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The Knowledge Project

The Knowledge Project

Written by: Shane Parrish
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 Master the best of what other people have already figured out. Deep conversations with the best that go beyond the usual advice to uncover the timeless principles that drive success. If you enjoy the show, please hit the follow button.Farnam Street Media Inc. Economics Social Sciences
Episodes
  • Winston Weinberg: Speed, Stress, and Better Decisions

    Winston Weinberg: Speed, Stress, and Better Decisions
    May 12 2026
    Winston Weinberg is the CEO and co-founder of Harvey, the AI platform built for the legal industry. In this episode, Winston explains how AI is reshaping legal work, why judgment becomes more valuable as routine work gets automated, and how to build the prioritization muscle required to move faster, stay focused, and make better decisions when everything is changing. He also shares the operating principles behind Harvey’s growth: make decisions faster, treat most choices as two-way doors, use stress to build resilience, prioritize the one thing that matters most and the Google Doc that drives it all. Harvey began with a simple test: take real legal questions, run them through GPT-3, and ask experienced lawyers whether they would send the answers with zero edits. On 86 out of 100 questions, three out of three attorneys said yes. This is a conversation about AI, law, speed, resilience, and building in a world where the bar keeps getting higher. ------ Timestamps: (00:00:00) “The List” that Powers Winston’s $11B Business (00:02:20) How to Say “No” Like a CEO (00:07:26) The 3 Principles for Strong Decision-Making (00:08:18) How Harvey is Changing the Legal World (00:11:36) One Cold Email to Sam Altman that Changed Everything (00:12:56) The Demo Strategy that Shocked Investors (00:17:55) Advice Winston Didn't Take (00:19:34) The Deal that Almost Killed Harvey (00:21:56) How to Build Resilience to Failure (00:24:00) How Winston Hacks His Stress (00:29:36) The Key to Creating a Sense of Urgency on Your Team (00:31:29) The Kinds of People Not to Hire at Startups (00:35:09) How to Screen for Resiliency in Interviews (00:41:49) Winston's Advice for Law Students (00:45:28) Would AI Make a Better Lawyer than a Human? (00:48:54) The Future of Agent-Powered Law Firms (00:49:14) Will AI Cause Law Firms to Shrink? (00:52:45) Can AI-Only Law Firms Exist? (00:54:52) Why Legal Costs Aren't Going Down (00:56:48) Three Principles All Entrepreneurs Need to Follow (01:00:54) How Winston Defines Success ------ Newsletter: The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------ Follow Shane Parrish: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/shaneparrish⁠ Insta: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet/⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/⁠ Follow Winston Weinberg LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/winston-weinberg/ Harvey: https://www.harvey.ai/blog/author/winston-weinberg ------ Thank you to the sponsors for this episode: +CoinShares: Delivering Reason to Digital Asset Investing. ⁠https://coinshares.com/⁠ +Granola AI, The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings: https://www.granola.ai/shane Check out the Granola Notes. HeyGen is a message-first AI video platform that helps people and AI agents turn ideas into professional video in minutes. Try for free at https://www.heygen.com/ Join the salty rebellion: https://drinklmnt.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • OpenAI Co-Founder: AI Goes Parabolic! Here's What's Next | Greg Brockman

    OpenAI Co-Founder: AI Goes Parabolic! Here's What's Next | Greg Brockman
    Apr 22 2026
    The AI race, the future of AGI, and the inside story of OpenAI. Greg Brockman is the co-founder of OpenAI. This is the most detailed first-person account he has given of the 72 hours after Sam Altman was fired, how OpenAI started, and the future. Greg explains how the original Napa offsite produced the three-step technical plan OpenAI has followed for a decade and the real reason OpenAI had to abandon its pure nonprofit structure. He then walks through the 72 hours after Sam Altman was fired: where he was when he got the board call, why he quit the same day, how the "Phoenix" backup company was designed at Sam's house the next morning, and the moment Ilya Sutskever's tweet changed everything. From there, the conversation turns forward: whether we're in a global AI race, how much of OpenAI's own code is now written by AI ("it's hard to know what percent is not"), why OpenAI stopped showing reasoning traces, what a compute-constrained world means for who gets access to AGI, and Greg's answer to the question everyone is really asking: What happens to your job? ----- Timestamps: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:00:49 Meeting Sam Altman and Starting OpenAI 00:02:40 Building the Founding Team 00:04:25 DeepMind's Lead Over OpenAI 00:04:54 The Change from a Pure Non-Profit 00:06:05 Breakthrough Moments at OpenAI 00:08:22 What Dota 2 Meant for OpenAI 00:10:04 Reasoning Versus Prediction 00:11:59 Tensions Grow at OpenAI 00:15:44 Sam Altman's Firing 00:17:49 Greg Quits OpenAI 00:19:56 Sam Explores Deal with Microsoft's Satya 00:20:28 OpenAI Employees Sign Petition for Altman's Return 00:23:43 Ilya Sutskever Leaves OpenAI 00:24:59 Lessons Learned in Leadership after Sam Ousting 00:28:22 The Thing Ilya Said that Greg Can't Forget 00:32:22 Is AI Going Parabolic? 00:33:24 How Much of OpenAI's Code is Written by AI? 00:36:21 Are AI Chatbots Just Telling Us What We Want to Hear? 00:38:06 The Global AI Race to Reach AGI 00:38:40 What Happens if US Doesn't Reach AGI First? 00:39:49 Are Competing Countries Stealing AI Advancements from U.S? 00:40:38 Why ChatGPT No Longer Shows Reasoning 00:41:47 The Finite Constraints of Compute 00:43:38 On Investing Early in Data Centers 00:46:31 The Future of Data Center Specialization 00:47:52 How OpenAI Will Decide Whose Queries to Serve 00:49:08 OpenAI on Consumer vs Enterprise Models 00:53:05 Data Centers in Space? 01:00:56 What Should AI Regulation Look Like? 01:04:33 The Future of AI-Powered Entrepreneurship 01:04:44 AI and Job Loss 01:07:15 The Skills Young People Should Invest In 01:11:30 What Does Success Look Like For You? ------ Newsletter: The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------ Follow Shane Parrish: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/shaneparrish⁠ Insta: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet/⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/⁠ Follow Greg Brockman: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thegdb/ Blog: https://blog.gregbrockman.com/ ------ Thank you to the sponsors for this episode: +CoinShares: Delivering Reason to Digital Asset Investing. ⁠https://coinshares.com/⁠ +Granola AI, The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings: https://www.granola.ai/shane Check out the Granola Notes. HeyGen is a message-first AI video platform that helps people and AI agents turn ideas into professional video in minutes. Try for free at https://www.heygen.com/ Join the salty rebellion: https://drinklmnt.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 13 mins
  • The $25B CEO: Most Leaders Are Setting Goals Way Too Small

    The $25B CEO: Most Leaders Are Setting Goals Way Too Small
    Apr 14 2026
    Mario Harik is the CEO of XPO, one of the largest trucking companies in the world, and leads a team of 40,000 people across a multi‑billion‑dollar operation. He started as employee #3, trained under Brad Jacobs (who’s built eight multibillion‑dollar companies from scratch), and has spent the last two decades turning engineering discipline, frontline feedback, and a deep belief in human potential into a repeatable leadership system. In this conversation, Mario breaks down how he makes decisions in real time using data and “second‑derivative” thinking, how he hires and develops A players (and the gut test that quietly tells you who isn’t one), how he runs meetings so the most junior person in the room often delivers the best idea, and why ego, complacency, and small goals are the silent cap on most leaders and most companies. You’ll learn: how an engineer thinks about strategy and execution, what Mario learned from Brad Jacobs about thinking big and moving fast, the A/B/C player framework he uses to assess talent, how he turned the Yellow bankruptcy into a capital‑allocation win, and the three core levers—people, capital, and time—he believes drive every great business result. Enjoy. Timestamps: (00:00:00) Why Ego and Complacency Quietly Cap Great Leaders (00:00:19) How an Engineer’s Mind Changes the Way You Lead (00:01:58) Using Engineering Frameworks to Run a Multi‑Billion‑Dollar Business (00:03:38) Letting Go of Perfection: How People Actually Operate (00:05:14) Lessons from Brad Jacobs: Thinking Bigger (00:07:13) Building Strong Teams and the Feedback Loops That Keep Them Going (00:08:18) Evaluating Talent: Skill, Work Ethic, and the Collegiality Test (00:10:51) Disagree, Then Commit: Making Better Decisions as a Team (00:12:50) The Service‑First Strategy Behind XPO’s Customer Edge (00:16:21) Running a Giant Business in Real Time with KPIs and Data (00:19:41) Why the Best Ideas Come from Frontline Employees (00:22:35) Using AI and Tech to Track Performance and Cut Errors (00:28:35) Coaching People with Data Instead of Opinions (00:29:30) How to Run Effective Meetings (00:32:36) Pre‑Meeting Prep: Getting the Most Out of Your Team (00:34:29) Spotting and Developing Future Leaders Inside Your Company (00:39:48) Mario’s Hiring Framework: How He Really Assesses Candidates (00:47:30) Early Life Lessons That Still Shape How He Leads Today (00:49:27) Thinking Analytically About Risk and Big Decisions (00:50:56) Inside the Yellow Bankruptcy Acquisition: A Case Study (00:55:31) Turning Strategy Into Execution Through Financial Tracking (00:59:23) The A/B/C Player Framework for Evaluating Talent (01:02:12) Creating a High‑Performance Culture Through Belief and Feedback (01:04:18) How Mario’s Leadership Style (and Feedback) Has Evolved (01:07:33) People, Capital, and Time: The Three Levers of Value Creation ------ Newsletter: The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ------ Follow Shane Parrish: X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/shaneparrish⁠ Insta: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/farnamstreet/⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-parrish-050a2183/⁠ Follow Mario Harik: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marioharik/ XPO: https://investors.xpo.com/board-member/mario-harik/ ------ Thank you to the sponsors for this episode: +Granola AI, The AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings: https://www.granola.ai/shane Check out the Granola Notes. +CoinShares: Delivering Reason to Digital Asset Investing. https://coinshares.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 hr and 39 mins
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- I do not bore you with you vast prescription of the show and how should over anypodcast
- the knowledge is same like everyone else
- but i can assure you, that after listening to this podcast you do not think that you wasted of your time ..........
- this podcast is worth of your time ..........

- i love the concept of the show.........

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amazing podcast i listen at least 1 podcast every day when I go to train 🚆

very good podcast especially all interview 👍...... from MADHUBANI BIHAR INDIA

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this is the most beautiful important and valuable podcast that I found! thanks for this!!

the most valuable podcast!

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