TIP772: How Great Compounders Turn Time Into a Superpower w/ Kyle Grieve
Host Kyle Grieve analyzes the book "The Compounders" and explores why a small group of exceptional businesses can compound capital at high rates for decades. He explains the central importance of maintaining returns on invested capital above the cost of capital, sustaining high reinvestment rates, and leveraging time, while highlighting the roles of decentralization, culture, incentives, and working capital discipline. The episode walks through multiple case studies, including Nvidia, Lifco, Indutrade, Bergman & Beving, AdTech, Constellation Software, Heico, Ametek, and Judges Scientific, to illustrate how great compounders turn time into a superpower.
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna: Creating Smarter Business with AI and Quantum
Host Malcolm Gladwell interviews IBM CEO and chairman Arvind Krishna in front of a live audience at IBM's New York City office about IBM's role in solving complex business problems through technology. Krishna reflects on his early technical career, his predictive bets on networking and streaming, his strategic decision to acquire Red Hat instead of chasing hyperscale cloud, and his views on how enterprises should pragmatically deploy AI. He also explains why he believes quantum computing is a third, fundamentally different form of computation on par with the semiconductor revolution and outlines a near-term timeline for impactful quantum applications.
How to communicate with your dog, from a Westminster champion | Jennifer Crank
Host Elise Hugh introduces a TED Talk by dog agility competitor Jennifer Crank, who demonstrates an agility course with her border collie High Five and explains how the sport depends on precise interspecies communication. Crank describes the structure and difficulty of modern dog agility, the six primary cues handlers use, and why dogs respond most naturally to motion and body position rather than voice commands. She then connects these lessons to human relationships, emphasizing clarity, timing, consistency, and trust in any form of communication or leadership.
TIP769: How Home Depot's Founders Built a $300 Billion Company from the Ground Up w/ Kyle Grieve
Host Kyle Grieve provides a narrative deep dive into the origins and growth of Home Depot, drawing heavily from the founders' book "Built from Scratch". He traces Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank's early careers, their firing from Handy Dan, the creation of the Home Depot concept, the role of key partners like Ken Langone and Pat Farah, and the company's early financing and expansion challenges. The episode then examines Home Depot's competitive strategy, supplier relationships, management philosophy, and long-term performance, extracting lessons for entrepreneurs and investors about culture, pricing, competition, and disciplined growth.
How Alex Hormozi Gets Other People To Build His $100M+ Empire
The host and Alex discuss how to think about talent, hiring, and leadership, including frameworks for diagnosing employee performance issues and prioritizing intelligence and small skill gaps in recruiting. They explore the evolution from operator to 'collector of people,' the importance of pattern recognition in building teams, and how to identify true partners versus employees. The conversation broadens into trade-offs between work and life, patience versus speed, the role of networks and alternative education, copywriting and persuasion, and Alex's current reflections on mortality, happiness, and redefining his priorities beyond business.
Advice Line with Chet Pipkin of Belkin International
This Advice Line episode of How I Built This Lab features Belkin founder Chet Pipkin helping three early-stage entrepreneurs work through practical business challenges. They discuss adoption and positioning for dissolvable shampoo tablets, inventory and cash-flow planning for a fast-selling sports accessory, and how a massage tool company can expand into B2B and corporate wellness markets. Throughout, Chet shares lessons from building Belkin around solving real problems, managing capital constraints, and relying on grassroots demand instead of top-down sales pushes.
Two US governors - a Democrat and a Republican - on why there's hope for democracy | Matt Meyer and J. Kevin Stitt
Democratic Governor of Delaware Matt Meyer and Republican Governor of Oklahoma J. Kevin Stitt interview each other on stage at TED Next 2025 about the health and future of American democracy. They discuss restoring trust in government through effective service delivery and federalism, navigating polarized information ecosystems, leveraging AI and apprenticeships in education, and preserving the American dream through integrity-driven, bipartisan leadership. The conversation emphasizes shared values, personal rapport, and practical reforms over partisan point-scoring.
Why Following Your Dreams Isn't Enough
Host Shankar Vedantam first speaks with Stanford professor Hagi Rao about why bold visions and passion often fail without careful attention to operations, using examples like the Fyre Festival, North Korea's unfinished "Hotel of Doom," and the rollout of healthcare.gov. Rao introduces the contrast between "poetry" (inspiring visions) and "plumbing" (execution, routines, and details), and explores how good leaders and organizations cultivate plumbing through practices like field visits, premortems, and empowering unsung "Sherpas." In the second segment, sociologist Rob Willer answers listener questions about bridging political divides, explaining why debate-style arguing backfires, how empathy and correcting misperceptions can reduce partisan animosity, and how structured conversations and role modeling from leaders can support healthier democratic engagement.
"Tom Freston"
The hosts talk with media executive Tom Freston about his unconventional path from advertising into years of travel across North Africa and Asia, building a clothing business in India and Afghanistan, and eventually helping launch MTV and other major cable brands. Freston recounts the creation and impact of MTV, the birth of Comedy Central, his tumultuous years leading Viacom under Sumner Redstone, early views on platforms like YouTube and MySpace, and his later work in philanthropy and Afghan media. The conversation also explores his philosophy on travel, risk-taking, and using media for social change, plus colorful anecdotes involving Jimmy Buffett, Bangkok sex clubs, and a desert music festival near Timbuktu.
Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel
Guy Raz interviews Tom Hale, founder and CEO of Backroads, about how he turned a spontaneous idea into one of the largest active travel companies in the world. Hale describes leaving an unfulfilling environmental planning job, bootstrapping bike trips through U.S. national parks and later internationally, and building a logistics- and people-intensive business without outside capital. He also explains how Backroads survived major shocks like 9/11, the Great Recession, and COVID-19 while expanding beyond bike tours into hiking and multi-adventure travel.
The Woman Who Makes Millionaires: Only 1% of People Do This! The PPF Framework Will 10x Your Income!
Steven interviews Natalie, an entrepreneur who has co-founded two nine-figure companies, Cardone Ventures and Tenex Health, and worked directly with over 15,000 business owners to grow and scale their organizations. She explains her frameworks for goal setting, hiring, communication, time management, and sales, and contrasts the mindset and behaviors of the top 1% with those who struggle to build wealth. The conversation also explores hard work versus burnout, respect versus likability, AI-enabled opportunities, the coming women's wealth transfer, and the importance of believing you can learn any skill you need.
TIP766: Intelligent Fanatics: How Great Business Leaders Win w/ Clay Finck
Host Clay Fink summarizes the book "Intelligent Fanatics" by Ian Cassel and Sean Iddings, explaining how extraordinary business leaders build durable competitive advantages through culture, incentives, and long-term thinking. He dives into case studies of Herb Kelleher at Southwest Airlines, Les Schwab at Les Schwab Tire Centers, and Chester Cajot at QuickTrip, highlighting their unconventional strategies and employee-first philosophies. The episode distills common traits of intelligent fanatics and connects them to how investors can better evaluate management teams and business quality.
How to Use AI to Make Money, Save Time, and Be More Productive
Mel Robbins interviews AI expert Allie K. Miller about how everyday people can practically use artificial intelligence to save time, make money, and improve their lives. Allie explains what AI and generative AI are in simple terms, outlines four main ways to interact with AI tools, and shares concrete examples from travel planning and cooking to job searches and caregiving. They also address risks and concerns such as hallucinations, job loss, over-reliance, data privacy, and environmental impact, while emphasizing that learning to use AI now is crucial, especially for women and knowledge workers.
The High School Dropout Who Made $2B & Bought an NBA Team
Ryan Smith describes his journey from a 1.9 GPA high school dropout to building Qualtrics from his family basement into a multi‑billion‑dollar company and later becoming an NBA team owner. He recounts being effectively forced out of school, surviving a precarious stint in Seoul as a teen English teacher, founding Qualtrics with his father during a cancer scare, and eventually turning down a $500 million acquisition offer before raising major venture capital and selling the company. He also reflects on focus, long‑term thinking, buying the Utah Jazz, and his personal frameworks for parenting and career decisions.
#834: David Baszucki, Co-Founder of Roblox - The Path to 150M+ Daily Users, Critical Business Decisions, Ketogenic Therapy for Brain Health, Daily Routines, The Roblox Economy, and More
Tim Ferriss interviews Roblox founder and CEO David Bazuki about his family's multi‑year struggle with his son Matthew's severe bipolar disorder and how a medically supervised ketogenic diet produced dramatic improvements after many medications and hospitalizations. They discuss metabolic psychiatry, ketosis, continuous glucose and ketone monitoring, and how physiology can underpin mental health. The conversation then shifts to the origin and growth of Roblox, its user‑generated economy, safety and civility at scale, the role of AI in the platform's future, and David's own health routines and long‑term decision‑making as a public company CEO.
Babylist: Natalie Gordon. How a new mom used nap time to build a $500M business.
Software engineer Natalie Gordon describes how her overwhelming experience creating a traditional big-box baby registry while pregnant led her to build BabyList, a universal registry that lets parents combine products from any retailer with practical services like dog walking or diaper subscriptions. She explains how she bootstrapped the company while caring for a newborn, then gradually scaled it through affiliate revenue, an accelerator, seed funding, and later a major shift into holding inventory and operating as an e-commerce retailer. Throughout, she reflects on hiring and management challenges, learning to become a CEO, and keeping BabyList focused on serving expecting and new parents rather than expanding into adjacent categories like weddings.
Brené Brown: We're In A Spiritual Crisis! The Hidden Epidemic No One Wants To Admit!
Brene Brown discusses how vulnerability, courage, and emotional "armor" shape our lives, relationships, and leadership. She shares personal stories from a chaotic Texas childhood, her long-term marriage, and caring for her mother with dementia, illustrating how shame, fear, and control patterns develop and how they can be changed. The conversation also explores power and politics, systems thinking, responsibility of large platforms, connection and belonging, and the practical skills needed to build trust, recover from failure, and live more bravely.
How to build your confidence - and spark it in others | Brittany Packnett Cunningham (re-release)
Host Elise Hu introduces a 2019 TED Talk by educator and activist Brittany Packnett Cunningham on the nature and power of confidence. Drawing on stories from her childhood, her classroom, women rangers in Kenya, and her own career, Brittany argues that confidence is a critical engine for turning ideas into action and pursuing justice. She outlines three elements that "crack the code" of what she calls revolutionary confidence: permission, community, and curiosity.
How to empower the next generation of pilots | Refilwe Ledwaba
Airline and helicopter pilot and educator Refilwe Ledwaba shares her journey from flight attendant to becoming the first Black woman helicopter pilot in South Africa, highlighting how a supportive instructor redesigned training around her background and learning needs. She explains how those experiences inspired her to found Girls Fly Africa, which prepares young people-especially girls from rural and traditional communities-for careers in aviation and aerospace through information, skills training, financial support, networks, and long‑term mentorship. In a follow‑up conversation, she and TED Fellows Program Director Lily Jameson Olds discuss systemic barriers for women in aviation, the importance of community and role models, and her vision of normalizing women's presence in high‑level aviation roles.
Kamala Harris: America Is At Breaking Point & I'm Deeply Concerned About The State Of The Country!
Kamala Harris discusses her upbringing in a civil-rights-oriented family, her legal career, and how those experiences shaped her commitment to justice and public service. She reflects in detail on serving as vice president, the 107‑day presidential campaign, internal tensions within the Biden White House, and her experiences debating Donald Trump. Harris also talks about media dynamics, disinformation, her regrets about not having more time to campaign, the emotional impact of losing the 2024 election, and how she is thinking about a potential future run for president.
How to Communicate With Confidence & Ease (From Harvard Business School's #1 Professor)
Mel Robbins interviews Harvard Business School professor and behavioral scientist Allison Wood Brooks about the science of communication. Brooks explains her TALK framework (Topics, Asking, Levity, Kindness) for improving conversations in every area of life, along with the critical role of listening and perspective-taking. They discuss practical strategies for topic preparation, asking better questions, managing status and group dynamics, handling interruptions and belittling comments, and shifting unhelpful communication patterns in relationships.
Are Two C.E.O.s Better Than One? (Update)
Stephen Dubner revisits the question of whether companies run by co-CEOs perform better than those with a single chief, exploring both supportive evidence and strong skepticism. CEO advisor Mark Feigen and several current and former co-CEOs describe the benefits and pitfalls of shared leadership, while Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld critiques the model as creating role confusion and undermining decisive authority. Computer scientist Lori Williams adds evidence from pair programming, showing how working in pairs can improve quality and satisfaction, raising the broader question of when two leaders might truly be better than one.
Masterclass: How to go from founder to CEO (without imploding)
Sam and Sean discuss how a startup's growth is constrained by the founder's psychology and development as a leader, especially after the brute-force phase ends around a few million in revenue. They contrast abdicating versus properly delegating, share concrete management frameworks (like RACI and feedback methods), and talk about building culture through real, lived values rather than slogans. In the second half, they examine how repeat founders exploit their edge talents by running the same proven playbook in similar industries, highlighting multiple examples of entrepreneurs who "speedrun" the same business model to build multiple large companies.
Touchdown! The flag football movement is here | Troy Vincent Sr.
Former NFL player and current Executive Vice President of Football Operations for the NFL, Troy Vincent Sr., describes how girls and young women with the talent and desire to play football have historically been denied access, sharing personal stories about a gifted neighborhood athlete and his own daughter whose opportunities vanished because of their gender. He highlights the rapid rise of flag football as an affordable, accessible, and inclusive sport that now serves over 20 million participants across 100 countries, with growing support in U.S. high schools and colleges and a debut in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games. Vincent urges listeners to actively support girls' access to flag football, resist re-centering the sport around men as it grows, and "let her take the field" so women can shape the future of football and sports.
Jürgen Klopp: Would You Go Back To Manage LFC...? The Real Reason I Fell In Love With Liverpool!
Jürgen Klopp discusses his upbringing in Germany, the contrasting influences of his caring mother and demanding father, and how those experiences shaped his competitive mindset, work ethic, and confidence. He explains his evolution from an average player and early father working multiple jobs to a successful manager at Mainz, Dortmund, and Liverpool, focusing heavily on individualized leadership, team culture, pressing football, and learning from failure. Klopp also talks about turning down Manchester United, choosing Liverpool, coping with grief and burnout, leaving Liverpool, his current non-coaching role, his faith, and how he thinks about the possibility of one day returning to management.
How Can We Break Our Addiction to Contempt? (Update)
Stephen Dubner interviews Arthur Brooks about his argument that American politics has fallen into an addictive cycle of contempt, driven by media incentives, populism, and habits of communication, and that the most effective antidote is deliberately practiced love and warmheartedness. Brooks, drawing on economics, neuroscience, psychology, and his own varied career, explains how contempt differs from anger, how financial crises fuel polarization, and why media and political structures amplify division. He offers concrete techniques for individuals and leaders to reduce contempt, cultivate love as a verb, and reorient politics toward a competition over opportunity rather than mutual hatred.
The flourishing future of women's sports | Kate Johnson
Olympic medalist and sports marketing executive Kate Johnson explains how algorithms and historical media coverage have made women's sports far less discoverable than men's, despite rapid growth in popularity and economic potential. She details how this lack of visibility feeds a vicious cycle of underinvestment, affects young girls' participation in sports, and weakens the pipeline for female leaders. Johnson highlights emerging solutions from brands, media platforms, athletes, fans, and AI tools, and calls on listeners to actively support and create content around women's sports to help level the playing field.
Cheaper Teslas, OpenAI's Cash Burn, and Apple's CEO Succession Plans
Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway discuss Tesla's newly announced cheaper but downgraded Model 3 and Model Y, and what the moves reveal about intensifying EV competition, Tesla's shrinking market share, and the company's stretched valuation. They analyze OpenAI's massive compute deals with NVIDIA and others as signs of a potential AI bubble and explain how AI-driven market gains concentrate risk and give political cover for Trump's aggressive policies. They also cover the surge in gold prices and what it signals about confidence in the U.S. dollar, Apple's emerging CEO succession plan around John Ternus, bank lobbying over a potential Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac IPO, National Guard deployments and ICE raids in U.S. cities, and close with predictions on the Nobel Peace Prize and the length of the government shutdown alongside personal anecdotes.
3 simple ways to build stronger relationships at work | Alyssa Birnbaum
Organizational psychologist Alyssa Birnbaum explains how high-quality connections at work significantly influence engagement, burnout, and well-being, especially in remote and hybrid environments. Drawing on her research and personal experiences, she shows that even a single high-quality interaction can boost engagement and that video conversations can foster connection similarly to in-person meetings. She then offers three concrete practices-expanding dialogue, finding overlap, and showing genuine care-and emphasizes the responsibility of leaders to intentionally create space for meaningful connection at work.
#482 - Pavel Durov: Telegram, Freedom, Censorship, Money, Power & Human Nature
Lex Friedman interviews Pavel Durov, founder and CEO of Telegram, about his philosophy on freedom, discipline, technology, and the design of secure, scalable messaging systems. Pavel describes his strict lifestyle, his refusal to compromise on user privacy under pressure from powerful governments, and the technical and organizational principles behind Telegram's lean but highly productive engineering team. They also discuss government overreach, Pavel's legal ordeal in France, earlier clashes with Russia and Iran, the economics and crypto ecosystem around Telegram, and broader reflections on human nature, education, abundance, and mortality.
The Hospitality Principles That Build Billion-Dollar Startups
The host interviews restaurateur and author Will Gudera about the philosophy and practice of "unreasonable hospitality" that helped his restaurant Eleven Madison become a top destination. They discuss how small, highly personal gestures can matter more than perfect execution, how to build a culture of rigorous feedback and care, and how to operationalize hospitality through roles like the "Dreamweaver" and systems such as one-size-fits-all, one-size-fits-some, and one-size-fits-one experiences. The conversation also explores applications in other industries, the economics of restaurants, and the broader pursuit of excellence in life and business.
DAVID SENRA: Daniel Ek, Spotify
Host David Senra speaks with Spotify founder Daniel Ek about optimizing life for impact rather than happiness, arguing that deep, sustained happiness is a trailing indicator of meaningful impact. Ek traces his journey from early financial success and subsequent depression to building Spotify as a long-term mission, emphasizing self-knowledge, founder archetypes, trust, creativity, and energy management. The conversation explores how he learns from other founders, delegates product decisions, focuses on problem-solving, and thinks about quality, longevity, and what it means to truly "live."
How do you turn hope into action? A doctor and a public health expert answer | David Fajgenbaum and Celina de Sola
Host Elise Hu introduces a TED Intersections conversation between public health expert Selena De Sola and immunology researcher David Fagenbaum on how they turn hope into concrete action in their respective fields. Fagenbaum shares how surviving Castleman disease led him to repurpose existing drugs and build the nonprofit EveryCure, now using AI to match old medicines to new diseases, while De Sola explains how her organization, founded in El Salvador, works to create trauma-informed public systems across schools, healthcare, and law enforcement. Together they discuss holding hope and grief simultaneously, navigating setbacks, scaling systemic change, and the leadership, teamwork, and vision required to sustain impact.
He turned a broke team into a billion dollars
The hosts profile Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas, tracing how he transformed a struggling summer-league baseball operation into a massively in-demand entertainment phenomenon. They describe his decade of experiments with the Gastonia Grizzlies, the all‑in risk he and his wife took to launch the Savannah Bananas, and the fan‑first innovations that led to Banana Ball and a huge touring live show business. Along the way they draw parallels to MrBeast, Steve Jobs, Will Guidara, Dan Porter, Monster Jam, and Feld Entertainment to explore strategy, hospitality, showmanship, and building AI‑proof live experiences.
Most Replayed Moment: Captivate A Room Even If You're Shy! - Vinh Giang
The conversation explores the concept of a "vocal image" and how it shapes the way others form beliefs about us beyond our visual appearance. Vinh Giang walks the host through live exercises on melody, rate of speech, volume, and emotional tonality, using famous movie monologues to demonstrate how vocal variety changes how messages are felt and remembered. They also discuss how facial expressions and nonverbal cues during listening can convey engagement or unintentionally signal impatience.
TIP756: The Rise and Fall of Julian Robertson's Tiger Fund w/ Kyle Grieve
Host Kyle Grieve presents a solo deep dive into the career of hedge fund legend Julian Robertson and the rise and fall of his Tiger Fund. He covers Robertson's background, investment philosophy, famous trades such as the mid-1990s copper short, his use of networks and sentiment to find mispricings, and his seven core stock-picking themes. The episode also examines how leverage, fund size, market bubbles, and centralized decision-making contributed to Tiger's eventual closure during the dot-com era.
Secret Agent (Evy Poumpouras): Never Be Yourself At Work! Authenticity Is Quietly Sabotaging You! - Evy Poumpouras
Former U.S. Secret Service agent Evy Poumpouras discusses why over-identifying with past trauma and 'authenticity' can disempower people, arguing instead for radical acceptance of reality, emotional self-regulation, and personal responsibility. She explains concepts like cognitive load, decision fatigue, and the 'iceberg' model of personality, and shares lessons from presidents and law enforcement on confidence, communication, and decision-making under pressure. The conversation also explores victim mindsets, boundaries in relationships and work, the dangers of low-vibration environments, and how online culture and algorithms are amplifying polarization and political violence.
#828: David Senra - How Extreme Winners Think and Win: Lessons from 400+ of History's Greatest Founders and Investors (Including Buffett, Munger, Rockefeller, Jobs, Ovitz, Zell, and Names You Don't Know But Should)
Tim Ferriss interviews David Senra, host of the Founders Podcast, about how studying hundreds of biographies of entrepreneurs and investors has shaped his thinking and behavior. They explore different archetypes of "extreme winners," the fine line between productive and destructive drive, David's obsessive reading and note-taking process, and how he built Founders from a one-man, paywalled show into a widely respected business history podcast. They also discuss his new conversation-driven show, his relationships with mentors like Daniel Ek, Patrick O'Shaughnessy, Michael Dell, Sam Zell, and Michael Ovitz, and how focus, authenticity, and obsession guide his work and life design.
TECH002: Jensen Huang & NVIDIA w/ Seb Bunney - Review of The Thinking Machine by Stephen Witt
The episode is a book-club style discussion of Stephen Witt's "The Thinking Machine," focusing on how NVIDIA evolved from a niche gaming graphics company into a central player in the AI revolution. Preston and Seb trace the technical and strategic milestones behind NVIDIA's rise-parallel processing, GPUs, CUDA, and neural networks-while examining Jensen Huang's leadership style, culture-building, and obsession with speed and iteration. They also touch on the implications and risks of AI, Huang's reluctance to address them directly, and preview their next book on OpenAI and Sam Altman.
Inside WWE's storytelling machine | Paul "Triple H" Levesque
Paul "Triple H" Levesque discusses how WWE blends athleticism, storytelling, and character to create a unique form of entertainment that emotionally engages a massive global audience. In conversation with Patrick Talty, he explains WWE's creative process, media partnerships, and the importance of family, presence, and health, including his work on the President's Fitness Council. He also reflects on his own journey from childhood fan to performer to chief content officer, and how WWE's stories can inspire resilience and connection for fans around the world.