Rick Rubin: How to Access Your Creativity
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Welcome to the huberman lab podcast, where we discuss science and science space tools for everyday life. I manager huberman, and i'm a professor neuber logy, and opened ology at stanford school of medicine today. My guest is rick rubin. Rick rubin is credited with being one of the most creative and prolific music producers of all time.

The range of artists with whom he's worked with and discovered is absolutely staggering, ranging from artists such as l cool j public enemy, minor threat for goi, beste boys, jesus, mary, chain, jie, red hotch, Shelley, pepper's, metallic, Green day, tom petty, system of a down, joe drummer, kony, us, john, I cash, adele and many, many more. Not surprisingly, therefore, rick is considered someone of an enigma. That is, people want to know how IT is that one individual is able to extract the best creative artistry from so many different people in so many different generations of music.

Well, as today's discussion reveals, rick expertise in the creative process extends well beyond music. In fact, our conversion takes us into the realm of what the creative process is specifically and generally across domains, including music, of course, but also writing, film science, and essentially all domains in which new original thought, ideas and production of anything becomes important. Our conversation ventures from abstract themes such as what is creativity and where does IT stem from, to the more concrete, everyday tool based approaches to creativity, including those that wick himself uses and that he seen other people used to.

Great success that took us down some incredible avenues, ranging from discussion about the subconscious to how the subconscious interact with our conscious mind, and how the subconscious conscious mind interact with nature around us and within us. Indeed, our conversation got rather scientific at times, but all with an irony year to our understanding the practical tools that any and all of us can use in order to access the creative process. We also spend some time talking about rick's new book, which is all about creativity and ways to access creativity.

The title of the book is the creative act, a way of being, by rick rubin. This is a book that i've now read three times from cover to cover, and i'm now reading at a fourth time, because IT is so rich with wisdom and information that i'm applying in multiple domains of my life, not just my work, but my everyday life, I cannot recommend IT highly enough because an incredible ability to translate his understanding of the creative process in a way that is meaningful for anybody. So if you're in music, if you're a musician, IT will certainly be meaningful for you.

But IT is not about music. IT is about the creative process. And so whether or not you consider yourself somebody creative or not, or whether not you seek to be more creative, rick's book in today's conversation sheds light on what I believe to be the fundamental features of what makes us human beings, that is, what allows us, unlike other animals, to look out on the landscape around us, to examine our inner landscape, and to come up with truly novel ideas that thrill us, entertain us, entertain other people, scare us, make us laugh, make us cry.

All the things that make life rich are essentially contained in the creative process, and to be able to sit down and learn from the rick rubin how the creative process emerges in him and his observations about how I can best emerging others is and was truly a gift. So i'm excited to share his knowledge with you today. One thing that you're quickly come to notice about today's conversation is that rick is incredibly generous with his knowledge about the creative process.

In fact, he very graciously and spontaneously I should offered to answer your questions about creativity. So if you have questions about the creative process for rick, please put those in the comment section on youtube. And in order to make those questions a bit easier for me to find, please put question for rick rubin in capitals, then Colin or dash, whatever you choose, and then put your question there.

I do ask that you keep the questions relatively so that I can ask rick as many of those questions as possible. We will record that conversation and we will post IT as a clip on the huberman lab clips channel. Before we begin, i'd like emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at stanford.

IT is, however, part of my desired 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 electoral light drink with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means plenty of sault magnesium in peason, the so called electro light, and no sugar. Now, salt, magnesium and potash 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 electrical lights need to be present in the proper ratio. And we now know that even slight reductions in electronic light concentrations or dehydration of the body can lead to deficits. And cognitive and physical performance element contains a science back electronic light ratio of one thousand milligrams, that one gram of sodium, two hundred milligrams of parasitic and sixty milligrams of magnesium.

I typically drink element first in the morning when I wake up in order to hydrate my body, make sure I have enough electoral 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's element dot com slash huberman to claim a free element sample pack with your purchase. Again, that drink element L M T dot com slash huberman. And now for my discussion with rick rubin. Great to have you here to a rick.

Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

So of all the topics in science and in particular in neuroscience, I confess that creativity is the most difficult one to capture because um you can find papers, scientific studies that is on convergent thinking versus divergent thinking and their definitions to these take on different forms but in but strict definition form IT seems that creativity has something to do with either rearranging existing elements or coming up with new elements.

But as I went into your book, which i've done twice, i've read IT twice and by the way, I feel so blessed honor to forgotten an early copy from you um or a final copy early that is but having gone through IT twice, i'm now convinced that there may not actually be an internal source of creativity that exists on its own right and the example that you give that for me really is serving as an anchor. And tell me if i'm wrong here is this idea that ideas and creativity are a little bit like a cloud. If you look at at at one moment, you might think that IT looks like one thing or IT has a certain shape and texture.

But then you look at at a moment later to be quite a bit different. If you look at an hour later, if very well could be gone. And the the reason, I think that serves as such a powerful hook for me to think about creativity, why I think neuroscientists and scientists in general have never actually captured way that even talk about creativity, stems from somebody that you knew in person.

But that, as you know, I greatly admire. I don't have many heroes, but I would put joe drama among the short list of heroes that I have. And I remember one interview with him, fairly disjointed, uh, he was sort of, uh, you know, often different tones that I couldn't follow.

But at one point he just kind of blurted out that if you have an idea, you have to write IT down and you may end up throwing IT away. But if you wait, IT will be gone. And I remember that in as a consequence, I have a whole system that I used to try and capture ideas.

But what are your thoughts on what joo said? This cloud idea that comes up in one form in one area of the book. But then I think this thread throughout the book in different ways no, how did that come to you and um and how does that serve you in chinese? I don't want to say extract which try to access creativity.

I think the best way to think about IT is like a dream. So if you think about your dreams, they don't they don't necessarily make sense. When you wake up, you'll might remember part, but not the whole thing.

Then if you start writing them down, they're you'll come back and they may not make sensitive there. They'll be a series of abstract images. And may you maybe some day in the future, you'll be able to look back and understand what they mean and maybe not.

And that's sort of how this the art making a process works as like we're making things and we're looking for feeling in ourselves. And IT could be a feeling of excitement or enthusiasm, a feeling of interest, feeling of curiosity. I want a more feeling of leaning forward.

And we were following that energy in our body. What we feel this, there's something here. There's something here.

I want to know more, I want to know more, I want to know more, but it's not its our sales not in intellectual al process is a different thing. That's why it's it's hard but even to talk about IT because it's so elusive. You know .

recently I was listening to a podcast by a friend like reading. I think he was in episode with biologies of a song where this biology, who's a investor type guy, thinker type guy, this is our epo de. He says something in the beginning that i'd love your thoughts on.

He said, look, you know, we can train a rat to lever press every other time or to expect reward and every even number press, or every odd number press, even every fifth number press. But a human and iraq can't do that for like prime number Prices. You can't actually train that.

And then you think about the reward systems on the way that we follow life from when we get up until we go to sleep. And what he said is the fact that we can do that means that we may not actually be in touch with the best schedules of doing things like every time i'm thirsty, I take a step. I assume that's the right way to do IT, but IT might not be optimal, right? Optimal for whatever purpose.

When I was reading your book, I was thinking about there's there's a there's a set of things to follow, things to pay attention to, you talk about this thing to access that none of the creative process comes from just within us IT can, but it's always being fed by things outside IT. And so what I started to do is the second time I read through the book, I think about IT through the lengths of biology was saying, was that there may not even be a language for this thing that we call accessing creativity. I mean, there's a process.

But dead language in the form of words is a little bit like trying to use. Even numbers to try and access prime numbers. Yes, like the the math become so convoluted that we end up in a conversation like this where i'm confident we can get to the corners of IT because in the what's remarkable about the book is that you do you you show and inform the process. But there may not be a english or any other language for saying do this and this and this and this and you'll have something of creative value, yes.

that capture, yes, I think language is is infinitely to to drill down on creativity. It's more um it's closer to magic than IT is science.

So when kids come into the world, do you think that they have Better access to this creative process? Then we do as adults because we start to impart role plays in books like will IT get likes, will people like IT, but also like all the things that are available to us that we're not paying attention to, like the texture of this table, right? They were discarding things that kind of systematically we get and set in our ways. Do you think kids are more are just by definition and by design.

more creative than adults? Kids are they are open and they have no baggage. They don't have any belief system. They don't know how things are supposed to work. Um they just see what is.

And if we pay attention to what is we learn, we learn much more than if we, most of us select from an endless number of data points available to us too well as as a species, to make sure that we don't die and to procreate and to defeat ourselves are probably the primary functions first and then. And then we learn things about what's right, what's wrong. And we learn things about how to do certain things.

Or we are inspired by someone who makes something we love and we want to do IT the way they do IT. And all of those things undermine the purity of the creative process. They can be tools to build your skill set to be able to do IT yourself.

Like, if your a singer, you might imitate a singer you really like for a while to get good at IT, and then eventually come to find your own voice. IT doesn't always IT doesn't always start with your own voice. But if you're three years old or five years years old, new try singing.

You're not singing like anyone else. You're singing with your own, your own voice. And when you make something, you're making IT based, don, not not knowing.

And I I think, mum, I had the advantage early in my career of starting making music without any experience, which was helpful because I didn't know what rules I was breaking. And so IT wasn't intentional breaking of rules. I just did what seemed right to me, but I didn't realize that I was doing things that other people wouldn't do.

Mean, there is this idea that there are no new ideas. You know, I sort of disagree because everyone somewhile see you hear something that at this seems different enough.

Um I think it's A A combination of a new combination of existing ideas presented in a new way. I think that I think that's how IT works, I don't know, but I will say that does seem like the things that are most interesting to me have a series of familiar elements joined together in a way that is creating something that i've never seen before.

You mention that it's um that when you are close to or you have see hands of creativity, that is a real value that you can that is a feeling. And I also believe that the body is a great source of information, and which, you know what people will realize, that the brain of courses in the skull, but the nervous system extends everywhere in the body, the whole mind body thing just falls away.

Philosopher have argued about this forever, but it's a silly argument. It's also true that, you know, got forget, over the amputate, all my limbs have the computed. I'd fundamental still be me, right? The city is not true.

If we took about big enough chunk of my brain and I still arrived, I would be fundamentally different. Human being still have the same name and identity and social security number, but I would behave very differently, who knows, maybe Better. The signals from the body.

we know, or at least we .

assume our pretty generic, like I can think, of fifty different ways or one hundred ways, that we could talk about creativity today, and we could define IT and redefine IT and carve IT up and serve IT up like sushi in a bunch of different ways.

But the body send signals that most of us are, we have a kind, of course, understanding of it's like, oh, my stomach hurts or my stomach feels good or i'm not sensing my stomach or um oh, that feels good IT feels warm IT feels good. Like most of us aren't trained and understanding how to interpret those signals. So it's almost like you have a few valls, a few sillily les.

And there is a lot more with less when we talk about our thoughts in our experiences, depending on how hyper verbal somebody is and how much emphases they put on different sounds. It's kind of near infinite, right? Um not infinite, but near infinite.

So for you personally, when you know that you're on the on the the end of a thread of creativity, maybe are listening to an artist or or you're hearing something you and you like there, and the the new anti starts to deflect in a certain way, right? Do you feel that in your body as a recognizable sensation? Or is IT a fought in .

a sensation, a feeling in my body?

Is IT?

Is IT no, it's it's a, it's a feeling of, I would say, like a surge of energy.

Do you remember the first time you experiences that?

Probably, do you know, hearing the beetles when I was three or four years old?

Three or four years old.

yeah, yeah. Is there something wrong .

with me that the beatles have never done IT for me?

Maybe just for an exposed at the right time, in the right way, it's there's no, no right or wrong way. And and everyone, I can love the beetles and you can not. And both right? Not a i'm glad we can still be friends.

I was a little concerned. I was a little cared to action that question. I know my taste music is a little bit of scared, but kind of fragmentary.

But um okay good. I'm always about like, gosh, there must be something wrong with me. I like their songs, but they don't. There's no juice .

for me there. I think maybe we'll watch. There was a and eight part series cobbles anthology, which is at a print.

But I I can try to find IT somewhere, and we can watch out together. OK may make the case for metals. Okay, yeah.

I mean, nothing against. I just I always bothered you for restraint that like, remind, I saw that like, well, like genes, aviators, everyone had to change their last name to remove. A lot of them hated each other.

There's not so much drama there and and three ords and just petite. I just was like like kids from new york that energy. So I think different things for different people right above.

So that brings me to a question when when something feels creatively right and you're sensing IT and um and you're there what they in the studio or maybe if you're listening to something that somebody sent you, how do how do you translate that given the absence of of language, how do you translate that into a conversation with the artist? And again, this could be about writing your comedy or or science or podcasting with that matter. How do you say that keep going that way when they might not even recognize that they did IT and i'm getting a .

lot of times they don't yeah sometimes they don't IT depends when we are in the i'll try to be in a in a setting where as where talking about IT, we can engage with IT in that moment. So it's not much good, let's say I was producing your new record. You played me something and I had some thoughts about IT IT wouldn't be so helpful for me to tell you what those were.

You be Better for us to wait till we're in a place where we could try things and see where IT goes. So the first thing is I wouldn't rely on language to do IT. IT would be more of a making a suggestion of something that's actionable.

We try IT and then we have more data. And either we're moving in a good direction or we're moving away from or moving towards that away from IT, and we never know. So it's always an experiment and maybe a simple way to talk about IT would be like if I gave you two dishes of food and ask you to takes them and tell me which one you like Better.

It's pretty usually it's pretty straight forward. You know, when you have two choices which like Better and I think most creativity can be boiled ed down to that, that's very different than I wonder how this is going to a perform on certain social media platforms. That's a different than what is IT what i'm tasing these two things, which is the one I want to finishing and and if I were the same, I like this one Better.

But IT needs little salt and then put a little salt on and like maybe I put too much salt and you and you know and you case that like it's that simple. Being in tone enough with ourselves to really know how we feel in the face of a knowing that other people might feel very differently, which is part of the chAllenge is like. If everyone tells you A, A, A, A, A, A, A, and you listen, you like, let's be as an.

Artist, it's important to be able to say to me to be. And that's a it's a disconnect because so much you know when we go to school, it's to get us to follow the rules. And in art is different because the rules are there as a scaffolding to be um chipped away as me be.

Sometimes are helpful. Sometimes they're and sometimes we even impose our own rules to give something its shape so we can decide to make a we're going to make a painting, but we're only gonna use, uh, Green and read or the only clothes where we're allowed to use. We decide that in advance.

And then how do we solve the problem knowing all we have is Green and red IT can because otherwise, if there's an infinite number of choices, anything can be anything. You know, it's like it's it's sometimes more choices is not Better. So limiting your palate to something manageable forces you to solve problems in a different way.

Now in our in our digital music wise, you can make anything digitally. There's no like there was a time when if you didn't have a guitar in the studio, you couldn't record guitar or if you didn't, if you couldn't hire an orchestra that couldn't be or extra on your recording. Now you can just call any of those things up.

So there's infinite choices. And infinite choices don't necessarily lead to Better a Better composition or Better final, final works. Understanding how how you feel. In the face of other voices, without second guessing yourself is probably the single most important.

Thing to practice as an artist, or skill set to develop as an artist is too know how you feel and own your feelings and and the kid of that is not, I know, so I know what's right for you. IT doesn't work that way. It's just, I know for me.

And the reason I chose to be an artist is to demonstrate this is how I see IT. If I if i'm undermining my taste for some commercial idea or IT, IT defeats the whole purpose of doing this. This is that's not what this process is about this processes. I'm doing me and i'm showing you who I am and you can like IT or not. But either way, this is still how I see IT.

I love that because in science, you know, having trained graduate students, having been a graduate students, I was very blessed, have mentors, one of who was a real icon on a class. He's dead now um actually all my advisers are dead. Um suicide, cancer, cancer. The joke is you don't want me to work for you. They were all had a more bit of humor, so they're laughing about the same place right now.

I thought you're going to say the mission no.

but the last one said to me, you're the common denominator, Andrew and I thought, oh, my goodness and he said, kind of just kidding, but not really.

So that's a little bit you but in any case um he he always said as he was then he always said the the one thing I can't teach is taste and the one predict I have of the people who will never develop IT are the ones who are perfectionists because they're filling their perfect feckless st that filter their perfection through the feedback. Others he was always looking for the person that was cut, putting up a little bit of a mild finger to feedback. Not so much.

They would get things wrong because you can be badly wrong in science. You can be wrong for the right reasons, but you can also be for the wrong reasons. But people 的 just had almost a compulsion to do IT their way or to believe in what they were doing。 And I am hearing some of that um or i'm hearing that and what you're describing.

I I also think that there's something about the human impair ic process or the emotional process where when we see somebody doing something and they seem to really not be paying attention, what anyone else is doing mean, I guess that the crazy person on the street is one version of IT, where we go there just in their experience and just crazy. But when somebody seems to be enjoying themselves or the the emotion seems to be real, I think there are a good for action of people who feel that kind of gravitation poll, and they go have that in. The best example I have of this, as I remember growing up in the escape thing, we were the first, we were the first start doing the bag.

I like sagging the clothing we had teased endlessly one year in school. Then there was a bunch of a hip hop that came out of guys wearing sagging their their genes or their shorts. Next we come back in the very same people who are making fun of us.

We're all doing IT, and that's when that IT clicked for me. I think most people don't actually know what they like. No, they like what they like because of the certainty of the people that they like.

And so the question then is in this landscape of creative stuff, what's real? What's not real? Um you know these are it's almost like whoever can create the most convincing story at least captures a good number of of a good action of audiences. But that's not what the creative artists needs to do. They need to actually depart from that.

Do I have that right? Well, they just two different things like coming up with a story with the purpose of pleasing someone else is a skillset. But it's more of a it's more of a commercial endeavour than an artistic and never .

it's like tactical.

Yeah ah yeah I was seeing .

IT in your book. You describe again, when you think about the creative process, is the cloud for me again and deserves as such a powerful anchor. And then I think about the biology, the neurobiology of like strategy formation or strategy implementation.

And then almost by sheer locker nachully. I turn a few pages later into the book, and there's a description of how animals that are trying to accomplish something, eat, mate, fine water, accomplish there there. The requirements of living IT requires a narrow visual focus.

This is something my law is kind of obsessed with, and i've been obsessed with. And in that more narrow visual focus, we know that the the playbook becomes more narrow, the rule set is more narrow. Now at some point, in order to come up with a new creative idea, that means broadening vision .

is intial in way of thinking. Either the picture from the standard, the reason we do this is to presents something new that maybe you already knew, but didn't know you knew IT. And for that to be the case if to be looking at it's not unlike what a comedian does.

You know, comedian makes you laugh. Usually what they're saying it's outrageous, but you know that it's right. You know just no one says IT that way or no one has set IT that way before, but it's always the truth in IT that makes IT funny.

It's like that it's the same. It's the same idea is recognizing something that seems really obvious once you see IT, but seems like nobody else sees IT or no one else points IT out. And I feel like science is like that too, because how much of science, when once the, you know, the light flashes over your head, like I got IT of cause IT just seems like I we knew that forever.

No one knew IT. But do you know something like, it's so obvious, it's so obvious. And I think another super power virus is this, accepting we don't know anything when we think we know things that also limits are our world.

We think we know it's only like this. This is all it's possible where michie's little box. But in reality, who's to say that's that's the case. Who's to say any of the we can take all the what we believe in science now and decide to throw all of that away and start from scratch. And we probably created different, a whole different one.

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If you'd 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 3k two again， that's that. Let Greens dot com slash huberman to get the five free travel packs in the year supply of vitamin three k two in a offline conversation. Um one time you asked a good friend of mine who's been a guests on this podcast at the chain is chair of neo surgery and when I I would place him in the top top one percent of neuroscientists, you pulling speech out of people who are completely paralysed with locked in synergy centre and you asked him what percentage of what's contained in medical textbooks and training today today if you went .

to medical school today, right and you learned what was in the textbook, what percentage of that information is accurate and percentage is not and he said maybe .

half right and you asked and what is the consequence of that and he said in culpable and I I completely agree and um and I asked him a second time and he still came up with the same answer so that's a good sign um reliability from experiment to the next is good yeah I think that the there is this idea that we really know things in the amy. You see we've observe amazing discoveries from chance.

We've observe amazing discoveries um from incredible belts of hard work. In both cases, people are spending a lot of time in the lab. No one walked in the lab, saw something one day and had a nobel prize winning discovery, your fundamental discovery.

They were all hanging out in lab a lot. Just some of them came up with something that they didn't expect. Others were we're drilling .

toward an answer. And in all those cases, when the breakthrough happened, i'm guessing I don't know this that considering we we assume this information, then this discovery is true based on everything that came before IT.

But if everything that came before IT is wrong, then the discoveries are probably built on a do you know i'm saying it's like that the context everything that happens takes into account that the context that is sitting in, if it's in that context, maybe that context isn't right. Who knows? We don't know. So i'm saying we're took we're too close to most things and thinking when we know when we think we know things where there are a lot of assumptions that go into IT, I met any new discoveries are essentially built on top of these beliefs, you know, but their beliefs.

I remember, you know, learn, of course. I listen to the b voice growing up who then knows travel the nineties, and they were in the sabotage was an outgrowth escape boarding movie like mike Jones and like the girl movies and those world's the peaceful ys and escape ing were were really closely into oven for a while.

Some people know that some people don't inspect, sort of form the bridge and then Spike when often start making more treated, bigger movies than more people watch. But you let's just use them as an example. I heard you say once before that know you guys, we're kind of joking around like bc boys like, you know, these guys doing hip p but he was kind like the hard seen in new york punk rosine and he was sort of a joke. There are lot of inside jokes when you were working together. Was there the thought that people might love IT, might hate IT, or you just weren't paying attention at all.

or attention all never sider IT. There were no one at that point time when we were making licence ill. The pop music was a tiny underground thing, and there was no one making hip hop at that time.

Thought I would ever mean anything IT. IT was not a realistic thought. So we were making IT really for our crazy friends. That's IT.

So you think nowa is the fact that one can create something and released IT quickly. I can put IT something out onto twitter, instagram now I can you do in ten seconds from now. And I will get immediate feedback that that which is external feedback, of course.

But then I can iterate on the basis of that feedback, to you think that's problematic for the larger opportunity for creativity. In other words, we were to go back twenty years or even fifteen years when the opportunity to to create was certainly still there. But you really didn't know what how IT was going to land until you could not released that there was that seems to me there was more opportunities stay in that magical a rainforest. That is the the creativity itself.

I don't think it's wrong or right. It's just it's more information that you can use or not use and use IT in a useful way. And now you can make something and put IT out and people could not like IT and you like hope they still don't get IT to go harder know to go harder in that direction.

Not do you know i'm saying it's like not to react away from information can be helpful. IT can be helpful when. There could be different stories that happened at the same time where you making something and you have an idea of what IT is, and then other people engage with IT and may have a different idea of what IT is.

And they like IT for a different reason that you did or dislike IT for a reason different than the reason you like IT. We can control any of those things. You know, the only part of IT that we can control is how we relate to the thing that we make and any external information that undermines the clarity of that connection is probably bad for the art.

Is my, is my guess. And again, I am only saying this from my experience, like I try to make things all i've ever tried to make, or was something I like, or something that I felt like was missing as a fan that I wanted and I nobody was making IT so i'll make IT, you know, but IT wasn't IT was always in the service of, I love this thing. I want something like this. No one else is making one. Have to make one.

It's it's beautiful because the word that keeps coming to mind is this, it's almost like a compulsion, like there. There are other options of ways to be into behave, into function and work in life. But there's if something that compulsion IT yx us away from those other opportunities just enough that we have to get back to IT.

You talked before about and you talked in the book this notion of the source to me um again I can't help up with my neuroscientist lens on this。 I think of um the source says not one brain area, but some function within the brain where we we are in touching with our boys signals like what feels right, what doesn't like testing the two foods. I love that example and that IT is a playbook that is far more vast than the the shorter adaptive labour like this.

How many get from point a to point b? And yet, when I listen to an album or song, I mean, I have to assume that there, at some point IT becomes not strategy development or creativity, but strategy implementation, like there needs to be like that songs are going to come in this order. And like, I don't know much about music at my musician, friends always .

know I don't.

There is so much about music, right? Well, well put. But the ordering of the sequence of the Melody at sea.

So at what point does one decide? Okay, like now is the time to get into that more narrow focus of effort like we've got IT, let's run with this because there is a component that creative process involves packaging and finishing. And is that part less satisfying to you? Or is IT just all part of the same?

Larger are it's all part of the same. It's nice. There's a good feeling is usually a good feeling when something is done. On the one hand, it's it's a commitment because up until the time that you say it's done, you can keep experimenting and changing IT.

You know if you think, well, maybe tomorrow I can make a Better than is not finished and you keep thinking that for a long time you can do that forever and never never put out anything. So getting to the point where you're ready to sign off is a good feeling um and that allows you one of things I talk about the book is because IT is a difficult thing to do because it's fun to play. It's fun to maybe it's not the best stick be yet you know to use whatever the next project is gonna be as motivation to finish the one you're working on。

Now like i'm working on this, i'm spending all of my time on this thing. It's really good. I believe I can be Better.

But is this other thing that I really want to make? And if I keep tinkering with this one, i'll never get to make the other one. So using other projects as impetus to finish something and released IT into the world's a good one.

And he said the description of of source as something within us, I don't know if I would accurate, if I would say that was accurate. It's definitely in us too, but it's not only in us, and it's, I think of source as the organizing principle of everything. And it's how everything exists, how the trees grow and why there are mountains and anything that we can see in the outside world. And and every discovery, and every piece of art, and every a new design and every machine are all outgrows of this source energy. Our part of IT is the antenna that like connects to IT and and maybe where the where the the vehicle for source to allow things to happen in the world.

And thank you for that because I I did indeed miss speak because I recall very distinctly in the book he described how if the physical world is constrained IT by the laws of physics and certain things, the imagination is unconstrained. And I think I have this right. You know, the work set somewhere between those, it's neither of one nor the other.

But that ultimately what feeds into all of that, our imagination in the way, indeed, that our our brain is a physical entity. The nature and the outside world provides least what appears to be near infinite, if not infinite, options. And I I love the example of the color power that if we restrict me to whatever source of paints or medium I have, then it's restricted. But in nature there is a an infinite number of shades and toes and commons.

And even on one, you know, if you pick up a rock and look at the color of the rock and tried to find a paint to match that rock, IT would never match. There's too much there. There are too many variations in nature within a single color, rq, for us to get close. There's too much information. We scratch the surface, we're only scratching .

the surface. And we love when we are able to appear in a different scales. Space al skills, time skills too. But spae scales, the delight that comes from that, you know, these nature pictures seemly.

There were more these in the eighties, like where you see a drop of oil shot at high, very high resolution. There is beauty in a drop of oil, and then you'd see the earth in the galaxy. There's beauty in that too right extremes. And of course, our daily perception is mostly through the filter of these kinds of interactions, walls and sometimes outdoors. There's a um a brilliant neuroscientist and um not surprisingly he has a nobel.

His name is Richard x he he's at columbia university is outrageous personality um choose nick at non stop um you guys we get along great now because of the nick but because his perspective on things is very abstract for a guy who's solved he won the nobel for solving um of great problem within how we smell perception of orders and taste he says, you know that everything that the brain does is an abstraction like I could take a photograph of your face and show IT to you and so yeah that's me or let's say for the moment I call myself an abstract artist. I just play a game because I ve never been accused of being an artist, but and I do three dots and I squeezing line, and I say that you and you say, well, that doesn't look like me and I say, but that's my abstraction of you okay, with the brain essentially does that because, or something in between that because there's no actual photograph of you in my brain. It's just a bunch of neurons playing what we call on on sambo, like a different keys on a piano.

And we go, rc, I recognize you. Rc, rubin. And so everything is an abstraction, and it's only once we start tinkering with the parts. And this is the essence of science to remove an ad and manipulate. And the best example I can come up with would be rough go.

And I won't come up with this example because I started off and vision science and maybe should make the most sense everyone, except the folks have been blind since birth and they can swap something in here that if I show you a rough go and I don't tell you it's a rough go, you may or may not actually think it's that impressive, depends on your taste and art. But what raft goo did, which was amazing, even if you don't like raft goals, and I happened to, is that he removed all the White and high contrast stuff. And when you do that, you alter color space.

And so the colors look very different. Some people saw that dress a few years ago. Is IT orange as a goal or whatever? That was a little bit of the same phenomenon. I doubt. In fact, I D be willing to bet my left ARM that ross co.

Knew nothing about the neuroscience of color perception, but somehow got to this place where if there was no canvas showing and no high contrast, and the paintings were large enough, and on the appropriate wall, you saw them a certain way, that tapped into something fundamental. And this is where I think art and science really converge, is that everyone's in a while, we see something that feels amazing to enough people, and not just like the baggie pants phenomenon, not just because other people think it's cool, but there's something there. And again, this defines language.

And I have to imagine that in years of of light and music and other trade endeavors, that you've that everyone is in a while to have you ever encountered something with, like something fundamental, keep showing up in different form. There's something like a like a almost like a rule or a principle. Is that ever come about? Because in science we think of this is like, this is reveal something about our limitation to abstract the world. I hope I made that clear.

Not exactly, but I have a thought. You talked earlier about the the drop of oil, the photograph of the drop of water and the photograph ord. We could use the on the other side, like hubble telescope images of these, these vast things and high definition.

What we see every day is as impressive as those things, but where none to them, because we see them all the time. And if we would look at drops of oil every day in in a microscope a month from now, we would we would not find wondering that image. So it's sometimes it's the novelty of not seeing IT from that perspective before.

That's really thrilling, you could I could imagine. And this probably relates to the rough go idea that you could see something from a particular angle and have this magical experience, and then walk three feet to the side and see IT from a different way and just evaporates. IT only works.

That IT only trigger this thing in us when we look at IT just the right way. There was a paint, an experiment I just heard about, heard about the other day that that sounds fascinating, that a painting teacher recommended where, instead of painting. You know, having a model in the room and painting the model that you have the model in the next room and you go into the next room without your equipment.

You don't have your equipment and you can study the model as long as you want. And then you go into a different room where you can see the model and paint the model instead of and IT changes your relationship with not we're not just painting the lines. We're painting what is interesting enough about what I saw.

What are the data points that stuck in my mind? And when I string those together, what do I get and and what do I how do I form IT to get us close to whatever that the experience of that person was, which the the closest of of getting to the experience of that person in the painting might not look like a photograph. You know, I might look more different than more the same to really see what you see. If we think about dum the, because of paintings that were inspired by african art, where the eyes are on different, different levels, they may give us more information than a photograph would give us. I'm thinking about the.

When you are describing the the the sensation of when something takes your breath away, and we all have that when we see a dramatic sunset, anyone you know, when there's a really dramatic sunset or if there's a whale, anyone's on the beach and there's a wael, everybody's really interested that there's a whe it's do not i'm saying these feelings of wonder, we get to experience some depending on where we are or you know a dragon fly or a bird flies into your space, these things happen. And when that happens, like we're we're a with the the mystery of the world, when we change the perspective, Normally we don't think of whales in our backyard or birds in our house flying freely. But but they do happen, these things do happen.

And they they like break us out of our trans when these things happen like, oh yeah, there are birds like this everywhere. I'm just not paying attention. This guy is coming into, like, tap me on the shoulder. I remember me here I am, you know.

So I would say that that the whale example and what you're describing is, is revealing to us how, in a delightful way, how deficient our perceptual filters Normally are. Yes, it's a little bit like the rock go is revealing how i've never thought about IT this way until this moment is revealing to us how color Normally looks is actually first or not the only way IT looks.

Those colors, we think are one way, but all the color is get into the biological region is all about trust, what something is next to dictate. Tes, what IT looks like, and that's the origin of that dress, mean, or whatever you call IT still can't figure out exactly what I mean is someone will eventually tell me the in the same way, when you see a whale. And it's delightful.

I think it's revealing to us the extent to which those whales are. The ocean is vast. There's a whole universe there and we are blind to IT all the time. And I think the misperception or the misconception, excuse me, is that we're delivery because we see the way we might be just as delighted because we're getting hit with the contrast of how little we recognize all the time.

And in that way, IT reminds me a little bit about comedy where and i've i've been watching more comedy lately and um sometimes it's the shock, sometimes it's the the absolute truth that's revealed. And then other times what i've noticed and I saw rogan do comedy at the vulcan club in Austin, what he does everyone a while, and he was small club and such, and he was leading out the story during his routine or bit. I think this is right.

This bit is, and everyone knew where IT was going. We all, no, no. And then when he finally told us, IT was exactly where we thought I was going, and IT was hilarious and I feel good and I felt amazing.

And I and I thought in that moment I was like, ways second, how did he pull that off? That was masterful because Normally it's the thing like you create one story, there's like a scripting out, almost like a courtroom lawyer, then they kind of pull the curtain and it's something different. It's the and and if you look at the the science, the neuroscience and brain imaging of of laughter and humor, which I ve looked into, to be honest, to just just respect the people that feel it's pretty lame.

It's lame because it's always the the daring nature of a surprise. But what he let us to was something that, oh, no, he's actually going there. Oh IT, he's really going there. And IT, was this an anticipation with the with a beautiful delivery at the end. And so i'm convinced that based on what we're talking about here, that there's something about when we see something, we think it's about that. But the delight that we feel could be about all the other experiences that now become in a subconscious way and of like, ha, it's almost like laughing at this perceptual deficit that we have. It's almost like laughing at how little we actually know, which is what you've said.

Yeah IT IT could be that IT also could be the sense of community of when you think it's gonna particular way and IT goes that way, it's like reinforcement of you like yeah we he's saying IT but in a way we're saying IT together and listening he's saying IT but we're in this together and that's a bit feeling.

To think about that first, second, I was trying to think about why certain music still can evoke such powerful emotions in me. And and there does seem to be something special about the music we listen to. And we are teenagers, you know, from about, you know, fourteen until about twenty five, IT seems to get routed entire nervous system in some way, maybe because that phase of our life is is really one of identity crisis.

I mean, you don't find too many forty years old, some who are wondering like who they are occasionally, but almost every Young teenager protein and like, who am you're defining personality? So I always liked IT to that, but leaving out the sort of critical period biology stuff, what do you think this is about the music that we hear at that time? We that much more emotionally tune, have we not shut down our sensors quite as much? Is there the songs in the artists don't matter is a very individual to me.

Other for other people will be the bees or something. Um now I just really wish the beatles did IT for me too. But um do you think that's important? Because I could see how it's really terrific. I could also see how IT sets up.

One of these would all just use nerdy language called like a semi deprived filter because if i'm only looking for the way that like a stiffe little fingers track made me feel the first time I listen to one fifteen, the feeling is worthwhile. But if i'm looking for that, i'm missing all the other stuff. I'm missing the beetles and missing fleet with mac, which you never did IT for me either.

I'm like, i'm missing all the stuff that, you know, people I love and respect really love. So i've never worried about that because there's kind of a infinite treasure trove of other things that I do love. But I do sometimes wonder whether not my life experiences diminish because i'm not allowing a range.

And you've obviously work in a huge number. Different generals of music. Punk is one thing. Hip hop is.

And I meet neil diamond, too, right? M, N, M, two, slater, too, right. And in some senses I let these up. I am just think about how much in high school, maybe nowadays, so, but even in college, in as an adult, we society were sort of asked to constrain ourselves to one of these groups. I didn't know I was OK to love bob dalen and love punk rock as much as I do until I heard t ARM strongly said the bob and I was like, and recently told me he loves is the grateful dead.

And I was like, wow. But to IT, I remember .

when you had do .

IT together to get so so I have a feeling. Part of IT is the reason IT gets in at that age is is at a time when where defining who we are and the music is part of the definition of how we see ourselves. So it's the the music that we hear before that might be the music that's on the radio or our parents music or older brothers, sisters of music.

And then when you're fourteen or fifteen and you start choosing what you you're listening to is like not finally, mine and my parents might not like IT and my older brothers and sisters may or may not like this, but this one is mine. And IT always has, IT always has that impression in us. But this is, this is ours. This is my thought of of why, like why IT continues to last. You know.

how do you wipe the slight clean then life sufferance, if you go to going and work with somebody knew. And again, as people are hearing this, I hope that they're transplant ting this to whatever IT is that they do because in the realm of science, in podcasting communication, that did not music, but um there is a contour a way, you know, hopefully this podcast will look nothing like IT does in five years. That's my hope, is IT will still have the core features of the beauty and of biology coming through. But I hope IT doesn't look anything like episode too yeah .

and I think IT live off as you of all, it's just the true IT is to what interest you. And if you are not interested biology in the same way in five years.

I would hope it's not the same. I'll be doing psychoanalysis .

in real time.

We probably on't be on c, we be vat. So how do you talk a bit if you would cause I know IT i'm very interested in know your process i'll spare you the daily routine question very good shape but you and I are both lovers of sunlight, of horizons and not as a trivial source as an amazing um gift of energy right in in the right words for IT really aside from your daily routine um when IT comes to you know somebody you're going from project to project and and you know you're going to be doing work with somebody could be your own worker and will talk about the writing in this book and its structure, which is very unique.

I've never encountered a book with this kinds structure before and is that it's the most facial read ever and yet every single page I underline took note, started and like IT as you would noticed it's very warm and have very, very warm already, only more so over time. Do you have a process for removing the functions of the day and that what you were doing last week and what's going on in um in order to get more access to the this um I D want to think of IT now more is as a receiver inside of you, right? Almost like a tuning a radio.

And then IT comes in like the beginning of like a stammer clash, right? You love the radio, love the radio, right? And then IT comes unclear. And there IT is how do you clear the static? What what are some of the Operational steps that you think might be more generalizable to regard this of where somebody and you know .

afford is listening particular project? Whatever is I dedicate all of myself for that period time, whatever is what there be, twenty minutes, or whether be five hours, whatever is. Coral focus and no outside distraction whatsoever.

And when I leave that process, I do my best not to think about IT. When i'm away from IT, I don't bring any materials with me. I don't leave the studio with works in progress and spend time listening to them during the day or looking for ideas.

I I stay as far away from me when i'm not directly engaging in IT as possible. And in the best of situations, I have something else to totally engage myself in in between. So instead of working on project day for five hours and then leaving in doing nothing, i'm hoping to engage in a project b or B C N D with all of myself before going back to project day again, which might be the next day.

let's say. So relates to an amazing chapter and series of writing to your book that i'm not going on to described you as I want people to finding for themselves about digging, about digging from the process. One question I had, as I read that chapter, and as you're saying this now, is even though you're engaged, do you believe that your subconscious is working IT through that?

I believe so. I believe so. And I think, in general, to stew over the problem is not the way to solve problem. Think to hold the problems lightly.

And and if and when I say a problem, you know, anywhere when we're starting a project, there is usually this feeling of there's a question mark at the beginning. Every project, I I am always anxious when I start a new project because I have no idea what's gona happen. I never know.

I never, I never. I may have, in some cases, a potential backup plan, if you know, if nothing works. But I really try not even have that.

I prefer not to have that. I prefer to go in maybe to come myself down enough to be able to show up. They'll be an idea like nothing works.

Maybe we could try something like this, but that would only be for my own anxiety. That would IT wouldn't be for actual practical. But there was always a anxiety because I know whatever is gonna en is completely the out of my control.

Some thing is going something either interesting or not will appear, and then we're going to follow that whatever IT goes. And until something appears first to follow, I have a lot of anxiety even though even though he has never not come. IT has come every time, but there's something about IT because I also feel like there might be expectation on me that i'm going to make this happen.

And I know that's not happening. That's not how works. It's it's A. I show up ready for that to happen, and i'm open to whatever we have to do to find that first thread. And once we find the thread, then saa, okay, we have a. And that thread may lead us to anything you know, can lead us to in a million different directions.

But something about having that glimmer, it's not a we're not looking at a blank page and we're looking at, okay, we have a we have a the beginnings of, I would say, a map, but it's a map that we don't know where IT takes us. And it's just the beginning. It's just like it's just to start, you know, you are here.

If you have a map, this is you are here, even if you can't see the directions, knowing where we are feels okay. And once we get and usually IT began usually in the first day, first couple of days, IT happens. But up until then, it's is really an anxiety producing situation. And then I I can't remember the origin inal questions like that was the beginning of of something completely different. But I do remember what you asked.

I don't remember yeah well, we are time about this engaging and as your subconscious into IT and and then we were talking about you so I love this sort like what what is your process of of waiting into this thing and and you're revealing that now, I mean, I think of anxiety as readiness. You I think about the characteristic um features of anxiety.

IT tends to be a bit of a construction of the the visual field into more of a narrow vision that's appropriate because you ever want to shed that what's going on elsewhere. And then, you know, even when people talk about the shakes or this, like not feeling okay, sitting still, anxiety was designed to mobilize us, and not always to run away. This is one of the, I know, rarely do I talk about the work in my own laboratory, but one of the things that, Frankly, I didn't discover, but he was done in my laboratory.

But this brilliant graduates during lanzi, sali, who's now at cal tech, was that we can often observe animals or humans in very high states of anxiety as they move forward toward a goal. And we always think of moving forward is like this calm thing, you know, we these heroes and rose apart, telling people like, if you like, i'm not getting off the back, i'm not leaving, giving up my seat on the bus or mohamed, all like that. I bet you they were experiencing tremendous anxiety, but he was in the forward tilt.

And so I think anxiety is least um comfortable when we are forcing ourselves to stand still. So it's it's an activating energy and that brings up a word that you know I have written my notebook as an extraction of a lot of themes from within the book to you and I have talked about before, which is in in the here I win a sound, gary was caused a woo. But I minute as seriously as IT can be stated that I feel like everything is energetic.

My, we can do things from a place of anger. We can do things from a place of joy. We can do things from A A place of delight. I like to think maturin into the idea that joy and delight and love is the ultimate reservoirs of energy. But not a lot of the music I like from when I was Young, I was because of the anger that was thread into IT or or the sadness.

If you think of your relationship to that music is a relationship of love, you should listen to that to get angry. Now you listen to IT because .

you loved IT ah and I felt loved by IT because I where I was at of .

the IT was true to who you were and where you I know .

that collaboration there's a wonderful chapter on collaboration, but it's collaboration, as you mentioned before, with the universe, not with others, but in terms of that, especially the kind of work that you've done and do when IT comes to working with artists. Um I do wonder and here i'm not looking for any gossip stories. I never been interested in gossip.

I love stories, but i'm international gossip. But once you see that thread kind of dangling there and you're going to be going to go after this and or you grab onto IT and you okay, now you have a little bit of a map in an orientation within that map, often wonder, you know, scientists are complicated people. People think they are very boring, but they're actually very complicated because they're often living in one limited rule set of the prefrontal cortex.

That's how you get good at getting degrees is by understanding the rules of academia and playing by those rules. Yes um people tinker with the rules. You get your Richard axel, who are very playful and how they go about IT, but they are systematic. He's known for rigor, rigor, rigor, right? When I think of creative artists and musical artist, I think of a bit more zane or lose, or you watch the documentary about the remind, you know, like there's all this chaos, how?

Because so many of the brilliant artist, musical artists that are out there seem to have some chaos inside them or their lives, and always structured, often times and science, to by the way, there are substance abuse issues and personal life issues, how since you don't have one hundred percent control, they need to play the instruments saying I said a how do you work with people who have IT in them but are getting in their own way right um and do you think that that kind of the internal chaos that a lot of artists seem to have? Do you think that sometimes is actually an essential piece of the creativity picture that you can't disentangle? IT yeah I know .

think is an essential piece in general, but certain artists, that's there. That's how they do IT. I would say I rather get to see the chaotic part of artists for whatever reason they they rarely show out to me. And most of them, like like most comedians I know, are much more serious about what they're doing. Then what IT looks like from if you see them on stage, there's much more to IT and is much more focus on craft going on and digging deep then would necessarily be obvious single jump around on stage.

I'm a fan of boxing track and field. In boxing, the sports nobody really cares about now that usc so popular and and track and heel is a it's a little bit like wrestling when you go with the people that there are there because they really love IT will talk about reston IT professional um but you have floyd may weather obviously a colorful character and one of the best records in boxing of all time in a few years back I get into watching his stuff and and what one sees is the the cars and the money that called Larry themselves, the money team.

You know and that spending in the and there's all the outrageous stuff, but I know someone who is in his in camp with him um who actually was a sparing partner for him. And the law has IT they have very close door sparing um or climbs. But the law is that he would do know because nobody is, is twelve, three minute rounds, right? With a million between.

Used to be fifteen, but now neuroscientists stepped in and IT turns out a lot of the deaths occurring when he was more than twelve rounds, for whatever reason, you cut off twelve really seemed to truncate the death, or other things, too. If the dad is apparently corn erman, we have someone else here, the pocket, he knows more about this. Me, yeah. The kid not wanting to disappoint the parent correlated with death. Get some of this wrong and and they can come after me.

But in any case, this guy who was in for its camp said that he would do thirty to sixty minutes of sparring, bringing in fresh spiring partners with no rest, that he would run three or four times per twenty four hour cycle, despite all the critical need for sleep, that his training was unbelievably intense to the point where he would just just chew out up and destroy all training partners. And yet the perception that we see is it's kind of it's playful for for him. So IT sounds very similar, like what we see is often not what goes into IT that people are intensely rigorous.

Yeah and I think in a way, from a psychological perspective, if you knew you were fighting someone who wasn't taking IT seriously, that would give you some confidence and that would not be a good thing if you if the person was actually working really hard at working, you do. You know, I have been like from a psychological perspective that makes sense to me.

So I keep coming back to us that i'm imagine in my mind they have two ends of the continue, one that is about firing, narrow focus, training, training strategy implementation, cultivating craft, building craft.

And then the outside is this the cloud? It's very nebulous, right? In IT, there's a word that I learned from a colleague of an when I was done at the slk institute, when my lab was there because he studies this there's this phenomenon um that I don't want to mispronounce because then that sounds like something else.

But the correct principle is paradol a. And paradol a is our tendency to look at in a more fish shape like a cloud or a tree and think that IT looks like something else, an ice cream cone. Yeah.

the man in the moon.

And that, again, reveals the extent to which the brain wants to place symbolic filters on things. And we need this, right? Because I see you walk in the door, and rick, I recognize, in fact, we have a brain area called the future of form.

Face gives, literally, is a face recognition area. And you could be at any orientation where I could just see your eyes and know that it's you. There's a phenomenon called proper, like nose a where people can see faces, they can describe everything in the face, but they don't know, for instance, that it's J, F, K, or madona or lex freeman.

Quite the list, quite the list, there you go, lacks run for office legs. Just kidding hard enough to get you to respond. My text as IT is so we have these filters. And so we're taking this cloud and were deciding what things are, yes. And what I want to go trill into your process a little bit more deeply when you approach a project.

So everyone's meet to each other, shakey hand here, the engineers, when I sit down where everyone knows what they're doing because you work with professionals and you start going, are you trying to be with the cloud or in the implementation? Like where are you in that continuum? And forgive me if i'm like trying to um surgically go into your process in a way that would disrupt IT in anyway, but I trust you been .

doing this for a while and not not in the cloud with the exception of i'm aware of what could go wrong on a technical side. And I might like if something good is happening, I might look over and make sure that we're rolling.

So that's a leap over to hear momentarily.

But you maybe I maybe if I feel like if I was in the moment, I would be in the cloud and if something good starts happening, IT would trigger something in me like, oh, I hope this is, I hope we're really doing this because I don't know if we could ever do this again. That would be a thought of when the first time the real world would come into the picture would be something good is happening. Let's not lose IT.

And when that happens, due never been as in a studio besides the podcast studio, do you say you guys that sounded good more that where do you wait? You let them continue because obviously want .

to break their their would never want to break any flow when it's happening yeah once something's happening, just kind of sit back so much.

And do you think there's resonance like that? The team of engineers and other people know when IT quote on quote is happening.

If everyone's paying attention, yes, when everyone is paying attention, it's usually pretty obvious. Sometimes the threat will be something different than expected. And maybe not everybody would pick up on IT.

And that might be a particular that might be particular based on my taste store. An artist taste or someone involvement might say that was a little Better. I think that was Better than what we thought that can happen, said several things. And I was like you said enough, if there will be several .

converse to sorry, especially with you, I don't get to see you as merely as often as I would like. And so when I do, I confessed that i'm a little bit of a kid in a Candy.

I down and the brain tells the stories so you talked about um I walk in certain data points. You recognize me. But it's a real like looking at a cloud short hand.

We go through we go through our lives doing this all day with everything we say. And the short hand, in the case of me, you know me, the short can turns out to be right. IT checks out if it's something we don't know and something we're not familiar with, something happens.

We, we, we experience something on the street, something happens and IT doesn't make sense. Something out of the ordinary happens. The first thing is, is this doesn't make sense.

Then what we do is, again, sub subconscious, unconsciously, I don't know. It's unsinful subconscious ly, without thinking, we create a story that explains what just happened, a hypothetical that makes IT okay, that what just happened happened. And oh, maybe he's running because his dog ran away and he's chasing his dog.

Maybe that's why is running. And as soon as we have that thought of what IT might be, we relax because now it's not just a guy running, and this is weird, but it's a guy running always by running after a stock. And now we register that story that we just made up without even knowing we were making IT up as what happened.

Then later in the day, if someone says he had, you see that I run out about and he was chasing his dog, I saw that and you you won't even realized that IT was the maybe hypothetical story that was the first possible explanation that allowed you to continue walking. Do you know him saying that our whole lives, we our whole lives are reacting things, making up the story of what we think may have happened without realizing that's what we're doing, and then leaving the rest of our lives as if that thing that we made up really happened. And we never know.

I completely agree. We confabulating from birth until death. There's this well observed phone enon um in people with memory deficits. So there's the sad example this and then there is the everyday typical not who knows sad are not sad example.

So for instance, if somebody has a slight memory deficit or someone has alzheimer dementia, they'll find themselves in the whole way at night. So what are you doing here? They'll say, oh, you know, I was going to get a glass water.

But they are walking away from the direction that would make sense. People who alcoholics who drink enough develop something, of course, the koh syndrome, where a certain brain area gets messed up. And you will ask them a question, what are you doing here? And they will come up with incredible stories, sometimes interesting stories, that have no bearing on reality.

yeah? yes. And who their name is. But they believe .

they believe that what happened .

with one hundred percent certainty and this actually relates to a lot um now Better understood controversy around repressed memories. Yeah you can a especially from Young people, you can pull memories from them, that of things that never happen.

This has been demonstrated over over against the courtrooms know to be very cautious now but the whole notion of repressed memories, very uh complicated area of the laws you can imagine um because we want we tend to want to trust victims for understandable reasons. But in terms of accuracy of details, two people have very different accounts of the same of the same experiences. And this has been shown over and over again that you can do well in the laboratory. Pretty interesting. So again, because of this selective filtering and storytelling, and we are the thing that was salmon rushy, who said, we are the story telling species.

He probably, I was going to say, we are story telling machines.

and that's great. Yeah, yes, we are the story. I would say that the big five, if I had to pick up brain function, is we are very limited filters.

The mantis shrimp h sees sixty several shades of red for everyone that we see lots. They have access to things we don't have access to. Yes, they are not.

As far as I know, you releasing albums of the know, red out, Shelley peppers calibre. But who knows, maybe down there they are. I did see something, by the way, as a relevant tangent recently, and I don't know if it's look, even if it's crazy, it's super core.

If you take a device that amplifies the electrical signals coming from cactus and you just translate that into a simple rule of conversion to two or three pitches of sound, the music that comes out of IT is beautiful, nothing short of beautiful. And when I saw that, the teenager and me thought, you know, when we hear wee song, we think it's so beautiful. Like if they're just like cursing at each other the whole time, right?

And they're in there like rogan episode winning invite all as comedian friends and there, who knows? Maybe it's a psychoanalyst versac about their childhood promise. I don't know. Yes, but we decide whales ong is beautiful. Yes, we decide cked us or just and it's .

beautiful to us and and we're write that IT is beautiful to us, but we IT doesn't mean what we know anything about IT. That's right.

yes. So we have these filters, perceptual filters. We only can see in here, smell and taste what we can. And then the brain likes to work in symbols we tend to like to match. That person whose shoes are messed up must be homeless.

I've had a couple incenses in life where I saw what I thought was a homeless vigor ant inside of building at an academic institution that turned out IT was the most accomplish person in the field. That's always cool. Yes, that happened at burkey.

Then the other thing that we do is we tend to put you simple reports. So we are perception symbol representations, and then our memories are entirely confabulated based on already deficient symbol and perceptual representation. yes.

And so I never like the statement that we don't know how the brain works. I think we do know how the brain works. But if that IT works through very limited filters, okay.

So knowing that in accepting that and um IT seems to me that this idea looking to nature, looking outside us is so critical and in fact, I I hope you want to mind me sharing this. But a few years back I had sent you something by text and I was kind of in disbelief about something i've seen in the media. I was say, they got IT all wrong.

And I knew the person involved and IT was IT was not a good situation for them. And I like, they got IT all wrong. And you wrote back and know, you said, it's all lies back to nature.

the only truth. wow.

And and I wrote that down. I put IT over my desk. wow. And I still, you know, i'd tat on my forehead if I didn't already have IT well, well committed to memory, but I think I know that's true, right? Nature we can look at.

And it's but I say it's all lies. You just talked about our ability to how limited our facility to see and understand what we see.

Yes, yes.

So based on that, that leads us to we can't know much. Do you know i'm saying our resolution is so low on everything that we're really just like our grasping at straws. We have no idea. We have no idea.

And this great powers in knowing that because if you think you know what's going on, your chances are you're being deceived, not because somebody is is deceiving you, but because they're telling you what they see and they don't know. It's all do you know i'm saying it's all made up everything that we everything we know is made up. Maybe maybe it's true.

The springs us protestant. It's the reason that protesters is closer to reality than anything else we can watch or any other content is we know it's made up. We know that it's a performance, it's storytelling and that's how everything is, except we think restyling fake. And the world is real, restyling real. And the word's fake you .

talk about in the book, we're definitely going this direction in the book you talk about the this notion of entertaining, the idea of the opposite being true as IT. And and there are not only emerging, but establish fields of psychology that are making great ground, I think, into the human psyche by ring kits were and others where you take a statement and you start playing with that statement for you poke at its authenticity. yeah.

And when I first heard that, I thought this is kind of hockey is just words. And then I realized how foolish I was being because she's really on to something. And there are others too, of course.

But in science, that's exactly what you do. You don't really ask questions. In science.

You are forced to raise hypotheses and try and say true or false. Now there are limitations to that approach. certainly. I mean, rational studies have been incredible um in terms of what they have reveal to us, especially medicine you know patient that has a bullet hole through a certain area of the brain.

You don't go in and say, oh, I hypothesize that person will have a deficit and seeing faces know you person wandered into the clinic and I go, this person cannot seize faces but can't make sense of them and then you you a reverse, you you forensically arrived in understanding. So but in general, we we go about things in this way. And considering that the opposite might be true.

Well, that's a little bit I I suppose of like seeing the whale at the surface of the water. It's like, well, the opposite of my experience, which is all above water for the most part, is maybe not the complete experience of life. You start seeing the universe all the time.

So I want to consider the universe all the time. And IT really relate to the way that you you described. How we see colors is based on contrast.

So maybe blues only blue in relation to yellow. So if blue is our choice, if we're not considering yellow, blue doesn't exist, do not i'm saying talk about night. It's only night because there is day.

If there was no day, there is no night in in all of our cases. Like it's like begin yang, you know it's like it's we there's the the light and the shadow always there's always another side for everything. And we we focus on one aspect. But if we look at the other aspect, chances I will learn something to .

the the nervous system is not just able to do this is the way he does everything. Two experiments just briefly described, my scientific great grandparents, David, he will turns the whistle show that if you force a person to look at something for a long period of time without moving their eyes, there's a way that you can do this.

The image disappears because Normally your eyes are making little microsys ods and you're comparing what you're seeing to what's right next to IT, pixel by pixel, pixel by pixel pico. If we don't enough to use example of pressing on the ARM, we're sitting and chairs right now. And until I said, know what's going on at the level of sensation on the box of your thoughts you are unaware of, because if you experience a pressure or a smell in room, ever walk in, the smell is either good or not good.

Precious in the smell disappears. The neurons are still firing like sledge hammers on on a bell. But we become blind and death to IT because the nervous system likes to habituate the value that signal when it's there often. And it's only the stuff that goes comes through signal, the noise that kind of job us into, you know, attention and awareness.

And I want to return to attention, awareness, which are prominent themes in the book, and I think is in an important way, not just our attention, awareness is important, but you also give insight into how to pay Better attention, how to pay awareness with the understanding that people are going to go about IT differently. But I do want to ask you about recently, because when I was growing up, I was not, I live self for the cow palace. And there were some restful going on there.

I think back and IT was W, W. F, there was a short stint to my childhood where I paid attention to, in particular, um was that coal? Beware the guy that had a car.

I was obsessed with tropical birds, and he were coming, put this tropical bird thing. And then who is the georgie animals? Still they they would eat the ring okay so um and I believe .

he was a professor, was thirsty seriously, what really real .

life amazing.

He was a professor, but he played George animals deal as arrest.

And I loved the movie the wrestler yeah one the reasons I like as I once visited asbury park, is that where that was film. There's a vacant he was a visit there. There's a vacant amusement park or abandoned musement park seen there.

There was really, really still on to me little, but there's something about the east coast in in kind of fall. All the places that people Normally go just for the summer that we don't have out here in the west coast, people got just tougher than we are still haunts me. Great movie, but I remember watching rustling.

And I was at that age, I think I was probably about twelve, thirteen, maybe eleven, twelve, thirteen where um you know you're kind of entering puberty. So and I you know puberty is a fundamental landmark of of development is the most rapid period of ageing. It's also when we start to change our rule set like certain people and certain kinds of interactions take on profoundly different meaning, right? It's not just a reproductive competence time. And when could change their bodies, change the rule book, changes fundamentally our .

understanding the world, changes in.

oh yeah, I mean, the moment that a child understands really what sex is and kind of how they got there, and that a lot of the stuff that we see in the world, this is kind of passively or not so passively being sent through that filter, it's like IT is something that changes the the rule, the rule book of a perception I view this age from about eleven to thirteen, at least for me, was a unique transition point where the gap between what I perceived as reality and fiction was kind of blurry.

This is captured pretty well in that movie, stand by me, where they're hanging ing around the campfire night. And the kids says, who do you think would win in a fight between superman and mighty mouse and the other kids says, like you idiot, minty mouse is a cartoon. Of course, supermen would win. And like to me, that's being eleven and a half or twelve years old where you're understanding of reality, as you know, that is changing, but it's not completely Christal zed into an adult .

form reality that sounds like a really healthy place to be to me like that not living at Crystalize. I think that's the there's where the downfall happens. So I have .

questions specifically about wrestling, but it's really about process. Yes, I want to know whether not you watch restless because IT allows you to access the energy state in your body and mind.

And that kind of mode of thinking in which reality as this one conceives IT is somewhat blurry or is IT for a number of other reasons, which is fine, is that the energy you're trying to export in bring to the creative process elsewhere to life is that that anything is possible or that we're dealing with architect es, because IT doesn't matter if it's coco beware or Randy montreal verage George animal deal in the lovely Elizabeth. I guess I did watch a little bit wrestling. There are archetypes much like the greek miss or the bible, or no disrespect to the bible, or good, or it's wrestling for that matter.

Archetypes are are a powerful filter for humans. But we know that there are a very limited filter too, because people aren't built like square way of functions. We have servers and controls and complexity. So what is the deal with your relationship to restless?

I think IT IT maintains that kind of playfulness. Anything is possible. We expect the unexpected all the time. And and it's and it's a way to have kind of a feeling of the energy of a sport with with no competition. It's everyone's working together to put on the best show they can.

So it's more like a valley than IT is like A A sporting event and and there's great skill involved. It's one of the few things that I can watch and really feel relax IT relaxed as me. I don't feel like I to think about that. I can just relax and enjoy IT.

This brings up a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, which is the notion of dopamine schedules. I never want to reduce everything to dopamine, but doping is the universal currency of delight, pleasure, motivation, seeking. There are other chemicals involved, but there is a beautiful experiment in a couple of examples that are used as a foundation to more questions about rustling and Whites, powerful and White.

Other people may want to use restful or some other endeavor is a way to access creative energy and source. Really, where we talk about you, you can train an animal to press a level three times and then get reward. And they will learn three, the magic number for reward, and then they can switch IT takes a little bit training, and then they can switch.

But they can't do prime numbers. They can't do high abstraction schedules. Humans either were not very good at figuring out the rule set for optimal for origin. We do IT well enough to persist as a species, at least for now. But it's very likely that we are not tapping into that system as well as we could.

And how would we know if we don't know to one of those you don't know what you don't know, there's a beautiful experiment that explored when dopamine in is released in the context of watching sport or watching comedy, believe IT or not. And with the comedy stuff, IT was, every time there was a surprise that was kind of that, darling. Ha, and they measure people.

People stop me out. But they were also brain imaging in the game of basketball. It's a beautiful opportunity experimentally because every time one team gets the ball or shooting free throws and they are going down court and it's either going to end up in the basket or it's not might end up on the freeze line and even not.

So what they found is that the schedule of anticipation was every time there was a switch of which team got IT. So you're waiting, waiting. And then it's a waiting, waiting, yes, waiting, waiting.

Three pointer. awesome. And if something happened where IT look like they were, make the three point point. But then somebody basically squatted the ball away and then went for a half court shot. Like you don't expect that very often bigger dopamine release OK.

That's kind of how the dopamine thing works when you describe restless, I wonder IT because you don't know the script. It's not one team gets IT than the other team gets IT. You don't know who's gonna in anything could happen as what you said. Yes, the availability of that .

dopamine .

surge or drip, which is a powerful thing, is completely is completely out of your reach in in terms of anticipation. You don't know when it's gonna come, but IT must arrive often enough that you return to IT eleven hours a week of watching. In many ways, the way i'm starting to conceptualize the creative process is a little bit the same.

You don't know where those nuggets of gold and those loose threats are, but you have enough experience. And in this case, I am referring to you specifically to know that they're in there. The people walking in this room have a certain level of ability and talent to create that the map will form itself as we are going through the voyage in those nuggets.

Ts of here are calling them dopa mean, but they are out there and that knowledge is enough to get you to come back again and again to trust the process. So I actually think the way you described um reston, as you know, it's the energy of the sport. It's not the whether not it's this move or that move or who wins or who loses, its the energy and i'm guessing it's the energy that IT creates in you yeah I observer .

yes is the energy creates me and the reality that is honest in what IT is, in a world where seemingly nothing is honest at at what IT is and again, not because people are lying all the time. We have a little data, we make up a story to explain IT and then we say that's what happened and and we have a trusted sources who do exactly what I just described and who passed this down as gospel of what what we teach and where. And maybe it's true.

Maybe it's not wrestling. We know maybe it's true, maybe it's not. We lean towards IT not being true, but it's really interesting about something. And maybe one of the most fun things about IT is that sometimes real life works its way into the story like a to restore, get married now .

in real life.

Well, we don't know. It's like that you never know is like in the story's line, they're getting married or getting divorced or best friends turn on each other. And IT could be part of the story and IT could really be happening because they do right, someone gets, someone breaks their leg.

So they're out because their leg is broken, they break their leg. We don't know they're out, do you know? I'm saying they were had told they broke their leg.

So there's always just like. I wonder what's true. Know I want I wonder where the line is.

We know that it's scripted or or predetermined. That's how they say it's predetermined. But we don't know where reality is and isn't. And in some ways that our real experience of the world is this. We don't really know where reality isn't, isn't.

We have an idea maybe I think in some ways, restrooms more honest or legitimate because we start with the idea that it's a that is fixed when we go to a boxing match. We don't go to a boxing match, think it's fixed yet IT might be. And historically, it's happened you or there was just something in baseball where was a baseball?

I don't follow baseball.

There was was just a big sports.

Oh.

one one of the teams .

that the plays basically yes, was that the call signals of the catch? Yes yeah that they were. You're not supposed to deep program the or deconstruct call the call signals of the other team. And I guess maybe a team got caught doing that.

yes. And the team, that one whatever the um you was. So it's like with restless, you know that that wouldn't be a scandal. I'm saying it's like because .

that almost anything goes.

anything goes and that's what the world is really like. So in some ways, it's comforting and there's still this mystery of like I wonder if that's true, not because we never really know someone gets her, did they really break their back or they just gone on vacation. We don't know. We'll never know. fascinating.

IT is fascinating. And I feel like there are certain people who show up in a way that is surprising in in not just one direction but in all directions like it's one thing for a celebrity to come out and make a statement. I can be interesting or not interesting depending on the celebrity in the statement and the delivery.

But and i'm pretty going to get this wrong because i'm terrible at pop culture things, most of them anyway. But as I recall, your lady gaga showed up to some event wearing an outfit made of meat. And I cannot tell you for the life of me whether or not that was a statement against meat or four meat maybe was a statement for the carnival dye, maybe was a statement for veganism.

I don't know any or maybe either or may be either, but IT was defining a statement in that he broke with the norm and IT said to me, okay, SHE creates different rules for herself or so breaks boundaries that um other people have. I never heard of anyone doing that before um doesn't in the head, but I never heard of anyone doing that before. But we do tend to associate outside the current playbook with coconut creativity unless IT crosses a line, in which case IT becomes something else, IT becomes almost theater for sake of theater.

But what you're telling me is that within the realm of wrestling, feather is the goal at some level. And everybody knows that. Who goes into those arenas? Who watches IT? yes. Everybody.

yes. And everyone .

agrees to kind of sand outside reality and say, this is reality, yes.

And they bo for the bad guys and cheer for the good guys, knowing that back days, you're probably friends except for the .

kids that are eleven who think it's really real.

I don't know. I don't even know if they know i'm not sure .

the only other person I know who has localized their love of professional restless um to extend that you have a large rejections in the rider m guitar player for ransom who like love is restless but his statement and forgive me large game this wrong um is that because he grew up in an area of the south bay where like there were no teams like now there's a cenote earthquakes.

But there was no football team in sanoh he's from but there there were no like good teams, no sports teams but they had a restless and he had IT where on the television set. And so if you didn't have a like adding group with any organized sports thing that foreign miners were up the road, but for me, escape boarding. And I love IT for the same reason you actually never really know it's gonna happen.

There is no robot. The robot isn't made up, but they are very it's a unique sport in that surfings a bit like this too, in that they are absolutely manal about making things look a certain way. It's not about just doing IT. It's about doing IT making IT look good yeah smooth catching up with the front for you know and the trends style .

star it's a star style is .

in that style is like nebulous thing of like in fashionable as with a football there some amazing catches. There's even like the law catch, which I happen to know as a is a four dog catch during the super ball. But in general, like the goal is getting the end zone, win the game. And i'm sure football players like crunching, as I say this, but doesn't matter if you run ugly, if you run fastest and capable, and that would never fly. In fact, you will basically be ridiculed out of the sport in wrestling is at the same is their style to wrestling.

It's all, it's all performance. It's all the Chrism of the people involved. There's the physical ability, the ability to talk until the story and the how charisse matic the performers are, whether want to watch them, where you want to see them win, what you want to see them lose, and whether you're interested in cheering or booing for them.

I was going to say that reminds me of Opera, but Opera get released over and over again. You know the story and how IT ends when you walk in if you've listen to a before. So restating does seem to be unique in that way. It's real time iteration, at least from the perspective of .

the any real time iteration based on because people get hurt all the time, they're doing really crazy physical stuff. So if someone gets hurt, the story has to change because in real life, they can show up next week, can do what was planned in the script. So it's very alive and there's a lot of. Something interesting and unexpected is always .

happening well in a much more um calm form. I'll share with you something I just like your perspective on IT. For years I I used a tool in order to try and to access ideas since I was a little kid actually um because I have a little bit of ocd, a little bit of a threat when I get tired.

I'll do that like very like strategy implementation oriented. I had that when I was a little little kid. I need all my stuff animals do. And then science is very much about, you have to do things with a lot of precision.

And I discovered that the ultimate reset for me when I was in graduate school, or a post stock, if I couldn't make IT to a really good, like agnostic front shower, like chaos, like the chaos of a puncog show for me, was the kind of this reset, like, could like, release all this thing. And I got energy from IT for some, I got transplants. Play you like wa, because you don't know what's going to happen.

And IT was scary. And I loved IT. The other thing that I used over time to kind of reset this ability to to think in a structured way without IT feeling like I was overcoming me.

Maybe even access the same thing in some ways that you're accessing with restless. Was I to stare at a query like, I like to go to aquarium or i'd build aquarium, and I would just sit there because you never know which way the fish are gonna go. You think it's going that way, but then all the same will turn to go the other way.

It's completely unpredictable. And I love a quero because of the requite and had them in my lab for a long time. I just a door aquariums because of the nonlinear of IT. It's not A B C.

It's A Z Z Q, you know? And I think this is what some people trying to access through psychology, but that didn't seem to me like a very good way to do IT on a regular basis. We're as with the aquaria, you just the tanks are there.

So in your book you talk about something that um I also share a love for which is how you the ocean and aspects of nature, like clouds and ocean, they have a predictability to them. We know where they are and where to find them. Fortunately, the sun rises and sets every day, at least for now, and we can count on them with hundred percent reliability.

And yet they are, from the perspective of, like what physicists would say, they are very chaotic, that you can't look at wave and know exactly how the phone is gone to roll out. You know, it's going to roll in and roll out. We have the tides, but when I hear about rustling, I think about my love of a query, and I think about my love of contract music, for instance, or I think about the ocean. I think in that way that we actually have a need to source from things that have both a combination of structure and no structure.

I think is interesting that there are some places that don't change in some places to change a lot. And I can remember thinking about this. I was walking, there's a beach that I walk on in in that I walk on every morning when i'm there.

And if you walk on the same beach every day, you can get a sense of what it's like. And I remember I was in why walked on the beach every day for a year where how and long was. And then I left for six months, and I came back in the next time I walked on the beach. IT was an entirely different beach, entirely different.

And and I remember thinking in that moments, like this is an unusual place, because I pictured the house that I didn't even grow up in the house I was, I lived in maybe for the first seven years of my life, and I think about what the backyard look like, and I think about a particular old tree that was there. And I don't know this for sure, but my senses, if I were to go back to where I grew up and go to that place and look in that yard, IT would probably look pretty similar yet. He was this meeting that was walking on, and why that, in the course of six months, completely changed its face.

And just how interesting both of those things are. And then, depending on the project, were working on to be able to go to a place that we know has the potential to change a lot and what that would do to our to our uh, connection with the earth when when we're experiencing that versus go going to a place that has very little change. And you can kind of count on IT being the way it's always been that both of those are interesting things to be able to drop on depending on what we want to open in our in our psyche.

I have an almost unhealthy fascination with new york in the middle in nineties, and I lived .

there though, no.

but I, since I was a kid, I went to her when I was a little kid, and I was fascinated by IT. There's also very interesting migration of east coast to west coast creatives, including yourself, that IT playing important part of my life, just seeing things and hearing that were meaningful to me. But I like, for instance, I love the movie.

I ve never seen the documentary, but they want about john shelby basia because of the characters they run IT in. The huge number of people in that, like Parker was hopper, Chris and on and on. Those images of new york at that time are so exciting in what was happening.

I wish I could transport myself to that by the time machine. That's where I I land. First, I hear a lot of people say, you know, new york isn't what I used to be serving.

CEO isn't what I used to be. What there does seem to be something that feels a little bit disruptive to people about cities changing. But the idea that natural landscapes change, actually, we've been accept, like fire sweep through places.

And assuming they weren't started by humans, we accept that that change. And the reordering of landscapes is Normal and healthy. And I always tell myself they have the kids growing up in new worker differences.

Go or chicago now. They only know IT that way. So to them, it's as cooler as uncool as it's ever gonna.

You either want to get out or they're loving every piece of IT. And this happened for all the people that came before us. So um my questions are very basic. One, do you miss the new york that you came up in? Are you somebody who is attached to the past?

Anything in the past? I don't look back at all.

You don't think about like, oh, in my dorm omand M Y U B T boys this like, I missed. No, your optics are forward, present, in.

for only, only present and forward.

Is there a process to that? Or IT just happens to be .

where you default too? I don't know. But how I do nostalgia.

not you in rick rubs brain.

No.

lucky you.

man. No.

I say that with with with genuine admiration so you can hear a song that maybe you had A A role in producing or not something from the past and you're accessing a state presumably but you're not pining for wishing how IT was never. I'm no psychologist, but I ve been a venture say that I think that's a very unique quality. I think a lot of people wish for or wish that things did not happen the way they did that.

There's a lot of living in the past. There's a lot of this notion of like people future trip. I don't actually think that's the default ate of the brain. I think a lot of people live in emotional anchors to the past, good and bad.

One and watching .

restful is one way that you cleanse the palate yeah you go to a meal and you're they pass around that do the same more, but pass around little bit of survey that cleans the pallet. Turns out there's A A biological reason for that. There is a kind of neutralization of the taste factors between savery and sweet. A so restless is your pallet.

Nutri know if I watch resting before I go to sleep. It's gonna a good nigh sleep.

Do you dream about restful?

No, never. But it's, but it's it's just relaxing. It's it's just relaxing. Do you anticipate .

when you watch IT like here comes the dog I mean .

hit sometimes sometimes .

when that happens yeah .

sometimes it's exciting. But do you enjoy even man, it's like the stakes so low like I don't really care what happens, which feels good. Do you know that i'm just being entertained?

Do they actually get hurt?

Sometimes you said they do a lot. Often they do. I mean, there basically stuntman. So imagine stunning. Getting her doing a crazy happens all the time.

Well, in the movie the restless, I remember he got stable stabled into him. And I thought that's pretty intense. I once went and saw, I guess that mexican, don't know what? I yeah.

I dip their hands in glass. This was in sacramento, and I went, I did have a stomach for IT. I really didn't I couldn't believe IT was legal and might not have been legal, yes, but I thought .

there is crazy stuff in us thing sometimes.

So be before sleep. Is that typically when .

you watch rustly? Yes.

do you think it's useful for people to have some activity that allows them to have clear their mind and in and create peace before heading off to sleep?

I think so. And I think gan would be like you can need a processing any of the any of the yeah not .

watching the doma thing. I won't watch that.

I don't watch any hard, any anything, or I don't like violent things. Yeah, I know IT exists. I know .

horrible things happen in the world, but I certainly don't want to do that before sleep. I think these liminal states before and emerging from sleep are very powerful. When you wake up in the morning, are your thoughts immediately structured? Red, you enjoy the kind of clearing of the cloud.

It's it's a process for me to wake up and I like that and like not engaging too much too soon. I also um another I usually fall asleep listening to a lecture or something speaking, because if if I don't, I can get caught in my own thoughts. And listening to something is enough of a focus point that IT stabs me from talking to myself.

I do the same. My grandfather listened to the radio to sports on the radio, and he would fall asleep ten times. He was a smoker with a cigarettes.

mal. His wife's responsibility was the stay up later that make sure didn't burn everything down. And then when you wake up, use that as a slow process is at an hour or two before you feel like you.

I would say, probably an hour. I usually wake up and try to get in the sun as soon as I possibly can, and hope to spend, hope to spend about an hour. And then i'll usually go for walk on the beach for another hour and ninety minutes, depending are you with family .

members and other people that .

are usually focused by myself. Phone, I ll be listening to something. I don't look at the phone, but I listen. I listen to, again, lecture pod caster audio book. I like, I do your books.

So, yeah, I do two. If an idea comes to mind.

you write IT down. I may IT depends. I like to, I usually haven't, would do a note in my phone. I don't usually Carry pit on paper with me when I walk. Yeah.

I do say I do a long sunday hiker jog and I I will audio script into my phone. People sometimes give me funny looks because i'm talking .

to myself and I that's a nice way to do IT though i'd like to learn more of the audio methods of doing that instead of the typing methods right now. I type I don't .

think it's best way the voice memo s function and um the iphone and other phones is really good. And they're now companies like rev dot com that will turn those into war dog scripts that are fairly well corrected um fairly inexpensive. Know their not sponsor the podcast I just happened use so it's great actually learn that trick from Richard the neck at chewing wildman noble prize winner. He writes manuscripts and by walking around his office, passing and talking into .

his phone and the. Alan, all the characters and talking about, yet he he's speaking comedy ideas under the first, is really pretentious.

I liked that movie about harvey milk. That champing play harvey milk because i'll took place before I was alive, mostly in very, but there's this, these beautiful scenes of her moves. I recall sitting there at this kitchen table, talking into a table record at night about how he predicted that he would be possibly assassin at a.

And this goes back to the stronger thing about writing things down. I, you know, I think that a lot of people including myself, feel a little bit of like egotistical guilt around my com mi. I think that my ideas could be worthwhile or something. But um you know I think over time I come to realized that the ideas about experiments or health questions I have about health, um they they don't always but often times can lead to real you know seeds that grow into .

be through that interesting to you, doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, you know, like most of my notes are not for anyone else is you know for anyone else is used like I I hear about something is interesting to me. And I think that, okay, I want to learn more about this, whatever is. And then sometimes those things work their way and things on doing, because the universe seems to work in that way.

But I rarely am learning something with the idea of using IT. I've learned things with the idea of this is what I wanted know. This is what's interesting to me.

And then often those things are interesting. Me can find their way to other projects just because they do. Yeah.

it's almost like color kindling but the moment that you think of IT that way IT sounds so extractive, right but if you so you you take this walk in your in your writing down the occasional idea perhaps and then um what is the dex sort of the way that i'm here less than do this than less than that i'm interested in like where does your mind shift does IT become more structured as the day goes on, as you think you become a more structured .

around projects in the plan to deal with things that need dealing with after that and in preparation for going to work? And then when I go to work, it's more like free, this free thing where i'm again hoping something good comes welcoming something good paying attention and may be trying to wait to happen, but never a but knowing I don't have the ability to make that happen, I can just be present for IT be ready if IT does arrive.

Some of the more surprising and I I found really uh interesting and useful features of the book were about um dancing with structure and lack of structure. So when I think of structure, I think like deadlines. So when you are in the process of creating something um obviously deadlines are relevant time of day. There's only so many hours in the day where one can stay in the groove or this like reading ceive. Have you ever found yourself in that mode where you're kind of grinding like like here we are like, okay, not coming home for dinner and I it's the next and we're going to push like they put on the coffee pot kind of thing a lot.

a lot in the over the course of my life, a lot, not as much now. And one of the things that I discovered through working on the book was the phases of work. We're not required to treat the different phase ses of work in the same way was before I did before everything was in the state of play, everything had and wide open time schedule.

IT happens when IT happens. And if IT takes two years or three years or doesn't matter, it's not about that. It's only about this thing has to be great.

And what I came to realize and working on the book is that there there are different phases. And the first phase is this seed collecting phase, which is kind of an ongoing part of life in general. I do that. I do that always whether whether we're working on something or not.

I'm always in the seed collecting phase and there's no deadline or it's just anything that interests me that I think I want to learn more about or has potential to be something anything something I hear, something hm, i'd like to read more about that or I want der, I wonder there's a movie about that. Is there a movie about that? If not, maybe there's a movie to be made.

You know, I could, again, I want, this is something I want in my life. Let's see if IT exist. If IT does not exist, then maybe that's something interesting to pursue.

But I know that the desirs is there because I have IT. So in the seed phase, there's no deadlines, is just a wide open cart. And then the next phase is called the experimental phase, where you we start experimenting to see what the seeds want to do.

You're involved, but you're more of A. You're not really dictating the action. You you're sitting stage for something to happen, but its not about you yet. So it'd be like the equivalent of you'd plant the seed, you would water IT, you would make sure IT was in the sun and you'd wait so you're involved, but you can't make IT grow, you know. And then when IT, sprats and IT grows and or if IT turns into a plant man, you can look at the plans.

I O, K, how is this plan? What's the potential of this plan? And then at and then that the third face is the crafting phase or is like to have this plan.

Maybe i'm in a trimmer or maybe i'm gonna combined with these other plans to make something else with IT. Now it's like material that you have. And then finally, is the the completion or or finishing phase, which is the final added getting to the version of IT, the version of IT.

That's the one that you can share with the world if if that's something you're going to do. And i've come to realize that by the time you're going into the completion phase, you can have a deadline and IT won't hurt the project. In fact, that might help the project. And I didn't know that before.

So i've worked on projects that i've gone longer than they necessarily needed to and maybe not in the best interest of the project because I didn't know that I didn't understand that, that the timing of that because I because I am so aware of the necessity in the experimental phase to not have a deadline that I assumed that, that held through the whole project and and they're not it's not a clear phase one finishes and then you start phase two, face two finishes and then you start face three, you move back and fourth between them. I'm collection seats all the time. I'm always in phase one.

And then probably to some degree, there's always some version of experimental going on, maybe that now. But if something's on a list of things I want to look at, hopefully i'll get get to the list and give them some experimental and see what they can turn into. And then if they do turn into something, then they get to the crafting phase. What's more? Okay, now I have this thing.

what? What do I know about this kind of thing? What can I match this with? What can I use this for? How can I be involved as a craft man? And by the end of the crafting phase, or deep into the crafting phase, you can start seeing the end, you know, you can start seeing an end, and then you can even dictate an end.

But I recommend if you do just IT for you, not for anyone else. Because if something comes up where you learn, if you set a deadline, public deadline, and then a new discovery happens along the way, and you realize, oh, this can actually be much Better than I thought, but I need more time. It's harder to do that if you set the deadline.

So I, we'd say, have an internal deadline to get to finish IT. That said, if an unusual situation comes up and it's Better for everything not to meet that deadline, IT. IT is one of those rules that if you set the rule to break IT, if it's what's best for the project, but that that was a new thing for me, and IT IT helped me a lot.

When did you realize that in .

collecting the material for the book and thinking about IT, when I realized that IT was phases, I didn't I didn't know any of this. When I start writing a book, I didn't know any hardly any of the things in the book there. More um most of IT would be reverse engineering something that I had experience a successful experience using these methods without knowing they were methods just following my instincts got me to something good and then I would look back at why did I want to do that and is there a principal at play that could be of use outside of this case and how do I explain that? And that's what the book is as these reverse engineered principles that have had to a good decision making in trying make things.

The chapter on self doubt was really interesting .

to me tell well.

you know i'll read the first sentence of IT which is itself out out lives in all of us while you may wish IT was gone, IT is there to serve us um and he goes on to the scribe how to um dance itself doubt in so many words I think you know there's a saying that um is actually from the world landscape of psychology um which which is uh generally discussed in um in a kind of pathological context which is if nothing matters, anything goes this is usually the phrase used to describe people who feel as if like there's no using livings I just go crazy often to self destruct but there's a light version of this I realized where in some sense that creative process seems to have something to do with, you know, if you're not paying attention to what outcomes are my who likes IT, who doesn't like IT and you're just doing that for you, you make the the role play I wanted delight myself.

Well then anything goes and you have an infinite rule set there out to from at least initially. so. As one gets Better at their craft, you can imagine your self out t goes down.

I think that's the perception of a lot of people, right? You get Better what you're doing. You you can lend more three free throws. As a basketball player, you can hit more home runs.

As a baseball player, you can produce more, you know, plata broom as as as an artist, you you know self confidence goes up, self that goes down. But thank you. And I both know a number of people who are successful ough to know that often times there's a mayor image to that where people feel pressure because they did IT once.

Now they gotta do IT again that you think you are so good at IT that IT IT comes these alley to .

apply .

yourself. arrogance. yeah. So self doubt is it's like a it's a check on yourself. You can either be really helpful or IT can inter mind you so and something we all have.

And if we let IT undermine us, then we don't make anything that's not good. But when used as A A balancing tool in our lives, IT serves a great function where we really do. It's O, K, to have all the conference in the world.

And still, second guess is this a bestia can be, you can doubt, I think they are phrases in the book. You can doubt your way to a great work, you know, to a masterpiece. Sometimes that questioning allows you to push further than just accepting. I made IT, so it's good.

yeah. I've encountered more people that seem to be driven by self doubt, the need to constantly perform and perform again, then I have real arrogance, just has been my experience fortunately I met american people in my life but um and of course we never as a psychiatrist who I admire a lot in bioengineer who was a guest on this podcast called said no we we never really know how other people feel I mean most of time we don't even know how we feel again, language is a very deprived format for explaining feeling so we think somebody feels one way but we kind of and IT could be another but observe their behavior.

So in in the sense of returning to the work now, just always returning to process sounds like you are routine is fairly scripted, at least now. But the things that you are getting in touch with rustling sleep and dreaming um the ocean, there's a predictability of them because you can access them in a predictable way. But they seem to have a lot of unpredictably in them. The ocean is completely unpredictable.

I I also listen to a lot of music that I don't know. So I listen to a lot of classical music and a lessor, but some jazz and a lot of old music that I never heard before. And I like, I like being surprised by music. And sometimes that really catches me off guard, like I just anima, you know, when when I hear something I like.

have you ever encountered music that really works well alive, but this does not work in a recording? Or that is that much Better alive, but the recording is so of after named.

Yes, I don't think so. I feel like maybe there is some artists who a great live who've never captured IT. Well, on record example would probably be the grateful dead, a good example of a band. I feel like their albums or not, their strong point, but there, if you hear live recordings, they're really interesting and really different from each other. And that's kind of part of what makes the grateful that interesting is their unpredictably .

I can test I, his sister who listen the grape dad and I got taken to a few shows when I was Young. Ger, they would do that. Where is a called space? Who was like these drum solos that would go on for hours and hours? This is like the antithesis of contracts.

And I and I remember things like, what is this? What is this? But people I know who love the grateful dead love that uncertainty about where the that drum thing. I think they do call IT space. Forgive me, dead heads, i'm not enough of one to and get IT right.

But they're looking for something. And sometimes they find IT. And if you're there when they find IT, we feel exciting because it's not just it's not just following a script.

It's like something is really happening. It's a real moment. Something that I I aim for in studio is to create real moments that when you hear them, they don't necessarily sound perfect.

They sound like something that really happened. And in that moment, something happened in is a special moment. And you you can feel that if they were to played again, IT wouldn't be like that is something really exciting about that. It's really what it's how jazz, jazz works as well.

And I think some of bringing some of that jazz mentality into other types of music is really interesting, makes for compelling things because when you hear them, there's a certain amount of you, you you really have to pay attention to do IT. When you're doing IT, you're really paying attention like I don't really know there's no music, there's no there's no there's no map to follow. And now we're working together to make something.

Do I player or not play? When do I play and you're really paying attention. And can I add, you go to start adding something and someone else said, is something I can do that.

And like everyone's just in this thing in this moment, experiencing this thing at once, that you can feel as a listener. And we get to, we get to hear their excitement of finding IT, and it's thrilling when that happens. So I I like that experience.

I feel like that's kind of what the dead do lie the play songs in different ways. Um and again, I don't know very much about the dead. And sort of a newer it's a newer for middle stem of the debt growing up. I never listen of the debt, but probably because I heard songs on their albums and thought this IT doesn't want to speak to me, but I think that the albums don't they reflect what special about them.

I think a law that shows were recorded right to a video tapes, yes.

by fans, which they support. They supported that everybody come, everybody take, everybody trade tapes IT made sense for who that band was. They .

redefined or they defined, excuse me, the notion of followers. I think people literally gave up their lives or spent much of their lives literally driving from city to city to .

follow them because it's not like going from city to city to watch a movie over and over because it's not a movie. It's different every night. It's changing prety .

incredible phenomenon. I don't know if anything else, quite like to accept cults, and those often don't end well. I think a guy that mixed the punch IT that for the jone's town master went to my high school.

That was the is true, I think so. Yeah, my sister is really good at all. This kind of like seventies adios, like like dark psychology trivia yeah she's a very light person .

but do read a season of the which no, it's about sences go in the sixties. It's great. You love IT one great .

book out to check IT out the way you describe a experiences going by in time in or or things emerging in time, in the creative process, being a way of the catching, capture those moments, maybe arranging, maybe watering at at A, I thought was beautifully captured in the in the analogy you gave about kind of A A convery about going by of things, right, that we think of the creative process, like it's going to land in us or we're going to enter IT or that we're going to sit there in a chain like great R T th.

The others like a some hemingway quote, you just sit there and there at the patient until the beds of blood form on your forehead or something. Maybe mabe seems like broke clear. Anyway, i'm going to get this wrong. People tell me in the comments, maybe no one said IT IT was a dream, but I love this convert.

Think the debt reminds me of being a laboratory, doing experiments, thinking I was trying to solve one thing and then seeing something else, and then having to make the decision, like, is that really cool enough to drop everything and go that direction or kind of spend an either a week or a career going that way? I think these are kind of big decisions given that at least as far as we know, we're we're going to live l hundred years or less. And but this idea that we have, you know, thoughts and experiences in our past and we can do draw and like try to make good decisions to we.

We like grab these things after convert or not. I hearing you and i'm trying to realize that being attached to the past might be the worst thing that one could do in terms of being able to make good decisions in this context because if we have a kind of a playbook of what's worked and what hasn't worked, but you actually talk about this, there's A A passage in the book you know that i'll just read IT um to be aware of the assumption that the way you work is the best way simply because it's the way you've done IT before I SAT with this page for almost ten, four minutes, which is not something I do very often. Maybe we could elaborate on this a little bit. I mean, we want to have, you know, mechanisms in routines we can trust. But this is that I think, an important warning.

Yeah when something works, it's easy to be fooled into believing that's the way to do IT or that's the right way. It's just a way and it's just a way that happened to work that time. And this plays into when you get.

Advice from people who have more experience than you. You explain your situation, they tell you their advice. The advice that they're giving you is not based on your life for your experience is based on their life in their experience.

And the stories that they are telling are based on experiences they've had that that have very different data points than yours. So maybe they are giving a good advice, but maybe they are giving a good advice for them and that giving you good advice for you. And it's it's easy when we try something and have a result, a positive result, thinking this is everybody can do this.

You know, the way I I was vegan for long time, twenty years, and then I started eating. I started eating animal protein, and then eventually changed, changed. My died a few times to the point where I lost a lot of wait.

The way that I did IT work for me, right before that happened, I did something that I was told that everyone else who did what you did, they all lost. Wait, for whatever reason I didn't. So the idea of that we know what's right for someone else, I think, is hard enough to even figure out what's right for ourselves.

And if we do somehow crack the code of what's right for us, be happy we have IT and then still know. I wondered if that's the only way, maybe there's an even Better way that we're not considering. You know, like. Not to get comfortable with thinking. We know how works just because we get the outcome we want.

I was raised in science with a principle. IT was literally dictate as a principle, almost like a rule of religion, which was that the brain is plastic. I can change and learn until you're about twenty five.

And then the critical period ended that IT. And this was a rule assumption was dictated a nobel prize which was very deserved, given to my scientific great grandparents they deserve IT. Um but I was told there was no changing of brain structure function in any meaningful way after age twenty five or so. Turns out that's completely wrong. Sorry, David and tourist in but they knew IT was wrong.

Ww, and yeah.

I was actively suppressed because of the competitive nature of prizes and discoveries at that time. And a guy name, mike merson and student greg and zone, we're showing that adult plasticity exists. And only now is this really starting to emerge as a theme, right? Just crazy like there were so many reasons, and the textbook said that we were all told IT and IT changed our behavior. Now we know this to be completely false plastically throughout the lifespan. There's limits to IT here and there, but like it's just far and away .

a different story. So why would that be the the only .

time that exactly and but the field was run by a very smoke ball of people.

that fields are run by a very smoky of people who have an investment in things being the way they are now because they're in charge like and one of .

the great things about getting older is that um well, fortunately, everyone eventually ages and I hope that David unfortunately passed away. He was lovely, torn son's love, he still alive. And they would say, I think towards in would say, yeah, we should have been a little more open or kind in allowing these other ideas. But I think that .

I just think about all the years that were wasted with this misunderstanding. Absolutely.

absolutely. And and he went beyond that and there were BBC specials that helps propagate the and you know, one of the goals of the podcast has been to try and shed shine light on ideas that at first seem crazy. Like, I know you and I both send me obsessed with the health benefits of light.

And you hear about this stuff like negative ion is therapy. Sounds crazy, right? Sounds like something you would only hear about. A, S. L. And and big sir, turns out, negative ionization therapy for sleep and mood is based on really amazing work out of colombia by guy Michael turma.

The nobel prize, I think he was in one thousand nine and sixteen, was given for phototherapy for the treatment of loops like this idea that certain wavelength light can help treat medical conditions is not a new idea. But somehow we see a red light. We're not used to seeing red lights except in sunsets and on stop lites. And somehow IT bothers people or IT makes them feel .

IT undermines A A business model that doesn't take red light into consideration right until IT does.

And then IT. And then it's cop ted there and the place, what I looked to, his active punch for a lot of years, people that will archibong ture, this is like no mechanism, no mechanism, no mechanical. There's A A lab.

Harvard guy name you 吗？ I know reasonably well whose laboratories y is dedicated to trying to figure out the biological mechanisms of accutane. And they are discovering what everyone is known for thousands of years, which is that incredible effects on anti information they got. So I have .

a friend who was having a terrible back problem, and I suggested that he's see an active puncture. And he went to the archibong crust that I suggested, and his back problem completely healed almost since santana ously. And I ask, you know, have you been keeping up? But because you get another another flare because like I can go back there because that you punch is work I said, well, if you saw w at work for you like you but there's no science oh yes.

he's got IT. There is now there is good science published in premier journals. You know, what interesting is, is a little bit of science editorial, what, since we like to exchange information about health and things that sort the editorial staff of a journal, dict ates, what gets publishing? What does that? And the premier journals have a an outsize effect on what the media covers. And so the beautiful thing is the journal staff now is of the age that they grew up hearing about architecture. Hip nosis has a powerful clinical effect if it's done right um you can either in similar practices. And so the tides are changing, but I sometimes like to take a step back and think what are we confronted with now that seems crazy that in ten years the kids that will be the customer, their kids will be journal editors like oh yeah absolutely um you know i'm making this up but putting tuning forks against your head or something like that like sound sound wave therapy. I think when one adopts IT stands of .

like we we have to filter everything .

through the limitations of our biology, but also through the the sociology of a like the way culture goes IT becomes a different story. How do you deal with that? Not just in terms of of health, but in terms of thinking about anything? Sounds like you don't spend a whole lot of time .

thinking about .

what people are going to think .

is cool or not. I just know what I like and what I know. I know what works for me, what doesn't you know, I try things, and i'm constantly looking for new, Better solutions to anything. And whether they come from doesn't matter.

IT could come from IT could come from stanford, or I could come from the guide to talk to in himself on the street if IT works i'm good, you know, doesn't really matter to me at all. I don't hold um I don't hold any of IT tightly. Well, fortunately.

there is now a division of the national institutes of health called complimentary health, complimentary alternative health. And it's it's amazing N C C I H is run by a woman who has published on this is interesting the uh some of the anti cancer effects of things like archived um not that act punch can cure all cancers, but but real you real data that I think for a lot of people you know certainly the generation above us, they just like not interested IT shed new light on the Andrew wiles, the paul and mages um you know the wild .

ones oil therapy. There are so many, there are so many we can look at I mean, for a long time, nutrition was just start of as something that doesn't matter what you is, what medicine you take in, what you know it's like. The food is everything. food.

Food is a powerful, powerful variable in the landscape of of online nutrition IT IT sort of one of the third rails for anyone like myself is alter. Show me. You do a very good job of putting out post on twitter and instance. But each day you take down.

you put up a new one. And I don't talk about, I only talk about, I talk about creative ideas. I don't talk about anything specific related to. Anything other then you know maybe something like don't believe what .

right exactly um well in the landscape of nutrition sometimes I I now place IT through the filter of a professional restless you ve got your your vegans and your army of wars and your um your carnival md and you've got liver king everything in between right? So you could translate that to any number of different areas. Fashion probably has its people, i'm just not aware for their music as theirs and sports as theirs and science has theirs characters. So are we all just progressed ling like characters in these different domains and we're taking IT ourselves and each other .

way too seriously? Yeah we don't know anything. If someone has an idea that sounds interesting, you try IT and if IT doesn't work, it's okay. Tries up, melts.

it's like you an empiricist yeah.

whatever works, whatever works. And if something seems interesting to you and you're excited by IT, why not try IT? You know, I tried very fragile things. I like in some ways, the more unraised IT seems, the more interesting IT is to me because I feel like that's getting closer to something that somebody doesn't not mean to know, you know .

but you're not a big drug guy like the big psychiatric craze that's .

happening now and that is against yeah that is an .

interesting area that default making a headway inside of standard economic science and medicine now so that i'm .

interested in non formose gc approaches to things, whatever they are.

I'm a big believer that also that behavioral do and dots at first are that they're the most fun to explore because in general, unless it's something like you know jumping between buildings, doing park course most of time you're not onna injure, harm yourself. There's more room for iteration than there is with a pillar, a portion. Although you know certainly pram accosts gy has its place.

So you ve had creative works certainly within the ROM of music, also comedy and producing film and other things for somebody out there who of whatever age that they maybe you're creating, maybe they their they know they have this creative. And ten, I not. The source is outside what was IT that draper said that I actually wrote this on the wall of my laboratory.

No input, no output. That drum's law, it's written in my laboratory. The people in my law was so like, what's gone on here? I think one guy underneath I was, but he was a picture of human picture, my ball dog.

And yeah, no input, no output. I don't think I can just stay in a room with four walls and selling and nothing else and create. I know, I know that there are certain number of things in here, but I I do think accessing the world is the .

world is giving us clues all the time for paying attention. That's not part of IT like if you paying attention, thing that you are looking for is being either whispered or screamed at you in the outside world if you're paying attention well .

and I uh I forget the exact title of the chapter, but um there's a chapter about staying open to clues or or being on the look out for clues. Now I feel attempted to look for the exact title of that chapter.

but it's probably look for clues.

look for a clue. Sounds like sounds right and saint rose, that's right. So do you think they're clues in in every everywhere? Yes.

I think there clues everywhere for if we pay attention will hear a phrase we will trigger him a thought we will see something unexpected um in the if someone recommend something to you, maybe it's a coincidence if three people recommend the same thing to you may be it's not you know who knows who knows that I do believe the universes on the side of creativity and the universes supporting things to happen and they could happen through you, but they could happen through someone else. So if you're paying attention, maybe you will happen to you.

We had had guessed on the pakistan, Justin sonnier, he is expert in the gut microbes, and he applied something that, without knowing, he applied the opposite principle. The opposite is to principal. We are time about these trillions have got microbiota that clearly are doing amazing things to create our transmittals and governor brain and even decision making how much sugars in our system driving appetite a and he said, you know, we think of them as cargo, but like maybe were just vehicles and they're in charge that all of our interactions every time we shake hand, are touch for exchanging got microbiota and we think of intelligence as as thinking and intelligence and he's a microbiologist and in in all seriousness, he said maybe were the ones being manipulated. We're the house cats and we think here we are we're falling in love and kissing and shaking hands and washing hands and um doing all sorts of things to isolate or or connect with one another and maybe the gut microbiota trying to .

optimize their survival. That's what lad hamilton said that one point in the sona that when you're in the sona, it's really hot. The feeling that you have of wanting to get out could be the bad quitters in your body hand IT.

Let's get trying .

to convince you from the inside to get out. Maybe that's where the that feeling of being compelled to get out comes from.

So elan, getting us all to mars might be a bit of maybe they just want to get to mars. And so they maybe .

i'm start .

to feel like i'm channeling like freeman here for a moment. Now I think this, considering the opposite, is really key. And while that might sound mystical to people or a little bit like we're just playing with ideas, that's exactly what you do in science.

Someone walks in with the result and says, I found this. This is true, you say, but what if it's all something else? A good example might be, here i'm pulling from my test episode, that we've have a leopard.

Is this amazing psychologist who were some belief effects? Your knowledge strongly shapes the physiological outcoming. SHE had this amazing graduate thesis where he said, would if all of exercises plus ebo all of IT, yeah, bring some calories and do some things.

Turns out this is implicated, but IT turns out a lot of the effects of exercise, positive effects, lowering blood pressure, relieving stress, possible or placebo. And but nobody thinks of IT like that because we're so attached to calories burned. And I think that's .

a big point that the belief part of IT is a huge part of the conversation about everything. You know what we believe has power. If we believe we could make something great, the chance of us making something great are Better than if we don't believe we can. So I would say any ability harness your belief on your behalf is a really healthy thing to do.

In one thing that you make very clear that while our own abilities may come into question from time to time, you absolutely believe that the elements from which to create are out there.

Absolutely all, all the elements are, are, are here. Everything is here. We get to pick and choose. We get to can vary belts going by with little, little gifts. And we can, first, first we have to notice there's a convey belt, then we noticed the gifts, and that's the starting point. And then we may even feel empowered enough to grab one of the gifts and open IT up and see what's inside. And then maybe that started something really beautiful that we wouldn't we wouldn't have done everything, everything that, that i'd make or have made has always been based on something that I see or here that allows me to see something that I didn't see before.

So I was gonna ask you whether or not it's important to be happy in order to create. But certainly lot of people that were unhappy, we're still able to create. But the more I listen to you IT seems that it's really about an ability to pay attention. yes. So if i'm unhappy or if i'm happy may not be as relevant as whether not I am able to stay undistracted.

Yes, I would say that I would say being able to stay present in the work is probably the most, most important part of IT. And how you feel is less of an issue in less how you feel gets in the way of you feeling, how the work makes you feel. Do not i'm saying if you're a lot of pain and you're looking at a piece of art IT may be hard to know how that art makes you feel because you're the big signal in your body is the physical pain. I'm sure there are some people who can do that too, who can, even through the physical pain, can feel that .

there is a idea of transmutation, of taking one emotion and contorting IT and co opting IT into another action in adaptive way. But this idea of distraction being a problem, this really resonate. I think when I think of time a great productivity, as when I was able to be undistracted, that I could also see how success can be its own distraction. This is often discussing the context of fighting sports, where someone starts making a lot of money, and pretty soon and their focus becomes all the things they can access with their, as opposed to the thing they're gotten there in the first place, keeping an underdog mentality .

yeah now .

before we conclude, I do want to ask you about one other aspect of process, which is meditation. Meditation and is interesting to me because when we close our eyes, as most meditations are done and we focus on our brain, our brain has no sensation. Like if we couldn't .

say we focus on our brain.

oh, or we focus on something other than our Normal experience was, how would you define meditation?

Well, it's different very different types of meditation usually. Either way, I would say there's no form of meditation where were focused on our brain.

Okay, good. I'm glad we digg.

I would say here are the things that happened. We either are engaging in a mantra which would be a version of a almost like a, creating a transfer ourselves, not unlike listening something. When we go to a sleep that would distract our conscious mind from participating, we would be overwriting of the the talking mind with just a sound that we're generating, or a word or a phrase, series of phrases.

Meta meditation is a loving kindness meditation with phrases could be that or could be focused on the breath, but the purpose of being focused on the breath is to not hear the self talk that we Normally have. It's it's a single pointed focus exercise in those that I described. The other version is an awareness meditation.

Where are closing your eyes and you're being with whatever is and noticing. So if we want to do IT now and you could do your eyes open, eyes close within awareness practice. But the first thing that I would do is I would feel I feel little ringing in my ears might be from the electronic equipment around us that I don't mean that I hear the sound.

It's like A A vibration. I hear cars passing in the distance. See what else comes up. I can feel a feeling in my chest. I can feel. This part of my face, not sure why he was like its related to my jaw, more car sons. Am aware of a little feeling of warmth.

So now I would say the room in the room he feels a bit when when I wasn't aware that before, when I wasn't just being with what's happening, feel little each on my left shoulder. So in that, that will be awareness practice, which is another kind of meditation when you're just pay attention, what's going on is no story. There's no this means this, not those things just like an inventory, almost of everything that comes up when IT comes up and you do that for period time.

But in in all of those cases, in the example of doing the awareness meditation or doing a montreal meditation or focusing on the breath, in none of them am I thinking, in none of them are concentrating on. I am being aware of the of sense perceptions in the awareness one or in the other meditations. I'm doing a practice so that i'm not aware of thinking about anything else.

When did you start meditating and how often do you meditate?

Now I learned when I was fourteen and I started with TM, and that's probably the meditation that i've done the most in my life. And I come back to, although I tried many different kinds and also different physical forms of meditation, I see things like that. I meditated for five or six years, and then I stopped when I went school to university.

And then I started again several years later. And when I started again, I realized how profound IT wasn't in me, that I had done IT when I did IT. So I usually have some sort of a, some sort of a practice in some ways, the beach walks could be a form of meditation.

But for me typically I would wake up to be the first thing I would do during that sort of in between time maybe go out in the sun, Cosmos and mitigate before starting my day. Um if i'm doing IT twice a day, the second time would probably be right before dinner. If i'm doing IT on a regular schedule, then if if I find myself on an airplane, I might meditate for an hour or for i've can remember one time meditating.

The entire flight from new york, L A. Just was a great opportunity to do a deep dive. When time passes, you lose track of time.

Mean, you don't even know it's like going sleep and waking up. You don't feel like that was eight hours. You know it's just time stops. Not always, but when he does great feel .

yeah you've send me some meditations, including the one that you did on that transatlantic check, trans confed. And and i've been trying to get do longer and longer meditations, but i've always made made a little bit. But your military practices, when i'm starting to adopt, if maybe we could commit you to give us suggestions of one or two and we can link out to them for .

listeners sure they appreciate and is also meditation like practices to do that involve like there's there's something called be the surgical series from the mono institute, which I used when I had a surgery. You'd listen to this recording and IT both allows your body to heal much faster and remove some of the trauma that goes on when you know, getting cut open. traumatic.

But just through listening certain things, you can can have really powerful effect too much faster. I remember I was. About to put under for a surgery, and my eyes were closed and I wasn't. Communicating with anyone there because I was going inside and and my wife was with me and they came in and they said, oh, so they already gave with the sensitive because he's ready we lunch they think of anything he's like but look at his numbers like, yeah.

I love IT. Yeah, it's it's an amazingly powerful practice. I like as anyone can cultivate. No.

absolutely, absolutely. There's no good or bad version. IT really is just if you learn a technique and show up and do IT IT works.

But I love that you're so willing to share what you do in your process in. And I just want to say thank you for a number of things. I want to thank you for the music you've created and that you are to create because we will be still ongoing certainly for your time today and sharing your thought process in a bit of what goes into the incredible creative process.

And I want to thank you for writing the book. You know, I don't talk about our future. Many books on the podcast is just not something we typically do. But i've seen a little bit of the evolution of IT, and then i've seen IT now and read through in its final form twice as I going to continue to be through again.

IT is one of those books where IT is so filled with gems like every chapter, like I could take no on this and take no on this and it's assembled in a very digestible way that allows people to extract the the meaningful part in every chapter. And there are so many in in a way that's very straight forward. So um I love the books so thank you for doing IT because you certainly didn't have to write a book, but i'm so happy that you did.

And I know that i've already benefit and I know so many people are going to benefit. It's an amazing book and I could not help you put my neuroscience lands on IT, but I also, about halfway through, I learned to discard my preexisting lens a bit and start to see things what I through what I think is a different perspective. So I just want to thank you for being such an incredible portal and also for being an amazing friend.

Thank you. I love you. I'm so happy to be here with you. And anytime I get, it's a good day.

I was thank you for joining me today for my discussion with rick rubin, all about creativity and the creative process. Please also be sure to check out his new book, the creative act, a way of being, by rick rubin. As I mentioned earlier, it's an incredible book and such a wealth of knowledge for your creative types out there, for those of you that seek to be more creative or to understand the creative process generally.

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