The Knowledge Project: A Farnam Street Podcast

Speaker, author and radio journalist Celeste Headlee has had decades of experience fine tuning the recipe for engaging and rewarding conversation. She shares some tips to help us instantly improve our conversational skills and meaningfully connect with others.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Josh Wolfe, co-founder of Lux Capital discusses how to unearth the unexplored ideas that will reshape our future. We also talk about parenting, decision-making, and which generation has the best rap.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former NHL player turned mining executive Brent Gilchrist joins me to share the lessons he learned in the trenches of professional hockey. We discuss leadership, hard work, and what it takes to win as a team.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author, educator, and hedge fund advisor, Adam Robinson returns for part 2 of our fascinating discussion. We talk chess, AI, handicapping horse races, and the secret to learning that nobody is teaching.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Author, educator, and hedge fund advisor, Adam Robinson shares powerful lessons on winning the game of life. He teaches us how to learn, how to fail, and his three secrets of happiness and success.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Television personality, activist, mother, and wife to Canada’s Prime Minister, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau discusses her battle with eating disorders, why nature and art play such a huge role in her life and what unites us as people.     Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dan Kluger, award-winning chef and owner of NYC’s Loring Place joins me on the podcast to reveal what really happens behind the scenes of a bustling restaurant, why every detail of your craft matters, and how to create the perfect experience for every guest.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Parenting expert and best selling author Barbara Coloroso shares her three foundational principles of child-rearing, how to get kids to be accountable for their actions, and what we can do as parents to raise confident, happy children.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a world that changes at a dizzying rate, effective leaders need to develop the skills to keep up. Developmental coach and author Jennifer Garvey Berger shares 3 habits to ensure continual growth, accelerated learning and deepened relationships of trust.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The world-renowned surgeon, writer, and researcher Atul Gawande shares powerful lessons about creating a culture of safe learning, the critical difference between a coach and a mentor, and how to ensure constant improvement in key areas of your personal and professional life.   Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member-only episodes, and more. Sign up at: https://fs.blog/membership/   Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/   Follow Shane on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, I interview fellow Ottawan and the founder and CEO of Shopify, Tobi Lütke. In case you’re still new to the internet, Shopify is the largest ecommerce platform that allows people to easily set up online storefronts to sell everything from jewelry to surfing lessons. Shopify began as a simple two man operation selling snowboards online, but it became clear rather quickly that it had the potential to grow into much more. Now Shopify employs more than 4,000 people and supports more than 600,000 businesses online. It’s a remarkable story, with a remarkable leader at the helm. There was so much I wanted to talk to Tobi about that we hop around quite a bit. Here are a few of the topics we discuss: Tobi’s thoughts on how video games helped him prepare to run a company How selling snowboards online slowly transitioned to the creation of one of the biggest tech companies in the world Why Tobi intentionally headquartered Shopify outside of Silicon Valley and how that fits into his overall growth strategy O

Today’s guest is Stratechery author and founder Ben Thompson. If you’re an investor in Silicon Valley, work at a tech start-up, or just love to geek out on technology and business analysis, odds are good that Stratechery is on your short list of must-read blogs. What started as a side project, quickly ballooned into one of the most influential tech blogs on the web. The New York Times called Stratechery, “one of the most interesting sources of analysis on any subject.” I agree. In this interview, Ben and I cover a lot of ground. Here are a few of the things we discuss: Learn once and for all how to pronounce Stratechery. :) How Ben’s business model was developed and how he massaged it over the years to become what it is today The one metric Ben looks at each day to gauge the health of his business How Ben deals with people who rip off his work and pass it off as their own Ben’s thoughts on pricing, free trials, content and other important aspects of online membership sites How Ben structures his day

There are only a handful of websites that I read religiously. One of those is MarginalRevolution.com, started by my next guest, Tyler Cowen. Other than hosting one of the most popular economic blogs in the world, Tyler is also an economics professor at George Mason University, a regular New York Times columnist, and the author of over a dozen books, including Average is Over, and The Complacent Class. With such a prolific guest, it’s no wonder that we cover a lot of ground. In this episode, we discuss: How the future of labor will look drastically different than it does today, and what we can do to future-proof our livelihood The pros and cons of virtual reality and the impact it could have on society The fate of newspapers and how information will be more and more “bundled” according to our tastes and preferences Race relations in the world, and how in many ways we’ve taken discouraging steps backwards How we’re losing touch with the physical world, and some of the symptoms that indicate that we co

My guest for this short episode of The Knowledge Project is a man who wears many hats. Ali Almossawi is a San Francisco-based author of books on critical thinking and computer science education, and the creator of An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments. He is also a principal engineer at Apple and was formerly employed as a data visualization engineer by Mozilla. His books have been read by 3 million readers, translated into 20 languages, and have sold over a quarter million copies in print. This interview is only 20 minutes along, but there was a lot I wanted to cover, so we move pretty fast. Specifically, we cover: The unique format Ali chooses when writing a book to help people understand the concepts more deeply The place for empathy in algorithmic thinking and how we can be more empathetic in our daily interactions with each other Ali’s note taking process and how he tracks the ideas and topics he’d like to explore Ali’s daily routine and the “algorithms” he uses to make the most of his day The si

I have wanted to do this interview for a long time. On this episode, I am thrilled to have Annie Duke, former professional poker player and author of the new book, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts. Annie has a very interesting background that makes her uniquely qualified to speak about high-level decision making. As an author, speaker, world-class poker player, and academic in the fields of psychology and cognitive theory, Annie understands the intersection of luck, skill, and making decisions in uncertain, chaotic environments better than most people on the planet. This is a whirlwind of an episode, and we cover all kinds of fascinating topics, including: The strange circumstances that shifted Annie’s path from finishing a Ph.D. in linguistics to becoming a professional poker player What it was like to be a female poker player in a predominantly male sport (especially before poker had become socially acceptable) What drew Annie into such a high stakes, time-

On this episode of The Knowledge Project, I’m happy to have William MacAskill. William is the co-founder and President of the Centre for Effective Altruism (CEA) and an Associate Professor in Philosophy at Oxford University. He is also the founder and president of 80,000 Hours, the co-founder and vice-president of Giving What We Can, and the author of Doing Good Better: Effective Altruism and a Radical New Way to Make a Difference. William’s work is primarily focused on encouraging people to use reason and evidence to find the best possible ways they can use their resources to make the biggest possible impact in the world. We cover a lot of ground in this interview, including: Why good intentions aren’t enough when giving to charity and how we can do better How William's giving philosophy was formed and how it developed into The Centre for Effective Altruism The best metrics to assess how good a charity is before donating a dime How letting our emotions guide our charitable giving can lead to ineffect

In this episode of The Knowledge Project, I have the brilliant Robert Greene. Robert is the author of 5 New York Times bestsellers, including The 48 Laws of Power and The 33 Strategies of War. He's also written on mastery and seduction. Robert’s books have been somewhat controversial over the years and have been called amoral, cunning, and even ruthless for what they reveal. Yet millions of readers, from mid-level managers to hip-hop royalty and corporate executives have revered his work as a sort of canonized scripture for the ambitious. In this conversation, we cover a lot of ground, including: Why Robert believes his first book, 48 Laws of Power has continued to sell steadily for over two decades. What Robert calls “alive time” and “dead time” and how we can optimize each day to be filled with “alive time” and live the life we’re proud of The one skill that determines how far you’ll get in life, no matter how talented you are in anything else Robert’s research method and how he finds such unique an

Since the popularity of Obstacle Course Racing, or OCR, has exploded onto the scene, there has been one woman who has dominated the sport: Amelia Boone. Amelia ran her first race in 2011 after some prodding from a co-worker, and though she says she stumbled her way to an unimpressive finish, she was smitten. She has since amassed over  50 podiums and two dozen victories, including the Spartan Race World Championship in 2013, and the World's Toughest Mudder (three times!) in 2012, 2014 and 2015. Oh, and her 2014 victory came just eight weeks after major knee surgery. Though she vehemently denies it, Amelia is superhuman. This interview is a little different than others you may have heard on The Knowledge Project but no less fascinating. We cover a wide variety of topics including habits, reading, self-reliance, and training. Specifically, you’ll learn: Why Amelia was drawn to obstacle racing even though running was something she despised The complementary connection between her sport and her professio

On this episode of the Knowledge Project, I’m joined by the fascinating Dan Ariely. Dan just about does it all. He has delivered 6 TED talks with a combined 20 million views, he’s a multiple New York Times best-selling author, a widely published researcher, and the James B Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. For the better part of three decades, Dan has been immersed in researching why humans do some of the silly, irrational things we do. And yes, as much as we’d all like to be exempt, that includes you too. In this captivating interview, we tackle a lot of interesting topics, including: The three types of decisions that control our life and how understanding our biases can help us make smarter decisions How our environment plays a big role in our decision making and the small changes we can make to automatically improve our outcomes The “behavioural driven” bathroom scale Dan has been working on to revolutionize weight loss Which of our irrational behaviors transf

On this episode of the Knowledge Project Podcast, I chat with Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of the leading online payment processing company, Stripe. If you’ve purchased anything online recently, there’s a good chance that Stripe facilitated the transaction. What is now an organization with over a thousand employees and handling tens of billions of dollars of online purchases every year, began as a small side experiment while Patrick and his brother John were going to college.   During our conversation, Patrick shares the details of their unlikely journey and some of the hard-earned wisdom he picked up along the way. I hope you have something handy to write with because the nuggets per minute in this episode are off the charts. Patrick was so open and generous with his responses that I’m really excited for you to hear what he has to say. Here are just a few of the things we cover: The biggest (and most valuable) mistakes Patrick made in the early days of Stripe and how they helped him get better