Rule Breaker Investing

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615

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Aug 2026

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About the show

David Gardner, co-founder of The Motley Fool, is among the most respected and trusted sources on investing. As a best-selling author, hugely successful stock picker, and financial authority, David has led The Motley Fool’s growth into a worldwide investment and financial advisory services company. Each week David shares his insights into today's most innovative and disruptive publicly traded companies -- and how to profit from them by following his signature “Rule Breaker Investing” principles. Pre-order David's new book, Rule Breaker Investing, to dive deeper into these game-changing principles: https://lnk.to/rulebreakerinvesting

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August 19, 20261 hr 14 min

Authors in August: Dave Ulrich & Why We Work

Why do we work? A paycheck matters, of course. And, when so much of life is spent working, might we reasonably hope for something more?Closing out the ninth year of Authors in August, David welcomes Dave Ulrich, one of the world’s leading thinkers on organizations, leadership, and human capability. Using the longtime favorite The Why of Work as a jumping-off point, their conversation ranges widely across what gives work meaning, what great leaders understand about people, and what decades spent studying organizations have taught Dave about the ways we work—and why! As technology transforms the workplace and old assumptions keep getting rewritten, some decidedly human questions endure. What makes work worth doing? What brings out the best in people? And how might we create workplaces that leave employees, customers, and the world better off? Host: David GardnerGuest: Dave UlrichProducer: Bart ShannonCompanies Mentioned: ADBE, JWN, WMT Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

August 12, 20261 hr 10 min

Authors in August: Vasant Dhar & “Thinking With Machines”

Artificial intelligence may feel suddenly everywhere, but AI pioneer Vasant Dhar has had a front-row seat for more than four decades—teaching AI, building companies around it, and bringing machine learning to Wall Street long before ChatGPT entered the conversation. For the second week of Authors in August, David sits down with Dhar to ask not merely what machines can do, but how humans can think with them. When should we trust AI? When does it sharpen our thinking—and when does it make our brains lazy? If intelligence itself is becoming a commodity, where will tomorrow’s value be created? And in a future where machines become extraordinarily capable, what are humans for?A conversation about AI, investing, trust, judgment, and our increasingly intelligent future. The Damodaran Bot is available for public use at: damodaranbot.com Vasant's monthly newsletter can be found at: vasantdhar.substack.com Host: David GardnerGuest: Vasant DharProducer: Bart Shannon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

August 5, 20261 hr 1 min

Authors in August: Thi Nguyen’s “The Score”

Authors in August is back! It’s our 9th year featuring authors of books that David loves and thinks you’ll love too. So for the third time, philosopher and game scholar Thi Nguyen joins back with Rule Breaker Investing—and this time the conversation reaches far beyond games. What happens when the scores we invent to measure success begin quietly reshaping what we value? Together, in an incredibly wide-ranging discussion, David and Thi explore rankings, metrics, investing, institutions, artificial intelligence, and the subtle difference between playing a game… and letting the game play you. And we close with a rousing round, as ever, of Buy, Sell, or Hold? Whose scorecard are you living by? Host: David GardnerGuest: Thi NguyenProducer: Bart Shannon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

July 29, 202648 min

July 2026 Mailbag: Year Twelve Begins

As Rule Breaker Investing enters its twelfth year, it is fitting to hand the microphone back to the people who have helped shape it from the very beginning: our listeners.This month’s Mailbag spans investing, artificial intelligence, financial freedom, World Cup soccer, custodial Roth IRAs, Rule Breaker stock selection… and even a soundtrack for Foolish living?! Along the way are a heartbreaking story, practical questions, imaginative ideas, and reminders that the best investing community doesn’t simply exchange stock tips—we help all of us become smarter, happier, richer. And perhaps a little wiser, too.Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Companies Mentioned: AMZN, AXON, ISRG, MELI, NVDA, PLTR, RKLB, SERV, SHOP, TEM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

July 22, 202643 min

Five Idle Thoughts of a Summer’s Day, Vol. 3

It’s become something of a midsummer tradition on Rule Breaker Investing: set aside the markets for a week and simply follow curiosity wherever it leads.This year’s sampler wanders through technology, sports, business, demographics, literature, and a few unexpected places in between. Along the way are thoughts about how to get the most out of AI, a few tweaks that could improve the world’s biggest sporting event, a prediction about who may be becoming the world’s most valuable people, and a dramatic reading of one of David’s favorite short stories.Two pages.Idle thoughts for you, of a summer’s day.Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

July 16, 202647 min

10 Years Later: 5 Brexit-Inspired Stocks

In the anxious days following Brexit, rather than predict the future, David asked a different question: Where are the opportunities? The result was a five-stock sampler built not on politics, but on optimism.Now a full decade has passed. Joined by longtime Fool Karl Thiel, we crack open the time capsule, revisit the original investment theses, score all five stocks against the market, and ask what a ten-year scorecard can teach that three years never could. Some ideas exceeded expectations. Others humbled us. All of them remind us why Rule Breakers look beyond the headlines and invest for the long haul. Host: David GardnerGuest: Karl ThielProducer: Bart ShannonCompanies Mentioned: GOOGL, EEFT, HAIN, BKNG, TSLA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

July 8, 202645 min

Great Quotes, Vol. 22: A Nation Forever Young

Every so often, five quotations come along that don’t merely make you nod. They make you stop, put the book down, and think.This week we explore why the best investors first become students of themselves, why our minds work better when they’re surrounded by rich ideas, why business is one of humanity’s great engines for creating value, why prosperity may make societies not just wealthier but wiser, and why one vision of America argues that a nation’s greatest competitive advantage isn’t its geography or its resources—it’s its ability to continually renew itself.Five quotations. Five conversations. And perhaps one or two ideas that will quietly change the way you see investing, business, and life. Happy 250th to the US of A!Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart ShannonCompanies Mentioned: AMZN, MCD, NVDA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

July 1, 202634 min

What You’ve Done to Create Financial Freedom, Vol. 4

Each Independence Week, Rule Breaker Investing asks a simple question: What have you done over the past year to create financial freedom—for yourself or for others? This year’s answers feature a listener’s Declaration of Financial Independence and a young woman whose very first stock purchase turned out to be… Nvidia. Along the way, we revisit three favorite moments from the first three years of this annual tradition, discovering that the path toward financial freedom may be simpler than it first appears: Believe. Persist. Pass it on. Happy Independence Week—and may financial freedom continue to echo like a Liberty Bell.Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart ShannonCompanies Mentioned: NVDA, SCHW Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 24, 202644 min

June 2026 Mailbag: “Do You Know Its Market Cap?”

This month’s Mailbag ranges from Washington, D.C. to Germany, from the SEC to the moon, and from individual stock ownership to the deeper question of what freedom is actually for. Along the way, fellow Fools write in about transparency, curiosity, market caps, parenting, AI, adding to winning investments, and what can happen when decades of patient investing quietly compound into opportunities to help others. As always, the best part of the Mailbag is you.Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart ShannonCompanies Mentioned: HAS, ISRG, JEPI, KO, MAT, MSCI, NKE, NVDA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

June 17, 20261 hr 6 min

Market Cap Game Show: The King-Sharon Rule Debuts

The Market Cap Game Show returns for its 42nd installment, with longtime Motley Fool personalities Charly Travers and Jason Moser battling for a coveted spot in next March’s Market Cap Madness Final Four.But this episode marks something new. For the first time, players can invoke the King-Sharon Rule, adding an extra layer of strategy, risk, and reward to the game. Agree or disagree is no longer the only choice. Feeling confident? Call “higher” or “lower” and put an extra half-point on the line.Ten stocks. Two seasoned competitors. One brand-new rule. And for reasons that only became apparent while recording, an unusually heavy concentration of food, cars, food delivered by car, food consumed after getting out of a car, car parts, collector cars, and at least one company that makes spices for the food. Host: David GardnerProducer: Bart Shannon Companies Mentioned: DASH, GPC, HGTY, MKC, MTN, OC, RACE, SYY, TDG, TEAM Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices