The Psychology of Power | Michael Ovitz
The Knowledge Project
Shane Parrish
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 February 2026
⏱️ 95 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | I didn't go into business to win a popularity contest. |
| 0:03.0 | I went into business to win. |
| 0:05.0 | You know, when Michael Crichton gave me the book of Jurassic Park, |
| 0:10.0 | I put the right director with it, Stephen Speeler. |
| 0:13.0 | There was no second choice. |
| 0:15.0 | You had a front row seat to Hollywood for a long time. |
| 0:19.0 | Where did people go wrong? I thought these powerless |
| 0:22.6 | that they developed in the entertainment business were just sheer nonsense. It's an ephemeral |
| 0:28.1 | thing power and it's fleeting and it doesn't last. And if you don't believe that, take a look |
| 0:33.3 | at anyone that's had it. It's like a lease. It has a closed end and never a good one. I have been viewed |
| 0:41.4 | by a lot of my friends as the world's best friend and the world's worst enemy. Success to me is |
| 0:48.8 | I think that's the most beautiful answer I've heard in 200 and some episodes. |
| 0:57.6 | One of the things that I admire about you is your voracious appetite for learning. |
| 1:02.9 | And you started in the William Morris File Room and you had access to all these. |
| 1:07.4 | But it was like you, David Geffen, Barry Diller, all the same sort of path in |
| 1:12.7 | the file room reading the history. What's the modern equivalent of that, do you think, for people |
| 1:18.1 | out there wanting to get ahead at work? Well, I don't, I, you know, it's a really great question. |
| 1:22.5 | I'm not sure, frankly, because one of my, I, I love the internet and I love being on my computer to the point |
| 1:31.0 | where my significant other wants to kill me sometimes because I just love surfing through |
| 1:41.1 | the internet and going down rabbit holes. |
| 1:47.7 | First of all, there's a... David Geffen and Barry Diller and I are very dissimilar human beings, |
| 1:52.1 | but we do share a couple of very similar traits. |
... |
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