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The James Altucher Show

Ep. 132 - John McAfee: The Most Interesting Man in the Universe

The James Altucher Show

James Altucher

Education, Business

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2015

⏱️ 55 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How do you summarize a highly colorful life of an inventor, billionaire and philanthropist? In this episode of The James Altucher Show, our guest is John McAfee. James and John talk about the high and low points of John's life. Just days after this interview, John announced he is running for President of the United States. Listen to John and see if you can decide if he's going to get your vote. He is probably best known for McAfee antivirus software, which he created while working as a programmer for Lockheed Martin. Even with extraordinary success, John never measured his self-worth with his net-worth. Rather, he saved more than $30 million since he began McAfee. After a time, he turned the reins of of his successful antivirus company to Bill Larson, former VP of IBM. John has had a controversial career. He's spent his life on the run, has admitted to using and selling illegal drugs and has been arrested for illegal possession of firearms in the U.S. Despite this, he still remains ever-relevant decades later. He is still the most influential authority on information security in the world and a widely sought speaker on that topic. So it did not come as a surprise that just recently he's come under fire for writing about the real culprit behind the Ashley Madison data brouhaha.   Episode highlights: How he created the McAfee antivirus out of curiosity, never expecting it take off. His unhappiness with the administrative aspect of running an enterprise and why he stopped running the company. His life on the run, after experiencing threat and extortion from the government of Belize. Reinventing his business and reorganizing his life after losing all his money when forced to leave Belize. Talking about his natural antibiotics venture in Quorum sensing. His foray into biohacking is touted to be 15 years advanced in terms of research. Problems confronting the Internet landscape nowadays, the loss of privacy and what he does to stop it. Being rich and famous never bothered John McAfee, he stays true to himself and does what he knows best: being unreasonable even if the world doesn't agree with his opinions. And there was the matter of losing all of his money and investments, hiding like a fugitive and finally getting extradited to the U.S. Also not a problem; John just continued to find ways to start another internet-security firm called Future Tense Central, the technology of which is leaning toward consumer mobile-device apps, company privacy, and security-sharing software. His purpose nowadays is more focused on preventing the loss of privacy and warning against the evil of using gadgets, downloading convenience apps and storing information on the cloud because there are ways to 'spy' and fish for personal information.   Links and References Mentioned in this show: Ashley Madison write-up Future Tense Central: his security firm after Belize D-Vasive: a mobile-privacy app he devised for anti-spying   Spy TV Series ------------What do YOU think of the show? Head to JamesAltucherShow.com/listeners and fill out a short survey that will help us better tailor the podcast to our audience!Are you interested in getting direct answers from James about your question on a podcast? Go to JamesAltucherShow.com/AskAltucher and send in your questions to be answered on the air!------------Visit Notepd.com to read our idea lists & sign up to create your own!My new book, Skip the Line, is out! Make sure you get a copy wherever books are sold!Join the You Should Run for President 2.0 Facebook Group, where we discuss why you should run for President.I write about all my podcasts! Check out the full post and learn what I learned at jamesaltuchershow.com------------Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe to "The James Altucher Show" wherever you... See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

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0:00.0

This isn't your average business podcast and he's not your average host.

0:06.4

This is the James Alteter Show on the Standsbury Radio Network.

0:11.6

So, John, you're like, I almost don't even know how to introduce you because you're

0:22.1

like the most interesting man in the universe in the tech world and I'm sure in other

0:27.8

worlds.

0:28.8

So, but I'll just start off saying John McAfee, your last name of course is famous to

0:33.8

everyone who owns a computer.

0:36.5

McAfee associates is that, you know, has until recently been that annoying software that

0:43.4

is constantly trying to protect my computer from virus software was bought by Intel for

0:50.2

almost eight billion dollars.

0:52.3

But meanwhile, you've done long after you left McAfee, you've been like on international

0:58.6

police chases, you've started another security company.

1:02.5

I mean, what did you do yesterday?

1:04.7

I'm going to ask the most bland question of all to start off with.

1:07.5

Like, what did you do with your time yesterday?

1:09.7

Okay, well yesterday was not a bland day.

1:12.4

It was the day that I published my conclusions that Ashley Madison was stuck out about

1:20.8

a woman, which was, I think I'm a safe-bearing woman part.

1:24.6

I got more hacked from being politically incorrect than anything else yesterday.

1:29.8

So, I was on the phone all day with Time Magazine and Forbes and others.

1:33.8

But that's not a typical day for me.

1:36.4

A typical day is a quiet day spent at home with my wife while I'm on the computer doing,

...

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