The Power of Obsession

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 people of the quality of people. 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. And hiring doesn't have to be complicated. Realistically, when you have a business to run, you don't want to spend hours on hiring.

0:49You 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.

1:26Jay tricked me. So as you know, Jay Yao is the producer of this podcast. And we were just talking casually. And he asked me about all the different things. I've been obsessed with a lot of different things ever since I was a little kid. And kind of this power of obsession has driven my entire life for better or for worse. Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. and we're just casually talking about it. And then I realized he's recording. And so we made an episode about the power of obsession. And you kind of hear in the beginning, I didn't really want to do an episode on it, but then I realized, oh, this has been an interesting thing for me.

2:09And this aspect, this power of obsession is overall very positively affected my life. So here we go, the power of obsession.

2:22This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show.

2:38You know what's really interesting is that when you go on that guy's, David Shen's show, that I never really thought about, is that the power of obsessions, right? The power of obsessions, because you were so obsessed with so many different things, one at a time, because you have all this interesting adventure that kick you into a quest. Yeah, like for instance, I mentioned how when I was six years old, I was obsessed with Greek mythology. I've never read a book on Greek mythology since I was six years old, but I remember everything because obsession helps the memory too. Yeah, wait. So I'm just curious.

3:13Six years old. Yeah. When do you start reading? I don't know, when I was three or four. As far as you can remember. Oh my God. And then you already start reading like Greek mythology and stuff like that. Yeah. I had to get a special library card to take books out of the adult section. How? Like, okay. I'm just curious. I'm just totally curious, right? Like, I don't know if this is going to make it into the podcast or whatever, but I'm just curious. How does six years old, you look at something and you're like, I'm going to obsess with this Greek mythology. Like, do you remember the start of it?

3:46Well, I didn't decide to be obsessed. i just i don't know it seemed like comic books but better because these were stories of uh that had lasted for hundreds or even thousands of years about these gods so it was almost like they were real they you know i didn't know i was six years old i didn't really understand what religion was at a deeper level you know how you know religion is designed to basically control the population in various ways. And, you know, I'm not, I'm not saying, I'm not saying faith is bad. Like faith could be a good thing about religion and religion can be very powerful in a positive way.

4:27But often in many historical periods, religion was used to control the masses. I'm essentially quoting Karl Marx here, but the stories are beautiful. Like it's like Joseph Campbell's, you know, the hero's journey like every one of these mythologies all have a creation story they have like a god that rules all the other gods sometimes they get angry sometimes they fall in love sometimes they um and they all have like superpowers because they're better than mortals and there's and there's amazing stories that are supposed to um you know teach people truths of life. And that's kind of how, you know, information would get transmitted from one generation to the next.

5:14Like, oh, why does the sun go down at night and come up in the morning? Well, there's a God named Apollo who rides a chariot, who, you know, brings the sun around the world every single day. So, and so that's how this, that was like science then. And so that's how this science gets passed down from one generation to the next. And, you know, their battles, for instance, again, in Greek mythology, Aphrodite, who was supposedly the most beautiful goddess, you know, Zeus, the king of the gods, wanted her to be married. So he wanted to award Hephaestus. So Hephaestus was a god who basically made all the weapons of the other gods.

6:01So he was like a, he was like the god of blacksmiths and weaponry. But he was very ugly. He was hideous. And Zeus wanted to award or reward Hephaestus for all the good he had done all the other gods were making all their weapons. Like he made Zeus's lightning bolts, for instance. And so he married Aphrodite to Hephaestus. But meanwhile, Aphrodite was attracted to Ares, the god of war. and Hephaestus found out and Hephaestus was a big guy and Ares, the god of war, was ironically a coward. And so just the little lesson there is that often the most warmongering people are cowardly at heart. So it's kind of a moral lesson there.

6:51But anyway, Aphrodite and Ares started having this affair. Hephaestus found out, beat the living crap out of Ares. Ares complained to Zeus and Zeus had to punish Hephaestus. So he threw Hephaestus down to earth for a year and he had to live like a human for a year. And imagine then that leads to many stories. Like imagine you could write a novel now. What happened to Hephaestus the year he was a normal human? So like there's all sorts of stories and that's why you have all these stories even now written. And like all these young adult novels are about the Greek gods, like the children of the Greek gods that are on earth right now.

7:36And, you know, what's that called? The Percy? Percy Jackson. Yeah, Percy Jackson. He's like some child of Poseidon, the god of the ocean or something like that. Right. So essentially he's a titan, right? That's what they call the titans or demigod. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so the Titans, and again, all of this is from books I read when I was six years old. I haven't read a single book about Greek mythology since I was six years old, but I was obsessed. So I read everything I could find. So the Titans are kind of like the aunts, uncles, and parents of the gods that ended up being the real Greek gods. so there was a god Cronus that the head titan the oldest titan was named Cronus and he was the ruler of all the gods and there was a prophecy told to him that one of his children was gonna kill him and become the king of the gods so every time his wife had a child he ate the baby and and one time the mother i forgot what her name was his wife or whatever she got sick of you're eating all my babies so she took when when she was giving birth this one time the last time she uh quickly the the midwife she she gave the baby to the midwife the midwife you know hid the baby this was the baby called zeus and instead she made like a fake baby like out of rock and cronus ate that baby instead of zeus so zeus grows up and the mom's like hey get your brothers and sisters back and so zeus kills cronus his father and uh you know gets his brothers their brothers and sisters are still alive they're just in cronus's stomach so he gets uh all his brothers and sisters back and then zeus becomes the king of the gods uh and all his brothers and sisters like poseidon and hephaestas i didn't know i didn't know he has a sister oh yeah uh zeus yeah i think demeter is his sister i mean i think he married his sister uh forgot what her name is see i don't i don't that's going on yeah exactly that's going on and and then he had children too so like hermes is his child uh athena so athena was a child she was born from his brain so that's why she's like the wisest of the gods yeah she's supposed to be the goddess of wisdom right or something like that and apollo and artemis are his children um and they're like twins so artemis is the moon apollo's uh the sun it's the sun and artemis is sort of the first example of lesbians in uh uh kind of mythological history uh and she was also the goddess of the hunt and no i i didn't know that so a lot of these gods also are similar in other countries so like you know the equivalent of zeus in norway is sort of like a combination between odin and thor and the equivalent of herme hermes in norse mythology would be loki and so there's kind of like little comparisons and and uh throughout all these uh different religions but i was obsessed so i would read all about greek mythology egyptian mythology norse mythology hindu mythology so i I would, and then again, this is all when I was six, I would trade my Superman comic books with my friends who were from India who had like these comic books called Amar Chitra Kata.

11:32And so it would be like all the Hindu gods. So the Mahabharata would be in there, the Bhavagad Gita, but just in comic book form. And so I would read about all the Hindu gods in these very popular comic books in India. Six years old, that's crazy. Also, I don't mean to break the flow, but I have one conspiracy theory about all this mythology. Tell me. I think Greek mythology, essentially it's alien. Oh yeah, why do you think? If you think about it, right? So you're saying Greek mythology and probably all these mythologies are Asian. So why do you think that? Oh, no, Asian. Not Asian, alien. Alien.

12:10Oh, because of the idea that the aliens possibly cloned an alien and left a human here on earth, but they're like the gods. Right. They're what we think of as the gods. Like who built the pyramids? Well, there were a bunch of gods around. You know, it's an interesting fact that we're closer in time to Cleopatra than Cleopatra is to the making of the pyramids. So the pyramids are so far back. We just really have no idea how they were made, who made them. I mean, what do we discover that like each block in the pyramids is two tons and comes from 100 miles away from where the pyramids are? How do they carry them there?

12:49Yeah. And also the Sphinx, right? I don't know if you heard about this. The Sphinx, if you look at it, the human's head, it's not proportionate. So what happened is maybe before it was actually way larger and then they cut it down and make it into a human head. But yeah. Yeah, and also, if you think about the Greek mythology and stuff like that, you have a blacksmith that make Zeus weapon, like a thunder, weapon, thunder, like magic, sort of sci-fi if you think about it. Yeah, well, mythology was kind of like the science fiction of those times. And by the way, some of these religions still exist, like Hinduism still exists.

13:35And you could argue the Bible is a form of mythology. uh you know for instance why does christianity have angels and saints well it's because roman mythology had all these gods and they wanted to convince the roman empire to not persecute christians so they kind of said oh we're similar it's to roman gods it's just like you know here's the angel michael and the angel gabriel and they have different powers and there was a war between the good gods and the bad gods you know just like in roman mythology and uh you know it's it's all it's all related yeah it's all it's all related because you know and and really probably the source of a lot of religions like the reason why why is it why is hinduism there's a god of the sun there's a uh god of wisdom there's a god of this a god and they're all kind of represented greek mythology a lot of theory is that alexander the great when he was invading all these different area countries all the way down to india he kind of brought greek mythology with him so you know they're in india kind of the regular gods sort of were more northern india where alexander the great was conquering and more southern india at least at that time this is like in 400 bc southern india was more like brahma shiva vishnu it's almost like two different mythologies but they they work together brahma vishnu shiva were were much more powerful than like the regular god so indra who is the king of the gods in hinduism is more like zeus and brahma vishnu shiva are more like this trinity of gods that are are much more powerful right that's like wasn't isn't shiva is like the god of destruction or something like that yeah so so brahma basically created the universe so brahma is almost like this uh equivalent to god in some sense really god is like all three combined but vishnu preserves the universe he keeps it going and uh shiva is going to destroy the universe eventually and shiva is all about change and so then it gets very deep like shiva is about change and creativity and and so on and vishnu is about uh is very very wise and and Vishnu would, much like the story of Jesus, Vishnu would go in human form occasionally.

16:04These were called avatars. So like Krishna is an example of an avatar of Vishnu. And like when the world needs some big thing to happen to change it, Vishnu turns into a human and goes down to earth. Gotcha. So it's a lot more philosophical that way. Yeah, but just like Christianity, And Greek mythology is also very philosophical. Like the story of Prometheus. So the story of Prometheus is, so Prometheus was, he could see the future. He was a titan and he could see the future. And he told his brother, listen, so his brother's name was Epimetheus. And again, I'm just remembering this from when I was six years old.

16:50Six years old. But Epimetheus had a special power. He could see the past. He knows everything about the past, but Prometheus had a better power, which he knows everything about the future. So Prometheus said to Epimetheus, listen, this Titan thing seems like a great deal right now, but it's not gonna work out for the Titans. So just let's hide for a little bit. So when Zeus killed all the Titans, Prometheus and Epimetheus kind of took off and did their own thing. But Prometheus eventually, you know he was very sympathetic to humans he liked humans he thought humans would eventually rule the earth you know instead of just being like another animal and so he wanted to um he wanted to give them a special present and so he gave them fire he taught them how to use fire and when zeus and he also taught them what it was like to eat food from that the gods would eat so So the humans wanted to show their new special talents to the gods.

17:54And so they cooked a meal using, you know, using fire and using food from Mount Olympus where the guys live. They cooked a meal for Zeus and the other main gods. And Zeus was like, what the hell? Where did you learn about this fire stuff? We didn't teach you this. And they were like, well, Prometheus taught us. So Zeus punished Prometheus. He tied Prometheus to a mountain, and all day long, a vulture comes to Prometheus and eats his heart out. And then at night, the heart, because Prometheus is immortal, at night, the heart regrows. And then in the morning, the vulture comes again and eats his heart out.

18:36And that's for the rest of Prometheus' days. So basically, the gods want to oppress humans. and the parmesis tried to but there's a deeper point too which is that you know there's that saying don't play with fire like god you know it's too powerful don't forget humans are the first species there's like a millions of species on earth right but humans are the first and only species that can with a single stick can destroy an entire forest so they they made technology fire is like the first scalable technology in that, you know, if an elephant can't burn down the whole forest, like an elephant has to kind of like knock down one tree at a time and kill one animal at a time.

19:26They just have to go find something to stomp on and they stomp on it and then it's gone. It's not scalable. But humans made the first scalable tool, which is basically a stick of fire. because with that you could burn down a whole forest and kill everything in it with just like a single stick of fire. So it was very dangerous. And so you have to be very careful how you use fire, both symbolically, you know, what fire, you know, dangerous things and fire itself. So it was really kind of like a moral lesson that, you know, Zeus is basically saying don't try to get too powerful, which is why like even, you know, even Oppenheimer, when he made the nuclear bomb, which is much more scalable than fire.

20:10What was that expression he said? It's about the chain reactions, right? No, now I become death, the destroyer of worlds. That's what he said the first time they exploded an atomic bomb as an experiment to see if it would work. He said, now I am become death, this destroyer of worlds. And I believe he's quoting Krishna from the Bhavagad Gita. And Krishna, of course, is Vishnu. so again these there's all sorts of like deeper moral lessons but anyway that was you're talking about the power of obsession yeah what obsession does is is it makes you over and over and over again think about the same thing and so when we're growing basically most of this happens from the ages of six to like 25 which is why they theorize maybe memory starts to decline after you know starting from your early to mid thirties.

21:05What did I say? Memory starts to decline. And it's because when you think about something over and over again, okay, you have these connections between neurons. I think they're, what are they called? Synapses or whatever. But this other substance called myelin forms around the connections that you form between the neurons. So it turns like a road into a super highway so that information can go back and forth much faster. And so the things that you really remember well, when you obsess on something, you build more and more myelin around these synapses. And so that's why obsession greatly, greatly increases your memory.

21:50Now, when you get older, people used to think you had no more myelin left to build these strong connections after the age of 25. That's not true anymore. that neuroplasticity, the ability to kind of grow your brain still continues. It's just not as powerful. So when you're obsessed with something now, it's harder to form memories around it. But when you're a kid and you don't have a lot of memories yet, you have all this myelin that kind of, that's why you're, you know, what you're exposed to when you're young is very important. So I'll tell you, like when I was six, I was obsessed with mythology and also obsessed with the new testament which as a jewish person didn't make me the parents didn't want their kids to hang out with me because i was talking about jesus all the time to my jewish friends so i literally like parents would call my mom and say get your dirty son away from my kid and you know you know everybody dislikes everyone else that's what we that's what you realize But isn't New Testament is sort of mythology as well, right?

23:00So it's still fall under the whole mythology, like Greek mythology in type of the category, right? Yeah, because if you think about it, yes, one thing about Judeo-Christian Islam religions is there's only one God, right? It's supposedly a monotheistic religion. But if you look at the personality of God between the Old Testament and the New Testament, It's very different. I mean, God in the Old Testament punishes people and gets angry at people, right? So Moses allowed for idols to be created when, he didn't allow this, but it happened. He didn't manage his team well. And when he was off getting the 10 commandments, they built, what was it?

23:52The golden calf or something? golden plate. From what I know from Monty Python, it was supposed to be 15 commandments, right? And then he dropped one plate and became 10 commandments. Yeah, right. So yeah, he comes down from Mount Sinai and all the Hebrews had created this golden calf to worship. And so Moses did drop the first version of the 10 commandments. He had to go back up the mountain and get a second version. But as his punishment, God was really pissed off and God said, you know, you're never going to, you're going to get to Israel. You'll see it, but you're never going to enter it. And, uh, uh, that was his, his punishment.

24:34And God also, you know, was a little, uh, upset at, at humans during the time of Noah. So he said to Noah, listen, I'm going to keep you and your family alive and all the animals, but the rest of these humans can go to hell for all I care. So, and that's when he flooded the world and there was Noah's Ark. By the way, there's similar floods in other religions like Hinduism and Greek mythology and so on. Also, didn't he kill someone's son? Was it Aaron or Isaac's son? Yeah, so Abraham had a nephew, Lot. He didn't kill Lot, but he killed Lot's wife because they were hanging out in Sodom and Gomorrah.

25:19He told Abraham, look, get them out of there because I'm going to burn those places to the ground. They're so disgusting. I'm going to burn them down. And Lot's wife, and God said specifically, when you're leaving Sodom and Gomorrah, do not look back. And Lot's wife was curious what was happening. And maybe she missed a little bit of that Sodom and Gomorrah partying that she was doing, she looks back and she instantly turned into a pillar of salt and died. And so, um, so, so, so in the old Testament, not always, but some of it, he was maybe a little bit of an angrier God. Uh, and in the new Testament, I, I, Jesus has more of a message of love and God sort of changes.

26:04So it's, there's not, God doesn't have like one personality, like, you know, Adam and Eve, the story of Adam and Eve. Yes, God created these great things and gave them great things in the Garden of Eden, but when they broke the rules, he punished them. When Cain and Abel, when Cain killed Abel, he punished Cain. Now, I'm not saying he doesn't punish in the New Testament. Christianity believes in the notion of sin, but God has different personalities in the Bible, depending on where you're reading. And so anyway, but it's just like how all these gods around that time, you know, the Old Testament is based on stories that happened in 2000 BC, 1500 BC, and like, you know, from 1000 BC to like 400 BC.

26:55There's like these different sections. And so it's written over a long period of time, and there are different writers for different sections. We don't know for sure, but that's the likely theory. And so God's personality changes throughout. And it's interesting studying these things almost from a literary perspective. Whether you believe in religion or not, it doesn't matter. Even if you believe in it, it's interesting to study the different parts of the Bible from a literary point of view, like how people wrote the way they wrote back then and how they told stories and so on. But anyway.

27:42Look, 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.

28:25And 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 so the power of we're talking about the power of obsessions right so you remember all this because of your obsessions with the mythology and the Old Testament New Testament I'm just talking about one part of your obsessions right because you have a tons of other obsessions yeah that was just one year like chat and all that stuff if you name me any year between the age of 6 and the age of 55 I could tell you my obsession and sometimes they lasted a year sometimes they lasted in more than one year, it just depends.

29:29All right, age 12. Age 12, I was obsessed, obsessed with politics. So here's, and I didn't know the issues. Like you're only 12 years old. I don't know, so I was 12 in 1980. So in the 1980, it was Jimmy Carter who was the president at that time versus Ronald Reagan. And of course, Ronald Reagan won and Jimmy Carter was a one-term president. and I didn't know anything about the issues. I didn't know what Reagan stood for. I didn't know what Jimmy Carter stood for. I didn't care. I was just interested in the game-like aspects of politics. Like what is an election? What do people have to do to win an election?

30:12What are all these personalities? Like, you know, it was just fascinating to me. Oh, John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated. Like all these conspiracies. But when I say I was obsessed, like i got the list of so i i called up the federal elections commission and they i i got the list it was a printout of all the people who are running for president and that's when i realized there's more than just the people you see in debates running for president there are hundreds of people running for president like if you go to ballotpedia.com right now you can see all the people who are running for president for 20 24 including my name on there because it only takes a few minutes to start running.

30:54Um, but so then what I would do is I would call, I would, I would skip school. Like I would basically, um, I would leave for the school. Okay. And then I would go into my backyard and hide like basically next to the chimney or whatever. And I would wait until I heard the garage door open twice. So both my parents went off to work and then I'd go back into the house and i would spend the whole day calling up presidential candidates and interviewing them and if you actually pick up huh do they actually pick up well i would call their office and i would say oh i'm i'm writing for the this local newspaper can i interview you and i will and this local newspaper did pay me at one point to publish the interviews if you search south brunswick central post and james althitcher you'll see me as a 12 year old and all my interviews so i interviewed all these presidential candidates i interviewed uh the minority leader of the house who later became the speaker of the house uh i interviewed oh i interviewed the chief usher of the white house he's like the chief butler of the white house name was rex scouton and on my birthday, Rex Scalton, who later became the official historian of the White House, Rex Scalton invited me and my dad on my birthday to come have like a private tour of the White House that he gave us.

32:23And so we went like to all the private areas of the White House on this tour. And I went to the Democratic National Convention that year and hung out on the convention floor. It was in New York City, so it was easy for me to get to. and I flew to Mississippi because Jimmy Carter, even though he was president, he had one, well, he had two people who were trying to fight him in the primaries. Joe Biden has nobody fighting him in the primaries really because RFK Jr. became an independent. But Teddy Kennedy was fighting Jimmy Carter in the primaries. And also this one unknown guy, Clifford Finch, who was the governor of Mississippi, was up against Jimmy Carter.

33:04And of course he lost disastrously. but I flew to Mississippi uh Clifford Finch's campaign paid for it and I stayed with his campaign manager I flew to Mississippi for a week to interview him I was 12 years old and he made me an honorary colonel of Mississippi and they all got a kick out of this 12 year old like being obsessed with I was giving him advice on how he should campaign and how he should make speeches and everything and I was trying to like come up with speech ideas for him and uh did they actually take some of the idea or they're just like oh this is good and then they're just like yeah i think they just said oh this is good uh and you know he he was he was nice for for doing that i think maybe he thought my dad was rich or something which my dad most certainly was not and i think they thought they were just going to raise money from my dad if they treated me nice and so right but uh uh you know all you know it was it was i had a lot of adventures put it that way like you you always want to have obsessions that lead to adventures and so when i was 12 i was a little more mobile than when i was six not that much more but a little more and but i was just obsessed with politics it's what i would do all day long like i would think about it in school or I would skip school.

34:24And I was constantly calling up, like I interviewed Senator Bill Bradley. I interviewed tons of senators, congressmen, mayors, all sorts of politicians. And I would tell my parents I wasn't doing any of this stuff. And then they get the phone bill. And people who are old enough will remember, phone bills were, it was really expensive to call outside of your town. Like if you made a long distance call, which was anywhere like could be just a few miles away, you start getting charged. and just think inflation's up about five times since then. So like a dollar then is like$5 now. So my parents would get these phone bills of$600 a month.

35:04So that's like$3 ,000 a month in today's dollars. But like salaries were like, I don't know, my parents made like$40 ,000, you know, they've made like nothing. And I was costing$3 ,000 a month just on my phone bills. so they would just be screaming me all the time and i said i promise i'll stop i promise i'll stop and i was just not able to stop that's crazy yeah so and again like anything i know about politics and presidential history most of it comes from that year like i read every biography of every president i read about all the big elections you know that were infamous like 1876 or 1824 with John Quincy Adams or, of course, George Washington and John Adams and Aaron Burr.