The James Altucher Show

Building connections and building relationships are how you bring real value to the world around you. Jayson Gaignard is a super-connector. He's two degrees of separation from anyone you want to meet. Broke and $250,000 in debt, Jayson thought about an idea that nobody else was doing after getting a free ticket to hear Seth Godin speak, connecting entrepreneurs over an intimate dinner. He paid for...

James and David Levien talk about the art and the science of writing books and screenplays, producing and directing movies, plus making this your full-time career. Eventually he teamed up with his longtime best friend Brian Koppelman (Episode 59) but the road to success was tough. Like most screenwriters, he moved to Hollywood to launch his career. He started as an assistant to a talent agent hopi...

James and Ben Mezrich dig deep into the art and science of writing books as a full-time career. His parents gave him two years to make a go at it, but secretly he gave himself five. As Ben tells James, he never wanted to do anything else. After college, he locked himself in his apartment and wrote nine novels. He got rejection letter after rejection letter, about 190 in all. Eventually he found an...

How do you transform your life? The answer is simple. Come up with 10 ideas a day. Every day. It doesn't matter if they are good or bad; the point is to exercise your idea muscle, to make it sweat. Today James talks with Claudia about her brand new book,Become an Idea Machine: Because Ideas Are the Currency of the 21st Century. People say ideas are cheap and execution is everything, but that is NO...

James has a man crush and he admits it on today's podcast. Simon Rich again joins James today for a very special episode. Simon's new TV show, Man Seeking Woman, debuted last night on FXX. Man Seeking Woman follows Josh Greenberg (a stand-in of sorts for Rich himself, played by the excellent Jay Baruchel) as he navigates a fantastical nightmare world of millennial dating. When Simon was last on Ja...

Talk about choosing yourself, Amanda Palmer has always blazed a path that pushes the boundaries of what most of us would be comfortable with. Her latest project is a book called The Art of Asking, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help that explores the fear most of us experience. Why is it so hard to ask for something from those who are closest to you? Amanda tells James that it's...

"I lost my job and I've piled up a huge amount of credit card debt. I just got a new job but I'm only making $11/hr. What should I do?" James says - Stop making any payments on your credit cards you can't afford to pay. I know this goes against what everyone else is telling you but James explains today why this individual shouldn't pay.  He can't... Get prepared for the calls and the harassment bu...

Today James goes through therapy. As a father of two young children, he felt he was going to ruin his kids by going through a divorce. He felt he was a loser, believing that divorce is a personal failure and that married people are better than divorced people. Astro and Danielle call this The Holy Cow. In their book, Sacred Cows, and on today's podcast they talk about the promise we all make when...

James asks Tucker Max back to talk about the book publishing business and his new hugely successful new venture, Book in a Box. Almost everyone would love to write and publish a book but the amount of work involved is daunting. So it just never happens. Until now... Tucker and his team have come up with the perfect solution and he's willing to give away all his secrets on today's show. This is a f...

"Online dating doesn't seem to be working. Is there anything wrong with me?" James says there's nothing wrong with the woman who asks this question. Online dating has reduced the value of a relationship just due to the sheer volume and the unlimited supply. Claudia mentions how you have to be clear and set a few parameters and preferences, but you also have to be flexible. Don't only rely on onlin...

Pennsylvania brewer Dick Yuengling, president of D.G. Yuengling & Son, has seen a lot of change since its founding in 1829. One of the most amazing things is that after five generations, it's still family-owned and two of his daughters are being groomed to take it over. Dick has always wanted to be involved in the brewery business and from an early age had the desire to modernize it. He left the c...

Sam Shank originally thought he wanted to be a Hollywood film director so he moved out to California to find his fame. He managed to get a job with the legendary director Wes Craven and worked on the now famous movie Scream. Quickly he learned that his reality wasn't anything like his dream. He spent most of his time running errands just like 99% of the others with the same dream. His entrepreneur...

The world of startups is extremely exciting. One of the few people who has been able to put himself right in the middle of it is James' longtime friend Jason Calacanis. He knows everyone... Today, James and Jason talk about Jason's early startups, Silicon Alley, Mahalo, his podcast This Week in Startups, and his newest venture, Inside.com They talk about the past, present, and future of technology...

How do people perceive you? Sally Hogshead, CEO of Fascinate, Inc. discovered a new way to measure how people perceive your communication. "You're either adding value or your taking up space." Sally tells James, that if you're nervous or uncomfortable in a conversation then you'll make your listener feel nervous and uncomfortable. When you feel relaxed and confident than your listener is more like...

Jay Jay French, guitarist, manager, and producer is most famous for his role as the founding member and one of the guitarists of the heavy metal band Twisted Sister  Long: Jay Jay French explains Twisted Sisters long-term success like it's an iceberg. What you see on the surface is only 10% of what's really there. They've continually reinvested in themselves. Whenever they'd make a little money, i...

15 years young, Fark.com is still alive and growing.   With 45 million monthly downloads and 3 million unique visitors per month, it has an extremely loyal fan base.   Drew Curtis, the founder of Fark, has chosen a different path from most web startups. He shuns most advertising and is not interested in selling Fark and cashing out.   He just loves his lifestyle.   Journalists have gotten lazy wit...

Adam Grant, the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School's youngest tenured professor, and author of one of the best books of 2013 - Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success - joins The James Altucher Show today.   Helpfulness is Adam's message.   James asks Adam how he got into a topic that resonates so much with people. He says it all started in his early life when he was a diver. H...

Daniel O'Brien's love of presidents started early. As he recounts the story in his hilarious book, How To Fight Presidents, it all started when his American Government professor said on his very first day of class, "Not one of you is ever going to grow up to be president of the United States."   He never wanted to be president but when that professor told him he couldn't even if he wanted to, some...

Sam Harris, a brilliant and often controversial author and lecturer, joins James today to talk about science, religion, spirituality, and Ben Affleck.   Ted.com has said of him...   "Questions of good and evil, right and wrong are commonly thought unanswerable by science. But Sam Harris argues that science can - and should - be an authority on moral issues, shaping human values and setting out wha...

Dave Berg spent 18 years as Jay Leno's co-producer of The Tonight Show.    Everyone knows The Tonight Show; say the name and you immediately get an image to pop into your mind. But what was really going on behind the scenes?   Today, Dave gives us all some great insight...    You'll hear in his voice how much love and respect he has for Jay, who he called the hardest-working man in all of show bus...

Podcasting's future is here and this time it's for real.   We've been podcasting for years now and we've grown a very successful business doing it, but we did it behind the scenes.   Alex Blumberg thought, why not invite the audience in and let them follow him build a podcasting company. He was never sure that idea would work and spent hours and hours editing the first few episodes before launch....

Your ups and downs are caused by brain chemicals inherited from earlier mammals.   What's exciting about that is, you can enjoy more happy chemicals if you learn how to manage your mammal brain.   Loretta writes a fantastic blog on her website Inner Mammal Institute where she digs deep into human emotions and the chemistry behind them.   She and James talk today about some of our happy chemicals:...

Biohacking is the art and science of taking control of your own biology and Dave's revolutionary diet will make you question everything you thought you knew about raw, vegan, paleo, and every other diet out there. Dave, a Silicon Valley investor and technology entrepreneur, has spent 15 years and over $300,000 to hack his own biology. Today you'll hear his story as he tells James why he has devote...

Often many of the key people who help create great companies work behind the scenes, out of the publicity spotlight. Mitch Lowe is one of these people.  As fate often has it, Mitch was working to develop another idea. While displaying at a trade show, he met Marc Randolph who happened to stop by his booth. After a long talk about DVDs Marc started to walk away. Mitch grabbed him by the back of his...

Carols' new book, How To Succeed In Business Without Really Crying offers great tips and tricks for getting ahead. Not everything in life is going to work in your favor but your attitude on how you deal with this can set you apart. Carol tells James, you can set you sights on - "This is The Thing", but if you don't get that all important "thing" you can stand often stand in your own way of success...