James Altucher interviews the world's leading peak performers in every area of life. But instead of giving you the typical success story, James digs deeper to find the "Choose Yourself" story - these are the moments we relate to... when someone rises up from personal struggle to reinvent themselves. The James Altucher Show brings you into the lives of peak-performers: billionaires, best-selling authors, rappers, astronauts, athletes, comedians, actors, and the world champions in every field, all who forged their own paths, found financial freedom and harnessed the power to create more meaningful and fulfilling lives.
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A Note from James: Oh my gosh, one of my favorite guests ever: Ben Mezrich. Ben wrote Bringing Down the House , which became the movie 21 . He wrote The Accidental Billionaires , which became The Social Network . And now his latest page-turner, Checkmate , is about one of the most explosive scandals in modern sports: the Hans Niemann chess cheating controversy that took over the world. You remember the story. Magnus Carlsen, the greatest chess player of all time, loses to this completely arrogan...
A Note from James: Have you ever read The Da Vinci Code ? That book was definitely a page-turner. Before I read it, I had never really heard of Opus Dei. And after today’s conversation with Gareth Gore, you might wish you had never heard of Opus Dei either. In The Da Vinci Code , Opus Dei is a mysterious organization tied to the Catholic Church, secret history, and global power. But today’s guest, Gareth Gore, started investigating Opus Dei from a completely different angle. He was looking into ...
A Note from James: Today on the show, I have a very special guest and a good friend of mine, Brandon Webb. Brandon has been on the show many times before. He’s a former Navy SEAL, and he also ran the Navy SEAL sniper school that trained some of the best snipers in the world, including the sniper the movie American Sniper was based on. He’s written a ton of books about the military, leadership, confidence, mental toughness, and even military thrillers. A few weeks ago, we talked about what was go...
A Note from James: Today on The James Altucher Show , I’m excited to welcome back one of my favorite guests, David Epstein. David is the bestselling author of Range , which completely changed how I think about my own jack-of-all-trades life. In his new book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better , David flips the usual idea of creativity on its head. We’re always told that creativity comes from total freedom: the blank page, the blank canvas, unlimited resources. But David shows that th...
A Note from James: What is actually going on in Iran? I have Brandon Webb on the show today. He’s a former Navy SEAL, he’s written a ton of books about the military and life in the military, then he wrote a murder mystery series set in the military, and now he has a parenting book out. Brandon also runs SOFREP.com, a major military intelligence news site. He came on for a quick episode to answer the big question: what is actually happening in Iran, and what might happen next? Episode Description...
A Note from James: Imagine going on Shark Tank in front of Mark Cuban, Mr. Wonderful, Lori Greiner, Robert Herjavec, and the rest of the Sharks. You’re offering 10% of your business for $700,000, which values the company at $7 million. They all say no. Then, a few years later, Amazon buys your company for a billion dollars. That's gotta feel really good, and that's the experience of our next guest, Jamie Siminoff. Jamie built the company behind the video doorbell that lets you see who’s at your ...
James Altucher and psychotherapist Amy Morin discuss tactical mental strength strategies, moving beyond vague advice to offer immediate relief for stress, anxiety, and conflict. They explore techniques like scheduled worry, psychological distance, the half-smile, and the power of kindness, emphasizing mental strength as a learnable skill rather than a fixed trait, applicable to diverse life situations from financial stress to relationship friction.
James Altucher and Peter Diamandis explore the transition to an AI-driven world, emphasizing that the real crisis is an "emotional pandemic of fear" rather than traditional scarcity. Diamandis advocates for an abundance mindset, seeing AI as a partner for massive economic expansion and entrepreneurial explosion. The conversation delves into AI's impact on daily life, the emerging divide between creators and consumers, and humanity's transformative "forks" in longevity, space, and digital consciousness.
Episode Description: In this From the Archive episode, James talks with Cal Newport about a simple but uncomfortable idea: most people are working hard on the wrong things. Newport breaks down the difference between deep work —focused, cognitively demanding effort that produces rare and valuable output—and shallow work , which fills time but doesn’t move the needle. In a world engineered to fragment attention, the ability to focus without distraction is becoming both rarer and more valuable. The...
Notes from James: I wish I had been Kolin Jones when I was 18 years old. When Colin was 19, during COVID, he set up his own private jet brokerage out of a college dorm room. No investors. No jets. No connections. Just a GoDaddy website, an email address, and an obsessive willingness to send 2,500 cold emails a day. Amalfi Jets is on track to do $120 million in revenue this year. And he still doesn't own a single plane. I love how he thought about competition. He literally calculated: my competit...
Episode Description In this From the Archive conversation, James talks with Yuval Noah Harari about the idea underneath Sapiens and Homo Deus : humans did not come to dominate the planet because they were the strongest animals, but because they learned to cooperate at scale through shared stories—religion, money, nations, and eventually data. The discussion moves from early human history to agriculture, war, terrorism, AI, and bioengineering, but the throughline stays the same: civilization runs...
A Note from James: What is going on in Iran? And once this war is over, what happens to investing? Is the world coming down? I’m bringing on the Invest Diva, Kiana Danial, to talk about both. She wrote Triple Compounding For Dummies , and we’ll get into that, too. She’s Iranian, and she has a perspective on what’s happening that I think matters. My gut, based on the force of history, is that when this war is over, the Islamic regime won’t survive. Iran has no air force left, no navy left, missil...
Jen Shahade, two-time U.S. Women's Chess Champion, explores lessons from chess and poker for smarter decision-making, wealth building, and career navigation. She highlights the importance of diversified income streams over sole salaries, the power of finding a "third option" in binary choices, and how AI can facilitate learning and reinvention. The conversation also delves into developing focus in a distracting age, the ethics of ambition, and the value of falsifying one's own ideas for robust decision-making.
A Note from James: This is why I love doing podcasts—talking to people like Dr. Sheena Howard, author of Why Wakanda Matters . Wakanda is the country where Black Panther is from, and Sheena has written extensively about comics, including work on Black Panther itself. We talk about comics, race, and storytelling. I asked a question I was almost afraid to ask—whether the Black Panther movie was racist against other Black people—and she gave a surprising answer. We also talk about a time she was ab...
Episode Description This archival conversation with Jim Kwik moves beyond memory tricks and into something more fundamental: how we think, learn, and make decisions. Jim breaks down why most people forget nearly everything they read, why repeating the same mistakes isn’t always about logic, and how modern life is quietly degrading attention and memory. He explains how the brain filters information, how habits form, and why focus—not intelligence—is often the real differentiator. James pushes the...
A Note from James: I talked to Nelson Dellis, who’s a six-time USA Memory Champion and has broken multiple Guinness World Records. His book, Everyday Genius , makes a pretty bold claim—that with some practice and the right techniques, you can dramatically improve how your brain works. We didn’t just talk about memory. We got into everything: mental math, focus, cold reading, even some techniques that feel almost like magic. And I’ve done a lot of episodes on memory over the years—but Nelson show...
A Note from James: I’ve been in therapy for more than three decades. Different therapists. Different kinds of therapy. Different crises. And one question has always fascinated me: What is the therapist actually thinking while I’m sitting there talking? Are they bored? Are they judging me? Are they secretly Googling me? My guest today, Lori Gottlieb , knows the answer—because she’s both sides of the story. She’s a psychotherapist, author of the bestselling book Maybe You Should Talk to Someone , ...
A Note from James: In the Blondie song “Rapture,” which was the number-one song in 1981, Debbie Harry has this famous line: “Fab Five Freddy told me everybody’s fly.” So the question is—who is Fab Five Freddy? This guy is one of the central figures in the birth of hip-hop culture. Not just rap music, but the whole ecosystem: graffiti, breakdancing, fashion, DJ culture, art, film—everything that eventually turned into a massive global industry. Hip-hop today represents hundreds of billions of dol...
A Note from James: Tony Hawk is one of the greatest athletes of all time—but what fascinates me most isn’t just the tricks. It’s the mindset. Tony didn’t just become the best skateboarder in the world. He built an entire ecosystem around what he loved: competitions, companies, tours, sponsorships, and one of the most successful video game franchises ever created. What’s interesting is that none of it was planned that way. It came from constant experimentation, falling—literally—and getting back ...
A Note from James: In the last episode, we talked about whether Martin Shkreli really deserves the label “most hated man in America.” My conclusion was no, and I hope you came to the same conclusion after hearing his perspective. In this episode, we shift gears completely. We talk about Bitcoin, crypto, AI, energy, optical computing, and what the future of technology might actually look like. Martin has a very unusual combination of skills—finance, biotech, programming—and I always enjoy hearing...
A Note from James: Is he the most hated man in America? I don’t think so. Martin Shkreli was notorious for various reasons that you’ll hear about in this episode—there are some crazy stories—but I’ve come to know Martin over the past few months as both a friend and business partner. Let’s just hear his stories and explanations. I think you’ll agree with me that this is one of the smartest people I’ve ever had on the podcast. Episode Description: Martin Shkreli became one of the most controversia...
A Note from James: In the first two episodes with Dr. Nicole McNichols, we talked about chemistry, communication, anatomy, and the science of pleasure. This final episode is really about something deeper—how relationships evolve over time and what actually keeps desire alive. Because the truth is, long-term relationships don’t stay exciting automatically. They require intention. They require curiosity. And sometimes the issue isn’t your partner at all—it’s that you’ve stopped doing things that l...
A Note from James: In the first episode with Dr. Nicole McNichols, we talked about chemistry, myths, and why communication matters more than performance. This episode goes deeper—into biology, anatomy, dopamine, desire, and the mechanics of pleasure. There are a lot of myths around sex. Some are cultural. Some are Hollywood. Some come from bad science. And some just come from silence. This conversation gets specific. We talk about orgasm, desire, scheduling sex, the so-called “missionary problem...
Episode Description: This archival conversation with Ramit Sethi is a masterclass in systems thinking, behavioral psychology, and building a “rich life” on your own terms. Long before online courses were mainstream, Ramit was quietly building scalable systems—automating money, testing business ideas rigorously, and rejecting conventional wisdom around careers, housing, and passion. In this conversation, he explains why most advice fails, why willpower is overrated, and how to engineer results in...
Human sexuality professor Dr. Nicole McNichols unpacks what truly makes sex great, emphasizing pleasure, communication, and responsiveness over performance-driven myths. She highlights how non-sexual touch and intellectual intimacy profoundly feed sexual desire, challenging common misconceptions about "chemistry" as anxiety. The conversation also explores navigating modern dating's "culture of chill" by advocating for intentionality, clear communication, and healthy boundaries to foster genuine connection and self-respect.
Episode Description: This was one of those interviews where James thought he was talking about leadership—and realized halfway through that he was really talking about responsibility. Jocko Willink doesn’t use buzzwords. He doesn’t soften the message. He talks about ego, blame, and why most problems—at work and in life—don’t come from bad systems but from leaders who won’t take ownership. What struck James most wasn’t the battlefield stories. It was how calmly Jocko explained things everyone avo...
Episode Description: This was one of the most intense conversations James ever recorded. This archive conversation captures David Goggins at the moment Can’t Hurt Me was launching — before the mythology around him fully formed. What makes this episode powerful is how grounded it is. He’s not selling inspiration. He’s explaining the mechanics of suffering, discipline, and self-reinvention in plain terms. Goggins describes growing up with abuse, learning disabilities, fear, and self-hatred — and h...
Episode Description: This second installment of “From the Archive” returns to James’s early, unfiltered conversation with Tim Ferriss. They unpack how to market by creating newsworthy moments (including a frigid book-launch fiasco turned lesson), how to learn anything using Tim’s DISS framework (Deconstruction, Selection, Sequencing, Stakes), and why “possibility is negotiable” when you seek outliers and test assumptions. Tim explains fear-setting, slow-play networking that leads to real mentors...
A Note from James: Data is oil. Data is the gold of this AI revolution. Imagine you have an AI that has all of everybody’s thoughts also—so it’s not just learning on tweets and texts, it’s learning on the 60,000 or so thoughts that 8 billion people think each day around the world. This sounds like amazing science fiction and magic and everything that one could ever have dreamed of… or it could be the end of the world. Episode Description: In this solo episode, James breaks down a recent AI devel...
In this episode, Dilbert creator Scott Adams discusses his "systems over goals" philosophy, emphasizing diversification, talent stacking, and the critical role of personal energy in achieving success. He recounts Dilbert's origin story, the surprising disorientation of achieving his biggest goal, and why he believes few people can truly judge a good idea. Adams also explores the "danger" in writing and how humor provides a voice against corporate absurdities, alongside his current venture, CalendarTree, and his views on reforming education and government.
