Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science based tools
for everyday life.
I'm Andrew huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is a world renowned music producer having worked with an enormous number of incredible artists producing for instance Red Hot Chili Peppers. Beastie Boys. Jay-Z, John.
Cash, Adele Lady Gaga Tom Petty and of course Slayer this last year Rick also authored his first book which is a truly incredible exploration into the creative process. His book is entitled. The creative act a way of being Rick has appeared once before on the huberman Lab podcast and during that appearance. He offered to answer listeners and viewers questions. Those questions were put in the comment section on YouTube and we received thousands.
I love them. So today Rick answers your questions about the creative process. I also took note of the feedback that when Rick previously appeared on the huberman Lab podcast that perhaps I spoke a bit more than the audience would have preferred. So today I refrain from speaking too much and try and give as much air time as possible to Rick in order to directly answer your questions. You'll notice that today's discussion gets really into the Practical aspects of the creative process the most frequent questions that I receive.
Wreck were ones in which people really want to understand what his specific process is each and every day as well as when he's producing music or other forms of Art. And of course people want to know what they should do specifically from the time they wake up until the time they go to sleep even whether or not they should take note of their dreams Etc. We get into all of that. So today's discussion is very different from the one I held with Rick previously and at least to my knowledge from any of the other interviews or discussions that Rick has had publicly
Lee before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however a part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui venison Maui Nui venison is the most nutrient dense and delicious red-meat available spoken before on this podcast, and there's General consensus that most people should strive to consume approximately.
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Mindfulness training and Yoga Nidra, which is sometimes referred to as NSD are I'm a longtime fan of meditation. I started meditating when I was back in my teens and I started doing a daily 10 or 20 minute meditation and I kept that up for a number of years, but then it became more sporadic and then eventually I stopped and then I'd start again and I stop what I found with the waking up app is that it makes it very easy to take on a meditation practice and to do meditation. If not every day very close to every day. And in that we know based on a lot of research has an outside.
Positive effect on everything from stress regulation to sleep you come up with better ideas. So indeed meditation can make you more creative more focused and on and on and then about 10 years ago. I got introduced to Yoga Nidra or NSD are non sleep deep breaths, which is a practice of laying completely still while keeping the Mind very active. So you're relaxing but keeping your mind active and I use NSD are essentially every single day. I'll do it anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and I find it to be incredibly restorative. It really reset.
It's my ability to think and to engage in physical activity and with waking up. I can select different lengths of meditations different lengths of yoga nidaros or NST ours so that I keep up my practice. If you'd like to try waking up. You can go to waking up.com huberman to try a completely free 30-day trial again. That's waking up.com huberman to try a free 30-day trial and now for my discussion about protocols for creativity with Rick Rubin Rick Rubin, welcome back.
Thank you, sir. Happy to be here.
We're going to answer or rather you are going to answer the questions of the listeners of our previous podcast episode.
Before we do that. However, when we were out in the lobby, you mentioned that you have a breathing exercise a coherence breathing exercise that you thought might be useful for us to do now and perhaps for some of the listeners to join in.
Yeah, let's do it. And then if you want to talk about it after we can sounds good. The reason I started doing this is I have relatively low heart rate variability and you want to have a higher one. So I looked at all the things that can raise your heart rate variability and I started doing this breathing technique.
Only for heart rate variability and it went up also it's great tested. Great. Let's do it together here, please it'll say take a deep breath and then when you'll hear the sound of a
If you follow me for the first inhale, and exhale, you'll know what sound means one
and you do this eyes closed. Typically, I do it as close to
hey will close our eyes.
That's five minutes.
Like that feels nice, doesn't it?
Yeah, I notice I
don't spontaneously breathe at that Cadence. I breathe quite a bit faster. So especially on the exhale. Hmm. So once I got into a rhythm of it, yeah, the mind just goes pseudo-random for me. What about for you does your mind to go one place? I
do now I count. So the reason I knew it was five minutes is because it's six breaths per minute and I counted five.
11 12 13 14 15 16 to 1 so I was occupied with a task. How often do you do that at least once and sometimes twice a day I aim for 10 minutes a day, but if I get to 20 minutes a day, it's noticeable in my heart rate variability results. Do do the
coherence breathing at a particular times of day or just whenever it occurs
to you.
I think it depends on where I am. And what else is going on in my life. So it was I had a window of a very specific thing that I was doing I would do coherent breathing and I would do squats just air squats and in one location where I didn't have any other equipment and and then I found a way like
Where I was doing treading water, which you got to experience with me, I would tread water and then after Treading Water, I would get out of the pool sit in the Sun and do the coherent
breathing. Great. Yeah, we should probably mention what the treading water was about because people will wonder very briefly. I went and visited Rick overseas this summer and we spent a fair amount of the daytime treading water while listening to podcasts from a speaker on the side of the pool, and it was awesome.
Time together as friends is awesome time in the sun is awesome learning from podcasts and listening and being entertained by podcast is awesome. And then treading water is awesome. You're much better at treading water than I am. I was fatiguing.
It's just as I said when we were doing it, it's it's like doing stairs if you practice doing stairs, it gets easier to do stairs, but nobody's good at doing, you know marathon runner.
Has can't run up the stairs. It's a you know, it's a particular thing and treading water if you just do it in even in the little bit of time that we were doing it every day by the end of your stay it was easier for you than when you started definitely yeah you acclimate
quickly. Yeah, I was able to adapt I was in pressed at your endurance and Treading Water early on by the way. I've continued the Treading Water practice because I'm fortunate to have a pool in my new place. Yeah. I listened to your podcast. Truly. Wow.
Love it love love love it. I listen to a few other podcasts and I've started listening to more episodes of the podcast that you introduced me to which was
history of rock music and 500 songs Andrew hickeys and English podcasts great podcast real in-depth information about music.
That was such a great trip. Thanks for having me over there. Thanks for coming loves fun Treading Water. It was loved the time with you and your family. So I'm going to invite myself again. You're
always welcome.
On the topic of meditation one of the questions in this list of questions will talk about the list itself in a moment was about this anecdote that you've told me and you've mentioned a few other places. Apparently that you've once meditated all the way from was it San Francisco to New York or Los Angeles to New York
flight. It was either LA to New York or New York to LA. I can't remember and I may have done it
with the once the question specifically was which
Indeed you do
TM TM was the first meditation. I learned Transcendental Meditation learned when I was 14. It's pretty much a default setting for me. Now. Sometimes it'll evolved from TM into breathing like I might start by doing breathing before the TMP starts and and the breathing may just take the whole time or it may turn from breathing into a gratitude practice.
Or a meta practice which is a four phrases. May I be filled with loving kindness? May I be well, may I be peaceful and at ease may I be happy and you repeat those phrases over and over and it starts may I and then eventually if you've done it for a year or so you could start saying may we for your for your immediate family and then may amend as you build up the charge for your immediate family in another year or so you can spread it to your
Community and eventually after maybe five years you can do it for the planet.
So that's the Meta
Meta M ETA amazing loving kindness practice
and are there any particular links? Maybe you could pass us later and we could put in the captions. Maybe one that you've you've
learned it from Jack kornfield who's a Buddhist scholar and a brilliant teacher. Terrific.
What do you think meditation is allowed you afforded you.
As well as what it's helped you avoid in terms of a daily practice or maybe in just how doing it once in awhile has whipped out into areas of your life. This is probably a long list of things. But if you were to pick maybe like the top three where you go, yeah when I'm meditating regularly blank happens and blank doesn't happen and when I'm
not
Those things cuz I've been doing it for such a long time. It's so part and parcel of who I am that without. I don't know who I would be without it that said I don't always do it, but I don't have at this point. I don't have to always do it to be in this Zone where I've been, you know for almost
You know 45 years. It's been a big part of my life. So.
A great deal of the benefits have are in me. Now when I practice it gets Amplified but as Maharishi described it every time he meditate is like making a deposit in a bank. So it's always there every time you do it. It's your building a base. And the goal of the practice is less about the practice. It's about the practice is to change the way you are in the world.
So it's a practice for life.
Do you know what I'm saying? Like the changes that come in the meditation are to help your reactions in the real world
in some ways not to trivialize it but it's like physical exercise, you know during the good work out. Your blood pressure is really elevated your secreting all sorts of inflammatory cytokines, you know, if we were to draw your blood mid-workout you'd say this person is in trouble. Yeah, but then all these wonderful adaptations occur that allow you to sleep better better.
Food walk up stairs easily and on and on
it's funny about sleeping better this one day. I was walking on the beach.
And my headphones on wired headphones and I was listening to a podcast. I can't remember when I was listening to but I was listening to a podcast and someone flagged me and interrupted me who I didn't know and went over to talk to him and he said I heard you talking about Steve Martin on a podcast and and he told me story about Steve Martin that he got to see him in 1979. I would say this person was probably
Midst mid to late 60s and he was wearing all black. He was wearing shoes on the beach tennis shoes. He was wearing dark sunglasses and a hat.
and
He said just want to talk about comedy and things that he heard me Santa podcast and we talked about it for a while. And then he said something about he loves podcasting. He listens to him at night because he's got terrible insomnia and he can't sleep and I'm looking at a guy in the sun wearing sunglasses and I say well, you know, the reason you can't sleep is because you're wearing sunglasses now said what are you talking about? I said, well the way the the human body works is we react to the sun. The sun is what tells us we're awake.
And then at night when it's dark that's what tells us to go to sleep. So you're mixing the signals to your body by wearing the sunglasses.
And he said well, I'm a dermatologist and you know, I've been a dumb. He said he was a dermatologist for last 40 years.
And my whole practice is about getting people to get out of the Sun.
And and I say we start talking about it and he was all covered up. I was wearing my my board shorts and nothing else and and I said, well, I'm in the sun, you know hours every day and and I was like, aren't you worried about cancer? And I said no, I feel pretty healthy. I feel okay, and then he said, let me see your back and I turned around and he looked at my back. He's like you have perfect skin that they
Study you in a Institute I said.
This is what normal is. This is what normal healthy skin looks like if you expose it to the Sun and he said so you're saying everything. I've been teaching in my in my medical practice for the last 40 years was wrong said yes everything it was funny funny
conversation. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean we could go down a deep rabbit hole with this but you know listeners of this podcast will know that I'm you know, very much a proponent of getting those sunlight signals to the eyes.
At least once a day in the morning, but also in the evening the US I'll just share with you. Now. I learned from a guest whose episode we haven't aired yet that the what is so special about that morning and evening sunlight are the contrast between blues and oranges blues and reds blues and Pink's that we can't always see if there's cloud cover but they come through and it's the mathematical difference in their presence of subtraction of a lot of blue in the next to it a lot of
Or enjoy a lot of blue in the next to it a lot of pink that triggers the body's understanding that this is morning and evening and that night is coming in the evening and that stone be awaken in the morning and throughout the day in the middle of the day when the sun is out and it's overhead. It looks like white light and white light includes the blues and the oranges and the pinks and the Reds but they subtract 20 because they're all mixed together. That's why it looks just blue and white and so while bright light is great throughout
The day it's those morning signals. Now. The I think the Dermatology Community is starting to come online with the idea that low solar angle sunlight early and later in the day sun rising sun rising and sun setting and I say that because people always go. Oh, do you have to see across the Horizon that would be ideal But Rising and setting
Do not create the kind of skin damage or eye damage that they've been so concerned about and I think the next step for the field of Dermatology is going to be to start communicating with the neuro scientists and the Circadian biologists and and really learning that so thanks for bridging that gap on the beach this morning. I do think that's how it starts and then it works out headphones. So I made the choice of few years ago to stop using the Bluetooth headphones based on my personal experience, which was I kept getting these cysts.
Hi my ears, which I was told were lymph swellings have limped. They would actually drain lymph if they got big enough. It was there's really gross and kind of troubling. I stopped using them. I didn't get them. I started using them again. I start getting those lymph things and there was some significant heat effects as well. And I've interviewed a couple people including a neurosurgeon on the podcast about the level of EMS that come from them and they were not concerned others have spoken to are
CERN I'm going to try and balance out the conversation over time, but my feeling was look if there's any concern whatsoever. Why would I use them and I so I use the ones with wires? Yes, but use the ones with wires that are even one step further away from Wi-Fi transmitter
ones with air tubes that I use depending on what's going on. And those have no electrical. There's no electric near your head. It's just an air tube where the sound is.
This actual sound is traveling in the tubes two years.
I definitely sleep better with the phone out of the bedroom. Some people are now turning off their Wi-Fi at night. I think you and I are both really aligned in the sense that we've seen enough things come and go in the health space like disparaging remarks about lifting weights. Like that's just for bodybuilders and it now everybody
knows muscle-bound you right on
muscle-bound right now men and women elderly and young are encouraged to do resistance training yoga.
To be cast in this kind of Magic Carpet realm breathwork. All this stuff is become over time mainstream, but it's taken a very long time in the road has been choppy and sometimes my opinion really unfair to the to the practices and their value. I mean, these are zero cost practices in many cases that can really help people. And so when I look at something like sunscreen or or you know Bluetooth headphones or we're talking about some of these things. I wish I had a portal into the future where we look back and go
Like of course, of course. So what are your thoughts on just kind of Health and Wellness as you've observed it in the last 20 30 years. I mean you've been in this for a while. I mean you paid attention to mindfulness and mind-body stuff. You know, what are your
thoughts? I try to live in as natural way as possible. I try to eat as few processed foods as possible. Try to eat grass fed animals.
And I use hardly any products of any kind. You know, that that aren't just something that grows or lives on the planet.
There were a couple questions about this all last now, you lost a tremendous amount of weight. You look great, by the way. Thank you. Look super fit every time I see you you're in better and better shape. And
that's in that's your perception. It's not in fact the case finally hear your call,
except. I don't know when I see each time you I mean, you're extremely
Mobile you sleeping? Well, you have a robust life like, you know all the marks of health and vitality.
So I've heard you mentioned before that. You lost a significant amount of weight. How much
weight and how did you do it 135 pounds through a high protein?
Low calorie low carb diet
and that went against the convention at the time.
Well the person who suggested it was someone at UCLA. So it was a mainstream Doctor Who helped me with my weight loss. I had been a vegan at that time which was not mainstream then and it was very unhealthy, but I did that for 20 some odd years because I believed in the theory of it.
But it proved not to be healthy for me.
Do you think that different diets likely work for different people? Yes.
Said that not everyone necessarily should do what you did. No,
but I think most people would probably benefit from healthy red meat I'm saying that only because it's so vilified in our culture.
Yeah, I agree and I think the healthy piece is key there to non Factory farmed animals, which fortunately reasonably cost sources that are becoming more available.
Well, I'm going to start pulling from the list of questions by the way folks. There were more than a thousand questions in just the one third print out that I did
intimidating stack in front of
you the most notes I've ever put in front of me during a guest discussion here on the podcast and we are not going to ask you every question but I've organized them in as some sense of coherent order.
Did you organize them or did a i organized?
I organized them but that's a great opportunity to ask you one of the questions that came up several times which was what are your thoughts on AI and its ability to shape how music is made how Visual Arts are made? Are you one of these like scared of AI or do you Embrace new technology?
I don't know enough about it yet to talk about it. What I will say is what I find interesting about art is the point of view of the person making it and I don't know that AI has a point of view of it.
Own so I'm at and I don't know how interesting it would be a eyes point of view.
But I like people's points of view and what makes an artist a great artist to me is something about their point of view does something with to me
childhood a question for Rick Rubin was what activities did you find most enjoyable and easy to get lost in as a child. I love this question for you in
particular you doing was a big part of my life listening to music was a big part of my life playing guitar along with music can't really play but
The idea of playing along so didn't have to actually be good enough to play alongside didn't have that skill set, but I liked the experience of doing my best to play along with something. I was listening to and also magic learning like shuffling cards in front of a mirror and coin tricks and sleight of hand was just interesting to
me. Do you still do magic I do
Okay,
at the time that music took over my life. I had to choose between the two because both of them were full-time life Pursuits.
I went and saw Mentalist in New York this summer with my sister hace wind is his name ASI. First name last name wind every time I see him Mentalist, especially when I see Aussie, I've seen him twice it blows my mind. What are your thoughts on mentalists?
Asthma?
Favorite form of magic real most interesting because it it doesn't rely on props it right. It's it's it's pure.
It feels like pure magic, you know, if if you have a box and you pull something out of the box, there's probably something tricky about the box, but when someone can look at you and tell you what you're thinking.
It's just wild it's really wild. So I love
that.
After us he did his his act when we sued over turned to reality because it really does change the way you look at things after that for quite a while maybe forever. I asked him if he was willing to share if you just have one nugget of insight into how he does what he does with and of course, I wasn't expecting he was gonna give away the whole thing and he said a lot of it has to do with forming and erasing memories in people quickly, which sounds very
Kind of
dark and Misty really interesting. Yeah that maybe it's possible to erase memories people like made like maybe what we thought we saw we really didn't see her here. Wow, so I dig that description. Yeah. I'm going to bring him out here by the way, so we should all get together and love ya. I would look what I want to get him on the podcast. Okay a full ten percent of the questions for you. We're around writer's block sticking points.
This kind of thing like feeling stuck in the creative process. Now people didn't specify whether or not they were stuck at the beginning the middle of the end, but based on my read of all of these questions. I got the sense that people were feeling like there's something in them that they want access to they want to create but they don't know how to get past that initial stage as opposed to somebody who's like 90% done and they just can't finish the last 10%
What are your thoughts about these kinds of blocks and how to overcome them any experience you've had with them yourself and perhaps with working with other artists.
The first thought is to go past the idea of the block and think about what what is what's the cause of the block?
and the block is usually something like
It's either a personal I'm not good enough. It's it can be a confidence issue. I don't have anything to say.
or it could be a
Thinking about someone else nobody's going to like what I make.
Do you know what I'm saying? So it's either a self judgement or fear of outside judgment.
So if you're making something.
with a with a freedom of
this is something I'm making for myself for now. That's all it is.
It's a diary entry everything I make is a diary entry.
The beauty of a diary entry is I can write my diary entry.
And you can't tell me my diary entry wasn't good enough or that's not what I that's not what I experienced. Of course. It's what I experienced. Its. I'm writing a personal diary for myself you no one else can judge it. It is my experience of my life.
Everything we make can be that can be.
a personal
Reflection of who we are in that moment of time. It doesn't have to be the greatest you could ever do it doesn't have to have any expectation that it's going to change the world. It doesn't have to be this has to sell a certain number of copies for any reason. It doesn't have any of those things. All it is is I'm making this thing I'm making this thing for me and I want to do it to the best of my ability to where I feel good about it and where it's honest. It's
honest of where I'm at
And if you're living in this world of just being honest where you're at.
There's nothing blocking that did you know what I'm saying? There are no blocks. The blocks are all based on dealing with a different force or a different perception that is made up. You know, you make up this story and you're living the story. I'm in this block because I just can't do it. The reason you can't do it is because you're afraid someone else is not going to like it or you're there are no blocks is there's infinite.
Amount of information out there to work with because it doesn't it also doesn't stem from us. So we're vehicles for this information and it's coming through us all the time. So if you don't have an idea when you're sitting at your desk, if you go for a walk chances are you'll see something that'll spark something in you as a as a seed to take off from
that makes a lot of sense and
I had a thought while you were saying that one of the challenges that I have in completing work and getting into a good work Groove is that especially nowadays because of phones and so easy to communicate with other people. It's not that they interrupt me. It's that and this happened the other day. I set up my new office really nicely. I'm living in a very quiet place now. It's like almost completely silent.
Unless I'm playing music. It's really interesting for the coyote sometimes come around and start doing their thing at night, but completely silent and I realize I was having a hard time getting into a work Groove and I realized that I felt compelled to continue to reach out to people and then I realized as you just provided your answer to the last question that you know, there's probably something in me that has a bit of a fear of
Separation or abandonment from People based on my own experience and I feel very well supported by my friends and co-workers these days very very well supported. I mean a kind of Pinch Me place around that and but I realize now that what's happening in my mind is it's not a challenge of getting into the work. It's a fear that if I spend a couple hours really in that tight tunnel of creation that
There might not be anyone there when I exit it which is a crazy thought that's a crazy. But that's the anxiety and I only realized that now yeah, so thank you great. You know, I trust that you guys will be there when I when I exit the tunnel you Barry and when there's a deadline, I have no choice but to jump into that tunnel that that's actually what helps deadlines really helped me do deadlines help you do you like deadlines
deadlines? Don't help me at the beginning of a process. They can help at the end once the codes.
Been cracked usually when I start something. I have no idea what's going to be so it's a very open process in the beginning and if there's any sense of required timing that would undermine the freedom needed for it to be all that it could be but once the code is cracked and you know what it is and it's all there and you're just, you know, you're dealing with the fine points, then it can be really helpful to have a
deadline.
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A number of questions were sort of comments about what people believe your processes and one of the repeating themes there which I thought was interesting was it seems that Rick Rubin is comfortable with uncertainty and the unknown.
Yes. That is true. Yes, and no. Yes, I am comfortable with it because I accept that's the way things are.
That said when I start a new project, I always have anxiety because I'm uncertain of what's going to happen. And I want it to be good now. I know it won't be done until I feel good about it. So in that way there is no there's no real pressure. But I do still feel this anxiety of I wonder what's going to happen today. I hope it's good, you know.
When you've worked with musical artists, let's say how important is it to you to know what challenges maybe even what success is, but certainly what challenges they happen to be going through at that period of time put differently. Do you enjoy finding yourself playing therapist and guide and psychological / emotional mentor to artists who work with during the creative process or is that separate?
If they're going through something that's interfering with the work anything that gets in the way of the work is something worth discussing. Our Focus there together is to get the work done. Sometimes it ends up being more therapeutic to allow that to happen.
One of the questions that really stood out to me in this vast list of questions involved a quote from your last discussion on this podcast our last discussion on this podcast. So I'm going to read a little bit of it because it's a fairly long but I found this to be a really important question that we should get into in a bit more depth somebody. I don't know who said If you happen to talk to Rick happen to be talking to you ask him this for me in his book.
In the section on self-doubt Rick said quote one of the reasons so many great artists died of overdoses early in their lives because they use drugs to numb of very painful existence. The reason that is painful is the reason they became an artist in the first place. They're incredible sensitivity. If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all you're confronted with big feelings all the time.
These emotions can be confusing and overwhelming and overwhelming scuse me. So this goes on for some pages and then this person says and I think they're speaking for many people when they said this resonated with me personally and I wonder whether or not this is something that maybe you've experienced yourself or that you just notice about artist and similar situations and what sort of advice do you give the artists who work with in order to embrace those painful tones within them and
To meet them into great work.
I've definitely felt to myself. I'm unusually sensitive in the world. I'm wearing red glasses in here for a reason.
I live a very protected monk like life because simulation gets in the way.
Of my ability to be where I want to be. So I tend to stay away from things.
And it seems to be the case with many artists.
a desire for nurturing their internal life
And if the goal is to nurture our internal life it it invariably leads to sacrifices.
Did you spend a lot of time alone as a kid? I'm asking this guy did yeah, I was the only child and I spent most of my time alone
when you talk about controlling this amount and type of stimulation in your life to protect that inner landscape is that pertain to certain personality types even voice types? I've found it various times in my life. I love people but they're certain voices that just great on me and I can't be around them as can't be around them. They driving it brings out with
It just it's like cacophony inside. I just feel like I'm being asked to drink something that tastes awful does it does that
resonate I try to curate the people around me to be people. I want to have around me whatever that is, right? Whatever that
well you said you'd protect the inner landscape, but certainly you're not averse to high intensity stimulation last night. We went to the aew and by the way, thank you for taking me that was such an incredible experience. It was really fun. It was really funny.
me of early punk rock shows where I really the sum of my first punk rock shows where I went and just was like, oh my gosh, this is exciting and scary and I loved it and it felt loving to yes, which is also the community of punk rock that I observed and have been blessed to be a part of it's like it's like there's yeah there's aggression but there's also love and then there's romance and then there's also betrayal and there's all the elements but there's still a sense of like everyone wants to be here and
There's a sense of goodness behind it. All even though some of it was bloody and violent. Yes. So for you what what does wrestling allow you to feel in those high intensity
environments completely relaxes me because there are no Stakes, you know, nobody.
Everyone's working together in the show to protect each other. No one's trying to hurt anybody regardless of what the storyline is. It's like a ballet where there's a fight in the ballet. There's no
There's no actual aggression of people towards each other. It's just the opposite.
But you get to experience this wildly Dynamic exciting surreal theater piece.
Where people are doing these gymnastic and acrobatic things that are truly death-defying.
And it's fun in this the storylines absorb you in a way where you know, you never know. What's true. And what's not. Well, you know, we know wrestling's fake. We're told wrestling's fake, but there's something legitimate about it.
That seems to me more legitimate than anything else the most legitimate because it's the closest to what the world's actually like.
People don't always tell you what they really think and when someone tells you a story it might not really be the true story. They may even think they may be they may think they're telling you the real story and that might not be the real story. We don't know we know so little you know, we we experience something and then we make up a story to understand it ourselves.
And then forever more when we tell that story it was our version of an experience, but we don't know that's what happened. That was our take on it.
Wrestling is like that's what the real world is like.
Because we when you watch wrestling you never know. What's true. That's what if you watch the news like you watch wrestling and you never know. What's true. It's more it would be more accurate. Do you have a better sense of the world if you took it all in like it was pro wrestling.
I think we're in a place in human history where people are starting to feel that way about the media.
It's also why wrestling so popular, you know, it's more popular than it's ever been.
Yeah, that's interesting things like UFC
Go Gladiator, like octagon fights and wrestling are increasing in popularity. Despite the fact that supposedly were evolving. So I think it reflects something both primitive and evolved about the human brain. Yes, right primitive in the sense that yeah, there's some violence. It's physical that's down in the
hypothalamus as we'd say. No, it's scratches that pitch.
But they're actually protecting each other, you know, it's scratches that itch of seeing the Gladiators.
But it's like watching a movie. You know, it's not they're not really it's they're not really hurting each other. They get hurt but only because the things they're doing are so
crazy. I think in order to be able to thoroughly enjoy wrestling one has to be able to give up narrative distancing just a little bit right narrative distancing is this sense that this is a story it's a movie it's not real but there were moments like yesterday the jump off the top rope onto the guy who's splayed out on the ladder the ladder breaks. This was right in front of us.
It couldn't have felt good. No, he walked away. He seemed fine. Yeah wish but that and then there was a match between two women were a woman put a metal plate into her into the bottoms of her suit and then ran and jumped onto the other woman and you hit her with the metal plate in the middle plate kind of slipped out. She was walking around and everyone knew she had cheated because you're not supposed to use the metal plate, but so it's sort of exciting because she had done it.
Exciting because she'd gotten away with it and at the same time exciting and upsetting that the referee saw it but then didn't call it and say this is like Twitter acts. This is like life Instagram. This is like politics. This is like this is real life, right like seeing people get away with things is so frustrating we can feel they should have
yeah, that's all part of it. It's like it's a very accurate representation of the world love it.
I'm it's it's
Because I never would have thought I'd be hooked hooked. It's like archery and professional wrestling now. It's like moment of you busy guy in 24.
I'm going to come back to this very practical question and ask a different question first.
There are few comments in here that are just Priceless by the way. Someone want to point out that you're a Pisces and so is Einstein.
A couple of historical questions. I know you're not big on answering historical questions necessarily. Maybe you are but I can't help every time I see you asking a question about the Ramones or asking a question about Joe Strummer, but I like this question. First of all, it starts off. I love Rick Rubin. He's so fascinating. There are so many questions that start that way.
On the podcast that you did with Joe Rogan you talked about your experience with Johnny Cash and seeing him in a new light after doing interviews for a book about Johnny or something like that. The question this person asked was from your present view. What was the most impactful moment or moments from being with him and working with him or simply do you recall a moment working with Johnny Cash that you particularly enjoyed?
I enjoyed anytime I got spend time with them who was really Soulful serious.
shy
Quiet Man incredibly knowledgeable. He knew a great deal about history and add so much about music he knew every song he didn't he may not have known modern songs, but he knew the history of Music really well.
And there was just a humble honesty about him.
That came through I think that the strength of him as an artist was when he said words even if he didn't write the words if he told a story and words you believe that story.
So he had a credible gravitas.
And he was great because of who he was. It wasn't his ability as a singer. It wasn't his ability as a songwriter. Although he was a great songwriter and he was a great singer, but that's not why he was Johnny Cash who was Johnny Cash because of the human being
underneath and anything that that guy would have done.
We would be interested in because that's how much of a beam of light he was on the planet. It just happened to be music just happen to be missing.
I love that.
One question that came up a lot and I think I can understand why which is how does one convince themselves that what they're doing and working on is worth it and I think here we have to Define worth it because and we can find any number of ways, but I think this is a feeling that I hear people Express a lot. Like how do I know if I'm on the right path and I just want to remind your earlier answer that you're pretty comfortable with uncertainty.
This and the unknown and I think that's a rare
trait the question of worth. It is reliant on an outcome.
We don't make these things for an outcome.
It's not the mindset to make something great.
The outcome happens you're making the best thing you can make it's a it's a devotional practice. Whatever happens after that.
Happens and that part that happens after it is completely out of your control.
Putting any energy into that part that's out of your control to waste of time. All it is all it does is undermine your work your work is to make the best thing you can so any thought you have about outcome undermines the whole thing.
Let that one sink in I think that's so important for people to
hear and I'll say it's okay to think about outcome after you finish the thing you're making once you've made it then you can say hmm. What can I do to turn people on to this but in the making of it?
It's
premature.
Which brings my mind back to that diary entry like approach because when you do a diary entry if you lie to yourself, you're going to get a lot less out of it.
It's a ridiculous idea lying in your diary
entries it is. Well, it's so interesting because when you learn how to do really good science and I was fortunate to work with someone who was truly committed to the truth and accuracy. She's just say whenever there was a scandal published like someone fabricated data. She was like, this is so crazy like like why would
Get into science you be but if you want to make the whole purpose you'd be better off going to something else. So clearly they weren't those people who make up data were not in science for discovery of Truth as best. We can understand it. They were into it for something else. But it's the same way you do it you formulate it question, then I'll hypothesis and then you just go see what is and what isn't and then afterwards you decide. Well, is this a paper that send to a top journal or a mediocre Journal that you can't control the outcome. So it's very
similar exactly the same and it you
you'll see it in so many different aspects of Life Beyond art. It's I think one of the things that was interesting that came up in writing the book is it started being about art and I came to realize as I was putting the ideas together that it seems like regardless of what you do in life. If you follow these principles your life will probably improve you probably be a better husband or a better father or better whatever it is. It's
It seems like the art is an outgrowth of its why the subtitle is a way of being like you create yourself in a way in the world where the things that you make are tapped into something deep.
But that comes from you being tapped into something to eat. That's how it
works. So tapping into self grounding and self not thinking about outcome diary entry like approach to creating stuff.
Seems to be the
and I think one thing I'll say that they say tapping into self. It doesn't come from the self, but you have to tap into yourself because you're the vessel to allow it to come out.
Everything in the vessels coming from somewhere else.
It's not it's not your creation.
You're the
it's like you're the sculptor or the your the data and analysts. We are taking these things from different places that you've noticed some things that you've noticed some things that you don't know that you've noticed but you did, you know, that's how we learned. You know, we take in a lot of information that we don't even know we're taking in but the way we can take these data points that are inside of us that came from outside of us.
And create a constellation. That's what that's what the artists job is, but also that's what we all do all the time and to get better at it. It's getting more in tune with yourself and opening yourself to things outside of I'll say if you have a narrow belief system.
You'll have less information to to work with less data points. So being open minded and allowing surprise to be surprised.
holding all of your beliefs very
loosely
It's interesting because it the way you described this in from knowing you as well. It seems that this whole process is best served by having really good boundaries like not getting foggy about what's about you and what's about somebody else or about what other people want or the world wants but also having really good antenna and being able to see what's happening in the world. You can't be cloistered and like this no, but part of the creative process.
Kind of feels and looks like you're in it you're in a tunnel, but then you have to bring in from the outside. I mean the so it seems like making these two separate compartments that you can Bridge seems important and healthy. I mean here as you mentioned it's a way of being it's not just about creating things. That's also a healthy way to be in the world because if you're constantly getting pulled around by everything emotionally and things are upsetting you that's not good. But if you're just cut off from everything that's not good either.
Do you cultivate that way of being through these practices or do you think you've been there's something about the way you're wired that you started
off that way? It was natural to me. It feels natural to me and I'll tell you when I was younger. I thought I would live in New York City my whole life and there was a time when I felt like having that energy and noise around me felt good now, I feel best in the jungle or the forest. I didn't decide that I didn't decide.
What feels good, you know, it just happened.
See you clearly willing to update and adapt change your nutrition change your all the time City changes the way you feel new information
update.
Love it your scientist.
Well, I don't know anything again we start with I know nothing we all know nothing.
So if something sounds interesting worth trying I'll try it. See does it work does it not work? You know, I thought at one point in time, I thought veganism was a good idea. I was excited about it.
And I did it for a long time. I didn't get the results. I was hoping for I did have better health at much were self. I had you know, a tremendous amount of weight gain, and I was very ill through that diet, but I didn't my intentions were good.
How do you approach resistance especially resistance and other artists you work with, you know, presumably people hire you they want to work with you they do want to work with you, but I think what the
Sin is asking here is if somebody you're working with is stock like they're stuck. Do you ask them to think do you ask them to field you? Ask them to take a day off? Do you do a Dennis Rodman on them and send them to Vegas to party for a couple of days because that's what worked for Dennis. Do you leave them alone? Let them come to you. I think people are very curious about what those sorts of interactions are.
I think it's always a case-by-case situation. It really depends on the artist. It depends on the situation.
Relation and and usually by the time that we're working together.
Any resistance they had in the past has already been overcome. Usually we I'm together with someone who wear weave make a team with the idea of making the best thing we possibly can and we'll both do anything. We can to that thing to be the best. It can be we're past the
resistance. I know as you remain friends with a lot of the people you've worked with which is a great Testament to you and your work and who you are just want to mention that
Not always the case folks with other producer artist relationships. It's worth pointing out a practical question. But I think one that is worth asking is do you handle the finances around your work with artists you do you have someone else do like negotiations and all of that kind of honestly have no idea how it
works. I've no clue.
It's see everything seems to get done. But I have no idea in the inner workings of any of it. I try to I try to stay out of his much.
If it's not about making the beautiful thing in the moment, I don't really want to think about it too much. I don't want to be involved in that aspect
as they're sitting when I was visiting you this summer. We had a really delightful dinner conversation with one of your other guests. And at one point probably due to me frankly the conversation veered a bit into the business realm and I'll never forget you said in a very polite way that didn't feel dismissive at all, you said
Let's talk about art instead right like enough about business. Let's talk about art instead. And and in that moment, I don't remember that. Well, I gleaned a lot of gems from that visit. I wasn't there to study you. I was there to hang out with you, but I gleaned so many gems treading water in the pool. Some of the other practices will talk about but I remember that and I think about that in myself a lot in the morning, you know, the emails and things coming in and then I think my purpose in life at this point in my life is too.
Collect organize and disseminate health and science information. Yes, so that for me is Art in the sense and anything else feels kind of
so one else can do that. Right? Right. That's good that you have a particular gift and that you can take complicated scientific ideas and explain them in a way that all of us who are not scientists or not. Medical students can understand and it's really helpful and you do it in a
Kind and loving way where?
We get the sense that you care that we understand you explain it in a way that there's a hair in it that really speaks to us. So thank you for thank you for teaching us.
Thank you. Thanks for the words. That means a lot to me that is indeed what it is for me. I want people to know the information because I think it's so cool and so important and they need the information and it's not about me. It's not like they have to know. Yeah, and you did this morning for this guy on the beach. So I've he'll he'll see.
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Do you prefer the WWE or the aew Rick? I love them both.
I love pro wrestling for wrestling is great.
How often do you abandon an idea or project? Like is there a is there a pile of journals with crossed out ideas somewhat place in Rick
rubin's basement either there are many ideas that have not yet come to fruition, but I wouldn't say I've abandoned any.
they it seems like
The ideas have a time when they want to come to fruition and regardless of what I think I don't get to determine the calendar. The ideas come I can get excited about it. I can work on it and then hit a wall nothing else and nothing it just impenetrable and then they'll be another project that just sailing along easily and the universe is working to help support that idea. So I tend to work with are several balls in the air at once.
And I don't fight against.
If the universe is not helping a project I'm weary to fight with the universe.
How many projects are you working on right now? Or typically
it's impossible for me to even say there are so many there are so many ideas and some of them are in.
Idea phase and some of them are in mid, you know mid making stage and some of them are in the final, you know, final detail stage is always something happening. I'm always thinking about a lot of stuff and some of it is stuff that I get to share with the world, but some of it might be, you know, remodeling a space or I'm always thinking about some creative puzzle.
I
have to imagine that for you when the internet came to be that it must have been really exciting because like me you love foraging for information. I used to go to the library and Xerox copy papers and I loved looking through the stacks, but frankly, it was physically exhausting and time-consuming and financially it was hard for me at the time and then you'd always get those copies where I'd like the book crease it, you know obscured the the text closer to the to the spine of the book and you know, I love PubMed I mean like,
The world is at my fingertips. The world of research is at my fingertips my goodness. How do you feel about smartphones and the internet? I mean to you does that feel like a like a giant gift for your creative process or is it an inhibitor?
It's both, you know, I love that. All the information is at our fingertips.
and
sometimes having so much information is
it's hard to sort tell you quick a quick story, which was when the music streaming Revolution happened. I was really excited the idea that all of music is in my pocket now and I can listen to any any song any album from any point in my life where I get to hear about something and it's all accessible right now in this moment and I was thinking at that time I'm just going to DJ almond to do is DJ and I'm going to hit listen to anything I can think of
Excited about having heard of the talking heads. And while this isn't Talking Heads just how great that that freedom is to have everything at your fingertips. And when I came to learn very quickly as I don't want a DJ all day, I love that. I have the ability to DJ all day. I love that when there's something I want to hear I can find it, but I don't want to have to do the work of picking everything. I'm going to listen to I like being programmed to
And I like the discovery of somebody else playing something that I wasn't expecting and getting to enjoy that. So now I do more listening to either somebody's curated playlists or online radio stations, and I do less picking music to listen to but I never would have known that before because I was thought well if I could listen anything I want I want to listen what I want to listen to I didn't know that I didn't want to have to
I love the rare live versions and be Sighs and whatever Z sides that one can find on YouTube like the other day. You sent me just at random clip from I think it was a Japanese television show The Ramones opening up and Johnny opens up with
you allow mouth baby. You better shut up and then they died in allowed on. Yeah, and I it's the song I could have heard anywhere else, but it was the fact that it was shot from above that it was black and white and that he adds this little riff at the beginning you allow mouth baby, but shut up and then just dives into it that made it for me as a huge Ramones fan. I was like, yeah, like, you know thing I did that in my kitchen. Yeah, like I was so hyped because when you go and just listen to us,
Song that's recorded as part of an album. You're not going to get those additional pieces back in the day and still now if you went to a live show, you might see that and hear that never forget that but in that sense to me YouTube and the internet is like whoa, like it's this art Archive of gems that I would potentially have been there. Maybe was 17. I would have been 4 years old. Yeah, so, you know anyway, thanks for sending me that clip loved it because you know how much I love the Ramones but
Things like that. I just think got the Internet is just amazing. And so spectacular.
Yeah and the amount of lectures you could find on YouTuber unbelievable the greatest thinkers in the world. I want I don't want to say are on YouTube because they probably didn't post on YouTube, but their material is on YouTube and it's unbelievable, you know things from old films from the 50s and 60s. It's all on You Tube.
I've been listening a Bible interpretation on YouTube and there's just it's interesting.
Different interpretations and different perspectives. I would have never found these people. Most of them aren't Dennings, please. Yeah, they're so good. I'm trying to work through the Old Testament start to finish now as a learning and a practice and wow. Okay. So the question was are smartphones the chains that bind us and prevent our creativity, but I think you answered that. It's both a rocket ship to creativity and and
Anna and chains to the ground
and it's like all of the tools like the tools don't make or break your art. It's just it's another tool you can use it or
misuse it.
Someone wanted to know and I would like to know whether or not you have any recurring dreams and what are your thoughts on dreams and dreaming in general? Do you write down your dreams to spend time? I've thinking about them. I've gone through
phases of my life where everything down dreams. I'm not doing it right now. I think we can learn a lot from from writing our dreams. I tend not to analyze them in the moment, but I've noticed when I've kept a dream journal and looked at it years later.
These surreal things that made no sense were all saying the same thing and they were all very clear based on my life experience at that time. So it gives us Clues as to what's actually going on the way our subconscious is experiencing Our Lives. It's giving us. I don't know if I would call them pointers.
Reflections would maybe be better word
our mutual friend Paul Conte believes that the unconscious or subconscious has both used interchangeably is the supercomputer of the human brain that the misconception is that the forebrain which is involved in planning and context in anticipation of outcomes Etc. People think that's the supercomputer but that the supercomputer is the unconscious. That's Paul's belief. He stated that very clearly
On this podcast in elsewhere and he believes that in dreams. The unconscious mind is controlling more of the dialogue which makes a lot of sense but also that the unconscious mind is constantly trying to teach us things in the way that we learn best. So like my dreams for instance are all analogies because that's pretty much if people listen to me Doc on the podcast I often we use analogy and I'm very visual so present things to me in visual symbols. So Paul said in terms of
of dream interpretation that we would all be wise to think about how we learn best and our unconscious mind is trying to toss us things in dreams to explain things in the way that we learn
it makes sense and I would say also unconscious and our Instinct the way we Act instinctually is a reflection of our unconscious and as artists, that's a tapping into that.
The Instinct and the unconscious is where the great ideas are and then things that come from our intellectual selves are are much less. They have much less of a charge a much smaller
ideas. And I think the conscious mind and the intellectual mind as you're calling it are bound to outcome in a big way.
I'm going to inject a question of my own.
I'm fascinated by the way, you've discussed people's real underlying motivations and how that shapes their creative process. But also their career if you would be willing to talk a little bit about the story of Andrew Dice Clay. That's the story that to me captures it
best.
Andrew Dice Clay was a
comedian who told really offensive jokes and his audience loved him for it.
But the people who weren't his audience didn't really understand it and they vilified him.
And he became a comedian because he wanted people to love him. He didn't become a comedian to hurt anybody. He wanted to entertain people and while he was playing too, you know sold out Madison Square Gardens full of people.
Newspapers would write terrible things about him.
And it really got to him and he decided to change his artistic output to try to make the people who didn't like him like him.
and when he did that it undermined his whole gift and
it just it seemed like things fell apart. I think he's in a better place now. I haven't I haven't seen him in a while, but I think he's in a better place now and he's back to caring less about the reaction and in turn getting a better reaction because he's being pure in.
What he thinks is funny.
I liked him very much. In fact, I thought he did a spectacular job as playing. The female artists father in A Star is Born gently. Gagan Greg Cooper who
really good actor. He's great actor. Yeah. Well,
I really like the story about him because it encapsulates so much that if people can think about why they do what they do.
They're going to avoid pitfalls potentially. But how much time do you think people should spend introspecting about what makes them tick and why they want to entertain or make jokes or I don't think it's a one
size fits all I don't know that I can answer that question.
Is it true that ad-rock encourage you to give LL Cool J a
chance? Yes. That is true. I'd Rock heard the demo tape and insisted that I listen to it.
Well that
This is a kind of generic question. But I think it's good to put these in every once in a while. What is your advice to a starting comedian? You know, these are the sort of like this. I always think of these like, you know sophomore in high school kind of question, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad in some sense. That's what makes it such a great question. Like what would your advice be to a starting comedian
be true to yourself and not to listen to
anyone. There you go. It would be great book accepted be a very short book. Which would wear
Also make it very
great. Look what could be a blank book. You can just put all the things that you want to put in
it and I'm working on a book now and I'll tell you it's hard. By the way, I asked Rick for advice about book writing because I'm been trying to write this book for a while and he gave me this the following advice. So I'm injecting my own question. He said the sooner you can get to a complete draft that you're happy with or happy-ish with the better. The process will go so I'm working on getting that complete
draft.
Yeah, I would say don't Focus too much on any of the individual details until you have the whole thing down and then you can focus on all making everything better that you want to make better don't get bogged down in that at the expense of getting through the
project.
Your advice is really been helping me by the way. Great. I'm doing it like diary entries great and I've kept a diary for many years so that somewhat natural
tell me a little bit about your diary entries. How long how long is it diarrhea?
Sure. Yeah a diary entry is anywhere from like 128 handwritten pages single line spacing going back and forth between I usually start in all capitals and then switch over to cursive as I speed up. I've been doing that since
Josh since high school. I've got a drawer filled with them dated and everything and it's usually a process of just trying to get something out of my system that I feel is is like clogging me some frustration with the outside world, but sometimes like this morning, I journaled in the room before you showed up and I just was like think I was riding high off wrestling last night. I was marveling at how similar
Allure the great experiences of my life are now as they work to every other stage in my life in the sense that they give me this feeling of like, okay, like they're these gems and I'm of people you and others and
experiences and I'm finding them like I'm experiencing them and reminding myself that there are long periods in between those moments where things feel kind of like not empty certainly not empty but kind of frustrating in the sense that like, I'm busy and I'm dealing with a bunch of things and things don't feel smooth and but I've been through enough of these cycles that I just didn't really learn to enjoy the cycles and that was it and I think the last line in my entry
Something like you know, and you know, and I can't wait for more or something. So this morning is just a very positive entry but sometimes you know, I mean, they're definitely some tear-stained entries and they're definitely some entries were I'm just so pissed I can barely get the riding out but it's a process of like getting that stuff out. So then I can lean into the day.
Do you ever go back and look at them?
I did the other day because I record an episode on a very particular type of journaling that's supported by over 200 peer-reviewed studies, which is called expressive writing I can tell you about it. Yeah.
No greater about it. It's a process that was developed by James pennebaker who is a professor at University of Texas Austin and he had his students, right?
As part of an experiment for 15 minutes a day for just four days either consecutive days or a week apart, but about the same thing and the thing that they're supposed to write about is the most challenging upsetting or even traumatizing experience of their life and it shows that the data from over 200 studies show incredible positive shifts in Psychology physiology immune system function and ability to combat infections. I was so struck.
By the data from this work that I decided to dedicate a whole podcast episode to it. It'll probably be out by time this episode airs, but I haven't done that one yet. I'm going to do it. It's a little bit of a higher bar entry because it's like, okay. I'm going to hear that. The first day especially is pretty upsetting because you're purposely picking something really hard. But yeah, but most of the journaling I do is just kind of diary like here's what happened. Here's what's going on and
My biggest fear is that somebody would find them but in preparation for that episode about pennebaker, I went and looked at my journals and like what do I write about and I realized they're pretty autobiographical sometimes about troubling things. But never before had I written four times in a row about the exact
same thing interesting. Yeah. Yeah
pennebaker I think deserves a Nobel Prize if you look at the data on this compared to and I'm not disparaging prescription drugs per se but like ssris for depression. It's like at least as good a treatment.
It's like zero cost stuff, but it you know and on and on you don't want to be careful. I'll start giving the podcast again now.
There were a number of questions about quote-unquote entertainment and music industry. None of which unfortunately were particularly complimentary of quote the industry and I think this is something that comes up a lot because people
often focus on the marketing the personalities that may or may not be so pleasant at times. I'm sure there are a ton of pleasant Personalities in the industry to but the question is this
How do you deal with the these are their words and soul-crushing anti creative aspects of the entertainment industry and hold on to that sense of creativity and love for the work.
I'm just focused on the work. I don't think of myself as part of the entertainment industrial complex.
I just make the things I make and then there are other people who are good at figuring out how to sell them or get them into stores or get him onto
services.
Do you have a process of capturing ideas like you write them down? And the reason this question came up so many times I think is that a lot of people feel like it great ideas right upon waking or while driving or in the shower random times and they were wondering whether or not you have any way of collecting and curating your ideas prior to embarking on quote-unquote a
project.
I write them. I make notes in my phone. I do it all the time. I don't have a great way of doing it and sometimes I'll make a note and then come back to it later and have no idea what it
means. Do you make those notes by writing or by like voice memo
writing that said voice? Memo might be a something worth trying. I've never
tried that.
How do you view money in relationship to your work? Meaning? How do you place it in? The constellation of things related to a project you mentioned earlier you let other people do the negotiations, but
Money is just another form of energy. How do you place it in the Contour of what
you do? I don't I try not to think of it at all and I because I come from punk rock background, which is like a do-it-yourself background. It was always more about the idea and the execution of the idea with whatever you could use to do it. So if I didn't have enough to go to a professional recording studio, then I would find a friend who had a home recording.
Studio and record or whatever it was or borrowing a drum machine when I'm before I had a drum machine. I would always find ways to make the things I wanted to make and
I can't remember a time where a financial boundary got in the way of making something and I see it happening a lot around me and it
I think some people look at it as the money is what allows it to happen. And I think I just see it as the ideas would allow this to happen. And then the Ingenuity is figuring out how to do it with you know, by any means necessary just got to make it whatever the that version is. It may not be the dream version. But whatever version you can execute is the one for you to
make.
I can attest the fact I launched my podcast in my closet in Topanga Canyon. Yeah, which felt totally natural because I also come from the skateboarding punk rock thing where like wouldn't ever occur to me to like get a professional studio built. Like we're now we have this one built for us. But at the time like, of course you use a closet because you just need a black backdrop and you know, I think starting from there makes so much sense and you also realize in the minimalist approach, you know, anything added is just something added so you don't really know what
Need if you
start with a lot of stuff around
you. Yeah, it's it can just be a distraction. I'm friends with Darren Aronofsky whose great director and his first movie was called pie and he made it for practically no money and it was really well loved and then the next movie he made was also wildly successful and he made it for very little money and then he made this huge hundred million dollar movie and it wasn't it turned out not to be a success that movie and it was a case of we're having more money didn't
help him tell a story.
It's just one particular case and it's no rules to follow but there is something about making the version that you can make with the means that you have that adds something.
Real to the project that may be better than the one that has a lot of money thrown at it.
I'm laying that sink in around a lot of online tutorials for science have a lot of visuals but we knew we wanted to do YouTube but also just pure audio and it there's nothing more frustrating than somebody talking about something or somebody that you can't see because you're just listening to it and the visuals were really expensive to do right and in the end, I think if I firmly believe
In the classroom as well as via podcasting if people can hear something clearly enough and create an image in their own mind of how they would visualize it. Then it's in there for good. Whereas just having people look at a slide with a bunch of beautiful illustrations on it does nothing for retention of material. So I think the minimalist approach I think sometimes is really the best one. Maybe it's always the best one because it forces the better.
Ellucian like the in any case, I do realize I editorialize there folks. I entered the answering portion of the not just the question asking portion. Have you ever felt that something was too obscure for mainstream audience appeal to the point where you did not release it never tell us more
if I like something someone else. Maybe they'll like it. I don't know. How can I judge?
How can I judge every I've been told with every new thing that I've done it's a terrible idea and it won't work every single time. Really every single
time Geto Boys LL Cool J. Beastie Boys Slayer Adele every one of them Eminem everyone and every time
when I went from producing rap records to producing Slayer, you can't do that. You're you're a rap producer. It's going to be terrible. Don't do it or then Johnny.
Cash, you can't do that. You're a metal rap producer. You can't do that. It's going to be terrible. Don't do it.
Every single time still to this day.
Still to this day.
I was so excited when you launch tetragrammaton and it's going so well, I listen to every episode. I love the interviews. I've been fortunate to be on there twice. I think the second one is still hasn't been released yet, but I mentioned tetragrammaton because it just feels so you like the adder eat?
Which I talked about it during my intro but the ad reads are amazing. Like I listen to the ad reads over and over again because they're so clever and they don't know they put me in a state. I feel like I'm watching. I'm like I'm transported to as if I was like born in the 1940s. I'm listening to television for the first time. There's there's something there like there's really something there. It's it
came out of solving the problem. The problem was when I decided to do the podcast.
I'd even recorded the first several episodes friend of mine said well, you're going to have to if you want to have a ads on the show to support being able to do the show. Then you're going to have to read the ads. I said, I don't really feel comfortable reading as I don't think that's something I can do. Well I said I'm cool with the idea of only advertising products. I believe in or that I use because that's if I get to essentially promote something I'll do that with things that I use but I don't feel comfortable.
Bible reading it
And he's like, well, you have to it's going to be expected of you and it was just an opportunity. It was like a okay. I understand. It's expected of me. What can I do? That's true to me that add something, you know instead of it being less than how can I make it more than and it was just solving this problem of needing a way to have an advertisement that I didn't feel bad about and then in gotten
Inspired and had this idea and started making them and now they're my favorite thing in the podcast when it in many podcasts honestly when the ads come up, I forward through them when I as a listener on tetragrammaton, when when it commercial comes on, I always listen to them. It's so cool. It's like a it's a highlight and they make me smile.
Which is again, and again, I didn't set out to do that. I just was trying to solve a creative problem.
So sometimes the innovative ideas don't come when you're looking for an Innovative idea. It's just there's this slot to fill. This is the way it's normally done. I'm not comfortable doing it the normal way how else can we solve this problem and sometimes it doesn't just solve the problem, but it becomes an actual feature.
Yeah. There's something about that like solution seeking that
Is part of or at least is aligned with the creative process, right? Yeah, the ads are extraordinary. We're listening them in Italy. I'm like play that one again. I love the way the guys says the word shilajit. It says she legit or something like but in it, but I can't do the accent folks do it. Don't take what I just said is as evidence what the other like Australian accent that guy and the Chimes in the background says so good.
You don't drink alcohol, correct? Correct. Have you ever had a sip of alcohol I
had.
I drank alcohol once as part of a class experiment and had to mix all these drinks and taste them and it was a terrible experience but it was a it was a requirement in the class. I was
taking wow school was different back then. Yeah or that school was different. I think school was different. We used to prick our fingers and do our own blood tests in science
that they would never did it because I was always needle phobic but that was definitely something that was asked of us to
do you could never get
With that now in the high school classroom. The reason I asked about alcohols. First of all, I'm not the anti-alcohol Crusader, even though I did an episode about alcohol which discouraged many people from drinking more of it. But I think for a lot of people the idea of smoking cannabis drinking alcohol for them in their mind is synonymous with the creative process, especially music for a lot of reasons that people can imagine
No, I think it's remarkable and impressive and we're spending a few moments you sharing with us. You know, how is it that you were around all of that? You're clearly part of the part of the crew meaning you're part of the creative process presumably people offered you alcohol drugs Etc. But something in you seems like resistant to any kind of peer pressure and and as an adult that impressive but to think like, you know, like when
Sick 1516 sure, you know I sort of regret it. But yeah, I drank a had my experiences and then eventually stop that but most people are not good at like not drinking if they don't want to drink ever or just once from a high school class. What was the internal narrative in your mind when that stuff was around and what allowed you to
just say, I'm going to
belong here, but I'm not going to
do that. It's just was never interesting to me. And I think maybe it had to do with being an only child. I'd never being an only child I think made me less resistant to peer pressure because I felt more
Confident in who I was whatever that was just from being with my being with myself and not with other siblings. I'm guessing I don't know if that's right. But that's my first my first inclination is to guess that would be the case.
Also, I've always known what I like and known what I don't like and know there are things I want to try their things. I don't want to try and I feel very good about not doing something. I don't want to do I feel great about it.
Have you ever been curious about psychedelics given
that I'm very curious? I've never done it, but I'm very curious and I've been curious for a long time. They may be a time when I experiment
there are two psychedelics in particular that I find really interesting one is macro do psilocybin which I've done is part of
Clinical trial and my understanding is it reveals in a very intense and experiential way some component of the unconscious mind and allows for plasticity and rewiring of the brain that's permanent. If you come to some understanding through the so-called integration, it's not without its risks the other one. That's really interesting that I've been hearing more about and I have not tried and it carries some dangers is ibogaine, which is 22 hours long and people experience.
The world as normal with their eyes open, but when they close their eyes, they get a like high-resolution movie like version of Prior experiences, but they have agency within those movies. They can reshape their reactions is being used to treat PTSD and Veterans to great success. It has some cardiac risk associated with it. So and it's not legal in the United States. It's not being explored in clinical trials yet, but the state of Kentucky recently took
think it's 40 million dollars from the Oxycontin settlement and is putting it to ibogaine
research interesting. Yeah. So
those are the two that kind of spring to mind, you know kind of the classic psychedelic experience
also heard good things about MDMA, but I've never done
that. Yeah, I have done MDMA is part again as part of a therapeutic trial. It's a strong and pathogen the danger with MDMA. I think is that
If you don't stay in the eye mask or if you're listening to music or something, you can easily get anchored to some external queue and like see a plan to me like I love plants and spend the whole four to six hours thinking about your love of plants which might be valuable but I think the strong introspective work is best done with a therapist there and that you and the eye mask and occasionally leaving the eye mask and writing things down. So, you know, the reason I put that detail in there is that
The Psychedelic experience is very different with eyes open versus in the eye mask with a clinician there versus recreationally and it's not just about dangers versus safety. It's also about like it's a big investment and what one stands to get out of it. I think depends on how much introspection you're willing to do. We won't be doing it this afternoon.
There were at least a thousand questions about attention deficit and neuroticism people who feel like they can't organize themselves and I thought a lot about these questions and tried to distill them into a single question. And eventually I did and it's this for many people. They associate the creative process with disorganization. I think what's so striking about you is that you embody
The creative process but also a strong sense of organization around it.
Like nothing seems harebrained or like random or haphazard about anything that you do and yet for a lot of people who call themselves creatives. They'll say I'm a creative this that and you look at the space there in it's like chaos or their life is kind of chaos not all of them, but
It's what I'm saying making sense because I think why people Orient toward you and one of the reasons for your success with the creative process is that you are extremely organized but not to the point of being rigid.
You willing to embellish a little bit on that perception whether or not it's accurate
inaccurate say there's a part in the process early on where it is before it can get organized where it's free, and it's playful and it can be chaotic.
It's just not the it's a byproduct of whatever's happening. It's not it's good because it's chaotic and it's it just happens to be sometimes chaotic in that in that experiment in the beginning you were we really playing with this idea of having fun and creating stimulation and seeing how it makes us feel and we try a lot of we could try wacky things to get there. But then when it happens
Need to get that that feeling of like, oh, this is interesting. I haven't seen this before.
Then it gets more controlled.
But it starts in a very free place and I don't know if I would really use the word chaotic but it could be it certainly wouldn't be wrong. I would say more free would be the word free like no no expectation.
And total immersion in like an improvisation that you're participating in that can go wherever it wants to go and you're cool allowing it to go wherever it wants to go and sometimes when it goes somewhere dangerous, that's when it gets interesting. So the I can understand that that danger aspect. Maybe that's why I like pro wrestling. I don't know but there's something about when you get to this these edges where this is not.
everybody
it can get very
interesting.
speaking of
stuff that's not for everybody and that to some people might have been shocking. I remember hearing Geto Boys for the first time and I'm like, whoa, like they're taking certain things pretty far when you're working with an artist and they venture out into that place where things are like, maybe even a little shocking. What does that feeling for you internally? Like is it how do you distinguish between shock value for its own sake and something? That's really
Opening up a new creative Avenue or in sight. Like, how do you do you recall the first time you heard like Bushwick and those guys do their thing? Yeah. Well, what was your internal
narrative? I can't believe it. I can't believe what this thing. It's really pushing the boundaries of what anyone has said in this music for it had switch because the the original in originally and wrapped. There was a lot of boasting about themselves bragging.
And then we got to the message happened and there was some social commentary.
Then there was gangster rap.
and then the Geto Boys took a version of gangster rap and turned it into a horror rap, which was much more graphic than gangsta rap gangsta rap was talking about a
real life situation. Where's the Ghetto Boys took it into horror movie territory.
It was more fantasy.
But it seemed really scary at the time in the way that it you're scared at a great horror movie.
Do you like horror movies? I don't
do you like monster movies where you know, it's not real like it's impossible as opposed to horror movies where you know, it's you know, people getting killed by another human like stuff that could happen in the world versus, you know monsters and zombies and that kind of thing.
I don't think I really like either of them very much. I like things that make me feel good. I don't really like adrenaline. You know, I don't like to be
for some reason
in audio, I like something that makes me excited, but in visuals, I tend not to like things that make me excited.
Interesting
and you're able to kind of clean yourself of experiences easily ride. Like if it seems like if you listen to something that's really shocking you don't carry that shock to your sleep or to the next day. Like it doesn't
trouble you but a movie can can impact me like there was a movie called Melancholia that I saw years ago Lars von Trier movie and I thought it was very beautiful movie. But I was in a bad mood I would say for three months from the time I watch that movie on it just like did
Think to my brain that didn't feel good and it couldn't snap out of it.
It's punched in there. There are few movies that have done that to me the movie Blue Valentine, which is done really well, which is with a Ryan Gosling and someone else where it's a relationship. I won't explain what happens in the ark of the relationship, but it just like the movie Haunted me there's one scene where he's wearing a misfit shirt and I was like, ah like the and that's a particularly good scene where he's singing.
To her, but the rest of the movie just brings about such feelings of like just how hard life can be sometimes and how misguided people can be in relationship and it's interesting how movies can just kind of embed in us. It's not pleasant. I don't want to talk about it anymore. There were a number of questions asking about how you consume information in the world related to what's happening in the world. Where do you get your news from?
You know I talk about this a lot. How do we know what to trust these days did should we have ever trusted the news or is it less trustworthy now? Like, where do you get your information about what's happening in the world and stay abreast of like world affairs.
Honestly, I don't feel like I know anything about it, you know, I
I tend to look at it all like wrestling. So if the story's good, I might be more interested in the story, but I still don't hold much belief that that story is true.
Yeah. I don't know what to believe anymore.
I was asked to comment on a particularly well-known person who's not considered very Savory by a couple of news Avenues in the last couple of years and I don't know how people had in mind that I would have knowledge about this person and and I gave zero information to these news outlets and nonetheless that they they they didn't publish quotes for me, but they publish things that I know to be completely false and they know to be completely false. So I was just
Shocked by the fact that like in scientific publishing that would get you you'd lose your job you forever. Well at
one point in time, you would have lost your job now. I don't know if that's true if you lose your job because we see it happening a lot, right?
Yeah, it's wild.
Have you ever read anything about you? That's not true.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So based on that. Absolutely. I mean some of it is playful stuff like on Reddit and now they are flagged us play. They have a little flag that they can put as you know, comedic or something.
But oh sure. I mean things not just taken out of context but things like completely wrong like just like that. I don't even know where people get this stuff from I keep waiting for the thing that I'm going to see that says that I'm dead. Yeah now that that'll be the moment.
So based on that experience. Why would you believe anything you read about anyone else you get to see firsthand that they're just stories just not
true and presumably you've seen things written about you that are not truly. All right. Absolutely, right?
And artists I know friends of mine. They write things about him. I know it's not true. Wild.
What do you think about the state of play and is the experience of being a parent and having a young child has that allowed you more opportunities for play and to see through the world through childlike lenses in Greater capacity or is it, you know,
just separate from the your creative process.
I would say I'm fairly childlike all the time. I try to stay as open the beauty of childhood is that you don't know you haven't been
indoctrinated yet
So you see things and you have wonder about them and it's a great feeling that feeling of wonder.
And now when someone I'll tell you story this is a true story. My friend Owen came over one night in the middle of the night and he had just seen luminescence in the water for the first time and he had didn't know what it was and thought he was having a mystical experience and he was so excited. Like you won't believe what happened to the ways were like there was the light everywhere was so cool. I never saw anything like it and I said, oh, yeah, that's
Luminescence and I explained what it was and it destroyed the magic for him.
He was really having a childlike magical experience and I destroyed it by telling them the science behind it.
I try to live in a world where I can experience what he experiences and I don't let be story ruin. What's I allow the possibility to go past what I'm told the story is but that things can be even wilder than the rational explanation.
For me learning the reductionist science behind something to meet adds depth and Beauty. But then again, I realize I'm I've been indoctrinated into the field of science. So
Matrix they call it but
Matrix, this is what I didn't understand but I'm going to assume that you understand because it has to do with people you've worked with if Rick had casually dropped at the Ramones named themselves after the fake last name Paul McCartney used to check into hotels during beatlemania. Would that have blown Andrews mind?
This is kind of weird question. I guess the question is is it true that the Ramones named themselves after the fake last name that Paul McCartney used to check into hotels during beatlemania.
I don't know that I don't know if that's a true story. I do know that Paul McCartney used the name Paul Ramon when checking into hotels, but I don't know if that's where the Ramones got the name got it
and here is how rumors turn into quote unquote facts on the internet. So
we had also.
Maybe the Paul Ramon story is not true either but that story I've
heard right that reminds me and I think this is an important case in point that there's a what I consider very famous photograph of you Johnny Cash Joe Strummer and Henry Rollins, you're wearing a dead Kennedy shirt. The four of you are facing one another and I love that photograph because of who's in it, and I remember hearing rare track from
Drummer in the Mescalero is called on the road to rock and roll.
And then for some reason probably because my phone is tapped into my brain.
I was served up a video on social media of Henry Rollins telling the story of that Gathering of the four of you where Rollins is describing the story of of Joe Strummer leaning into Johnny Cash and saying hey, I wrote a song for you. It goes on the road to rock. Okay, and I remember coming to you and saying Rick guess what remember that photo you like. I remember the photo I said, yeah Rollins has the story of what was happening in that moment. And I was so excited. And you said
You said yeah, I don't remember that. It might be true. It might be true, but it might be entirely made up also. Yeah, and we're not calling Henry a liar. But Henry I have I believe
I believe remembers that story and that was his experience. That was not my experience or I don't remember being my experience, but who knows anything could have been set?
It's true. Anything could have been said like it had as much to do the fact that I don't remember has as much to do with whatever I was thinking about when that happened and the story that Henry told had as much to do with what was going on in Henry's head when it happened. We have no idea.
You know, it's we have
no idea. Do you remember somebody shooting the photograph? I do not I'll put a link to that photograph on the Internet. It's a really incredible Gathering
of I've seen the photo but I don't remember it being
shown. I'm looking for a high-resolution version of that photo if anyone can find me one. I'll be happy to compensate you well.
there were a lot of questions about your daily routine people love this the morning routine the daily routine and while I
Have to believe that everybody is necessary routine is quite different from the next if you wouldn't mind just giving us a sense of like the first couple hours of your day what that typically looks like when you're like not traveling in your settled into to a place.
It's different depending on the place that I'm in but typically it involves waking up going out into the Sun as naked as possible to start the day.
I try to take it slowly wake up slowly.
and
Probably within an hour of that. I'll leave the house and go for as long as it Beach Walk is possible or if I'm in a place where there's a gym several days a week. I'll go to the gym instead. But some I'll do some activity. I would say about an hour after waking up. Sometimes it's an hour and a half. Sometimes it's less depending on the place. I'm at I also might do stretching before I go on the walk and do just several stretches on yoga mats on the floor.
Were with foam rollers or balls or some different things?
I don't start my day until those things are out of the way. I try to avoid any work-related anything now that's that said if a thought comes up that I'm excited about. I'll note it I won't avoid thoughts, but I tend not to engage in any work until probably 11:00 11:00 a.m. Would be the soonest and in end some days not until 1:00.
and then I do focused work until
maybe six
and then I spend the rest of the night.
Trying to wind down out of work mode.
So 1 p.m. To 6 p.m. Or really the peak probably
wouldn't work hours could be 11 to look today. We started here at 11 and that felt like I felt like I'd be good by 11 and I already did my my morning walk. I had the argument on the beach. I was in the sun. I was in the hot tub had a whole whole morning already. And then
what is your evening wind down look like in terms of the space that you're
And we're trying to create and your internal landscape.
Well, it's only red light. I'm usually wearing is from the time the sun sets. I'm wearing red glasses. I'm in a space with only red light.
I'm
99% of the time home with my family
and we talked I might watch wrestling or a documentary with red glasses on.
We eat dinner together or we eat dinner in shifts depending on how it's working, but we're all we're all together.
And I find something to occupy my mind that gets me out of the work day that said sometimes the idea still flow and I'll know them but I avoid I avoid any kind of a work phone call or anything. That's stimulating or that will get me thinking about it.
I aim for Sunset and then I'm usually in bed.
I'm usually in bed by 10.
And and fall asleep within 15 minutes
your relationship to light as fascinating the sunlight piece makes a lot of sense and will make sense to the listeners this podcast. We haven't done too many episodes and but we will do more that covers the trying to avoid bright light exposure in the evening you're wearing the red lens glasses now, even though it's the middle of the day, that's because we've got these bright lights around us, correct and have you
found that limiting your bright artificial light exposure in the evening has benefited you and in what ways
lutely and once you've done it once you've changed and avoid like looking at screens or might, you know, my phone turns red at night when I see someone else's phone if someone comes to visit and their phone lights up at night, it's blinding
And it's so disturbing and for them that's normal there in this heightened blown out place all the time. I'm staying at neutral. I'm staying at the the more natural.
How the world would be if man didn't create all of these these loud things. Yeah, how'd a loud loud devices?
I've switched my phone thanks to your input and we will have released a clip on this by time this episode airs on the triple click approach to the phone that you can put in very easily to allow it to go from regular screen to read screen at night so that you don't have to go into the
Xiaomi just triple-click will provide a link to that explanation and Ric taught me that when I was over in Italy everyone in his home turned to me and said way your phone is so bright. You got to do the red light thing. I said, I don't know how and taught me that so it's a very useful trick. Have you noticed a difference since looking at huge positive difference? I sleep better. They're a great data now because of course I go then find the data that you know for shift workers people that have to be up at night working if they put them under red.
Light the amount of cortisol at that time is suppressed which is great as compared to when they're under bright artificial lights without red lens glasses or theran red lights. It's far more beneficial less cortisol. You want cortisol High early in the day viewing sunlight early in the day increase it by at least 50% then you want to taper off and on and on I heard something recently, which is going to make a lot of sense one thing that's
happened in the last 30 years, which may at least partially explain the Obesity crisis is that
Calories which are depleted of nutrients micronutrients are very cheap. Now. See they're very cheap to get calories, but they aren't nutritious calories in addition. There's been a change in lighting technology. So that blue light photons are very cheap. Like when I was a kid, they my parents is a turn off the lights. It's costing us all this money. Now, it's very cheap to keep the lights on in a home. The heat is a different story, but with respect so we have a
Of cheap photons. So I think of blue light as cheap photons not the good for you photons not nourishing photons. That's correct and consuming calories too often are at the wrong times a day we know is bad for you consuming photons in the wrong form of the wrong time of day bad for you. And I think those two things combined plus all the downstream - Cascades can largely explained the Obesity and then some sense Mental Health
crisis interesting. So just
there I edit or realized again. I realized that we're trying to shift the ratio of
two more Rick less Andrew, but you can't help him so he can't help himself and Rick indulges me. So actually there are a number of questions in here that ask me. You know, how is Rick helped you and I'm refraining from answering those because this is people want your answers for them. But I do all the things that Rick's referring to I'm not wearing red lens classes now, but I have changed a lot of my health practices and or sought out science to test whether or not some of the things that you've been doing for a while make sense and indeed in every case. They've made sense. I'm not just saying that because because you're here
You and I do a lot of the same
thing and we're interested and if it didn't work, we'd probably stop doing it eventually, right? So we're testing rice. Right
and I do believe that what starts out as crazy like Mike men sir stuff of low volume weight training with heavy weights. It works so much better than the high volumes. All that stuff is being shown to be true in these peer-reviewed trial. So, you know, that's the nature of science it often comes science often follows the practitioners by
many decades
You know, it doesn't get there first because it's a slower more iterative process. But some people need to see those clinical trials to feel comfortable doing something. I think the creative process is uniquely separated from academic science and academic scholarship in a way that I think has really benefited it. I mean, can you imagine if the Geto Boys had to get a degree in music theory in order to do what they do? They wouldn't be together was right or Slayer. They would not be slaves. Yeah or Public Enemy. Yes or Adele.
Business or Eminem right? It's almost by virtue of the fact that there is no degree for that per se that allowed them to do what they did, right?
Yeah, absolutely.
So, what are your thoughts on schooling and higher education or just education? I mean you were at NYU when you launch your record label you graduated in what you do? What are your thoughts on getting a quote unquote formal education?
It seems like an obsolete idea.
I think maybe there was a time where would have been helpful and maybe depending on the if the thing that you want to study?
Can only be learned in an institution maybe it would make sense. But I think the real world getting an internship or a finding the right mentor and going into the whatever. The thing is that you're interested in learning about learning from people who do it as opposed to
The the system I think.
I think might be a more better use of your time.
The creative process doesn't exist in a vacuum and relationships are a huge part of life. One thing that I've heard you say and that certainly I've been working to internalize this this idea that whatever relationships one has in their life romantic relationships are not married or not kids are not that
The ideal circumstance is where one's work is the most stressful part of their life. Yes. You tell us more about
that. Yeah, the home is the the safe place from which you can go out and be a warrior and do all these great things and these crazy things. You know, I have
I'm fearless when it comes to Art. I'm not felis when it comes to life.
Life is my relationships art is where we can do these crazy things and have fun and try extreme things and see what happens and it's a city that's a safe place to do that because it's it's just expression. It's not
The things we make don't have to represent who we are. They're just the things we make and that's a point of view. It's like this is interesting to me in this moment. Check it out. That's all it is may have a completely different feeling tomorrow was in a relationship. It's its long-term, hopefully and it says long term as its productive relationship where everybody is getting what they want from that relationship. Everybody's needs are being met and
Cares enough to meet each other's
needs.
I've always admired how rational you are about relationships and this notion that like if everybody isn't being honest, there's no relationship actually not it's a bad relationship, but there's actually no relationship
because if you if you
if someone's not telling the truth then
Each person is experiencing a different understanding of the world.
You're living in two different worlds.
So they're not there never actually together.
When you're experiencing a different world, so unless you can you don't have to agree. I'm not saying you have to agree on everything but you have to be truthful and saying this is how I see it and your partner is clear in yes. This is how I see it or no. This is how I see it.
You're on the same. You're on the same page even in even in disagreement, but it's real. It's you're being who each of you are being who you are for and with the other.
But if you're not opening yourself up in that way to your partner, you're in a different world. They have an idea of what's happening. It's completely different than what you have an idea of what's Happening. That's not that's not being together. No masks.
No.
No, it's the it's the same as what when you said earlier about lying in your diary.
You'd only be doing a disservice to yourself lying in a relationship would only be doing a disservice to
yourself.
Mike Ness of Social Distortion as a song called cheating at Solitaire which seems like an appropriate title Dimension right now lying in the diary cheating at Solitaire. Yeah. It's ridiculous
doesn't make any sense. No, you're not. You're not actually playing the game.
Do you know what I mean? If you're cheating at it, you're not actually playing the game. The whole point of the game is the game. If you cheat at it, you're not playing the game.
Do you have any must-read books for people? I'll throw one out Rick's book on the creative act a way of being but in addition to that book, what are some books that
You recommend to people for stimulating thought or for I don't know Health purposes or things that you found particularly beneficial in book form.
My favorite book about meditation is called wherever you go. There you are and I just got sent the 30th Anniversary Edition, which is completely Rewritten. I have not yet read the rear the Rewritten version, but I love the original version and I know the Rewritten version. I'm guessing the Rewritten version is just more refined and
Even
better such a great book. That book was given to me when I was about 14 and a half when I was released from a particularly uncomfortable nonviolent voluntary State of Affairs and one of the things that I remember about that book that helped me through so many years of life and I have to go back to is this mountain visualization
meditation
Being a mountain.
I don't know why it was so helpful. But goodness. Was it helpful for me
beautiful idea. It's a beautiful idea.
Yeah, I don't know why I thought of that just now but I'm gonna go back and read it. Do you think that there's
genetic Epi genetic family lineage stuff unrelated to genetics that leads us to create things that are really about like our ancestors. You know the for instance. Is it possible that
Let's take let's take Johnny Cash for instance or an artist. If you worked with more recently Chili Peppers that when they got together to make music that something from Anthony's Family line was being transmuted threw him into the songs. Is that happening? Do you think that we can work out and include things that are Generations far back enough that we don't we don't even really know what happened to them.
It's coming through in our
genes. I think it's certainly possible, but I don't think we can know and I don't think it's necessarily even helpful to know.
It just is one of those mysterious things. I don't think we know why we do many of the things we do and it's just another example of that and that's up possible Theory to explain why we do the things we do maybe but there may be another one. It may be UFOs are controlling us. I don't know. Do you know what I'm saying? It's it could be
anything.
There are people on the internet that thinks it's UFOs that are controlling.
I don't I wouldn't I wouldn't disagree with
that more and more evidence is coming out that you know that unidentified flying objects might might actually be a documented phenomenon by the US government. I haven't looked into it yet, but
I wouldn't be surprised
when you were on this podcast before and on several other podcast. You mentioned that you don't play music at least not.
Only you don't play an instrument that you have limited knowledge of how a soundboard works. So when you're listening to artists
Are you listening for something or you're staying open for something that you might hear like that that will trigger a certain state in you that you recognize
I'm open to just see what's happening. Like I feel what's I'll listen and recognize is this making me Lean Forward. Am I curious to see what's going to happen? Next is the thing that happens next different than what I thought was going to happen next that could be interesting. You know, I listen to a lot of music when it doesn't do what
Expected that's really interesting. Especially if it sounds good if it works, I'm just open to experiencing what it is and I'll say something funny about it, which is this this will sound mystical. I don't understand it. But often you can tell a lot about the piece of music you're going to listen to based on the first sound you hear like the first moment.
It's not about what note it is. It's not about what instrument it is. It's
Intention in the performance and that performance could even be a machine.
The way when something starts sometimes is this feeling of up this is going to be good. Just out of the Boom the downbeat.
can't explain it
reminds me of dating and you know within
half a nanosecond like this is going to be a fun night to be interesting night. This person's interesting or okay. This is not a night to continue right? I don't know there's something and it's not what said necessarily or even how it said just it's a it's a feeling.
I know that depending on how I'm feeling. I'll avoid listening critically to something from not feeling well if
I'm if I don't feel like I can be completely there and open.
I'll not listen.
I know.
I know I want to really be there for the thing that I'm listening to do you inform
people of like hey, I'm not here today. Like I'm I can't keep times. Yeah sometimes
As somebody who has never been part of the music production process, how long does it take like for an album? Like let's throw out an artist. You've worked with like you worked with Eminem. How long did that but you did some songs on that album or the whole
album did some songs.
So did he come in with those written and then you guys work together on those songs? How long was that a week a month a
day?
I think we were together for several weeks.
It's been long enough now that I can't remember the specifics, but there is no rule of how that works and sometimes things come together very quickly and album can be made in a weekend and some albums are years in the making when it's using the making it's rarely every day for years in the making it's usually more episodic but there is something both versions are very interesting and something that comes out almost fully formed very quickly.
Has particular energy and then something that's made over time.
Can have all of those individual moments all the changes that happen within you over that period of time those can all be reflected in be the difference between a daily diary journal and reading three months. It's different. There are two different things can't say one's better than the other. They're just two different things. So some projects are more like
A Year's diary and some are more like a weekend.
And same, you know, you watch a movie some movies the movie story takes place in 24 hours. And sometimes it's a person's lifetime one's not better than the other ones not a better method than the other it's whatever suits the work
speaking of your work with Eminem. But also with Jay-Z and with Beastie Boys and others you are featured in a number of the videos you show up in those videos whose decision was that and what are your thoughts on music?
As I remember when music videos first came out om TV era and just saying like this is so cool. I can see the artists see how they're dressed. I love the like the crazy Styles and all of that that accompany the music two questions one whose decision was it to be in the videos because producers often are not included in the
videos. It would always be the artist ask that would be the only reason I would be
there and to what are your thoughts on music videos and the idea that then it
Puts a very strong visual to the song. Whereas where they're not to be a video people could just imagine something based on what they're hearing and hearing alone.
There are two different. There are two different things. There's not a better or worse. There's sometimes where the video makes the song better and they're ours.
Often the case where the Poetry of the words if you close your eyes and listen to what the words are.
As a listener you get to participate in that in creating that world in your head. So sometimes photographs can tell us too much information. It's to Leading it limits the story to just this photograph photograph tells you much more than the words the words can be interpreted in many ways. And then we each get to have that experience. It's something in the book that I was
Cognizant dove in picking the words was never to be specific to the point of where the reader doesn't get to participate in this act. So it doesn't tell you what to think. It's an invitation to think it's an invitation to say Where am I in this?
What's my version of this? It's not about anyone else. It's about the reader and that was
it was over from the beginning that was always part of the
my understanding of what I thought would be the most helpful.
The cover certainly embodies that that it's not clear exactly what the cover design is quote unquote supposed to be it's
open to a new mutation interpreted as you wish and different people see different things.
Let's get current. What what are you working on now that you're excited about if you can
share let me see what I can can't share could be broad categories of things to look I'm working on a couple of documentary projects that I'm excited about.
And some albums that I've been working on overtime are coming out one is a credible singer guitar player named Marcus King his albums. About to come out. The gossip is a band that I made an album with 10 years ago, and we just made a new album or we made an album Maybe 18 months ago and that's coming out now.
Those are the first ones that come to
mind.
Is the documentary process fun for you and how do you approach that?
I watch a lot of documentaries to learn what I don't want to do.
I don't think I've been inspired. Well, maybe some cases where I get inspired by what I'm seeing but more often I see things and I say okay these documentaries all have this format so I know I don't want it to be this format.
It's more of a ruling out.
And it's fun to find new ways.
That reveal different information than the standard format allows interesting to me. I will see if anyone else cares
you having unique approach to podcasting. First of all, what are your criteria for who you invite on as a guest and second. What do you have in mind? When you sit down and podcast I have some ideas about how you're going to answer but I think it's important that
Not injecting that I think people are interested in this even if they don't want a podcast because I think it gets to the process of something that you're doing now and how you're doing it now.
Yeah, I didn't set out to do what I'm about to tell you. I didn't set out to do this, but it's something that after I started doing it. I came to realize it's an interesting thing and actually learned this from listening to your podcast who's actually Lexus
just with you and I was listening to the podcast and I know you know Lex and I know you guys are friends and both of you.
In addition to you talking Alec's you're talking to the audience and Lex in addition to talking to you talks to the audience. And the audience was a participant in your conversation and I realized that in at the tetragrammaton podcast. It's different than that. It's more of an intimate personal like the interview with you that hasn't come out yet. That was me.
Talking to you.
With no, I certainly didn't have any idea that anybody else was going to hear it other than yes, someone else is going to hear it. But that's not what this is. This is I was asking you the questions I was interested in and I wanted to learn as much as I could and if you said something either that I didn't understand I'd ask you to explain it or if you told me a story about something that sent me on a tangent that would I want to know more about this left side of what you said or the right side of what you said, I would ask but only
Following my own interests. So it has a an intimacy it turned into when I if I listen to a tetragrammaton podcast. It sounds like I'm overhearing a conversation.
personal conversation
and
it it has turned into parts of certain decisions. We've made like having there's music at the beginning and then you hear the guest more often than not is in the middle of a story and it's almost as if you've walked into a room and people are in this deep conversation and you just sitting on the side quietly and hearing this conversation and it's a real moment that's happening there.
And it's just different. I can't say it's better can't say it's worse can't say I don't know. What what's interesting about it but something about it's interesting to me and when I listen to it, I feel a different kind of an intimacy.
And again, it wasn't premeditated. This is after the fact I'm looking back and understanding. Oh, this is what it is. This is why this is different.
Yeah, the
podcast that I did with you on your podcast when I was featured as a guest a second time. I completely forgot that we were podcasting. It was also good. We'd had a few days together overseas there. We're in a very kind of isolated environment that helped me get out of the mode of their
listeners. There's no there's no sense of performance involved. It's it couldn't be more casual and the reason
Chose not to film it is because the nature of lights and cameras.
Make it harder to forget that you're doing it.
So I aim for it to be as natural and experience.
So that you can have the conversation that you really would have if there were no lights and cameras. Not that not that we want to reveal anything. It's just it's a level of comfort and openness where you're talking to somebody like and it's you're enjoying the
conversation and that's so you I just have to share that you and the first time we met in person you and I had FaceTime to number of times previous to that. But the first time we met in person came over to your house, we ended up doing sauna and cold and
I was going through a particularly challenging time in my life. I mean it really just hit me square in the face and I remember saying Hey listen, I don't know we could talk about this but I just opened up about all of it. And that's the moment when like we would have become friends anyway, but that's where things really took off because I kept apologizing at the end. I found the so sorry and you said no. No, this is actually what we're supposed to do. And you know, I'm feel very grateful that we've remained close friends ever since and
that catalyzed a lot, but I think that
One of the things I love about podcasts not just podcasting but podcast is that the really effective podcast like yours like flexes like Rogan like Rich Roll.
Tim Ferriss they really reflect the love and passion that the person has for that kind of conversation. I mean I can certainly say this about my podcast that I've been learning organizing and distributing information since I was you know, you know six years old. So my podcast is just that you like real conversation and real things that are unburied by like the idea that maybe someone's going to listen and how will it work out just like we talked about earlier and you answered the questions.
Way and I think Lex likes Lexus form of thing and Joe's doing his form of thing. And I think that's to me one of the great gifts of podcasting if anyone wants to know how to create a successful podcast quote-unquote successful. It's have the kind of conversations and talk about the kinds of things. You really love like Cameron Haynes says this lift run shoot podcast where you go to his house you would do a work out then you go for a run and then he teaches you archery. And the reason it's so effective is that he loves lifting.
Running and shooting and then he's almost and he loves teaching people that so the end of the day you're sitting down talking about a great day that embodies everything that he's about and the person learned and like I couldn't do that podcast. I can go on as a guest and I loved being guess but I think that's the message and it brings us back to what you were talking about earlier and throughout today's discussion.
Just that if you're thinking about how it's going to land how the hell could it ever
work? Yeah. It's just a different thing. I had a conversation yesterday for the podcast with Daniel kuya who I've never met before incredible actor and beautiful human being and we probably talked for about three hours and it was a deep conversation and I feel like I might have a new best friend like he's unbelievable. The coolest guy wasn't doing the podcast. I don't know if I would have met him it just worked.
Doubt it worked out that I got to meet this incredible
person.
Well Rick, we covered most of the most frequently asked questions and you've been extremely gracious with your time and thoughtfulness and answering them and I don't know what to say except thank you for taking the time to do yet another podcast to answer the audience's questions. They were here in this podcast in the form of this very large stack of questions and
Of course, your book includes a lot of information that encapsulates this but I think this really flushes out some of the details of like how you go about things how certain things can't be the same for everybody and I think in answering these questions you provided a great service to people who are perhaps still struggling with getting the creative process going or flowing. I'm certain that it's going to change the way that I focus and lean into my day off.
At a number of different notes here and maybe I would be willing to share them with people but then that would go against the principle of this is for me and everyone is going to work it out their own way. So will provide links to everything that was mentioned where there's a link that's relevant. And and I want just want to say thank you so much for being such an incredible educator and such an incredible friend as
well. Thank you. It's a funny idea of being an educator. I can't imagine that but I appreciate the I appreciate those words
you are.
You are indeed an educator. We're learning so much from you and if you just step back for a second and think about all the creative works that have stemmed and are going to stem from the learnings that people have achieved from hearing your experience and wisdom. It's incalculable.
I'll take it. Thank you, sir.
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about protocols for creativity with the one and only Rick Rubin, please also be sure to check out the links in the show notes captions in particular to Rick's incredible book all about the creative process entitled the creative act a way of being if you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero cost way to support us in addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and apple and on both Spotify and apple you can leave us up.
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