My Favorite Things: James Sharing Favorites and what he learnt!

0:00Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the quality of people. you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

0:42And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great big candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash altature. then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's LinkedIn.com slash Altachirk. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

1:18For this episode, can we change the podcast music to open this up to a song that we make on SUNO? I think we could.

1:52Today on the James Altucher Show. Okay, I admit it. I love a good TV show. I love watching Netflix, sometimes for six, seven straight hours at a time. I love scrolling on Instagram and dare I say it, even TikTok. I love all sorts of stupid videos on YouTube. Well, why don't I tell you a couple of things that I love? These are a few of my favorite things. And I think you should check these things out. I'm going to include my favorite my current favorite AI websites that I like to play with my favorite Instagram accounts my favorite Kung Fu movie my favorite Twitter account to follow my favorite recent books that I've read and also my favorite American president or vice president it depends so Jay, do you have a favorite Instagram account?

2:52Oh yeah Like one that you always look for? Yes, I was just watching it It's called, I think it's called Cost and Mayor. It's this couple dancing. It's amazing. And their dance move is great. Cost and Mayor, C-O-S-T. Like there would never be a TV show. That's just something like, like if you pitched, like if you went into a Hollywood studio and believe me, I've been in all of them pitching shows. And you said, you know, I just want to do a show with me and my wife doing like really bad dancing. They would say, all right, what are you, who set up this meeting? Wait, I just searched Cuss and Meyer Cuss N is like the alphabet N So Cuss underscore N underscore Mayor M-A-Y-O-R Their dance is amazing I found them during the lockdown Everyone's like, do all this stupid dance move But their dance is actually amazing I think they were dance choreographer Or from musical theater Okay, hold on, hold on Cuss and Meyer Okay, I see it 2 million followers Yeah, they just hit 2 million followers.

3:59So like more people watch this couple than watch basically any TV show on the planet right now except for like the Super Bowl. Right. So let's see. Yeah. And do they have music? They have music, yeah. The one, my favorite one was they were doing the Crazy Frog. A frog. Crazy Frog. Oh yeah, they're fun. This is good. It is great. Yeah, it's like every time I'm disappointed or I'm frustrated, I just watch them. Wait, when are you ever disappointed or frustrated? You know. When I don't show up for a podcast? Like, James, you're like half an hour late. No, no, no, no. Sometimes, you know, sometimes when my dog doesn't do things I want or sometimes things that depend on that I want to.

4:37Sometimes I just look at myself. I'm like, why am I not Italian? You know, I was disappointed that I'm not Italian. No, I'm just joking. All right. I'll show you a couple of Instagram accounts. I really like this one. This girl who's like a neuroscientist always gives really great neuroscience advice about improving your life. Like she has how to boost your dopamine. Are you addicted to your phone? Tips for deep sleep, get high on your own biology. So I was just looking at one. So if you Google, yeah, Emily McDonald and the Instagram account is M on the brain. So E-M-O-N-T-H-E-B-R-A-I-N, M on the brain, all one word though.

5:21And like, here's five natural ways to boost dopamine. Here are five ways to boost dopamine naturally. One is kind of a mind game and it's to decide to do things rather than telling yourself you have to do things. And this is because we actually get more dopamine when we do something as a choice versus when we do something because we have to do it. And all it takes is a little mental reframing. The second way to boost dopamine naturally is exercise. Exercise also increases the production of endocannabinoids, which are molecules made by the body that bind to the same receptor as cannabis. To boost dopamine is to actually reduce light exposure between the hours of 11 p.m.

5:57and 4 a.m. And this is because light exposure during that time activates a pro-depressive pathway in the brain that reduces the activity of dopamine. Number four is novelty. Trying something new or going somewhere new is a great way to boost dopamine. And tip number five is humor. Humor increases dopamine, so watching something funny or talking to a funny friend is a great way to get dopamine. And then Cody Sanchez, who's recently been on this podcast, she really has a great Instagram account. It's Cody Sanchez. Her name's C-O-D-I-E-S-A-N-C-H-E-Z. Cody Sanchez. And it's an account all with business advice.

6:34And I have to say she's got really great business advice on every single post. Fail you pay once. Regret lasts a lifetime. time. There's a quote that I love, which is, a coward dies a thousand deaths, but a hero can die only one. It's the same thing in our lives. Everybody's concerned about failing at that big thing. And what if other people know? But the truth of it is, you have to look yourself in the mirror every single day, remembering all the times you just didn't take the swing at all. Would you rather be the coward dying a thousand deaths by paper cut or be the hero and he only can die once?

7:09And she got great personality too. Yeah, yeah. She really does a good job. So those are two Instagram accounts. But I like all the, like on TikTok, I like all magician accounts or kids doing parkour. There's like superheroes on TikTok. So next time we do this, I'll have some of those that I really like. But that's my favorite two Instagram accounts at the moment. Do you learn anything from the M on the brain at all? Excuse me? Do you usually learn something every time you look at one of the real? Ah, cool. Every single time. And she's like Andrew Huberman, but she's prettier than Andrew Huberman.

7:45And maybe she's even got better neuroscience tips than Andrew Huberman. Andrew Huberman's been on this podcast several times. Now, also, favorite, my favorite YouTube mashup. What I really love is I love when people take two groups that separately I love, like two musical groups that separately I love, and then they mash them together. and so there's this one i've just been obsessively listening to like if you like either led zeppelin or the wu-tang clan this guy curious george his youtube account is curious george and he only has like 9 000 subscribers and he did this great mashup called the wu-tang zeppelin and it's like it's every song is great on this mashup it's like a perfect mashup of the wu-tang clan and led zeppelin

8:49Let me see what other mashups he's done. He has A Tribe Called West, which is Kanye West mashed up with A Tribe Called Quest. He has Dr. Doom. It's a mashup between MF Doom and Dr. Dre. So he does, I guess, a lot of rap stuff. But I like this kind of classic rock. The Wu-Tang Clan is really good. So I like mashups. That's my YouTube of the day. I have many other favorite YouTube channels, but we'll just go with that one. You know what's my favorite YouTube channel? What's that? The James Aldrich Show. The James Aldrich Show YouTube channel. It's a fantastic YouTube channel. I don't like it that much because I've already seen them all.

9:28I was there, so I get bored. But watching myself again, I don't like to watch myself on YouTube. Oh, okay My favorite AI website Like I have a different favorite website every day So you could ask me every day and I have a different favorite one Get this website out It's really great Go to, have you tried this one Jay? Yeah, yeah, yeah S-U-N-O dot A-I Yeah, I use it to write my podcast music Yeah, for this episode, can we change the podcast music To open this up to a song that we make on S-U-N-O I think we could But I wonder if that's any copyright That we have to report about Who cares? What are they going to do?

10:05Sue us? They'll probably have to sue No. I'll sue them back. I'll counter sue. So who cares? I'm suing you. They're stealing anyway. All this AI stuff is like stolen content of stolen content. Exactly. Just like what Sarah Silverman has said. Yeah. What did she say? She said like we shouldn't be able to use anything on the internet to train the AI because you know that it's stealing. No, I mean, I get it that she's a content creator. And so she's feeling very, she's feeling the ownership of her content. She doesn't want like AI just to have it for free and nobody will know was her content originally.

10:46But A, when an AI creates something, it's using so many micro pieces of content from all over the place. And it's being original too, by combining them together in original ways. It's really hard to trace where some content is coming from. and just be confident in yourself that if you have great content, it's still gonna rise above the ad nauseum of AI. But that said, go to suno.ai, suno, not sumo, but suno.ai and, or go to the YouTube channel and we'll have all the links to these things in the show notes, but go to suno.ai and you can basically write a song description. Like I wrote an aggressive gangster rap song about James Altucher being the king of podcasts.

11:35And it came up with the song title. And then it has a human playing the song. We'll play you a clip in a second. It has like the Altucher Empire or the podcast flow or flowing with Altucher or Podcast King. So it's fun. I'll play one right now.

12:18Look, as a manager of people, as an employer, as an entrepreneur, and as even an investor in startups, I can tell you the most important thing for your business is the quality of the people you hire. The best part is that great candidates are already on LinkedIn. Employees hired through LinkedIn are 30 % more likely to stick around for at least a year compared to those hired through the leading competitor. And I will tell you that the great thing about LinkedIn is that you're not just looking at random people. You're able to see the people who your friends and trusted peers and colleagues, who they trust and who they've hired in the past and who they recommend.

13:00And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring. You want to hire the right person as quickly as possible. That's why LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant suggests immediately 25 great fit candidates daily so you can invite them to apply and keep things moving. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Altature, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find the top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Altature. Post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

13:37This message comes from Capital One. With the Spark Cash Plus card from Capital One, you earn unlimited 2 % cash back on every purchase and get big purchasing power so your business can spend more and earn more. Steven, Brandon, and Bruno, the business owners of SandCloud, reinvested their 2 % cash back to help build the company's retail presence. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Find out more at CapitalOne.com slash Spark Cash Plus Terms Apply. Comedian. Okay. I highly recommend people Google on YouTube Greer Barnes. First off, I have a lot of favorite comedians. It's nonstop. I could give you, I could do a whole podcast about my top 100 favorite comedians, but Google Greer Barnes and Google Greer Barnes imagines the day black people leave earth and subscribe to Greer Barton's YouTube channel.

14:36He is just nonstop, like a high quality comedian. Unfortunately, nobody really knows. Not that many people have heard of the guy and he's one of the best comedians out there. And I don't say that part lightly. Favorite Twitter account. Well, the Twitter account of one of our recent podcast guests, Brian Romel, R-O-E-M-M-E-L-E. He always has this weird, quirky stuff. Like here's one, the brain goes through 12 phases of development and he describes different phases. Or here's another one. Here's a story, a picture of Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe and how Ella Fitzgerald was not allowed to perform in Hollywood's most popular nightclub, the MoCambo.

15:18Marilyn Monroe called the owner, explained that if he booked Ella, she would be there every night, which guaranteed huge press coverage. So he did book Ella, and that totally made Ella's career a huge success, put her over the top. And here's another one. He quotes an article, less than half of Americans are very satisfied with their own lives. Oh, here's a great one. He has these drawings, like it's the first human drawings in caves, and they're from 37 ,000 years ago, and they're drawings of animals. So did you know that humans were already putting cave drawings on 37 ,000 years ago? He has a bunch of stuff about the Vision Pro.

15:57NASA tracks the brightest cosmic event ever recorded. Here's one. He has a thing about 1983 in the release commercial for the Sony Super Walkman, a cassette player the size of a cassette case. Boy, that looks cool. If only it could play more than nine songs, it would be like an iPod. James, do you remember There was once The CD player They called it a CD Walkman Was a thing Everyone has that one round thing By the pocket And they will wear a headset They're like, oh I'm from the outer space Look at me, so cool And futuristic Well, first of all Not only do they remember that But I remember the 1983 Walkman That he's referring to So I go way, way back I'm practically as old as these guys Who wrote on these cave walls 37 ,000 years ago Oh, here's one that Brian has.

16:46Early dimensional warning. Thinking thinning of this brain region may signal risk up to 10 years before symptoms. I better get my brain checked out. Here's a map of Apple's product revenue from 2007. So basically it shows the iPhone in 2007 was almost nothing. And the big thing was the iMac. And then gradually the iPhone became the biggest, is to the iPhone alone is 200 billion in revenues now. All right. So that's my favorite Twitter account. I have lots of favorite Twitter accounts, but I'm going to stick with Brian for now. And let's see, favorite books. Well, I've talked a lot about the collection of short stories, Jesus Son by Dennis Johnson, best collection of short stories ever.

17:30But I have to say, I really, and by the way, I'm just, I'm not mentioning any books by ex-podcast guests on purpose. They're all great and I loved all of them. But this guy I never got as a podcast guest and he recently died. Mahali, and I can never say his name, Sishan Mahili something. He's the author of the book Flow and he came up with the whole concept of flow, which is when you're really passionate about something and you love working on something. So you work on it in this state of flow and you barely can remember the time it happens so fast. But he also wrote, most people don't know, he wrote a book called Flow that a lot of people know about, but he also wrote a book called Creativity, The Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

18:12And I have to say, this is the best book on creativity I've ever read. And I'm trying to think why I bookmarked this one page months ago when I read this. I don't know what I was specifically bookmarking, but he says, to overcome the pain of existence, one must be honest with oneself, acknowledging one's faults and weaknesses. like a surgeon one must be willing to cut deeply into the festering sores of the psyche otherwise too much energy is absorbed in denial or in ruminating over disappointments and so the point there is and i see this in a lot of good creators is that really don't be afraid to tell the story of your worst most vulnerable moments because that's truly a universal vein that you into and everyone appreciates that kind of creativity when you're really willing to to spill your blood on on the page or the canvas or whatever and I find that this book which is like 300 or so pages is just filled with incredible advice about creativity and and if you want to be an artist or an actor or a writer or a clown or a magician by the way I love books about clowns too most people don't realize clowns are more than just what you see in the circus there's a whole science and philosophy about clowns.

19:31I wanted to be a clown when I was growing up. Really? Because of the circus? Because it just makes people laugh. One time I did a clown routine as kind of a part of my standup act, but nobody liked it. You know how people play the air guitar? Well, I played the air piano. So I put on the song Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis, and it actually has some weird piano motion in it. Like it's interesting to watch, but I play, I played the air piano and the only one in the audience who laughed was Kamal Ravikant, who's been on this podcast many times. And he, you know, you know why it fell because you're not drunk enough.

20:14No, if I was drunk, I would not have been able to do it because it was actually pretty complicated to do. Like I practice it for about a month before I performed it because there's like, oh, I don't know how to describe it. there's a lot of flourish on the piano in the song. So I was very much exact. And you had to know the exact second to do different things with your hand. So it was hard to do that bit. So I practiced for a month to do a two-minute bit. But everyone in the audience was just staring at me at the end, like, what the hell did you just do? But Kamal was cracking up. So all credit to Kamal on that one.

20:49Yeah, we love Kamal.

20:54now jay what's your favorite kung fu movie because i've recently got into kung fu movies oh my god i have so much to talk about because kung fu movie was like just calm down a little bit just give me your favorite all right i'm not so i'm gonna start from like very very early days right uh this is like 1970 some 1978 one of my favorite was drunken master starring jackie chen That was 1978? Yep, 1978 Okay, I was looking last night for a Jet Li movie What Jet Li movie should I watch? Oh yeah, the Once Upon China, I think it's called Once Upon a Time in China? Yep, Once Upon a Time in China Got it Because the main guy that he played The character is like a famous Chinese Kung Fu master in China Growing up practicing martial arts So like Wong Fei Hong, it's like one of the biggest like sort of like a Kung Fu master figure in Chinese martial arts.

21:51All right. I'll watch that. I'll watch that tonight. So my favorite, and I didn't want to like this one. I've seen it advertised forever. I've seen T-Biel talking about it forever. I didn't think I would like it. It looked like just some dumb Kung Fu movie. but I watched the first one and then the next day I watched the next three movies it was so great and I've been watching clips of it ever since and it's called Ip Man it's spelled I-P space man M-A-N Ip Man and and then there's Ip Man 1 2 3 and then Ip Man 4 the finale and they are all great each one is better than the one before it and it stars this guy Donnie Yen and he plays this role so it's based on the story of the real Ip Man who was the teacher of Bruce Lee in the martial art called Wing Chun and Wing Chun if you don't know is the one martial art do you know this Wing Chun is the one martial art that is not allowed in in MMA or ultimate fighting or anything like that because because Wing Chun will kill you like the purpose of Wing Chun it was started I didn't know this.

22:59It was started by women because they're smaller than often their male attackers. And so they can't really fight them like a boxer. They have to basically know the exact points how to kill people. And that's how Wing Chun developed was to protect women. But this guy, Ip Man, was a grandmaster of Wing Chun. And it goes back to all the way to the 1930s, China, and then when and it's occupied by Japan, but then the Ip Man finale is all the way in San Francisco when Ip Man goes to visit Bruce Lee. And Donnie Yen, the actor who plays him, plays with such nobility and integrity. You really admire this guy, his discipline, his personality, his honesty, the way people look up to him, the way he respects and treats other people.

23:49what did you like about it man well just just the choreography of the fight because that's what all uh i'm you know all i'm about right i can't really relate to china and japan you know all the war and stuff but just donnie and just the fight and choreography is just so beautiful you don't get it anymore in all the western movie anymore that's why the modern kung fu movie like the western one looks kind of like still like a lot of cuts you know camera flying everywhere you can't really see anything clearly. But with like Yip Man, like the culligraph of the Kung Fu and the martial arts, you can see everything clearly.

24:26And clearly everyone in the movie knows some sort of martial arts. Right, exactly. That's the whole point is that in some martial arts movies, you could tell the main actor has no clue what's happening. And that's why there's a lot of cuts and all that stuff. But like Donnie Yen, he's like a master of many different martial arts. And you could tell, like when I read a little bit more about Wing Chun and what it is, You could tell he is very deeply into Wing Chun the way he, you know, kind of he attacks the knees. He attacks the eyes. He does all these Wing Chun moves. And someone explained to me, like, why he holds his hands the way he does in Wing Chun and how he uses the elbow to defend.

25:03Like, the elbow apparently is the most, you know, strongest part of your body pretty much. And it's just fascinating stuff. Great stories based on a true guy. I don't know if the stories are based on true stories, but it's based on a true guy. and Donnie Yen, if people don't know, he was in Rogue One. He was like the blind guy who had the force in Rogue One. But you can tell he's a good actor because I haven't seen another Donnie Yen movie that is like the role he played in Ip Man. Like Ip Man was not his personality. He has a different personality. Like Ip Man's very serious too. He was in John Wick 4.

25:37Oh, I don't like the John Wick movies and I know people disagree with me that. I watched the first one and I thought it was a little boring. but Donnie Yen was also in Iron Monkey which was previously I didn't know he was in Iron Monkey and that was in previously my favorite Kung Fu movie that was a long time ago isn't it? 1993 yeah yeah but Quentin Tarantino brought it to the US it man check out those movies thank me later okay favorite my favorite AI website oh I did that one oh but you know what since I said it I'm gonna give you another one you'll love this other one go to pixelate oh wait not found i must have spelled it wrong hold on i'm just gonna google pixelate and have it take me yeah uh no it didn't take oh because i use bing uh okay favorite browser not bing yeah anything but bing why is bing my default browser i have google chrome okay PIXITE.AI P-I-X-I-T-E dot AI You can log in for free and I typed in make a t-shirt about James Altucher playing chess and it made this great t-shirt mostly about chess not so much about me and then it lets you sell them right away so I think it's a genius idea so check it out it's my second favorite AI website of the day first was Suno S-U-N-O and check out P-I-X-I-T-E no sorry P-I-X-I-T-E dot A-I make a t-shirt let us know on Twitter and we'll all buy your t-shirt so tag me or refer to me at J Altucher so I can find it and I will buy your t-shirt even if there's 20 ,000 t-shirts that are made so that's pretty much my favorite things I was going to say about my favorite politician ever but I'll save that for next time we'll do more if you like hearing about my favorite things and you like some of these recommendations, just tweet at me that you told me you like this.

27:39Subscribe to this podcast and I will definitely do this again. I have so much more that I love sharing. You know what? You might as well talk about the things that you love and the things that you're fascinated about. So these things fascinate me. I'm impressed with all the creativity of every site, person, book, comedian, whatever that I mentioned. And I hope you'll be as excited as I am as well. Yeah, and you know, if you have any recommendations, Twitter us, right? So we can check them out. Oh yeah. Tweet us your favorite AI websites, your favorite Instagram accounts, your favorite Twitter accounts, and whatever you want.

28:13Your favorite whatever. Favorite sitcoms. Okay. Favorite sitcom right now for me. Other than Curb Your Enthusiasm, which is just beyond, but Dave and Atlanta. Atlanta, you know how to spell Dave. You know how to spell. Trust me. Watch the two seasons of Dave. It's really super funny. So, Jay, what's your favorite sitcom? Tell me your favorite sitcom. I got to say Seinfeld, but that's not up there anymore. Did you just sin? I know. You just committed sin? Okay. Is Big Bang Theory considered a sitcom? Well, no, Silicon Valley. Okay, I'll go along with Silicon Valley. It's not my absolute favorite, but it's very funny.

28:55The problem with Big Bang Theory is that it's a broadcast show. So it really has a lot of censors and ads and all that kind of stuff. But who recently talked about the Big Bang Theory? We had - Mike Massimino. Yeah, Mike Massimino. Yeah. He wrote about how the Big Bang Theory started. And I forgot why he wrote about that, but it was very interesting. Read his book, Moonshots. Yep. Yeah, he was in there. Oh, yeah. He was on the show a couple of times. That's right. Yep. Yeah, I remember. It was so young. He was so young then. All right, Jay. Thanks so much. And remember, everybody else, send me recommendations at Jay Altucher on Twitter or send me the link to your t-shirt and I'll buy it.

29:32Thanks a lot. Thanks, Jay. Check it. It's the James. I took the show. Listen up now. The realest podcast. And they bang. No joke, no doubt. He got the guest in now. And she spitting fire. Dropping gins. Making moves. Taking it hot. This is the Outreach of Chronicles. Coming at you real swift. Getting deep into the minds of the ones who uplift. From entrepreneurs to comics. He got the lobby is cool. Listen up. Tune in. Cause he bringing it through.