The James Altucher Show

"If you were on the outside looking in you'd probably think, 'This guy's got a really good life.' And on paper I did, but on the inside I felt like I was dying. I was depressed. I was unenthusiastic about my life because I knew I was in a career that was ill suited to me. But I just couldn't see my way out of it," Rich Roll said. He told be about the time he felt a tightness in his chest. He couldn't walk up the stairs. He had to take a break halfway up the flight. Rich was 39 and dying. Rich and I talked about his story before... how he transformed himself from a depressed and overweight alcoholic to a plant based, vegan eating, mega athlete / bestselling author / podcaster / writer and total peak performer. But THIS time we dove even deeper. "I was trying to force this round peg into a square hole for most of my life," he said. I wanted to understand the switch that led him to himself... He told me his secret. And I believe him. "Surrender." He went to rehab. And got help for a problem he couldn't handle on

We all have vulnerabilities. And I exposed mine to Linda because it's a free therapy session. She's a well-known psychologist and bestselling author born in Canada, living in the UK. I had to ask her about all her theories. And all her books. But mostly these 2: 1. "What Men Say, What Women Hear" 2. "Unfollow: Living Life on Your Own Terms" Because I am still outsourcing my self-worth to new measures. First, it was money. So I gave up Wall Street (for many reasons). And then it became book sales and now podcast downloads or laughs when I'm on stage doing stand up. And so I asked Linda "why?" Why am I sacrificing my art for identity? "We create because it's in," she said. "We're social beings and our identity is bound up in what we create. That identity needs to be confirmed by others, right? It's an interesting thing: identity. It's simultaneously what makes us different but it's also what binds us with a group" Then she told me about the evolution of acceptance. "Years ago you'd have a much smaller group val

"This guy tried to kill me. He had a gun to my head," Jon said.  "We were leaving the country.  We got intercepted." Wait. What? I was interviewing Jon Alpert.  He was trying to smuggle controversial footage out of Iraq. "I was basically a complete failure up until the moment that I started making films," Jon said. He was constantly trying to make his community a better place, but his attempts were always unsuccessful. "I want to make this country better. And I'm not a good soldier. And I'm not a politician. So I can't go represent in Congress, but I can be a good reporter," he said. He took two passions (camera and country) and combined the two to become creative in the intersection. His documentaries show aspects of social change that I've never seen anywhere else. There's this undercurrent of a larger problem... an issue or a cause that people are fighting for. I feel like, in talking to Jon, that I want to be fighting for something too. Jon had a core. A direction. And a destination. All in one. "The cam

I started to get really itchy. Inside my head. I didn't know how to scratch it. So I avoided it. Until I broke out into hives and finally forced myself on stage. I think it started when I interviewed Gary Gulman, one of the greatest comedians ever. It was over two years ago. And even though he was deeply depressed, I was jealous. Because he was living my dreams. He was scratching my itch. So I started to interview more comedians. And writers of comedy. I had so many questions. I interviewed Jim Norton, Nancy Cartwright (the voice of Bart Simpson!) Fred Stoller, Chris Smith (who worked with Jon Stewart), Paul Shaffer (the famous band leader on Jay Leno), Bonnie McFarlane. The list keeps growing. And there are so many branches of comedy: Stand up, voice overs, writers, monologue performers, sidekicks. And each branch has its own microskills. That's true for every skill. They all require you to learn hundreds of micro-skills. So getting started can be scary. Very scary. Some people die with itches unscratched. W

I like the idea of experimenting for two reasons. A) widen comfort zone B) become a better person. I'll tell you about A first then B. But first, let me reintroduce my good friend AJ. If you listen to this podcast then you already know who AJ is. But just in case, AJ Jacob's is a professional at experimenting. All his books are experiments. Four are bestsellers. He told me about one he did with the comedian Jim Gaffigan. They looked up the oldest jokes in the world. From hundreds of years ago. And told them to live audiences today. Sometimes Jim bombed, some jokes he skipped (because a lot of jokes were about lettuce... lettuce used to be thought as an aphrodisiac), but others worked. And he didn't know what to expect.   That's A) widening your comfort zone. So for this podcast, AJ and I came up with ideas to experiment with. And we want you to join us. You'll hear what we're testing right now. And what's next.  I found that if I do a new experiment a day or week, it becomes a micro step to creating a

Got to interview one of my favorite comedians for the podcast, Tiffany Haddish, star of "Girls Trip," her recent comedy special. "She Ready", and 20 years a stand up. I asked her what was the biggest change in her first few years of doing standup. (She's been doing it over 20 years). She said, "I learned to change the fear into fun". I think all of the above is great advice to achieve success in everything worth doing. I had a gift for Tiffany. It was a suitcase. I gave her a suitcase for the kids. Let me explain. Because a suitcase is an odd kind of gift. Tiffany was placed in foster care when she was 12 years old and stayed in the system until she was a legal adult. When she moved from home to home she didn't have a suitcase or any kind of bag to put her clothes. They make the kids put all their belongings in trash bags. And it made her feel like garbage. "You're garbage," she said. "Garbage moved around from house to house." "When I was 13, I said to myself if I ever get any sort of power, any sort of infl

If you're reading this, you probably don't know the name Stephen Tobolowsky. But I'll give you some hints. Ned Ryerson. (From "Groundhog Day") Jack Barker. (From "Silicon Valley") Sound familiar? Stephen Tobolowsky is one of the main characters and actors in one of my favorite TV Shows, Silicon Valley. He also plays the MOST annoying character in Groundhog Day. He's been in 200 movies and a thousand other things including Seinfeld, Thelma & Louise, Heroes and the list goes on. But he did something weird. He wrote a book. And when I read it I thought, "who the hell is this guy?" There are only two ways someone could write this book..." My Adventures with God". ONE: If they were incredibly broken as a human being somewhere in their lives and then they climbed back out of that hole by thinking all these intense and philosophical thoughts. TWO: They were just born this way... I still haven't figured out which one. I have to admit I didn't understand parts of Stephen's book. And not because it was bad, (I love

I wish I could take everything Ray Dalio said and turn it into a book. But he already did that. It's called, "Principles: Life and Work." And I'm going to be re-reading it for the rest of my life. He defines principles as "ways of successfully dealing with reality to get what you want out of life." And he's revealing how he used these principles to build BridgeWater Associates, (which manages $150 BILLION in assets. Globally.) He told me story after story. How he went broke. How he started over. How he built a community within the walls of business. How he wrote his book. Love his family, teaches his students, learns from life... "I think you're faced with choices. Those are the times that test your values..." "Being successful is hard," he said. "But it's a lot harder to live a life you don't want." Then he said, "habit is the main controller of all of us." And (for me) it all came down to one formula: He said, "Dreams + reality + determination = a successful life."   Show Notes: Principles: Life and Work

You may remember Amy, she came on my podcast a few weeks ago. We discussed her book, "13 Things Mentally Strong People Don't Do." I asked her why is it a book about what people DON'T do instead of SHOULD do. It seemed counterintuitive to me. But her reasoning made sense. The book wasn't written for other people. It was actually just a letter to herself at first. And then she put it online. And it became viral... that led to a book deal. The podcast was really popular. But I feel like you didn't get the full story... Amy's not just an author, therapist, social worker/mentally strong person. She's also an entrepreneur. She was making money in her sleep... "I've always had some sort of a side hustle usually something fun or strange," she said. I knew immediately I needed to have her back on the show. I wanted her to  share this with my listeners. Because these are "choose yourself" ideas. Simple, easy to execute, and anyone can do it.   "I had a friend who had a jewelry store," Amy said, "so I knew the markup

I got a call from my friend Mike Van Cleave a year ago. He told me had cancer. We hadn't spoken for years. "It's like mold in your refrigerator," he said. "All of a sudden you're like, 'What the hell happened? It's only been a week."   You never know who's going to call you out of the blue someday with cancer. It's scary, but luckily we don't live with these thoughts in our minds. We only think of ourselves. "Will I get cancer?" And that's important. These selfish thoughts keep us alive. I've always admired my friend Mike. I felt honored to have him on this podcast. He told me the science of his cancer (thyroid cancer) and the ways he's surviving every day. I'll take emotional pain over physical any day. So my bones can keep typing. "Do you have pain in your bones?" I asked him. He did. And it went away. "I have no bone pain right now. So there's a very good chance that all the bone metastasis is working," he said. That takes away 80% of the "badness". He spoke casually. And sometimes I laughed inappropriatel

I don't know where to begin. I'm a fan of Scott. I think he reminds me of someone I went to highschool with. He was bright and always cursing at the right time. I remember laughing. Because I felt close to being free. But he was the one with the ability to put himself in the middle of controversy. That's something I (still) can't do. He'd say eff this or eff that. Part of me felt compelled to egg him on. But he didn't need it. He was comfortable being cynical and right. Scott Galloway does this with business. I watch his weekly  "Winners & Losers" videos where he tells you things like "Brands are dying" and "Amazon will be broken up" Then he'll dress up like Spock and I'll lose my mind. I get these videos emailed to my phone. And I'm also subscribed to his YouTube channel. He came on my podcast to talk about his new book, "The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google." But we also talked about his past: creating and selling companies. Being on the board of The New York Times, wanting to

Dennis Woodside left Google, for DropBox. Everyone thought he was crazy. DropBox was this little tiny company. What was he thinking? "So you ask why I would go from Google to Dropbox. Just play the movie forward. Where's it going to be in ten years? It's logical to me that the company that pioneered this notion of putting your files in the cloud is going to have all kind of opportunities and going to solve problems for everybody in the world. A lot of people don't think that way. They think very linearly. That's how we're taught as kids. That's how you're taught in college." (And that's how Dennis was taught to think in law school. But he got out of that rut. More on that later...) "You have to rewire your brain a bit," he said. You have to ask yourself, "What trends do I understand to be true?" And "If I extrapolate that trend to its logical conclusion, what does the world look like?" That's what Dennis did. And that's how he found Google. And later, Dropbox. He said Google was tiny when he first joined. "Wh

I sat down with two women the other day. And I can't decide whether they've completely ruined my life or helped me. I decided they were going to help me decide before this podcast was over. Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider are the authors of the classic book, "The Rules". I know this book inside and out. Every woman I ever dated back in the 90's and early 00's read "The Rules" AND were following them. I felt like I was talking to them on behalf of every single person I've ever dated. (And every man who's ever been frustrated by a woman they've dated.) "The Rules" tell women how to date and WHO to date. But more than that, it teaches you to have self respect. How to bring the center of gravity back to yourself. And stop outsourcing your self-esteem to some other human or some idea of being with that human. I've been married twice. I told Ellen and Sherrie about both of my marriages, but I kept something things private, too. I told them I'm going to give their books to my daughters. I want them to read it. "But

I asked Frank Shamrock, a living legend MMA fighter, "How many titles have you won?" "I think I won them all." He calls himself a "super athlete." So I told him he lacks humility... And we laughed. But he's right. He IS a super athlete. He evolved the art form. And went one level deeper than any opponent. He didn't just say "how do I crush this person?" He said "How is the body working? What is this machine? How can I use it optimize my performance?" "I was studying the biomechanics," Frank said. "And how to maximize it... everyone else studied technical fighting." But he wasn't always a fighter. He found the sport in jail. He was 11. He left home and learned "crime was a tool to change your situation and protect you," Frank said. His parents were abusing him. "I was an emotional basket case," he said. "I couldn't hold anything together for more than a few days, no sport, no activities I would just fall apart." He escaped through crime. " I actually threw rocks at a train and in California, that's a felony. I

Anthony holds a lot of weird records. But the most interesting to me is the record for the biggest span between winning golds. SIXTEEN YEARS.    But first, let's start from the beginning. Anthony Ervin always had a gift for swimming. He had the talent. He had the coaching. And he had the success from an early age. But there was something else looming. Tourette's. I asked him how it happened. "What was the first things you noticed about yourself when you developed Tourette's?" "It was debilitating," he said. "I felt a lot of nervous energy running through the body and that energy needs to find an exit." It escaped through his eyes, his jaw, his neck. "It took a long time cause originally you want to fight this. You want to imprison this energy just to make it stop. But my eventual tactic for it was to take that energy and move it through my entire body. Specifically to move it into my swimming," Anthony said.   He used it as a weapon. He turned a negative into a positive. And it ultimately led to success in sw

We've become too comfortable. We're innovating less and watching Netflix more. When I think of a "complacent class," (a group of people who don't care to move forward or move at all), I think of this: Americans soaking high wages off the backs of more aggressive global economies. I picture us eating delivered food, never moving, only using the remote. And having drones deliver everything we need. I had to ask Tyler Cowen about this. He's a personal computer that's going to answer all my economic questions. He knows all about the "complacent class." Because he wrote the book on it. It's called, "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream". "Look at it this way," he said. "We've had these incredible advances in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. We take fossil fuels and powerful machines and combine them to do everything you can imagine (cars, airplanes, electricity, radios, televisions). We've had incredible booms spread to the middle class. Spread to the poor. We've done that.

Tim's doing a new experiment. (I'm not surprised.) He's looking at people and asking himself one question... "What happened to this person?" He said, "Normal people are just folks you don't know well enough yet, right? Nobody's normal. We're so full of stuff and trauma and nonsense and silly beliefs. Everyone's a work in progress and since you're a work in progress, it's very hard to know yourself." He gave me an example. But didn't name names. "There was this woman who had some very peculiar emotions. It turned out that she had watched her father beat her mother into unconsciousness on multiple occasions... knocked out, unconscious, on the floor. And that was just the tip of the iceberg." She's acting in response to her past. Not her present. I think that's what Tim means when he said, "we're cause and effect collection machines." And that's really where advice comes from... the intersection between cause, effect, and hindsight. I feel Tim's really mastered this new intersection. He's embracing being "a work

I can't just call Chuck a writer. He's arguably one of the most successful pop culture critics. "Oh sure," he said. "And I have a big advantage. Most critics want to be the first to write about something, I get to be the last person. And that puts me in a very good position." "Why?" I asked. "I'm not just reacting to something," he said. "I'm looking at all the other reactions." He's interpreting our interpretations. And defining the 21st century.   They say Deja Vu shows us when we're having the right experience at the right time. The other kind of "repeat experience" is monotony. The same "day-in and day out." I think humans have a desire to look for newness.?? If you look down at your feet but forget to look at the sky and see a new day, is it a new day??? The way to achieve newness is through interpretation. ?No song sounds the same to any two people. No business opportunity or investment looks as golden to two people. We see the world through ourselves. ?Chuck Klosterman analyzes Pop culture. He's the

I was really nervous for this podcast. Elizabeth Smart has been through so much trauma. And I'm sure everyone says that to her. Was she sick of hearing that after all these years? I wanted to learn how she survived. The kidnapper came through her window, held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her. He said it was religion... God, that made him do it. But she saw through them and their evil. Elizabeth said, "From a very early age, my parents said, 'You'll know a person by their actions. If they're a good person, they'll be doing good things. If they're a bad person, they'll be doing bad things.' So despite the fact that my captors constantly said, 'God has commanded us to do this. We don't want to do this, but we have to,' it was always pretty easy for me to separate what they said from actual faith because they were hurting me."  I asked her about escape... and how she rebuilt her life back. She was just fourteen when she was kidnapped. Now she's an advocate. She started by going to Washington with

Floyd exposed Armstrong. He exposed the whole US cycling team for doping. In 2006, he won the Tour de France. He made it to the heights of the profession. And then he blew the whistle. "People see it as exercise, a healthy, endurance sport. It's not that at all," he said. "It's war, and your body is a machine." I don't know if I'd be brave enough to be the whistle blower. I think I'd just quit the sport to avoid controversy. "Aren't you afraid of letting down children?" I asked him? "At this point there's enough information out there that if you're able to read and you can think, you can see what's happening. It's obvious... what's happening in profession sports." He told me every detail. How he was bullied for being honest. Sent hate mail. He was depressed and turned to drugs. So how did he turn himself around? This is that story... The consequences of exposing a legend... overcoming rejection, and finally learning how to take your life back one and for all. You can read my show notes here: https://jamesaltu