Latest Interviews

Classroom 2050: Unleashing AI, XR, Gaming

Sal Khan, Romy Drucker, Allison Matthews, Steph, Anarupa

Facing a critical decline in U.S. math and literacy levels exacerbated by the pandemic, educational leaders are deploying generative AI, virtual reality, and gaming platforms to restore student proficiency without replacing educators. Tools like Khanmigo's Socratic AI and Prisms VR have achieved rapid teacher adoption by addressing cognitive gaps and fostering spatial reasoning, while shifting professional development focus from hardware mechanics to instructional design. With immediate execution and mastery-based grading models now prioritized, these innovations aim to scale personalized learning experiences that bridge equity gaps and prepare students for future STEM and problem-solving challenges.

Shocking TRUE Story: “I Lost Both Of My Legs Because Of A Tampon” (Health Warning) - Lauren Wasser

Lauren Wasser, Steven

In October 2012, 24-year-old Lauren Wasser survived Toxic Shock Syndrome, a rare infection caused by a retained tampon that led to septic shock, organ failure, and the subsequent amputation of her right leg and left heel. Following a traumatic recovery marked by depression and a deliberate shift toward activism, she now collaborates with Madeline Masabi to lobby for the "Robin Danielson Act," which seeks federal mandates for safer labeling and ingredient transparency in the feminine hygiene industry. Wasser frames this legislative effort as a critical intersection of patient safety and gender equity, aiming to eliminate preventable deaths while redefining disability through her "Golden Legs" advocacy.

Sri Batchu: Biggest Growth Lesson from Instacart & Opendoor; 70% of Experiments Should Fail | E1040

Sri Batchu, Harry Stebbings

Sri, drawing on his operational leadership at Opendoor, Instacart, and Ramp, defines growth as a rigorous discipline that balances data-driven investment with strategic discipline by intentionally letting certain fires burn to preserve team capacity. He outlines a framework for building unified growth functions post-product-market fit that prioritizes efficiency metrics over revenue volume and emphasizes a "failing quickly" culture to validate bets like Opendoor's decision to reject short-term price-matching against Zillow. Beyond execution, he advocates for restructuring growth into segment-oriented models, refining hiring practices to assess intellectual curiosity, and leveraging recent operator experience to make superior early-stage angel investments.

60 Startup Founders Share How They Met Their Co-Founder

Diverse founder pairs established their startups through a wide array of pre-existing connections, ranging from long-term personal bonds and professional histories at companies like Airbnb and Bolt to modern matchmaking platforms and chance encounters during the pandemic. These teams strategically aligned complementary technical and non-technical skill sets, often leveraging decades of friendship or shared professional passions in sectors like decarbonization to overcome the risks of leaving stable employment. The resulting ventures, which span from formalizing side projects to launching full-scale decarbonization initiatives, were ultimately driven by mutual trust and verified operational delivery tracks that facilitated critical decision-making moments.

Man Group CEO Luke Ellis on hedge funds, quantitative strategies and leadership

Luke Ellis, John Storey

Man Group CEO Luke Ellis will retire in September 2023, handing leadership to President Robin Grew as the $150 billion quantitative asset manager completes a seven-year strategic pivot toward customized solutions for pension and sovereign clients. Ellis credits this growth and operational efficiency to a model count expansion from six to 700, enabling the firm to navigate the shift from the 2010s' low-interest environment to the 2020s' inflationary volatility while leveraging AI with rigorous human oversight. Looking ahead, Ellis identifies Japan and specific inflation-resistant strategies as prime opportunities, though he warns that a tight global supply of talent and potential regulatory changes to leverage pose significant hurdles for the broader hedge fund industry.

Adam Mosseri: Why Video Is Bad For Business; Does Feed Matter Anymore? | E1039

Adam Mosseri, Harry Stebbings

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri orchestrated a major strategic pivot by reallocating resources to direct messaging and Reels to counter TikTok, while rebuilding the organization from scratch following the departure of the original founders. Despite facing significant backlash for algorithmic feed recommendations and the introduction of Reels, the leadership team achieved substantial growth by leveraging the existing Instagram social graph to launch Threads and prioritizing creator retention over immediate monetization. Mosseri emphasizes that this transformation required a willingness to embrace necessary complexity and unship legacy features to ensure the platform's long-term survival in a rapidly evolving competitive landscape.

Mohammed El-Kurd: Palestine | Lex Fridman Podcast #391

Mohammed El-Kurd, Lex Fridman

Palestinian activist Omar El-Kurd argues that the conflict in Palestine is a political and colonial struggle rather than a religious one, highlighting judicial asymmetry in cases like Sheikh Jarrah where courts favor settler claims despite international pressure. He criticizes systemic discrimination, including US military aid and media narratives that obscure the ongoing Nakba, while rejecting the two-state solution in favor of a single state built on the right of return and land redistribution. Through his personal narrative and advocacy, El-Kurd frames Palestinian "stubbornness" as a rational response to expulsion and occupation, urging a recognition of historical injustices to achieve eventual justice.

The LIFE-EXTENSION Doctor: "The ONE thing that's increasing your chance of early-death by 170.8%!"

Steven, Dr Peter Attia

Dr. Atia advocates for a paradigm shift to Medicine 3.0, which prioritizes proactive, personalized prevention of chronic diseases and cognitive decline over reactive crisis management. His framework integrates three critical pillars of longevity—physical strength, cognitive capacity, and emotional healing—by combining evidence-based exercise protocols and metabolic strategies with intensive trauma therapy to reframe maladaptive behaviors as childhood survival mechanisms. Ultimately, the approach emphasizes that early, consistent intervention in areas such as VO2 max, sleep, and hormonal balance is essential to mitigate the inevitable, non-linear health decline associated with aging.

CEO's Guide to Marriage & Parenting 👰🤵‍♂️👨‍👩‍👦‍👦

Dave Clark, Ryan Peterson, Harry Stebbings

Dave, CEO of a large-scale enterprise, navigates the intense demands of rapid Amazon expansion during the pandemic by structurally protecting family time with his wife, Leanne, and children to maintain leadership effectiveness. He prioritizes raising well-rounded, empathetic individuals through strict family values and digital minimalism, rejecting the notion that elite academic success or unchecked career focus is necessary for a fulfilling life. Ultimately, he asserts that a leader's well-being is inextricably linked to their ability to balance high-impact professional responsibilities with the protective, grounding nature of parenthood.

Why I Said Goodbye to Amazon after 23 Years

Dave Clark, Ryan Peterson, Harry Stebbings

After twenty-three years at Amazon, the executive departed in 2016 to become CEO of Flexport, driven by a desire to escape bureaucratic management and apply uncompromising customer centricity to global logistics. He is replicating Amazon's builder culture on a multi-tenant scale while deliberately moderating its intensity by replacing short-term performance metrics with empathy and long-term collaboration. This strategic pivot aims to help businesses of all sizes compete effectively while improving environmental outcomes through initiatives like absorbing port delay costs and prioritizing waste reduction.

Growth vs Efficiency: Can You Have Both?

Gina Gotthilf, Kieran Flanagan, Bryan Kim

This session synthesizes strategic shifts where founders prioritize sustainable moats like proprietary data and community trust over bloated growth tactics to counter incumbent monopolies. Speakers analyze how AI serves as both a cost-reduction tool and a retention driver while detailing volatile channel dynamics, including the decline of traditional SEO and the rise of interest-based discovery on short-form video platforms. By examining case studies from Snapchat, Duolingo, and Zapier alongside specific experiment frameworks, the discussion outlines a disciplined approach to balancing profitability with iterative product hits in an era of market austerity.

Jean-Denis Greze: CTO of Plaid, the $18B Fintech Startup; How to Hire, Fire & Build Great UX | E1038

Jean-Denis Greze, Harry Stebbings

Jean-Denis Granger outlines a founder-centric framework emphasizing that decisive firing, precise talent identification, and rapid execution are superior to generic work-life balance in building transformative companies. He contrasts early-stage needs for immediate problem-solving with the scaling requirement for high-level management, while noting a market shift where in-person collaboration remains vital for creative innovation despite the rise of remote work. Granger further advises leaders to prioritize high-impact initiatives that management currently overlooks and to pivot or return capital immediately if their ventures cannot demonstrate true product-market fit in the current capital-constrained environment.

Inside El Salvador’s war on crime

Nayib Bukele, Robert Guest

El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele has implemented a nationwide security strategy that has imprisoned approximately 70,000 individuals, primarily young men detained on circumstantial evidence through group trials that bypass standard due process. This campaign has effectively dismantled democratic checks by purging the judiciary and gagging press coverage, yet it retains approval ratings between 80% and 90% by eliminating gang intimidation in exchange for a police state environment. Minister Gustavo Villatoro explicitly defended these measures as prioritizing citizen safety over human rights protocols while projecting a model where public popularity is sustained through the erosion of civil liberties.

How To Make Money..."Do Not Buy A House!" 10 Ways To Make REAL Money: Ramit Sethi

Ramit Sethi, Steven

Financial strategist Vikram Sethi outlines a behavioral framework for wealth creation that prioritizes intentional lifestyle design over mere income generation, arguing that psychology and strategic spending habits matter more than traditional investment intelligence. He advocates for specific financial rules, including automated investing in low-cost target date funds, maintaining a four-year emergency fund, and allocating a "guilt-free" spending budget to eliminate debt-driven anxiety. The discussion emphasizes that true financial freedom requires aligning daily expenditures with intrinsic values rather than extrinsic status symbols, allowing individuals to build lasting wealth through consistency, market selectivity, and early retirement funding.

Ignore the haters, and keep on building cool stuff.

The speaker argues that successful ventures must solve customer problems in an "amazing way" rather than relying on superficial "thin wrapper" strategies or cargo cult behavior around existing infrastructure. While acknowledging that some projects begin as simple toys, the advice warns founders to ignore backlash from critics if their model is merely a trend-chasing wrapper, emphasizing that genuine innovation is the only viable path for growth. This perspective frames the current market climate as an opportunity for optimism and building cool products, provided they evolve beyond weekend-build claims to offer real value rather than serving as mere capital-raising vehicles.