Famous Failures

By Ozan Varol

What's Famous Failures about?

On Famous Failures, I interview the world's most interesting people about their failures and what they learned from them.

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125125 ratings

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Famous Failures episodes:

05.19.2020
End of Season 1
This episode marks the end of Season 1 of Famous Failures. If you’d like to stay in touch with me, please sign up for my weekly email list at weeklycontrarian.com. My emails go out every Thursday to 21,000+ subscribers and...
05.05.2020
Derek Sivers on What It Means to Fail
Derek Sivers has lived many lives. He has been a musician, producer, circus performer, entrepreneur, speaker, and book publisher. His TED Talk, “Weird, or just different?”, has been viewed more than 3.5 million times. His book Anything You Want: 40...
04.21.2020
Cathy Heller on the Power of Radical Empathy
Cathy Heller is the host of the popular podcast Don’t Keep Your Day Job, which was given the #1 spot on iTunes recommended list of shows for the New Year in 2018 and 2019. She started out as a singer...
04.14.2020
3 Key Insights from Think Like a Rocket Scientist
Today is the official launch date of my new book, Think Like a Rocket Scientist. In this special episode, I share with you three key insights from the book that will help you make giant leaps in work and life....
04.07.2020
Baya Voce on the Cure for the Loneliness Epidemic
Baya Voce has produced “magic touch” experiences ranging from two-person rituals to elaborate 1,000+-person immersive-theater productions. Whether 20-person Jeffersonian-style dinners or high-end finance conferences at Lincoln Center (and everything in between), Baya’s focus is engineering unforgettable moments. With more than...
03.24.2020
Dorie Clark on Failure and the Entrepreneurial Journey
Dorie Clark is a consultant and keynote speaker, and the author of the books Entrepreneurial You, Reinventing You, and Stand Out, which was named the #1 Leadership Book of 2015 by Inc. magazine. A former presidential campaign spokeswoman, Dorie has...
03.10.2020
Jessica Kriegel on How You Should Ditch Generational Stereotypes
Dr. Jessica Kriegel is a researcher and expert in generational dynamics. Her insights and solutions offer a roadmap for how you can most effectively transform your culture to attract, retain, and engage all generations in the workplace. Jessica’s book, Unfairly...
02.25.2020
Neil Pasricha: Ask Me Anything
Neil Pasricha is the author of five New York Times bestsellers including: The Book of Awesome, a catalog of simple pleasures based on his 50-million hit, award-winning blog, and The Happiness Equation, a nine-step guidebook to happiness based on new...
02.11.2020
Tara Schuster on Rising Up From Rock Bottom
Tara Schuster is an author, playwright, and accomplished entertainment executive, currently serving as the Vice President of Talent and Development at Comedy Central. She was the Executive in Charge of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning Key & Peele, the Emmy...
01.28.2020
Frans Johansson on Why Diversity Drives Innovation
An entrepreneur, creative thinker, and acclaimed international speaker, Frans Johansson has lived all his life at the intersection. He has started a health-care business, a software company, a hedge fund, and an innovation firm. Frans is the author of The...
01.14.2020
Scott Harrison on Transforming Himself and Ending the Water Crisis
Scott Harrison is the founder and CEO of charity: water, and the New York Times Bestselling author of Thirst: A Story of Redemption, Compassion, and a Mission to Bring Clean Water to the World. In 13 years, with the help...
12.31.2019
BJ Fogg on How Tiny Habits Can Spark Big Life Changes
BJ Fogg is a behavioral scientist with deep experience in innovation and teaching. At Stanford University he runs the Behavior Design Lab and also teaches his models and methods in graduate seminars. On the industry side, he trains innovators to...
12.17.2019
Laura Vanderkam on Why You Have More Time Than You Think
Laura Vanderkam is the author of several time management and productivity books, including Juliet’s School of Possibilities, Off the Clock, I Know How She Does It, What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast, and 168 Hours. Her work has...
12.03.2019
What to Do When You Make a Mistake
This is a short, solo episode of Famous Failures. Instead of doing an interview, I speak about what you should do when you make a mistake. The episode is based on a blog post I wrote a few months ago,...
11.19.2019
Rene Denfeld on Healing Trauma and Telling Her Story
Rene Denfeld is the author of the acclaimed novels The Child Finder, The Enchanted, and The Butterfly Girl. Her literary thrillers have earned glowing reviews from the New York Times Book Review, among other venues. Margaret Atwood, who is the...
11.05.2019
Why the "Fail Fast" Mantra is a Recipe for Failure
This is a short, solo episode of Famous Failures. Instead of doing an interview, I go on a riff on why the popular “fail fast, fail often” mantra is misguided. I offer an alternative that produces better results and explain...
10.22.2019
Whitney Johnson on Disrupting Yourself
Whitney Johnson is a leading business thinker and expert on disruptive innovation and personal disruption. She covers the framework for personal disruption in the critically-acclaimed book Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work. Originally an award-winning stock...
10.08.2019
Think Like a Rocket Scientist
In this special episode of Famous Failures, I read a never-before-released excerpt from my forthcoming book, Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life. If you pre-order the book, you’ll...
09.24.2019
Tim Urban on Overcoming Procrastination and Finding His Voice Through Experimentation
Tim Urban is best known as the writer and illustrator behind the incredibly popular blog Wait But Why, which has garnered millions of unique page views and famous fans like Elon Musk. His deeply researched long-form posts on everything from...
09.10.2019
Lindsey Horan on Winning the Women’s World Cup
In 2012, eighteen-year-old soccer player Lindsey Horan defied conventional wisdom when she turned down a scholarship from soccer powerhouse University of North Carolina. UNC is almost a guaranteed path to the big leagues for talented and hardworking women, but Lindsey...
08.27.2019
Nadya Okamoto on the Value of Being Unapologetically You
Nadya Okamoto is the Executive Director of PERIOD (period.org), an organization she founded at the age of sixteen to provide menstrual hygiene products to those in need. PERIOD is now the largest youth-run NGO in women’s health, and one of...
08.13.2019
Christine Carter on the Science of Happiness and Escaping the "Busy" Trap
Christine Carter is a sociologist, columnist and speaker. She’s the author of the books Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps for More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents, as well as The Sweet Spot: How to Achieve More by Doing Less. She...
07.30.2019
Tiago Forte on Building a Second Brain
Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity. He writes and speaks on how knowledge workers can revolutionize their personal effectiveness using technology, and has taught more than 20,000 people around the world through his online courses...
07.16.2019
How SpaceX Bounced Back from the Brink of Disaster
This is a special episode of Famous Failures. Instead of doing an interview, I recount the story of the first three failures that SpaceX experienced on the launchpad, which brought the company to the brink of collapse. You’ll learn how...
07.02.2019
Ryan Levesque on Giving Up "Good" for "Great"
Ryan Levesque is the CEO of The ASK Method ® Company, and the #1 national best-selling author of Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Method to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy, which was named by Inc. as the #1...
06.18.2019
Khe Hy on Taming Self-Doubt and Overcoming the Scarcity Mindset
Khe Hy is the founder of RadReads, which is a community of 20,000 professionals seeking to reexamine their relationship to money, ambition, and ultimately themselves. Khe has been called Oprah for Millennials by CNN and the Wall Street Guru...
06.04.2019
Tali Sharot on Our Power to Change Others
Tali Sharot is a professor of cognitive neuroscience and a leading expert on the neural basis of emotion, decision making and optimism. She has been featured in numerous media outlets,including The New York Times, Time magazine, The Washington Post, CNN,...
05.21.2019
Susan Cain on Overcoming Failure and Unleashing the Power of Introverts
SUSAN CAIN is the author of Quiet: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking, which has been translated into 40 languages, is in its seventh year on the New...
05.07.2019
Rob Walker on the Art of Noticing
Rob Walker is an author and journalist covering design, technology, business, the arts, and other subjects. He writes the Human Resource column for Lifehacker, and has contributed to The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, TheNewYorker.com, and many others....
04.23.2019
Julian Guthrie on Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things
Julian Guthrie is an award-winning journalist, New York Times best-selling author, and all around adventurer who loves underdog stories. Her new book, due out April 30, is Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley's Male Culture and...
04.09.2019
Sahil Lavingia on Failing to Build a Billion-Dollar Company
Sahil Lavingia is the founder and CEO of Gumroad, a web platform where creators can sell products directly to consumers with quick, simple links. Sahil was the second-ever employee at Pinterest before starting Gumroad with the goal of making it...
03.26.2019
Julie Zhuo on Becoming a Facebook Manager at 25, Overcoming the Impostor Syndrome, and Staying in the Discomfort Zone
Julie Zhuo is the Vice President of Product Design at Facebook. As one of Silicon Valley's top product design executives, she leads the teams behind some of the most popular web and mobile services used by billions of people around...
03.12.2019
Amy Edmondson on Psychological Safety and How Companies Can Learn from Failure
Amy Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School. She is best known for her pioneering work on psychological safety and failure. The topic recently gained widespread popular attention after a February 2016...
02.26.2019
Rachel Simmons on Helping Girls and Women Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success
Rachel Simmons is the author of Enough As She Is: How to Help Girls Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success to Live Healthy, Happy and Fulfilling Lives, and the New York Times bestsellers Odd Girl Out and ...
02.12.2019
Maren Kate Donovan on Zirtual's Meteoric Rise to Overnight Failure
Maren Kate Donovan is an entrepreneur and writer. Her first venture-backed startup, Zirtual, grew to over 400 employees before she turned 30, but then, due to the perfect storm of missteps, was forced to shut down overnight. She now uses...
01.29.2019
Jennifer Dulski on Being Too Stubborn to Fail and Becoming Head of Facebook Groups
Jennifer Dulski is the head of Facebook Groups, a product used by more than 1 billion people. She has more than fifteen years of experience at successful startups and big-brand Internet companies, including as a business unit leader at Yahoo!...
01.15.2019
Selina Tobaccowala on Creating a Company Culture Where People are Willing to Fail
Selina Tobaccowala is a serial entrepreneur who started coding in her Stanford dorm room in the late 1990s. Selina and her college friend Al Leib co-founded Evite, which was the dominant platform for online invitations. After Ticketmaster acquired Evite, she...
01.01.2019
Dina Kaplan on Finding Her Path and Overcoming Failure Through Meditation
Dina Kaplan is Founder of The Path, which teaches meditation for the modern mind. The Path has taught thousands of people to meditate around the world. Before founding The Path, Dina was co-founder and COO of the tech start-up Blip....
12.18.2018
Matilda Ho on Revolutionizing the Chinese Food Industry and Learning from Failure
Matilda Ho is the founder of Yimishiji, one of China's first online farmers markets to bring organic and local produce to families. She’s also the founder and managing director of Bits x Bites, China’s first accelerator and venture capital fund...
12.04.2018
Erica Ariel Fox on Winning From Within
Erica Ariel Fox is an advisor to CEOs and other senior executives on their leadership challenges. She is the New York Times best-selling author of Winning From Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change, and she's...
11.20.2018
Austin Buchan on Democratizing Access to College and Helping Students Cope with Failure
Austin Buchan is the CEO of College Forward, which is a nonprofit that coaches students from underserved backgrounds to achieve the benefits of higher education and a college degree. One of the central tenants of College Forward is the belief...
11.06.2018
Derek Thompson on Google X, Embracing Failure, and Making Hits
Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine. He writes about topics as diverse as behavioral psychology, professional sports, and blockbuster films. Derek also hosts The Atlantic’s latest podcast Crazy/Genius, and is a weekly contributor to “Here and...
10.23.2018
Jordan Selleck on Navy SEALS, Start-Ups, and Persistence Through Failure
Jordan is the CEO and Founder of DebtMaven, which is like eHarmony for commercial lending. The platform has facilitated over $350 million in deals. Jordan is the Co-Founder and Chairman of Elite Meet, a nonprofit dedicated to helping Navy SEALs...
10.09.2018
James Clear on Habits, Decision-Making, and Continuous Improvement
James Clear is an author and speaker focused on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Entrepreneur, Time, and on CBS This Morning, and is taught in universities around the world. His website...
09.25.2018
Chelsey Korus on Turning Tragedy into a Love Story
Chelsey Korus is one of the most preeminent teachers of yoga. Over the course of her career, she has been featured on Live! with Kelly and Michael, PopSugar, Fitness, Shape, Prevention Magazine, Yoga Journal, and Women’s Health, and many, many...
09.11.2018
Susan Henderson On How to Deal with Failure & Critique
Susan Henderson is a five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the recipient of an Academy of American Poets award. She is the author of the novels, Up from the Blue (HarperCollins, 2010) and The Flicker of Old Dreams (HarperCollins, 2018). She...
08.28.2018
Neil Pasricha on How Seeking Approval Can Lead to Failure
Neil Pasricha is the author of five New York Times bestsellers including The Book of Awesome, a catalog of simple pleasures based on his 50-million hit, award-winning blog, and The Happiness Equation, a nine-step guidebook to happiness based on new...
08.14.2018
Caroline Webb on How to Build Resilience in the Face of Failure
Caroline Webb (Facebook and Twitter) is the CEO of Sevenshift, a firm that shows people how to use insights from behavioral science to improve their working life. Her book on that topic, How To Have A Good Day, was published in...
07.31.2018
Shane Snow on His Personal Failures and The Power of Storytelling
Shane Snow is an award-winning journalist, celebrated entrepreneur, and the bestselling author of the books Smartcuts: The Breakthrough Power of Lateral Thinking and DREAM TEAMS: Working Together Without Falling Apart, as well as the co-author of The Storytelling Edge. He...
07.17.2018
Jessica Bennett on Becoming the First Gender Editor of The New York Times & How Failure Furthered Her Career
Jessica Bennett is an award-winning journalist and author who covers social issues and culture through a gender lens. She was recently appointed the first-ever Gender Editor of the New York Times. Jessica is the author of the bestselling book, ...

What's Famous Failures about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Famous Failures episodes:

End of Season 1

Derek Sivers on What It Means to Fail

Cathy Heller on the Power of Radical Empathy

3 Key Insights from Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Baya Voce on the Cure for the Loneliness Epidemic

Dorie Clark on Failure and the Entrepreneurial Journey

Jessica Kriegel on How You Should Ditch Generational Stereotypes

Neil Pasricha: Ask Me Anything

Tara Schuster on Rising Up From Rock Bottom

Frans Johansson on Why Diversity Drives Innovation

Scott Harrison on Transforming Himself and Ending the Water Crisis

BJ Fogg on How Tiny Habits Can Spark Big Life Changes

Laura Vanderkam on Why You Have More Time Than You Think

What to Do When You Make a Mistake

Rene Denfeld on Healing Trauma and Telling Her Story

Why the "Fail Fast" Mantra is a Recipe for Failure

Whitney Johnson on Disrupting Yourself

Think Like a Rocket Scientist

Tim Urban on Overcoming Procrastination and Finding His Voice Through Experimentation

Lindsey Horan on Winning the Women’s World Cup

Nadya Okamoto on the Value of Being Unapologetically You

Christine Carter on the Science of Happiness and Escaping the "Busy" Trap

Tiago Forte on Building a Second Brain

How SpaceX Bounced Back from the Brink of Disaster

Ryan Levesque on Giving Up "Good" for "Great"

Khe Hy on Taming Self-Doubt and Overcoming the Scarcity Mindset

Tali Sharot on Our Power to Change Others

Susan Cain on Overcoming Failure and Unleashing the Power of Introverts

Rob Walker on the Art of Noticing

Julian Guthrie on Ordinary People Doing Extraordinary Things

Sahil Lavingia on Failing to Build a Billion-Dollar Company

Julie Zhuo on Becoming a Facebook Manager at 25, Overcoming the Impostor Syndrome, and Staying in the Discomfort Zone

Amy Edmondson on Psychological Safety and How Companies Can Learn from Failure

Rachel Simmons on Helping Girls and Women Move Beyond Impossible Standards of Success

Maren Kate Donovan on Zirtual's Meteoric Rise to Overnight Failure

Jennifer Dulski on Being Too Stubborn to Fail and Becoming Head of Facebook Groups

Selina Tobaccowala on Creating a Company Culture Where People are Willing to Fail

Dina Kaplan on Finding Her Path and Overcoming Failure Through Meditation

Matilda Ho on Revolutionizing the Chinese Food Industry and Learning from Failure

Erica Ariel Fox on Winning From Within

Austin Buchan on Democratizing Access to College and Helping Students Cope with Failure

Derek Thompson on Google X, Embracing Failure, and Making Hits

Jordan Selleck on Navy SEALS, Start-Ups, and Persistence Through Failure

James Clear on Habits, Decision-Making, and Continuous Improvement

Chelsey Korus on Turning Tragedy into a Love Story

Susan Henderson On How to Deal with Failure & Critique

Neil Pasricha on How Seeking Approval Can Lead to Failure

Caroline Webb on How to Build Resilience in the Face of Failure

Shane Snow on His Personal Failures and The Power of Storytelling

Jessica Bennett on Becoming the First Gender Editor of The New York Times & How Failure Furthered Her Career