Why College Sucks (& Better Alternatives), How To Win At Any Game, What You Need To Say No To, & Much More With James Altucher.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, I had just realized I was basically dead broke. I was losing my home. My house was for sale. I had $143 left, and now I had all over my head. You know, when you lose all your money, you find out who your friends are. And I realized I actually had no friends. I had zero friends and zero family. If you own and build hotels as quickly as possible on The Orange properties, St. James, Tennessee and New York, you'll win. So.

And I'll tell you health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield.

Welcome to the show. Oh, my goodness. Hello, this is Ben Greenfield. I am back. I just got back from a week of hunting in. Where was I? I was in New Mexico. It was all just a rush. I hunted for five days, hard and in burning heat for the first three days and then bitter cold for the last two days. And it was a great hunt. I learned a ton about elk hunting, elk tracking, elk calling, and on the final day, just called in a. A monster bull elk, which I planned to fill my freezer with after dry aging in my for a while. By the way, I'm sure I've already lost all of my vegan listeners. Don't worry, vegan listeners, you don't have to eat meat to listen to this show. And yeah, then I was going to get in the freezer, give a whole bunch to my local church, and feed some people in the local community. And I was super excited. So called in this big bowl. And he stopped in kind of an open spot about 40 yards out from me, standing completely broadside. And he stood there forever as I began to draw back, didn't even glance my direction. I was wearing this thing called a hex suit, which apparently blocks the electromagnetic field of the human body, which was possibly the reason that he just stood there. I don't know. It's called hexuit. H E C s kind of a cool idea anyways, though. So I got about halfway through my draw and my bow stopped. A bow I've shot a hundred, more than a hundred times, hundreds of times in the past few months. Wouldn't draw back. And so I looked down and the string was. Was lodged and stuck outside of the cam on my bow. And then when I slowly let the arrow back down, it twisted in even farther and frayed. And so I laid down on my belly and attempted to fix my bow while the bowl wandered around the left side of the tree that I was at. And these, these things are like White tailed deer on steroids. I'm, I'm shocked it didn't run off. Stopped 30 yards to my left. Again, broadside shot I could take in my sleep. And I had no weapon. And I'm laying there trying to fix my bow, frantically thinking, God, God, please, please help me fix my bow. I've been working my ass off for the past five days to track and hunt and harvest this animal. And long story short is the string completely broke. I had no weapon. I thought about perhaps just taking a photograph, but by the time I finished fumbling around for my phone, he wandered off and took off over the mountain. It about a 360 for those of you who know how to score elk. So a pretty, pretty big bowl. And that was going to be my big early season archery elk hunt. So I am, I'm very, very heartbroken and have a huge fire in my belly now to go out after another elk at some point in my life because it was just an amazing hunt. So I digress. I'm probably boring all of you. If there are any hunters out there or outdoorsmen who know their elk game, feel free to me because I've got some things I need to learn and I got to get this bow repaired and then I'll be back in action. Anyways, though, so a couple of things before we jump into today's podcast, which is a kind of fascinating one with my friend James Altucher. We had a ton of fun on this. I don't know if you know who James is, but super cool, quirky, fun entrepreneur. And we just jammed hardcore for over an hour and you're just gonna love this, this episode. I think we finally connected. I'm stoked and this discussion today can go in any, any direction really. But of course, as you know, I have no agenda.

I just like, like hanging out and chatting.

Word. Me too. Me too. It's gonna be a ton of fun. And I'm already recording, so we're just gonna jump right in and have fun with this. Okay? All right, well, here we go. All right, folks, I've never interviewed this gentleman that you are about to hear on today's show. However, he is a fascinating guy. He's published 20 books. I'll link to all his books in the show notes, but two that I really like. One's called choose yourself and one's called Reinvent Yourself. He is a frequent contributor all over the place. Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, the Huffington Post, his own blog and his own podcasts, which are really amazing. He gets a ton of interesting guests, and he's a fantastic interviewer. He's a hedge fund manager. He's an author, he's a podcaster. He's an entrepreneur. He's made millions of dollars multiple times, lost millions of dollars multiple times, and is therefore a wealth of knowledge. And he is just an intriguing gentleman. His name is James L. Teucher. Everything we talk about on today's show you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com LTucher and if you don't know how to spell his name, then go Google that, because you'll probably figure it out pretty quickly. And that all being said, I think that's enough of an intro. James, what do you think?

Ben, that was great. That was maybe the most comprehensive intro I've ever had of me. So thank you very much.

I practice in front of the mirror a lot.

Well, that. That's good for you. Like, I don't like looking at myself in the mirror so much, so, you know, I can't really practice in front of a mirror.

Somebody's got to be narcissistic. Somebody's got to do it. I'm going to take it. So you know what? You know what? There's something that I want to jump right into, because I had my kids start doing this, and they came up with all sorts of crazy ideas, and I got this harebrained idea from you. I told them that what they should do for a week and then they shifted to just starting to do it on Saturday mornings during breakfast was to write down 10 new ideas each day. And there's a. There's a lot of that goes into that idea of writing down 10 new ideas a day. But it's also so great that you.

Got your kids to do that, and they were. They were into it.

Oh, anything that involves writing or illustrating, they're all over it. And they're very creative, so they come up with all sorts of crazy ideas. Their last one was a magical world comprised of fruits that do crazy things like papayas when you break them open. Instead of seeds are a whole bunch of magical spiders that come crawling out and scramble all over the place. And coffee trees that grow coffee beans that are already covered in chocolate for you.

Oh, my God. That's a great idea.

Cherry trees that grow in the winter and make you like, frozen cherries, and grapevines that grow in the winter and make you frozen grapes and all sorts of crazy things that they're now putting into a book about magical fruits.

That's a great idea. And it Makes me even think there's, like, business ideas out of that. Like, it's not inconceivable that you can mix, you know, coffee grinds or whatever with chocolate somehow and, you know, use them both in the coffee machine at the same time to make the perfect chocolate coffee.

Oh, yeah, there. There's all, all sorts of directions that they're going with it. I mean, you know, smoothies that you could, you could pre grow on trees. And maybe sometime I'll. I'll have them share all of their ideas with you. But they're, they're working on it. Oh, they've got a few others. Dragon fruit. And the dragon fruit is actually tiny little miniature dragons, like dragon fruits. It's actually shaped like dragons. So when you cut it open, you get that nice pink white fruit with the, with the seeds inside it. They're all shaped like dragons or like coconut water. But. But the coconuts are kind of like red on the outside. And then when you crack them open, the coconut water is like blood red because they've kind of put like beet powder and beet genetics in it. But then the flesh is bright, right? So you get like this whitish red coconut. And then the, the one I like the best. And then I'll, I'll shut up because I want to hear your backstory of how you came up with the 10 ideas. Is, is you. You do an apple tree, but they're very sweet apples, the tree. And the inside of the apple, instead of a core, it's caramel. And you have like this kind of sugary grain outer coating on the apple. So when you eat an apple, it's literally like biting into apple pie.

You know, I feel there's a future in genomics for your kids. Like, yeah, I feel like with, with crispr, you know, one of these gene editing things, you could potentially achieve some of these magical fruits in real life.

Well, that's so funny.

Conceivable.

That's so funny that you bring that up because they're. They're homeschooled. They're actually unschooled. And they wanted to know where they came from. So they did the DNA ancestry test, the salivary DNA ancestry test. And then so anytime they want to learn about something, we block it into their schooling. And they're literally out in the living room right now studying DNA and learning all about Crick and Watson and G, C, A and T and helical sequences. And just last night I told them about CRISPR and actually about some of the F ups in China. That happened during CRISPR and explained to them all of that. And then they didn't quite get the idea that the general idea for DNA was partially inspired by the use of lysergamides by. I believe it was Crick as part of the Crick and Watson crew who.

Oh really? I didn't know that.

Yeah, yeah, no, he was on LSD when he came up with that idea for what DNA would actually look like. Yeah, yeah. So I haven't yet given my kids LSD to work on their fruits book, but they are literally studying DNA right now.

How old are your kids?

They're 12. 12 year old twin boys.

So you know, I don't know if they're quite ready for this book yet, but there's a really good book for layman called Hacking Darwin by Jamie Metzl, M E T Z L about genomics. And he's not a genomicist which is why he was like a science fiction writer who wanted to really write a nonfiction book explaining crispr, genomics, gene editing, all this stuff. And I thought it was an incredibly valuable book for learning more. So I don't know if they're quite ready for that, but it's not technical at all. It's a very good, good read.

As long as they can practice on, on like their dragon lizard or their dog and not me, then I'm cool with that. I'll link to that one in the show. I think that's a pretty new book, isn't it? Hacking Darwin.

Yeah, it's in the past. I feel like everything was like two months ago but you know, because there's like this six month blackout right now, but it's like in the past year.

Do you think people are going to be writing a lot more books and we'll see a lot more books getting published because of the lockdown and a lot more people being stuck at home writing. Because a lot of people I know are writing a lot of books.

Yeah, I think so. I don't necessarily think there's going to be a lot more great books. I think that's a skill that, you know, takes, takes time to learn like any other difficult skill. But I do think you're going to see a lot more books written during this period. In fact, one of the things that I've been doing is coming up with what I call 30 day book challenges. So I'll come up with a broad outline for what I think would be an interesting book that could be written within 30 days. And I describe exactly the step by step process of how to write one of these books in 30 days. And the outline is broad enough that everybody I tell to, Even if it's 100,000 people, everybody will write a completely different book. And all 100,000 books will be what I would say is equally interesting if they use my step by step process. And so I've done about six of these book challenges and people really respond to that. I think people want to write books.

Yeah. And I think it'd be interesting too because I'm interested in how the future of books progresses with this new. There's this new artificial intelligence algorithm. I think it's called like GST or GDT or something like that.

GPT3.

Yeah, yeah, GPT3 that supposedly can, you know, you can plug in a few instructions for what you'd want a website to look like some other websites that you like and it will literally create for you a big beautiful website in a few seconds. That's exactly what you want. And I'd be curious if you were to feed like a script, some characters, your general hero's journey into an artificial intelligence based algorithm like that, if it could begin to generate books that literally are thrilling titles that seem as though they were written by actual humans.

That's a great idea. So here's the idea. I would try. I would feed in like 40, you know, you have to train it. So I would feed in 40 Harlequin Romance novels and say, go and have it spit back a Harlequin romance novel to me and see if that's, if it's good, and then submit it to the editors at Harlequin and see if it's good enough to publish.

But the problem is you'd know when you're reading it if it was written using the GPT3 algorithm. There'd still be that sense in the back of your head that it was written by a computer. And I think you'd have some kind of a bias knowing it didn't come from the mind of an actual real human.

I wonder. Because as these things get better, you won't really have. You won't really have that bias. You know, there's a lot of. There's a lot of interesting things. Like there's a story. So there's this writer, Jersey Kosinski, he wrote the novel which became the movie Being There. And he wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning novel called Steps, which was published I think in like 1967. Won the Pulitzer Prize that year, or the National Book Award a few years later. A guy copied the book word for word. Did not change a single word and submitted it to 20 publishers. Back then there were 20 publishers, there's much fewer now. And he got rejected by all of them. So nobody realized that not only was this book published before, but it was a National Book Award winner. It was like the best book in the country. And they all just uniformly rejected this book from this guy. So it's amazing how little awareness people have. Like, they don't really think like, oh, has this been written before? Or oh, is this an AI engine? It sounds a little bit weird. They just read it and Harlequin published it, so it must be like a decent romance novel and they just move on. And you know, 50 shades of gray, if you read that, that almost seems like it was written by a robot. It's. By the way, I think all credit to El James. She wrote something that, you know, 100 million copies sold, so she's brilliant, but it's not the best writing in the world. You could sort of feel that right away, even when you're reading it and. But nobody cared. They became like the best selling book of all time.

Yeah, it's interesting about that. I mean, even people, some people think that J.K. rowling was really not the person who came up with all the ideas for the Harry Potter novels and that that was an entire kind of team effort and it's just too far fetched for her to have done all that on her own and that it must have been like a team or some kind of computers that were assisting or artificial intelligence. Like if you were to Google J.K. rowling conspiracy theory, like pretty much the claim is that a team of writers collaborated on the series and Rowling was just kind of like an actress.

Oh my gosh. I feel like an entire book or podcast could be done just on the controversies around J.K. rowling. Like there's that, there's the whole recent TERF thing and if you don't know what a TERF is, I'll let people look it up. There's her pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, where she started writing mystery novels and how people uncovered that it was her. So it's like a lot of interesting stories writer. But I will add to what you just said about her, which is that prior to Harry Potter, there was a graphic novel by Neil Gaiman, who's obviously a famous writer of comics, novels, movies and so on. Neil Gaiman wrote a graphic novel called the Books of Magic about a boy magician who didn't realize at first he was a magician. And the boy has like black straight Hair and glasses and kind of looks exactly like Harry Potter. So there is some suspicion that she got, not, maybe not consciously, but at least subconsciously, the idea from a fellow British author who had a popular comic book about two years before Harry Potter came out.

That's crazy. And by the way, that's on my, my list of books to read. I listened based on the recommendation from Tim Ferriss to Neil Gaiman's graveyard on Audible. That's really good. And I actually want to read his new book, American Gods. Have you read that book?

Yeah. American Gods is great. I really like his stuff. American Gods is great. And then I would say maybe American Gods is the best thing. I love books of magic. He has this beautiful, it's like artistically beautiful novel called Signal to Noise about the last days of a man dying of cancer. So it's a little depressing. And then his, his opus, his magnum opus is the Sandman series, which was a series of about 100 or so comic books. It's gathered into six graphic novels. And that was just brilliant as well.

Oh, that one's called the Sandman series.

Yeah.

My kids love graphic novels, so I'm gonna have to look that one up. Maybe I'll buy them the series. That's amazing. They're reading a different series called Wings of Fire right now. It's a graphic novel series. But what I do is I'll give them weird tasks like writing a book report in some massive tome that I'll hand to them. Right now they're doing this huge book report on. It's basically like the life of Christ. And before that they actually did it was what's the controversial speaker who wrote the 12 rules for life? Jordan Peterson. So I'll give them books that a 12 year old wouldn't normally read. But typically after they write the book report, they usually have two weeks from the time I hand them the book to generate a two page book report. I'll gift them with something cool like a book that they actually get super excited to read. And maybe this Sandman set would be a cool one for them.

So I'll love it. I guarantee they'll love it.

Okay, cool. So how did you come up with the idea? Because I know it's kind of related to how you wound up making some money. And a lot of my listeners don't really know your story, but I know this idea of writing down 10 ideas led to you being able to kind of like dig yourself out of a hole, so to speak, and generate some business for yourself. Can, can you get into that story a little bit.

Yeah, so. So in the 90s there was this brief period where the web was up and coming, but not yet fully out there. And a lot of companies did not have websites. So I was one of the few people, I would say in New York City who really knew from beginning to end how to build a website. There was no WordPress, there were no tools for making websites, like to just dig in and write software and you know, hire graphic designers and really make a website. So I started an agency to make and a software company to make websites for companies. And I wasn't just doing it for like the local locksmith or whatever. I did AmericanExpress.com, i was their first website. I did Time Warner.com, i did every gangster rap record label. So Bad Boy Records, Loud Records, Interscopes, you know, Death Row Records, Jive Records. I did a lot of movie studios that existed then, like Miramax, October Films, New Line Films. And so I did a lot of movie websites. But so I built up this business, a really good business specializing in the entertainment industry, mostly building websites. And then I sold it during the Internet kind of stock bubble. And I made a lot of money. I made enough money that, that it's like I have post traumatic stress even thinking about it now how much money I lost. So I made about 15 million. And then there was one summer where I lost about $1 million a week through. And you would think it would be through something like just decadent like drugs, women, whatever, but it was nothing like that. I did not do anything like that. I lost it simply on making bad money decisions, bad investing decisions. I really had no knowledge.

So the $15 million wasn't, wasn't, it was cash, it was actual cash. So this wasn't like at like equity or, or, or, or stocks that you hadn't cash out and you actually had cash, you lost $15 million, right?

I had cash and I upped my lifestyle because of the cash.

Holy shit. I guess you must have.

Yeah. And then, and then I was just like, you think when you make money that you think, oh, I must be a genius if I could make it here, I could make it anywhere. And I don't know, people would. It was almost like this self satisfying circle about it. Like everyone would suddenly ask me for money advice because I had money. And it was just really, look, I built up an agency in an Internet bubble and I had no clue. Like money is a very difficult skill and there's three sub skills. There's making it Keeping it, growing it. And so I made it that one time. I didn't even know if I had the skill really to make it again. And I didn't know how to keep it and I certainly didn't know how to grow it. And all of those are separate skills. So I was making like horrible investment decisions. Like, I just did not know what I was doing. And it would take a long time of self study to figure out how to have money skills. No, I had no guide, no mentor. I wish I had asked for help, but I was too prideful. I had ego. And I really thought, oh, no, I must be an expert because I'm a genius. I sold a business. I'm the smartest person, and I didn't even want to be in business. I didn't really enjoy being an entrepreneur, but it just sort of happened accidentally because people needed a website and there was like five people in the city who knew how to make one. But. But anyway, I made. I made all these horrible decisions and I was getting so depressed. I remember one point I looked at my ATM machine and I always avoided looking at the balance. I knew I was going down, but I just did not want to look at the balance. And by accident, one time I looked at the balance and I had $143 left in the same account that I had once had $15 million in there. And I couldn't believe it. And I remember I called my wife at that time and. And I. Or I went to a payphone. There were payphones back then. I picked up the phone and I'm dialing it, but like, I'm not getting a ringtone. And then I realized the entire phone, for some reason, somebody maliciously did this. The entire payphone, the phone itself was covered in. So I don't know, dog or human, I have no idea. And so then it was all over me, like, all over my head. And so there I.

That's good for your immune system, though.

Maybe that's why I didn't need to go to a doctor that year. I don't know. But I was just. I had just realized I was basically dead broke. I was losing my home. My house was for sale, but because I lived right next to what had been called the World Trade center, but was then called Ground Zero, I wasn't getting any offers. I had $143 left and now I had shit all over my head and I was really depressed and I thought, gosh, I have two babies. They're not going to remember who I am. But I Still had one thing going for me is I had a life insurance policy. So that brought me down a dark place, which, fortunately, I didn't. The problem was I wanted to figure out how to kill myself without hurting myself, because I was scared. And there was. There's no way to do it. I will. I will conclude that there was no way to do it. After much research and not recommending this choice for anybody. And I didn't know what to do. So I called even my parents and I said, hey, can I drive down and borrow $1,000? And as soon as I get rid of this house, I will give you back $1,000? And they refused me. I just had nothing going on. Nobody. You know, when you lose all your money, you find out who your friends are. And I realized I actually had no friends. I had zero friends.

And at that point, you had already washed the telephone shit off of your head and hands, so it wasn't because of your odor or stench.

Exactly. Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah. Then I had no excuse for having no friends. That would have been a good excuse. Oh, sorry, I forgot to wash this off. But so one day I was. And literally, I wasn't surviving. Like, I wasn't eating, but I was too depressed to eat or sleep or anything. And one day I was. I was walking around, just taking huge walks around New York City. And I walked into a restaurant supply store for whatever reason, I don't know why, And I saw a box of waiters pads. I could buy 100 waiters pads for $10. So 10 cents a pad. And I just loved the look of a waiter's pad. It was like a small little pad so I could fit it in my pocket. It wasn't these fancy pads that the moleskin pads that people would pay $1,000 for. It was just. It was like, very, like, worker. And I like the light blue. And it's small enough. You can't write a novel on a waiter's pad. You have to just write lists, like orders. And so the next day, I take it out with me on my walk. I go for a coffee, and I just start writing down ideas. I had an idea for a book, so I wrote down 10 chapter ideas. And I got a little excited about this book. I felt it inside myself, like. Oh, it's like this stirring in my heart that was also connecting to my brain. Like, the writing of ideas was connecting something I desired with something I was being creative about in my. In my brain. And the next day, for each chapter, I wrote down 10 ideas for, okay, what Will be, you know, kind of a sub outline of that chapter. And then I started writing down, just randomly, like the next day, business ideas. Or I'd write down, here's 10 people who I'd love to have as a mentor.

Right. Just like purely in creative flow. Anything goes when you're writing down these ideas.

Yeah, like a lot of times, anything. And this is why I love the. The list that your kids made. A lot of times people ask me, do you keep track of. Do you write down business ideas every day, or do you keep track of all your business ideas? And the answer is no. The idea, the point of this really is ideas and creativity and possibilities are a muscle. And like most muscles, they atrophy very, very quickly. Like, let me ask you, Ben, if you didn't exercise, or let's say you just stayed in bed and watched TV for, for, you know, a straight amount of time, like, no, you didn't get up at all, how long before your muscles would atrophy to the point it would be hard for you to walk the first time you got up?

Typically it's about two to three weeks. It kind of depends. There's things that you could do to keep them from atrophying. Like if you're really hot, that seems to keep muscles from atrophying, which is why people who can't exercise, if they just go sit in a sauna, it could stave it off. Those made for.

I knew. I knew by the way, asking this if you would ray a new chapter.

Yeah. Oh, those made for TV electrostimulation devices that can help a little bit. There are certain things like SARMs and some things called peptides that you can take that will stave off muscle atrophy. Interestingly, even creatine, which is dirt cheap, can help out a little bit. But yeah, I mean, after anywhere from two to four weeks, depending on how fit you are going in, you're going to see some significant muscle atrophy. Absolutely.

And I will say it is the exact same thing with the idea muscle. So that's why I love what your kids did. Or these types of lists. Like, yeah, you could do a lot of lists of businesses, businesses I could do, businesses other people could do. But it's really just about exercising that muscle every day. And you feel it. Like after you write down your first seven ideas, the final three of the 10, you feel like your brain is sweating. And what I noticed after like a few weeks, maybe after a month or so, was that I. It's like literally like I felt New connections between the synapses of my brain. Like, I felt like my brain was electrified a little bit. And it was a real feeling. It was a visceral feeling. And I remember one time I wrote email. I made a list of all the people I wanted to meet, and I wrote emails to them, and I said, hey, can I please meet you and buy you a cup of coffee? Blah, blah, blah. Nobody responded. And so, of course, nobody responded. Like, Warren Buffett's not going to suddenly say, oh, my gosh, I've got a. I've got to hold everything. James Altucher is coming to Omaha and is going to buy me a cup of coffee.

Hold on, Charlie Munger. I have a more important meeting going on right now.

Right. So what I did instead was I started making idea lists for other people. So here's 10 ideas for your business. Here's 10 ideas for your business here. If you're a writer, here's 10 article ideas you could write. And then I sent those out and I said, hey, I love what you do. And I would mention something specifically that they did. No strings attached. Here's 10 ways I thought your XYZ could be better. You don't have to respond. Good luck. So. So I asked for nothing. I just gave. I gave these 10 ideas to each person. I wrote about 20 different people, and three of them responded. And one person. One person was a writer. And I said, here's 10 ideas for articles you. You could write, and then I'll subscribe to your publication. And he wrote back and said, wow, these are. These ideas are great. Can you write these articles? And that literally started my career as a writer. Like, that was it. And another person, I said, Here's 10 Ideas for your. I knew his hedge fund style, so here's 10 ideas of software that I'd written where I found patterns that mimic your style. And you could. You could try these out. I'm happy to train your staff. Or they could learn on their own and good luck. And then another person was a writer also, and I'd given him some ideas. He wrote back and said, yeah, I would love to have lunch. I actually didn't respond to him until 12 years later, and I simply hit reply and said, okay. Instead of lunch, though, how about coming on my podcast? So that's when, in 2014, the writer Nassim Taleb came on my podcast. Oh, wow. Sometimes that's a good technique to just go back to somebody you blew off and respond as if he just wrote you a second ago. And I find that it's like funny enough that people ignore the fact that you didn't write them back the first time. So the hedge fund guy, he actually said these. It doesn't quite fit my style, but I like these ideas. And he allocated money to me and it started me off on a hedge fund career. So creating these ideas lifted me out of my depression. I don't know why. It just, it excited me enough that it lifted me out of this depression and then it got me actually doing things and then it created opportunities for me.

Just imagine if, if, if during, for example, we're recording this during the lockdown, even though it's going to be a classic and people are going to be listening to this by the millions 20 years from now, but right now we're in lockdown. Just imagine if people who are struggling with finding a career or pivoting and making an income in lockdown were to sit down and write down 10 new ideas each day. I mean, I can just imagine the ideas being generated would be profound. And as you alluded to, it is a muscle. I mean, if I write every day because I've been working on these Sunday blog posts that are more kind of like creative ramblings. And it flows for me, the first few weeks I was working on it because I'm just so used to technical, sciencey writing. It was a chore and now it just flows, the ability to be able to write more spiritual, more prose esque type of material. But it took a while and it was all related, more vulnerability. All related to what you're talking about, the neuroplasticity and the change in the way that the synapses fire. When you repeatedly perform a task, including a creative task like writing new ideas or writing in a specific style, your brain does change in a very, very similar way as exercise. And on the flip side, as you also alluded to, when you don't, it atrophies. And so, you know, there's so many different directions that we could go with what you just outlined. But I have a couple of comments. First of all, I also recently lost a lot of money, but it was only on paper. About three years ago, I wanted to invest in cannabis because I thought that it was going to be a hot sector. So I bought Canadian cannabis and I bought this company called Aurora and I put about $100,000 into it. I think it was at about 9 or $10 when I did, and this was like 2000 mid 2017. And then early last year it was at 1:15. And so I think If I cashed out, this is of course before capital gains, but I would have realized like maybe 3 million. And then I had some issues with computer share and transferring, and so I kind of like walked away for a few weeks and get around back to it. And then I went back in and checked on the stock a couple of months ago, and it's at $8. And it's less painful, though, when it's money that hasn't actually materialized or wound up in your bank account and it was all just kind of on paper and you can set it out and wait it out anyways. But yeah, it was an interesting moment for me, feeling as though I'd made a whole host of millions of dollars in a relatively short period of time and then just seeing it all disappear. But that's the volatility of the stock market and cannabis in particular, of course. And then. But before I ask you another question, you did mention that you were looking into a painless way to die. I would imagine that this is probably controversial and could get the podcast pulled from any podcast platform in multiple countries.

But we could take that part out.

If you want, but we could always take it out if we need to. No, but I was going to tell you that the US Government has actually approved a painless way to die. And, and it's, it's supposedly if you do a true lethal injection, like if, which is where first they give you an anesthetic, which is, I think they use thiopental right now, and then they follow that up with a paralytic agent, which kind of like stops you from breathing, but then the anesthetic they give you before that stops any pain, and then they finish that up with potassium chloride, which basically just stops your heart instantly. Apparently there is zero pain and zero time to die with a lethal injection. That's, that's supposedly the only way to do it and not feel a thing is, is you have to have, you have to have those three chemicals, though. So there is a way to do it. It's not parking your car in your garage and doing the carbon monoxide thing or jumping from the Empire State Building or anything like that.

But yeah, those are all horrible ways. And, but then also I was worried if you wouldn't get life insurance if they knew you killed yourself there. I wasn't sure about my life insurance policy.

That's true.

So that. That was the other issue as well.

Yeah, but it's a good point, General.

Now I'm glad. I mean, we all go through periods where we're Miserable or depressed or anxious or something. And I'm glad, you know, this wasn't the first time I went broke. It was like three or four times later. I kept doing it, I kept being miserable, I kept being depressed and depressive. But I'm glad, you know, my kids are older, you know, I finally figured out some basic skills that I was missing, including exercising the idea muscle as much as possible, which was really not only an antidepressant, but created so many opportunities for me over the years. And then also it takes a while for a young person, I think, to learn, or at least for me. Hey, toxic relationships are just as damaging as not exercising or not eating good food or whatever. And of course, then making sure you sleep. All these things are related to creativity, to depression, to, you know, your ability to function as a business person and as a member of society and the community. And so I realized every time I made money, I would stop being a useful, functioning member of society and I would essentially stop taking care of these various muscles, like an emotional muscle, the idea muscle, you know, physically. So I just stopped bad behavior like that, you know, eventually, and that, that helped me on a more consistent growth spurt. Yeah, but the idea muscle always, 100% of the time brought me, brought me back from the dead financially. It was amazing.

Yeah, I think another muscle that's really good is game and strategy muscle. I was pleased to see when I started reading some of your blog posts that are really good how into games you are, not just chess, which I think you're relatively well known for being a really good chess player. But you also have some great posts on poker, which I found interesting because I have a lot of poker players who hire me to coach them for things like sleep and mental optimization and how to use things like nootropics and smart drugs and what to do after a night in the casino to bounce back and have your cognition the next day, etc. Which is important for them because that's how they make a lot of money. And it's kind of interesting. I never would imagine that I would wind up coaching poker players for things like cognition or, or sleep or heart rate variability or anything like that. But as a result, you know, I'm talking to a lot of people who are playing games. And then we also at our, at our dinner table at least five nights a week, we have our hour and a half long family dinners where we'll play quiddler boggle, Scrabble, Stratego, chess, Canasta tens, Texas Hold', Em, you name It. We literally have an enormous game closet that we go into and dig into almost every single night for dinner, unless we have company. And sometimes we just talk with the company if we have company.

That is such a great thing. It's so important for your kids. And I agree with you. I mean, just. And sorry to interrupt, but when I would go out, even that first day that I used my waiter's pad, I would always start off. I would read some passages from some book on games. I would solve game problems. And I still do this every day. I solve game problems every day. So you, like. You could have a book of chess puzzles or a book of checkers puzzles or backgammon or poker or. Or, you know, all those games you mentioned. I've spent. Actually. My very first idealist. You'll find this funny. My very first idealist. That very first day was an idea for a book that I outlined in the. And the book was beat your friends and family at every game in the universe.

At every game?

Yeah, at every game. Because the idea is most people, you know, they're amateurs, but they usually. They think they're pretty good at Monopoly or Risk or poker. Like, people usually think they're better than they are. And. But with a few little shortcuts, you could. You can't beat a professional or a good player this way. But with a few little shortcuts, you could beat any player off the street, like a family member at Thanksgiving or something. You could beat them with just a few shortcuts. Like Scrabble. You mentioned. If you just know the list of two letter words, you'll beat anybody at all.

The two letter words?

Yeah, there's like 101 two letter words, something like that. Like qi, x, I, x, U. So that helps you get rid of the Q's, the X's. K, A helps you get rid of the K's. Or if you know. And then if you know. The second tip was if you get. If you know the Q without U words. So like Q, A, T, Q, O, P, F. Oh, yeah, good point.

Yeah. Key Qi. That's it.

Q, I. Yeah. So if you just know these two lists, you'll. You'll easily beat any buddy who thinks Scrabble. Most people think Scrabbles above vocabulary. And you can say, okay, I'll play you. And you just put. Play two and three letter words. You'll crush them.

Okay, tonight. Tonight's game night, and I'm gonna propose Scrabble. And that's what we're gonna do. And I'm gonna beat everybody. And if I don't, I'm gonna be calling you up on the phone. But what about, what about. And I want to get back to why game theory is important. But first, some, some of this, this stuff that you're talking about for this idea that you had. What about Monopoly? How would you win at Monopoly?

Okay, Monopoly, you guess what color is the most important to buy. You know, there's. It goes, you know, there's the yellow.

Green, red, light purple, the light blue ones, the connect, the ones that come right before jail, like Connecticut and all the light blues.

Decent guess. But if you own and build hotels as quickly as possible on the orange properties, you'll win. You know, there's a luck component of Monopoly with the dice, but you'll, you'll win almost every time.

That's like, like St. James and St.

James, Tennessee and New York. So. So, so, and I'll tell you why. Because the most popular square to land on is jail. Because you could land on jail with the dice. You could land on jail if you land on the go to jail square. And there's two community chess cards that take you to jail. So there's all these extra opportunities to land on jail. The most common dice roll is a seven with two dice. So that puts you right in the middle of the orange properties. A 6, 8, 9 lands you on the orange properties. So the orange properties is this are the properties people are most likely to land on over and over and over again. If you're the one who owns the hotels there, I would even trade, like, Broadway, which is an expensive property for, like New York, if I could, if it makes me have, you know, all three orange cards. So the orange cards are key in Monopoly, and that's all you need to know, and you win almost every game.

What about games that aren't board games, like Rock, paper, Scissors, for example? You were looking at any of those?

No, I haven't. And that's an interesting one. There's even a rock, paper, scissors world championship. So there's a lot of psychology to that one. And I haven't quite. That's an interesting one. I haven't looked into that one to figure out how to, how to master it.

Okay, why, why is game theory so important?

You know, for two reasons. One is every position on the board is like a puzzle. Really. Three reasons. Every position on the board is a puzzle in front of you. You could ignore the fact that there's competition, and it's just like, here's a board, like a chess position. Here's a board. It's black's turn to move. What's the best move? It's like a puzzle. So first off it's, it engages this puzzle solving, problem solving part of your game brain. And it's hard enough that you know it's going to be a hard puzzle to solve because that's why it's a famous game. Second, competition is incredibly important to learn. Like essentially, competition is a safe way to practice everything from fighting to war to business competition, but it's safe. You're just in the comfort of your own home. You totally want to destroy and annihilate the other person. But it's a safe way to do that without violence or putting much at risk. And a third thing which I think is more useful maybe than people think is a lot of these games are metaphors for life. Like you learn a lot about yourself and a lot about life by, you know, by getting good at these different games like chess. Just simple things like controlling the center. You know, there's metaphors for that in, in life and different aspects of being patient, patient and balancing defense and offense. And there's a lot of metaphors in poker for life, like the psychology of it. So. So all of those things are, provide useful lessons in addition to the competition aspect and the puzzle solving aspect.

Yeah, I think just the whole idea of game theory helps people understand not only people, but how to make decisions based on assessing Outco. And I think there's some logic that's worked in as well. And then even, you know, for me there's even some amount of morality built in. And by morality I mean something as simple as when you're playing Scrabble. And you know, I've got whatever my, you know, I don't usually have my smartphone on the table, but it is within reach a lot of the time. And I can easily, if I wanted to say, you know, during Scrabble, oh, I got to look for a text when really I could just like type in a word, you know, on Google, see if it's an actual word. And so there's a great deal of morality and ethics built into proper gameplay as well. And I've just seen my children grow dramatically by dragging out these games every single night in terms of their ability to reason, their ability to engage in decision making, understand other people make, make decisions even when, you know, doing the right thing, when other people might not know that you're doing the right thing. You know, make making a moral decision. Like even though nobody knows I'm going to look up this word in Scrabble. I'm not going to do it anyways. And so, yeah, I think it's incredibly important. I want to link in the show notes. And again, the shownotes for those of you listening in are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com ltuture to a really great article that James wrote called how to Master Every Game. And I think it's fantastic. And if you guys want to leave some of your favorite games in the show notes as well, that would be great. We sometimes modify our games too. James. I also lost some money recently because I paid A licensing attorney $400 to do this for me. But we have this game called Quitter, which is like Scrabble with cards. And what I did was because we were making so many modifications to the game, like we thought it would be cool if there was a card that you draw that would force you to pass all of your letter cards immediately to the right, keeping only one or double the points if you spell a word that rhymes with your first name or, you know, a wild card that automatically makes all your vowels worth double the points. And so we came up with like 20 special rules for this game called Quittler. And I gave them all to the, to the IP attorney and had her go to the original game manufacturer and try to see if we could license a new game or our version of the existing game back to them. But it turns out they don't make the game anymore and they also own all the IP even though they don't make the game anymore. So it would have been really difficult for us to do. But we also have gotten to the point where we play these games so regularly we just like to modify them and make up our own rules.

I like that. Game construction is also an interesting game in itself. Oh yeah, you know, but, but, but you're right about studying like game theory and strategy and what you can learn from it. Like, I find in many situations, like I'll watch the president, like the Democratic primary debates, for instance, and I'm sort of half listening to hear what they're saying about the issues, But I'm also sort of half listening to really break down what's the game like. Every one of them is playing a game. They want to be noticed the most and they want to have the most favorable. It's a game with measurement. Like they want to win the debate. They want to have the most favorable improvement post between pre and post debate. And so I'm always listening for what's their strategy, how Are they playing a game? Because it's not like they prepare pretty heavily from a game theory point of view for these debates. So I always. I always like looking at everything as a game, and that's a useful way of solving problems without getting personally involved.

Yeah. And, you know, in addition to game theory, you've also written a lot about kind of. Kind of decision making when it comes to saying no. Saying. Saying no to certain things. And, you know, I, of course, live my life now by the hell yes rule. You know, if I didn't want to be talking to you right now, if this podcast wasn't. It wasn't a hell yes, we wouldn't be recording it. I just. Don't bother. I appreciate that it's not a hell yes. You're welcome. That was my sneaky way of blowing smoke, too. But. But anyways, do you see people in. This is kind of a broad question. You can take anywhere you want, but people who should say no to things more often that they don't like. Are there things people should say no to more often that they don't?

Oh, yes, everybody. And A, sometimes people say yes when they really want to say no. B, sometimes people say no, and then they lie about why they're saying no. And then there's a small category of people who only say no when they really don't want to say yes and they're honest about it. And I try very hard to be in the third category, and I've spent a lot of time in the first two categories, unfortunately. And that's why I was able to write a book about the power of no.

Yeah, I remember that you'd written that book. That's why I wanted to ask, because I know you studied up on this. You wrote the book like. Like, I think five or six years ago. The Power of no. But yeah, in writing that book. I'm just curious if there. If there are, you know, from a practical standpoint, things that people should just say fricking no to more often that you. That you wish they would or that you think would make their lives better.

Yeah, I think. I think most meetings. And by the way, this really varies per person, but I think most meetings and most socializing people should say no to. Because, like, a lot of times I'll go out, and the first thing and kind of the only thing I want to do is go home. Like, I'll go out, be with a bunch of friends in a loud bar. There's like zero chance I'm gonna have fun.

Right? Or. But you're there. You're there because you want to be seen. I think that's what happens a lot of times. You want to be seen. You think maybe something's going to happen that's going to be slightly interesting. And this happens to me too, James. I'll go to a function, organize a big dinner. Sometimes I'm responsible putting the function together, or I'll show up at a party that's supposed to be amazing. And five minutes in, I realized that had I stayed back in my hotel room during the four hours I'm at that party talking shallow with a bunch of people with a cocktail in my hand, I could have learned like two songs on the guitar and read an amazing book and done something kind of meaningful and impactful.

Right? That's exactly it. Because let's say every day you improve your life 1%, you know, compounded, that's 3,700% a year. That's. You make your life 37 times better in a year if you take a little bit more time for yourself and like you say, read a book or part of a book or play a musical instrument or learn something. And yet, you know, I remember one time I was going out with some friends and, you know, they were talking about the books they wanted to write and all their ideas, and. And it was around 1 in the morning, we're closing down the restaurant, and I realized why they never wrote their books. To this day, this is 20 years later, to this day, they haven't written their books. It's because they kept going out every night instead of saying no.

Yep.

And so basically, the more I was able to say, you know, what's been great about this lockdown is that I canceled about seven business trips. So saying no, I almost have never made money traveling for business. Like, if I had to travel across country to have a sales meeting with a potential customer from whatever business I was involved in, none of those. Almost, I think maybe zero of those meetings. Out of the hundred times I've traveled for business, or hundreds of times, zero of those meetings have actually worked out. So in retrospect, I should have said no to many of those. And so I say no now to almost all travel? I say no to almost all meetings. I don't even answer my emails really that much.

Do you feel like there's certain things you myopically focus on every single day? And it even makes you feel guilty sometimes that that's just like what you get a kick out of and you never get bored with those things? Because I run into That a lot. Like, I wake up, I want to write some stuff. I want to research and read. I want to be with my family. I want to play my guitar. I want to make some really cool meals and spend some time outdoors and. And there's like, 30 other things that I could be doing. And sometimes I ask myself, am I too boring? Am I just saying no to too much? Does that happen to you?

Oh, yeah. All the time, in fact. And I get insecure about it. Like, I ask my wife, is it okay? I don't really want to socialize with the neighbors today or whoever. Yeah, I feel guilty about that because I really like just sitting in my office and reading and writing and coming up with my 10 ideas a day list. I get very excited about that.

Okay, so reading, writing, 10 ideas. What are the other things that are just like, you'd be happy as a clam, and you could just say no.

To everything else, really, those things. And I always say yes to opportunities, and it's gonna sound a little odd. I always say yes to opportunities to do standup comedy. So about five years ago, maybe a little more, I got up on stage. Someone asked me randomly. A comedy club owner asked me, hey, do I want to go up? He had heard me give a talk and thought I was funny. And so I said, sure, I'll go up. I was really scared to death to do it. And it was such a thrill to make people laugh. I couldn't believe it. It was like such a big dopamine hit, really. And so I started. Yeah. And I went back a week later, and I bombed horribly. Like, people booed me off the stage. The second time it was.

And was this the initial time you got up? Was this, like, the deal where it's like an open mic now? You got five minutes.

It wasn't an open mic night. I was up with the professionals because people knew me. And so I was up there with people who were like. Had been on Showtime, hbo, Comedy Central. And I did good the first time, and I had prepared, but I was scared. I was really scared. And looking at the video later, I always take videos of myself doing this, Looking at the video later. It's so clear to me now what. What was going wrong and why I was so scared. But so the second time, I just. Or the third time, whatever, I completely bombed. And it was, like, shameful. It was like, I bombed so bad, the emcee had to apologize for me, which is something you never do. You keep the show going if you're the emcee. And I felt so bad, and I figured, okay, but I love this. I'm gonna. I'm just gonna really study it and practice and get good at it. And I started doing up to 10 shows a week. So three, four nights a week. 10 shows a week. And, you know, now. Now it's a much different story. So now I go up pretty much. You know, if I go to a city, I'll go perform in whatever local comedy club. I toured through the Netherlands right before the lockdown. That was actually the last time I performed. And I've been all over the country performing. And now it's. It's. I feel really good that it was probably the hardest skill I ever had to learn, actually, out of everything. And, you know, that includes business, investing, writing, chess, day trading.

Do you practice comedy a lot?

Yeah, well, I mean, like I said, I do up to 10 shows a week. I mean, right now, because of the lockdown, I don't.

Well, I mean, yeah, you do the shows, but do you have to practice a lot in between you're writing?

No. I mean, yeah, I'll write a little bit each day or if I think of jokes, I always try. Every time I perform, I try to do 10 to 20% new material. And most comedians don't do that. And the key. I realized this actually changed my whole philosophy of learning. So I was really grappling with. Malcolm Gladwell popularized the 10,000 hour rule, which is the idea that if you spend 10,000 hours in what he calls deliberate practice, you'll be the best in the world at something. And I didn't want to spend 10,000 hours at this. I'm. I'm over 50 years old. I wanted to learn really quickly. And I was struggling with this, though I contacted Anders Erickson, who was the original professor who developed the 10,000 hour rule. I talked to other people who had written about it, and it just wasn't sitting right with me, the whole 10,000 hour thing. And so I changed it to be what I call the 10,000 experiments rule, which is that if every day I do an experiment, then I'm going to move the envelope of my knowledge. Because the whole concept of an experiment is I'm going to try something I don't know the answer to, but I have a theory about. And so I'm not going to just try something randomly. I have a theory that this might be good, and then I'm going to try it and I'm going to. Whether I. Whether it succeeds or fails, there's little downside. It's just an experiment. There's huge upside. If the experiment works, I really move my knowledge quite a bit in my experience. And if it fails, like it doesn't work or it doesn't make people laugh, then okay, I learned something. I at least learned something new. And I do this now for entrepreneurship. Like, if I want to validate a business idea, the first thing I'll think of is ways to experiment on this idea. Or like, for instance, right now and even the last time we spoke when you were on my podcast, I'm wearing pajamas. I'm experimenting with full time, 24 hours a day wearing pajamas for some potential business ideas I have that I probably won't do. But they showed up on my idea list. So I decided to experiment with some.

People'S version of pajamas would not be acceptable for calls. Just so you know, like, like for me, pajamas is my birthday suit, so I can't do that.

Well, yeah, no, that's, that's a good point. And my, my whole thinking is that now with this lockdown, you know, nobody really needs to wear uncomfortable outside wear ever. And pajamas by definition are the most comfortable clothes, so. Because you could sleep in them. So my theory is, is that, oh, maybe there's some twist I can find on pajamas that are good for outside wear. I don't know. I'm just experimenting. Interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

No one said anything.

They're comfortable. It's. I interviewed a guy named Paul Check who's kind of a health pioneer, and he's convinced that everything from like breast cancer due to tight clothing and restrictive bras, to men who have poor libido or erectile dysfunction due to tight fitting briefs and poor movement patterns due to inability to squat, lunge, et cetera. Like a big part of it is just the kind of clothing that we wear. And if we were all to wear like loosey goosey pajama esque clothing, that we'd all function better and be healthier in life. So you may be onto something. You might, you might like that. Launching a new health trend.

Right? I could tell people it's Viagra or, or these pajamas. You choose.

That's right. See, that was funny right there. And so I could tell that you're probably naturally funny, but I did want to ask you that as a follow up to the comedian thing. Do you ever feel like you're posing imposter syndrome at all? Do you feel like you're both funny in real life and funny on stage? Or is the you on stage that much different?

That's a great Question. Because I would say the me on stage in the beginning was very different because I thought I had to be something different to be a comedian. I thought that a comedian had a certain structure to it, that stand up comedy had a certain structure to it, which it does, but. But it's looser than I thought. And so I would get into that here. I've had so many more experiences in life than the average standup comedian. And, you know, not like a Dave Chappelle or someone who's like, like godlike in comedy, but, you know, the average comedian. There's thousands of comedians going on stage, so I would tell like these standard style jokes with my own little twist and it just wasn't good. Like I wasn't good for years and years. And it was only when I started really just going on stage and saying, you know, man, 2020 and saying it in a certain way and acting a certain way, and then talking to people in the crowd and then figuring out how to draw from what they're telling me in the crowd to material that I've used before and combining them to make new jokes, like just being myself and making interesting observations, but making them in a funny way or talking to people. You know, like, I would talk to people about colleges. Like, I'm really against people taking on student loan debt and wasting four years of their life with a degree they'll never use. And so if I'll ask the crowd, like, who's, you know, who here has debt? And someone will say, oh, I've got $100,000 in debt. And I'm like, what did you major in? And he says, well, I'm still majoring in business. And I'm like, oh my gosh. Well, you need to switch majors, sir, because Business 101, do not get $100,000 in debt before starting your first business. And usually the crowd will go along with that, but now I'm able to veer in an entire pre written set of material about the college experience and my kids going to college and so on. So I'm able to segue in and out of material, but conversing my own observations with the crowd and so on.

Yeah, that's interesting. My friend who's a financial analyst or a financial advisor, Garrett Gunderson. And he just got into standup comedy. I think you know him. You know Garrett? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Met at Jason Gaignard's mastermind.

Yeah, yeah, good guy. And I'm actually going on a five day elk hunt trip with him in New Mexico next week. And so I might be stuck in a tent with him for five days and learn a little bit more about standup comedy, because it's actually something that I'm kind of interested in doing, but have a little bit of imposter syndrome. I love to be on stage. I love to crack jokes. I love being in front of people. Ironically, even though I'm introverted, as you know. You know, a lot of times introverts can. Can do well on stage. And so it's. It's something I'm interested in. And that's. That's inspiring that you just kind of got up and started doing it. So that's very cool.

And I was really bad. Like, I. I was funny in person, but I was really, really bad. So it took. It took a lot of experimenting and a lot of studying other comedians and, you know, before I finally realized, like, something started to click, like a rhythm started to happen where I essentially. I don't want to say I never bombed, but I pretty much stopped bombing. And then it was just a matter of, you know, how am I killing, or am I just doing okay? Or then I always study the video of myself, and then every day I experiment.

Yeah, well, that's good to know that you sucked, because that gives me hope. So you briefly mentioned one thing, and this was probably the last thing I want to ask you, but you talked about college, and you mentioned in passing there your thoughts about whether or not young people should go to college. And I know you do have some feelings about that. My kids aren't of college age yet, and I'm homeschooling them, unschooling them. Yet at the same time, in the back of my mind, I don't want them to turn 16 or 17 or 18 and look back and say, dad, I really want to be an engineer or a physician or a lawyer. But you didn't supply me with what I needed to be able to take an entrance exam or go to college and be embittered about that. But at the same time, I'm not structuring their education with the goal of them getting in an Ivy League institution or with the ultimate golden pot at the end of the rainbow being college. For various reasons. But I'm curious what your thoughts are about college and its necessity.

Yeah. So I first wrote about this for the Finance financial times in 2005, and everybody thought I was completely insane. And people would argue with me, and people would write me letters, and professors would debate this on their own blogs. And so it was. It was. It was A weird conversation then to have, but now, starting around 2015, I would say it was a more. It was starting to be a mainstream conversation.

By the way, was that your article that, that was entitled College is a Waste of Time and Money for Kids?

Probably because I've written about like 10 different articles.

I'll link to that one in the show Notes for People. Go ahead.

And there was one time even Georgetown University did a study on the financial benefits of going to college. And the study was so poorly done that you didn't even like just basic statistics. And I was able to tear it apart. But they mentioned me in the study as like, well, there's guys like James Altatucher say it's no good, but here's the actual statistics. But they're taking statistics from the 70s which have no bearing on how people view college now. So it was, it was horrible. But look at right now, now college. It's just, the scam is over. People are. Colleges are telling students, look, go home. You're going to do remote learning. Forget everything we used to say about the campus experience. You're not going to have it this year because of the coronavirus, but we're still going to have to charge you the full tuition. Meanwhile, they can learn from some of the best people on the planet for like $300 on Coursera or Khan Academy or Skillshare or Udemy or Masterclass. Like, you could learn from Wolfgang Puck. You could learn screenwriting from Aaron Sorkin. Like, it's, it's unbelievable, the capability. It's unbelievable to me what I've learned on online courses versus what I learned back in the day when I went to college. And I just think, you know, Google has even said, look, don't worry about college. If you take these kind of certificate programs at Coursera, which is just an online school, very cheap, we'll consider you for a job. So major companies now are saying, you don't need college, you just need these skills. Skills trump college. They're much more important than college. And I also think, you know, tuition has gone up faster than inflation for 40 straight years in a row. So tuitions are out of control because the government backs all these student loans. So the college, the college presidents know they're always going to get paid by the government. So they just keep upping the tuition. It's totally in scam territory at this point. And it's not necessary. There's all sorts of things like, oh, maybe the socialization. Trust me, your kids do not need to spend a quarter of a Million dollars to make friends. Like that's ridiculous.

I told my kids that if they really want, if they really really want. I don't think this is a great idea for a kid anyways. But, but if they really just want to go drink and meet girls and be with people in a highly social environment, which is the reason a lot of people go to college, maybe watch and play some sports, then I'll buy them a round the world plane ticket. They can go to Amsterdam and Sydney and Rome and all over the place, come back and they will have gotten all that out of their system and then they can basically start to learn from amazing people and amazing both online and offline institutions that aren't college at a fraction of the price or free and get everything that they need to succeed in life except maybe if they need a demonstrable, A demonstration that they've completed some kind of coursework that's necessary for say like doing surgery on somebody or building a bridge. Like there are certain things that you do need to show demonstrable coursework having completed for. But those things are pretty few and far between in my opinion.

And the way those things are going to be taught is going to change. Like things are going to change coming out of this, out of 2020. But you know, you made a great point like traveling around the world, that is so much more valuable. I mean I would offer any of my kids, I would say to them, look, I'll get. You have two choices. You could. I'm not going to hold them back from anything they want to do because they'll hold it against me for the rest of their lives. But I'll give you the money for college if you use to just travel around the world or if you use it to start a business and you know, again skills even for socializing. And let's say they want to be around kids their own age, which is by the way, the last time you'll ever do that in your life. Most, I don't know anybody my age. Everybody. All my friends are different ages, older and younger.

I don't even know the age of most of my friends.

Yeah, right. And so, but, so college is the last time you're really around people your own age. But even if you wanted to do that instead of going to college, go to a college town, get really good at shooting pool and then you could go to any bar and you'll make friends instantly.

Good. Like good point. Or poker.

Then you learn games and you learn a skill.

Yep. Yeah. And if you need money, go apply For Peter Thiel's fellowship, you get a hundred thousand bucks to build things exactly inside a classroom. He's got a, he's got a great two year program for people who just want to build shit and not have to, you know, sit and learn things that are getting forced down your throat that you don't want to learn anyways.

Or tell, tell the drunk people who are challenging at pool that, hey, if you have an essay due tomorrow, but you're out here writing, playing pool, drunk instead, for 100 bucks, I'll write your essay for you by tomorrow and you know, start a little business on the side there with no money at all. And then you make a decent living doing that. So, you know, I don't think, I don't think people will be going to by the time your 12 year olds are 18. They're not. College will be one of maybe many, many options that are much better. And right now there are options that are better. And fortunately, you know, my kids are all going through this process. Some of them are deciding to go, some of them are not. But it's, it's interesting.

Yeah, look, it's woven, it's woven into our culture as an expected necessity that when you really step back and look at it, is ridiculous. And I totally agree with you.

Yeah, it was a big marketing scam because they knew they could keep raising prices. So they encouraged people like, oh, it's the part of the American dream. Go, go to college. We'll, we'll pay for you. And then you're, this entire generation is ruined because it used to be you could graduate college and start inventing and innovating. Young people should be doing that. Instead you got to be like a salesman at an eyeglass store. Nothing wrong with that. But you need to start paying back your loans immediately or they'll, they'll take it from you. Yeah, it's the one kind of debt you can't get rid of in a bankruptcy, interestingly enough. But they'll lend $250,000 to an 18 year old.

In 1901, Andrew Carnegie said a college education unfits rather than fits men to Affairs. So 100 years ago, one of the most richest and successful men in America, Andrew Carnegie, he thought college was not only unnecessary, but detrimental. And a lot has changed since. Yeah, Andrew Carnegie, way back in 1900, he said that. And then a whole bunch happened during 1900, where it just became, became woven into our culture. And now I think we're coming full circle after just 100 years, which is not that long. A period of time. And we're realizing that a lot of it is a scam and unnecessary. And I'm kind of glad that people, you know, even during the COVID pandemic, are realizing how much of a, of a scam it really can be.

Now, now, I, and I'll just mention that, yeah, I, I, I have made almost all my current net worth from either writing or investing. That pretty much covers 100%. And none of those two things are skills I learned long after college. So I can't attribute any of my. I didn't do any writing at all in college, and I didn't do any investing or studying of investing. I wasn't interested in investing. I knew nothing about investing then. And I learned these skills much, much later. And that kind of typically happens now. We have long lives, our interests change, our passions change throughout our life. And you have to learn how to learn more than you have to remember what you learned when you were 18.

Yeah, I agree. There were certain things I did in college that maybe I wouldn't have been able to or would have been more difficult for me to do in the private sector, like dissecting human cadavers or having access to really good microbiology or biochemistry equipment. But even that kind of stuff, if you really do want an internship or an apprenticeship in the private sector, you can get access to. So you just have to be creative. And James, you're an intensely creative guy. I'm actually really glad to be able to introduce you to my audience because.

Thanks, Ben.

You write really good shit. And I think that people need to at least read books like Choose Yourself and Reinvent Yourself. Even though all of your books are on Amazon. I haven't read them all, but those two I have, and they're really good.

Those two are my favorite.

Yeah. And then you have a lot of really good articles. You interview really interesting people on your podcast. So for those of you listening in, James is a good guy for you to know about. So I'm going to link to everything that we talk about and his website and his books@bengreenfieldfitness.com altuture a l t U C H E R There you go. You're welcome. I actually spelled it for you for those of you who chose to stick around for the end of the show. And James, dude, thanks for coming on the show, man. You're, you're just, you're a pleasure to speak with.

I appreciate it so much. I'm a big fan. I love Boundless. I loved having you on my podcast and I super appreciate this. Thank you.

Awesome dude. Well, keep on rocking the pajamas and I'll catch you on the flip side.

Okay, Thanks a lot, Ben. I will talk to you soon.

All right, folks, until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with the great James Altucher signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week.

Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all, all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes. Use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.

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