Rick Rubin: Protocols to Access Creative Energy and Process
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I'm ander huberman and i'm a professor of neurobiology and opened ology at stanford school of medicine. My guess today is rick rubin.

Rick rubin is a world renown music producer, having worked with an enormous number of incredible artists producing, for instance, red hot chelly peppers, B T. Boys, J. E.

Johna, cash adell, lady gaga, tom petty and of course, slater. 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. Richard 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 comments section on youtube, and we received thousands of 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 refrained from speaking too much and try give as much airtime as possible to rack in order to directly answer your questions.

You notice that that today's discussion gets really into the practical aspects of the creative process. The most frequent questions that I received for rick 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 not they should take note of their dreams that set out.

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 Richard had public public. Before we begin, i'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at stanford.

IT is, however, 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 element.

Element is an electronic light drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of salt, magnesium and pattani um this so called electronic and no sugar. Now salt magnesium um in patasse are critical to the function of all the cells in your body, in particular to the function of your nerve cells, also called neurons.

In fact, in order for your neurons to function properly, all three electro lights need to be present in the proper ratios. And we now know that even slight reductions in electoral light concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits and cognitive and physical performance element contains a science back electronic ratio of one thousand milligrams, that one gram of sodium, two hundred milligrams of plastic and sixty milligrams of magnesium. I typically drink element first thing in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrates my body and make sure I have enough electrical lites.

And while I do any kind of physical training, and after physical training as well, especially if i've been sweating a lot, if you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element, that element dot com slash huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that drink element element t dot com slash huberman. Today's episode also brought to us by waking up, waking up as a meditation APP that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga ea cessions and nsd r non sleep depressed protocols.

I started using the waking up up a few years ago because even though i've been doing regular meditation since my teens and I start doing yoga edra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an APP turned out to be the waking up APP, which could teach you meditations of different durations, and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place to bringing body into different states, and that he liked IT very much. So I gave the waking up up a try, and I too found IT to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate. Other times I have longer to meditate.

And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states, depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the waking up up has lots of different types of yoga eda sessions, those you don't know. Yoga eza is a process of lying very still, but keeping an active mind is very different than most meditations.

And there is excEllent scientific data to show that yogananda and something similar to IT called non sleep deep breath or nsd r, can greatly restore levels of cognitive physical energy, even which is a short ten minute session. If you'd like to try the waking up up, you can go to waking up dot com slash huberman and access a free thirty day trial. Again, that's waking up dot com slash huberman to access a free thirty 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 mention that you have a breathing exercise of 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 in. The reason I started doing this is I have relatively low heart right variability.

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 techniques specifically for hearts rate variability. Then I went up.

So it's great. Test IT. great.

Let's to do IT together here, please. It'll say, take a be breath. And then when you'll hear the sound of a, if you follow me for the first thing and when next hill.

you'll know what sound means, what and you do the eyes close. Typically I do IT. I was close, okay, will close our. So thank you.

IT was five minutes like that feels nice was not, yeah.

I know his side don't spontaneously you breathe that cadences. I breathe quite a bit faster, so especially on the x tail. So once I got into a rythm of IT, yeah, the mind just goes, saudi, random for me. What about for you? Does your man tend to go one place?

I do. Now I can't. So the reason I knew was five minutes, because its six breaks per minute, and accounted five, one, one, one, two, one, three, one, four, one, five, one, six, two, one.

So I was occupied with a task. How often you do that at least once, and sometimes twice a day. I aim for ten minutes a day, but if I get to twenty minutes a day, it's noticeable in my heart. right? Variability, results.

Do you do the coherence breathing at a particular time of day, or just whenever IT ocurred to you?

I think IT depends on where I am and what else is going on in my life. So IT, there was, I had a window of a very specific thing that I was doing. I would do cohere and breathing. I would do squats, just air squats, and um in one location I didn't have any other equipment and and then I found a way like where I was doing treating water, which you ve got to experience with me, I would treat water. And then after treading water, I would get out of the cool, sit in the sun and do the coherence breathing.

great. We actually mention what the treating water was about because people will wonder very briefly. I when visit 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 podcast and listening and being entertained by podcast is awesome. And then treating water is awesome here. Much Better at treating water than I am.

I was fatigue. It's just as as I said when we were doing IT. It's it's um 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 runners can run up the stairs. It's you know, it's a particular thing in treading water if you just do IT in even in a little bit of time that we were doing IT every day by the end of your stay, IT was easier for you then when you started, definitely, but you actually make quickly.

Yeah, I was able to adapt. I was press that you're endurance in treating water early on, by the way, i've continued the treading water practice because unfortunate at a pool in my new place. Yeah, I listened to your podcast, truly tech her gramaw love IT love love love IT I listen to a few other podcast, and I ve started listening to more episodes of the podcast that you introduced me to.

which was history of rap music in five hundred .

songs .

and a some english podcast. Great podcast, real in depth information about music. Yes, yeah.

that was such a great trip. thanks. We're having me over there.

Things become and loves fun trading water.

IT was loved to the time with you and your family. So i'm like myself again.

You're always well .

on the topic of meditation. One of the questions in this list of questions will talk about the list itself in the moment um 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 the same Frances, go to new york or los Angeles to new york flight IT was either l .

to a new york in a new york to lay. I can't remember, and I may have done in with the ones.

The question specifically was, which meditation did you do? T. M.

T. M. Was the first meditation I learned, president dental meditation learn when I was fourteen. It's it's pretty much a default uh, setting for me. Now sometimes IT evolved from TM into breathing, like I might start by doing breathing before the TM peace starts.

And I and the breathing may just take the whole time, or IT may turn from breathing into a gratitude or a meta practice, which is four phrases, may I be filled with loving kindness? May I be well? May I be peaceful? And these? 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 you so you could start saying that we for for your immediate family and then may. And then 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.

That's the matter matter.

M A T T amazing .

loan kindness practice.

And are there any .

particular links maybe you could pass us later and we could put in the company, make one that .

you've I learned from Jackson field who's a buddy scholar and a brilliant teacher.

Now what do you think meditation is allowed you afford, did you as well as what has helped to you avoid in terms of a daily practice or um maybe in just how doing IT once in a while has worked out in the areas of your life is pretty 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 .

because .

have been doing IT for such a long time. It's so um part in parts of who I am that without I don't know who I would be without IT that said, I don't know we 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 been been no probe almost forty five years has been a big part of my life so a great deal of the benefits have are in me now when I practice IT is simplified but um as maharshis described that every time you 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 is about the practice is to change the way you are in the world so it's a practice for life. Do know i'm saying like the changes that come in the meditation are to help your reactions in the real world mean .

some ways not to trivialize IT, but it's like physical exercise. During a good work out, your blood pressure is really elevated, your secreting, all sorts of inflammatory side icons. You know, we were to draw your blood ID workout. You'd say, this person is in trouble, yeah. But then all these wonderful adaptations occur that allow you to sleep Better, Better mood, walk upstairs easily and on and on.

It's funny about sleeping Better. This morning I was walking on the beach and had 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. I said, I heard you talking about Steve Martin, a podcast, and and he told me story about Steve Martin that he got to see him in one thousand nine hundred and seventy nine.

I would say this person was probably mids midday late sixties and he was wearing all black he was wearing shoes on the beach tensor es whose ring dark sun glasses in a hat and um he said I just want talk about comedy and things that he heard me on a podcast and we talked about IT for a while and then he said something about he loves podcasting listen to him at night because he's got terrible in somalia he can sleep and i'm looking at a guy in the sun wearing sunglasses and I say, well, you know, the reason you can sleep is because you are in sun glasses. Now think, what do you talking about is simple. The way the the human party works is we react to the sun.

The sun is what tells us were 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, amendment ologies and yeah, i've been a done, he said, was a demodocus for less forty years and my whole practice is about getting people to get out of the sun and and I I we started talking about IT and he was all covered up I was wearing um my my board shorts and nothing else and and I said long in the sun you know hours every day and and as I aren't you worry about the cancer and I said, I feel pretty healthy I feel okay and then he said, let me see your back and I turned around he looked at my back. Is like you've perfect skin that they should study you in in uh in an institute I said this is what Normal this is what Normal healthy skin looks like if you expose IT to the sun and he says, you're saying everything i've been teaching in my in my a medical practice for last forty years was wrong said, yes, everything there is funny, funny conversation yeah.

it's interesting. I mean, we could go down a deep rab hole with this but listeners at this podcast will know that i'm very much a proponent of getting the sunlight signals to the eyes at least once today in the morning but also in the in the evening this is all share with you um now I learned from A A guest use episodes have an ardia that the what is so special about that morning and evening sunlight are the contrast between blues and oranges, blues and red, blue and pink that we can always see if this cloud cover but they come through and it's the mathematical difference in their precious attraction of a lot of blue in the next to IT, a lot of orange, a lot of blue in the next to a lot of pink, that trigger the body's understanding that this is morning and evening, and that night is coming in the evening, and that time to be awake in the morning and throughout the day.

In the dle of the day, when the sun is out and its overhead IT looks like White light and White lie, includes the blues and the oranges and the pinks and the reds, but that they attract as ero, because they are all mix together. That's why IT looks just blue and White. And so while bright lights great throughout the day, IT shows morning signals.

Now I think the german ology community is starting to come online with the idea that low solar angle sunlight early in, later in the day, sunshine, sunrising and some setting. And I say that because people always go, oh, do you have to see across the horizon that would be ideal. Rising and setting do not create the kind of skin damage or eye damage they've been so concerned about.

And I think the next step for the field of dramatic logy is going to be to start communicating with the neuroscientist in the circuit, an biologists in in really learning that the thanks for bridging that gap on the beach this morning. I I do think that's how IT starts and then IT weeks out headphones. So um I made the choice a few years ago to stop using the blue headphones based on my personal experience, which was I kept getting these sites behind my ears, which I was told where limb swelling of lymph, they would actually drain length if they got big enough.

If I was there was really gross and kind of troubling. I stopped using them. I didn't get them. I started using them again. I start getting those limp things in and there was some significant heat effects as well.

Um and i've been reviewed a couple people, including a neurosurgeon on the podcast about the level of E M S that come from them in. They were not concerned. Others have spoken to our concern, and i'm going to trying to 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, but use the ones with wires that are even one step further away from wifi transmit.

There are ones with air tubes that I used, depending on what's going on. And those have no electrical. There's no electric new your head. It's just an air tube with the sound is traveling. This actual sound is travelling in the tube two years.

I definitely sleep Better with the phone out of the bedroom. Some people are now turning off their wife. I at night. I think you and I are both really a line in a sense, that we've en enough things coming, go in the health space, like diverging reMarks about lifting weights, like that's just for body builders.

And now everybody, now.

men and women, elderly and Young, are encouraged to resistance training. Uh, you go is to be cast in this kind of magic carpet realm, breath work. All this stuff has become, over time, mainstream, but it's taken a very long time in the road, has been shopping in sometimes might in really unfair to the to the practices and in their value.

And these are zero costs practices in many cases, that can really help people. And so when I look at something like sunscreen or or you know bluto headphones or we're talking about some of these things, I wish I had a portal into the future where we look back. We think, of course, of course.

So what are your thoughts on just kind of i'm health and wellness, as you've observed in the last twenty thirty years? I am you've been in this for a while. I mean, you paid attention to mindful this and mind body stuff. yeah. What are you thought?

I I try to live in as natural way as possible. I try as few progress food as possible, try to grasped animals and and I used hardly any products of any kind, you know, that that aren't just something that grows or lives on the planet.

There were couple questions about this. All us. Now, um you lost a tremendous ont way. You look great, by the way, thank you. You look super fit every time I see you, you're in Better and Better shape um and ah that's that's .

in that's your perception is not in fact .

the case for you. I cept oh no when I see each time you I think you're extremely mobile. You you're sleeping value of a robust life, like, you know, know all the Marks of health and vitality. So i've heard you mention before that you lost a significant amount way, how much way, and how did you .

do hundred and thirty five 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 U. C, L. A. 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 twenty some ideas 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, so that not everyone necessarily should do what you did. No.

but I think most people would probably benefit from healthy read 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 farming animals, which fortunately reasonably cost sources that are becoming more available. Well, a minute start pulling from the list of questions. By the way, folks, they were more than a thousand questions in just the one third print out that I did timidity .

that in front the most note .

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 in some sense of a coherent order um did you .

organize them? Where did A I organize them?

I organized them. But that's a great opportunity to ask you one the questions that came up several times, which was what are your thoughts on A I and its ability to um shape how music is made, how visual arts are made? Are you one of these like scared of AI or due embraced new technology?

I don't know enough about yet to talk about IT. What I will say is 我， 我 i find the interesting about art is the point of view of the person making IT。 And I don't know that A I has a point of view of his own. So I don't know how interesting I 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. yeah. For you in particular.

Reading 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 I didn't have to actually be good enough to play along. I didn't have that skillset, but I like the experience of doing my best to play along with something I was listening to. And um also magic a learning like shufu cards in front of the mirror and. Coin tricks and slide of hand was just interesting to me.

Do you still do magic? I don't.

But at the time that music took over my life, I had to choose between the two because both of them more full time life pursuits.

I went, saw mentalists in new york this summer with my sister asi. Wind is his name, A S I first name, last name wind. Every time I see a mentalist, and especially when I see oc, i've seen him twice. IT blows my mind what your thoughts on mentalists as my favorite .

former magic really most interesting because IT IT doesn't rely on props. IT its 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 backs. 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 .

a ceded his his act um when we suda returned 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 and we just have one nuggets of insight into how he does what he does with and of course, I wasn't expecting he was gna give away the whole thing and he said, um a lot of IT has to do with forming and a racing memories in people quickly, which sounds very kind of darkness and yeah that maybe it's possible to race memories, even people like like maybe what we thought we saw. We really didn't see her here. So I dig that.

Yeah, i'm going to bringing him out here so we should all get together. Yeah, I want to get him on the podcast. okay. A full ten percent of the questions for you were around writers black sticking points, this kind of thing, like feeling stuck in the creative process. Now people didn't specify whether that they were stuck at the beginning, 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 someone is like your ninety percent done and they just can't finish the last ten percent. What are your thoughts about these kinds of blocks in how to overcome them? Um any experience you've had with them yourself and perhaps with are 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 black is usually something like it's either a personal, i'm not good enough if IT can be a confidence issue, I don't have anything to say, or IT could be a thinking about someone else. Nobody's gonna like what I make do do know him saying so it's either a self judgment or a fear of outside judgment.

So if you're making something. With the with the freedom of this is something I making form 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. I'm writing a personal diary for myself.

No one else can judge IT IT is my experience of 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 gna change the world. IT doesn't have to be this has to sell a certain number copies for any reason.

IT doesn't have any of those all IT is is i'm making this thing i'm making this thing for me and I I want to do to the best of my ability to where I feel good about IT and where it's honest. It's honest of where I met. And if you're living in this world of just being honest to you, you're at there's nothing blocking that.

Did you know i'm saying there are no, 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 gona like IT or you're there 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 where 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 to see something that i'll Spark something in you as a, as a seed to take off from.

That makes a lot of sense.

Had a thought while you .

were saying that one of the chAllenges that I have in completing work and getting into a good workgroup is that um especially nowaday because of phones and so easy to communicate with other people. It's not the day interrupt to me is that in this happen 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 on the sampling.

Music is really interesting. Or the coyote sometimes come around and start doing their thing at night, but completely silent. And I realized I was having a hard time getting into a work grove. And I realized that I felt compelled to continue to reach out to people.

And then I realized, as you just provided your answer, i'll ask 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 coworkers these days, very, very well supported. I mean, to pinch me place around that.

And but I realized now that what's happening in my mind is it's not a chance ge 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 exited, which is a crazy thought, a crazy, but that's the anxiety. 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 time and when there's a deadline, I have no choice but to jump in into that tunnel.

That that's actually what helps. Deadlines really helped me. Do deadlines help you? Do you like deadlines?

Deadlines help me at the beginning of the process. They can help at the end once the codes been cracked. Usually when I start something, I have no idea what it's gonna be. So it's a very open process in the beginning. And if there is any sense of required timing that would undermine the freedom needed for IT to be all that IT could be. But once the codes crack and you know what that is and it's all there and you just, you know you dealing with the fine points, then IT can be really helpful to have a deadline.

I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called A G one, is a vitamin, mineral, probiotic drink that covers all of your foundation tional nutritional needs. I've been taking athletic Greens since two thousand and twelve, so i'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast.

The reason I started taking athletic Greens, and the reason I still take athletic Greens once are usually twice a day, is that IT gets to be the probiotics that I need for good health. Our god is very important. It's populated by got microbiota communicate with the brain, the immune system and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediate and long term health.

And those probiotics and athletic Greens are optimal and vital for microbiology alth. In addition, athletics Greens contains a number of adaptations in vitamin minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met and IT tastes great. If you you like to try athletic Greens, you can go to athletic Greens dot com slash huberman, and they'll give you five free travel packs that make IT really easy to mix up athletic Greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, at sea, and they'll give you a year supply of vitamin d three k two.

Again, that's athletic Greenstock comes slash huberman en to get the five free travel packs in the year supply of vitamin d three k two. A number of questions were sort of comments about what people believe your process is. 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, not. yes. I am comfortable with IT because I accept that the way things are. That said, when I start a new project, I always have anxiety because i'm uncertain of what's going happen, and I wanted 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 is no real pressure, but I do still feel the anxiety of what I vendor's gonna en 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 is they happen to be going through at that period of time, put differently, due in finding yourself, playing therapies and guide in sycophant ical flash emotional mentoring to artist I 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 the work is something worth discussing. Our focus there together is to get the work done. Sometimes IT ends up being more therapist for 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, someone to read a little bit of IT tells its 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, happened 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 dive overdoses early in their lives because they use drugs to num a very painful existence. The reason that is painful is the reason they became an artist in the first place. The 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 in overwell, in overwhelming, excuse 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 resonate with me personally. And I wonder whether not this is something that maybe you've experiences yourself for, that you just notice about artists in similar situations. And what sort of advice do you give the artist you work with in order to embrace those painful tones within them and trance, move them into great work?

I've definitely felt in myself unusually sensitive in the world and wearing with glasses in here for a reason. I live a very protected monk like life, because simulation get in the way of my ability to be where I wanted be. So I tend to stay away from things.

And IT 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 IT invariably leads to sacrifices. Did you spend a lot of time alone as a kid?

I'm asking this. I did. yeah.

I was on the 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 in your landscape, that pertained to certain personality types, even voice types. I I found the first time in my life I love people, but um there there's certain voices that just great on me and I can be around them. I can be around them.

The driving IT brings out with IT IT just it's like a cocoon ony inside. I just feel like i'm being asked to drink something that taste awful. Does does that resonate?

I I try to curate the people around me to be people I want to have around me. Whatever that is, right?

Whatever that you said, you protect the inner landscape. But certainly you're not averse to high intensity stimulation. Last night we went to the A E W. And by the way, thank you for taking me. That was such an incredible experience.

IT was really found a reminding me of early punk rock shows where I really, some of my first punk rock shows where I went and just was like, oh my gosh, this is exciting and scary and I love IT and I felt loving too. Yes, which is also the community of puncture that I observed in have been blessed be a part of like it's like, yeah, there's aggression but there's also love and then there's romance and then there's also betrayal. There's all the elements but there's still a sense of like everyone wants to be here and that there's a sense of goodness behind at all even though some of IT was bloody and violent. Yes, so for you, what is restless allow you to feel in those high intensity environments .

completely relaxes me because there are no stakes, nobody. Everyone's working together in the show to protect each other. No one's trying to hurt anybody.

Regardless of what the story line is. It's like a ballet where there's a fight in the ballet. There's no there is no actual aggression of people towards each other.

It's just the opposite. But you get to experience this wildly dynamic, exciting, surreal, fiery ece, uh, where people are doing these uh gymnasts and acrobatic things that are truly determined and. It's fun in the the story lines absorb you in a way where, you know, you never know what's true and what's not.

But you know, we know restyling s fake or told reston's fake, but there's something legitimate about IT that seems to me more legitimate than anything else. The most legitimate because is the closest to what the worlds 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 maybe, 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, we, 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 of an experience, but we don't know that what happened that was our take on IT. Wrestling is like, that's what the real world is like because we when you watch restless, 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. You have a Better sense of the world. He took IT all in like IT was protestant.

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 resting so popular. You know, it's more popular than it's ever been.

Yeah it's interesting. Things like U F, C, cator, like octagon fights and rustling are increasing in popularity despite the fact that supposedly we're evolving. So I think IT would like like something both primitive and evolved about the human brain.

Yes, right? Primitive in the sense that yeah, there's some violence. It's physical. Let's down in the helper .

flowers as we say no, IT scratches that mitch, but they're actually protecting each other. You know, scratches that each 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 you're doing are so crazy.

I think in order to be able to thread enjoy wrestling, one has to be able to give up narrative distancing. Just a little bit right. Narrative distancing is the sense that this is a story, is a movie.

It's not real. But there were moments like yesterday that the jump off the top rope onto the guy who splayed out on the latter, the latter breaks. This was right in front of us.

IT couldn't have felt good. No, he walked away. He seemed fine. Ah is but that and then um there is a match between two women or a woman put a metal plate into her uh into the bottom of her suit, then ran and and jumped onto the other woman hund and hide with the medal plate and then the medal plate kind of slipped out which he was walking around and everyone knew he had cheered because you're not able to use the metal plate.

But so is sort of exciting because SHE, i'd done IT exciting because he had gotten away with IT and the same time exciting, upsetting that the referee saw IT but then didn't call IT. This is like twitter. X this is like, and this is like politics. This is like, this is my life, right? Like seeing people get away with things is so frustrating you feel they have .

yeah that's all part of IT. It's like it's a very um accurate representation .

of the world. Love IT. I'm it's it's weird because I never would have thought i'd be hugged and hugged like artery and professional wrestling now like one would be busy guy in 4。

I'm only come back to this very practical question and ask a different question first. There are few comments in here. There are just Priced whether way someone want to point out that your Prices.

And so as einstein. A couple of historical questions. I know you're not big on answering historical questions necessarily, maybe or but I can't help every time I see you asking a question about the remind or asking a question about jose drama.

But I like this question first of all, starts off, I love a rubin. He's so fascinating. There are so many questions .

that started that way .

on the podcast you did with joe rogan. You talk about your experience with john y. Cash and seeing him in a new light after doing interviews for a book about john y or something like that. Um 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 hnc cash that you particularly .

enjoyed I enjoying any time I got spend time with them, who was a really soulful, serious, shy. Quiet man, incredibly knowledgeable, you know, a great deal about history, and a 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 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 the story in words, you believe that story so he had A A credible gravitas and um he was great because of who he was. IT wasn't his ability as a singer. IT wasn't his ability as a song writer, although he was a great song ride and he was a great singer.

But that's not why he was john's cash. He was john's cash because of the human being underneath. And anything that that guy won't done. We would be interested in because that how much of a beam of light he was on the .

planet IT just .

happened to be music, just happened .

to be music of that one question that came up a lot. And I 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 that because and we can to find a 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 you're pretty comfortable with uncertainty, this and the unknown. And I think that's .

a rare trade. The question of worth IT is reliant and outcome. We don't make these things for outcome.

It's it's it's not the mindset to make something great. The outcome happens. You are making the best thing you can make a is a devotional practice.

Whatever happens after that happens in that part, that happens after IT is completely at your control, putting any energy into that part that at your control to waste time. All IT is, all IT does is under my new york, your workers, to make the best thing you can. So any thought you have about outcome undermines the whole thing.

Let that one sink in and got so important for people to here.

And i'll say it's OK to think about outcome after you finished the thing you're making once you've made IT that you can say him, what can I do to turn people onto this. But in the making habit, it's premature.

Which brings my mind back to the diary entry like approach. Because when you do a diary entry, if you lie to yourself, you're gna get a .

lot less out of IT. It's it's a ridiculous idea lying in your diene. Es.

well, it's so interesting is 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 used to say, whenever there was a scandal published like someone fabricated data, shoes like this is so crazy.

Like, like, why would you get in the science? You be bit, if you want to make, 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, that they were into IT for something else. But the same way you do, you formulate question, then our hypotheses, and then you just go see what is and what is. And then afterwards you decide, well, as this, a paper that sent to a top journal or a mediocre journal that you can control the outcome.

So it's very someone exactly the same and and IT, you'll see IT in so many different aspects of life beyond art. 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'd probably be a Better husband, or a Better father, or a Better whatever is. it's. IT seems like the 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 in something deep. But that comes from you being tapped into something that that how works.

So tapping into self, grounding itself, not thinking about outcome, diary entry like approach to creating stuff. IT seems to be there.

And I I think one thing out of savest, 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, your the.

It's like you're the sculptor or the you're the data an analyst. 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 notice but you did. That's how we earn.

We taking 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 artist 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 two 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 surprised to be surprised, holding all of your beliefs very loosely.

it's interesting because the way you describe this in from knowing you as well IT IT, seems that this whole process is best red by having really good boundaries, like not getting a foggy about what's about you and what's about somebody else, about what other people want or the world wants, but also having really good on ten. I am being able to see what's happening in the world. You can't be choisya in and like this.

no. But part of the creative process feels and looks like your ear in an ear in a tunnel, but then you have to bring in from the outside. I mean the um so IT seems like making these two separate compartments that you can bridge um seems important and healthy.

I mean, here as you mention, 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, 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 something about the way you're wired that you started off that he s natural to me.

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 fast. I didn't decide that. I didn't decide what feels good. Know if IT just happened.

So you're clearly willing to update in adapt, change your nutrition, change your city, change the way you feel .

new information, update.

love IT, your scientist.

But I don't know any of IT. 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 that 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 through this out. I was hoping for I didn't have Better health and much more health. I had been on a tremendous and 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 in other artists you work with? You know, personally, people hire you. They want to work with you that they do want to work with you.

But I think what the person is asking here is if somebody are working with is stock like they're stock, do you ask them to think? Do you ask them to feel? You ask them to take a day off.

Do you, uh, do a Dennis rod men on them and send them to vague to a party for a couple days because that's what for Dennis. Do you live in them alone? Let them come to you. I think people are very curious about what those sorts .

of interactions. I think it's case by this situation, the on the situation and and usually by the time that we're working together, any resistance they had in the past has already been overcome. Usually we are together with someone who where we've make a team with the idea of making the best thing we possibly can, and we will both do anything we can do that thing to be the best IT could be webcast. The resistance. I know he's miming friends .

of a lot of the people you've work with, which is a great testiment to you in your work and who you are just want to mention that that's not always the case. Folks with other producer artist relationships. Worth pointing out a practical question, but I think one that um is is worth asking is do you handle the finances around your work with artists you have someone else do .

like negotiations and all of that I have no clue to see everything seems to get done, but I have no idea inner workings of any of IT. I try to I try to stay out of as much um 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.

That aspect was interesting. When I was visiting you this summer, we had a really delightful dinner conversation with one of your other guests and at one point, proudly, 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 mean, a lot of James from that visit, I wasn't there to study you, I was there to hang out with you, but I clean so many James treating water in the pool. Some of the other practices will talk about, but 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 to collect, organize and disseminate health and science information. So that, for me, is art in this sense, and anything else feels kind .

of someone else can do that, someone else can do, you have a secular gift, and that you can take complicated scientific ideas and explain them in a way that all of us were 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 the way that there's A A carony 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 make. 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 I like they have to know and you did IT this morning for this guy on the beach so I he'll see the light pon intended. Do you prefer the W W E or the A W rick alone?

both. I love forestland protestant is great.

How often do abandoned an idea project? Like is there a is there a pile of journals with crossed out ideas somewhat place in?

Rick rubin say there are many ideas that have yet come to fruition, but I wouldn't serve abandon any IT seems like. The ideas have a time when they wanted 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 wall. Nothing else, and nothing is just in entrance.

And they'll be another project that just saying along easily. And the universe is working to help support that idea. So I tend to work with their several balls in the area once, and I don't fight against. If the universe is not helping a project, i'm wary to fight with the universe.

How many projects are you working on right now? Or typically.

like it's impossible for me even say there are so many there are so many ideas in some of them are in idea phase in some of the marine, did you know, mid making stage in some of the marine, the final, final detail stage is always something happening and always thinking about loud stuff. And some of IT is stuff that I get to share with the world, but some of them might be, you know, remodeling a space, or i'm always thinking about some creative puzzle.

Have, imagine that for you when the internet came to be that a must sonant really exciting, because, like me, you love fogging for information. And I used to go to the library and xiao copy papers, and I loved looking through the stacks, but Frankly was physically exhAusting in time consuming and financially IT was hard for me at the time. And then you always get those copies were like the book created.

No, i'm scared. The text closer to the to the spine of the book and you, I love puma. I mean, like the world at my fingertips, the world of research is at my fingertips. My goodness, how do you feel about smart phones and the internet? I mean, that to you, is that feel like a like a giant gift for your creative process or is IT an inhibitor?

It's it's both. You know, I love that all the information is that I think your tips 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 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.

I'm going to do is DJ, and i'm going to hit, listen to anything I can think of that. I'm excited about having heard the talking heads and while I listen the talking heads, just how great that that freedom is to have everything that you think your tips. And when I came to learn very quickly is I don't want to 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 claying, something that I wasn't expecting and getting to enjoy that.

So now I do more listening to either some boy's security 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 ticket.

I love the rare life versions and um besides and whatever these sides that one can find on youtube like the other day you sent me just at rand oma a clip for my thing I was a japanese television show the remains opening up um and john y opens up with you allow mouth baby you were shut up and then they died in a lot and I it's the song I could have heard anywhere else but IT was the fact that I was shot from above, that IT was black and White and that he adds a little river at the beginning you allow my baby shut up and then just dives into IT that made IT for me as a huge roman's fan.

I like, like, you know, thing I did that in my kitchen yeah, like I was so hived because when you go and just listen to a song that's record as part of an album, you're gonna get those additional pieces back in the day. And still, now if you want to a live show, you might see that and hear that and never forget that. But in that sense, to me, youtube win in the internet like, wow, like it's this of James that I potentially have been there maybe or seventy, I wouldn't.

Four years old, yes. So you know anyway, thanks for sending me that clip. Loved IT because you know how much I love the round but things like that. I just think that the inner net is just amazing against so spectacular yeah .

and the amount of lectures you could find on youtube are unbelievable the the greatest thinkers in the world, I I don't want to say our on youtube because they probably not post on youtube, but they're material is not youtube and it's unbelievable. You know things from old films from the fifties and sixties, it's all on youtube .

have been living a bible interpretation on youtube. And there's just it's interesting to hear different interpretations and different perspectives. I would have never found these people. Most of them are dealing, had there so good, trying to work through the old testament art to finish now as a as a learning in a practice and wow okay so the question was our smart phones, the chains that bind us and prevent our creativity um but I think you answer that is both A A rocket ship to creativity in a in chains to the ground yeah in its like all of .

the tools like the tools don't make or break your are it's just it's another tool you can use IT or miss IT someone wanted to know and I .

would like to know whether not you have any recurring dreams and what are your thoughts on dreams and dreaming in general? Do you write down your dreams?

Do you spend time are thinking about? I ve gone through phases of my life, britain 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 have noticed when you've kept a dream journal and looked at 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 um what's actually going on the way our subconscious is experiencing our lives.

It's giving us up. I don't know if I would call them pointers. Reflections would maybe a Better word.

Our mutual friend paul county believes that the unconscious or subconscious is both used interchangeably, is the supercomputer of the human brain, that the misconception is that the four brain, which is involved in planning and in context, in anticipation of outcomes, that said, a people think that the supercomputer, but that the supercomputer is the unconscious, that's polls belief. He stated that very clearly on this podcast and elsewhere.

And he believes that in dreams, the unconscious mind is controlling more of the dialogue, which makes a lot of sense here, 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 out on the park, I often we use an allergy and i'm very visual. So IT will present things to me in visual symbols. So paul said in terms 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 um explain things in the way that we learn he .

makes sense. An aly also unconscious. And our instinct, the way we act instinctly is a reflection of our unconscious.

And as artists that tapping into that the instinct in 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. They much small ideas.

I think the conscious mind and the intellectual mind, as you're calling IT, are bound to outcome in a big way. I'm an injected 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. Um if you would be willing to talk a little bit about the story of andred's clay that's the story that to me .

captures IT best. Andreas clay was A, A, A comedian who told really offensive jokes in his audience, loved him before IT. But the people who warrant his audience didn't really understand IT, and they vilify to him.

And he became a comedian because he wanted people to love him. He didn't become a comedian too hurt anybody. He wanted to entertain people.

And while he was playing to, you know, sold out medicine square gardens full of people, newspapers would write terrible things about him. And IT really that 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, he 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 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 and that I thought he did a spectacular job is playing um the female artist father in a star is borne laggan great .

cook is a really good at great .

actor well, I really liked the story about him because he in capitaine so much that if people can think about why they do what they do, they're gona avoid pitfalls um potentially but how much time do you think people should spend in respecting about what makes them taken, why they want to entertain or make jokes .

or I don't think it's a one size fits. I don't know that I can answer that question.

Is IT true that iraq engage you to give L.

L call jay a chance? Yes, that is true. Iraq heard the demo tape and insisted that .

I listen to IT of that. This is a kind of generic question, but I think it's good to put these in everyone in a while. What is your advice to a starting comedian?

I like this, like, you know, software in high school kind of question, but that doesn't still me. They're bad in some sense. That's what makes IT such a question. Like what wouldn't your advice speed to a starting media .

be true to yourself and not to listen to anyone?

There you go. IT would be a great book, except to be very short work.

but you didn't also make a very great. But what could be a blank book give me? You can just put all the things that you want to put in IT.

I'm working on a book now. I tell you it's hard. By the way, I asked rick for advice about book rating because i'm been generate this book for a while and he gave me this the following advice.

So i'm injected my own question. He said, the sooner you can get to a complete draft that you're happy with or are happy fish with, the Better the process will go. So i'm working on getting that complete after yeah.

I would say don't focus too much on any other individual details into do you have the whole thing down and then you can focus on all making everything Better that you wanted, make Better. Don't get bogged down in that at the expense of getting through the project.

Your advice has really been helping me, by the way, great. I'm doing IT like diary entries. great. And i've got a diary for many years, so that's somewhat natural.

Tell me a little bit about your diary entry. Is how long?

How long is a diary? sure. yeah. Diary entry is anywhere from like one to eight hundred written pages, single line spacing, going back and forth between asia.

Start all capitals and then switch over the curse of as I speed up. Been doing that since gushi in's high school. I've got draw filled with them, dated in everything. And um it's usually a process is just trying to get something out of my system that I feels is like clogging me some frustration the outside world but sometimes like this morning I journal in the room before you showed up and I just was like thing was riding high after restating last night, I was marveling at how similar the great experiences of my life are now as they were to every other stage of my life, in the sense that they give me this feeling of like, okay, like they're these James and and of people, you and others and experiences and i'm finding them like i'm experiencing them in reminding myself that there there are long hours in between those moments where things .

feel kind of like not empty.

certainly not empty, but but kind of frustrating the sense like busy and i'm dealing with a bunch of things and things don't feel smooth. And but i've been through enough these cycles that I just really learn to enjoy the cycles and that was IT. And and I think the last line in my entry was something like, you know, 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've mean there are definite some sustained entries and there are definitely some mentor's where I am just so pissed I can barely get the riding up. But it's 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 recorded episode on a very particular type of journey that supported by over two hundred peer reviewed studies, which is called expressive writing. I can tell you about IT, not. It's a process that was developed by James penneBaker, who is a professor, university of texas, Austin.

And he had his students right as part of an experiment for fifteen minutes a day, for just four days, either consecutive days or a week apart. But about the same thing in the thing that they're posed to write about is the most chAllenging, upsetting or even traumatizing experience of their life. And IT shows that the data from over two hundred study 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 have to get a whole podcast episode to IT probably be out by time um this episode is but um I haven't done that one yet. I'm onna do IT is a little bit of a higher bar entry because I like a commit. I hear that the first day especially is pretty upsetting because you're purposely picking something really hard.

Yeah, but most of the journal I do is just kind of diary, like, here's what happened, here's what's going on and my bigger fears that somebody would find them. But in preparation for that episode about panda Baker, I went, looked at my journals and like, what do I write about? And I realized there are pretty auditable graphical, 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 date on this compared to and i'm not disparaging prescription drugs pursue, but like sr s for depression, it's like at least as good a treatment thinking your cost stuff.

But you know and on and on, you don't want to be careful or start giving the podcast again. Now there were a number of questions about colton quote entertainment in 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 may not be so pleasant at times. I'm sure they're a pleasant personalities in the industry too. But the question is this, how do you deal with the these are their words, soul crushing, anti creative aspects of the entertainment industry and hold on to that sense of creativity in love for the work.

I'm just focused on the work. I don't think of myself as part of the the entertainment industrial complex. I just make the things I make. And then there are other people who are good at figuring out and sell them or get them into stores or get amount services.

Do you have a process of capturing ideas like you write them down? Um in the reason that question came up so many times, I think is that a lot of people feel like they have get great ideas right upon waking or while driving in the shower random times and they were wondering whether not you have any way of collecting and creating your ideas prior to embarking on coding court a project.

I I write them, I make note 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 i'm no idea what that means.

Do you make those notes by writing or by, like, voice memo riding?

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 placed in the conStellation of things related to a project? Imagine earlier, you let other people do the negotiations.

But money is just another form of energy. Um how do you place IT in in the control what you do? I I don't I .

try to think that at all. And I because I come from a puncture ft background, which was like to 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 professional recording studio, then I would find a friend who had homes recording studio in accord, or whatever IT was, were borrowing a drum machine.

When, before I had to drive machine, I would always find ways to make the things I wanted to make. And I I can't remember a time where a financial boundary got in the way making something. And I see that happening a lot around me.

And if I think some people look at IT as the money is what allows you to happen, and I think I just see IT as the ideas, what allows the tatan. And then the ingenuity is figuring out how to do IT with you 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 not test the fact that I launched my podcast in my classes into paying a canyon which felt told natural, because I also come from the the scape working punk rock thing where, like we would ever occurred me to get a professional studio built like we're now, we had this one built for us. But at the time, of course, you use a closet because you just need a black background. And I think starting from there makes so much sense.

And you also realize in the minimal alist approach, anything added is just something added. So you don't really know what you need. If you start with a lot of stuff around you.

yeah you can just be a distraction and friends with Diana, ana sky, who's a great director, and his first movie was cop 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 where 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 mean, that sinking 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 in IT. There's nothing more frustration than somebody talking about something or somebody that you can see because you're just listening to IT.

Um and the visuals were really expensive to do, right? And in the end, I think if P 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. We're as just having people look at a slide with with a bunch of beautifully illustrations on IT that does nothing for retention of material.

Um so I think the minimalist approaching sometimes is really the best one. Maybe it's always the best one because IT forces the Better solution. Like in any case, I do realized I editor realized their folks I entered the answering question of the, not just the question, asking question, have you ever felt that something was too obscure for mainstream audience? Appeal to the point where you did not release IT never tell. 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. Get to boys, L, L, cool, j, bc boys, slater.

adell, every one of them and everyone every time when I went from producing rap records to producing slayer. You can't do that. Your a reproducer.

It's gonna be terrible. Don't do IT. Or then john y cash.

You can do that. You're a medal rap producer. You can do that.

It's onna be terrible. Don't do IT every single time. Still to the day, still to this day.

I was so excited when you launched telegram. Atta is going so well. I listened to every episode. I love the interviews i've been fortunate to be on there twice. I think the second one is still has been released yet, but I mentioned teacher grammar because they just feels .

so you like the ads .

I talked about during my intro. But the address s are amazing, like I listened to the address, its over and over again because they're so clever and they I don't know, they put me in a state I feel like i'm watching, like i'm transport to as if I was like born in the one thousand and forties, i'm listening to television for the first time. There's there's something there like there's .

really something there IT came out of solving a problem.

The problem was a when I decided to do the podcast, I even recorded the first several episodes um a friend of man said, well, you're going to have to if you want to have ads on the show to support being able to do the show, then you're going to have to read the ads and I said I don't really feel comfortable reading as I don't think that something I can do well, I said i'm cool with the idea of only advertising products I believe in or that I used because that's if I get to essentially promote something, i'll do that with things that I use. But I will feel comfortable reading IT. And equally, you have to do.

It's gonna expected of you and IT was just an opportunity. He was like, a, okay, I understand, is expected to me. What can I do that's true to me.

That adds 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 I god inspired and have the idea and started making them.

And now they're my favorite thing in the podcast when when IT in many podcasts, honestly, when the ads come up, I forward through them. When I, as a listener on telegram ton, when when a commercial comes on, I always send to them it's so 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 the innovative ideas don't come when you're looking for an innovative idea. It's just there's this slap to fill. This is the way it's Normally done.

I'm not comfortable doing in 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 this line with a creative process right now yet either or extraordinary, we were listening them in italy. I'm like, play that one again. I love the way the guy says the word SHE logit. It's a silly get something like, but but I can do the accent, folks. Don't don't take what I just said as as evidence what I like.

Australian and the chance .

in the backers is so good. You don't drink alcohol, correct? correct. Have you ever had a simple alcohol?

Had I drank alcohol once as part of a classic experiment, and had to mix all these drinks and taste them? And IT was a terrible experience, but IT was IT was a requirement in the class.

I was taking what how school was different back then. Yeah, well, that school was different. I think school was different ways to prick our fingers and do our own blood side would .

that was always needle phobic, but that was definitely something that was asked of us to do.

Yeah, you could never get away with that now. yeah. In a high school classroom, there is not ask about alcoves for so well, not the entire alcohol crusader, even though I did episode alcohol, which discourage 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. I think it's remarkable and impressive and worth spending a few moments with you sharing with us how is that, that you are around all of that.

You're clearly part of the part of the crew, meaning you're part of the the creative process presumed ly people offered you alcohol drugs at sea, but something in new seems like resistant to any kind of peer pressure and and as an adult, that impressive. But to think I can like when I was fifteen, sixteen, sure, you know. So I regret that.

But yeah, I drank. I had my experiences and then eventually stopped 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 what was the internal narrative in your mind um when that stuff was around and what allowed you to just say i'm I belong here but i'm not onna do that IT just was never interesting .

to me and I think maybe had to do with being an only child. I i'd never being 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 doing with myself and not their siblings. I'm guessing I don't know 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. There are 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 psychodeviant? S.

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. There may be a time when I experiment yet.

There are two psychedelic in particular that I find really interesting. One is macro o Sullivan, which i've done as part of a clinical trial. And my understanding is that reveals in a very intensive, experiential way some component of the unconscious mind, any allows for plasticity and rewiring of the brain that's permanent.

If you come to some understanding through the so called the 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 um and Carries some dangerous as I began, which is twenty two hours long. And people experience that 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 as being used to treat P T, S, D.

In veterans to great success. Um IT has some cardiac isc associated with IT. So and it's not legal in the united not being explored in clinical trials yet. But the state of kentucky recently took, I think it's forty million dollars from the oxi content settlement and is putting IT to abstain research?

interesting. yeah.

So those are the two that kind of spring to mind. The count, the classic psychology .

experience. I also heard good things about M, D, M, A.

but i've never done that. Yeah, I have done M D, M, A as part again as part of therapeutic c trial is a strong in pathogen. The danger with md ma I think, is that um if you don't .

stay .

in that I mask or if you're listening to music or something, you can easily get anchor to some external q and like see a plant 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 inspective work um is best done with a therapies there you in the I M ask and occasionally leave you in the I M ask 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 eyes mask with a clinch their versus recreationally. And it's not just about dangerous VS 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 interest spectrum you're willing to do. We won't be doing at this afternoon, there were at least a thousand questions about attention deficit in neuroticism people who feel like they can't organize themselves. And I thought a lot about these questions and tried to still them into a single question, and eventually I did. And it's this for many people, they associate the creative process with disorganisation. I think what's so striking about you is that you embodies the creative process, but also a strong sense of organization .

around IT.

Like nothing seems hairbrained or like random or hap hazard about anything that you do. And yet, for a lot of people who call themselves creative theyll say i'm a creative with, is that you look at the space there in is like chaos. They or their life is kind of chaos, not all of them.

But is what i'm saying .

making sense. Because I think why people oriented told you and one of the reasons for your success with the creative process is that you're are extremely organized, but not to the point of being rigid. Be willing to embrace a little bit on that perception, whether not is accurate .

and actually 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 by product of whatever is happening. It's not it's good because it's sko tic and it's just happens to be sometimes chaotic.

C in that in that experiment in the beginning where we're really playing with this idea of having fun and creating stimulation and seeing how makes us feel, and we try a lot of we could try whacky things to get there. Um but then when that happens, when you get that that feeling of like all this is interesting, have seen this before, then IT gets more controlled, but IT starts in a very free place. And I don't know, I would really use the word chaotic, but IT could be IT certainly wouldn't be wrong.

I would seem more free would be the word free, like no um no expectation. A total immersion in like an impossible that you're participating in that can go whatever he wants to go and you're cool allowing IT to go whatever he wants to go. And sometimes when IT goes somewhere dangerous, that's when IT is interesting so that the I can understand that dangerous aspect. Maybe why I like protestant, I don't know, but there's something about when you get to this, these edges, where this is not for everybody, you can get very interesting speaking of stuff.

That's not for everybody and that to some people, might have been shocking.

I remember hearing getter boys for the first time and like, wow, 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 is that feeling for you internally? Like is that had you distinguished between shock value for its own sake and something that's really opening up a new creative avenue or insight? Like like how do you do you recall the first time you you heard like bushwork and those guys do their thing? yeah. What was your internal narrative?

I can't believe IT, I can't believe what they're saying. It's really pushing the boundaries of what anyone has said in this music before IT has switch because the the original in originally in rap, 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 gang's rap, and then the getter boys took a version of gangster rap and turned IT into horror rap, which was much more graphic than gangster rap. Gang's rap was talking about A A real life situation, was the getter boys took IT into higher movie territory. IT was more fantasy, but IT seemed really scary at the time in the way that you are scared. A great horn movie.

Do you like harm 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 um 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 .

think I don't think I really like either them very much. I like things that make me feel good. I don't really like a drinnan.

You know, I don't like to be excited for some reason. In audio, I like something that makes me excited. But in visuals, I tend not to like things .

that that makes me exact interesting. And you are able to kind of clean yourself of experiences easily, right? Like IT seems like if you listen to something, it's really shocking. You don't Carry that shocked to your sleep, but 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, last one trier movie, and I thought I was a 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 something to my brain that didn't feel good and I couldn't snap out of IT.

So there there are a few movies that have done that to me. The movie blue valentine, which has done really well, which is with a ryan gassin and someone else where it's a relationship. I want to explain what happens in the art of the relationship.

But IT, just like the movie haunted me. There's one seam where he's wearing a miss fit shirt and I I like and that's A A particularly good scene where he's singing to her. But the rest of the movie just brings about such feelings of life, just how hard life can be sometimes and how this guide people can be in relationship.

And it's interesting. Our movies can just kind of in bed in us. It's not pleasant. I want to talk about anymore.

There are a number of questions asking about how you consume information in the world related to what's happening in the world. Like, where do you get your news from uni? 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 abroad of like world affairs? I I .

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 stories is 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 is not considered very savery by a couple news avenues in the last couple of years, and I don't know how people had in mind that I would acknowledge about this person. And I gave a zero information to these news outlets, and nonetheless, they they didn't publish quotes for me, but they they publish things that I know to be completely false and they know to be completely false. So I I was just struck by the fact that, like in scientific publishing, that would get you you'd lose your job forever.

Well, at one point in time you would have lost your job. Now I don't know that 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 yes, absolutely.

I mean, some of IT is playful stuff like on redit. And now they flag as they have a little flag that they can put us comedically 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 if you will get this stuff from. I keep waiting for the thing i'm going to see that says that i'm dead. Yeah, that ll be the moment.

So based on that experience, why would you believe anything you read about anyone else? You get to see first, and that there are just stories, just not true.

Imprisonable ly, you've seen things written about you that are not true. right?

Absolutely right. And artist, I know friends of mine, the right 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 in having a Young child? Has that allowed you more opportunities for play and to see through the world through child like lenses in a greater capacity? Or is IT been just separate from the creative process?

I would say i'm fairly child like all the time. I try to stay as a open with the beauty of childhood is that you don't know you you haven't been inductions ated yet. So you you see things and you have wonder about them.

And it's a great feeling, that feeling of wonder. And now when so I i'll tell you story. This is A A true story.

My friend own came over one night, the middle the night, and he had just seen blue essence in the water for the first time, and he had didn't know what what IT was, and thought he was having a mystical experience. And he was so excited that you won't be what happened. The ways were like, there was light, everywhere was so cool.

I'd never said anything like IT. And I say, yeah, that's luminescence. And I explained what IT was. Any destroyed the magic for him? He was really having a child like magical experience. And I destroyed IT by telling them the science mind that 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 ads depth in beauty. But then again, I realised him i've been inducted onto into the the field of science. So matrix, they call IT the metrics. This is what I didn't understand, but i'm going to assume that you understand because he has to do with people you've worked with. If ricked casually drop that the romance named themselves after the fake last name palmer used to check into hotels during beetle mania with that of blown Andrews mind, kind of where your question, I guess the question is, is IT true that the romans named themselves after the fake last name that palma curtains used to check into hotels during beetle mania?

Um I don't know I don't know if that's a true story. I do know that paul marketa used the name paul remo when checking into hotels, but I don't know if that's where .

the romans got the name gone IT. And here is how rumors turn into code, code facts on the internet.

So we had also, maybe the palm mm 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 what I consider very famous photograph of you, john y. Cash, joe drum and Henry roland. You're wearing a dead Kennedy shirt. The four of you are facing one another. And I love that photograph because who's in IT and I remember hearing a rare track from sumer the mascula is called a on the road to rock and roll.

Um 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 rans telling the story of that gathering of the four of you where roles are describing the story of of those strummer leaning into john y. Cash said, here I wrote a song for you IT goes on the role iraq okay and I remember coming you and saying, rick, guess what? Remember that photo you like? I remember this photo.

I said, yeah, how Browns has the story of what was happening in that moment now? So excited and you said, he said, yeah, I don't remember that I might be true. IT might be true, but I might be entirely made up. Also, we're not calling Henry a liar. But Henry, I believe.

I believe hen remembers that story. And that was this 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 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. And henri said, when IT happened, we have no idea. You know, if we have no idea.

do you remember somebody shooting the photograph? I do know i'll put a link to that photograph on the area is a really incredible gathering of.

i've seen the photo, but I don't remember being i'm looking .

for a high resolution version in that photo of anyone can find me one else 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 well, I have to believe that everybody's necessary routines is quite different from the next. Um if you wouldn't mind just giving us a sense of like the first couple hours of your day with that typically looks like one year, like not travelling in your settlement to to a place it's .

different depending on the place that I mean. But typically this involves waking up, going out onto the sun as naked as possible to start the day. I try to tick slowly, wake up slowly.

And probably within an hour of that, i'll leave the house and go for as long as the beach walk as possible. Or if i'm in a place with there's a gym several days 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 just now on a half, sometimes is less depending on the place on at.

I also might do stretching before I go on the walk and do just several stretches on yoga. Mats on the floor or with former rollers or balls are 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 that said, if a thought comes up that i'm excited about unknown IT, I won't avoid thoughts, but I tend not to engage in any work until probably eleven o'clock. Eleven a would be the soonest and and some day's not until one o'clock. And then I do focused work until maybe six, and then i'd spent the rest of the night. Trying to wind down out of work mode.

So one P M to six P M are really the peak club could not working hours.

That could be eleven to today. We started to hear at eleven, and that felt like I felt like I D be gone by eleven. And I really did my my morning walk, had the argument on the beach. I I was in the sun, I was in hot tub. I had a whole home morning already.

And then what is your evening wine down look like in terms of the space that you're in, we're trying to create and your internal landscape?

Well, it's only red light um i'm usually ring is from the time sunset somewhere in red glasses and in a space with only red light. I'm ninety nine percent of the time home with my family and we talk. I might watch wrestling or documentary with red glasses on.

We eat dinner together or we eat dinner in shifts depending on how it's working. But all together. And I find something to occupy my mind that gets me out of the workday.

That said, sometimes the idea still flow and i'll note 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 using in bed by ten. And and falsely, within fifteen minutes.

your relationship to light is 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, but we will do more that covers the trying to avoid bright light exposure in the evening um you're wearing the red lens glasses now even though the middle 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 way lately? And once you've done IT, once you've changed and avoid like looking at screens or not, you know, my phone turns right at night when I see someone else. This 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. They're in this heightened blow out place all the time. I'm staying neutral. I'm staying at at the more natural. How how the world would be if man didn't create all these these loud things, you out loud.

loud devices. Yeah, i've switched my phone, thanks to your input. And we will have released a clip on this um by time. This episode here is on the triple click approach to the phone that you can put in very easily um to allow you to go from regular screen to red screen at night so that you don't have to go into the settings each show me just triple click will provide a link to that explanation. And rick told me that when I was over in italy, everyone in this home turned to me and said, way, your phone is so bright, you had to do the red light thing. I said, I don't know how taught me that it's a very useful trick.

Have you noticed a difference since .

looking a huge positive difference? I sleep Better. There are great data now, because, of course, I go then find the data that you 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 ARM, as compared to when they're under bright or official lights, without red lens glasses or the red light.

Its farmer beneficial less quarters all you want, quarters all high early in the day. Viewing sunlight early in the day increased by at least fifty percent. Then you wanted to tape or off and on and on. I heard something recently, which is gonna a lot of sense. One thing that happened in the last thirty years, which made at least partially explain the obesity crisis, is .

that calories.

which are depleted of nutrients, micro neutrinos are very cheap now. So they are very cheap p 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.

But when I was a kid that my parents, when I turn off the lives, 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 lot of cheap photons.

So I think of blue light as cheap photons, not the good for you. Photons not nourishing photons and consuming calories too often. Earth, the wrong times a day, we know, is bad for you.

Consuming photons in the wrong form at the wrong time a day, bad for you. And I think those two things combined, plus all the downstream negative cascades, can largely explain the obesity and in some sense, mental health crisis. And so just I editor realized again, I realized that were trying to shift the ratio to more rick.

less Andrew.

But he can help, can help himself and rick and indulgence me. So actually, there were a number of questions in here that asked me, know what powers rick helped to you? And I am fraying from answering those because this.

You want your answers for them. But I do all the things that ricks referring to. I'm not wearing red lens classes now, but I have changed a lot of my health practices and doors, sought out science to test whether not some of the things that you've been doing for a while make sense. In in, in every case, they've made sense. I'm not just saying that because because you're here, but you when I do a lot .

of the same thing, we we're interested. And if I didn't work, we'd probably stop doing IT eventually, right? Like good testing ranks.

right? And I do believe that what starts out is crazy, like mike manser stuff of low volume wait training with heavy weights. IT works so much Better than the high volumes.

All that stuff is being shown to be true in these few of you 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 is really benefited IT. And you imagine that if the getter boys had to get a degree in music theory in order to do what they do.

or they would not .

be slater yeah or public enemy or adell or M M. It's almost by virtue of the fact that there is no degree for that per say that allow them to do what they did, right? Yeah.

absolutely.

So what are your thoughts on schooling in higher education or just education? I mean, were at N. Y, U, when you launched your record label, you graduated in what your thoughts on getting a coding formal education.

IT seems like an obsolete idea. I think maybe there was a time where would have been helpful and may be depending on the if the thing that you wanted study can only be learned in an institution, maybe IT would make sense. But I think the real world, getting an internship or a um finding the right mentor and go going into the whatever the thing is that you're interested in learning about learning from people who do IT as supposed to the the system, I think I think might be more a Better use of your time.

The creative process doesn't exist in a vacuum. In 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 or not, that. The ideal circumstance is where one's work is the most stressful part of their life. Yes, tell us more about that.

Yeah the home is the um the safe place from which you can go out N B 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 fearless when 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 I said that's a safe place to do that because it's it's just expression.

It's not um 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 like this is interesting to me in this moment. Check IT out.

That's all IT is may have a completely different feeling tomorrow with the relationship. Its its long term, hopefully and it's it's as long term as it's a productive relationship where everybody y's getting what they want from that relationship. Everybody's needs are being met and everybody cares enough to meet each other other's needs.

I have always admired how rational you are about relationships in this notion that if everybody isn't being honest, there's no relationship actually yeah not it's a bad relationship, but there's actually .

no relationship now because if you if you if someone's not telling the truth, then each person is experiencing a different understanding of the world. They're living in two different worlds, so they're they're 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 will have to Green on everything, but you've to be truthful and saying this is how I see IT and your partners clearing. 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 even in disagreement.

But it's real. It's your 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 that'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 it's the same as when you said earlier about lying in your diary. You'd only be doing IT in service to yourself. Lying in a relationship would only be doing IT to service to yourself.

Magnets of social distortion as a song called cheating its solitary ir, which seems like an appropriate title to mention right now buying the diary.

cheating its solitary no ridiculous, does not make any sense. No, you not you're not actually playing the game, do you know? 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 um a way of being um 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 are things that you found particularly beneficial in book form.

My favorite book about meditation is called whether you go there you are and I just got sent the thirtieth anniversary edition, which is completely rewritten. I have not yet read 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 fourteen and a half, when I was released from a particularly uncomfortable nonvoluntary 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 I was so helpful, but goodness was IT helpful for me.

Beautiful idea. It's a beautiful idea.

Yeah, I don't know. I thought of that just now.

but i'm going to go back and read IT.

Do you think that there's genetic, epigenetic, family liniers stuff unrelated to genetics that leads us to create things that are really about like our ancestors? You know the for instance, um is IT possible that let's take let's take john's cash, for instance, or in other, say, if we work with more recently chili peppers, that when they got together to make music, that something from Anthony's family line was being transmuted through him into the songs, uh, is that happening? You think that we can work out and and include things that are generations far back enough that we don't we don't even really know what happened to them. I mean.

coming through in our genes, I think it's certainly possible, but I 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 and maybe UFO are controlling us. I don't know. Do you know them saying it's IT could be anything.

There are people on the internet that think is the UFO s that are controlling.

I I wouldn't I wouldn't disagree with that.

More and more evidence is coming out that you know that I identified flying objects. Might might. I should be a documented phenomenon by the U. S. government. I I haven't looked into IT yet.

but I went be surprised .

when you were on this podcast before. In on several other podcast, you mentioned that you don't play music, at least not routinely. You don't plan instrument, that you have limited knowledge of how a sound board works. So when you're listening to artists, are you listening for something or you staying open for something that you might hear like you that will trigger a certain state in you that you recognize?

I'm open to just see what's happening. Like I feel what I listen and recognize this is making me leaned forward. Am I curious to see what's gonna en next? Is the thing that happens? The next different thing? What I thought was gonna en next? That could be interesting. You know, I listen a lot of music.

When IT doesn't do, it's expected that's really interesting especially if IT sounds good if IT works um so i'm just open to experiencing what IT is and i'll say something funny about IT which is this sound mycal I don't understand IT but often you can tell what about the piece of music you're going to listen to based on the first sound you here like the first moment. It's not about what noted is. It's not about what instrument that is.

It's A. Intention in the performance. And that performance could even be a machine.

The way when something starts, sometimes this is feeling up of this is gonna good. Just out of them. Bomb the downbeat can explain IT reminds .

me of dating. And, you know, within half a ano second, like this gonna a fun night. Be interesting night this person's interesting or okay this is not a night to continue, right? I don't know something in in its not what said necessarily or even how IT said just it's a IT said feeling.

I know that depending on how i'm feeling, i'll avoid listening critically to something from not feeling. Well, if I, if I don't feel like I can be completely there and open out, not listen, I know, I know. I want to really be there for the thing that i'm listening to.

You inform people if I am not here today like I I .

can't yeah.

As somebody who has never been part of the music production process, how long does IT take like for an album like a little throughout an artist i've watched, like you watched them and them. How long did that? You did some songs on that album the whole out you did some songs.

So did he come in with those written? And then you guys worked together on those songs. Helen was at a week, a month, a day.

I think we were together for several weeks. It's been long enough now that I can remember the specifics, but there is no rule of how that works. And sometimes things come together very quickly and how can be made in the weekend. And some albums are years in the making. When it's used in the making, it's rarely every day for years in the making, it's usually more epithetic.

But there is something both versions are very interesting and is something that comes out almost fully formed very quickly, has particular energy and then something has made over time can have all of those individual moments, all the changes that happen within you over that period time. Those can all be reflected and be the difference between a daily diary journal and reading three months, it's different. They're two different things.

Can't say ones Better than the other. They're just two different things. So some projects are more like a year's diary and summer, more like a weekend and same. You know you watch a movie, some movies, the movie story takes place in twenty four hours and sometimes it's a person's lifetime once not Better than the one's not a Better method than the other. It's whatever suits the work.

Speaking of your work with them and them, but also with J, Z. And with bc boys and others, you are featured in a number of the videos. You show up in those videos.

Whose decision was that? And um what are your thoughts on music videos? I remember when music videos first came out. Mtv, just think like this is so I can see the artists, see how they dressed of 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, you would always be the artist.

and to what your thoughts on music videos, and the idea that then IT puts a very strong visual to the the song where as where they're not to be a video. People who just imagine something based on what they are hearing and hearing alone.

There are two different. They're two different things. There's not a Better, worse there. Sometimes where the video makes the song Better.

And there's 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 too leading IT limits the story to just this photograph.

The 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 is something in the book that I was cognition.

Dov, 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 are mine in this? What's my version of this is not about anyone else. It's about the reader that was. He was always from the beginning, that was always part of the my understanding of what I thought would be the most helpful.

The cover is certainly embodies that. That IT not clear exactly what the cover design is not supposed to be.

If the top into a rotation 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 share could be broad .

categories of things too working.

I'm working on a couple of documentary projects that i'm excited about and some albums that i've been working on over time are coming out. One is a credible singer guitar player in markets, king, his albums about to come out. The gossip is a ban that I made out. But with ten years ago and we just made a new album or we made an album maybe eighteen months ago, and that's coming out now. Does the first ones are 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. 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 I don't want you to be this format smaller, ruling out. And it's fun to find new ways that reveal different information than the standard format allows. Interesting than me, I will see if anyone else cares.

You have in a unique approach to podcasting. First of all, what you criteria for who you invite on as a guest. And second, what do you have in mind when you sit down in podcast? I have some ideas about how you're going the answer, but I think it's important that i'm not injected that I think people are interesting this even if they don't want a podcast because I think IT, IT gets to the process of something that you're doing now in how you're doing IT.

Now yeah, I didn't sit out to do what I about to tell you. I didn't set out to do this, but is something that after I started doing IT, I came to realize is it's an interesting thing and actually learn this from listening to your podcast IT was actually, lex is podcast with you, and I was listening the podcast. And I know you know lex and I know you guys are friends.

And both of you in addition to you talking the legs, you're talking to the audience and legs in addition to talking, you talks to the audience and the audience was a participant in your conversation. And I realize that in at the telegram ton podcast, it's different than that. It's more of an intimate personnel 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 gonna AR IT other then yes, someone else is gonna AR IT. But that's not what this is.

This is I was asking you to the questions I was interested in, and I wanted to learn as much as I could and if you said something you that I didn't understand that actually explain IT, or if you told me a story about something that sent me on a tenant 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's turned into when I if I listen to a telegram in podcast, IT sounds like i'm overhearing a conversation, a personal conversation. And IT IT has turned into parts of certain decisions we made like having there's music at the beginning and then you hear the guest more often than not is in the middle 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 in 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 say I don't know what what's interesting about IT, but something about is interesting to me. And when I listen to IT, I feel a different kind of an intimacy um 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 against the second time I 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 and a kind of isolated environment that helped me get out of the mode of their listeners.

Ah there's no there's no sense of performance involved. It's IT couldn't be more casual. And the reason I chose not to film in 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 a natural and experience so that you can have the conversation that you really would have if there were no lights and cameras. Not 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 enjoy the conversation and that so .

you I just have to share that. You know, the first time we met in person, you and I had face time the number of times previous to that. But the first time we met in person came over your house, we ended up doing sona and cold.

And I was going through a particularly chAllenging time in my life. I mean, IT could really just hit me square in the face. And I remember saying, hey, listen, I don't know we can talk about this, but I just opened up about all of IT and that's the moment went like we would have to become friends anyway.

But that's what things really took off because I kept apologizing at the end. I am so sorry you said, no, no, this is actually what we're supposed to do. You and, you know, feel very grateful that we've remain close friends ever since and that catalist ed 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 rural tim fires, they really reflect the love in action that the person has for that kind of conversation. I mean, I can certainly say this about my part. I i've been learning, organizing and distributing information since I was six years old.

So my pocket is just that. You you like real conversation and real things that are on barrier 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 that way. And I think likes, likes, likes this form of thing and joe doing his form of thing.

And I think that to me, one of the great gifts of podcast, if anyone wants to know how to create a successful podcast, quote and quote, successful. It's have the kind of conversations and talk about the kinds of things you really love, like Cameron. Hence, as this lift run shoot podcast, where you go to his house, you would do 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 and he loves teaching people that so at the end of the day, you're sitting down talking about a great day, that IT bodies, everything that he's about in in the personal world. And like I couldn't do that podcast, I can go on as a guest and I loved being guest, but I think that's the message. And IT brings us back to what your time on or earlier and throughout today's discussion, just that if you're thinking about how it's gonna land, how the help could have ever work.

yeah, it's just a different thing. I had a conversation yesterday for the podcast with Daniel colley, who have never met up for 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 cool sky for isn't doing the podcast. I don't know if I would have met him. I just worked out IT worked out that I got to meet this incredible person.

Well, we covered most of the most frequently asked questions, and you've been extremely gracious with you time in 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 audiences 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 but I think this really flushes out some of the 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 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. I've got a number 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's going to work IT out their own way. So we'll provide links to everything that was mentioned, where there is 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 educate. I can't imagine that, but I appreciate the appreciate this work.

So you are indeed an educator. We're learning so much from you. And and if you just step back for second and think about all the creative works that have stamped and are going to stamp from the learnings that people have achieved from hearing your experience in wisdom, it's inlcuded.

Wow, i'll take you. 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 shower. Note captions in particular to ricks incredible book, all about the creative process entitled the creative act, a way of being.

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