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
• The characteristics that Patrick looks for in a new hire to fit and contribute to the Stripe company culture
• What compelled he and his brother to move forward with the early concept of Stripe, even though on paper it was doomed to fail from the start
• The gaps Patrick saw in the market that dozens of other processing companies were missing — and how he capitalized on them
• The lessons Patrick learned from scaling Stripe from two employees (he and his brother) to nearly 1,000 today
• How he evaluates the upsides and potential dangers of speculative positions within the company
• How his Irish upbringing influenced his ability to argue and disagree without taking offense (and how we can all be a little more “Irish”)
• The power of finding the right peer group in your social and professional circles and how impactful and influential it can be in determining where you end up.
• The 4 ways Patrick has modified his decision making process over the last 5 years and how it’s helped him develop as a person and as a business leader (this part alone is worth the listen)
• Patrick’s unique approach to books and how he chooses what he’s going to spend his time reading

…life in Silicon Valley, Baumol’s cost disease, and so, so much more.

Patrick truly is one of the warmest, humblest and down-to-earth people I’ve had the pleasure to speak with and I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation together. I hope you will too!

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Just when I start to think I’m using my time well and getting a lot done in my life, I meet someone like Barbara Oakley.

Barbara is a true polymath. She was a captain in the U.S. Army, a Russian translator on Soviet trawlers, a radio operator in the South Pole, an engineer, university professor, researcher and the author of 8 books.

Oh, and she is also the creator and instructor of Learning to Learn, the most popular Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) ever(!), with over one million enrolled students.

In this fascinating interview, we cover many aspects of learning, including how to make it stick so we remember more and forget less, how to be more efficient so we learn more quickly, and how to remove that barriers that get in the way of effective learning.

Specifically, Barbara covers:

• How she changed her brain from hating math and science to loving it so much she now teaches engineering to college students
• What neuroscience can tell us about how to learn more effectively
• The two modes of your brain and how that impacts what and how you learn
• Why backing off can sometimes be the best thing you can do when learning something new
• How to “chunk” your learning so new knowledge is woven into prior knowledge making it easily accessible
• The best ways to develop new patterns of learning in our brains
• How to practice a skill so you can blast through plateaus and improve more quickly
• Her favorite tactic for dealing with procrastination so you can spend more time learning
• The activities she recommends that rapidly increase neural connections like fertilizer on the brain
• Whether memorization has a place in learning anymore, or simply a barrier to true understanding
• The truth about “learning types” and how identifying as a visual or auditory learner might be setting yourself up for failure.

…and a whole lot more.

If you want to be the most efficient learner you can be, and have more fun doing it, you won’t want to miss this discussion.

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Today, I’m joined by speaker, international executive and five-time author Margaret Heffernan. We discuss how to get the most out of our people, creating a thriving culture of trust and collaboration, and how to prevent potentially devastating “willful blindness.”

 

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When Pixar was dreaming up the idea for Inside Out, a film that would explore the roiling emotions inside the head of a young girl, they needed guidance from an expert. So they called Dacher Keltner.

Dacher is a psychologist at UC Berkeley who has dedicated his career to understanding how human emotion shapes the way we interact with the world, how we properly manage difficult or stressful situations, and ultimately, how we treat one another.

In fact, he refers to emotions as the “language of social living.” The more fluent we are in this language, the happier and more meaningful our lives can be.

We tackle a wide variety of topics in this conversation that I think you’ll really enjoy.

You’ll learn:

• The three main drivers that determine your personal happiness and life satisfaction
• Simple things you can do everyday to jumpstart the “feel good” reward center of your brain
• The principle of “jen” and how we can use “high-jen behaviors” to bootstrap our own happiness
• How to have more positive influence in our homes, at work and in our communities.
• How to teach your kids to be more kind and empathetic in an increasingly self-centered world
• What you can do to stay grounded and humble if you are in a position of power or authority
• How to catch our own biases when we’re overly critical of another’s ideas (or overconfident in our own)

And much more. We could have spent an hour discussing any one of these points alone, but there was so much I wanted to cover. I’m certain you’ll find this episode well worth your time.

***

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Michael Mauboussin returns for a fascinating encore interview on the Knowledge Project. We geek out on decision making, luck vs. skill, work life balance, and so much more.

***

Michael Mauboussin is back as a returning guest on the Knowledge Project!

He was actually the very first guest on the podcast when it was still very much an experiment. I enjoyed it so much, I decided to continue with the show. (If you missed his last interview, you can listen to it here, or if you’re a member of The Learning Community, you can download a transcript.)

Michael is one of my very favorite people to talk to, and I couldn’t wait to pick up right where we left off.

In this interview, Michael and I dive deep into some of the topics we care most about here at Farnam Street, including:

• The concept of “base rates” and how they can help us make far better decisions and avoid the pain and consequences of making poor choices.
• How to know where you land on the luck/skill continuum and why it matters
• Michael’s advice on creating a systematic decision-making process in your organization to improve outcomes.
• The two most important elements of any decision-making process
• How to train your intuition to be one of your most powerful assets instead of a dangerous liability
• The three tests Michael uses in his company to determine the health and financial stability of his environment
• Why “algorithm aversion” is creating such headaches in many organizations and how to help your teams overcome it, so you can make more rapid progress
• The most impactful books that he’s read since we last spoke, is reading habits, and the strategies he uses to get the most of every book
• The importance of sleep in Michael’s’ life to make sure his body and mind are running at peak efficiency
• His greatest failures and what he learned from them
• How Michael and his wife raised their kids and the unique parenting style they adopted
• How Michael defines happiness and the decisions he makes to maximize the joy in his life

Any one of those insights alone is worth a listen, so I think you’re really going to enjoy this interview.

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Negotiation expert Chris Voss teaches a masterclass on the art of negotiation. Chris is the former lead international kidnapping negotiator at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

 

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Through asking the right questions we can spark innovation and creativity, gain deeper knowledge in the topics that are most important to us, and propel us forward in our personal and professional pursuits.

Yet very few of us do it well — if we do it at all.

My guest on the podcast today is Warren Berger — journalist, speaker, best selling author, and self-proclaimed questionologist.

His insightful book A More Beautiful Question shows how the world’s leading innovators, education leaders, creative thinkers, and red-hot start-ups ask game-changing questions to nurture creativity, solve problems, and create new possibilities.

In this episode, we discuss the importance of asking the right questions, why they’re critical to your success, and how you may be one great question away from a major breakthrough.

You’ll also learn:

• How Warren manages the constant input and stimulation from online consumption when it’s time to create.
• The small habits that pack the biggest punch and make the most difference in Warren’s life
• What makes a question more or less effective
• How to create a culture where questions are welcome and encouraged
• Why answering all your kids’ questions may be doing them a disservice — and what to do instead
• What “collaborative inquiry” is and how to use it to get the most out of your teams in the workplace
• How Warren transformed one of his most painful failures into one of his most proud achievements
• Why Warren insists that everyone is creative, and what we can do to fan the flames of our own creativity

If you think you could improve the quality (and frequency) of your questions to enhance key areas of your life, this is not a conversation you’ll want to miss.

 

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It seems that nowadays, aside from religion and politics, one of the most hotly debated topics is that of nutrition.

Should we eat high carb diets? Low carb? High fat? High protein? What about wheat or gluten? Should we eat meat or adopt a vegan diet?

There are as many opinions as there are people — and books, magazines and websites are overflowing with information showing you the “right” way to eat and exercise to lose weight.

But if “eating less and moving more” is all it takes to lose weight and enjoy a healthy lifestyle, why are so many of us fat and getting fatter?

In this episode, I chat with Gary Taubes, bestselling author of three books, The Case Against Sugar (2016), Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It (2011) and Good Calories, Bad Calories (2007).

We talk about the sharp rise of obesity and diabetes in America, the structural hurdles to effective nutrition research, and explore the common myth that a calorie is just a calorie.

Here are a few other things you’ll learn in this interview:

• How diets shifted in the last century, and what impact it’s having on our bodies today.
• Why a carb isn’t just a carb — and why you should know the difference
• Is the sugar industry the new Big Tobacco?
• What role genetics play in our health, and how much is under our control
• Why humans are so attracted to sugar and how to break the habit
• Gary’s suggestions to improve your health, drop body fat and feel terrific
• The benefits of fasting and how you can try it out yourself

And a bunch more.

If you think at all about your health, give this podcast a listen. 

 

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For decades, introversion was looked at as something to overcome, almost like an illness. The way to win in life was through charisma, outspokenness, and self-promotion.

Even now, in an increasingly noisy world, introverts may feel added pressure to take one of two paths: force themselves into more extroverted behavior, or become even more reserved and shrink back to themselves.

My guest Susan Cain says both paths are wrong and in fact, rob the world of the unique contributions introverts make when they choose to be true to themselves.

Susan knows what she’s talking about. A self-proclaimed introvert, she wrote the New York Times bestselling book, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking and delivered one of the most popular TED talks ever delivered, with nearly 18 million views to date.

Whether you consider yourself an extrovert, an introvert, or an ambivert (those lucky bastards in the middle) you’ll find a ton of value in this interview.

 

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Are you in love with your own ideas regardless of how good they are Would you like to make better decisions and fewer mistakes? Would you like to improve the most important relationships in your life?

These are just some of the topics I discuss with my guest, Ray Dalio.

Ray Dalio is the founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, and is the author of the new book Principles: Life and Work. He is also a leading figure in the world of philanthropy, is an avid supporter of transcendental meditation, and has appeared on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Ray gave me over an hour and a half of his time, and I didn’t waste a minute of it. 

 

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