advice

A five-minute clip from Donald Knuth's Web of Stories interviews in which he gives advice to young people, including being wary when too many people adopt an idea.

A short excerpt from a 1994 interview of Steve Jobs in which he says everything around us was made up by people no smarter than you, and that you can change and shape the world.

A fireside chat at LAUNCH Festival 2014 where Paul Graham tells Jason Calacanis why he is handing Y Combinator's presidency to Sam Altman. He also shares startup advice drawn from nine years and 500+ startups.

Y Combinator's Geoff Ralston interviews Paul Graham about startups and founders in a Startup School conversation. It touches on Viaweb, Robert Morris and what makes founders effective.

A three-minute clip of Jeff Bezos describing his Regret Minimization Framework: imagining yourself at 80 to decide whether to leave a Wall Street job to start Amazon.

A two-minute clip from a 1994 interview with Steve Jobs by the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association. Jobs talks about failure and about how most people never ask for help, recalling that he simply called people to ask.

A two-minute video of Ira Glass on the creative process, describing the gap between taste and skill when starting out and urging you to keep producing until your work matches your taste.

A short clip of George R.R. Martin asking Stephen King on stage how he writes so fast. King describes setting daily page goals, around six pages a day, and keeping focused hours.

Neil Gaiman tells the Open Rights Group how the internet and piracy affect books and publishing. He describes how free web copies of his books boosted sales.

Mike Wallace interviews Aldous Huxley in 1958 about the warnings in Brave New World, including mass persuasion, overpopulation and voluntary totalitarianism.

A short excerpt of Elon Musk, interviewed by Kevin Rose, explaining first-principles reasoning with the example of the car versus improving horse carriages. He warns it takes much more mental energy than reasoning by analogy.

Dwarkesh Patel interviews Andy Matuschak on how he learns, why memorization matters for understanding, and why most learning tools fail. The conversation also covers handling confusion and the role of tutoring.

The full unedited 2003 ZDF television interview with David Foster Wallace, running about an hour and a half. He talks about literature, boredom, silence, television and what stories do.

In a New York Times interview, Jerry Seinfeld describes the anatomy of his Pop-Tart joke, still a work in progress, and shows his longhand writing process.

A Startup School 2013 session where Paul Graham and Sam Altman hold live office hours with startups including CodeCombat, Flexport and others. The founders pitch and get on-the-spot feedback.

Tim Dodd of Everyday Astronaut tours SpaceX's Starbase with Elon Musk as guide. They cover the high bay, grid fins, Raptor V2, the HLS lander and stage separation, and Musk explains his engineering management process.

Ian Cutress interviews chip architect Jim Keller about his time at AMD, Intel and elsewhere, management advice, design approach, Moore's Law and x86 versus Arm.

A 20-minute Y Combinator interview in which Sam Altman asks Elon Musk how to build the future. Topics include which problems a 22-year-old should work on, such as AI, genetics, and brain interfaces, and general advice for founders.

A roughly 40-minute Mahalo mentor interview with Elon Musk, covering his background from Zip2 and PayPal to SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity, along with advice for entrepreneurs.

YC partner Michael Seibel discusses his essay on real product-market fit, why founders wrongly believe they have it, and how building a company is not a single-variable problem, drawing on Justin.tv and Socialcam.