What can the strategies of the chessboard teach us about how to succeed in life? Author, educator, entrepreneur, hedge fund advisor and US Chess Federation life master Adam Robinson makes a return appearance to The Knowledge Project to discuss some of the best ways to position yourself for success, including how to steer outcomes in your favor and what it takes to become a learning machine. He also weighs in on the potential uses of ChatGPT, investment strategies, and what it means to truly...

Dr. Gina Poe has spent nearly four decades studying the science of sleep, and how we can all get a better night’s rest by making some simple changes in our lives. In this episode Poe dives deep into what she’s learned about sleep during her career, including the stages of sleep, why you’re waking up in the middle of the night, why some people remember their dreams, the best bedtime routines, and the real-life consequences when you miss a night’s sleep.   Dr. Poe is a professor of...

When Kevin Kelly turned 68 years old, he began writing down notes and thoughts about all the lessons he’d learned in his life and the ones he wished he’d learned earlier. While those notes were originally intended for his young adult children, they eventually became the book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, which was released in May 2023. On this episode of the Knowledge Project, Kelly goes in-depth on some of the book’s most essential lessons, including learning,...

How can you use time to create sustainable, competitive advantages for your company? Acclaimed business consultant George Stalk, Jr. has spent much of his more than 40 years in the industry thinking about time, and on this episode he dives deep into the strategies he’s preached to companies about how to speed things up, and how to use time as an effective tool that’s almost impossible to compete against. Stalk joined the Boston Consulting Group in 1978 and is based in the firm’s Toronto...

One of the main jobs Ravi Gupta has as a partner at venture capital giant Sequoia Capital is to help founders see the difference between fantasy and reality. On this episode of The Knowledge Project, Gupta dives deep into a wide range of topics that will help you better understand the realities of success, decision making, why it’s crucial to practice doing things you don’t want to do, the best advice he ever received, and the value of quality over quantity.   Gupta has served as a partner...

Jason Karp was living what he thought was a successful life in his 20s. He graduated near the top of his class from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and was well on his way to becoming a successful hedge fund manager. But when he noticed a series of health issues cropping up - including the frightening diagnosis that he would go blind by the age of 30 - he made a series of life-altering decisions focused on his health and wellness. On this episode Karp dives deep into the...

Visionary technology and business leader Nathan Myhrvold just might be the most interesting person in the world, and in this episode of The Knowledge Project he dives deep into some of the most pressing questions facing our world today. Where will technology take us in the future? Should we trust artificial intelligence? Where have we gone wrong in protecting our planet? How do we reverse the effects of what we’ve already done? Myhrvold answers all these and much, much more.   Myhrvold is a...

Get ready to upgrade your life with executive and leadership coach Jim Dethmer's powerful Four Pillars of Integrity. From owning your mistakes to boosting your emotional intelligence, Dethmer shares essential strategies to improve your relationships and live more purposefully. As a coach to over 150 CEOs and founding partner at The Conscious Leadership Group, Dethmer brings experience and results. And if you want more from Jim Dethmer, don't miss his first appearance on The Knowledge...

In the third installment in a series of episodes, The Knowledge Project curates essential segments from five guests revolving around one theme: leadership. This episode helps put a unique definition on leadership and examines whether or not good leaders are context-dependent, the differences between a great leader and an average leader, how great leaders should balance feedback, the difference between being right and doing right, a playbook for managing teams, and the importance of radical...

Are you scrolling on your phone constantly? How badly do you crave that morning cup of coffee? Are you compulsively gambling, drinking, shopping, or even reading romance novels just to fall asleep? The potential for addiction is everywhere in our society, and on this episode of The Knowledge Project psychiatrist and author Dr. Anna Lembke discusses dopamine, addictive behaviors, warning signs and treatment for addiction, and how our brains handle all that pleasure and pain in life.   Dr....

What if you could change the way your company operates, even if you’re not the CEO? Aaron Dignan believes it’s possible, and in this episode he’s offering a wealth of insights into how organizations are run, the perils of stagnant bureaucracy, and all the various hurdles keeping us from doing our best work. As the founder of The Ready - a global organizational transformation and coaching practice - Dignan helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic...

Acclaimed executive coach and leadership development specialist Carolyn Coughlin calls on more than a decade of experience to help you become a better listener. She goes in-depth on why the language we use with each other and with ourselves is so important, the three different types of listening, the most common skill she teaches that makes an immediate impact, and how to help your kids become better listeners. Coughlin is a co-founder at Cultivating Leadership, a leadership development...

Author and Buddhist practitioner Jack Kornfield sits down for a candid, in-depth interview to help you suppress self-doubt and find inner calm.  Calling on decades of experience as one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West, Kornfield offers valuable insights into how to best deal with conflict and stress in your life and how to handle harmful outside influences in healthy, constructive ways.   Kornfield trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of...

The Knowledge Project closes 2022 with a look back at some of the best conversations of the year. Featuring interviews from 10 of the most downloaded and acclaimed episodes of 2022, this collection of conversations offers a variety of insights into evidence-based approaches to happiness, getting things done, small things you can do to make life great, eliminating drama, impulse control, making faster and better decisions, the core human nature that drives us all, sleeping better, slowing down...

Social psychologist Emily Balcetis has devoted her career to understanding how people’s perceptions of the world fuel their motivations and life goals. In this episode she goes in-depth on that wealth of research, what she’s learned from studying some of the world’s most successful people and how they set goals, and how you can get better results in life if you change the way you see the world and where you place your focus.   Balcetis is an Associate Professor of Psychology at New York...

Keith Creel calls on nearly a decade of experience working with the Canadian Pacific Railway to discuss his strategies for leadership and how he’s turned the company around over five years in charge.   We discuss all you need to know about the rail industry and how it affects our daily lives, what changes he sees coming in the future for the industry, how he thinks about leadership in times of change, and how Canadian Pacific secured a $27 billion deal to take over its rival, Kansas City...

My guest today is Shopify co-founder and CEO Tobi Lütke.  We discuss the differences between founders and professional managers, how he’s scaled with Shopify, the constant fight against bureaucracy, how he thinks about innovation in a large company, and how he manages to keep his head when everyone else is losing theirs.   A coder at heart who emigrated from Germany to Canada two decades ago, Lütke co-founded the e-commerce giant Shopify in Ottawa in 2006. The Globe and Mail named Lütke...

Widely regarded as one of the top business leaders of his generation, Alan Mulally joins the show to discuss the formation of his leadership strategy and how you can apply his lessons to your life and business. On this episode Mulally breaks down the principles of how a team can work together toward a larger goal, creating a culture of love by design, the role of the leader, what happens when people opt out of working together, how to use the ideas of working together in your family life, and...

This episode is packed with wisdom from previous guests on the art of making better decisions.  We discuss the three types of decision-makers, how to control your emotions when making decisions, why it’s crucial to look at every decision differently, the processes for coming to the right decision, and how to learn from your mistakes when you get it wrong. The guests on this episode are author Ventakesh Rao (Episode 7), psychologist, author and professional poker player Maria Konnikova...

Shane's guest on this episode of the show is New York Times bestselling author Neil Pasricha, who returns for his second appearance on The Knowledge Project. We discuss the importance of gratitude and how simple acts can change the way you feel, where confidence comes from, the specific routines and habits you can use to counter anxiety, the recipe for building resilience, and so much more. Pasricha is the author of seven books which collectively have sold over 2 million copies and spent...

Artificial intelligence researcher and author Kenneth Stanley has argued that “as soon as you create an objective, you ruin your ability to reach it.” So what should you consider when thinking about your objectives, and what will set you up for success? On this episode Stanley discusses how to set the right objectives for your life, why we’re too tied to accomplishments, what role accountability plays in our education system, the value of peer review,  why transformative innovations are...

Few figures have shaped the way we think about business over the past 20 years more than Reid Hoffman. The co-founder of LinkedIn and former PayPal executive is also a wildly successful venture capitalist, author and podcaster, but he didn’t get to his place as a Silicon Valley giant without making plenty of crucial decisions. On this episode Hoffman discusses lessons learned from decades spent as a hands-on operator and investor, including what he knows about scaling that others miss, the...

My guest today is acclaimed psychologist and longtime Stanford University professor Barbara Tversky who calls on her nearly 50 years in the field of cognitive psychology for an in-depth discussion about how our minds work. We discuss the Nine Laws of Cognition, why action shapes thought, how the language we use changes what we think, tactics to communicate better on Zoom, why she dove into the work of Leonardo da Vinci, when to use charts and when to avoid them, the importance of perspective...

LA Rams General Manager Les Snead dives deep into some of the strategies that made the Rams a Super Bowl Champion, including assessing character, how to draft the right player, the complicated nature of trading players, how to build a team, hiring the right coach, hidden performance, why it’s so important to be relentlessly curious, and so much more.   A native of football-crazed Eufaula, Alabama, Snead served as a graduate assistant at Auburn University before he spent 14 years as an NFL...

Celebrated research psychologist Gary Klein has spent nearly 50 years studying how and why people make the decisions they do. On this episode, Klein calls on those five decades of experience to discuss pioneering the field of naturalistic decision making, the difference between experience and expertise, why some people stagnate at an intermediate level, Cognitive Flexibility Theory, the role of storytelling, how to gain insights, fixation errors, cognitive biases, mental models, how to...