Protocols to Access Creative Energy and Process | Rick Rubin

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday [Music] life I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Opthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine my guest today is Rick Rubin Rick Rubin is a world-renowned music producer having worked with an enormous number of incredible artists producing for instance Red Hot Chili Peppers Beasty Boys Jay-Z John cash Adele Lady Gaga Tom Petty and of course Slayer this last year Rick also authored his first book which is a truly incredible exploration into the creative process his book is entitled the creative act a way of being Rick has appeared once before on the hubman Lab podcast and during that appearance he offered to answer listeners and viewers questions those questions were put in the comment section on YouTube and we received thousands of them so today Rick answers your questions about the creative process I also took note of the feedback that when Rick previously appeared on the hubman Lab podcast that perhaps I spoke a bit more than the audience would have preferred so today I refrain from speaking too much and try and give as much airtime as possible to Rick in order to directly answer your questions you'll notice that today's discussion gets really into the Practical aspects of the creative process the most frequent questions that I receive for Rick were ones in which people really want to understand what his specific process is each and every day as well as when he's producing music or other forms of Art and of course people want to know what they should do specifically from the time they wake up until the time they go to sleep even whether or not they should take note of their dreams Etc we get into all of that so today's discussion is very different from the one I held with Rick previously and at least to my knowledge from any of the other interviews or discussions that Rick has had public before we begin I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford it is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast our first sponsor is Maui neui venison Maui Nei venison is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available I've spoken before on this podcast and there's General consensus that most people should strive to consume approximately 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight now when one strives to do that it's important to maximize the quality of that protein intake to the calorie ratio because you don't want to consume an excess of calories when trying to get that one gram of protein per pound of body weight Maui venison has an extremely high quality protein to calorie ratio so it makes getting that one gram of protein per pound of body weight extremely easy it's also delicious personally I like the 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pod three mattress cover eights sleep currently ships in the USA Canada UK select countries in the EU and Australia again that's 8sleep.com huberman today's episode is also brought To Us by waking up waking up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of meditation programs mindfulness training and Yoga Nidra which is sometimes referred to as nsdr I'm a longtime fan of meditation I started meditating when I was back in my teens and I started doing a daily 10 or 20 minute meditation and I kept that up for a number of years but then it became more sporadic and then eventually I stopped and then I'd start again and then I'd stop what I found with the waking up app is that it makes it very easy to take on a meditation practice and to do meditation if not every day very close to every day and that we know based on a lot of research has an out ex positive effect on everything from stress regulation to sleep you come up with better ideas so indeed meditation can make you more creative more focused and on and on and then about 10 years ago I got introduced to Yoga Nidra or nsdr non-sleep deep rest which is a practice of laying completely still while keeping the Mind very active so you're relaxing but keeping your mind active and I use nsdr essentially every single day I'll do it anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes and I find it to be incredibly restorative it really resets my ability to think and to engage in physical activity and with waking up I can select different lengths of meditations different lengths of yoga nedas or ndrs so that I keep up my practice if you'd like to try waking up you can go to waking up.com huberman to try a completely free 30-day trial again that's waking up.com huberman to try a free 30-day trial and now for my discussion about protocols for creativity with Rick Rubin Rick Rubin welcome back thank you sir happy to be here we're going to answer or rather you are going to answer the questions of the listeners of our previous podcast episode before we do that however when we were out in the lobby you mention that you have a breathing exercise a coherence breathing exercise that you thought might be useful for us to do now and perhaps for some of the listeners to join in yeah let's do it and then if you want to talk about it after we can sounds good the reason I started doing this is I have relatively low heart rate variability and you want to have a Higher One M um so I looked at all the things that can raise your heart rate variability and I started doing this breathing technique specifically for heart rate variability then it went up awesome so it's great tested great let's do it together here play it'll say take a deep breath and then when you'll hear the sound of a if you follow me for the first inhale and exhale you'll know what sound means what and you do this eyes closed typically I do it eyes closed okay we'll close our eyes eyes thank you [Applause] [Music] that was five minutes I like that feels nice doesn't it yeah I notice I don't spontaneously breathe at that Cadence I breathed quite a bit faster mhm so especially on the exhale mhm so once I got into a rhythm of it yeah the mind just goes pseudo random for me what about for you does your mind tend to go one place I do now I count um so the reason I knew it was 5 minutes is because it's six breaths per minute and I counted five 1 one 1 2 1 3 1 4 1 5 1 6 2 1 so I was occupied with a task how often do you do that at least once and sometimes twice a day I aim for 10 minutes a day but if I get to 20 minutes a day it it's uh noticeable in my heart rate variability results do you do the coherence breathing at a particular times of day or just whenever it occurs to you uh I think it depends on where I am and what else is going on in my life so it it there was I had a window of a very specific thing that I was doing I would do coherent breathing and I would do squats just air squats and um in one location where I didn't have any other equipment and uh and then I found a way like where I was doing treading water which you got to experience with me I would tread water and then after Treading Water I would get out of the pool sit in the Sun and do the coherent breathing great yeah we should probably mention what uh the treading water was about because people will wonder um very briefly I went and visited Rick overseas this summer and we spent a fair amount of the daytime um treading water while listening to podcasts from a speaker on the side of the pool and it was awesome um time together as friends is awesome time in the sun is awesome learning from podcasts and listening and being entertained by podcast is awesome and then treading water is awesome you're much better at treading water than I am I was fatiguing it's just as as I said when we were doing it it's it's um it's like doing stairs if you practice doing stairs it gets easier to do stairs but nobody's good at doing you know marathon runners can't run up the stairs it's a you know it's a particular thing and treading water if you just do it in even in the little bit of time that we were doing it every day by the end of your stay it was easier for you than when you started definitely yeah you acclimate quickly yeah I was able to adapt I was impressed at your endurance and Treading Water early on by the way I've continued the Treading Water practice because I'm fortunate to have a pool in my new place yeah um I listen to your podcast truly wow tetr grammaton love it uh love love love it uh I listened to a few other podcasts and I've started listening to more episodes of the podcasts that you introduced me to which was history of rock music and 500 songs Andrew hickey English podcasts great podcast real indepth information about music yeah yeah that was such a great trip thanks for having me over there thanks for coming it was fun Treading Water it was loved the time with you and your family so I'm going to I'll invite myself again you're always welcome on the topic of meditation uh one of the questions in this list of questions we'll talk about the list itself in a moment um was about this anecdote that you've told me and you've mentioned a few other places is apparently that you've once meditated all the way from was it San Francisco to New York or Los Angeles uh to New York flight it was either LA to New York or New York to LA I can't remember and I may have done it more than once the question specifically was which meditation did you do TM TM was the first meditation I learned Transcendental Meditation learned when I was 14 it's a it's pretty much a default uh setting for me now sometimes it evolve from TM into breathing like I might start by doing breathing before the TM piece starts and I and the breathing may just take the whole time or it may turn from breathing into a gratitude practice or a meta practice which is a four phrases may I be filled with loving kindness may I be well may I be peaceful and at ease may I be happy and you repeat those phrases over and over and it's starts may I and then eventually if you've done it for a year or so you could start saying may we for your for your immediate family and then May and then as you build up the charge for your immediate family in another year or so you can spread it to your community and eventually after maybe five years you can do it for the planet so that's the Meta Meta MTA amazing loving kindness practice and are there any particular links maybe you could pass us later and we could put in the captions maybe one that you've used I learned it from Jack cornfield who's a Buddhist scholar and a a brilliant teacher terrific uh what do you think meditation has allowed you uh afforded you as well as what it's helped you avoid in terms of a daily practice or um maybe in just how doing it once in a while has Wicked out into areas of your life this is probably a long list of things but if you were to pick maybe like the top three where you go yeah when I'm meditating regularly blank happens and blank doesn't happen and when I'm not those things because I've been doing it for such a long time it's so um part and parcel of who I am that without I don't know who I would be without it that said I don't always do it but I don't have at this point I don't have to always do it to be in this Zone where I've been you know for almost you know 45 years it's been a big part of my life so a great deal of the benefits have are in me now when I practice it gets Amplified but um as Maharishi described it every time you meditate is like making a deposit in a bank so it's always there every time you do it it's you're building a base and the goal of the practice is less about the practice it's about the practice is to change the way you are in the world so it's a practice for life do do you know what I'm saying like the the changes that come in the meditation are to help your reactions in the real world in some ways not to trivialize it but it's like physical exercise you know during a good workout your blood pressure is really elevated you're secreting all sorts of in inflammatory cyto kind you know if we were to draw your blood midw workout uh you'd say this person is in trouble yeah but then all these wonderful adaptations occur that allow you to sleep better better mood walk upstairs easily and on and on it's funny about sleeping better this morning I was walking on the beach and um had my headphones on wired headphones and I was listening to a podcast I can't remember what I was listening to but I was listening to a podcast and someone flaged me and interrupted me who I didn't know and I went over to talk to him and he said I heard you talking about Steve Martin on a podcast and uh and he told me a story about Steve Martin that he got to see him in 1979 I would say this person was probably mid mid to late 60s and he was wearing all black he was wearing shoes on the beach uh tennis shoes he was wearing dark sunglasses and a hat and um he said said uh just want to talk about comedy and things that he heard me say on a podcast and we talked about it for a while and then he said something about he loves podcast and he listens to him at night cuz he's got terrible insomnia and he can't sleep and I'm looking at a guy in the sun wearing sunglasses and I said well you know the reason you can't sleep is because you're wearing sunglasses now like what are you talking about I said well the way the the human body works is we react to the sun the sun is what tells us we're awake and then at night when it's dark that what tells us to go to sleep so you're mixing the signals to your body by wearing the sunglasses and he said well well I'm a dermatologist and you know I've been a do he said he was a dermatologist for the last 40 years and my whole practice is about getting people to get out of the Sun and and I I we started talking about it and uh he he was all covered up I was wearing um my my board shorts and nothing else and and I said well I'm in the sun you know hours every day and and he's like aren't you worried about uh cancer and I said no I I feel pretty healthy I feel okay and then he said let me see your back and I turned around and he looked at my back he's like you have Perfect Skin he like they should study you in a in a uh in an Institute I said this is what normal this is what normal healthy skin looks like if you expose it it to the Sun and he said so you're saying everything I've been teaching in my in my uh medical practice for the last 40 years was wrong said yes everything it was funny funny conversation yeah it's interesting I mean we could go down a deep rabbit hole with this but you know listeners of this podcast will know that I'm you know very much a proponent of getting those sunlight signals to the eyes at least once a day in the morning but also in the in the evening this I'll just share with you um now I learned from a a guest whose episode we haven't um aired yet that the what is so special about that morning and evening sunlight are the contrasts between blues and oranges blues and reds blues and pinks that we can't always see if there's cloud cover but they come through and it's the mathematical difference in their presence a subtraction of a lot of blue and then next to it a lot of orange or a lot of blue and then next to it a lot of pink that triggers the body's understanding that this is morning and evening and that night is coming in the evening and that it's time to be awake in the morning and throughout the day in the middle of the day when the sun is out and it's overhead it looks like white light and white light includes the blues and the oranges and the pinks and the Reds but the they subtract to zero because they're all mixed together that's why it looks just blue and white and so while bright light is great throughout the day it's those morning signals now the I think the Dermatology Community is starting to come online with the idea that loow solar angle sunlight early and later in the day sunrise sunrising and sun setting and I say that because people always go oh do you have to see across the Horizon that would be ideal But Rising and setting do not create the kind of skin damage or eye damage that they've been so concerned about and I think the next step for the field of Dermatology is going to be to start communicating with the neuroscientists and the Circadian biologist and and really uh learning that so thanks for bridging that gap on the beach this morning I I do think that's how it starts and then it Wicks out headphones so um I made the choice a few years ago to stop using the Bluetooth headphones based on my personal experience which was I kept getting these cysts behind my ears which I was told were lymph swellings of lymph they would actually drain lymph if they got big enough it was it was really gross and kind of troubling I stopped using them I didn't get them I started using them again I started getting those lymph things and and there was some significant heat effects as well um and and I've interviewed a couple people including a neurosurgeon on the podcast about um the level of emfs that come from them and they were not concerned others I've spoken to are concerned I'm going to try and balance out the conversation over time but my feeling was look if there's any concern whatsoever why would I use them and I so I use the ones with wires yes but use the ones with wires that are even one step further away from um Wi-Fi transmitted there are ones with air tubes that I use depending on what's going on um and those have no electrical um there's no electric near your head it's just an air tube where the sound is traveling this actual sound is traveling in the tube Interiors I definitely sleep better with the phone out of the bedroom some people are now turning off their Wi-Fi at night I think you and I are both really aligned in the sense that we've seen enough things come and go in the health space like disparaging marks about lifting weights like that's just for bodybuilders and it now everybody knows muscle bound you become muscle bound now men and women elderly and young are encouraged to do resistance training uh Yogo used to be cast in this kind of Magic Carpet realm breath work all this stuff has become overtime mainstream but it's taken a very long time and the road has been choppy and sometimes in my opinion really unfair to the to the practices and and their value I mean these are zero cost practices in many cases that can really help people and so when I look at something like sunscreen or or you know Bluetooth headphones or we're talking about some of these things I wish I had a portal into the future where we look back and go like of course of course so what are your thoughts on just kind of um health and wellness as you've observed it in the last 20 30 years I mean you've been in this for a while I mean you paid attention to mindfulness and mind body stuff you know what are your thoughts I I try to live in as natural way as possible possible I try to eat as few processed foods as possible try to eat grass-fed animals um and and I use hardly any products of any kind you know that that aren't just something that grows or lives on the planet there were a couple questions about this I'll ask now um you lost a tremendous amount of weight you look great by the way than you look super fit every time I see you you're in better and better shape um and uh that's that's in that's your perception it's not in fact the case I'll accept it I don't know when I see you each time you I mean you're extremely mobile you you're sleeping well you have a robust life like you know mean all the marks of health and vitality um so I've heard you mention before that you lost a significant amount of weight how much weight and how did you do it uh 135 lbs through a high protein low calorie low carb diet and that went against the convention at the time uh well the person who suggested it was uh uh someone at UCLA so it was a mainstream Doctor Who helped me with my weight loss I had been a vegan at that time which was not mainstream then and it was very unhealthy but I did that for 20 some ODOT years because I believed in the theory of it but it proved not to be um healthy for me do you think that different diets likely work for different people yes so that not everyone necessarily should do what you did no yeah no but I I think most people would probably benefit from healthy red meat I'm saying that only because it's so vilified in our culture yeah I agree and I think the healthy piece is key there to non-factory farmed animals um which fortunately reasonably cost sources that are becoming more available MH um well I'm going to start pulling from the list of questions uh by the way folks there were more than a thousand questions in just the onethird print out that I did um it's an intimidating stack in front of you it's the most notes I've ever put in front of me during a guest uh discussion here on the podcast and we are not going to ask you every question but I've organized them in a in a some sense of a coherent order um did you organize them or did AI organize them I organize them but that's a great opportunity to ask you one of the questions that came up several times which was um what are your thoughts on AI and its ability to um shape how music is made how Visual Arts are made are you one of these like scared of AI or do you Embrace new technology I don't know enough about it yet to to talk about it what I will say is what what I find interesting about art is the point of view of the person making it and I don't know that AI has a point of view of its own so and I don't know how interesting it would be ai's point of view uh but I like people's points of view and what makes an artist a great artist to me is something about their point of view does something with to me childhood the question for Rick Rubin was what activities did you find most enjoyable and easy to get lost in as a child I love this question for you in particular reading was a big part of my life listening to music was a big part of my life playing guitar along with music can't really play but the idea of playing along so it didn't have to actually be good enough to play along CU I didn't have that skill set but I like the experience of doing my best to play along with something I was listening to and um also magic uh learning like shuffling cards in front of a mirror and um coin tricks and uh slide of hand was just interesting to me do you still do magic I don't okay at the time that music took over my life I had to choose between the two because both of them were full-time life Pursuits I went and saw a mentalist in New York this summer with my sister AI wind is his name ASI first name last name wind every time I see a Mentalist and especially when I see aie I've seen him twice it it blows my mind what are your thoughts on mentalists as it's my favorite form of magic it's the most interesting because it it doesn't rely on props it it's it's it's pure um it feels like pure magic M you know if if you have a box and you pull something out of the box there's probably something tricky about the box but when someone can look at you and tell you what you're thinking it's just wild it's really wild so I love that after aie did his his act um when we pseudo returned to reality because it really does change the way you look at things after that for quite a while maybe forever I asked him if he was willing to share maybe just like one nugget of insight into how he does what he does with and of course I wasn't expecting he was going to give away the whole thing and he said um a lot of it has to do with forming and erasing memories in people quickly which sounds very kind of dark and mysterious really interesting yeah that maybe it's possible to to erase memories wow people like like maybe what we thought we saw we really didn't see or here wow so I dig that b description yeah I'm going to bring him out here by the way so we should all get together love I want to get him on the podcast okay a full 10% of the questions for you were around writer blocks sticking points this kind of thing like feeling stuck in the creative process now people didn't specify whether or not they were stuck at the beginning the middle of the end but based on my read of all of these questions I got the that people were feeling like there's something in them that they want access to they want to create but they don't know how to get past that initial stage as opposed to somebody who's like you know 90% done and they just can't finish the last 10% what are your thoughts about these kinds of blocks and how to overcome them um any experience you've had with them yourself and perhaps with uh working with other artists the first thought is to go past the idea of the block and think about what what is what's the cause of the block and the block is usually something like it's either a personal I'm not good enough it's it can be a confidence issue I don't have anything to say or it could be a um thinking about someone else nobody is going to like what I make do do you know what I'm saying so it's either a A self-judgment or fear of outside judgment so if you're making something with a with a freedom of this is something I'm making for myself for now that's all it is it's a diary entry everything I make is a diary entry the beauty of a diary entry is I can write my diary entry and you can't tell me my diary entry wasn't good enough or that's not what I that's not what I experienced of course it's what I experienced it's I'm writing a personal diary for myself no one else can judge it it is my experience of of my life everything we make can be that can be a personal reflection of who we are in that moment of time it doesn't have to be the greatest you could ever do it doesn't have to have any expectation that it's going to change the world it doesn't have to be this has to sell a certain number of copies for any reason it doesn't have any of those things all it is is I'm making this thing I'm making this thing from me and I I want to do it to the best of my ability to where I feel good about it and where it's honest it's honest of where I'm at and if you're living in this world of just being honest to where you're at there's nothing blocking that do you know what I'm saying there are no blocks the blocks are all based on dealing with a different force or a different perception that is made up you know you make up this story and you're living the story I'm in this block because I just can't do it the reason you can't do it is because you're afraid someone else is not going to like it or you're there are no blocks is there's infinite amount of information out there to work with because it doesn't it also doesn't stem from us so we're we're vehicles for this information and it's coming through us all the time so if you don't have an idea when you're sitting at your desk if you go for a walk chance are you'll see something that'll spark something in you as a as a seed to take off from that makes a lot of sense and I had a thought while you were saying that one of the challenges that I have in completing work and getting into a good work Groove is that um especially nowadays because of phones and so easy to communicate with other people it's not that they interrupt me it's that and this happened the other day I set up my new office really nicely I'm living in a very quiet place now it's like almost completely silent unless I'm playing music it's really interesting or the coyotes sometimes come around and start doing their thing at night but completely silent and I realized I was having a hard time getting into a work Groove and I realized that I felt compelled to continue to reach out to people and then I realized as you just provided your answer to the last question that you know there's probably something in me that has a bit of a fear of separation or abandonment from people uh based on my own experience and I feel very well supported by my friends and co-workers these days very very well supported I'm in a kind of Pinch Me place around that and but I realize now that what's happening in my mind is it's not a challenge of getting into the work it's a fear that if I spend a couple hours really in that tight tunnel of creation that there might not be anyone there when I exit it which is a crazy thought that's a crazy thought but that's the anxiety and I only realize that now yeah so thank you great you know I trust that you guys will be there when I when I exit the tunnel and when there's a deadline I have no choice but to jump into that tunnel that that's actually uh what helps deadlines really help me do deadlines help you do you like deadlines uh deadlines don't help me at the beginning of a process they can help at the end once the code been cracked usually when I start something I have no idea what it's going to be um so it's a very open process in the beginning and if there was any sense of uh required timing that would undermine the freedom needed for it to be all that it could be but once the code's cracked and you know what it is and it's all there and you're just you know you're dealing with the fine points then um it can be really helpful to have a deadline as many of you know I've been taking ag1 daily since 2012 so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast ag1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that's designed to meet all of your foundational nutrition needs now of course I try to get enough servings of vitamins and minerals through whole food sources that include vegetables and fruits every day but often times I simply can't get enough servings but with ag1 I'm sure to get enough vitamins and minerals and the probiotics that I need and it also contains adaptogens to help buffer stress simply put I always feel better when I take ag1 I have more focus and energy and I sleep better and it also happens to taste great for all these reasons whenever I'm asked if you could take Just One supplement what would it be I answer ag1 if you'd like to try ag1 go to drink a1.com huberman to claim a special offer they'll give you five free travel packs plus a year supply of vitamin D3 K2 again that's drink a1.com huberman a number of questions were sort of comment about what people believe your process is and one of the repeating themes there which I thought was interesting was it seems that Rick Rubin is comfortable with uncertainty and the unknown yes that is true yes and no yes I am comfortable with it because I accept that's the way things are that said when I start a new project I always have anxiety because I'm uncertain of what's going to happen and I want it to be good now I know it won't be done until I feel good about it so in that way there is no um there's no real pressure but I do still feel this anxiety of I wonder what's going to happen today I hope it's good you know when you've worked with musical artists let's say um how important is it to you to know what challenges maybe even what successes but certainly what challenges they happen to be going through at that period in time put differently do you end finding yourself playing therapist and guide and um psychological SL emotional mentor to artists you work with during the creative process or is that separate uh if they're going through something that's interfering with the work anything that gets in the way of the work is something worth discussing our Focus there together is to get the work done sometimes it ends up being more therapeutic to allow that to happen one of the questions that really stood out to me in this vast list of questions um involved a quote from your last discussion on this podcast our last discussion on this podcast um so I'm going to read a little bit of it because it's fairly long but um I found this to be a really important question that we should get into in a bit more depth um somebody I don't know who said If you happen to talk to Rick happen to be talking to you um ask him this for me in his book in the section on self-doubt Rick said quote one of the reasons so many great artists die of overdoses early in their lives is because they use drugs to numb a very painful existence the reason it is painful is the reason they became an artist in the first place their incredible sensitivity if you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all you're confronted with big feelings all the time these emotions can be confusing and overwhel and overwhelming excuse me so this goes on for some pages and then this person says and I think they're speaking for many people when they said this resonated with me personally and I wonder whether or not this is something that maybe you've experienced yourself or that you just noticed about artists in similar situations and what sort of advice do you give the artists you work with in order to embrace those painful tones within them and trans mute them into great work I've definitely felt them myself I'm unusually sensitive in the world I'm wearing red glasses in here for a reason um I live a very um protected monk like life because simulation gets in the way uh of my ability to be where I want to be so I tend to stay away from things um and it it seems to be the case with many artists um a desire for nurturing their internal life and if if the goal is to nurture our internal life it it um it invariably leads to sacrifices did you spend a lot of time alone as a kid I'm asking this question I did yeah I was the only child and I spent most of my time alone when you talk about controlling this amount type of stimulation in your life to protect that inner landscape does that pertain to certain personality types even voice types i' I've found it various times in my life I love people but um there there's certain voices that just grate on me and I can't be around them I just can't be around them they drive me it brings out but it just it's like cacophony inside I just feel like I'm being asked to drink something that tastes awful um does it does that resonate uh I I try to curate the people around me to be people I want to have around me whatever that is whatever that is well you said you protect the inner landscape but certainly you're not averse to high-intensity stimulation last night we went to the aew and by the way thank you for taking me that was such an incredible experience it was really fun it was really fun it reminded me of early punk rock shows where like some of my first punk rock shows where I went and just was like oh my gosh this is exciting and scary and I love it yeah and it felt loving too yes which is also the community of punk rock that I observed and have been blessed to be a part of it's like I it's like there yeah there's aggression but there's also love and then there's romance and then there's also um betrayal and there's all the elements but there's still a sense of like everyone wants to be here and there's a sense of goodness behind at all even though some of it was bloody and violent yes so for you what what does wrestling allow you to feel in those high intensity environments it completely relaxes me because there are no Stakes you know nobody everyone's working together in the show to protect each other no one's trying to hurt anybody regardless of what the story line is it's like a ballet where there's a fight in the ballet there's no um there's no actual aggression of people towards each other it's just the opposite but you get to experience this wildly Dynamic exciting surreal theater piece uh where people are doing these uh gymnastic and acrobatic things that are truly death defying um and it's fun and the the storylines absorb you in a way where you know you never know what's true and what's not Mo you know we know wrestling's fake we're told wrestling's fake but there's something um legitimate about it that seems to me more legitimate than anything else the most legitimate because it's the closest to what the world's actually like people don't always tell you what they really think and when someone tells you a story it might not really be the true story they may even think they may be they may think they're telling you the real story and that might not be the real story we don't know we know so little you know we we we experience something and then we make up a story to understand it ourselves and then forever more when we tell that story it was our version of a of an experience but we don't know that's what happened that was our take on it um wrestling is like that's what the real world is like because we when you watch wrestling you never know what's true that's what if you watch the news like you watch wrestling and you never know what's true it's more it would be more accurate you you'd have a better sense of the world if you took it all in like it was pro wrestling I think we're in a place in human history where people are starting to feel that way about the media it's also why wrestling so popular you know it's it's uh more popular than it's ever been yeah that's interesting things like UFC kind of gladiator like octagon fights and wrestling are increasing in popularity despite the fact that supposedly we're evolving so I think it reflects something both primitive and evolved about the human brain yes right primitive in the sense that yeah there's some violence it's physical that's down in the hypothalamus as we'd say no it scratches that itch MH but they're actually protecting each other you know it scratches that itch of seeing the Gladiators but it's like watching a movie you know it's not they're not really it's they're not really hurting each other they get hurt but only because the things they're doing are so crazy I think in order to be able to thoroughly enjoy wrestling one has to be able to give up narrative distancing just a little bit right narrative distancing is this sense that this is a story it's a movie it's not real but there were moments like yesterday the the jump off the top rope onto the guy who SPL out on the ladder the ladder breaks this was right in front of us it couldn't have felt good no he walked away he seemed fine yeah uh is but that and then um there was a match between two women where a woman put a metal plate into her uh into the bottoms of her suit and then ran in then jumped onto the other woman and you know hit her with the metal plate and then the metal plate kind of slipped out and she was walking around and everyone knew she had cheated cuz you're not supposed to use the metal plate but so it was sort of exciting cuz she had done it exciting cuz she had gotten away with it and at the same time exciting and upsetting that the referee saw it but then didn't call it this is like Twitter X this is like Instagram this is like politics this is like this is real life right like seeing people get away with things is so frustrating if you feel they shouldn't have yeah that's all part of it it's like a it's a very uh accurate representation of the world love it I'm I'm it's it's weird because I never would have thought I'd be hooked I'm hooked it's like archery and professional wrestling now it's like I'm going to be busy guy in 24 I'm going to come back to this very practical question and ask a different question first there are a few comments in here that are just Priceless by the way someone wanted to point out that you're a Pisces and so is Einstein a couple of historical questions I know you're not big on answering historical questions um necessarily maybe you are but I can't help every time I see you asking a question about the Ramones or asking a question about Joe Strummer but I I like this question first of all it starts off I love Rick Rubin he's so fascinating there's so many questions that start that way on the podast that you did with Joe Rogan uh you talked about your experience with Johnny Cash and seeing him in a new light after doing interviews for a book about Johnny or something like that um the question this person asked was from your present view what was the most impactful moment or moments from being with him and working with him or simply do you recall a moment working with Johnny Cash that you particularly enjoyed uh I enjoyed anytime I got to spend time with him he was a really Soulful serious shy quiet man incredibly knowledgeable he knew a great deal about history and had so much about music he knew every song he didn't he may not have known modern songs but he knew the history of Music um really well and there was just a a humble honesty about him that came through I think that the strength of him as an artist was when he said words even if he didn't write the words if he told a story in words you believe that story so he had a a credible gravitas and um he was great because of who he was it wasn't his ability as a singer it wasn't his ability as a songwriter although he was a great great songwriter and he was a great singer but that's not why he was Johnny Cash He was Johnny Cash because of the human being underneath and anything that that guy would have done we would be interested in because that's how much of a beam of light he was on the planet it just happened to be music just happened to be music I love that one question that came up a lot and I I think I can understand why would is how does one convince themselves that what they're doing and working on is worth it and I think here we have to Define worth it um and we can Define that a number of ways but I think this is a feeling that I hear people Express a lot like how do I know if I'm on the right path and I just want to remind your earlier answer that you're pretty comfortable with uncertainty yeah this and the unknown and I think that's a rare trait the question of worth it is reliant on an outcome we don't make these things for an outcome it's a it's it's not the mindset to make something great the outcome happens you're making the best thing you can make it's a it's a devotional practice whatever happens after that happens and that part that happens after it is completely out of your control putting any energy into that part that's out of your control it's a waste of time all it is all it does is undermine your work your work is to make the best thing you can so any thought you have about outcome undermines the whole thing let that one sink in I think that's so important for people to hear and I'll say it's okay to think about outcome after you finished the thing you're making once you've made it then you can say hm what can I do to turn people on to this but in the making of it it's premature which brings my mind back to that diary entry like approach because when you do a diary entry if you lie to yourself you're going to get a lot less out of it it's it's a ridiculous idea lying in your diary entries it is well it's so interesting because when you learn how to do really good science and I was fortunate to work with someone who was truly committed to the truth and accuracy she used to just say Whenever there was a scandal published like someone fabricated data she was like this is so crazy like like why would you get into science you'd be if you want to make stose you better off going into something else so clearly they weren't those people who make up data were not in science for discovery of Truth as best we can understand it they were into it for something else but it's the same way you do you formulate a question then a hypothesis and then you just go see what is and what isn't MH and then afterwards you decide well is this a paper that's sent to a top Journal or a mediocre Journal but you can't control the outcome so it's very similar exactly the same and and it you'll see it in so many different aspects of Life Beyond art it's it's I think one of the things that was interesting that came up in writing the book is it started being about art and I came to realize as I was putting the ideas together that it seems like regardless of what you do in life if you follow these principles your life will probably improve you'll probably be a better husband or a better father or a better whatever it is it's um it seems like the the art is an outgrowth of it's why the subtitle is a way of being it's like you create yourself in a way in the world where the things that you make are tapped into something deep but that comes from you being tapped into something deep that's how it works so tapping into self grounding in self not thinking about outcome diary entry like approach to creating stuff seems to be the and I I think one thing I'll I'll say to that because I say tapping into self it doesn't come from the self but you have to tap into yourself because you're the vessel to allow it to come out everything in the vessel is coming from somewhere else it's not it's not your creation you're the um it's like you're the sculptor or the you're the data an analyst where you're taking these things from different places that you've noticed some things that you've noticed some things that you don't know that you've noticed but you did you know that's how we learn you know we take in a lot of information that we don't even know where taking in but the way we can take these data points that are inside of us that came from outside of us and create a constellation that's what that's what the artist job is but also that's what we all do all the time and to get better at it it's getting more in tune with yourself and opening yourself to things outside of um I'll say if you have a narrow belief system you'll have less information to to work with less data points so being openminded and um allowing surprise to be surprised holding all of your beliefs very Loosely it's interesting because it the way you describe this and from knowing you as well it it seems that this whole process is best served by having really good boundaries like not getting um foggy about what's about you and what's about somebody else or about what other people want or the world wants but also having really good antenna and being able to see what's happening in the world you can't be cloistered and and like this no um but part of the creative process kind of feels and looks like you're you're in you're in a tunnel but then you you have to bring in from the outside I mean that um so it seems like making these two separate compartments that you Bridge um seems important and healthy I mean here as you mentioned it's a way of being it's not just about creating things that's also a healthy way to be in the world because if you're constantly getting pulled around by everything emotionally and things are upsetting you that's not good but if you're just cut off from everything that's not good either do you cultivate that way of being through these practices um or do you think you've been there's something about the way you're wired that you it started off that way it feels natural to me it feels natural to me and I'll tell you when I was younger I thought I would live in New York City my whole life and there was a time when I felt like having that energy and noise around me felt good now I feel best in the jungle or the forest I didn't decide that I didn't decide what feels good you know it it just happened so you're clearly willing to update and adapt change your nutrition change your city change the way you feel information update love it you're a scientist after well I don't know anything again we start with I know nothing we all know nothing so if something sounds interesting worth trying I'll try it see does it work does it not work you know I thought at one point in time I thought veganism was a good idea I was excited about it and I did it for a long time I didn't get the results I was hoping for I didn't have better health I had much worse health I had you know a tremendous amount of weight gain and um I was very ill through that diet but I didn't my intentions were good how do you approach resistance especially resistance in other artists you work with you know presumably people hire you they they want to work with you they they do want to work with you but I think what the person is asking here is if somebody you're working with is stuck like they're stuck do do you ask them to think do you ask them to feel do you ask them to take a day off do you uh do a Dennis Rodman on them and send them to Vegas to party for a couple of days because that's what worked for Dennis do you leave them alone let them come to you I think people are very curious about what those sorts of interactions are like I think it's always a case-by case situation it really depends on the artist it depends on the situation and um and usually by the time that we're working together any resistance they had in the past has already been overcome usually we I'm together with someone who where we make a team with the idea of making the best thing we possibly can and we'll both do anything we can for that thing to be the best it can be we're past the resistance I noce you remain friends with a lot of the people you've worked with which is a great Testament to you and your work and who you are I just want to mention that that's not always the case folks with uh other producer artist relationships so it's worth pointing out a practical question but I think one that um is is worth asking is uh do you handle the finances around your work with artists do you have someone else do like negotiations and all of that kind of stuff I honestly have no idea how it works I have no clue it see everything seems to get done but I have no idea in the inner workings of any of it I try to I try to stay out of as much um if it's not about making the beautiful thing in the moment I don't really want to think about it too much I don't want to be involved in that aspect it was interesting when I was visiting you this summer we had a really delightful dinner conversation with one of your other guests and at one point probably due to me frankly the conversation veered a bit into the business realm and I'll never forget you said in a very polite way that didn't feel dismissive at all you said let's talk about art instead right like enough about business let's talk about art instead and and in that moment I don't remember that well I gleaned a lot of gems from that visit um I wasn't there to study you I was there to hang out with you but I gleaned so many gems treading water in the pool some of the other practices we'll talk about but I remember that and I think about that in myself a lot in the morning you know the emails and things coming in and then I think my purpose in life at this point in my life is to collect organize and disseminate health and science information yes so that for me is Art in this sense and anything else feels kind of someone else can do that right someone else can do you have a particular gift and that you can take complicated scientific ideas and explain them in a way that all of us who are not scientists or not um Medical students can understand and it's really helpful and you do it in a kind and loving way where we get the sense that you care that we understand you explain it in a way that there's a a a care in it that really speaks to us so thank you for thank you for teaching us thank you and thanks for the words that means a lot to me that is indeed what it is for me I want people to know the information because I think it's so cool and important and they need the information and it's not about me it's like like they have to know and you did it this morning for this guy on the beach so I he'll he'll see the light pun intended I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor insid tracker insid tracker is a personalized 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huberman to get 20% off any of insid tracker's plans again that's insidetracker docomo do you prefer the WWE or the aw Rick I love them both I love pro wrestling pro wrestling is great how often do you abandon an idea or project like is there a is there a pile of journals with crossed out ideas somewhat place in Rick rubin's basement I would say there there are many ideas that have not yet come to fruition but I wouldn't say I've abandon any they it seems like the ideas have a time when they want to come to fruition and regardless of what I think I don't get to determine the calendar the ideas come I can get excited about it I can work on it and then hit a wall nothing else and nothing it just impenetrable and then there'll be another project that just sailing along easily and the universe is working to help support that idea so I tend to work where there's several balls in the air at once and I don't fight against [Music] um if the universe is not helping a project I'm wary to fight with the universe how many projects are you working on right now or typically I it's impossible for me to even say there are so many there's so many ideas and some of them are in idea phase and some of them are in mid you know mid-ming stage and some of them are in the final you know final detail stage there's always something happening I'm always thinking about a lot of stuff and some of it is stuff that I get to share with the world but some of it might be you know remodeling a space or uh I'm always thinking about some creative uh puzzle I have to imagine that for you when the internet came to be that it must have been really exciting because like me you love foraging for information I used to go to the library and Xerox copy papers and I loved looking through the stacks but frankly it was physically exhausting and timec consuming and financially it was hard for me at the time and then you'd always get those copies where like the book crease you know obscured uh the the the text closer to the to the spine of the book and you know I love PubMed I mean like the world's at my fingertips the world of researches at my fingertips my goodness uh how do you feel about smartphones and the internet I mean to you does it feel like a like a giant gift for your creative process or is it an inhibitor it's it's both you know I love that all the information is at our fingertips and sometimes having so much information is um it's hard to sort I'll tell you a quick a quick story which was when the music streaming Revolution happened I was really excited the idea that all of music is in my pocket now and I can listen to any any song any album from any point in my life where I get to hear about something and it's all accessible right now in this moment and I was thinking at that time I'm just going to DJ D all I'm going to do is DJ and I'm going to listen to anything I can think of that I'm excited about haven't heard the Talking Heads in a while let's listen to Talking Heads just how great that that freedom is to have everything at your fingertips and what I came to learn very quickly is I don't want to DJ all day I love that I have the ability to DJ all day I love that when there's something I want to hear I can find it but I don't want to have to do the work of picking everything I'm going to listen to I like being programmed to and I like the discovery of somebody else playing something that I wasn't expecting and getting to enjoy that so now I do more listening to either somebody's curated playlists or uh online radio stations and I do less picking music to listen to but I never would have known that before because I always thought well if I could listen anything I want I want to listen what I want to Listen to I didn't know that I didn't want to have to pick it I love the rare live versions and um bsides and whatever Zs sides that one can find on YouTube like the other day you sent me just at random a a clip from I think it was a Japanese television show with the Ramones opening up um and Johnny opens up with you're loud mouth baby you better shut up and then they they dive into loud yeah and I it's the song I could have heard anywhere else but it was the fact that it was shot from above that it was black and white and that he adds this little riff at the beginning you're a loud mouth baby you better shut up and then just dives into it that made it for me as a huge Ramon fan I was like yeah like you know I think I did that in my kitchen yeah like I was so hyped because when you go and just listen to a song that's recorded as part of an album you're not going to get those additional pieces back in the day and still now if you went to a live show you might see that and hear that and never forget that but in that sense to me YouTube and and the internet is like wow like it's this AR Archive of gems that I I would potentially have been there maybe it was 79 would have been four years old yeah so you know um anyway thanks for sending me that clip loved it because you know how much I love the Ramones but um things like that I just think God the Internet is just amazing and so spacular yeah and the amount of lectures you could find on YouTube are unbelievable the the greatest thinkers in the world I want I don't want to say are on YouTube because they probably didn't post on YouTube but their material is on YouTube and it's unbelievable you know things from old films from the 50s and 60s it's all on YouTube yeah I've been listening to Bible interpretation on YouTube wow and there's just it's interesting to hear different interpretations from different perspectives I would have never found these people most of them are links yeah they're so good I'm I'm trying to work through the Old Testament start to finish now as a as a learning and a practice and wow okay so the question was are smartphones the chains that bind us and prevent our creativity um but I think you answered that it's both a um a rocket ship to creativity and a and a and chains to the ground yeah and it's like all of the tools it's like the tools don't make or break your art it's just it's another tool you can use it or misuse it someone wanted to know and I would like to know whether or not you have any recurring dreams and what are your thoughts on dreams and dreaming in general do you write down your dreams do you spend time about them G I've gone through phases of my life where I've written down dreams I'm not doing it right now um I think we can learn a lot from from writing our dreams I tend not to analyze them in the moment but I've noticed when I've kept a dream journal and looked at it years later these surreal things that made no sense were all saying the same thing and they were all very clear based on my life experience at that time so it gives us Clues as to um what's actually going on the way our subconscious is experiencing Our Lives it's giving us a I don't know if I would call them pointers um Reflections would maybe be a better word our mutual friend Paul kti um believes that the unconscious or subconscious is U both used interchangeably is the supercomputer of the human brain that the misconception is that the forbrain which is involved in planning and context and anticipation of outcomes Etc people think that's the supercomputer but that the supercomputer is the unconscious that's Paul's belief he's stated that very clearly on this podcast and elsewhere and he believes that in dreams the unconscious mind is controlling more of the dialogue which makes a lot of sense yeah but also that the unconscious mind is constantly trying to teach us things in the way that we learn best so like my dreams for instance are all analogies because that's pretty much if people listen to me talk on the podcast I often will use analogy um and I'm very visual so it will present things to me in visual symbols so Paul said in in terms of dream interpretation that we would all be wise to think about how we learn best and our unconscious mind is trying to toss us things in dreams to um explain things in the way that we learn it makes sense and I would say also unconscious and our Instinct the way we Act instinctually is a reflection of our unconscious and as artists that's a tapping into that the Instinct and the unconscious is where the great ideas are and then things that come from our um intellectual selves are are much less they have much less of a charge they're much smaller ideas yeah I think uh the the conscious mind and the intellectual mind as you you're calling it are bound to outcome in a big way I'm going to inject a question of my own um I'm fascinated by the way you've discussed people's real underlying motivations and how that shapes their creative process but also their career um if you would be willing to talk a little bit about the story of Andrew Dice Clay that's the story that to me captures it best um Andrew Dice Clay uh was a uh a comedian who told really offensive jokes and his audience loved him for it but the people who weren't his audience didn't really understand it and they vilified him and he became a comedian because he wanted people to love him he didn't become a comedian to hurt anybody he wanted to entertain people and while he was playing to you know sold out Madison Square Gardens full of people newspapers would write terrible things about him and it really got to him and he decided to change his artistic output to try to make the people who didn't like him like him and when he did that it undermined his whole gift and it just it seemed like things fell apart I think he's in a better place now I haven't I haven't seen him in a while but I think he's in a better place now and he's back to uh caring less about the reaction and in turn getting a better reaction um because he's being pure in what he thinks is funny I liked him very much in fact I thought he did a spectacular job as playing um the female artist's father in A Star is Born had Le Gaga and um Brad Cooper he's a really good actor he's a great actor yeah well I really like the story about him because it encapsulates so much that if people can think about why they do what they do they're going to avoid pitfalls um potentially um but how much time do you think people should spend introspecting about what makes them tick and why they want to entertain or make jokes or um I don't think it's a one- siiz fit I don't know that I could answer that question is it true that ad Rock encourage you give LL Cool J a chance yes that is true ad Rock heard the demo tape and insisted that I listen to it love that this is a kind of generic question but I think it's good to put these in every once in a while um what is your advice to a starting comedian you know these are the the sort of like I I always think of these like uh you know sophomore in high school kind of question but that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad in some sense that's what makes it such a great question like what would be your advice spe to a starting comedian be true to yourself and not to listen to anyone there you go um it would be a great book except it'd be a very short book which would also make it a very great book um well it could be a blank book could be aank you can just put all the things that you want to put in it oh man I'm working on a book now and I'll tell you it's hard by the way I asked Rick for advice about bookwriting um because I'm been trying to write this book for a while and he gave me this the following advice so I'm injecting my own question he said the sooner you can get to a complete draft that you're happy with or happyish with the better the process will go so I'm working on getting that complete draft yeah I would say don't Focus too much on any of the individual details until you have the whole thing down and then you can focus on all making everything better that you want to make better don't get bogged down in that at the expense of getting through the project your advice has really been helping me by the way great I'm doing it like that diary entries great and I've kept a diary for many years so that's somewhat natural tell me a little bit about your diary entries how long how long is a diary entry sure yeah um a diary entry is anywhere from like 1 to eight handwritten pages single line spacing going back and forth between I usually start in all capitals and then switch over to cursive as I speed up uh I've been doing that since gosh since high school I've got a drawer filled with them dated and everything and um it's usually a process of just trying to get something out of my system that I feel is is like clogging me some frustration with the outside world but sometimes like this morning I journaled uh in the room before you showed up and I just was like I think I was riding high off wrestling last night I was marveling at how similar the great experiences of my life are now as they work to every other stage of my life in the sense that they give me this feeling of like okay like there are these gems and I'm of people you and others and experiences and I'm finding them like I'm experiencing them and reminding myself that there there are long periods in between those moments where things feel kind of like not empty certainly not empty but but kind of frustrating in the sense of like I'm busy and I'm dealing with a bunch of things and things don't feel smooth and um but I've been through enough of these cycles that I just am really learning to enjoy the cycles and that was it and uh I and I think the last line in my entry was something like you know and you know and I can't wait for more or something so this morning is just a very positive entry but sometimes you know I mean they definitely some tear stained entries and there definitely some entries where I'm just so pissed I can barely get the writing out but it's it's a process of like getting that stuff out so then I can lean into the the day do you ever go back and look at them I did the other day because I recorded an episode on a very particular type of journaling that's supported by over 200 peer-reviewed studies which is called expressive writing I can tell you about it it's a process that was developed by James pennebaker who is a professor at University of Texas Austin and he had his students write as part of an experiment for 15 minutes a day for just four days either consecu Ive days or a week apart but about the same thing and the thing that they're supposed to write about is the most challenging upsetting or even traumatizing experience of their life and it shows that the data from over 200 studies show incredible positive shifts in Psychology physiology immune system function and ability to combat infections I was so struck by the data from this work that I decided to dedicate a whole podcast episode to it it'll probably be out by time um this episode but um I haven't done that one yet I'm going to do it it's a little bit of a higher bar entry cuz it's like okay I'm going to I hear that the first day especially is pretty upsetting because you're purposely picking something really hard but um yeah but most of the journaling I do is just kind of diary like here's what happened here's what's going on and my biggest fear is that somebody would find them but in preparation for that episode about penne Baker I went and looked at my journals and was like what do I write about and I realized they're pretty autobiographical um sometimes about troubling things but never before had I written four times in a row about the exact same thing interesting yeah yeah pennebaker I think deserves a Nobel Prize if you look at the data on this compared to and I'm not disparaging prescription drugs per say but like ssris for depression it's like at least as good a treatment it's like zero cost stuff but it you know and on and on you don't want to be careful I'll start giving the podcast again now there were a number of questions about quote unquote entertainment and music industry none of which unfortunately were particularly complimentary of quote the industry and I think this is something that comes up a lot because people often focus on the marketing the personalities that may or may not be so pleasant at times I'm sure there are a ton of pleasant Personalities in the industry too but the question is this how do you deal with the and these are their words Soul crushing anti- creative aspects of the entertainment industry and hold on to that sense of creativity and love for the work I'm just focused on the work I don't think of myself as part of the um the entertainment industrial complex I just make the things I make and then there are other people who are good at figuring out how to sell them or get them into stores or get them to services do you have a process of capturing ideas like do you write them down um and the reason this question came up so many times I think is that a lot of people feel like they get great ideas right upon waking or while driving or in the shower random times and they were wondering whether or not you have any way of collecting and curating your ideas prior to embarking on quote unquote a project uh I I write them I make notes in my phone I do it all the time I don't have a great way of doing it and sometimes I'll make a note and then come back to it later and have no idea what it means do you make those notes uh by writing or by uh like voice memo writing that said voice memo might be a something worth trying I've never tried that how do you view money in relationship to your work meaning how do you place it in the constellation of things related to a project you mentioned earlier you let other people do the negotiations but money is just another form of energy um H how do you place it in the in the Contour of what you do I I don't I try not to think of it at all and I because I come from punk rock background which was like a do-it-yourself background it was always more about the idea and the execution of the idea with whatever you could use to do it so if I didn't have uh enough to go to a Prof professional recording studio then I would find a friend who had a home recording studio and record or whatever it was or borrowing a drum machine when I before I had a drum machine I would always find ways to make the things I wanted to make and um I I can't remember a time where a financial boundary got in the way of making something and I see it happening a lot around me and it um I think some people look at it as the money is what allows it to happen and I think I I just see it as the idea is what allows it to happen and then the Ingenuity is figuring out how to do it with you know by any means necessary just got to make it whatever the that version is it may not be the dream version but whatever version you can execute is the one for you to make I can attest to the fact that I launched my podcast in my closet in Tanga Canyon yeah which felt totally natural cuz I also come from the skate boarding punk rock thing where like wouldn't ever occur to me to like get a professional studio built like we're in now we had this one built for us but at the time like of course you use a closet because you just need a black backdrop and you know I think starting from there makes so much sense and you also realize in the minimalist approach you know anything added is just something added so you don't really know what you need if you start with a lot of stuff around you yeah it's it can just be a distraction I'm friends with Darren aronowski who's a great director and his first movie was called pie and he made it for practically no money and it was really well- loved and then the next movie he made was also wildly successful and he made it for very little money and then he made this huge hundred million movie and it wasn't it turned out not to be a success that movie and it was a case of where having more money didn't help him tell a story it's just one particular case um and it's no rues to follow uh but there is something about making the version that you can make with the means that you have that adds something real to the project that may be better than the one that has a lot of money thrown at it I'm laying that sink in around a lot of online tutorials for science have a lot of visuals but we knew we wanted to do YouTube but also just pure audio and it there's nothing more frustrating than somebody talking about something or somebody that you can't see CU you're just listening to it um and the visuals were really expensive to do right and in the end I think if PE I firmly believe in the classroom as well as via podcasting if people can hear something clearly enough and create an image in their own mind of how they would visualize it then it's in there for good whereas just having people look at a slide with with a bunch of beautiful illustrations on it that does nothing for retention of material um so I think the minimalist approach I think sometimes is really the best one maybe it's always the best one because it forces the better solution like the in any case I do realize I editorialized there folks I entered the answering portion of the not just the question asking portion have you ever felt that something was too obscure for Main stream audience appeal to the point where you did not release it never tell tell us more if I like something someone else maybe they'll like it I don't know how can I judge how can I judge every I've been told with every new thing that I've done it's a terrible idea and it won't work every single time really every single time Ghetto Boys LL Cool J beasty boy Slayer Adele every one of them Eminem every one of every time when I went from producing rap records to producing Slayer you can't do that you're you're a rap producer it's going to be terrible don't do it or then Johnny Cash you can't do that you're a metal rap producer you can't do that it's going to be terrible don't do it every single time still to this day still to this day I was so excited when you launch tetr Graton and it's going so well I listen to every episode I love the interviews I've been fortunate to be on there twice I think the second one is still hasn't been released yet but I mentioned tetr grammaton because it just feels so you like the ad reads which I talked about it during my intro but the ad reads are amazing like I listen to the ad reads over and over again because they're so clever and they I don't know they put me in a state I feel like I'm watching I'm like I'm transported to as if I was like born in the 1940s I'm listening to television from for the first time mhm there's there's something there like there's really something there it it's it came out of solving a problem the problem was uh when I decided to do the podcast I had even recorded the first several episodes um a friend of mine said well you're going to have to uh if you want to have uh ads on the show to support being able to do the show then you're going to have to read the ads and I said I don't really feel comfortable reading ads I don't think that's something I can do well I said I'm cool with the idea of only advertising products I believe in or that I use cuz that's if I get to essentially promote something I'll do that with things that I use but I don't feel comfortable reading it um and he's like well you have to it's going to be expected of you and it was just an opportunity it was like uh okay I understand it's expected of me what can I do that's true to me that adds something you know instead of it being less than how can I make it more than and it was just solving this problem of needing a way to have an advertisement that I didn't feel bad about and then got inspired and had this idea and started making them and now they're my favorite thing in the podcast when it when it in many podcasts honestly when the ads come up I forward through them when as a listener on Tetra gramon when it when it commercial comes on I always listen to them it's so it's like a it's a highlight and they make me smile which is again and again I didn't set out to do that I I just was trying to solve a creative problem so sometimes the um the innovative ideas don't come when you're looking for an Innovative idea it's just there's this slot to fill this is the way it's normally done I'm not comfortable doing it the normal way how will can we solve this problem and sometimes it doesn't just solve the problem but it becomes an actual feature yeah there's something about that like solution seeking that is part of or at least is aligned with the creative process right uh yeah the ads are are extraordinary we were listening to them in Italy I'm like play that one again I love the way the guy says the word he say or something like but in but I can't do the accent folks don't don't take I just said as as evidence of what he like Australian accent that guy and the Chimes in the background is so good you don't drink alcohol correct correct have you ever had a sip of alcohol uh I had I drank alcohol once as part of a class experiment and had to mix all these drinks and taste them and um it was a terrible experience but it was a it was a requirement in the class I was taking wow school was different back then yeah or that school was different yeah I think school was different we used to prick our fingers and do our own blood tests and science class I never did it cuz I was always needle phobic but that was definitely something that was asked of us to do yeah you could never get away with that now yeah in a high school classroom the reason I ask about alcohols first of all I'm not the anti-alcohol Crusader even though I did an episode about alcohol which discouraged many people from drinking more it but I think for a lot of people the idea of smoking cannabis drinking alcohol for them in their mind is synonymous with the creative process especially music um for a lot of reasons that people can imagine I think it's remarkable and impressive and worth spending a few moments with you sharing with us you know how is it that you were around all of that you're clearly part of the part of the crew uh meaning you're part of the the creative process presumably people offered you alcohol drugs Etc but something in you seems like resistant to any kind of peer pressure and and as an adult that impressive but to think like you know like when I was 15 16 sure you know I sort of regret it but yeah I drank I I had my experiences and then eventually stopped that but most people people are not good at like not drinking if they don't want to drink ever or just once from a high school class what what was the internal narrative in your mind um when that stuff was around and what allowed you to just say no I'm going to I belong here but I'm not going to do that it just was never interesting to me and I I think maybe it had to do with being an only child I i' never being an only child I think made me less resistant to peer pressure because I felt more confident in who I was whatever that was um just from being with my being with myself and not with other siblings I'm guessing I don't know if that's right but that's my first my first inclination as to guess that would be the case also I've always known what I like and known what I don't like and know there are things I want to try there are things I don't want to try and I feel very good about not doing something I don't want to do I feel great about it have you ever been curious about psychedelics given that I'm very curious I've never done it but I'm very curious and I've been curious for a long time there may be a time when I experiment yeah there are two psychedelics in particular that I find really interesting one is U macro Doocy which I've done as part of a clinical trial um and my understanding is it reveals in a very intense and experiential way some component of the unconscious mind mind and it allows for plasticity and rewiring of the brain that's permanent if you come to some understanding through the so-called integration it's not without its risks the other one that's really interesting that I've been hearing more about and I have not tried um and it carries some dangers as ibigan which is 22 hours long and people experience the world as normal with their eyes open but when they close their eyes they get a like high resolution movie like version of prior experien but they have agency within those movies they can reshape their reactions this is being used to treat PTSD and Veterans uh to great success um it has some cardiac risk associated with it so and it's not legal in the United States it's not being explored in clinical trials yet but the state of Kentucky recently took I think it's $40 million from the um oxyc conton settlement and it's putting it to iag research interesting yeah so those are the two that kind of spring to mind you know kind of the classic psychedelic experience I've also heard good things about MDMA but I've never done that yeah I have done MDMA uh as part again as part of a therapeutic trial it's a strong empathogen um the danger with MDMA I think is that um if you don't stay in the eye mask or if you're listening to music or something you can easily get anchor to some external Quee and like see a plant and be like I love plants and spend the whole four to six hours thinking about your love of plants which might be valuable but I think the strong introspective work um is best done with a therapist there and you and the ey mask and occasionally leaving the ey mask and writing things down so you know the reason I put that detail in there is that um the Psychedelic experience is very different with eyes open versus in the eye mask with a clinici there versus recreationally and it's not just about dangers versus safety it's also about like it's a big investment and what what one stands to get out of it I think depends on how much introspection you're willing to do we won't be doing it this afternoon there were at least a thousand questions about attention deficit and neuroticism people who feel like they can't organize themselves and I thought a lot about these questions and tried to distill them into a single question and eventually I did and it's this for many people they associate the creative process with disorganization I think what's so striking about you is that you embody both the creative process but also a strong sense of organization around it like nothing seems hairbrained or like random or halfhazard about anything that you do and yet for a lot of people who call themselves creatives they they'll say I'm a creative this that and you'll look at the space they're in and it's like chaos or they or their life is kind of chaos not all of them but is what I'm saying making sense because I think why people Orient toward you and one of the reasons for your success with the creative process is that you're extremely organized but but not to the point of being rigid are you willing to embellish a little bit on that perception whether or not it's accurate inacurate say there's a part in the process early on where it is before it can get organized where it's free and it's playful and it can be chaotic um it's just not the it's a byproduct of whatever is happening it it's not it's good because it's chaotic and it's it just happens to be sometimes chaotic in that in that experiment in the beginning where we're really playing with this idea of of having fun and creating stimulation and seeing how it makes us feel and we try a lot of we could try wacky things to get there um but then when it happens when you get that that feeling of like oh this is interesting I haven't seen this before then it gets more um controlled but it starts in a very free place and I I I don't know if I would really use the word chaotic but it could be I it certainly wouldn't be wrong I would say more free would be the word free like no um no expectation and total immersion in like an improvisation that you're participating in that can go wherever it wants to go and you're cool allowing it to go wherever it wants to go and sometimes when it goes somewhere dangerous that's when it gets interesting so the the I can understand that that danger aspect maybe that's why I like pro wrestling I don't know but there's something about when you get to this these edges where this is not for everybody it can get very interesting speaking of um stuff that's not for everybody and that to some people might have been shocking I remember hearing Ghetto Boys for the first time and like whoa like they're taking certain things pretty far when you're working with an artist and they venture out into that place where things are like maybe even a little shocking what is that feeling for you internally like is it how do you distinguish between shock value for its own sake and something that's really opening up a new creative Avenue or Insight like like how do you do you recall the first time you you heard like Bushwick and those guys do their thing yeah what what was your internal narrative I can't believe it I can't believe what they're saying it's really um pushing the boundaries of what anyone has said in this music before it had switched because the the original in originally in rap there was a lot of boasting about themselves bragging and then we got to uh the message happened and there was some social commentary then there was gangster rap and then the Ghetto Boys took a version of gangster rap and turned it into horror rap which was much more graphic than gangster rap gangster rap was talking about a um a real life situation whereas the Ghetto Boys took it into horror movie territory it was more fantasy um but it seemed really scary at the time in the way that a you're scared at a great horor movie do you like horror movies I don't do you like monster movies to where you know it's not real like it's impossible uh as opposed to horror movies where you know it's um you know people getting killed by another human like stuff that could happen in the world versus um you know monsters and zombies and that kind of thing I don't think I really like either of them very much I like things that make me feel good I don't really like adrenaline you know I don't like to be excited for some reason in audio I like something that makes me excited but in visuals I tend not to like things that make me excited interesting and you're able to kind of clean yourself of experiences easily right like it seems like if you listen to something it's really shocking you don't carry that shock to your sleep or to the next day like it doesn't trouble you but a movie can can impact me like there was a movie called Melancholia that I saw years ago Lars vont Trier movie and I thought it was a very beautiful movie but I was in a bad mood I would say for 3 months from the time I watched that movie on it just like did something to my brain that didn't feel good and it couldn't snap out of it so interesting there there are a few movies that have done that to me the movie Blue Valentine which has done really well um which is with uh Ryan goling and someone else where um it's a relationship I won't explain what happens in The Arc of the relationship but it just like the movie Haunted me m there's one scene where he's wearing a misfit shirt and I was like I like the and that's a a particularly good scene where he's singing to her um but the rest of the movie just brings about such feelings of like just how hard life can be sometimes and how misguided people can be in relationship and it it's interesting how movies can just kind of embed in us it's not pleasant I don't want to talk about it anymore there were a number of questions asking about how you consume information in the world related to what's happening in the world like where do you get your news from you and I talk about this a lot how do how do we know what to trust these days um did should we have ever trusted the news or is is it less trustworthy now like where do you get your information about what's happening in the world and stay a breast of like world affairs I I honestly I don't feel like I know anything about it you know I um I tend to look at it all like wrestling so if the story's good I might be more interested in the story but I still don't hold much uh belief that that story is true yeah I don't know what to believe anymore uh I was asked to comment on a particularly well-known person who's not considered very Savory by a couple news Avenues in the last couple of years and um I don't know how people had in mind that I would have knowledge about this person and and I gave zero information to these news outlets and um nonetheless they they they didn't publish quotes from me but they they publish things that I know to be completely false and they know to be completely false so I I was just struck by the fact that like in scientific publishing that would get you you'd lose your job forever well at one point in time you would have lost your job now I don't know if that's true if you lose your job because we see it happening a lot right yeah it's wild have you ever read anything about you that's not true oh yeah yeah okay so based on that absolutely I mean some of it is playful stuff like on Reddit and now they're flagged as as play they have a little flag that they can put as you know comedic or something but oh sure I mean things not just taken out of context but things like completely wrong like just like that I I don't even know where people get this stuff from I keep waiting for the thing I'm going to see that says that I'm dead yeah that that'll be the moment so based on that experience why would you believe anything you read about anyone else you you you get to see firsthand that there are just stories just not true and presumably you've seen things written about you that are not true absolutely right absolutely right and artists I know friends of mine they write things about them I know it's not true wild what do you think about the state of play and is the experience of being a parent and having a young child has that allowed you more opportunities for play and to see through the world through childlike lenses in uh greater capacity or is it you know just separate from your creative process I would say I'm fairly childlike all the time I try to stay as uh open the beauty of childhood is that you don't know you haven't been um indoctrinated yet so you you see things and you have wonder about them and it's a great feeling that feeling of Wonder and now when someone I I'll tell you a story this is a a true story my friend Owen came over one night in the middle of the night and he had just seen um luminescence in the water for the first time and he had didn't know what what it was and thought he was having mystical experience and he was so excited he's like you won't believe what happened the W the waves were like there was light everywhere it was so cool i' never saw anything like it and I said oh yeah that's uh luminesence and I explained what it was and it destroyed the magic for him he was really having a childlike magical experience and I destroyed it by telling them the science behind it I try to live in a world where I can experience what he experiences and I don't let the story ruin what's I allow the possibility to go past what I'm told the story is but that things can be even wilder than the rational explanation for me learning the reductionist science behind something to me adds depth and Beauty but then again I realize I'm I've been indoctrinated into the the field of science so the Matrix they call it the Matrix this is one I didn't understand but I'm going to assume that you understand because it has to do with people you've worked with if Rick had casually dropped that the Ramones named themselves after the fake last name Paul McCartney used to check into hotels during Beetle Mania would that have blown Andrew's mind this kind of weird question I guess the question is is it true that the Ramones name themselves after the fake last name that Paul McCartney used to check into hotels during Beetle Mania um I don't know that I don't know if that's a true story I do know that Paul McCartney used the name Paul Ramon when checking into hotels but I don't know if that's where the Ramon got the name got it and here is how rumors turn into quote unquote facts on the internet so we have and also maybe the Paul raone story is not true either but that's story I've heard right that reminds me and and I think this is an important case in point that there's a what I can consider a very famous photograph of you Johnny Cash Joe Strummer and Henry Rollins mhm you're wearing a dead Kennedy shirt the four of you are facing one another and I love that photograph because of who's in it um and I remember hearing a rare track from Strummer and the mescaleros called uh on the road to rock and roll um and then for some reason probably because my phone is tapped into my brain I was served up a video on social media of Henry Rollins telling the story of that Gathering of the four of you where Rollins is describing the story of of uh Joe Strummer leaning into Johnny Cash and saying hey I wrote a song for you it goes on the road to rock okay and I remember coming to you and saying Rick guess what remember that photo you're like I remember the photo I said yeah Rollins has the story of what was happening in that moment and I was so excited and you said you said yeah I don't remember that it might be true it might be true but it might be entirely made up also yeah and we're not calling Henry a liar but Henry I I I believe Henry I believe Henry remembers that story and that was his experience that was not my experience or I don't remember it being my experience but who knows anything could have been said it's true anything could have been said like it it had as much to to do the fact that I don't remember has as much to do with whatever I was thinking about when that happened and the story that Henry told had as much to do with what was going on in Henry's head when it happened we have no idea you know it's we have no idea do you remember somebody shooting the photograph I do not I'll put a link to that photograph on the Internet it's a really incredible Gathering of I've seen the photo but I don't remember it being sh I'm looking for a high resolution version of that photo if anyone can find me one I'll be happy to compensate you well there were a lot of questions about your daily routine people love this the morning routine the daily routine and while I have to believe that everybody's necessary routine is quite different from the next um if you wouldn't mind just giving us a sense of like the first couple hours of your day what that typically looks like when you're like not traveling and you're settled into to a place uh it's different depending on the place that I'm in but typically it involves waking up going out into the Sun as naked as possible to start the day um I try to take slowly um wake up slowly and probably within an hour of that I'll leave the house and go for as long of a beachwalk as possible or if I'm in a place where there's a gym several days a week I'll go to the gym instead but some I'll do some activity I would say about an hour after waking up sometimes it's an hour and a half sometimes it's less depending on the place I'm at I also might do stretching before I go on the walk and do um just several stretches on yoga mats on the floor or uh with foam rollers or balls or some different things I don't start my day until those things are out of the way I try to avoid um any work related anything now that that said if a thought comes up that I'm excited about I'll note it I won't um avoid thoughts but I tend not to engage in any work until probably 11:00 11:00 a.m. would be the soonest and in and some days not until 1:00 and then I do focused work until maybe six and then I spend the rest of the night uh trying to wind down out of work mode so one p.m. to 6 p.m. are really the peak probably quote unquote work hours yeah could be 11: too like today we started here at 11: and that felt like I felt like I'd be good by 11: and I already did my my morning walk I had the argument on the beach I I was in the sun I was in the hot tub I had a whole whole morning already and then what does your evening wind down look like in terms of the space that you're in uh or trying to create and your internal landscape well it's only red light um I'm usually wearing from the time sun sets I'm wearing red glasses I'm in a space with only red light I'm uh 99 % of the time home with my family and we talk I might watch uh wrestling or a documentary with red glasses on um we eat dinner together or we eat dinner in shifts depending on how it's working but we're all we're all together and I find something to occupy my mind that gets me out of the workday that said sometimes the ideas still flow and I'll note them but I avoid I avoid any kind of a work phone call or um anything that's stimulating or that will get me thinking about it I aim for Sunset and then I'm usually in bed I'm usually in bed by 10: and um and fall asleep within 15 minutes your relationship to light is fascinating the sunlight piece makes a lot of sense and will make sense to the listeners of this podcast we haven't done too many episodes but we will do more that covers the trying to avoid bright light exposure in the evening um you're wearing the red uh lens glasses now even though it's the middle of the day that's because we've got these bright lights around us correct and have you found that limiting your bright artificial light exposure in the evening has benefited you and in what ways absolutely and and once you've done it once you've changed and avoid like looking at screens or my you know my phone turns red at night when I see someone else's phone if someone comes to visit and their phone lights up at night it's blinding and it's so disturbing and for them that's normal they're in this heightened blown out place all the time I'm staying at neutral I'm staying at at the the the more natural how how the world would be if man didn't create all of these uh these loud things loud loud um loud devices yeah I've switched my phone thanks to your input and we will have released a clip on this um by time this episode airs on the triple click approach to the phone that you can put in very easily um to allow it to go from regular screen to red screen at night so that you don't have to go into the settings each time you just triple click U we'll provide a link to that um explanation and Rick taught me that when I was over in Italy everyone in his home turned to me and uh said wait your phone is so bright you got to do the red light thing I said I don't know how and it taught me that so it's a very useful trick um have you no is the difference since looking at huge positive difference I sleep better there are great data now because of course I go there and find the data that um you know for shift workers people that have to be up at night working if they put them under red light the amount of cortisol at that time is suppressed which is great um as compared to when they're under bright artificial lights without red lens glasses or if they're in red lights it's far far more beneficial less cortisol you want cortisol High early in the day viewing sunlight early in the day increases it by at least 50% then you want it to taper off uh and on and on I heard something recently which is going to make a lot of sense one thing that's happened in the last 30 years which may at least partially explain the Obesity crisis is that calories which are depleted of nutrients micronutrients are very cheap now see they're very cheap to get calories but they aren't nut nutritious calories in addition there's been a change in lighting technology so that blue light photons are very cheap like when I was a kid they my parents would say turn off the lights it's costing us all this money now it's very cheap to keep the lights on in a home the heat is a different story but with respect so we have a lot of cheap photons so I think of blue light as cheap photons not the good for you photons not nourishing photons that's correct and consuming calories too often are at the wrong times of we know is bad for you consuming photons in the wrong form at the wrong time of day bad for you and I think those two things combined plus all the downstream negative Cascades can largely explain the Obesity and in some sense Mental Health crisis interesting yeah so just a there I editorialized again I realized that we're trying to shift the ratio to more Rick less Andrew but he can't help himself he can't help himself and Rick indulges me so actually there were a number of questions in here that asked me you know how has Rick helped you and I I'm refraining from answering those cuz this is people want your answers for them but I I do all the things that Rick's referring to I'm not wearing red lens glasses now but I have changed a lot of my health practices Andor sought out science to test whether or not some of the things that you've been doing for a while make sense and indeed in every case they've made sense I'm not just saying that because because you're here but you and I do a lot of the same things yeah we're in we're interested and if it didn't work we'd probably stop doing it eventually right it's like we're testing things right and I do believe that what start starts out as crazy like Mike mener stuff of low volume weight training with heavy weights it works so much better than the high volumes all that stuff is being shown to be true in these peer-reviewed trials so you know that's the nature of science it often comes science often follows the practitioners by many decades MH you know it doesn't get there first because it's a slower more iterative process but some people need to see those clinical trials to feel comfortable doing something I think the cre process is uniquely separated from academic science and academic scholarship in a way that I think has really benefited it I mean can you imagine if the Ghetto Boys had to get a degree in music theory in order to do what they do they wouldn't be the Ghetto boys right or Slayer they would not be Slayer yeah or Public Enemy yes or Adele yes or Eminem right it's it's almost by virtue of the fact that there is no degree for that yeah per se that allowed them to do what they did right yeah absolutely so what are your thoughts on schooling and higher education or just education I mean you were at NYU when you launched your record label you graduated NYU I did um what are your thoughts on getting a a quote unquote formal education uh it seems like an obsolete idea I think maybe there was a time where it would have been helpful and maybe depending on the if the thing that you want to study um can only be learned in an institution maybe it would make sense but I think the real world um getting an internship or a um finding the right mentor and going into the whatever the thing is that you're interested in learning about learning from people who do it as opposed to uh the the system I think I think might be more a better use of your time the creative process doesn't exist in a vacuum and relationships are a huge part of life one thing that I've heard you say and that certainly I've been working to internalize is this idea that whatever relationships one has in their life romantic relationships or not married or not kids or not that the ideal circumstance is where one's work is the most stressful part of their life yes you tell us more about that yeah the the home is the um the safe place from which you can go out and be a warrior and do all these great things and these crazy things you know I have um I'm fearless when it comes to Art I'm not Fearless when it comes to life life is my relationships art is where we can do these crazy things and have fun and um try extreme things and see what happens and as to say that's a safe place to do that because it's it's just expression it's not um the things we make don't have to represent who we are they're just the things we make and that's a point of view it's like this is interesting to me in this moment check it out that's all it is may have a completely different feeling tomorrow was in a relationship it's it's longterm hopefully and it's it's as longterm as it's a productive relationship where everybody's getting what they want from that relationship everybody's needs are being met and everybody cares enough to meet each other's needs I've always admired how rational you are about relationships and this notion that like if everybody isn't being honest there's no relationship actually yeah not it's a bad relationship but there's actually no relationship no because if you if you if someone's not telling the truth then each person is experiencing a different understanding of the world they're living in two different worlds so they're not they're never actually together when you're exper experiencing a different world so unless you can you don't have to agree I'm not saying you have to agree on everything but you have to be truthful in saying this is how I see it and your partner is clear in yes this is how I see it or no this is how I see it you're on the same you're on the same page even even in disagreement but it's real it's you're you're being who each of you are being Who You Are for and with the other but if you're not opening yourself up in that way to your partner you're in a different world they have an idea of what's Happening that's completely different than what you have an idea of what's Happening that's not that's not being together no masks no no it's the it's the same as what when you said earlier about lying in your diary you'd only be doing a disservice to yourself lying in a relationship would only be doing a disservice to yourself Mike Ness of Social Distortion has a song called cheating at solitire which seems like an appropriate title to mention right now lying in the diary cheating at solitire yeah it's ridiculous doesn't make any sense no you're not you're not actually playing the game do you know what I mean if you're cheating at it you're not actually playing the game the whole point of the game is the game if you cheat at it you're not playing the game do you have any mustre books for people I'll I'll throw one out Rick's book on the creative act um a way of being uh but in addition to that book what are some books that you recommend to people for stimulating thought or for um I don't know Health purposes or things that you found particularly beneficial in book form my favorite book about meditation is called wherever you go there you are I love it and I just got sent the 30th Anniversary Edition which is completely Rewritten I have not yet read the re the Rewritten version but I love the original version and I know the Rewritten version I'm guessing that the Rewritten version is just more refined and even better such a great book that book was given to me when I was about 14 and a half uh when I was um released from a particularly uncomfortable nonv voluntary um uh State of Affairs and one of the things that I remember about that book that helped me through so many years of life and I have to go back to is this mountain visualization meditation being a mountain mhm I don't know why it was so helpful but goodness was it helpful for me it's a beautiful idea it's a beautiful idea yeah I don't know why I thought of that just now but I'm going to go back and read it do you think that there's genetic epigenetic family lineage stuff unrelated to genetics that leads us to create things that are really about like our ancestors you know the for instance um is it possible that uh let's take let's take Johnny Cash for instance or an artist worked with more recently Chili Peppers that when they got together to make music that something from Anthony's Family line was being transmuted through him into into the songs uh is that happening do you think that we can work out and and include things that are Generations far back enough that we don't we don't even really know what happened to them I mean it's coming through in our genes I think it's certainly possible but I I don't think we can know and I know think it's necessarily even helpful to know it just is one of those mysterious things I don't think we know why we do many of the things we do and it's just another example of that and that's a possible Theory to explain why we do the things we do maybe but there may be another one it maybe uh UFOs are controlling us I don't know do you know what I'm saying it's it could be anything there are people on the internet that think it's UFOs that are controlling us could be I don't I wouldn't um I wouldn't disagree with that more and more evidence is coming out that you know that uh unidentified flying objects might might actually be a documented phenomenon by the US government I I haven't looked into it yet but I wouldn't be surprised when you were on this podcast before and on several other podcasts you mentioned that you don't play music at least not routinely you don't play an instrument um that you have limited knowledge of how a soundboard works so when you're listening to artists are you listening for something or you're staying open for something that you might hear like that that will trigger a certain state in you that you recognize I'm open to just see what's happening like I I feel what's I I listen and recognize is this making me Lean Forward am I curious to see what's going to happen next is the thing that happens next different than what I thought was going to happen next that could be interesting you know I listen to a lot of music when it doesn't do what's expected that's really interesting especially if it sounds good if it works um so I'm just open to experiencing what it is and I'll say something funny about it which is this this will sound um mystical I don't understand it but often you can tell a lot about the piece of music you're going to listen to based on the first sound you hear like the first moment it's not about what node it is it's not about what instrument it is it's uh intention in the performance and that performance could even be a machine the way when something starts sometimes there's this feeling of oh this is going to be good just out of the bo the downbeat can't explain it reminds me of dating uh and you know within half a nan second like this is going to be a fun night this be interesting night this person's interesting or okay this is not a night to continue right I don't know there's something and and it's not what said necessarily or even how it said just it's a it's a feeling I know that depending on how I'm feeling I'll avoid listening critically to something if I'm not feeling well if I'm if I don't feel like I can be completely there and open I'll not listen I I know I know I want to really be there for the thing that I'm uh listening to do you inform people if like hey I'm not here today like I'm I can't sometimes yeah sometimes as somebody who has never been part of the music production process how long does it take like for an album like let's throw out an artist you've worked with like you worked with Eminem how long did that well you did some songs on that album or the whole album I did some songs so did he come in with those written and then you guys work together on those songs how long was that a week a month a day I think we were together for several weeks it's been long enough now that I can't remember the specifics but there there is no rule of how that works and sometimes things come together very quickly an album can be made in a weekend and some albums are years in the making when it's years in the making it's rarely every day for years in the making it's usually more episodic but there is something both versions are very interesting and it's something that comes out almost fully formed very quickly has particular energy and then something that's made over [Music] time can have all of those individual moments all the changes that happen within you over that period of time those can all be reflected and be the difference between between a daily diary journal and reading 3 months it's different they're two different things can't say one's better than the other they're just two different things so some projects are more like a Year's diary and some are more like a weekend and same you know you watch a movie some movies the movie story takes place in 24 hours and sometimes it's a person's lifetime one's not better than the one's not a better method than the other it's whatever suits the work speaking of your work with Eminem but also with Jay-Z and with Beasty Boys and others you are featured in a number of the videos you show up in those videos whose decision was that and um what are your thoughts on music videos I remember when music videos first came out the whole MTV era and just things like this is so cool I can see the artists see how they're dressed the like the crazy Styles and all of that that accompany the music two questions one whose decision was it to be in the videos because producers often are not included in the videos it would always be if the artists asked that' be the only reason I would be there and two what are your thoughts on music videos and the idea that then it puts a very strong visual to the the song whereas were there not to be a video people could just imagine something based on what they're hearing and hearing alone they're two different there're two different things there's not a better or worse there's sometimes where the video makes the song better and there's often the case where the Poetry of the words um if you close your eyes and listen to what the words are as a listener you get to participate in that in creating that world in your head so sometimes photographs can tell us too much information it's too leading it limits the story to just this Photograph the photograph tells you much more than the words the words can be interpreted in many ways and then we each get to have that experience it's something in the book that I was uh cognizant of in picking the words was never to be specific to the point of where the reader doesn't get to participate in this act so it doesn't tell you what to think it's an invitation to think it's an invitation to say Where am I in this what's my version of this it's not about anyone else it's about the reader and that was um it was from the beginning that was always part of the um my understanding of what I thought would be the most helpful the cover certainly embodies that that it it's not clear exactly what the cover design is quote unquote supposed to be it's open to interpretation you interpret it as you wish and different people see different things let's get current what what are you working on now that you're excited about if you can share let me see what I can and can't share could be broad categories of things too but okay uh I'm working on a couple of um documentary projects that I'm excited about and some albums that I've been working on over time are are coming out um one is a incredible singer guitar player named Marcus King his album's about to come out uh the gossip is a band that I made an album with 10 years ago and we just made a new album or we made an album Maybe 18 months ago and that's coming out now um those are the first ones that come to mind is the documentary process fun for you and how how do you approach that uh I watch a lot of documentaries to learn what I don't want to do I don't think I've been inspired well maybe some cases where I get inspired by what I'm seeing but more often I see things and I say okay these documentaries all have this format so I know I don't want it to be this format um um it's more of a ruling out and it's fun to find new ways that reveal different information than the standard format allows it's interesting to me I we'll see if anyone else cares you have a unique approach to podcasting uh first of all what are your criteria for who you invite on as a guest and second um what do you have in mind when you sit down and podcast um I have some ideas about how you're going to answer but I think it's important that and not inject and that uh I think people are interested in this even if they don't want a podcast because I think it it gets to the process of something that you're doing now and how you're doing it now yeah um I didn't set out to do what I'm about to tell you I didn't set out to do this but it's something that after I started doing it I came to realize it it's an interesting thing and I actually learned this from listening to your podcast it was actually Lex's podcast with you and I was listening to the podcast and I know you know Lex and I know you guys are friends and both of you in addition to you talking to Lex you're talking to the audience and Lex in addition to talking to you talks to the audience and the audience was a participant in your conversation and I realize that in at the tetraman podcast it's different than that it's more of an intimate personal like the interview with you that hasn't come out yet that was me talking to you with no I certainly didn't have any idea that anybody else was going to hear it other than yes someone else is going to hear it but that's not what this is this is I was asking you the questions I was interested in and I wanted to learn as much as I could and if you said something either that I didn't understand I'd ask you to explain it or if you told me a story about something that sent me on a tangent that would I want to know more about this left side of what you said or the right side of what you said I would ask but only following my own interests so it has a an intimacy it's turned into when I if I listen to a tetr gramon podcast it sounds like I'm overhearing a conversation a personal conversation and it it has turned into parts of certain decisions we made like having there's music at the beginning and then you hear the guest more often than not is in the middle of a story and it's almost as if you've walked into a room and people are in this deep conversation and you're just sitting on on the side quietly and hearing this conversation and it's a a real moment that's happening there and it's just different I can't say it's better I can't say it's worse can't say I don't know what what's interesting about it but something about it's interesting to me and when I listen to it I feel a different kind of an intimacy um and again it wasn't premeditated this is after the fact I'm looking back and understanding oh this is what it is this is why this is different yeah the podcast that I did with you on your podcast when I was featured as I guess the second time I I completely forgot that we were podcasting it was also good we'd had a few days together overseas there we're in a very kind of isolated environment that helped me get out of the mode of there are listeners yeah there's no there's no sense of performance involved it's it couldn't be more casual and the reason I chose not to film it is because the nature of lights and cameras make it harder to forget that you're doing it so I aim for it to be as natural an experience so that you can have the conversation that you really would have if there were no lights and cameras not that not that we want to reveal anything it's just it's a level of comfort and openness where you're talking to somebody you like and it's you're enjoying the conversation and that's so you I just have to share that you know the first time we met in person you and I had facetimed a number of times previous to that but the first time we met in person came over to your house we ended up doing sauna and cold and I was going through a particularly challenging time in my life I mean it had really just hit me square in the face and I remember saying Hey listen I I don't know we could talk about this but I just opened up about all of it and that's the moment when like we would have become friends anyway but that's where things really took off because I kept apologizing at the end I I'm so sorry and you said no no this is actually what we're supposed to do yeah and you know I'm feel very grateful that we've remained close friends ever since and that catalyzed a lot but I think that one of the things I love about podcasts not just podcasting but podcast is is that the really effective podcasts like yours like Lex's like Rogan like Rich rooll Tim Ferris they really reflect the love and passion that the person has for that kind of conversation I mean I can certainly say this about my podcast I I've been learning organizing and distributing information since I was you know you know six years old mhm so my podcast is just that you you like real conversation and real things that are unb barriered by like the idea that maybe someone's going to listen and how will it work out just like we talked about earlier and you answered the questions that way and I think Lex likes Lex's form of thing and Joe is doing his form of thing and I think that's to me one of the great gifts of podcasting if anyone wants to know how to create a successful podcast quote unquote successful it's have the kind of conversations and talk about the kinds of things you really love like Cameron Haynes has this lift run shoot podcast where you go to his house you do a workout then you go for run and then he teaches you archery and the reason it's so effective is that he loves lifting running and shooting and then he and he loves teaching people that so at the end of the day you're sitting down talking about a great day that embodies everything that he's about in and the person learned and like I couldn't do that podcast I can go on as a guest and I loved being a guest but I think that's the message and it brings us back to what you were talking about earlier and throughout today's discussion is that if you're thinking about how it's going to land how the hell could it ever work yeah it's just a different thing I had a conversation yesterday uh for the podcast with Daniel kuuya who I've never met before incredible actor and beautiful human being and we probably talked for about 3 hours and it was a deep conversation and I feel like I might have a new best friend like he's unbelievable the coolest guy if it wasn't doing the podcast I don't know if I would have met him it just worked out it worked out that I got to meet this incredible person well Rick we covered most of the most frequently asked questions and you've been extremely gracious with your time and thoughtfulness in answering them and um I don't know what to say except thank you for taking the time to do yet another podcast to answer the audience's questions they were here in this podcast in the form of this very large stack of of questions and of course your book includes a lot of information that encapsulates this but I think this really fleshes out some of the the details of like how you go about things how certain things can't be the same for everybody and um I think in answering these questions you provided a great service to people who are perhaps still struggling with getting the creative process going or flowing um I'm certain that it's going to change the way that I focus and lean into my day I've got a number of different notes here and maybe I'll be willing to share them with people but then that would go against the principle of this is for me and everyone's going to work it out their own way so we'll provide links to everything that was mentioned where there's a link that's relevant and you man I want just want to say thank you so much for being such an incredible educator and such an incredible friend as well thank you it's a funny idea of being an educator I can't imagine that but I appreciate the uh I appreciate those words well you you are indeed an educator we're learning so much from you and and if you just step back for a second and think about all the creative works that have stemmed and are going to stem from the learnings that people have achieved from hearing your experience in wisdom it's um incalculable wow I'll take it thank you sir thank you for joining me for today's discussion about protocols for creativity with the one and only Rick Rubin please also be sure to check out the links in the show captions in particular to Rick's incredible book all about the creative process entitled the creative act a way of 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protocols listed out again completely zero cost to sign up you simply go to huberman lab.com go to the menu function scroll down to newsletter and enter your email and I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Rick rubben and last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science [Music]