5 insights into the lives of billionaires, from the producers of hit TV drama 'Billions'

They're competitive ... with everything.

"For many of these people, each exchange has a winner and a loser," Levien and Koppelman explained to Altucher. Even something as simple and habitual as dinner can be "won" or "lost," they learned during one particular interview.

They told Altucher:

We're at dinner with a billionaire and it's clear that he's doing us the favor by sitting with us. He has a lot of things he could be doing and we asked the favor to spend the time ... So it was sort of understood that we were going to pay.

When it was time to order the wine, he said to the maitre d's, "Just bring me what I always have." There were four of us, and we drank it, and it was unbelievable — and then of course, if you're thirsty for even a sip more, he just stuck his finger in the air and a second bottle appeared. And then the check came, and it was more than any human could put on any kind of expense account.

It cost them more than $2,000.

The dinner was some sort of game, or playing field, to the billionaire. It could be won or lost. "He couldn't live with the idea that we won the dinner by going away with information," the producers explained. "So he had to win, too, by hurting us with a dinner check the price of a trip to Florida."

They never admit defeat.

Not only is every exchange something that can be won or lost, but the richest of the rich are always on the winning side. The competitive mindset held true as Levien and Koppelman continued to interview billionaires.

Another example is billionaire Donald Trump, who told The Wall Street Journal: "I've never lost in my life." His businesses have gone bankrupt, he launched a few companies that ultimately flopped, and has had two failed marriages, yet he still claims to have never lost — and that bravado could be precisely what makes him so successful.

"This is psychology 101 of the self-made rich," Steve Siebold, self-made millionaire and author of "How Rich People Think," tells Business Insider. "They don't recognize failure like the rest of us. They only see it as a stepping stone to their success. These people are professional comeback artists, so when they fail, they frame the setback as a bump in the road as opposed to an outright failure."

They're high-profile — and they know it.

"When these people walk into a room, you see the look on the eyes of the people around them. Everybody wants something," Levien and Koppelman tell Altucher of their experiences shadowing billionaires.

"It's like when a really, really beautiful woman walks in a room and you can just look around and everybody looks — everybody wants something. And we wondered, what does that feel like? How do you stay normal? How do you not become corrupt? How do you not give in to the fact that you can have everything?"

They have the ability to create their own worlds.

Billionaires have so many resources at their fingertips that they can mold their own utopias. Koppelman gives the example of the billionaire he stayed with for a few weekends, who had created "artist colonies": "This one person I knew had artists who were his favorite artists, so he built — on his huge grounds — artist studios! But not for any reason other than so that he could have the artists he likes around him. What must that feel like to be able to move with that kind of footprint? It's not just being wealthy. It is a whole other kind of experience."

As Levien and Koppelman put it, later in the podcast: "They each can have a belief system that supports considering themselves the hero in their story."