Rick Rubin: How to Access Your Creativity

00:00:00.000 | - Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast,

00:00:02.280 | where we discuss science and science-based tools

00:00:04.880 | for everyday life.

00:00:05.900 | I'm Andrew Huberman,

00:00:10.080 | and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology

00:00:12.920 | at Stanford School of Medicine.

00:00:14.640 | Today, my guest is Rick Rubin.

00:00:16.800 | Rick Rubin is credited with being one of the most creative

00:00:19.240 | and prolific music producers of all time.

00:00:21.960 | The range of artists with whom he's worked with

00:00:23.740 | and discovered is absolutely staggering,

00:00:26.160 | ranging from artists such as LL Cool J, Public Enemy,

00:00:29.400 | Minor Threat, Fugazi, Beastie Boys,

00:00:31.600 | Jesus and Mary Chain, Jay-Z, Red Hot Chili Peppers,

00:00:34.640 | Metallica, Green Day, Tom Petty, System of a Down,

00:00:37.680 | Joe Strummer, Kanye West, Johnny Cash,

00:00:40.180 | Adele, and many, many more.

00:00:42.660 | Not surprisingly, therefore,

00:00:44.180 | Rick is considered somewhat of an enigma.

00:00:46.940 | That is, people want to know how it is that one individual

00:00:50.080 | is able to extract the best creative artistry

00:00:52.920 | from so many different people

00:00:54.720 | in so many different genres of music.

00:00:57.080 | Well, as today's discussion reveals,

00:00:59.720 | Rick's expertise in the creative process

00:01:01.920 | extends well beyond music.

00:01:03.560 | In fact, our conversation takes us into the realm

00:01:05.960 | of what the creative process is specifically

00:01:08.400 | and generally across domains, including music, of course,

00:01:12.800 | but also writing, film, science,

00:01:15.360 | and essentially all domains

00:01:16.940 | in which new original thought, ideas,

00:01:19.760 | and production of anything becomes important.

00:01:22.720 | Our conversation ventures from abstract themes,

00:01:25.200 | such as what is creativity and where does it stem from,

00:01:28.240 | to the more concrete,

00:01:29.360 | everyday tool-based approaches to creativity,

00:01:31.600 | including those that Rick himself uses

00:01:33.800 | and that he's seen other people use to great success.

00:01:37.140 | That took us down some incredible avenues,

00:01:39.100 | ranging from a discussion about the subconscious

00:01:41.600 | to how the subconscious interacts with our conscious mind

00:01:44.480 | and how the subconscious and conscious mind

00:01:46.040 | interact with nature around us and within us.

00:01:49.220 | Indeed, our conversation got rather scientific at times,

00:01:52.640 | but all with an eye and an ear

00:01:54.020 | toward understanding the practical tools

00:01:55.840 | that any and all of us can use

00:01:57.980 | in order to access the creative process.

00:02:00.320 | We also spent some time talking about Rick's new book,

00:02:02.660 | which is all about creativity and ways to access creativity.

00:02:06.500 | The title of the book is "The Creative Act,

00:02:08.800 | "A Way of Being" by Rick Rubin.

00:02:10.920 | This is a book that I've now read three times

00:02:13.500 | from cover to cover,

00:02:14.960 | and I'm now reading it a fourth time

00:02:16.640 | because it is so rich with wisdom and information

00:02:19.700 | that I'm applying in multiple domains of my life,

00:02:21.840 | not just my work, but my everyday life.

00:02:24.640 | I cannot recommend it highly enough.

00:02:26.840 | Rick has an incredible ability

00:02:28.800 | to translate his understanding of the creative process

00:02:32.420 | in a way that is meaningful for anybody.

00:02:34.580 | So if you're in music, if you're a musician,

00:02:36.980 | it will certainly be meaningful for you,

00:02:38.400 | but it is not about music.

00:02:40.240 | It is about the creative process.

00:02:41.920 | And so whether or not you consider yourself

00:02:43.920 | somebody creative or not,

00:02:45.520 | or whether or not you seek to be more creative,

00:02:47.380 | Rick's book in today's conversation sheds light

00:02:50.180 | on what I believe to be the fundamental features

00:02:52.660 | of what makes us human beings.

00:02:54.460 | That is what allows us unlike other animals

00:02:57.580 | to look out on the landscape around us,

00:02:59.680 | to examine our inner landscape

00:03:01.340 | and to come up with truly novel ideas

00:03:03.880 | that thrill us, entertain us, entertain other people,

00:03:07.220 | scare us, make us laugh, make us cry.

00:03:10.440 | All the things that make life rich

00:03:12.480 | are essentially contained in the creative process.

00:03:15.240 | And to be able to sit down and learn from the Rick Rubin,

00:03:18.220 | how the creative process emerges in him

00:03:20.300 | and his observations about how it can best emerge in others

00:03:23.540 | is and was truly a gift.

00:03:25.300 | So I'm excited to share his knowledge with you today.

00:03:27.960 | One thing that you'll quickly come to notice

00:03:29.440 | about today's conversation

00:03:31.120 | is that Rick is incredibly generous with his knowledge

00:03:33.600 | about the creative process.

00:03:35.180 | In fact, he very graciously and spontaneously, I should add,

00:03:39.080 | offered to answer your questions about creativity.

00:03:41.980 | So if you have questions

00:03:42.880 | about the creative process for Rick,

00:03:44.660 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

00:03:47.240 | And in order to make those questions

00:03:48.800 | a bit easier for me to find,

00:03:50.600 | please put question for Rick Rubin in capitals,

00:03:53.640 | then colon or dash, whichever you choose,

00:03:56.560 | and then put your question there.

00:03:58.040 | I do ask that you keep the questions relatively short

00:04:00.080 | so that I can ask Rick

00:04:01.140 | as many of those questions as possible.

00:04:03.160 | We will record that conversation

00:04:04.880 | and we will post it as a clip

00:04:06.560 | on the Huberman Lab Clips channel.

00:04:08.240 | Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast

00:04:10.860 | is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford.

00:04:13.520 | It is, however, part of my desire and effort

00:04:15.780 | to bring zero cost to consumer information about science

00:04:18.360 | and science-related tools to the general public.

00:04:20.940 | In keeping with that theme,

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00:08:20.700 | And now for my discussion with Rick Rubin.

00:08:23.480 | Great to have you here today, Rick.

00:08:25.300 | - Thank you for having me, it's a pleasure.

00:08:27.460 | - So of all the topics in science

00:08:30.020 | and in particular in neuroscience,

00:08:31.860 | I confess that creativity is the most difficult one

00:08:35.500 | to capture because you can find papers,

00:08:39.300 | scientific studies that is on convergent thinking

00:08:43.300 | versus divergent thinking and there are definitions

00:08:46.180 | to these and they take on different forms.

00:08:49.120 | But in a strict definition form,

00:08:54.060 | it seems that creativity has something to do

00:08:56.760 | with either rearranging existing elements

00:08:59.840 | or coming up with new elements.

00:09:01.520 | But as I went into your book,

00:09:05.380 | which I've done twice, I've read it twice.

00:09:08.060 | And by the way, I feel so blessed and honored

00:09:10.780 | to have gotten an early copy from you

00:09:12.860 | or a final copy early, that is.

00:09:17.740 | But having gone through it twice,

00:09:19.300 | I'm now convinced that there may not actually

00:09:24.260 | be an internal source of creativity

00:09:27.700 | that exists on its own, right?

00:09:29.420 | And the example that you give that for me

00:09:31.900 | really is serving as an anchor

00:09:33.300 | and tell me if I'm wrong here

00:09:34.440 | is this idea that ideas and creativity

00:09:38.300 | are a little bit like a cloud.

00:09:39.680 | If you look at it at one moment,

00:09:42.300 | you might think that it looks like one thing

00:09:44.900 | where it has a certain shape and texture.

00:09:47.500 | But then you look at it a moment later,

00:09:48.880 | it could be quite a bit different.

00:09:49.820 | And if you look at an hour later,

00:09:51.640 | it very well could be gone.

00:09:53.560 | And the reason I think that serves

00:09:57.420 | as such a powerful hook for me to think about creativity

00:10:00.700 | and why I think neuroscientists and scientists in general

00:10:03.320 | have never actually captured a way

00:10:05.420 | to even talk about creativity

00:10:07.100 | stems from somebody that you knew in person.

00:10:10.860 | But as you know, I greatly admire,

00:10:13.740 | I don't have many heroes, but I would put Joe Strummer

00:10:15.900 | among the short list of heroes that I have.

00:10:17.860 | And I remember once an interview with him,

00:10:20.460 | fairly disjointed, he was sort of often different tangents

00:10:25.120 | that I couldn't follow.

00:10:26.060 | But at one point, he just kind of blurted out

00:10:29.660 | that if you have an idea, you have to write it down

00:10:33.440 | and you may end up throwing it away,

00:10:35.440 | but if you wait, it will be gone.

00:10:38.400 | And I remember that, and as a consequence,

00:10:40.480 | I have a whole system that I use to try and capture ideas.

00:10:42.680 | But what are your thoughts on what Joe said,

00:10:46.420 | this cloud idea that comes up in one form

00:10:49.600 | in one area of the book,

00:10:50.920 | but then I think is thread throughout the book

00:10:53.160 | in different ways, how did that come to you

00:10:57.040 | and how does it serve you in trying to,

00:11:01.660 | I don't want to say extract, but trying to access creativity?

00:11:04.380 | - I think the best way to think about it is like a dream.

00:11:08.380 | It's like, if you think about your dreams,

00:11:11.000 | they don't necessarily make sense.

00:11:13.560 | When you wake up, you might remember part,

00:11:16.820 | but not the whole thing.

00:11:18.140 | Then if you start writing them down, they'll come back

00:11:24.260 | and they may not make sense to you.

00:11:25.980 | There'll be a series of abstract images

00:11:30.100 | and maybe someday in the future,

00:11:34.820 | you'll be able to look back and understand what they mean

00:11:37.540 | and maybe not.

00:11:39.020 | And that's sort of how the art making process works.

00:11:44.020 | It's like we're making things

00:11:46.580 | and we're looking for feeling in ourselves.

00:11:49.540 | And it could be a feeling of excitement or enthusiasm,

00:11:54.540 | a feeling of interest, a feeling of curiosity,

00:11:57.900 | I want to know more, feeling of leaning forward.

00:12:01.500 | And we're following that energy in our body

00:12:07.860 | when we feel this, there's something here,

00:12:11.500 | there's something here, I want to know more,

00:12:13.140 | I want to know more, I want to know more.

00:12:15.140 | But it's not, I'll say it's not an intellectual process.

00:12:19.740 | It's a different thing.

00:12:21.420 | That's why it's hard even to talk about it

00:12:23.820 | because it's so elusive.

00:12:26.900 | - Recently, I was listening to a podcast

00:12:30.860 | by our friend Lex Friedman.

00:12:34.020 | I think it was an episode with Balaji Srinivasan

00:12:36.360 | where with Balaji, who's a investor type guy,

00:12:41.360 | thinker type guy, this is like an eight hour episode.

00:12:45.420 | He says something at the beginning

00:12:47.060 | that I'd love your thoughts on.

00:12:49.660 | He said, look, we can train a rat

00:12:52.020 | to lever press every other time

00:12:55.380 | or to expect reward on every even number press

00:12:59.260 | or every odd number press or even every fifth number press,

00:13:02.960 | but a human and a rat can't do that

00:13:06.660 | for like prime number presses.

00:13:10.260 | You can't actually train that.

00:13:11.660 | And then you think about the reward systems

00:13:13.260 | and the way that we follow life

00:13:14.840 | from when we get up until we go to sleep.

00:13:17.140 | And what he said is the fact that we can't do that

00:13:21.260 | means that we may not actually be in touch

00:13:25.480 | with the best schedules of doing things.

00:13:28.200 | Like every time I'm thirsty, I take a sip.

00:13:30.100 | I assume that's the right way to do it,

00:13:32.460 | but it might not be optimal, right?

00:13:34.600 | Optimal for whatever purpose.

00:13:36.720 | When I was reading your book,

00:13:38.700 | I was thinking about there's a set of things to follow,

00:13:43.700 | things to pay attention to, you talk about this,

00:13:46.880 | things to access that none of the creative process

00:13:50.300 | comes from just within us.

00:13:52.180 | It can, but it's always being fed by things outside of it.

00:13:55.460 | And so what I started to do is the second time

00:13:57.860 | I read through the book was think about it

00:13:59.140 | through the lens of what Balaji was saying was that

00:14:02.280 | there may not even be a language

00:14:04.020 | for this thing that we call accessing creativity.

00:14:07.740 | I mean, there's a process,

00:14:09.400 | but that language in the form of words

00:14:11.620 | is a little bit like trying to use even numbers

00:14:16.500 | to try and access prime numbers.

00:14:19.220 | Like the math becomes so convoluted

00:14:22.500 | that we end up in a conversation like this

00:14:25.140 | where I'm confident we can get to the kernels of it

00:14:28.040 | because what's remarkable about the book is that you do,

00:14:31.940 | you show and inform the process,

00:14:35.440 | but there may not be a English or any other language

00:14:41.220 | for saying do this, then this, then this, then this,

00:14:44.220 | and you'll have something of creative value.

00:14:46.980 | Does that capture it?

00:14:48.020 | - Yes, I think language is insufficient to,

00:14:51.680 | to drill down on creativity.

00:14:55.740 | It's more, it's closer to magic than it is science.

00:15:00.740 | - So when kids come into the world,

00:15:04.340 | do you think that they have better access

00:15:08.940 | to this creative process than we do as adults?

00:15:11.740 | Because we start to impart rule plays and books like,

00:15:15.380 | will it get likes, will people like it?

00:15:17.840 | But also like all the things that are available to us

00:15:22.680 | that we're not paying attention to,

00:15:23.900 | like the texture of this table, right?

00:15:26.220 | They, we're discarding things kind of systematically.

00:15:29.880 | We get quote unquote set in our ways.

00:15:31.940 | Do you think kids are more, are just by definition

00:15:34.120 | and by design more creative than adults?

00:15:36.500 | - Yes, kids are, they're open and they have no baggage.

00:15:41.500 | They don't have any belief system.

00:15:43.460 | They don't know how things are supposed to work.

00:15:46.620 | They just see what is.

00:15:48.540 | And if we pay attention to what is, we learn,

00:15:51.940 | we learn much more than if we,

00:15:54.040 | most of us select from an endless number of data points

00:16:00.240 | available to us to, well, as a species,

00:16:07.100 | to make sure that we don't die and to procreate

00:16:10.940 | and to feed ourselves

00:16:12.220 | are probably the primary functions first.

00:16:15.860 | And then we learn things about what's right and what's wrong

00:16:19.580 | and we learn things about how to do certain things

00:16:24.540 | or we're inspired by someone who makes something we love

00:16:28.840 | and we want to do it the way they do it.

00:16:31.180 | And all of those things undermine the purity

00:16:34.740 | of the creative process.

00:16:36.380 | They can be tools to build your skillset

00:16:41.380 | to be able to do it yourself.

00:16:43.100 | Like if you're a singer,

00:16:46.420 | you might imitate a singer you really like for a while

00:16:50.160 | to get good at it

00:16:51.800 | and then eventually come to find your own voice.

00:16:54.660 | It doesn't always start with your own voice.

00:16:58.040 | But if you're three years old or five years old

00:17:02.020 | and you try singing, you're not singing like anyone else.

00:17:04.780 | You're singing with your own voice.

00:17:07.140 | And when you make something,

00:17:08.760 | you're making it based on not knowing.

00:17:13.400 | And I think I had the advantage early in my career

00:17:16.520 | of starting making music without any experience,

00:17:20.240 | which was helpful

00:17:21.080 | because I didn't know what rules I was breaking.

00:17:24.340 | And so it wasn't intentional breaking of rules.

00:17:28.520 | I just did what seemed right to me,

00:17:31.040 | but I didn't realize that I was doing things

00:17:33.760 | that other people wouldn't do.

00:17:35.800 | - I mean, there is this idea that there are no new ideas.

00:17:39.160 | You know, I sort of disagree

00:17:41.600 | because every once in a while I'll see or hear something

00:17:43.600 | that at least seems different enough.

00:17:45.620 | - I think it's a new combination of existing ideas

00:17:52.240 | presented in a new way.

00:17:55.280 | I think that's how it works.

00:17:57.960 | I don't know.

00:17:59.320 | But I will say it does seem like

00:18:00.960 | the things that are most interesting to me

00:18:03.060 | have a series of familiar elements

00:18:07.220 | joined together in a way that it's creating something

00:18:09.500 | that I've never seen before.

00:18:11.540 | - You mentioned that when you are close to

00:18:16.140 | or you see hints of creativity,

00:18:18.460 | that is of real value, that it's a feeling.

00:18:22.060 | And I also believe that the body

00:18:24.180 | is a great source of information.

00:18:26.420 | Which, you know, once people will realize

00:18:29.560 | that the brain of course is in the skull,

00:18:31.080 | but the nervous system extends everywhere in the body.

00:18:33.840 | The whole mind-body thing just falls away.

00:18:36.920 | You know, philosophers have argued about this forever,

00:18:39.140 | but it's a silly argument.

00:18:41.440 | It's also true that, you know,

00:18:43.520 | God forbid I were to amputate all my limbs,

00:18:46.720 | have them amputated, I'd fundamentally still be me, right?

00:18:50.680 | The same is not true.

00:18:51.840 | If we took about big enough chunk of my brain

00:18:53.980 | and I still survived,

00:18:54.960 | I would be fundamentally different human being.

00:18:57.480 | I'd still have the same name and identity

00:18:59.400 | and social security number,

00:19:00.540 | but I would behave very differently.

00:19:02.780 | Who knows, maybe better.

00:19:05.060 | The signals from the body we know,

00:19:11.920 | or at least we assume are pretty generic.

00:19:15.480 | Like I can think of 50 different ways

00:19:18.040 | or a hundred ways that we could talk about creativity today

00:19:20.620 | and we could define it and redefine it and carve it up

00:19:22.980 | and serve it up like sushi in a bunch of different ways.

00:19:25.740 | But the body sends signals that most of us

00:19:30.380 | are, we have a kind of course understanding of.

00:19:33.740 | It's like, oh, my stomach hurts or my stomach feels good,

00:19:35.980 | or I'm not sensing my stomach.

00:19:38.080 | Or, oh, that feels good.

00:19:40.560 | It feels warm.

00:19:41.400 | It feels cool.

00:19:42.220 | Most of us aren't trained in understanding

00:19:44.400 | how to interpret those signals.

00:19:45.840 | So it's almost like you have a few vowels,

00:19:47.960 | a few syllables, and there isn't a lot more.

00:19:49.560 | Whereas when we talk about our thoughts

00:19:51.040 | and our experiences,

00:19:51.940 | depending on how hyperverbal somebody is

00:19:54.920 | and how much emphasis they put on different sounds,

00:19:57.280 | it's kind of near infinite, right?

00:20:00.320 | Not infinite, but near infinite.

00:20:02.060 | So for you personally,

00:20:05.120 | when you know that you're on the end

00:20:09.920 | of a thread of creativity,

00:20:11.080 | maybe you're listening to an artist

00:20:12.500 | or you're hearing something and you're like there

00:20:15.600 | and your antennae start to deflect in a certain way, right?

00:20:20.380 | Do you feel that in your body as a recognizable sensation

00:20:25.380 | or is it a thought and a sensation?

00:20:28.680 | - It's a feeling in my body.

00:20:31.200 | - Is it localized?

00:20:33.800 | - No, it's a feeling of,

00:20:37.520 | I would say it's like a surge of energy.

00:20:41.180 | - Do you remember the first time you experienced that?

00:20:45.560 | - Probably, you know, hearing the Beatles

00:20:47.480 | when I was three or four years old.

00:20:49.620 | - Three or four years old?

00:20:50.720 | - Yeah.

00:20:51.560 | - Wow.

00:20:52.520 | - Yeah.

00:20:53.340 | - Is there something wrong with me

00:20:54.180 | that the Beatles have never done it for me?

00:20:56.040 | - No, maybe just weren't exposed at the right time

00:20:58.040 | in the right way.

00:20:58.880 | There's no right or wrong way.

00:21:01.040 | And everyone, I can love the Beatles and you can not,

00:21:05.120 | and we're both right.

00:21:05.960 | You know, there's not a-

00:21:07.080 | - I'm glad we can still be friends.

00:21:08.320 | I was a little concerned.

00:21:09.160 | I was a little scared to ask that question.

00:21:11.160 | I know my taste in music is a little bit obscure

00:21:13.200 | and kind of fragmentary, but okay, good.

00:21:16.960 | I've always felt like, gosh,

00:21:18.020 | there must be something wrong with me.

00:21:19.120 | I like their songs, but there's no juice for me there.

00:21:23.340 | - I think maybe we'll watch,

00:21:26.300 | there was an eight part series called the Beatles Anthology,

00:21:30.760 | which is out of print,

00:21:31.600 | but I can try to find it somewhere

00:21:33.160 | and we can watch that together.

00:21:34.300 | - Okay.

00:21:35.140 | - Maybe that'll make the case for the Beatles.

00:21:37.620 | - Okay.

00:21:38.460 | Yeah, but I mean, nothing against them.

00:21:39.840 | It's just, and I'm always bothering you for story,

00:21:42.300 | but like Ramones, I saw that and I was like, wow,

00:21:44.520 | like jeans, aviators,

00:21:45.960 | everyone had to change their last name to Ramone.

00:21:48.400 | A lot of them hated each other.

00:21:50.800 | There's so much drama in there and three chords and just,

00:21:54.380 | but to me, it just was like, wow,

00:21:55.880 | like kids from New York, that energy.

00:21:58.460 | So I think it different things for different people, right?

00:22:00.700 | - Absolutely.

00:22:01.700 | - So that brings me to a question of when,

00:22:03.380 | when something feels creatively right

00:22:08.380 | and you're sensing it and you're there,

00:22:11.540 | let's say in the studio,

00:22:12.540 | or maybe even you're listening to something

00:22:13.920 | that somebody sent you,

00:22:15.060 | how do you translate that?

00:22:18.980 | Given the absence of language,

00:22:22.580 | how do you translate that into a conversation

00:22:26.180 | with the artist?

00:22:27.220 | And again, this could be about writing or comedy or,

00:22:29.340 | you know, or science or podcasting for that matter.

00:22:31.800 | How do you say that,

00:22:34.340 | keep going that way when they might not even recognize

00:22:37.780 | that they did it.

00:22:38.620 | And I'm guessing a lot of times they don't.

00:22:40.980 | - Yeah, sometimes they don't.

00:22:42.020 | It depends when we're in the,

00:22:44.060 | I'll try to be in a setting where as we're talking about it,

00:22:50.860 | we can engage with it in that moment.

00:22:53.940 | So it's not much good.

00:22:55.680 | Let's say I was producing your new record

00:22:59.340 | and you played me something and I had some thoughts

00:23:01.220 | about it.

00:23:02.300 | It wouldn't be so helpful for me to tell you

00:23:04.460 | what those were.

00:23:05.660 | It'd be better for us to wait till we were in a place

00:23:07.520 | where we could try things and see where it goes.

00:23:11.340 | So the first thing is I wouldn't rely on language to do it.

00:23:16.340 | It would be more of a,

00:23:18.580 | making a suggestion of something that's actionable.

00:23:20.580 | We try it and then we have more data

00:23:22.820 | and either we're moving in a good direction

00:23:24.780 | or we're moving away from it.

00:23:26.060 | We're moving towards it or away from it.

00:23:28.060 | And we never know.

00:23:29.380 | And so it's always an experiment.

00:23:31.060 | And maybe a simple way to talk about it would be like,

00:23:34.560 | if I gave you two dishes of food and asked you to taste them

00:23:38.560 | and tell me which one you like better.

00:23:40.620 | It's pretty, usually it's pretty straightforward.

00:23:42.380 | You know, when you have two choices, which you like better.

00:23:45.140 | And I think most creativity can be boiled down to that.

00:23:50.140 | That's very different than I wonder how this is gonna

00:23:54.100 | perform on certain social media platforms.

00:23:57.020 | That's different than what is it when I'm tasting

00:24:00.660 | these two things, which is the one I wanna finish eating.

00:24:03.940 | And if I would say, hmm, I like this one better,

00:24:07.180 | but it needs a little salt and then put a little salt on.

00:24:09.420 | And it's like, hmm, maybe I put too much salt.

00:24:11.660 | And you know, when you taste it, it's like, it's that simple.

00:24:15.740 | Being in tune enough with ourselves to really know

00:24:23.420 | how we feel in the face of knowing that other people

00:24:28.260 | might feel very differently, which is part of the challenge.

00:24:31.460 | It's like, if everyone tells you, aye, aye, aye, aye, aye,

00:24:36.460 | and you listen and you're like,

00:24:39.020 | "Oh, that's not good."

00:24:40.180 | And you say, aye, and you listen and you're like, "That's B."

00:24:43.180 | As an artist, it's important to be able to say,

00:24:50.460 | to me, it's B.

00:24:52.580 | And it's a disconnect because so much of, you know,

00:24:59.420 | when we go to school, it's to get us to follow the rules.

00:25:04.420 | And in art, it's different because the rules are there

00:25:09.300 | as a scaffolding to be chipped away as need be.

00:25:14.300 | Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they're not.

00:25:17.380 | And sometimes we'll even impose our own rules

00:25:20.900 | to give something its shape.

00:25:23.300 | So we can decide to make a, we're gonna make a painting,

00:25:28.120 | but we're only gonna use green and red

00:25:31.140 | are the only colors we're allowed to use.

00:25:33.260 | We decide that in advance.

00:25:35.140 | And then how do we solve the problem

00:25:36.940 | knowing all we have is green and red?

00:25:39.740 | It can, because otherwise if there's an infinite number

00:25:44.420 | of choices, anything can be anything.

00:25:47.940 | You know, it's like, it's sometimes more choices

00:25:51.260 | is not better.

00:25:52.220 | So limiting your palette to something manageable

00:25:57.540 | forces you to solve problems in a different way.

00:26:02.280 | Now in our digital age, music wise,

00:26:06.980 | you can make anything digitally.

00:26:11.980 | There's no, like in, there was a time

00:26:14.940 | when if you didn't have a guitar in the studio,

00:26:16.940 | you couldn't record guitar.

00:26:18.140 | Or if you didn't, if you couldn't hire an orchestra,

00:26:20.800 | there couldn't be orchestra on your recording.

00:26:22.560 | Now you can just call any of those things up.

00:26:25.280 | So there's infinite choices and infinite choices

00:26:30.280 | don't necessarily lead to better compositions

00:26:36.060 | or better final works.

00:26:39.700 | Understanding how you feel

00:26:43.100 | in the face of other voices

00:26:48.720 | without second guessing yourself

00:26:50.860 | is probably the single most important thing to practice

00:26:55.620 | as an artist or skill set to develop as an artist

00:27:00.900 | is to know how you feel and own your feelings.

00:27:05.980 | And the key to that is not, I know,

00:27:08.900 | so I know what's right for you.

00:27:10.720 | It doesn't work that way.

00:27:11.900 | It's just, I know from me.

00:27:14.360 | And the reason I chose to be an artist

00:27:17.460 | is to demonstrate this is how I see it.

00:27:20.820 | If I'm undermining my taste for some commercial idea

00:27:26.780 | or it defeats the whole purpose of doing this.

00:27:32.460 | This is not, that's not what this process is about.

00:27:35.380 | This process is I'm doing me and I'm showing you who I am

00:27:40.380 | and you can like it or not.

00:27:42.980 | But either way, this is still how I see it.

00:27:45.220 | - I love that because in science,

00:27:49.380 | having trained graduate students,

00:27:50.660 | having been a graduate student,

00:27:52.580 | I was very blessed to have mentors.

00:27:55.060 | One of who was a real icon of class, he's dead now.

00:27:58.420 | Actually, all my advisors are dead.

00:28:00.780 | Suicide, cancer, cancer.

00:28:01.800 | The joke is you don't want me to work for you.

00:28:03.500 | So they were all had a morbid sense of humor.

00:28:05.540 | So they're laughing about this someplace right now.

00:28:08.100 | - I thought you were gonna say

00:28:10.180 | they all ate the poison mushrooms.

00:28:11.220 | - No, but the last one said to me,

00:28:15.240 | you're the common denominator, Andrew.

00:28:17.860 | And I thought, oh my goodness.

00:28:19.260 | And he said, kind of just kidding, but not really.

00:28:22.460 | So that's a little bit eerie.

00:28:24.280 | But in any case, he always said, his name was Ben.

00:28:29.460 | He always said, the one thing I can't teach is taste.

00:28:34.300 | And the one predictor I have

00:28:36.260 | of the people who will never develop it

00:28:38.540 | are the ones who are perfectionists

00:28:41.380 | because they're perfectionists that filter their perfection

00:28:46.100 | through the feedback of others.

00:28:47.540 | He was always looking for the person

00:28:49.580 | that was putting up a little bit of a middle finger

00:28:52.140 | to feedback, not so much that they would get things wrong

00:28:56.060 | 'cause it can be badly wrong in science.

00:28:57.720 | It can be wrong for the right reasons,

00:28:59.140 | but you can also be for the wrong reasons.

00:29:01.780 | But people that just had almost a compulsion

00:29:04.700 | to do it their way or to believe in what they were doing.

00:29:09.500 | And I'm hearing some of that

00:29:11.800 | or I'm hearing that in what you're describing.

00:29:14.020 | I also think that there's something

00:29:15.320 | about the human empathic process or the emotional process

00:29:18.440 | where when we see somebody doing something

00:29:20.980 | and they seem to really not be paying attention

00:29:24.100 | to what anyone else is doing.

00:29:25.900 | I mean, like I said, the crazy person on the street

00:29:28.260 | is one version of it where we go,

00:29:29.440 | they're just in their experience and it's just crazy.

00:29:31.980 | But when somebody seems to be enjoying themselves

00:29:35.620 | or the emotion seems to be real,

00:29:39.000 | I think there are a good fraction of people

00:29:41.940 | who feel a kind of gravitational pull.

00:29:45.140 | They go, yeah, that.

00:29:46.580 | And the best example I have of this

00:29:47.980 | is I remember growing up in the skateboard thing,

00:29:50.460 | we were the first to start doing the baggy,

00:29:53.500 | like sagging the clothes thing.

00:29:55.060 | We got teased endlessly one year in school.

00:29:58.160 | Then there was a bunch of hip hop that came out

00:30:00.000 | and guys were wearing sagging their jeans or their shorts.

00:30:04.140 | Next year we come back and the very same people

00:30:05.980 | who were making fun of us were all doing it.

00:30:08.220 | And that's when it clicked for me.

00:30:10.460 | I was like, most people don't actually know what they like.

00:30:13.180 | They like what they like because of the certainty

00:30:16.100 | of the people that they like.

00:30:18.540 | And so the question then is in this landscape

00:30:23.580 | of creative stuff, what's real, what's not real?

00:30:28.340 | It's almost like whoever can create

00:30:31.500 | the most convincing story at least captures

00:30:34.280 | a good fraction of audiences.

00:30:38.260 | But that's not what the creative artist needs to do.

00:30:40.440 | They need to actually depart from that.

00:30:41.940 | Do I have that right?

00:30:42.880 | - Well, they're just two different things.

00:30:44.360 | Like coming up with a story with the purpose

00:30:48.600 | of pleasing someone else is a skillset,

00:30:51.740 | but it's more of a commercial endeavor

00:30:56.160 | than an artistic endeavor.

00:30:57.740 | - It's like tactical.

00:30:58.820 | Yeah, I was seeing it in your book, you describe again,

00:31:03.140 | when you're thinking about the creative process

00:31:05.260 | as the cloud.

00:31:07.220 | For me, again, it serves as such a powerful anchor.

00:31:10.300 | And then I think about the biology, the neurobiology

00:31:13.460 | of like strategy formation or strategy implementation.

00:31:18.980 | And then almost by sheer luck or miraculously,

00:31:23.780 | I turn a few pages later into the book

00:31:26.740 | and there's a description of how animals

00:31:28.780 | that are trying to accomplish something,

00:31:32.460 | eat, mate, find water, accomplish the requirements of living.

00:31:37.460 | It requires a narrow visual focus.

00:31:41.960 | This is something my lab is kind of obsessed with

00:31:43.720 | and I've been obsessed with.

00:31:44.900 | And in that more narrow visual focus,

00:31:47.340 | we know that the playbook becomes more narrow.

00:31:51.180 | The rule set is more narrow.

00:31:52.860 | Now, at some point in order to come up

00:31:57.180 | with a new creative idea,

00:31:59.060 | that means that broadening vision is essential in some way

00:32:02.580 | or broadening thinking.

00:32:03.840 | - Well, it could either be a broadening or a narrowing,

00:32:06.900 | but it's changing the aperture from the standard.

00:32:11.760 | The reason we do this is to present something new.

00:32:16.760 | That maybe you already knew, but didn't know you knew it.

00:32:21.760 | And for that to be the case, you have to be looking at it.

00:32:27.920 | It's not unlike what a comedian does.

00:32:29.720 | Comedian makes you laugh.

00:32:30.820 | Usually what they're saying, it's outrageous,

00:32:33.420 | but you know that it's right.

00:32:35.920 | Just no one says it that way

00:32:37.240 | or no one has said it that way before.

00:32:39.380 | But it's always the truth in it that makes it funny.

00:32:43.060 | It's like that.

00:32:45.280 | It's the same idea as recognizing something

00:32:50.280 | that seems really obvious once you see it,

00:32:54.920 | but it seems like nobody else sees it

00:32:58.000 | or no one else points it out.

00:32:59.440 | And I feel like science is like that too,

00:33:01.160 | because how much of science,

00:33:02.720 | when once the light flashes over your head,

00:33:07.720 | it's like, I got it.

00:33:09.840 | It just seems like, well, we knew that forever.

00:33:15.160 | No one knew it, but do you know what I'm saying?

00:33:16.680 | It's like, it's so obvious.

00:33:18.680 | It's so obvious.

00:33:19.580 | And I think another superpower of artists

00:33:22.720 | is this accepting we don't know anything.

00:33:25.160 | When we think we know things, that also limits our world.

00:33:30.280 | We think we know it's only like this.

00:33:34.000 | This is all that's possible.

00:33:35.880 | We're mice in this little box.

00:33:38.080 | But in reality, who's to say that's the case?

00:33:43.580 | Who's to say any of the,

00:33:45.440 | we could take all of the what we believe in science now

00:33:49.420 | and decide to throw all of that away and start from scratch.

00:33:52.280 | And we'd probably create a whole different one.

00:33:55.540 | - I'd like to take a brief break

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00:35:04.100 | - In a offline conversation,

00:35:06.460 | one time you asked a good friend of mine

00:35:10.560 | who's been a guest on this podcast, Eddie Chang,

00:35:12.640 | who's chair of neurosurgery,

00:35:14.100 | and I would place him in the top 1% of neuroscientists.

00:35:19.100 | You know, he's pulling speech out of people

00:35:21.180 | who are completely paralyzed

00:35:22.340 | with Lockton syndrome, et cetera.

00:35:23.580 | And you asked him what percentage of what's contained

00:35:28.100 | in medical textbooks and training?

00:35:30.280 | - Today. - Today.

00:35:31.380 | - Yeah, if you went to medical school today

00:35:34.160 | and you learned what was in the textbook,

00:35:35.940 | what percentage of that information is accurate

00:35:38.300 | and what percentage is not?

00:35:39.780 | And he said, maybe half.

00:35:42.020 | - Right, and you asked, and what is the consequence of that?

00:35:44.880 | And he said, incalculable.

00:35:47.340 | And I completely agree.

00:35:49.220 | And I asked him a second time

00:35:51.380 | and he still came up with the same answer.

00:35:52.820 | So that's a good sign.

00:35:54.440 | Reliability from experiment to the next is good.

00:35:57.400 | Yeah, I think that there is this idea

00:36:00.800 | that we really know things.

00:36:02.800 | In science, I mean, you've seen,

00:36:05.860 | we've observed amazing discoveries from chance.

00:36:08.860 | We've observed amazing discoveries

00:36:12.220 | from incredible bouts of hard work.

00:36:15.080 | In both cases, people were spending a lot of time in the lab.

00:36:18.640 | No one walked into the lab, saw something one day,

00:36:21.680 | and had a Nobel Prize winning discovery

00:36:24.020 | or fundamental discovery.

00:36:25.860 | They were all hanging out in lab a lot.

00:36:27.780 | Just some of them came up with something

00:36:30.700 | that they didn't expect.

00:36:31.980 | Others were drilling toward an answer.

00:36:34.060 | - And in all those cases, when the breakthroughs happen,

00:36:37.020 | I'm guessing, I don't know this,

00:36:38.820 | that considering we assume this information,

00:36:43.820 | then this discovery is true

00:36:51.900 | based on everything that came before it.

00:36:54.300 | But if everything that came before it is wrong,

00:36:57.220 | then the discoveries are probably built on a...

00:37:00.380 | Do you know what I'm saying?

00:37:01.220 | It's like the context, everything that happens

00:37:04.860 | takes into account that the context that it's sitting in,

00:37:09.080 | it fits in that context.

00:37:11.380 | Maybe that context isn't right, who knows?

00:37:13.340 | We don't know.

00:37:14.180 | So I'm saying we're too close to most things

00:37:18.300 | in thinking when we think we know things

00:37:21.700 | where there are a lot of assumptions that go into it

00:37:27.340 | and that any new discoveries are essentially built

00:37:30.220 | on top of these beliefs, you know?

00:37:34.540 | But they're beliefs.

00:37:36.100 | - I remember, of course, I listened to the BC boys

00:37:41.100 | growing up, who then I was a child of the '90s

00:37:44.100 | and they were in the...

00:37:46.180 | Sabotage was sort of an outgrowth of a skateboarding movie

00:37:49.540 | like Spike Jones and like the girl movies.

00:37:51.900 | And those worlds, the BC boys in skateboarding

00:37:54.900 | were really closely interwoven for a while.

00:37:56.980 | Some people know this, some people don't.

00:37:58.300 | And Spike sort of formed the bridge

00:37:59.860 | and then Spike went off

00:38:00.700 | and started making more bigger movies.

00:38:04.300 | And more people watch.

00:38:06.120 | But let's just use them as an example.

00:38:08.140 | I heard you say once before that, you know,

00:38:10.340 | you guys were kind of joking around like BC boys,

00:38:12.980 | like, you know, these guys doing hip hop,

00:38:15.180 | but it was kind of like the hardcore scene in New York

00:38:17.860 | and punk rock scene.

00:38:18.740 | And it was sort of a joke.

00:38:19.700 | There were a lot of inside jokes.

00:38:21.540 | When you were working together,

00:38:25.020 | was there the thought that people might love it,

00:38:28.900 | might hate it, or you just weren't paying attention at all?

00:38:31.740 | - Weren't paying attention at all.

00:38:33.180 | Never considered it.

00:38:35.020 | They would know at that point in time

00:38:37.260 | when we were making "Licensed to Ill",

00:38:40.580 | hip hop music was a tiny underground thing.

00:38:43.740 | And there was no one making hip hop at that time

00:38:49.840 | thought it would ever mean anything.

00:38:52.220 | It was not a realistic thought.

00:38:54.780 | So we were making it really for our crazy friends.

00:38:58.100 | And that's it.

00:38:59.220 | - So do you think nowadays the fact that

00:39:02.340 | one can create something and quote unquote,

00:39:05.060 | release it quickly.

00:39:05.900 | I can put it something out onto Twitter, Instagram now.

00:39:10.860 | You can do it in 10 seconds from now.

00:39:12.900 | And I will get immediate feedback that,

00:39:15.460 | which is external feedback of course,

00:39:16.880 | but then I can iterate on the basis of that feedback.

00:39:19.220 | Do you think that's problematic

00:39:21.340 | for the larger opportunity for creativity?

00:39:24.380 | In other words,

00:39:25.220 | if we were to go back 20 years or even 15 years,

00:39:29.780 | when the opportunity to create

00:39:31.600 | was certainly still there,

00:39:32.980 | but you really didn't know how it was gonna land

00:39:36.540 | until you quote unquote released it.

00:39:38.980 | It seems to me there was more opportunity

00:39:40.900 | to stay in that magical rainforest

00:39:44.580 | that is the creativity itself.

00:39:47.060 | - I don't think it's wrong or right.

00:39:48.580 | It's just, it's more information that you can use

00:39:50.980 | or not use and use it in a useful way.

00:39:53.860 | And you can make something and put it out

00:39:57.180 | and people could not like it.

00:39:58.260 | And you're like, oop, they still don't get it.

00:39:59.820 | Here, I'm gonna, I gotta go harder.

00:40:01.300 | You know, like I gotta go harder in that direction,

00:40:04.000 | not, do you know what I'm saying?

00:40:06.220 | It's like not to react away from information.

00:40:10.680 | It can be helpful.

00:40:11.680 | It can be helpful when

00:40:13.180 | there could be different stories that happen

00:40:17.320 | at the same time where you're making something

00:40:20.360 | and you have an idea of what it is

00:40:22.780 | and then other people engage with it

00:40:25.800 | and they have a different idea of what it is

00:40:28.120 | and they like it for a different reason than you did

00:40:30.060 | or dislike it for a reason different

00:40:32.340 | than the reason you like it.

00:40:33.980 | We can't control any of those things, you know?

00:40:37.220 | The only part of it that we can control

00:40:41.580 | is how we relate to the thing that we make.

00:40:44.660 | And any external information

00:40:48.740 | that undermines the clarity of that connection

00:40:52.860 | is probably bad for the art, is my guess.

00:40:58.740 | And again, I'm only saying this from my experience.

00:41:01.500 | Like I try to make things,

00:41:03.740 | all I've ever tried to make was something I like

00:41:07.800 | or something that I felt like was missing as a fan

00:41:10.900 | that I wanted and nobody was making it.

00:41:14.660 | So I'll make it, you know, but it wasn't.

00:41:17.040 | It was always in the service of, I love this thing.

00:41:23.340 | I want something like this.

00:41:24.700 | No one else is making one.

00:41:26.020 | I have to make one.

00:41:27.980 | - Yeah, it's beautiful 'cause the word

00:41:31.260 | that keeps coming to mind is this,

00:41:33.420 | it's almost like a compulsion.

00:41:35.220 | Like there are other options of ways to be

00:41:38.700 | and to behave and to function and work and life,

00:41:41.180 | but if something's a compulsion,

00:41:43.240 | it yanks us away from those other opportunities

00:41:46.540 | just enough that we have to get back to it.

00:41:48.620 | You've talked before about, and you talk in the book,

00:41:52.080 | this notion of the source.

00:41:54.780 | And to me, again, I can't help but put my neuroscientist

00:41:59.060 | lens on this.

00:42:00.420 | I think of the source as not one brain area,

00:42:05.020 | but some function within the brain where we are in touch

00:42:09.180 | with our bodily signals, like what feels right,

00:42:12.700 | what doesn't, sort of like tasting the two foods.

00:42:14.700 | I love that example.

00:42:15.880 | And that it's a playbook that is far more vast

00:42:23.540 | than the short-term adaptive playbook.

00:42:26.100 | Like this is how I'm going to get from point A to point B.

00:42:28.540 | And yet, when I listen to an album or a song,

00:42:31.860 | I mean, I have to assume that at some point,

00:42:35.280 | it becomes not strategy development or creativity,

00:42:40.280 | but strategy implementation.

00:42:42.300 | Like there needs to be songs are going to come in this order

00:42:45.100 | and like, I don't know much about music.

00:42:47.140 | My musician friends are always laughing.

00:42:49.700 | - I don't either, it's not so much about music.

00:42:52.940 | I don't know that, right, well put.

00:42:56.580 | But the ordering of the sequence of the melodies, et cetera.

00:43:01.280 | So at what point does one decide, okay,

00:43:06.280 | like now's the time to get into that more narrow focus

00:43:09.020 | of effort, like we've got it, let's run with this.

00:43:13.940 | Because there is a component of the creative process

00:43:15.940 | that involves packaging and finishing.

00:43:17.740 | Is that part less satisfying to you

00:43:21.400 | or is it just all part of the same larger arc?

00:43:23.820 | - It's all part of the same, it's nice.

00:43:25.820 | There's a good feeling.

00:43:26.780 | There's usually a good feeling when something is done.

00:43:29.380 | On the one hand, it's a commitment

00:43:34.380 | because up until the time that you say it's done,

00:43:36.840 | you can keep experimenting and changing it.

00:43:39.760 | If you think, well, maybe tomorrow I can make it better,

00:43:42.820 | then it's not finished.

00:43:43.860 | And you keep thinking that for a long time,

00:43:45.740 | you can do that forever and never put out anything.

00:43:49.780 | So getting to the point where you're ready to sign off

00:43:53.780 | is a good feeling and it allows you,

00:43:57.540 | one of the things I talk about in the book is,

00:44:00.260 | because it is a difficult thing to do,

00:44:02.160 | 'cause it's fun to play and it's fun to,

00:44:04.660 | maybe it's not the best it could be yet.

00:44:06.560 | To use whatever the next project is gonna be

00:44:13.580 | as motivation to finish the one you're working on now.

00:44:18.700 | Like, I'm working on this,

00:44:21.100 | I'm spending all of my time on this thing.

00:44:23.920 | It's really good, I believe it can be better,

00:44:26.720 | but there's this other thing that I really wanna make.

00:44:30.240 | And if I keep tinkering with this one,

00:44:32.780 | I'll never get to make the other one.

00:44:34.900 | So using other projects as a impetus to finish something

00:44:39.900 | and release it into the world's a good one.

00:44:43.240 | And you said your description of source

00:44:46.380 | as something within us, I don't know if I would say

00:44:51.380 | that was accurate.

00:44:54.460 | It's definitely in us too, but it's not only in us.

00:44:59.460 | And it's, I think of source

00:45:03.420 | as the organizing principle of everything.

00:45:07.340 | And it's how everything exists,

00:45:13.260 | how the trees grow and why there are mountains

00:45:17.840 | and anything that we can see in the outside world

00:45:21.140 | and every discovery and every piece of art

00:45:25.640 | and every new design and every machine

00:45:30.640 | are all outgrowths of this source energy.

00:45:35.220 | Our part of it is the antenna that like connects to it.

00:45:39.180 | And maybe we're the vehicle for source

00:45:44.180 | to allow things to happen in the world.

00:45:50.160 | - And thank you for that 'cause I did indeed misspeak

00:45:55.300 | because I recall very distinctly in the book,

00:45:57.460 | you described how the physical world is constrained

00:46:00.940 | by the laws of physics and certain things.

00:46:02.960 | The imagination is unconstrained.

00:46:05.300 | And I think I have this right that you said,

00:46:07.500 | the work sits somewhere between those.

00:46:08.920 | It's neither of one nor the other,

00:46:10.800 | that ultimately what feeds into all of that,

00:46:14.720 | our imagination and the way indeed

00:46:17.240 | that our brain is a physical entity,

00:46:20.280 | the nature and the outside world provides

00:46:24.100 | at least what appears to be near infinite,

00:46:25.840 | if not infinite options.

00:46:27.200 | And I love the example of the color palette

00:46:29.960 | that if we restrict me to whatever sorts of paints

00:46:32.460 | or medium I have, then it's restricted.

00:46:36.200 | But in nature, there's an infinite number of shades

00:46:39.800 | and tones and combinations.

00:46:41.540 | - And even on one, if you pick up a rock

00:46:44.460 | and look at the color of the rock

00:46:46.480 | and tried to find a paint to match that rock,

00:46:48.760 | it would never match.

00:46:50.100 | There's too much, there are too many variations in nature

00:46:55.100 | within a single color rock for us to get close.

00:47:01.380 | There's too much information.

00:47:05.140 | We scratch the surface.

00:47:06.600 | We're only scratching the surface.

00:47:08.640 | - And we love when we are able to peer in

00:47:12.200 | at different scales, spatial scales,

00:47:15.040 | time scales too, but spatial scales,

00:47:16.960 | the delight that comes from that,

00:47:18.200 | you know, that these nature pictures

00:47:19.440 | seem like there were more of these in the 80s,

00:47:20.720 | like where you'd see a drop of oil shot

00:47:22.840 | at high, very high resolution.

00:47:24.720 | There's beauty in a drop of oil.

00:47:26.800 | And then you'd see that the earth and the galaxy,

00:47:28.760 | there's beauty in that too, right?

00:47:30.120 | These extremes.

00:47:31.440 | And of course our daily perception

00:47:33.920 | is mostly through the filter

00:47:35.460 | of these kinds of interactions, walls,

00:47:37.920 | and sometimes outdoors.

00:47:39.860 | There's a brilliant neuroscientist

00:47:42.660 | and not surprisingly, he has a Nobel.

00:47:45.100 | His name is Richard Axel.

00:47:46.200 | He's at Columbia University.

00:47:47.660 | He's outrageous personality.

00:47:51.780 | Choose Nicorette nonstop.

00:47:53.680 | You guys would get along great,

00:47:55.760 | not because of the Nicorette,

00:47:56.820 | but because his perspective on things

00:47:59.460 | is very abstract for a guy who's solved,

00:48:04.460 | he won the Nobel for solving a great problem

00:48:07.960 | within how we smell, perception of odors and tastes.

00:48:12.880 | And he says, you know,

00:48:14.460 | everything that the brain does is an abstraction.

00:48:16.860 | Like I could take a photograph of your face

00:48:18.580 | and show it to you and say, yeah, that's me.

00:48:20.420 | Or let's say for the moment,

00:48:21.680 | I call myself an abstract artist.

00:48:23.100 | Let's just play a game

00:48:24.020 | 'cause I've never been accused of being an artist,

00:48:26.020 | but, and I do three dots and a squiggly line.

00:48:28.760 | And I say, that's you.

00:48:30.060 | And you say, well, that doesn't look like me.

00:48:31.340 | And I say, but that's my abstraction of you.

00:48:33.660 | Okay, well, the brain essentially does that

00:48:36.380 | because we're something in between that

00:48:38.500 | because there's no actual photograph of you in my brain.

00:48:41.140 | It's just a bunch of neurons playing

00:48:42.740 | what we call an ensemble,

00:48:44.340 | like a different keys on a piano.

00:48:45.840 | And we go, Rick, I recognize you, Rick Rubin.

00:48:49.620 | And so everything is an abstraction.

00:48:52.820 | And it's only once we start tinkering with the parts,

00:48:55.080 | and this is the essence of science

00:48:56.300 | to remove and add and manipulate.

00:48:58.340 | And the best example I can come up with would be Rothko.

00:49:02.220 | And I only come up with this example

00:49:03.800 | 'cause I started off in vision science

00:49:05.280 | and maybe this will make the most sense to everyone,

00:49:07.160 | except the folks who've been blind since birth.

00:49:09.700 | And they can swap something in here.

00:49:12.160 | If I show you a Rothko and I don't tell you it's a Rothko,

00:49:15.780 | you may or may not actually think it's that impressive.

00:49:18.040 | It depends on your taste in art.

00:49:19.520 | But what Rothko did, which was amazing,

00:49:22.720 | even if you don't like Rothkos, and I happen to,

00:49:26.200 | is that he removed all the white and high contrasty stuff.

00:49:31.160 | And when you do that, you alter color space.

00:49:34.120 | And so the colors look very different.

00:49:36.760 | Some people saw that dress a few years ago.

00:49:38.660 | Is it orange or is it gold or whatever?

00:49:41.420 | That was a little bit of the same phenomenon.

00:49:44.220 | I doubt, in fact, I'd be willing to bet my left arm

00:49:46.920 | that Rothko knew nothing about

00:49:49.280 | the neuroscience of color perception,

00:49:51.640 | but somehow got to this place

00:49:53.260 | where if there was no canvas showing and no high contrast,

00:49:56.780 | and the paintings were large enough,

00:49:58.680 | and on the appropriate wall, you saw them a certain way

00:50:02.400 | that tapped into something fundamental.

00:50:06.320 | And this is where I think art and science really converge,

00:50:09.000 | is that every once in a while,

00:50:10.540 | we see something that feels amazing to enough people,

00:50:15.180 | and not just like the baggy pants phenomenon,

00:50:17.740 | not just because other people think it's cool,

00:50:20.280 | but there's something there.

00:50:21.800 | And again, this defies language.

00:50:23.760 | And I have to imagine that in your years of light

00:50:28.540 | and music and other creative endeavors,

00:50:31.160 | that you've, that every once in a while,

00:50:34.860 | have you ever encountered something where like,

00:50:36.980 | something fundamental keeps showing up in different form,

00:50:40.340 | or there's something almost like a rule or a principle?

00:50:45.240 | Does it ever come about?

00:50:46.720 | 'Cause in science, we think of this as like,

00:50:48.400 | this reveals something about our limitation

00:50:51.520 | to abstract the world.

00:50:53.640 | I hope I made that clear.

00:50:55.480 | - Not exactly, but I have a thought.

00:50:57.240 | You talked earlier about the drop of oil,

00:51:03.320 | the photograph of the drop of oil,

00:51:04.780 | and the photograph of, or we could use on the other side,

00:51:08.600 | like Hubble telescope images of these vast things

00:51:12.040 | in high definition.

00:51:14.720 | What we see every day is as impressive as those things,

00:51:18.600 | but we're numb to them,

00:51:20.820 | because we see them all the time.

00:51:22.680 | And if we were to look at drops of oil every day

00:51:25.480 | in a microscope, a month from now,

00:51:29.820 | we would not find wonder in that image.

00:51:33.000 | So it's, sometimes it's the novelty

00:51:38.000 | of not seeing it from that perspective before.

00:51:43.280 | That's really thrilling.

00:51:45.840 | You could, and I could imagine,

00:51:47.520 | and this probably relates to the Rothko idea,

00:51:49.980 | that you could see something from a particular angle

00:51:54.040 | and have this magical experience,

00:51:57.000 | and then walk three feet to the side

00:51:59.600 | and see it from a different way, and it just evaporates.

00:52:01.680 | It only works, it only triggers this thing in us

00:52:06.680 | when we look at it just the right way.

00:52:10.720 | There was an experiment I just heard about,

00:52:16.320 | heard about the other day that sounds fascinating,

00:52:19.440 | that a painting teacher recommended,

00:52:22.700 | where instead of painting,

00:52:26.420 | having a model in the room and painting the model,

00:52:29.500 | that you have the model in the next room,

00:52:31.900 | and you go into the next room without your equipment,

00:52:35.340 | you don't have your equipment,

00:52:36.940 | and you can study the model for as long as you want,

00:52:39.540 | and then you go into a different room

00:52:42.820 | where you can't see the model and paint the model.

00:52:45.360 | Instead of, and it changes your relationship

00:52:50.360 | where it's not, we're not just painting the lines.

00:52:54.940 | We're painting what is interesting enough about what I saw,

00:52:59.940 | what are the data points that stuck in my mind,

00:53:05.300 | and when I string those together, what do I get?

00:53:09.200 | And what do I, how do I form it

00:53:13.900 | to get as close to whatever that,

00:53:16.240 | the experience of that person was,

00:53:18.660 | which the closest of getting to the experience

00:53:23.660 | of that person in the painting

00:53:26.380 | might not look like a photograph.

00:53:29.820 | You know, it might look more different

00:53:34.460 | than more the same to really see what you see.

00:53:43.260 | If we think about the Picasso paintings

00:53:45.540 | that were inspired by African art,

00:53:47.460 | where the eyes are on different levels,

00:53:50.460 | they may give us more information

00:53:54.740 | than a photograph would give us.

00:53:56.340 | I'm thinking about the,

00:54:00.940 | when you were describing the sensation

00:54:05.500 | of when something takes your breath away,

00:54:07.420 | and we all have that when we see a dramatic sunset.

00:54:11.660 | Anyone you know, when there's a really dramatic sunset,

00:54:14.220 | or if there's a whale,

00:54:16.180 | and if anyone's on the beach and there's a whale,

00:54:19.700 | everybody's really interested that there's a whale.

00:54:22.640 | It's, do you know what I'm saying?

00:54:24.420 | These feelings of wonder,

00:54:26.380 | we get to experience them depending on where we are,

00:54:30.780 | or a dragonfly, or a bird flies into your space.

00:54:35.100 | These things happen, and when they happen,

00:54:37.260 | like we're confronted with the mystery of the world

00:54:42.260 | when we change the perspective.

00:54:45.780 | Normally we don't think of whales in our backyard,

00:54:48.300 | or birds in our house, flying freely.

00:54:51.180 | But they do happen, these things do happen.

00:54:54.640 | And they like break us out of our trance

00:54:58.880 | when these things happen.

00:55:00.620 | It's like, oh yeah, there are birds like this everywhere.

00:55:04.460 | I'm just not paying attention.

00:55:06.180 | This guy's coming in to like tap me on the shoulder.

00:55:08.660 | It's like, remember me?

00:55:09.500 | Here I am, you know?

00:55:11.540 | - So I would say that the whale example

00:55:14.100 | and what you're describing is it's revealing to us

00:55:17.060 | how in a delightful way,

00:55:20.060 | how deficient our perceptual filters normally are.

00:55:23.580 | It's a little bit like the Rothko is revealing how,

00:55:26.620 | I've never thought about it this way until this moment,

00:55:28.860 | is revealing to us how color normally looks is actually,

00:55:33.220 | first of all, not the only way it looks.

00:55:35.380 | Those colors we think are one way,

00:55:36.780 | but all color, this gets into the biology of color vision,

00:55:39.700 | is all about contrast.

00:55:40.940 | What something is next to dictates what it looks like.

00:55:43.700 | And that's the origin of that dress meme

00:55:45.740 | or whatever you call it.

00:55:47.300 | I still can't figure out exactly what a meme is.

00:55:49.260 | Someone will eventually tell me.

00:55:50.860 | In the same way, when you see a whale and it's delightful,

00:55:56.460 | I think it's revealing to us the extent

00:55:58.160 | to which those whales are, the ocean is vast.

00:56:00.940 | There's a whole universe there

00:56:03.260 | and we are blind to it all the time.

00:56:04.920 | And I think the misperception or the misconception,

00:56:08.260 | excuse me, is that we're delighted 'cause we see the whale.

00:56:10.760 | We might be just as delighted

00:56:12.040 | because we're getting hit with the contrast

00:56:14.700 | of how little we recognize all the time.

00:56:18.020 | And in that way, it reminds me a little bit about comedy

00:56:20.860 | where, and I've been watching more comedy lately

00:56:24.960 | and sometimes it's the shock.

00:56:28.280 | Sometimes it's the absolute truth that's revealed.

00:56:32.280 | And then other times, what I've noticed,

00:56:35.940 | and I saw Rogan do comedy at the Vulcan Club in Austin,

00:56:40.940 | which he does every once in a while,

00:56:42.380 | and it was a small club and he was leading out the story

00:56:47.380 | during his routine or bit, I think, right?

00:56:50.820 | This bit, his lead, and everyone knew where it was going.

00:56:54.300 | We all knew.

00:56:55.680 | And then when he finally told us,

00:56:59.640 | it was exactly where we thought it was going.

00:57:02.180 | And it was hilarious.

00:57:03.680 | - And it felt good.

00:57:04.520 | - And it felt amazing.

00:57:05.840 | And I thought in that moment, I was like, wait a second,

00:57:08.460 | how did he pull that off?

00:57:09.780 | That was masterful because normally it's this thing

00:57:12.280 | like you create one story, there's like a scripting out,

00:57:14.540 | almost like a courtroom lawyer,

00:57:15.900 | and then they kind of pull the curtain

00:57:17.180 | and it's something different.

00:57:18.740 | And if you look at the science, the neuroscience

00:57:21.620 | and brain imaging of laughter and humor,

00:57:24.380 | which I've looked into, to be honest,

00:57:26.340 | and no disrespect to the people in that field,

00:57:27.940 | it's pretty lame.

00:57:29.540 | It's lame because it's always the jarring nature

00:57:33.940 | of a surprise.

00:57:35.440 | But what he led us to was something that, oh no,

00:57:38.380 | he's actually going there.

00:57:39.780 | Oh wait, he's really going there.

00:57:41.000 | And it was this anticipation

00:57:42.660 | with a beautiful delivery at the end.

00:57:45.900 | And so I'm convinced that based on what we're talking

00:57:50.020 | about here, that there's something about

00:57:51.900 | when we see something, we think it's about that,

00:57:54.380 | but that the delight that we feel could be

00:57:56.900 | about all the other experiences that now become

00:58:00.180 | in a subconscious way, kind of like, ha,

00:58:03.940 | it's almost like laughing at this perceptual deficit

00:58:07.060 | that we have.

00:58:07.900 | It's almost like laughing at how little we actually know,

00:58:11.380 | which is what you've said.

00:58:13.020 | - Yeah, it could be that it also could be the sense

00:58:16.740 | of community of when you think it's going to go

00:58:21.740 | a particular way and it goes that way,

00:58:23.940 | it's like reinforcement of you.

00:58:28.140 | You know, it's like, yeah, he's saying it,

00:58:32.860 | but in a way we're saying it together.

00:58:34.860 | I'm listening, he's saying it, but we're in this together.

00:58:38.260 | And that's a good feeling.

00:58:39.560 | - To think about that for a second.

00:58:42.620 | I was trying to think about why certain music

00:58:46.780 | still can evoke such powerful emotions in me.

00:58:50.500 | And there does seem to be something special

00:58:52.320 | about the music we listen to when we are teenagers.

00:58:54.700 | You know, from about, you know, 14 until about 25,

00:58:59.520 | it seems to get routed into our nervous system in some way,

00:59:02.160 | maybe because that phase of our life

00:59:04.280 | is really one of identity crisis.

00:59:06.520 | I mean, you don't find too many 40 year olds,

00:59:09.440 | some who are wondering like who they are occasionally,

00:59:13.140 | but almost every young teenager, preteen,

00:59:15.680 | and it's kind of like, who am I?

00:59:17.120 | You're defining personality.

00:59:18.700 | So I always likened it to that,

00:59:20.200 | but leaving out the sort of critical period biology stuff,

00:59:24.440 | what do you think it is about the music

00:59:27.240 | that we hear at that time?

00:59:28.280 | Are we that much more emotionally tuned?

00:59:30.240 | Have we not shut down our sensors quite as much?

00:59:33.200 | Is there, the songs and the artists don't matter

00:59:35.680 | 'cause they're very individual to me.

00:59:37.160 | For other people it will be the Beatles or something.

00:59:39.860 | Now I just really wish the Beatles did it for me too.

00:59:42.000 | But do you think that's important?

00:59:44.360 | Because I could see how it's really terrific.

00:59:46.700 | I could also see how it sets up one of these,

00:59:48.960 | what I'll just use nerdy language to call the,

00:59:51.680 | like a semi-deprived filter.

00:59:54.360 | Because if I'm only looking for the way that,

00:59:56.500 | like a stiff little fingers track made me feel

00:59:58.700 | the first time I listened to when I was 15,

01:00:00.920 | the feeling is worthwhile.

01:00:02.520 | But if I'm looking for that,

01:00:03.880 | I'm missing all the other stuff.

01:00:05.340 | I'm missing the Beatles, I'm missing Fleetwood Mac,

01:00:07.640 | which never did it for me either.

01:00:08.920 | I'm like, I'm missing all this stuff that, you know,

01:00:11.360 | people I love and respect really love.

01:00:14.880 | So I've never worried about it

01:00:16.760 | because there's kind of an infinite treasure trove

01:00:20.480 | of other things that I do love.

01:00:22.900 | But I do sometimes wonder whether or not

01:00:24.480 | my life experiences diminish

01:00:27.080 | because I'm not allowing kind of range.

01:00:31.480 | And you've obviously worked in a huge number

01:00:35.720 | of different genres of music.

01:00:37.600 | Punk is one thing, hip hop is another.

01:00:38.760 | I mean, Neil Diamond too, right?

01:00:41.160 | Eminem too, Slayer too, right?

01:00:44.800 | And in some senses I list these off.

01:00:46.400 | I mean, just think about how much in high school,

01:00:48.800 | maybe nowadays less so, but even in college

01:00:51.760 | and as an adult, we societally,

01:00:54.200 | we're sort of asked to constrain ourselves

01:00:56.800 | to one of these groups.

01:00:58.280 | I didn't know it was okay to love Bob Dylan

01:01:02.080 | and love punk rock as much as I do

01:01:04.160 | until I heard Tim Armstrong said he loved Bob Dylan.

01:01:07.040 | And I was like, and recently he told me

01:01:09.280 | he loves the Grateful Dead.

01:01:10.760 | And I was like, whoa.

01:01:12.300 | But I remember when you had to pick.

01:01:15.120 | Both the Ramones and the Clash loved the Beatles.

01:01:17.320 | So we can--

01:01:18.160 | - Okay, I got work to do.

01:01:19.440 | - No, but we'll do it together.

01:01:21.160 | - Okay, so--

01:01:23.120 | - I have a feeling part of it is

01:01:25.160 | the reason it gets in at that age

01:01:27.760 | is it's at a time when we're defining who we are

01:01:32.720 | and the music is part of the definition

01:01:34.720 | of how we see ourselves.

01:01:36.400 | So it's like the music that we hear before that

01:01:39.740 | might be the music that's on the radio

01:01:42.200 | or our parents' music or our older brother or sister's music.

01:01:45.640 | And then when you're 14 or 15

01:01:47.840 | and you start choosing what you're listening to,

01:01:50.200 | it's like, now it's finally mine.

01:01:52.400 | And my parents might not like it

01:01:54.080 | and my older brothers and sisters may or may not like it,

01:01:56.700 | but this one is mine.

01:01:58.760 | And it always has that

01:02:03.760 | impression in us that this is ours.

01:02:10.760 | That's my thought of why it continues to last, you know?

01:02:15.760 | - How do you wipe the slate clean then?

01:02:19.360 | So for instance, if you're going to go in

01:02:20.880 | and work with somebody new,

01:02:22.360 | and again, as people are hearing this,

01:02:23.600 | I hope that they're transplanting this

01:02:25.080 | to whatever it is that they do.

01:02:26.400 | 'Cause in the realm of science

01:02:27.640 | and podcasting communication, it's not music,

01:02:29.980 | but there's a contour and a way,

01:02:34.000 | hopefully this podcast will look nothing

01:02:36.220 | like it does in five years.

01:02:37.620 | That's my hope is it will still have the core features

01:02:40.260 | of the beauty and utility of biology coming through,

01:02:42.760 | but I hope it doesn't look anything like episode two.

01:02:47.240 | - And I think it'll evolve as you evolve.

01:02:49.140 | It's just the truer it is to what interests you.

01:02:53.240 | And if you're not interested in biology

01:02:56.280 | in the same way in five years,

01:02:57.440 | I would hope it's not the same.

01:02:59.200 | - I'll be doing psychoanalysis in real time here.

01:03:01.400 | We'll do therapy, we'll all be lying down on couches.

01:03:03.480 | - Whatever it is, whatever it is.

01:03:04.820 | - Yeah, we probably won't be on psychedelics,

01:03:06.640 | but we might be levitating, you know?

01:03:10.020 | - I'd like to take a brief break

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01:04:14.560 | - So how do you, let's talk a little bit, if you would,

01:04:18.860 | 'cause I know I'm very interested in your process, right?

01:04:23.600 | I'll spare you the daily routine question.

01:04:26.360 | It's very cliche, but you and I

01:04:28.000 | are both lovers of sunlight, of horizons,

01:04:32.340 | and not as a trivial source,

01:04:34.480 | as an amazing gift of energy, right?

01:04:39.480 | And there aren't words for it, really.

01:04:42.320 | Aside from your daily routines,

01:04:46.140 | when it comes to, you know, somebody,

01:04:51.120 | you're going from project to project

01:04:52.720 | and you know you're going to be doing work with somebody,

01:04:55.520 | could be your own work,

01:04:56.360 | and we'll talk about the writing of this book

01:04:58.680 | and its structure, which is very unique.

01:05:00.600 | I've never encountered a book

01:05:01.760 | with this kind of structure before.

01:05:03.540 | And it's the most facile read ever,

01:05:06.240 | and yet every single page, I underlined, took note, starred,

01:05:10.960 | and like, as you'd notice, it's very worn,

01:05:13.700 | very, very worn already, and only more so over time.

01:05:16.740 | Do you have a process for removing the functions of the day

01:05:22.880 | and what you were doing last week and what's going on,

01:05:27.420 | and in order to get more access

01:05:31.680 | to this, I'm going to think of it now

01:05:34.240 | more as a receiver inside of you, right?

01:05:37.100 | Almost like tuning a radio,

01:05:38.520 | and then it comes in.

01:05:40.640 | Like the beginning of like a Strummer Clash thing, right?

01:05:43.180 | You love the radio, Joe loved the radio, right?

01:05:45.980 | And then it comes in clear, and there it is.

01:05:48.380 | How do you clear the static?

01:05:50.300 | What are some of the operational steps

01:05:54.000 | that you think might be more generalizable

01:05:58.540 | to regardless of where somebody in Africa's listening to this?

01:06:03.540 | - I would say when I engage in a particular project,

01:06:07.020 | whatever it is, I dedicate all of myself

01:06:11.480 | for that period of time, whatever it is,

01:06:15.600 | whether it be 20 minutes or whether it be five hours,

01:06:19.780 | whatever it is, total focus and no outside destruction.

01:06:24.780 | And no outside distraction whatsoever.

01:06:29.780 | And when I leave that process,

01:06:33.620 | I do my best not to think about it when I'm away from it.

01:06:36.700 | I don't bring any materials with me.

01:06:39.100 | I don't leave the studio with works in progress

01:06:41.900 | and spend time listening to them during the day

01:06:44.180 | or looking for ideas.

01:06:45.900 | I stay as far away from it

01:06:48.740 | when I'm not directly engaging in it as possible.

01:06:53.260 | And in the best of situations,

01:06:56.300 | I have something else to totally engage myself in in between.

01:07:00.420 | So instead of working on project A for five hours

01:07:04.520 | and then leaving and doing nothing,

01:07:06.780 | I'm hoping to engage in a project B or B, C, and D

01:07:11.420 | with all of myself before going back to project A again,

01:07:15.180 | which might be the next day, let's say.

01:07:17.380 | - So this relates to an amazing chapter

01:07:21.380 | and series of writings in your book

01:07:22.620 | that I'm not going to describe

01:07:23.640 | because I want people to find it for themselves

01:07:25.740 | about disengaging, about disengaging from the process.

01:07:29.140 | One question I had as I read that chapter,

01:07:31.180 | and as you're saying this now,

01:07:32.220 | is even though you're disengaged,

01:07:35.380 | do you believe that your subconscious is working it through?

01:07:38.620 | - I believe so. I believe so.

01:07:40.520 | And I think in general to stew over a problem

01:07:45.140 | is not the way to solve a problem.

01:07:47.380 | Think to hold the problems lightly.

01:07:51.800 | And when I say a problem, when we're starting a project,

01:07:56.740 | there's usually this feeling of there's a question mark

01:08:01.740 | at the beginning of every project.

01:08:03.460 | I'm always anxious when I start a new project

01:08:06.820 | because I have no idea what's going to happen.

01:08:08.900 | I never know.

01:08:09.900 | I never, I may have in some cases a potential backup plan

01:08:18.300 | if nothing works, but I really try not even to have that.

01:08:23.300 | I prefer not to have that.

01:08:26.960 | I prefer to go in, maybe to calm myself down enough

01:08:30.360 | to be able to show up.

01:08:31.780 | There'll be an idea of like, nothing works.

01:08:35.400 | Maybe we could try something like this,

01:08:38.240 | but that would only be for my own anxiety.

01:08:40.580 | That wouldn't be for actual practical use.

01:08:43.820 | But there's always a sense of anxiety

01:08:46.420 | because I know whatever's going to happen

01:08:49.500 | is completely out of my control.

01:08:51.100 | Something either interesting or not will appear.

01:08:57.820 | And then we're going to follow that wherever it goes.

01:09:00.580 | And until something appears for us to follow,

01:09:06.480 | I have a lot of anxiety.

01:09:11.820 | Even though it has never not come,

01:09:13.980 | you know, it has come every time,

01:09:15.460 | but there's something about it.

01:09:17.040 | 'Cause I also feel like there might be expectation on me

01:09:20.380 | that I'm going to make it happen.

01:09:22.440 | And I know that's not happening.

01:09:23.860 | That's not how it works.

01:09:25.340 | It's, I show up ready for it to happen

01:09:30.340 | and I'm open to whatever we have to do

01:09:38.060 | to find that first thread.

01:09:40.700 | And once we find the thread, then it's like, okay,

01:09:43.220 | we have a, and that thread may lead us to anything,

01:09:46.420 | you know, can lead us to in a million different directions,

01:09:49.540 | but something about having that glimmer,

01:09:52.660 | that it's not a, we're not looking at a blank page.

01:09:55.700 | You know, we're looking at, okay, we have a,

01:09:59.000 | we have the beginnings of, I would say a map,

01:10:05.260 | but it's a map that we don't know where it takes us.

01:10:09.000 | And it's just the beginning.

01:10:10.260 | It's just like, it's just the start, you know, you are here.

01:10:14.860 | If you have a map and it says you are here,

01:10:17.940 | even if you can't see the directions,

01:10:20.980 | knowing where we are feels okay.

01:10:22.960 | And once we get, and usually, again,

01:10:28.740 | usually in the first day, first couple of days, it happens.

01:10:36.340 | But up until then, it's really an anxiety producing situation.

01:10:41.340 | And then I can't remember the original question.

01:10:44.320 | It's like, that was the beginning

01:10:45.620 | of something completely different,

01:10:47.780 | but do you remember what you asked?

01:10:49.360 | I don't remember.

01:10:50.200 | - Yeah, well, we were talking about disengaging

01:10:52.580 | and as your subconscious into it,

01:10:54.180 | and then we were talking about, you know,

01:10:57.180 | so I love this sort of like, what is your process

01:11:00.420 | of wading into this thing and you're revealing that now?

01:11:03.980 | I mean, I think of anxiety as readiness, you know?

01:11:07.700 | I mean, think about the characteristic features of anxiety.

01:11:11.000 | It tends to be a bit of a constriction of the visual field

01:11:14.560 | into more of a narrow vision, but that's appropriate

01:11:16.960 | because you want to shed what's going on elsewhere.

01:11:20.340 | And then, you know, even when people talk about the shakes

01:11:23.320 | or this like not feeling okay sitting still,

01:11:26.260 | anxiety was designed to mobilize us

01:11:28.540 | and not always to run away.

01:11:30.240 | This is one of the, I could, you know,

01:11:32.100 | rarely do I talk about the work in my own laboratory,

01:11:33.920 | but one of the things that frankly, I didn't discover,

01:11:36.420 | but it was done in my laboratory,

01:11:37.620 | but this brilliant graduate student, Lindsay Soleil,

01:11:40.820 | who's now at Caltech, was that we can often observe animals

01:11:45.740 | or humans in very high states of anxiety

01:11:48.360 | as they move forward toward a goal.

01:11:50.620 | And we always think of moving forward

01:11:52.000 | as like this calm thing, you know, these heroes,

01:11:55.320 | you know, Rosa Parks telling people like, F you,

01:11:57.820 | like I'm not getting off the back,

01:11:59.740 | I'm not leaving the, giving up my seat on the bus

01:12:02.220 | or Muhammad Ali, I bet you

01:12:04.180 | they were experiencing tremendous anxiety,

01:12:07.020 | but it was in the forward tilt.

01:12:09.180 | And so I think anxiety is least comfortable

01:12:14.100 | when we are forcing ourselves to stand still.

01:12:16.740 | So it's an activating energy.

01:12:19.260 | And, you know, that brings up a word that, you know,

01:12:21.760 | I have written in my notebook as an extraction

01:12:24.200 | of a lot of themes from within the book

01:12:25.780 | that you and I have talked about before,

01:12:27.140 | which is, and here I'm going to sound very West Coast woo,

01:12:31.920 | but I mean it as seriously as it can be stated

01:12:36.920 | that I feel like everything is energetic.

01:12:40.540 | We can do things from a place of anger.

01:12:44.760 | We can do things from a place of joy.

01:12:47.540 | We can do things from a place of delight.

01:12:49.580 | I like to think maturing into the idea

01:12:53.100 | that joy and delight and love

01:12:55.060 | is kind of the ultimate reservoir of energy.

01:12:58.180 | But, you know, a lot of the music I liked

01:13:00.700 | from when I was younger was because of the anger

01:13:02.560 | that was thread into it or the sadness.

01:13:05.880 | - If you think of your relationship to that music,

01:13:08.420 | it's a relationship of love.

01:13:10.660 | You didn't listen to that to get angry.

01:13:12.800 | You listened to it because you loved it.

01:13:14.720 | - And I felt loved by it because it matched

01:13:18.080 | where I was at at the time.

01:13:18.920 | - Yes, it was true to who you were and where you were.

01:13:22.180 | - I know that collaboration,

01:13:23.520 | there's a wonderful chapter on collaboration,

01:13:25.900 | but it's collaboration as you mentioned before

01:13:27.920 | with the universe, not with others,

01:13:30.480 | but in terms of the,

01:13:32.180 | especially the kind of work that you've done and do,

01:13:35.340 | when it comes to working with artists, I do wonder,

01:13:39.620 | and here I'm not looking for any gossip or stories.

01:13:43.060 | I've never been interested in gossip.

01:13:44.540 | I love stories, but I'm not interested in gossip.

01:13:47.080 | But once you see that thread kind of dangling there

01:13:51.740 | and you guys are going to go after this

01:13:53.820 | or you grab onto it and you're like,

01:13:55.200 | okay, now you have a little bit of a map

01:13:56.740 | and an orientation within that map.

01:13:59.380 | I often wonder, scientists are complicated people.

01:14:03.000 | People think they're very boring,

01:14:04.160 | but they're actually very complicated

01:14:05.580 | because they're often living in one limited rule set

01:14:08.780 | of the prefrontal cortex.

01:14:09.740 | That's how you get good at getting degrees

01:14:12.020 | is by understanding the rules of academia

01:14:14.560 | and playing by those rules.

01:14:16.020 | People tinker with the rules.

01:14:18.360 | You get your Richard Axles who are very playful

01:14:20.680 | in how they go about it, but they are systematic.

01:14:23.240 | He's known for rigor, rigor, rigor, right?

01:14:27.760 | When I think of creative artists and musical artists,

01:14:30.100 | I think of a bit more zany or loose

01:14:33.140 | or you watch the documentary about the Ramones

01:14:35.120 | and you're like, wow, there's all this chaos.

01:14:37.320 | How, because so many of the brilliant artists,

01:14:40.560 | musical artists that are out there

01:14:42.780 | seem to have some chaos inside them

01:14:44.920 | or their lives aren't always structured.

01:14:46.620 | Oftentimes, and science too, by the way,

01:14:49.400 | there are substance abuse issues and personal life issues.

01:14:52.880 | How, since you don't have 100% control,

01:14:56.480 | they need to play the instruments, sing, et cetera.

01:14:59.840 | How do you work with people who have it in them,

01:15:04.840 | but are getting in their own way, right?

01:15:07.980 | And do you think that that kind of the internal chaos

01:15:13.680 | that a lot of artists seem to have,

01:15:15.220 | do you think that sometimes is actually an essential piece

01:15:20.080 | of the creativity picture, that you can't disentangle it?

01:15:23.680 | - Yeah, I don't think it's an essential piece in general,

01:15:26.080 | but certain artists, that's how they do it.

01:15:29.440 | I would say I rarely get to see the chaotic part of artists.

01:15:36.720 | For whatever reason, they rarely show it to me.

01:15:39.600 | And most of them, like most comedians I know,

01:15:43.440 | are much more serious about what they're doing

01:15:45.640 | than what it looks like from, if you see them on stage.

01:15:49.640 | There's much more to it and there's much more focus

01:15:54.480 | on craft going on and digging deep

01:15:58.280 | than would necessarily be obvious,

01:16:01.760 | seeing them jump around on stage.

01:16:04.360 | - Yeah, I'm a fan of boxing, track and field and boxing,

01:16:07.680 | the sports nobody really cares about,

01:16:09.300 | now that UFC is so popular and track and field is a,

01:16:13.540 | it's a little bit like wrestling when you go,

01:16:15.240 | the people that are there 'cause they really love it.

01:16:17.440 | We'll talk about wrestling in a little bit,

01:16:19.420 | professional wrestling.

01:16:21.480 | But Floyd Mayweather's obviously a colorful character

01:16:24.980 | and one of the best records in boxing of all time.

01:16:28.720 | And a few years back, I got into watching his stuff

01:16:30.600 | and what one sees is the cars and the money,

01:16:35.000 | they literally call themselves the money team,

01:16:37.360 | and the spending and there's all the outrageous stuff.

01:16:41.400 | But I know someone who is in camp with him,

01:16:44.620 | who actually was a sparring partner for him

01:16:47.560 | and the lore has it,

01:16:49.600 | they have very closed door sparring or cleanups,

01:16:52.760 | but the lore is that he would do,

01:16:55.160 | 'cause nowadays it's 12, three minute rounds,

01:16:57.300 | with a minute in between, used to be 15,

01:16:59.160 | but now neuroscientists stepped in

01:17:01.080 | and it turns out a lot of the deaths were occurring

01:17:02.820 | when it was more than 12 rounds.

01:17:04.320 | For whatever reason, it cut off at 12,

01:17:06.600 | really seemed to truncate the deaths.

01:17:08.040 | There are other things too,

01:17:09.280 | if the dad is apparently a corner man,

01:17:11.320 | we have someone else here at the podcast

01:17:12.520 | who knows more about this than me.

01:17:13.360 | - That's fascinating.

01:17:14.280 | - Yeah, the kid not wanting to disappoint the parent,

01:17:16.640 | correlated with death, I'll get some of this wrong

01:17:19.240 | and then they can come after me.

01:17:21.600 | But in any case, this guy who was in Floyd's camp

01:17:26.480 | said that he would do 30 to 60 minutes of sparring,

01:17:29.760 | bringing in fresh sparring partners with no rest,

01:17:33.140 | that he would run three or four times per 24 hour cycle,

01:17:36.760 | despite all the critical need for sleep,

01:17:38.960 | that his training was unbelievably intense,

01:17:42.040 | to the point where he would just chew up

01:17:45.920 | and destroy all training partners.

01:17:48.980 | And yet the perception that we see is it's playful for him.

01:17:53.060 | So it sounds very similar,

01:17:54.120 | like what we see is often not what goes into it,

01:17:57.260 | that people are intensely rigorous.

01:17:59.660 | - Yeah, and I think in a way,

01:18:01.520 | from a psychological perspective,

01:18:03.760 | if you knew you were fighting someone

01:18:06.120 | who wasn't taking it seriously,

01:18:09.020 | that would give you some confidence

01:18:12.280 | and that would not be a good thing

01:18:14.060 | if the person was actually working really hard,

01:18:19.060 | outworking you, do you know what I'm saying?

01:18:22.440 | Like it's from a psychological perspective

01:18:24.920 | that makes sense to me.

01:18:26.880 | - So what I keep coming back to is that

01:18:28.400 | I'm imagining in my mind two ends of the continuum.

01:18:31.560 | One that is about fairly narrow focus,

01:18:33.680 | training, training, strategy, implementation,

01:18:36.280 | cultivating craft, building craft.

01:18:37.880 | And then the other side is this, the cloud.

01:18:40.360 | It's very nebulous, right?

01:18:41.700 | And there's this word that I learned

01:18:44.520 | from a colleague of mine when I was down

01:18:46.240 | at the Salk Institute when my lab was there,

01:18:48.600 | 'cause he studies this.

01:18:49.420 | There's this phenomenon that I don't want to mispronounce

01:18:52.880 | 'cause then it sounds like something else.

01:18:54.360 | But the correct pronunciation is pareidolia.

01:18:57.960 | And pareidolia is our tendency to look at an amorphous shape

01:19:03.840 | like a cloud or a tree

01:19:05.720 | and think that it looks like something else.

01:19:08.960 | An ice cream cone.

01:19:10.680 | The man in the moon.

01:19:11.960 | And that again reveals the extent to which

01:19:15.120 | the brain wants to place symbolic filters on things.

01:19:20.080 | And we need this, right?

01:19:21.260 | Because I see you walk in the door and Rick, I recognize you.

01:19:24.780 | In fact, we have a brain area called the fusiform face gyrus

01:19:27.920 | that literally is a face recognition area.

01:19:31.100 | And you could be at any orientation

01:19:33.400 | or I could just see your eyes and know that it's you.

01:19:37.120 | There's a phenomenon called proposegnosia

01:19:39.180 | where people can see faces,

01:19:40.780 | they can describe everything in the face,

01:19:42.740 | but they don't know, for instance,

01:19:45.060 | that it's JFK or Madonna or Lex Friedman.

01:19:49.660 | - It's quite the list.

01:19:52.740 | - Quite the list.

01:19:53.580 | There you go, Lex.

01:19:54.560 | Run for office, Lex.

01:19:56.900 | Just kidding.

01:19:57.980 | It's hard enough to get you to respond to my text as it is.

01:20:00.780 | So we have these filters and so we're taking this cloud

01:20:05.920 | and we're deciding what things are.

01:20:08.240 | - Yes.

01:20:09.080 | - And what I want to go drill into your process

01:20:11.900 | a little bit more deeply.

01:20:14.300 | When you approach a project,

01:20:16.660 | so everyone meets each other, shakes hands,

01:20:18.400 | here are the engineers, we're going to sit down,

01:20:19.940 | everyone knows what they're doing

01:20:22.020 | because you work with professionals and you start going,

01:20:25.020 | are you trying to be with the cloud or in the implementation?

01:20:29.340 | Like where are you in that continuum?

01:20:31.260 | And forgive me if I'm like trying to surgically go

01:20:34.980 | into your process in a way that would disrupt it in any way,

01:20:38.060 | but I trust you've been doing this for a while

01:20:39.560 | and there's no threat.

01:20:40.700 | - I'm not, I'm in the cloud with the exception of

01:20:45.700 | I'm aware of what could go wrong on a technical side

01:20:50.560 | and I might, like if something good is happening,

01:20:54.880 | I might look over and make sure that we're rolling.

01:20:57.380 | - So that's a leap over to here momentarily,

01:21:00.620 | but then you're back in the cloud.

01:21:02.640 | - Maybe.

01:21:07.700 | If I was in the moment, I would be in the cloud

01:21:12.700 | and if something good starts happening,

01:21:16.300 | it would trigger something in me like,

01:21:18.300 | oh, I hope this is, I hope we're really doing this

01:21:21.260 | because I don't know if we could ever do this again.

01:21:23.940 | That would be a thought of when the first time

01:21:28.380 | the real world would come into the picture would be

01:21:31.620 | something good is happening, let's not lose it.

01:21:36.060 | - And when that happens, do you never been in a studio

01:21:40.360 | besides a podcast studio?

01:21:42.100 | Do you say, hey guys, that sounded good, more of that,

01:21:46.460 | or do you wait, you let them continue?

01:21:48.020 | Because obviously you don't want to break their flow.

01:21:50.220 | - We'd never want to break any flow once it's happening.

01:21:53.600 | Yeah, once something's happening,

01:21:55.620 | just kind of sit back and watch.

01:21:57.780 | - And do you think there's resonance,

01:21:59.500 | like the team of engineers and other people know

01:22:02.780 | when it quote unquote is happening?

01:22:05.020 | - If everyone's paying attention, yes.

01:22:06.980 | When everyone's paying attention,

01:22:08.120 | it's usually pretty obvious.

01:22:09.600 | Sometimes the thread will be something different

01:22:11.540 | than expected and maybe not everybody would pick up on it.

01:22:15.020 | And that might be a particular,

01:22:16.880 | that might be particular based on my taste

01:22:20.200 | or an artist's taste or someone involved might say,

01:22:24.980 | that was, let's listen back to that.

01:22:27.140 | I think that was better than what we thought.

01:22:29.080 | That can happen.

01:22:31.540 | - You said several things and it was like,

01:22:36.380 | you said enough for there to be several conversations.

01:22:38.500 | - I tend to do that, sorry, especially with you.

01:22:40.980 | I don't get to see you as nearly as often as I would like.

01:22:43.580 | And so when I do, I confess that I'm a little bit

01:22:46.060 | of a kid in a candy shop.

01:22:46.900 | - I wrote down the brain tells us stories.

01:22:48.780 | So you talked about, I walk in, certain data points,

01:22:53.420 | you recognize me, but it's a real,

01:22:55.360 | like looking at a cloud shorthand.

01:22:57.860 | We go through our lives doing this all day

01:23:02.860 | with everything we see.

01:23:05.500 | And the shorthand, in the case of me, you know me,

01:23:11.140 | the shorthand turns out to be right, it checks out.

01:23:14.820 | If it's something we don't know

01:23:19.060 | and something we're not familiar with,

01:23:21.020 | something happens, we experience something on the street,

01:23:26.300 | something happens, and it doesn't make sense.

01:23:31.300 | Something out of the ordinary happens.

01:23:33.500 | First thing is, this doesn't make sense.

01:23:37.540 | Then what we do is, again, subconscious, unconsciously,

01:23:42.020 | I don't know if it's unconscious or subconsciously,

01:23:44.100 | without thinking, we create a story

01:23:47.660 | that explains what just happened, a hypothetical

01:23:52.660 | that makes it okay that what just happened happened

01:23:56.620 | and oh, maybe he's running 'cause his dog ran away

01:24:01.460 | and he's chasing his dog.

01:24:02.540 | Maybe that's why he's running.

01:24:04.420 | And as soon as we have that thought of what it might be,

01:24:09.060 | we relax because now it's not just a guy running

01:24:11.660 | and this is weird, but it's a guy running,

01:24:13.720 | oh, he's probably running after his dog.

01:24:15.720 | And now we register that story

01:24:21.420 | that we just made up without even knowing

01:24:24.340 | we were making it up as what happened.

01:24:27.340 | And then later in the day, if someone says,

01:24:29.420 | yeah, do you see that guy running out of bugs?

01:24:30.820 | Like, yeah, he was chasing his dog, I saw that.

01:24:33.000 | And you won't even realize

01:24:34.900 | that it was the maybe hypothetical story

01:24:37.460 | that was the first possible explanation

01:24:42.000 | that allowed you to continue walking.

01:24:44.160 | Do you know what I'm saying?

01:24:46.940 | That's our whole lives.

01:24:48.660 | Our whole lives are reacting to things,

01:24:51.900 | making up a story of what we think may have happened

01:24:54.580 | without realizing that's what we're doing

01:24:57.060 | and then living the rest of our lives

01:24:58.720 | as if that thing that we made up really happened

01:25:02.420 | and we never know.

01:25:03.660 | - I completely agree.

01:25:06.460 | We confabulate from birth until death.

01:25:10.380 | There's this well-observed phenomenon

01:25:13.300 | in people who have memory deficits.

01:25:16.300 | So there's the sad example of this

01:25:17.900 | and then there's the everyday, typical, not sad,

01:25:20.500 | who knows, sad or not sad example.

01:25:22.540 | So for instance, if somebody has a slight memory deficit

01:25:25.020 | or someone has Alzheimer's dementia,

01:25:27.180 | they'll find themselves in the hallway at night

01:25:29.540 | and say, what are you doing here?

01:25:30.940 | And they'll say, oh, you know,

01:25:31.920 | I was going to get a glass of water,

01:25:33.580 | but they're walking away from the direction

01:25:35.740 | that would make sense.

01:25:37.700 | People who, alcoholics who drink enough

01:25:40.180 | develop something called Korsakoff syndrome

01:25:41.780 | where a certain brain area gets messed up

01:25:44.380 | and you'll ask them a question like,

01:25:45.900 | oh, what are you doing here?

01:25:46.720 | And they will come up with incredible stories,

01:25:49.280 | sometimes interesting stories

01:25:51.360 | that have no bearing on reality.

01:25:53.660 | You ask them who their name is.

01:25:54.900 | - But do they believe?

01:25:55.740 | They believe that's what happened.

01:25:56.860 | - With 100% certainty.

01:25:58.300 | And this actually relates to a lot of the

01:26:00.580 | now better understood controversy around repressed memories.

01:26:04.380 | You know, you can, especially from young people,

01:26:07.020 | you can pull memories from them

01:26:09.500 | of things that never happened.

01:26:10.700 | This has been demonstrated over and over again.

01:26:12.220 | So courtrooms know to be very cautious now

01:26:14.140 | about this whole notion of repressed memories.

01:26:16.140 | - That's good to know.

01:26:17.080 | - Yeah, very, very complicated area of the law,

01:26:20.580 | as you can imagine,

01:26:21.960 | because we tend to want to trust victims

01:26:25.180 | for understandable reasons.

01:26:27.140 | But in terms of accuracy of details,

01:26:29.300 | two people have very different accounts

01:26:31.500 | of the same experiences.

01:26:33.400 | And this has been shown over and over again.

01:26:35.740 | That you can do well in the laboratory.

01:26:37.360 | It's pretty interesting.

01:26:38.720 | So again, because of these selective filtering

01:26:40.740 | and storytelling, and we are,

01:26:43.180 | I think it was Salman Rushdie who said,

01:26:44.760 | we are the storytelling species.

01:26:46.320 | He probably-

01:26:47.160 | - Wow, I was going to say we're storytelling machines.

01:26:48.880 | That's great.

01:26:49.720 | - Yeah, I think, you know, we are the story.

01:26:52.500 | I would say that the big five,

01:26:53.880 | if I had to pick up sort of brain function is

01:26:57.220 | we are very limited filters.

01:26:59.860 | The Mantis shrimp sees 67 shades of red

01:27:02.660 | for every one that we see.

01:27:04.300 | So they have access to things we don't have access to.

01:27:07.740 | They're not, as far as I know, you know,

01:27:09.800 | releasing albums of the, you know,

01:27:11.800 | Red Hot Chili Peppers caliber, but who knows?

01:27:14.300 | Maybe down there they are.

01:27:15.600 | I did see something, by the way,

01:27:16.840 | as a relevant tangent recently.

01:27:18.520 | And I don't know if it's, look,

01:27:21.440 | even if it's crazy, it's super cool.

01:27:23.700 | If you take a device that amplifies the electrical signals

01:27:28.640 | coming from Cactus, and you just translate that

01:27:31.700 | into a simple rule of conversion

01:27:34.440 | to two or three pitches of sound,

01:27:36.480 | the music that comes out of it is beautiful.

01:27:38.880 | Nothing short of beautiful.

01:27:40.280 | And when I saw that, the teenager in me thought,

01:27:43.100 | you know, when we hear whale song,

01:27:44.400 | we think it's so beautiful.

01:27:45.380 | Like what if they're just like cursing at each other

01:27:47.200 | the whole time, right?

01:27:48.240 | I mean, maybe they're in there like a Rogan episode

01:27:50.560 | when he invites all his comedian friends in there.

01:27:52.440 | Who knows?

01:27:53.340 | Maybe it's a psychoanalytic conversation

01:27:55.360 | about their childhood traumas.

01:27:56.760 | I don't know, but we decide whale song is beautiful.

01:28:01.800 | We decide Cactus are just plants.

01:28:04.040 | - And it's beautiful to us.

01:28:06.580 | And we're right that it is beautiful to us,

01:28:08.920 | but it doesn't mean we know anything about it.

01:28:11.580 | - That's right.

01:28:12.640 | Yeah, so we have these filters, perceptual filters.

01:28:14.740 | We only can see and hear, smell and taste what we can.

01:28:18.600 | And then the brain likes to work in symbols.

01:28:20.860 | We tend to like to match that person

01:28:23.940 | whose shoes are messed up must be homeless.

01:28:27.000 | I've had a couple instances in life

01:28:30.100 | where I saw what I thought was a homeless vagrant

01:28:32.780 | inside a building at an academics institution.

01:28:35.140 | It turned out it was the most accomplished person

01:28:39.180 | in the field.

01:28:40.900 | That's always cool.

01:28:42.940 | Yes, that happened at Berkeley.

01:28:44.440 | Then the other thing that we do

01:28:47.820 | is we tend to put symbol,

01:28:52.160 | so we said perception, symbol representations,

01:28:54.440 | and then our memories are entirely confabulated

01:28:58.600 | based on already deficient symbol

01:29:01.960 | and perceptual representation.

01:29:04.080 | And so I never liked the statement

01:29:05.380 | that we don't know how the brain works.

01:29:06.880 | I think we do know how the brain works,

01:29:08.440 | but that it works through very limited filters.

01:29:12.140 | Okay, so knowing that and accepting it,

01:29:14.660 | and it seems to me that this idea of looking to nature,

01:29:19.660 | looking outside us is so critical.

01:29:26.140 | And in fact, I hope you won't mind me sharing this,

01:29:28.540 | but a few years back, I had sent you something by text

01:29:31.820 | and I was kind of in disbelief

01:29:33.640 | about something I'd seen in the media.

01:29:35.540 | I was like, they got it all wrong.

01:29:37.140 | And I knew the person involved

01:29:38.540 | and it was not a good situation for them.

01:29:41.040 | And I was like, they got it all wrong.

01:29:42.660 | And you wrote back and you said,

01:29:44.960 | "It's all lies, back to nature, the only truth."

01:29:50.600 | - Wow, that's wild.

01:29:52.500 | - And I wrote that down, I put it over my desk.

01:29:54.700 | - Wow.

01:29:55.540 | - And I still, you know, I'd tattoo it on my forehead

01:29:59.180 | if I didn't already have it well, well committed to memory.

01:30:02.580 | But I think I know that's true, right?

01:30:05.740 | Nature, we can look at and it's-

01:30:07.380 | - But when I say it's all lies,

01:30:09.140 | you just talked about our ability to,

01:30:12.760 | how limited our facility to see and understand what we see.

01:30:17.760 | Yes? - Yes.

01:30:20.260 | - So based on that, that leads us to, we can't know much.

01:30:25.260 | Do you know what I'm saying?

01:30:28.140 | Our resolution is so low on everything

01:30:34.540 | that we're really just like, we're grasping at straws.

01:30:39.540 | We have no idea, we have no idea.

01:30:43.540 | And there's great power in knowing that.

01:30:45.940 | Because if you think you know what's going on,

01:30:48.820 | chances are you're being deceived.

01:30:52.600 | Not because somebody is deceiving you,

01:30:55.860 | but because they're telling you what they see

01:30:57.980 | and they don't know.

01:30:59.260 | It's all, do you know what I'm saying?

01:31:00.600 | It's all made up.

01:31:01.780 | Everything that we, everything we know is made up.

01:31:05.500 | Maybe, maybe it's true.

01:31:07.300 | This brings us to pro wrestling.

01:31:09.020 | It's the reason that pro wrestling is closer to reality

01:31:14.020 | than anything else we can watch or any other content.

01:31:18.540 | It's, we know it's made up.

01:31:20.540 | We know that it's a performance, it's storytelling.

01:31:26.380 | And that's how everything is,

01:31:31.340 | except we think wrestling's fake and the world is real.

01:31:34.940 | Wrestling's real and the world's fake.

01:31:37.880 | - You talk about in the book,

01:31:39.540 | we're definitely going in this direction.

01:31:41.660 | In the book, you talk about this notion

01:31:45.040 | of entertaining the idea of the opposite being true as it.

01:31:49.060 | And there's our not only emerging,

01:31:51.660 | but established fields of psychology

01:31:53.220 | that are making great ground, I think,

01:31:54.780 | into the human psyche, Byron Katie's work and others,

01:31:58.080 | where you take a statement and you start playing

01:32:00.540 | with that statement for, you poke at its authenticity.

01:32:04.180 | And when I first heard that, I thought,

01:32:05.480 | this is kind of hokey, right?

01:32:07.220 | It's just words.

01:32:08.060 | And then I realized how foolish I was being

01:32:10.460 | because she's really onto something.

01:32:13.300 | And there are others too, of course,

01:32:14.520 | but in science, that's exactly what you do.

01:32:18.260 | You don't really ask questions in science.

01:32:21.660 | You are forced to raise hypotheses

01:32:24.300 | and try and say true or false.

01:32:26.380 | Now, there are limitations to that approach, certainly.

01:32:28.860 | I mean, pure observational studies have been incredible

01:32:32.900 | in terms of what they've revealed to us,

01:32:34.420 | especially medicine, a patient that has a bullet hole

01:32:37.020 | through a certain area of the brain.

01:32:38.360 | You don't go in and say, oh, I hypothesize

01:32:40.440 | that person will have a deficit in seeing faces.

01:32:42.980 | No, the person wandered into the clinic and they go,

01:32:45.540 | this person cannot, sees faces,

01:32:47.420 | but can't make sense of them.

01:32:48.860 | And then you forensically arrive at an understanding.

01:32:54.660 | But in general, we go about things in this way

01:32:58.840 | and considering that the opposite might be true.

01:33:02.300 | Well, that's a little bit, I suppose,

01:33:03.940 | of like seeing the whale at the surface of the water.

01:33:07.660 | It's like, well, the opposite of my experience,

01:33:10.080 | which is all above water for the most part,

01:33:12.780 | is maybe not the complete experience of life.

01:33:17.380 | You start seeing the inverse all the time.

01:33:19.600 | So I want to-

01:33:20.660 | - Consider the inverse all the time.

01:33:22.340 | - And it really relates to the way that you described

01:33:26.700 | how we see colors is based on contrast.

01:33:29.900 | So maybe blue's only blue in relation to yellow.

01:33:33.060 | So if blue is our choice,

01:33:37.680 | if we're not considering yellow, blue doesn't exist.

01:33:43.520 | Do you know what I'm saying?

01:33:44.780 | - Absolutely. - It's like,

01:33:45.620 | we talk about night, it's only night because there's day.

01:33:48.660 | If there was no day, there is no night.

01:33:50.440 | In all of our cases, it's like being in the end.

01:33:55.440 | There's the light and the shadow always.

01:34:00.480 | There's always another side for everything.

01:34:03.960 | And we focus on one aspect.

01:34:07.540 | But if we look at the other aspect,

01:34:10.720 | chances are we'll learn something too.

01:34:12.680 | - The nervous system is not just able to do this.

01:34:18.000 | It's the way it does everything.

01:34:20.320 | At two experiments, I'll just briefly describe,

01:34:22.640 | my scientific great grandparents,

01:34:23.980 | David Hubel and Torrance Weasel,

01:34:25.140 | showed that if you force a person to look at something

01:34:28.080 | for a long period of time without moving their eyes,

01:34:30.840 | there's a way that you can do this, the image disappears.

01:34:33.400 | Because normally your eyes are making little microsaccades

01:34:35.680 | and you're comparing what you're seeing

01:34:37.060 | to what's right next to it.

01:34:38.280 | Pixel by pixel, pixel by pixel, pixel by pixel.

01:34:40.680 | If we don't even have to use the example

01:34:42.780 | of pressing on the arm, we're sitting in chairs right now.

01:34:45.680 | And until I said, what's going on at the level of sensation

01:34:48.680 | on the backs of your thighs,

01:34:49.780 | you were unaware of it because if you experience a pressure

01:34:52.120 | or a smell in a room, you ever walk in,

01:34:53.800 | the smell is either good or not good,

01:34:55.380 | pretty soon the smell disappears.

01:34:56.940 | The neurons are still firing like sledgehammers on a bell,

01:35:01.940 | but we become blind and deaf to it

01:35:05.040 | because the nervous system likes to habituate

01:35:07.600 | the value of that signal when it's there often.

01:35:10.640 | And it's only the stuff that comes through signal the noise

01:35:13.520 | that kind of jolts us into attention and awareness.

01:35:17.960 | And I want to return to attention awareness,

01:35:19.940 | which are prominent themes in the book.

01:35:22.500 | And I think in an important way,

01:35:24.780 | not just, oh, attention awareness is important,

01:35:27.300 | but you also give insight into how to pay better attention,

01:35:31.780 | how to pay awareness with the understanding

01:35:34.780 | that people are going to go about it differently.

01:35:36.840 | But I do want to ask you about wrestling.

01:35:40.580 | Because when I was growing up,

01:35:42.680 | I was not, I lived south of the Cow Palace

01:35:45.700 | and there was some wrestling going on there.

01:35:47.080 | I think back then it was WWF.

01:35:49.720 | And there was a short stint in my childhood

01:35:51.420 | where I paid attention to, in particular,

01:35:53.960 | was it Coco B. Ware, the guy that had a macaw?

01:35:57.060 | I was obsessed with tropical birds

01:35:59.020 | and he would come in and he'd put his tropical bird

01:36:00.640 | on the thing.

01:36:01.480 | And then who's that, George "The Animal" Steele,

01:36:03.000 | the guy that would eat the ring.

01:36:04.500 | - Yeah.

01:36:05.340 | - Okay, so, and-

01:36:08.040 | - I believe he was a professor, seriously, seriously.

01:36:11.420 | Seriously.

01:36:12.260 | - Was he really?

01:36:13.080 | - In real life.

01:36:13.920 | - Amazing.

01:36:14.740 | - He was a professor,

01:36:15.580 | he played George "The Animal" Steele as a wrestler.

01:36:17.820 | - And I loved the movie, "The Wrestler."

01:36:19.820 | - Darren Aronofsky movie.

01:36:22.980 | - It was Mickey Rourke.

01:36:24.820 | Yeah, one of the reasons I liked it

01:36:25.940 | is I once visited Asbury Park.

01:36:29.040 | Isn't that where that was filmed?

01:36:31.220 | There's a vacant, he goes to visit his daughter,

01:36:33.940 | there's a vacant amusement park

01:36:36.000 | or abandoned amusement park scene there

01:36:37.580 | that was really eerie, still kind of haunts me a little bit.

01:36:39.540 | There's something about the East Coast in kind of fall,

01:36:44.180 | all the places that people normally go just for the summer

01:36:46.980 | that we don't have out here in the West Coast.

01:36:49.900 | People in the East Coast are just tougher than we are.

01:36:52.020 | It still haunts me, great movie.

01:36:54.540 | But I remember watching wrestling and it was at that age,

01:36:59.280 | I think I was probably about 12, 13, maybe 11, 12, 13,

01:37:02.500 | where you're kind of entering puberty.

01:37:07.500 | So, and puberty is a fundamental landmark of development

01:37:14.140 | it's the most rapid period of aging.

01:37:15.580 | It's also when we start to change our rule set,

01:37:18.660 | like certain people and certain kinds of interactions

01:37:21.240 | take on profoundly different meaning, right?

01:37:25.140 | It's not just a reproductive competence time

01:37:28.340 | and when kids change, their bodies change,

01:37:30.780 | the rule book changes fundamentally.

01:37:33.300 | - Our understanding of the world changes in that moment.

01:37:35.420 | - Oh yeah, I mean, the moment that a child understands

01:37:37.660 | really what sex is and kind of how they got there

01:37:40.960 | and that a lot of the stuff that we see in the world

01:37:43.120 | is kind of passively or not so passively

01:37:45.820 | being sent through that filter, it's like, it's something.

01:37:49.440 | It changes the rule book of perception.

01:37:53.260 | I view this age from about 11 to 13, at least for me,

01:37:58.980 | was a unique transition point where the gap between

01:38:03.980 | what I perceived as reality and fiction was kind of blurry.

01:38:08.020 | This is captured pretty well in that movie Stand By Me

01:38:10.260 | where they're hanging around the campfire at night

01:38:11.820 | and the kid says, "Who do you think would win

01:38:13.800 | "in a fight between Superman and Mighty Mouse?"

01:38:16.460 | And the other kid says like, "You idiot.

01:38:19.220 | "Mighty Mouse is a cartoon.

01:38:21.680 | "Of course Superman would win."

01:38:23.380 | And to me, that's being 11 and a half or 12 years old

01:38:29.380 | where your understanding of reality as you know it

01:38:33.260 | is changing, but it's not completely crystallized

01:38:35.660 | into an adult form reality.

01:38:37.380 | - That sounds like a really healthy place to be, to me,

01:38:39.920 | like that, not letting it crystallize.

01:38:43.520 | I think that's the, there's where the downfall happens.

01:38:46.900 | - So I have questions specifically about wrestling,

01:38:50.700 | but it's really about process.

01:38:52.360 | I want to know whether or not you watch wrestling

01:38:56.260 | because it allows you to access the energy state

01:38:59.880 | in your body and mind and that kind of mode of thinking

01:39:04.040 | in which reality, as one conceives it, is somewhat blurry.

01:39:09.780 | Or is it for a number of other reasons, which is fine.

01:39:14.740 | Is that the energy you're trying to export

01:39:16.980 | and bring to the creative process elsewhere, to life?

01:39:21.520 | Is it that anything is possible

01:39:23.780 | or that we're dealing with archetypes?

01:39:25.260 | 'Cause it doesn't matter if it's Coco Beware

01:39:27.020 | or Randy Macho Man Savage or George The Animal Steel

01:39:29.380 | and the lovely Elizabeth.

01:39:30.980 | I guess I did watch a little bit of wrestling.

01:39:33.820 | They are archetypes, much like the Greek myths

01:39:36.860 | or the Bible or no disrespect to the Bible

01:39:40.140 | or Greek myths or to wrestling for that matter.

01:39:42.960 | Archetypes are a powerful filter for humans,

01:39:46.540 | but we know that they're a very limited filter too

01:39:50.020 | because people aren't built like square wave functions.

01:39:53.320 | We have curves and contours and complexity.

01:39:55.760 | So what is the deal with your relationship to wrestling?

01:40:00.380 | - I think it maintains that kind of playfulness.

01:40:03.260 | Anything is possible.

01:40:05.140 | We expect the unexpected all the time in wrestling

01:40:09.100 | and it's a way to have a kind of a feeling

01:40:14.100 | of the energy of a sport with no competition.

01:40:19.660 | Everyone is working together

01:40:23.900 | to put on the best show they can.

01:40:25.940 | So it's more like a ballet than it is like a sporting event.

01:40:30.180 | And there's great skill involved.

01:40:34.780 | It's one of the few things that I can watch

01:40:37.420 | and really feel relaxed.

01:40:39.740 | It relaxes me.

01:40:41.220 | I don't feel like I have to think about it.

01:40:42.840 | I can just relax and enjoy it.

01:40:45.780 | - This brings up a topic

01:40:47.180 | that is very near and dear to my heart,

01:40:48.740 | which is this notion of dopamine schedules.

01:40:51.220 | I never want to reduce everything to dopamine,

01:40:53.080 | but dopamine is the universal currency

01:40:55.000 | of delight, pleasure, motivation seeking.

01:40:57.540 | There are other chemicals involved too,

01:40:59.380 | but there's a beautiful experiment

01:41:02.440 | and a couple of examples that I'll use as a foundation

01:41:05.440 | to more questions about wrestling and why it's powerful

01:41:09.420 | and why other people may want to use wrestling

01:41:12.460 | or some other endeavor as a way

01:41:15.500 | to access creative energy and source.

01:41:18.260 | Earlier, we talked about, you can train an animal

01:41:21.680 | to press a lever three times and then get reward.

01:41:24.340 | And it will learn three is the magic number for reward.

01:41:27.100 | And then it can switch.

01:41:27.940 | It takes a little bit of training and then they can switch,

01:41:29.900 | but they can't do prime numbers.

01:41:31.180 | They can't do high abstraction schedules.

01:41:33.700 | Humans either were not very good

01:41:36.240 | at figuring out the rule set for optimal foraging.

01:41:40.800 | We do it well enough to persist as a species,

01:41:43.040 | at least for now,

01:41:44.420 | but it's very likely that we are not tapping

01:41:49.000 | into that system as well as we could.

01:41:51.780 | And how would we know if we don't know?

01:41:53.540 | It's one of those, you don't know what you don't know.

01:41:56.180 | There's a beautiful experiment that explored

01:41:58.260 | when dopamine is released in the context of watching sport

01:42:01.860 | or watching comedy, believe it or not.

01:42:05.260 | And with the comedy stuff,

01:42:06.540 | it was every time there was a surprise.

01:42:08.060 | It was kind of that jarringly ha ha,

01:42:09.500 | and they'd measure people's dopamine output.

01:42:11.780 | They were also brain imaging.

01:42:13.180 | In a game of basketball,

01:42:16.560 | it's a beautiful opportunity experimentally

01:42:18.760 | because every time one team gets the ball

01:42:21.080 | or shooting free throws or something,

01:42:22.340 | they're going down court

01:42:23.260 | and it's either going to end up in the basket or it's not.

01:42:26.500 | Might end up on the free throw line,

01:42:27.700 | but it's in it or not.

01:42:28.540 | So what they found is that the schedule of anticipation

01:42:31.740 | was every time there was a switch of which team got it.

01:42:34.180 | So you're waiting, waiting, and then it's ah.

01:42:36.640 | You're waiting, waiting, yes.

01:42:38.240 | Waiting, waiting, three pointer, awesome.

01:42:40.640 | And if something happened where it looked like

01:42:42.300 | they were going to make the three pointer,

01:42:44.380 | but then somebody basically swatted the ball away

01:42:47.620 | and then went for a half court shot,

01:42:49.100 | like you don't expect that very often,

01:42:50.980 | bigger dopamine release, okay?

01:42:52.380 | So that's kind of how the dopamine thing works.

01:42:54.420 | When you describe wrestling,

01:42:56.940 | I wonder, because you don't know the script,

01:43:00.940 | it's not one team gets it, then the other team gets it.

01:43:03.220 | You don't know who's going to win.

01:43:04.540 | Anything could happen is what you said.

01:43:07.220 | The availability of that dopamine surge or drip,

01:43:12.220 | which is a powerful thing,

01:43:13.820 | is completely, it's completely out of your reach

01:43:19.740 | in terms of anticipation.

01:43:21.360 | You don't know when it's going to come,

01:43:22.740 | but it must arrive often enough

01:43:24.580 | that you return to it 11 hours a week of watching.

01:43:27.820 | In many ways, the way I'm starting to conceptualize

01:43:32.060 | the creative process is a little bit the same.

01:43:34.540 | You don't know where those nuggets of gold

01:43:36.460 | and those loose threads are,

01:43:38.180 | but you have enough experience,

01:43:39.820 | and in this case, I am referring to you specifically,

01:43:42.340 | to know that they are in there.

01:43:44.420 | The people walking in this room have a certain level

01:43:46.860 | of ability and talent to create

01:43:50.500 | that the map will form itself as we are going

01:43:55.500 | through the voyage and those nuggets of,

01:43:58.940 | here I'm calling them dopamine, but they are out there.

01:44:02.980 | And that knowledge is enough to get you to come back again

01:44:05.140 | and again, to trust the process.

01:44:07.380 | So I actually think the way you described wrestling as,

01:44:11.820 | it's the energy of the sport.

01:44:14.460 | It's not the, whether or not it's this move or that move

01:44:17.540 | or who wins or who loses, it's the energy.

01:44:20.660 | And I'm guessing it's the energy

01:44:22.020 | that it creates in you as an observer.

01:44:25.260 | - Yes, it's the energy it creates in me

01:44:27.180 | and the reality that it's honest in what it is

01:44:32.180 | in a world where seemingly nothing is honest at what it is.

01:44:38.180 | And again, not because people are lying all the time.

01:44:43.380 | We have a little data, we make up a story to explain it,

01:44:46.660 | and then we say, that's what happened.

01:44:48.980 | And we have trusted sources who do exactly

01:44:53.980 | what I just described and who pass this down as gospel

01:45:00.100 | of what we teach and maybe it's true and maybe it's not.

01:45:06.220 | With wrestling, we know maybe it's true, maybe it's not.

01:45:12.420 | We lean towards it not being true.

01:45:14.820 | But what's really interesting about wrestling

01:45:16.380 | and maybe one of the most fun things about it

01:45:18.060 | is that sometimes real life works its way into the story.

01:45:23.060 | Like two wrestlers get married now.

01:45:29.060 | - In real life.

01:45:30.060 | - Well, we don't know.

01:45:30.940 | It's like that you never know.

01:45:32.420 | It's like in the storyline, they're getting married

01:45:35.740 | or getting divorced or best friends turn on each other.

01:45:40.740 | And it could be part of the story

01:45:45.660 | and it could really be happening because they do write,

01:45:49.180 | someone gets, someone breaks their leg.

01:45:51.900 | So they're out because their leg is broken.

01:45:54.620 | Did they break their leg?

01:45:55.540 | We don't know.

01:45:56.380 | They're out.

01:45:57.620 | Do you know what I'm saying?

01:45:58.980 | We're told they broke their legs.

01:46:00.620 | So there's always this like, I wonder what's true.

01:46:05.620 | I wonder where the line is.

01:46:08.820 | We know that it's scripted or predetermined.

01:46:13.660 | That's how they say.

01:46:14.500 | It's predetermined.

01:46:16.420 | But we don't know where reality is and isn't.

01:46:20.820 | And in some ways that's our real experience of the world

01:46:25.820 | is this, we don't really know where reality is and isn't.

01:46:30.580 | We have an idea maybe.

01:46:33.020 | I think in some ways wrestling is more honest or legitimate

01:46:35.780 | because we start with the idea that it's fixed.

01:46:40.780 | When we go to a boxing match,

01:46:43.500 | we don't go to a boxing match thinking it's fixed,

01:46:45.900 | yet it might be.

01:46:47.220 | And historically it's happened.

01:46:50.500 | Or there was just something in baseball where,

01:46:53.500 | was it baseball?

01:46:55.020 | - I don't follow baseball.

01:46:56.020 | I should know.

01:46:56.860 | - There was just a big sports.

01:46:59.980 | One of the teams that-

01:47:03.620 | - The plays basically.

01:47:04.820 | - Yes.

01:47:05.660 | - Was it the call signals of the catcher?

01:47:08.060 | - Yes.

01:47:09.820 | - Because you're not supposed to deprogram

01:47:13.740 | or deconstruct the call signals of the other team.

01:47:16.940 | And I guess maybe a team got caught doing that.

01:47:19.420 | - Yes.

01:47:20.260 | And the team that won whatever the World Series was.

01:47:24.220 | So it's like with wrestling, that wouldn't be a scandal.

01:47:29.220 | Do you know what I'm saying?

01:47:30.140 | It's like-

01:47:30.980 | - Because almost anything goes.

01:47:32.580 | - Anything goes.

01:47:33.620 | And that's what the world is really like.

01:47:36.320 | So in some ways it's comforting

01:47:39.460 | and there's still this mystery of like,

01:47:41.020 | wow, I wonder if that's true or not.

01:47:42.620 | Because we never really know.

01:47:43.940 | Someone gets hurt.

01:47:45.200 | Did they really break their back

01:47:47.180 | or are they just going on vacation?

01:47:49.100 | We don't know.

01:47:49.940 | We'll never know.

01:47:50.780 | It's fascinating.

01:47:51.720 | - It is fascinating.

01:47:52.560 | And I feel like there are certain people who show up

01:47:54.660 | in a way that is surprising in not just one direction,

01:47:58.840 | but in all directions.

01:48:00.040 | Like it's one thing for a celebrity to come out

01:48:01.740 | and make a statement.

01:48:03.340 | That can be interesting or not interesting

01:48:04.920 | depending on the celebrity and the statement

01:48:07.380 | and the delivery.

01:48:08.540 | But, and I'm probably going to get this wrong

01:48:10.380 | because I'm terrible at pop culture things.

01:48:13.820 | Most of them anyway.

01:48:15.040 | But as I recall, Lady Gaga showed up to some event

01:48:17.900 | wearing an outfit made of meat.

01:48:21.060 | And I can't tell you for the life of me

01:48:23.140 | whether or not that was a statement

01:48:24.540 | against meat or for meat.

01:48:26.900 | Maybe it was a statement for the carnivore diet.

01:48:28.520 | Maybe it was a statement for veganism.

01:48:30.020 | I don't know.

01:48:31.660 | - Or maybe neither.

01:48:32.620 | - Or maybe neither.

01:48:33.660 | But it was definitely a statement

01:48:34.900 | in that it broke with the norm.

01:48:37.140 | And it said to me, okay,

01:48:39.320 | she creates different rules for herself

01:48:43.280 | or so breaks boundaries that other people had.

01:48:47.720 | I never heard of anyone doing that before.

01:48:49.820 | This doesn't mean they hadn't,

01:48:51.700 | but I never heard of anyone doing it before.

01:48:53.800 | But we do tend to associate outside the current playbook

01:48:58.800 | with quote unquote creativity, unless it crosses a line,

01:49:05.640 | in which case it becomes something else.

01:49:08.800 | It becomes almost theater for sake of theater.

01:49:11.040 | But what you're telling me is that

01:49:12.040 | within the realm of wrestling,

01:49:13.580 | theater is the goal at some level.

01:49:17.320 | And everybody knows it who goes into those arenas,

01:49:19.800 | who watches it.

01:49:20.640 | - Yes.

01:49:21.480 | - Everybody.

01:49:22.300 | - Yes.

01:49:23.560 | - And everyone agrees to kind of suspend outside reality

01:49:27.620 | and say, this is reality.

01:49:29.280 | - Yes.

01:49:30.120 | And they boo for the bad guys and cheer for the good guys,

01:49:33.560 | knowing that backstage they're probably friends.

01:49:36.480 | - Except for the kids that are 11

01:49:37.860 | who think it's really real.

01:49:39.080 | - I don't know.

01:49:39.920 | I don't even know if they know.

01:49:41.140 | I'm not sure.

01:49:42.100 | - The only other person I know

01:49:44.320 | who has vocalized their love of professional wrestling

01:49:49.320 | to the extent that you have is Lars Fredrickson,

01:49:51.800 | the rhythm guitar player for Rancid who loves wrestling.

01:49:54.820 | But his statement, and forgive me, Lars,

01:49:57.220 | while I'm getting this wrong,

01:49:59.260 | is that because he grew up in an area of the South Bay

01:50:01.800 | where there were no teams,

01:50:03.320 | now there's the San Jose Earthquakes,

01:50:04.680 | but there was no football team in San Jose.

01:50:06.340 | He's from Campbell.

01:50:07.360 | But there were no like good teams, no sports teams,

01:50:10.320 | but they had wrestling.

01:50:11.660 | And he had it where?

01:50:13.400 | On the television set.

01:50:15.200 | And so if you didn't have a,

01:50:17.800 | like I didn't grow up with any organized sports thing.

01:50:20.520 | The 49ers were up the road, but for me it was skateboarding.

01:50:23.320 | And I love it for the same reason.

01:50:25.780 | You actually never really know what's gonna happen.

01:50:27.860 | There is no rule book.

01:50:28.820 | The rule book is made up.

01:50:31.120 | But they are very, it's a unique sport in that,

01:50:34.880 | surfing's a bit like this too,

01:50:36.780 | in that they are absolutely maniacal

01:50:40.560 | about making things look a certain way.

01:50:42.620 | It's not about just doing it.

01:50:44.040 | It's about doing it and making it look good.

01:50:47.360 | Smooth, catching it with the front foot.

01:50:49.560 | You know, and the trends change.

01:50:51.520 | - Style. - Style.

01:50:52.680 | - It's a style.

01:50:53.520 | - Style is, and style is this like nebulous thing

01:50:56.480 | of like, you know, in fashion or in sport.

01:50:58.920 | - Right, whereas with a football there's some amazing catches

01:51:01.280 | there's even like the catch, which I happen to know

01:51:03.440 | is a 49er, the catch during the Super Bowl.

01:51:06.780 | But in general, it's like the goal is get in the end zone,

01:51:09.840 | win the game.

01:51:11.080 | And I'm sure football players are like cringing

01:51:12.760 | as I say this, but it doesn't matter if you run ugly,

01:51:15.560 | if you run fastest.

01:51:17.240 | In skateboarding that would never fly.

01:51:19.020 | In fact, you'd basically be ridiculed out of the sport.

01:51:22.440 | In wrestling, is it the same?

01:51:24.920 | Are there, is there style to wrestling?

01:51:27.480 | - It's all, it's all performance.

01:51:29.520 | It's all the charisma of the people involved.

01:51:32.760 | There's the physical ability, the ability to talk

01:51:36.880 | and tell a story, and the, how charismatic

01:51:40.840 | the performers are.

01:51:41.740 | Whether you want to watch them, whether you want to see

01:51:43.960 | them win, whether you want to see them lose,

01:51:46.440 | and whether you're interested in cheering

01:51:49.000 | or booing for them.

01:51:50.480 | - I was going to say it reminds me of opera,

01:51:52.840 | but operas get released over and over again.

01:51:56.720 | You know the story and how it ends when you walk in,

01:51:59.320 | if you've listened to it before.

01:52:01.120 | So wrestling does seem to be unique in that way.

01:52:04.360 | It's real time iteration, at least from the perspective

01:52:07.400 | of the-

01:52:08.360 | - And it's real time iteration based on,

01:52:11.080 | because people get hurt all the time,

01:52:12.480 | they're doing really crazy physical stuff.

01:52:15.000 | So if someone gets hurt, the story has to change

01:52:19.380 | because in real life they can't show up next week

01:52:21.720 | and do what was planned in the script.

01:52:23.960 | So it's very alive and there's a lot of,

01:52:28.960 | something interesting and unexpected is always happening.

01:52:36.060 | - Well, in a much more calm form,

01:52:42.280 | I'll share with you something.

01:52:43.720 | I just like your perspective on it.

01:52:45.240 | For years, I used a tool in order to try and access ideas.

01:52:52.460 | Since I was a little kid, actually,

01:52:54.160 | because I have a little bit of OCD,

01:52:57.280 | a little bit of a Tourette's.

01:52:58.540 | When I get tired, I'll do that.

01:52:59.740 | And like very like strategy implementation oriented.

01:53:03.560 | I had that when I was a little, little kid,

01:53:05.020 | I needed all my stuffed animals arranged in a certain way.

01:53:07.100 | Lego is how to be, you know, full neurotic or a lot.

01:53:10.540 | And then science is very much about,

01:53:12.500 | you have to do things with a lot of precision.

01:53:14.680 | And I discovered that the ultimate reset for me

01:53:17.700 | when I was in graduate school or a postdoc,

01:53:20.100 | if I couldn't make it to a really good,

01:53:22.480 | like agnostic front show or like chaos,

01:53:24.360 | like the chaos of a punk rock show for me

01:53:26.080 | was kind of this reset.

01:53:27.080 | It was like, could like release all this thing.

01:53:29.280 | And I got energy from it.

01:53:31.140 | First time I saw transplants play and, you know,

01:53:33.540 | it was like, whoa,

01:53:34.600 | 'cause you don't know what's going to happen.

01:53:36.220 | And it was scary and I loved it.

01:53:37.780 | The other thing that I used over time

01:53:40.820 | to kind of reset this ability to think in a structured way

01:53:45.040 | without it feeling like it was overcoming me,

01:53:46.820 | maybe even access the same thing in some ways

01:53:49.000 | that you're accessing with wrestling was,

01:53:50.700 | I like to stare at Aquaria.

01:53:52.980 | Like I like to go to aquariums or I'd build aquariums

01:53:55.320 | and I would just sit there

01:53:56.160 | because you never know which way the fish are going to go.

01:53:58.080 | You think it's going that way,

01:53:59.100 | but then all of a sudden they'll turn and go the other way.

01:54:01.060 | It's completely unpredictable.

01:54:02.740 | And I love Aquaria because of the tranquility

01:54:04.900 | and had them in my lab for a long time.

01:54:07.900 | I just adore aquariums because of the non-linearity of it.

01:54:12.380 | It's not A, B, C, it's A, Z, Z, Q, you know?

01:54:17.680 | And I think this is what some people try

01:54:19.060 | and access through psychedelics,

01:54:20.780 | but that didn't seem to me like a very good way

01:54:23.260 | to do it on a regular basis.

01:54:25.540 | Whereas with Aquaria, you just, the tanks are there.

01:54:28.540 | So in your book, you talk about something

01:54:31.200 | that I also share a love for,

01:54:33.060 | which is how the ocean and aspects of nature,

01:54:38.060 | like clouds and ocean, they have a predictability to them.

01:54:42.420 | We know where they are and where to find them.

01:54:44.980 | Unfortunately, the sun rises and sets every day,

01:54:47.680 | at least for now.

01:54:48.940 | And we can count on them with 100% reliability.

01:54:53.940 | And yet they are from the perspective of like,

01:54:56.640 | what physicists would say, they're very chaotic.

01:54:59.080 | They, you can't look at a wave

01:55:00.880 | and know exactly how the foam is going to roll out.

01:55:02.660 | You know it's going to roll in and roll out.

01:55:04.280 | We have the tides.

01:55:05.160 | But when I hear about wrestling,

01:55:07.520 | I think about my love of Aquaria.

01:55:09.240 | When I think about my love of punk rock music,

01:55:11.960 | for instance, or I think about the ocean,

01:55:14.860 | I think of it in that way that we actually have a need

01:55:19.140 | to source from things that have both a combination

01:55:22.700 | of structure and no structure.

01:55:25.480 | - I think it's interesting that there are some places

01:55:27.960 | that don't change and some places that change a lot.

01:55:31.320 | And I can remember thinking about this.

01:55:33.620 | I was walking, there's a beach that I walk on in in Hawaii

01:55:37.500 | that I walk on every morning when I'm there.

01:55:40.660 | And if you walk on the same beach every day,

01:55:43.040 | you kind of get a sense of what it's like.

01:55:45.300 | And I remember I was in Hawaii,

01:55:47.400 | walked on the beach every day for a year, however long it was

01:55:50.520 | and then I left for six months and I came back

01:55:52.920 | and the next time I walked on the beach,

01:55:55.360 | it was an entirely different beach, entirely different.

01:56:00.360 | And I remember thinking in that moment,

01:56:03.980 | it's like, this is an unusual place

01:56:05.720 | because I pictured the house that I didn't even grow up in,

01:56:10.720 | the house I lived in maybe

01:56:17.040 | for the first seven years of my life.

01:56:19.560 | And I think about what the backyard looked like

01:56:22.020 | and I think about a particular old tree that was there.

01:56:25.000 | And I don't know this for sure, but my sense is,

01:56:27.600 | if I were to go back to where I grew up

01:56:30.380 | and go to that place and look in that yard,

01:56:34.400 | it would probably look pretty similar.

01:56:36.640 | Yet here was this beach that I was walking on in Hawaii

01:56:39.960 | that in the course of six months,

01:56:42.920 | completely changed its face.

01:56:45.260 | And just how interesting both of those things are

01:56:47.960 | and that depending on the project we're working on,

01:56:50.420 | to be able to go to a place

01:56:52.640 | that we know has the potential to change a lot

01:56:56.040 | and what that would do to our connection with the earth

01:57:02.400 | when we're experiencing that,

01:57:04.740 | versus going to a place that has very little change.

01:57:09.460 | And you can kind of count on it

01:57:11.760 | being the way it's always been.

01:57:14.260 | That both of those are interesting things

01:57:15.980 | to be able to draw upon,

01:57:17.400 | depending on what we want to open in our psyche.

01:57:21.720 | - I have an almost unhealthy fascination

01:57:25.680 | with New York in the mid '80s and '90s.

01:57:28.120 | - You didn't live there though.

01:57:30.900 | - No, but since I was a kid,

01:57:33.000 | I went there when I was a little kid

01:57:34.260 | and I was fascinated by it.

01:57:35.580 | There's also a very interesting migration

01:57:37.240 | of East Coast to West Coast creatives,

01:57:40.200 | including yourself,

01:57:41.100 | that played an important part of my life,

01:57:44.160 | just seeing things and hearing things

01:57:46.360 | that were meaningful to me.

01:57:47.380 | But for instance, I love the movie.

01:57:49.720 | I haven't seen the documentary

01:57:51.320 | about Jean-Michel Basquiat because of the characters

01:57:54.120 | that are in it and the huge number of people in that,

01:57:55.980 | like Parker Posey, Dennis Hopper, and Christopher Wall,

01:57:58.620 | and on and on.

01:57:59.920 | Those images of New York at that time are so exciting

01:58:02.500 | and what was happening.

01:58:04.380 | I wish I could transplant myself to that.

01:58:06.140 | If I had a time machine, that's where I'd land first.

01:58:08.680 | I hear a lot of people say,

01:58:12.980 | New York isn't what it used to be.

01:58:14.240 | San Francisco isn't what it used to be, whatever.

01:58:16.480 | LA isn't.

01:58:17.680 | There does seem to be something

01:58:18.880 | that feels a little bit disruptive to people

01:58:20.920 | about cities changing.

01:58:22.980 | But the idea that natural landscapes change

01:58:26.440 | is actually, we even accept like,

01:58:28.760 | hey, fire sweeps through places

01:58:30.520 | and assuming they weren't started by humans,

01:58:33.020 | we accept that.

01:58:34.360 | That change and the reordering of landscapes

01:58:36.840 | is normal and healthy.

01:58:38.440 | And I always tell myself,

01:58:39.840 | they have the kids growing up in New York

01:58:41.280 | or San Francisco or Chicago now,

01:58:43.360 | they only know it that way.

01:58:44.660 | So to them, it's as cool or as uncool

01:58:46.440 | as it's ever gonna be, right?

01:58:47.920 | They either wanna get out

01:58:48.880 | or they're loving every piece of it.

01:58:50.760 | And this happened for all the people that came before us.

01:58:53.240 | So my question is a very basic one.

01:58:56.760 | Do you miss the New York that you came up in?

01:58:59.000 | Are you somebody who is attached to the past?

01:59:01.400 | - I'm not attached at all.

01:59:02.640 | I'm not attached to anything in the past.

01:59:04.880 | I don't look back at all.

01:59:06.200 | - You don't think about like,

01:59:07.200 | oh, in my dorm room at NYU, Beastie Boys, this,

01:59:09.940 | like I miss...

01:59:10.780 | No, your optics are forward, present and forward.

01:59:14.480 | - Only present and forward.

01:59:16.440 | - Is there a process to that?

01:59:19.960 | Or it just happens to be where you default to?

01:59:22.120 | - I don't know.

01:59:22.960 | I'm not sure, but that's how I do it.

01:59:25.580 | Nostalgia is not in Rick Rubin's brain.

01:59:29.780 | - No.

01:59:30.620 | - Oh, lucky you, man.

01:59:31.800 | - No.

01:59:32.760 | - I say that with genuine admiration.

01:59:36.740 | So you can hear a song that maybe you had a role

01:59:43.280 | in producing or not, something from the past

01:59:45.160 | and you're accessing a state, presumably,

01:59:49.320 | but you're not pining for or wishing how it was.

01:59:52.040 | - Never.

01:59:54.900 | I'm no psychologist, but I'm going to venture to say

01:59:57.400 | that I think that's a very unique quality.

01:59:59.840 | I think a lot of people wish for,

02:00:04.280 | or wish that things did not happen the way they did,

02:00:07.820 | that there's a lot of living in the past.

02:00:09.500 | There's a lot of this notion of like people future trip.

02:00:12.960 | I don't actually think that's the default state

02:00:15.120 | of the brain.

02:00:15.960 | I think a lot of people live in emotional anchors

02:00:17.760 | to the past, good and bad.

02:00:19.240 | - Yeah, I have none.

02:00:22.920 | And watching wrestling is one way that you cleanse the palate.

02:00:26.400 | - Yeah, it's true.

02:00:28.600 | - When you go to a meal and they pass around this,

02:00:30.640 | they don't really do this anymore,

02:00:31.820 | but pass around a little bit of sorbet to cleanse the palate.

02:00:33.980 | It turns out there's a biological reason for that.

02:00:36.960 | There's a kind of neutralization of the taste receptors

02:00:39.120 | between savory and sweet, et cetera.

02:00:41.380 | So if wrestling is your palate neutralizer.

02:00:44.600 | - I know that if I watch wrestling before I go to sleep,

02:00:46.760 | it's going to be a good night's sleep.

02:00:49.240 | - Do you dream about wrestling?

02:00:50.440 | - No, never.

02:00:52.880 | But it's just relaxing.

02:00:55.520 | It's just relaxing.

02:01:00.000 | - Do you anticipate when you watch it,

02:01:01.600 | like here comes the dopamine hit?

02:01:03.380 | - Sometimes, sometimes when it happens.

02:01:05.160 | - He's going up for the three pointer.

02:01:06.960 | - Yeah, sometimes it's exciting.

02:01:09.280 | - But do you enjoy it?

02:01:10.120 | - But even then it's like the stakes are low.

02:01:12.200 | It's like, I don't really care what happens,

02:01:13.880 | which feels good.

02:01:14.720 | You know that I'm just being entertained.

02:01:18.840 | - Do they actually get hurt sometimes?

02:01:22.240 | - You said they do.

02:01:23.080 | - A lot, often.

02:01:24.840 | I mean, they're basically stunt men.

02:01:26.380 | So imagine stunt men getting hurt doing a crazy stunt.

02:01:29.720 | It happens all the time.

02:01:30.560 | - Well, in the movie, "The Wrestler,"

02:01:31.600 | I remember he got staples stapled into him

02:01:33.720 | and I thought that's pretty intense.

02:01:35.120 | I once went and saw,

02:01:36.960 | I guess they called it Mexican wrestling.

02:01:38.520 | I don't know if they call it that anymore,

02:01:39.920 | where the guys dipped their hands.

02:01:41.380 | Yeah, they dipped their hands in glass.

02:01:42.740 | This was in Sacramento.

02:01:43.880 | And I went and saw it.

02:01:44.720 | I honestly didn't have a stomach for it.

02:01:46.840 | I really didn't.

02:01:47.880 | I couldn't believe it was legal.

02:01:49.140 | It might not have been legal.

02:01:51.200 | But I thought-

02:01:52.040 | - There's crazy stuff in wrestling sometimes.

02:01:54.520 | - Wow.

02:01:55.360 | So before sleep,

02:01:57.880 | is that typically when you watch wrestling?

02:01:59.720 | - Yes.

02:02:01.280 | - Do you think it's useful for people to have some activity

02:02:03.620 | that allows them to kind of clear their mind

02:02:07.100 | and create peace before heading off to sleep?

02:02:10.120 | - I think so.

02:02:10.960 | And I think yoga nidra would be a good,

02:02:12.440 | like it's like yoga nidra, pro wrestling,

02:02:14.640 | any of the, any of those type things.

02:02:17.480 | - Yeah, not watching the Dalmer thing.

02:02:19.200 | I won't watch that.

02:02:20.840 | I-

02:02:21.780 | - I don't watch any horror, any anything,

02:02:23.840 | or I don't like violent things.

02:02:26.080 | - Yeah.

02:02:26.920 | I know it exists.

02:02:27.740 | I know horrible things happen in the world,

02:02:29.320 | but I certainly don't want to do that before sleep.

02:02:31.480 | I think these liminal states before

02:02:33.720 | and emerging from sleep are very powerful.

02:02:37.320 | When you wake up in the morning,

02:02:38.920 | are your thoughts immediately structured

02:02:42.260 | or do you enjoy the kind of clearing of the clouds?

02:02:44.720 | - It's a slow process for me to wake up.

02:02:47.460 | And I like that.

02:02:48.300 | I like not engaging too much too soon.

02:02:53.300 | I also, another,

02:02:56.540 | I usually fall asleep listening to a lecture

02:02:59.260 | or something speaking because if I don't,

02:03:04.260 | I can get caught in my own thoughts

02:03:07.340 | and listening to something is enough of a focus point

02:03:12.340 | that it stops me from talking to myself.

02:03:15.920 | - Yeah, I do the same.

02:03:16.920 | My grandfather listened to the radio,

02:03:18.760 | to sports on the radio and he would fall asleep.

02:03:22.960 | Oftentimes he was a smoker with a cigarette in his mouth.

02:03:25.740 | His wife's responsibility was to stay up later than he did

02:03:29.240 | and make sure they didn't burn everything down.

02:03:31.600 | And then when you wake up, you said it's a slow process.

02:03:36.160 | Is it an hour or two before you feel like you're-

02:03:39.580 | - I would say probably an hour.

02:03:41.080 | I usually wake up and try to get in the sun

02:03:43.280 | as soon as I possibly can

02:03:45.720 | and hope to spend about an hour.

02:03:49.900 | And then I'll usually go for a walk on the beach

02:03:52.200 | for another hour or 90 minutes, depending.

02:03:55.760 | - Are you with family members and other people at that time?

02:04:00.560 | - No, I'm usually focused by myself.

02:04:03.680 | - Phone?

02:04:05.040 | - I'll be listening to something.

02:04:06.520 | I don't look at the phone, but I listen.

02:04:08.360 | I listen to, again, a lecture or a podcast or audio book.

02:04:13.300 | I like audio books a lot.

02:04:14.580 | - Yeah, I do too.

02:04:15.720 | If an idea comes to mind, do you write it down?

02:04:18.340 | - I may, it depends.

02:04:20.260 | I like to.

02:04:21.700 | I usually would do a note in my phone.

02:04:26.580 | I don't usually carry pen and paper with me

02:04:28.460 | when I'm walking.

02:04:29.860 | - Yeah, I do the same.

02:04:30.700 | I do a long Sunday hike or jog

02:04:32.380 | and I will audio script into my phone.

02:04:35.100 | People sometimes give me funny looks

02:04:37.520 | 'cause I'm talking to myself.

02:04:38.740 | - That's a nice way to do it though.

02:04:39.880 | I'd like to learn more of the audio methods of doing it

02:04:44.200 | instead of the typing methods.

02:04:45.880 | Right now I type and I don't think it's the best way.

02:04:48.320 | - The voice memos function in the iPhone and other phones

02:04:53.320 | is really good.

02:04:54.520 | And they're now companies like rev.com

02:04:58.260 | that will turn those into Word doc scripts

02:05:01.200 | that are fairly well corrected, fairly inexpensive.

02:05:06.200 | No, they're not a sponsor of the podcast.

02:05:08.100 | I just happen to use it.

02:05:08.940 | It's great.

02:05:09.860 | I actually learned that trick from Richard Axel,

02:05:12.460 | the Nicorette chewing wild man Nobel prize winner.

02:05:16.960 | He writes manuscripts and by walking around his office,

02:05:21.980 | pacing and talking into his phone.

02:05:23.700 | - I always think of the Woody Allen movie

02:05:25.940 | where the Allen Alder character is talking about,

02:05:30.940 | yeah, he's speaking comedy ideas into the phone.

02:05:35.400 | It's really pretentious.

02:05:37.260 | - I liked that movie about Harvey Milk,

02:05:39.900 | that Sean Penn played Harvey Milk

02:05:41.620 | because that all took place before I was alive,

02:05:43.740 | mostly in the Bay Area.

02:05:44.860 | But there's these beautiful scenes of him,

02:05:47.360 | as I recall, sitting there at his kitchen table,

02:05:49.580 | talking into a tape recorder at night,

02:05:51.720 | talking about how he predicted

02:05:52.820 | that he would be possibly assassinated, et cetera.

02:05:55.920 | And this goes back to the strummer thing

02:05:57.940 | about writing things down.

02:05:59.380 | I think that a lot of people, including myself,

02:06:02.900 | feel a little bit of egotistical guilt around like,

02:06:06.740 | who am I to think that my ideas could be worthwhile

02:06:09.680 | or something?

02:06:10.520 | But I think over time I've come to realize

02:06:14.400 | that the ideas about experiments or health,

02:06:16.660 | questions I have about health,

02:06:18.180 | they don't always, but oftentimes can lead to real seeds

02:06:24.100 | that grow into trees.

02:06:24.940 | - But it's something that's interesting to you.

02:06:27.260 | It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.

02:06:30.440 | Like most of my notes are not for anyone else's use.

02:06:35.440 | Like I hear about something that's interesting to me

02:06:38.840 | and I think about, okay, I want to learn more about this,

02:06:41.460 | whatever it is.

02:06:42.300 | And then sometimes those things work their way

02:06:44.420 | into things I'm doing

02:06:45.300 | because the universe seems to work in that way.

02:06:48.300 | But I rarely am learning something

02:06:50.780 | with the idea of using it.

02:06:54.080 | I learn things with the idea of this is what I want to know.

02:06:57.940 | This is what's interesting to me.

02:06:59.940 | And then often those things that are interesting to me

02:07:03.200 | can find their way into other projects just because they do.

02:07:08.620 | - Yeah, it's almost like Kohler kindling,

02:07:10.460 | but the moment that you think of it that way,

02:07:13.200 | it sort of, it sounds so extractive, right?

02:07:16.800 | But if you, so you take this walk

02:07:19.640 | and you're writing down the occasional idea perhaps,

02:07:24.460 | and then what is the next sort of the way that,

02:07:29.220 | here are less than do this, then this, then that.

02:07:31.660 | I'm interested in like, where does your mind shift to?

02:07:34.080 | Does it become more structured as the day goes on?

02:07:36.140 | Does your thinking become more structured around projects

02:07:39.220 | and plans? - I try to deal with things

02:07:43.220 | that need dealing with after that

02:07:45.840 | and in preparation for going to work.

02:07:49.440 | And then when I go to work, it's more like free,

02:07:52.920 | this free thing where I'm, again,

02:07:56.140 | hoping something good comes, welcoming something good,

02:08:01.020 | paying attention and maybe trying to will it to happen,

02:08:05.460 | but knowing I don't have the ability to make it happen.

02:08:10.460 | I can just be present for it and be ready if it does arrive.

02:08:15.540 | - Some of the more surprising,

02:08:19.040 | and I found really interesting and useful features

02:08:22.780 | of the book were about dancing with structure

02:08:27.780 | and lack of structure.

02:08:29.620 | So when I think of structure, I think of like deadlines.

02:08:32.300 | So when you are in the process of creating something,

02:08:35.740 | obviously deadlines are relevant, time of day, right?

02:08:40.660 | There's only so many hours in the day

02:08:42.200 | where one can stay in the groove

02:08:44.060 | or this like readiness to receive.

02:08:46.360 | Have you ever found yourself in that mode

02:08:51.140 | where you're kind of grinding like, ah, like here we are,

02:08:53.580 | like, okay, I'm not coming home for dinner at night.

02:08:55.660 | It's the next, you know, we're going to push.

02:08:58.260 | We're like put on the coffee pot kind of thing.

02:09:00.860 | - A lot, a lot in the, over the course of my life a lot,

02:09:04.940 | not as much now.

02:09:06.620 | And one of the things that I discovered

02:09:10.200 | through working on the book was the phases of work.

02:09:15.200 | We're not required to treat the different phases of work

02:09:19.020 | in the same way.

02:09:19.980 | Whereas before I did,

02:09:22.300 | before everything was in this state of play,

02:09:26.520 | everything had a wide open time schedule.

02:09:31.440 | It happens when it happens.

02:09:33.080 | And if it takes two years or three years,

02:09:37.440 | it doesn't matter, it's not about that.

02:09:39.320 | It's only about this thing has to be great.

02:09:41.760 | And what I came to realize in working on the book

02:09:43.860 | is that there are different phases.

02:09:46.340 | And the first phase is this seed collecting phase,

02:09:49.220 | which is kind of an ongoing part of life in general.

02:09:52.820 | I do that.

02:09:53.880 | I do that always, whether I'm working on something or not,

02:09:58.880 | I'm always in the seed collecting phase

02:10:01.020 | and there's no deadline or just anything that interests me

02:10:05.260 | that I think I want to learn more about

02:10:08.540 | or has potential to be something, anything.

02:10:11.180 | Something, I hear something, think, hmm,

02:10:14.440 | I'd like to read more about that.

02:10:15.580 | Or I wonder if there's a movie about that.

02:10:17.700 | Is there a movie about that?

02:10:18.660 | If not, maybe there's a movie to be made.

02:10:21.220 | You know, again, this is something I want in my life.

02:10:25.200 | Let's see if it exists.

02:10:26.160 | If it doesn't exist,

02:10:27.100 | then maybe that's something interesting to pursue.

02:10:30.160 | But I know that the desire is there 'cause I have it.

02:10:32.760 | So in the seed phase, there's no deadlines.

02:10:36.960 | It's just a wide open part.

02:10:39.500 | And then the next phase is called the experimentation phase

02:10:42.440 | where you start experimenting

02:10:45.380 | to see what the seeds want to do.

02:10:48.960 | You're involved, but you're more of a,

02:10:51.820 | you're not really dictating the action.

02:10:58.400 | You're setting the stage for something to happen,

02:11:02.820 | but it's not about you yet.

02:11:04.880 | So it'd be like the equivalent of you'd plant the seed,

02:11:10.180 | you would water it,

02:11:11.540 | you would make sure it was in the sun and you'd wait.

02:11:16.060 | So you're involved, but you can't make it grow, you know?

02:11:20.500 | And then when it sprouts and it grows

02:11:22.720 | and or if it turns into a plant,

02:11:25.120 | then you can look at the plants like,

02:11:26.900 | okay, how does this plant,

02:11:28.480 | what's the potential of this plant?

02:11:31.680 | And then that the third phase is the crafting phase

02:11:34.860 | where it's like, okay, I have this plant,

02:11:37.220 | maybe I'm gonna trim it,

02:11:38.480 | or maybe I'm gonna combine it with these other plants

02:11:42.320 | to make something else with it.

02:11:43.880 | Now it's like material that you have.

02:11:46.540 | And then finally is the completion or finishing phase,

02:11:51.120 | which is the final edit, getting to the version of it,

02:11:55.980 | the version of it that's the one

02:11:57.440 | that you can share with the world

02:11:58.660 | if that's something you're gonna do.

02:12:00.400 | And I've come to realize that by the time

02:12:05.040 | you're going into the completion phase,

02:12:08.560 | you can have a deadline and it won't hurt the project.

02:12:12.200 | In fact, it might help the project.

02:12:14.240 | And I didn't know that before.

02:12:15.560 | So I've worked on projects that have gone longer

02:12:18.080 | than they necessarily needed to,

02:12:20.320 | and maybe not in the best interest of the project

02:12:24.480 | because I didn't know that.

02:12:25.580 | I didn't understand the timing of that

02:12:28.560 | because I am so aware of the necessity

02:12:33.560 | in the experimental phase to not have a deadline,

02:12:40.760 | that I assumed that that held through the whole project.

02:12:44.660 | And it's not a clear phase one finishes

02:12:50.640 | and then you start phase two, phase two finishes

02:12:52.680 | and then you start phase three.

02:12:54.160 | You move back and forth between them.

02:12:55.920 | I'm collecting seeds all the time.

02:12:57.280 | I'm always in phase one.

02:12:59.080 | And then probably to some degree,

02:13:02.360 | there's always some version of experimentation going on.

02:13:05.440 | Maybe not now, but if something's on a list of things

02:13:08.320 | I wanna look at, hopefully I'll get to the list

02:13:11.480 | and give them some experimentation

02:13:13.360 | and see what they can turn into.

02:13:15.340 | And then if they do turn into something,

02:13:18.000 | then they get to the crafting phase where it's more,

02:13:20.600 | okay, now I have this thing.

02:13:22.960 | What do I know about this kind of thing?

02:13:25.520 | What can I match this with?

02:13:27.320 | What can I use this for?

02:13:28.560 | How can I be involved as a craftsman?

02:13:31.640 | And by the end of the crafting phase

02:13:34.480 | or deep into the crafting phase,

02:13:37.760 | you can start seeing the end.

02:13:40.080 | You can start seeing an end

02:13:41.800 | and then you can even dictate an end.

02:13:44.060 | But I recommend if you do just dictate it for you,

02:13:46.520 | not for anyone else,

02:13:47.360 | because if something comes up where you learn,

02:13:51.080 | if you set a deadline, a public deadline,

02:13:56.080 | and then a new discovery happens along the way

02:13:59.600 | and you realize, oh, this could actually be much better

02:14:01.440 | than I thought, but I need more time.

02:14:04.020 | It's harder to do that if you set the deadline.

02:14:06.540 | So I would say have an internal deadline to get to finish it.

02:14:11.080 | That said, if an unusual situation comes up

02:14:15.040 | and it's better for everything not to meet that deadline,

02:14:18.260 | it's one of those rules that you set the rule to break it

02:14:22.760 | if it's what's best for the project.

02:14:24.980 | But that was a new thing for me and it helped me a lot.

02:14:29.500 | - When did you realize that?

02:14:32.080 | - In collecting the material for the book

02:14:35.080 | and thinking about it, when I realized that it was phases,

02:14:39.180 | I didn't know any of this.

02:14:40.600 | When I started writing the book,

02:14:42.660 | I didn't know hardly any of the things in the book.

02:14:46.180 | They were more, most of it would be reverse engineering,

02:14:51.180 | something that I had experience, a successful experience,

02:14:56.600 | using these methods without knowing they were methods,

02:15:00.260 | just following my instincts got me to something good.

02:15:04.900 | And then I would look back at why did I want to do that?

02:15:09.900 | And is there a principle at play

02:15:14.480 | that could be of use outside of this case?

02:15:18.800 | And how do I explain that?

02:15:21.160 | And that's what the book is,

02:15:22.380 | is these reverse engineered principles

02:15:25.540 | that have led to good decision-making

02:15:29.580 | and trying to make things.

02:15:32.660 | The chapter on self-doubt was really interesting to me.

02:15:36.340 | That's where all-

02:15:37.340 | - Tell me what it says 'cause I can't remember.

02:15:39.660 | - Well, I'll read the first sentence of it,

02:15:42.220 | which is that self-doubt lives in all of us.

02:15:45.620 | And while we may wish it was gone, it is there to serve us.

02:15:49.300 | And it goes on to describe how to dance with self-doubt

02:15:52.900 | in not so many words.

02:15:56.380 | I think there's a saying that is actually

02:16:00.100 | from the landscape of psychology,

02:16:03.080 | which is generally discussed

02:16:05.700 | in a kind of pathological context,

02:16:08.780 | which is if nothing matters, anything goes.

02:16:12.700 | This is usually the phrase used to describe people

02:16:15.060 | who feel as if like there's no use in living,

02:16:18.200 | so just go crazy often to self-destruct.

02:16:22.620 | But there's a light version of this, I realize,

02:16:26.020 | where in some sense the creative process

02:16:29.260 | seems to have something to do with,

02:16:31.640 | if you're not paying attention to what outcomes are,

02:16:33.880 | like who likes it, who doesn't like it,

02:16:35.700 | and you're just doing it for you,

02:16:37.100 | you make the rule play, I want to delight myself,

02:16:41.600 | well, then anything goes and you have an infinite rule set

02:16:45.040 | there to extract from, at least initially.

02:16:47.340 | So as one gets better at their craft,

02:16:52.340 | you can imagine self-doubt goes down.

02:16:54.380 | I think that's the perception of a lot of people, right?

02:16:56.840 | You get better at what you're doing.

02:16:58.800 | You can land more free throws as a basketball player.

02:17:02.260 | You can hit more home runs as a baseball player.

02:17:04.180 | You can produce more platinum albums as an artist.

02:17:08.040 | Self-confidence goes up, self-doubt goes down.

02:17:12.180 | But I think you and I both know a number of people

02:17:14.580 | who are successful enough to know that oftentimes

02:17:17.240 | there's a mirror image to that where people feel pressure

02:17:20.060 | because they did it once, now they got to do it again.

02:17:22.580 | - Yes, or that you think your self-doubt

02:17:27.580 | and you think you're so good at it that it comes easily

02:17:32.580 | and you don't have to apply yourself.

02:17:34.640 | - Arrogance.

02:17:35.620 | - Yeah, so self-doubt, it's a check on yourself.

02:17:40.620 | It can either be really helpful or it can undermine you.

02:17:47.560 | So it's something we all have and if we let it undermine us,

02:17:51.760 | then we don't make anything and that's not good.

02:17:56.800 | But when used as a balancing tool in our lives,

02:18:01.800 | it serves a great function.

02:18:03.900 | Where we really do, it's okay to have all the confidence

02:18:07.820 | in the world and still second guess

02:18:12.160 | is this the best it can be?

02:18:13.660 | I think the phrases in the book,

02:18:17.180 | you can doubt your way to a great work, to a masterpiece.

02:18:23.580 | Sometimes that questioning allows you to push further

02:18:28.580 | than just accepting I made it so it's good.

02:18:31.560 | - Yeah, I've encountered more people that seem to be driven

02:18:36.060 | by self-doubt and the need to constantly perform

02:18:41.060 | and perform again than I have real arrogance.

02:18:44.240 | Just that's been my experience, fortunately.

02:18:46.880 | I've met some arrogant people in my life,

02:18:48.520 | but, and of course we never, as a psychiatrist

02:18:52.840 | who I admire a lot and bio-engineer who was a guest

02:18:55.200 | on this podcast, Karl Deisseroth said,

02:18:57.600 | "We never really know how other people feel."

02:19:01.520 | I mean, most of the time we don't even know how we feel.

02:19:03.260 | Again, language is a very deprived format

02:19:05.900 | for explaining feelings.

02:19:07.040 | So we think somebody feels one way, but we can observe

02:19:09.660 | and it could be another, but we observe their behavior.

02:19:12.520 | So in the sense of returning to the work,

02:19:15.180 | just always returning to process.

02:19:17.620 | It sounds like your routine is fairly scripted,

02:19:19.820 | at least now, but the things that you are getting

02:19:23.560 | in touch with, wrestling, sleep and dreaming, the ocean,

02:19:28.560 | there's a predictability of them because you can access them

02:19:32.860 | in a predictable way, but they seem to have

02:19:35.920 | a lot of unpredictability in them.

02:19:37.920 | The ocean is completely unpredictable.

02:19:39.960 | - I also listen to a lot of music that I don't know.

02:19:42.460 | So I listen to a lot of classical music and less so,

02:19:49.660 | but some jazz and a lot of old music

02:19:54.240 | that I never heard before.

02:19:56.260 | And I like being surprised by music.

02:19:59.780 | And sometimes it really catches me off guard.

02:20:04.800 | Like I shazam a lot, you know,

02:20:06.800 | when I hear something I like.

02:20:09.100 | - Have you ever encountered music that really works well

02:20:12.720 | live, but just does not work in a recording?

02:20:15.480 | Or that is that much better live,

02:20:18.140 | but the recording is sort of meh.

02:20:20.100 | You don't have to name names.

02:20:21.780 | - Yeah, I don't think so.

02:20:22.600 | I feel like maybe there is some artists who are great live,

02:20:27.160 | who've never captured it well on record.

02:20:29.960 | Example would probably be The Grateful Dead's

02:20:32.620 | a good example of a band where I feel like their albums

02:20:34.900 | are not their strong point, but there,

02:20:37.700 | if you hear live recordings, they're really interesting

02:20:40.340 | and really different from each other.

02:20:42.260 | And that's kind of part of what makes The Grateful Dead

02:20:44.580 | interesting is their unpredictability.

02:20:47.960 | I confess, I had a sister who listened to The Grateful Dead

02:20:50.740 | and I got taken to a few shows when I was younger

02:20:52.900 | and they would do that, what is it called?

02:20:54.660 | Space, it was like these drum solos

02:20:57.020 | that would go on for hours and hours.

02:20:58.520 | This is like the antithesis of punk rock shows

02:21:00.380 | where songs are like 90 to 120 seconds.

02:21:02.480 | And I remember thinking like, what is this?

02:21:06.780 | What is this?

02:21:07.620 | But people I know who love The Grateful Dead,

02:21:12.060 | love that uncertainty about where that drum thing,

02:21:16.380 | I think they do call it space.

02:21:17.820 | Forgive me, dead heads.

02:21:18.920 | I'm not enough of one to get it right.

02:21:21.160 | - But they're looking for something

02:21:24.160 | and sometimes they find it.

02:21:25.980 | And if you're there when they find it, it feels exciting.

02:21:28.940 | 'Cause it's not just, it's not just following a script.

02:21:33.940 | It's like something is really happening.

02:21:37.200 | It's a real moment.

02:21:39.360 | It's something that I aim for in the studio

02:21:46.180 | is to create real moments that when you hear them,

02:21:50.700 | they don't necessarily sound perfect.

02:21:53.500 | They sound like something that really happened.

02:21:56.000 | And in that moment, something happened

02:21:58.340 | and it's a special moment.

02:22:00.260 | And you can feel that if they were to play it again,

02:22:05.260 | it wouldn't be like that.

02:22:08.940 | There's something really exciting about that.

02:22:11.060 | It's really what, it's how jazz works as well.

02:22:15.680 | And I think some of bringing some of that jazz mentality

02:22:20.680 | into other types of music is really interesting

02:22:25.960 | and makes for compelling things.

02:22:27.980 | 'Cause when you hear them, there's a certain amount of,

02:22:32.280 | you really have to pay attention to do it.

02:22:36.880 | When you're doing it, you're really paying attention.

02:22:39.320 | It's like, I don't really know.

02:22:41.120 | There's no music.

02:22:42.060 | There's no map to follow.

02:22:46.660 | And now we're working together to make something.

02:22:50.260 | Do I play or not play?

02:22:52.060 | When do I play?

02:22:53.660 | And you're really paying attention.

02:22:55.440 | And can I add, or you go to start adding something

02:22:58.620 | and someone else added something like, oh, I can't do that.

02:23:01.700 | And it's like, everyone's just in this thing,

02:23:06.220 | in this moment, experiencing this thing at once

02:23:11.900 | that you can feel as a listener.

02:23:14.820 | And we get to hear their excitement of finding it.

02:23:19.820 | And it's thrilling when it happens.

02:23:23.360 | So I like that experience.

02:23:25.380 | I feel like that's kind of what the dead do live.

02:23:28.060 | They'll play songs in different ways.

02:23:30.080 | And again, I don't know very much about the dead

02:23:33.580 | and it's sort of a newer,

02:23:35.020 | it's newer for me to listen to the dead.

02:23:37.600 | Growing up, I never listened to the dead.

02:23:39.980 | But probably because I heard songs on their albums

02:23:42.500 | and thought, this doesn't really speak to me.

02:23:44.340 | But I think that the albums don't really reflect

02:23:47.420 | what's special about them.

02:23:49.340 | - I think a lot of their shows were recorded, right?

02:23:51.260 | Or videotaped.

02:23:52.220 | - Yes, by fans, which they supported.

02:23:56.380 | They supported that everybody come, everybody tape,

02:23:59.140 | everybody trade tapes.

02:24:01.580 | It made sense for who that band was.

02:24:04.540 | - They redefined, or they defined, excuse me,

02:24:07.420 | the notion of followers.

02:24:08.540 | I mean, people literally gave up their lives

02:24:10.580 | or spent much of their lives

02:24:12.580 | literally driving from city to city to follow them.

02:24:15.980 | - Because it's not like going from city to city

02:24:19.140 | to watch a movie over and over.

02:24:21.340 | 'Cause it's not a movie.

02:24:22.800 | It's different every night, it's changing.

02:24:24.900 | - Pretty incredible phenomenon.

02:24:27.780 | I don't know of anything else quite like it except cults.

02:24:31.960 | And those often don't end well.

02:24:34.460 | [laughs]

02:24:36.840 | - I think a guy that mixed the punch

02:24:39.080 | for the Jonestown Massacre went to my high school.

02:24:41.220 | That was the- - Is that true?

02:24:42.280 | - I think so, yeah. - That's amazing.

02:24:43.440 | - My sister is really good at all this kind of like

02:24:45.600 | '70s, '80s, like dark psychology trivia.

02:24:50.600 | She's a very light person, but-

02:24:52.320 | - Did you read "Season of the Witch?"

02:24:54.500 | - No.

02:24:55.340 | - It's about San Francisco in the '60s.

02:24:57.040 | It's great, you'll love it.

02:24:58.760 | - One- - Great book.

02:25:00.240 | - I'll have to check it out.

02:25:01.640 | The way you describe experiences going by in time

02:25:06.760 | or things emerging in time and the creative process

02:25:10.240 | being a way of sort of capturing those moments,

02:25:14.640 | maybe rearranging, maybe watering, et cetera,

02:25:18.560 | I thought was beautifully captured

02:25:21.640 | in the analogy you gave about a kind of a conveyor belt

02:25:25.880 | going by of things, right?

02:25:29.500 | That we think of the creative process

02:25:30.860 | like it's going to land in us or we're going to enter it

02:25:34.560 | or that we're going to sit there in a chair

02:25:35.760 | and like grid our teeth.

02:25:36.920 | There's like a some Hemingway quote

02:25:38.980 | where you just sit there and stare at the page

02:25:40.480 | until the beads of blood form on your forehead or something.

02:25:42.920 | Maybe it was him, maybe it was,

02:25:44.320 | sounds like Bukowski or something.

02:25:45.520 | Anyway, I'm going to get this wrong.

02:25:46.760 | People tell me in the comments.

02:25:48.320 | Maybe no one said it, it was a dream.

02:25:51.760 | But I love this conveyor belt thing.

02:25:55.680 | That reminds me of being in laboratory,

02:25:58.040 | doing experiments thinking I was trying to solve one thing

02:26:01.820 | and then seeing something else

02:26:03.760 | and then having to make the decision,

02:26:05.040 | like is that really cool enough to drop everything

02:26:07.320 | and go that direction or to kind of spend a night

02:26:10.360 | or a week or a career going that way?

02:26:12.160 | I mean, these are kind of big decisions

02:26:13.760 | given that at least as far as we know,

02:26:15.200 | we're going to live 100 years or less.

02:26:18.220 | But this idea that we have, you know,

02:26:21.400 | thoughts and experiences in our past

02:26:23.520 | and we can draw on and like try and make good decisions.

02:26:26.000 | Do we like grab these things off the conveyor or not?

02:26:29.960 | I'm hearing you and I'm starting to realize

02:26:32.980 | that being attached to the past might be the worst thing

02:26:37.300 | that one could do in terms of being able

02:26:39.700 | to make good decisions in this context.

02:26:43.440 | Because we have a kind of a playbook

02:26:45.280 | of what's worked and what hasn't worked.

02:26:46.880 | But you actually talk about this.

02:26:49.000 | There's a passage in the book, you know,

02:26:50.700 | that I'll just read it.

02:26:52.960 | To be aware of the assumption

02:26:55.880 | that the way you work is the best way

02:26:58.000 | simply because it's the way you've done it before.

02:27:02.000 | I sat with this page for almost 10 full minutes,

02:27:04.600 | which is not something I do very often.

02:27:06.820 | Maybe you could elaborate on this a little bit.

02:27:10.000 | I mean, we want to have, you know,

02:27:12.280 | mechanisms and routines we can trust.

02:27:15.440 | But this is a, I think an important warning.

02:27:19.500 | - Yeah, when something works,

02:27:22.920 | it's easy to be fooled into believing

02:27:27.920 | that's the way to do it or that's the right way.

02:27:32.080 | It's just a way.

02:27:33.480 | And it's just a way that happened to work that time.

02:27:36.860 | And this plays into when you get advice

02:27:41.860 | from people who have more experience than you.

02:27:47.120 | You explain your situation.

02:27:50.740 | They tell you their advice.

02:27:52.720 | The advice that they're giving you

02:27:54.220 | is not based on your life or your experience.

02:27:57.800 | It's based on their life and their experience.

02:28:00.800 | And the stories that they're telling

02:28:03.240 | are based on experiences they've had

02:28:05.680 | that have very different data points than yours.

02:28:10.800 | So maybe they're giving you good advice,

02:28:14.640 | but maybe they're giving you good advice for them

02:28:17.460 | and not giving you good advice for you.

02:28:19.460 | And it's easy when we try something

02:28:25.320 | and have a result, a positive result,

02:28:29.080 | thinking this is, everybody can do this.

02:28:34.080 | You know, the way I was vegan for a long time, 22 years,

02:28:38.580 | and then I started eating, I started eating animal protein

02:28:43.580 | and then eventually changed my diet a few times

02:28:50.080 | to the point where I lost a lot of weight.

02:28:52.120 | The way that I did it worked for me.

02:28:57.640 | Right before that happened,

02:28:59.920 | I did something that I was told

02:29:04.360 | that everyone else who did what you did,

02:29:07.560 | they all lost weight for whatever reason I didn't.

02:29:10.360 | So the idea that we know what's right for someone else,

02:29:15.160 | I think it's hard enough to even figure out

02:29:17.440 | what's right for ourselves.

02:29:19.340 | And if we do somehow crack the code of what's right for us,

02:29:24.720 | be happy we have it, and then still know,

02:29:27.880 | I wonder if that's the only way.

02:29:29.560 | Maybe there's an even better way

02:29:30.920 | that we're not considering.

02:29:32.280 | You know, like not to get comfortable

02:29:36.700 | with thinking we know how it works

02:29:39.420 | just because we get the outcome we want.

02:29:42.080 | - I was raised in science with a principle.

02:29:44.560 | It was literally dictated to me as a principle,

02:29:46.600 | almost like a rule of religion,

02:29:48.100 | which was that the brain is plastic.

02:29:50.440 | It can change and learn until you're about 25

02:29:52.520 | and then the critical periods end and that's it.

02:29:55.560 | And this was a rule,

02:29:57.280 | essentially it was dictated a Nobel Prize,

02:29:59.640 | which was very deserved,

02:30:00.740 | given to my scientific great-grandparents.

02:30:02.700 | They deserve it.

02:30:03.680 | But I was told there was no changing

02:30:08.440 | of brain structure function in any meaningful way

02:30:11.960 | after age 25 or so.

02:30:14.760 | Turns out that's completely wrong.

02:30:16.720 | Sorry, David and Torsten, but they knew it was wrong.

02:30:21.560 | - Wow, that's interesting.

02:30:23.300 | - Yeah, it was actively suppressed

02:30:25.620 | because of the competitive nature of prizes

02:30:28.120 | and discoveries at that time.

02:30:29.160 | And a guy named Mike Merzenich and his student,

02:30:32.480 | Greg Reckenzone, were showing that adult plasticity exists.

02:30:37.480 | And only now is this really starting to emerge as a theme.

02:30:41.600 | Just crazy, like there were so many reasons

02:30:44.240 | and the textbook said it.

02:30:46.320 | We were all told it and it changed our behavior.

02:30:49.980 | Now we know this to be completely false.

02:30:52.160 | There's plasticity throughout the lifespan.

02:30:54.300 | There's limits to it here and there,

02:30:55.680 | but it's just far and away a different story.

02:30:58.820 | - So why would that be the only time that ever happened?

02:31:01.740 | - Exactly, but the field was run

02:31:04.820 | by a very small cabal of people at that time.

02:31:07.440 | - All fields are run by a very small cabal of people

02:31:10.680 | who have an investment in things being the way they are now

02:31:14.300 | because they're in charge.

02:31:15.460 | - And one of the great things about getting older is that,

02:31:18.380 | well, fortunately everyone eventually ages.

02:31:21.040 | And I hope that David unfortunately passed away.

02:31:23.920 | He was lovely, Torsten's lovely, he's still alive.

02:31:26.360 | And they would say, I think Torsten would say,

02:31:28.700 | "Yeah, we should have been a little more open or kind

02:31:31.680 | in allowing these other ideas."

02:31:33.760 | But I think that-

02:31:35.040 | - But just think about all the years that were wasted

02:31:38.580 | with this misunderstanding.

02:31:41.520 | - Absolutely, absolutely.

02:31:43.260 | And it went beyond that and there were BBC specials

02:31:46.400 | that helped propagate this.

02:31:47.720 | And one of the goals of the podcast has been to try

02:31:51.160 | and shine light on ideas that at first seemed crazy.

02:31:54.800 | Like I know you and I are both semi-obsessed

02:31:57.700 | with the health benefits of light.

02:31:59.820 | And you hear about this stuff like negative ion therapy.

02:32:03.200 | It sounds crazy, right?

02:32:04.280 | Sounds like something you would only hear about

02:32:05.960 | at Esalen or in Big Sur.

02:32:07.360 | Turns out negative ionization therapy for sleep and mood

02:32:10.940 | is based on really amazing work out of Columbia

02:32:13.280 | by a guy named Michael Terman.

02:32:15.340 | The Nobel Prize, I think it was in 1916,

02:32:17.740 | was given for phototherapy for the treatment of lupus.

02:32:20.480 | Like this idea that certain wavelengths of light

02:32:23.780 | can help treat medical conditions is not a new idea.

02:32:27.300 | But somehow we see a red light.

02:32:29.320 | We're not used to seeing red lights except in sunsets

02:32:32.160 | and on stoplights, and somehow it bothers people

02:32:36.540 | or it makes them feel like-

02:32:38.380 | - Well, it undermines a business model

02:32:43.820 | that doesn't take red light into consideration.

02:32:46.440 | - Right, until it does, and then it's co-opted there.

02:32:51.240 | And the place that what I look to is acupuncture.

02:32:53.900 | For a lot of years, people said, well, acupuncture,

02:32:56.400 | this is like no mechanism, no mechanism, no mechanism.

02:32:58.760 | There's a lab at Harvard, a guy named Chufu Ma,

02:33:01.400 | who I know reasonably well, whose laboratory is dedicated

02:33:04.080 | to trying to figure out the biological mechanisms

02:33:06.080 | of acupuncture.

02:33:06.920 | And they are discovering what everyone has known

02:33:09.320 | for thousands of years, which is that incredible effects

02:33:12.000 | on anti-inflammation, the gut microbiome.

02:33:15.440 | So-

02:33:16.640 | - I have a friend who was having a terrible back problem.

02:33:21.520 | And I suggested that he see an acupuncturist.

02:33:24.340 | And he went to the acupuncturist that I suggested,

02:33:27.340 | and his back problem completely healed,

02:33:30.920 | almost instantaneously.

02:33:32.700 | And I asked him, have you been keeping up?

02:33:36.800 | 'Cause he had another flare up.

02:33:38.440 | He's like, no, I can't go back there

02:33:40.440 | because acupuncture doesn't work.

02:33:42.520 | I said, well, you saw it work for you.

02:33:46.080 | He's like, yeah, but there's no science.

02:33:48.400 | - Wow. - Yeah.

02:33:49.580 | - Oh, he's got it.

02:33:50.840 | Now there's good science.

02:33:52.600 | And published in premier journals,

02:33:55.600 | what's interesting is,

02:33:56.760 | this is a little bit of science editorial,

02:33:58.080 | but since we like to exchange information about health

02:34:00.280 | and things of that sort, the editorial staff of a journal

02:34:04.000 | dictates what gets published and what doesn't.

02:34:06.840 | And the premier journals have an outsized effect

02:34:09.440 | on what the media covers.

02:34:11.040 | And so the beautiful thing is the journal staff now

02:34:15.800 | is of the age that they grew up hearing about acupuncture.

02:34:19.680 | Hypnosis has a powerful clinical effect if it's done right.

02:34:23.660 | Yoga nidra and similar practices.

02:34:26.840 | And so the tides are changing,

02:34:29.120 | but I sometimes like to take a step back and think,

02:34:31.720 | what are we confronted with now that seems crazy

02:34:35.700 | that in 10 years, the kids that will be the,

02:34:38.360 | 'cause to me they're kids, will be journal editors.

02:34:41.160 | Like, oh yeah, absolutely.

02:34:42.900 | I'm making this up,

02:34:44.760 | but putting tuning forks against your head

02:34:46.840 | or something like that.

02:34:47.680 | Like sound wave therapy.

02:34:49.620 | I think when one adopts a stance of like,

02:34:55.400 | we have to filter everything

02:34:58.220 | through the limitations of our biology,

02:35:00.400 | but also through the sociology of like the way culture goes,

02:35:05.400 | it becomes a different story.

02:35:08.120 | - How do you deal with that?

02:35:09.640 | Not just in terms of health,

02:35:11.160 | but in terms of thinking about anything.

02:35:14.780 | It sounds like you don't spend a whole lot of time

02:35:16.720 | thinking about what people are going to think is cool or not.

02:35:19.280 | - No, I can't.

02:35:20.120 | - You're punk rocker at heart.

02:35:21.280 | - Yes.

02:35:22.120 | - You still are.

02:35:22.960 | - Yes, I can't.

02:35:24.320 | I just know what I like and what I don't.

02:35:26.880 | I know what works for me and what doesn't.

02:35:29.360 | I try things and I'm constantly looking for new,

02:35:33.540 | better solutions to anything.

02:35:35.760 | And wherever they come from, it doesn't matter.

02:35:37.440 | It could come from Stanford,

02:35:40.320 | or it could come from the guy talking to himself

02:35:43.640 | on the street.

02:35:44.800 | If it works, I'm good.

02:35:46.760 | It doesn't really matter to me at all.

02:35:48.640 | I don't hold any of it tightly.

02:35:53.640 | - Well, fortunately there's now a division

02:35:56.480 | of the National Institutes of Health

02:35:57.800 | called Complementary and Alternative Health.

02:36:01.500 | And it's amazing.

02:36:03.920 | And CCIH is run by a woman who has published on,

02:36:07.960 | this is interesting,

02:36:09.920 | some of the anti-cancer effects of things like acupuncture.

02:36:14.920 | Not that acupuncture can cure all cancers,

02:36:19.840 | but real data that I think for a lot of people,

02:36:24.840 | certainly of the generation above us,

02:36:29.320 | they just are not interested.

02:36:31.820 | It sheds new light on the Andrew Wiles,

02:36:35.760 | the Paul Stanmetses, the wild ones.

02:36:40.000 | - Ozone therapy, or there's so many,

02:36:43.380 | there's so many we can look at.

02:36:44.640 | I mean, for a long time,

02:36:46.280 | nutrition was just thought of as something

02:36:48.520 | that doesn't matter what you eat.

02:36:50.600 | It's what medicine you take and what,

02:36:53.700 | it's like the food is everything.

02:36:58.060 | - Food is a powerful variable.

02:37:01.620 | In the landscape of online nutrition,

02:37:04.320 | it's sort of one of the third rails for anyone like myself

02:37:07.560 | who's out there on social media.

02:37:09.000 | You do a very good job of putting out posts on Twitter

02:37:12.320 | and Instagram, but each day you take it down,

02:37:14.880 | you put up a new one.

02:37:15.880 | - And I don't talk about any,

02:37:16.960 | I only talk about, I talk about creative ideas.

02:37:20.000 | I don't talk about anything specific related to anything

02:37:23.720 | other than maybe something like don't believe what you hear.

02:37:30.360 | - Right, exactly.

02:37:31.360 | Well, in the landscape of nutrition,

02:37:33.640 | sometimes I now place it through the filter

02:37:36.480 | of professional wrestling.

02:37:37.620 | You've got your vegans and your omnivores

02:37:40.480 | and your carnivore MD, and you've got liver king,

02:37:45.480 | and you've got everything in between, right?

02:37:47.960 | So you could translate that

02:37:51.020 | to any number of different areas.

02:37:52.740 | Fashion probably has its people.

02:37:54.320 | I'm just not aware of where they are.

02:37:55.260 | Music has theirs, and sports has theirs,

02:37:58.400 | and science has theirs, characters.

02:38:00.960 | So are we all just pro wrestling like characters

02:38:05.760 | in these different domains,

02:38:07.040 | and we're taking ourselves and each other way too seriously?

02:38:10.520 | - Yeah, it's all, we don't know anything.

02:38:12.880 | It's all, if someone has an idea

02:38:15.360 | and it sounds interesting to you, try it,

02:38:17.100 | and if it doesn't work, it's okay, try something else.

02:38:20.040 | - You're an empiricist.

02:38:21.080 | - Yeah, whatever works, whatever works.

02:38:23.480 | And if something seems interesting to you

02:38:27.040 | and you're excited by it,

02:38:28.240 | why not try it?

02:38:29.420 | It's, you know, I try very fringy things.

02:38:32.680 | I like, in some ways, the more unrealistic it seems,

02:38:37.680 | the more interesting it is to me,

02:38:41.600 | because I feel like that's getting closer

02:38:43.480 | to something that somebody doesn't want me to know, you know?

02:38:48.480 | - But you're not a big drug guy,

02:38:51.920 | like the big psychedelic craze that's happening now

02:38:54.600 | and that happened some years back.

02:38:56.680 | - I'm not against it, it just has never been

02:38:58.600 | something that I've done.

02:38:59.760 | - Yeah, yeah, it's an interesting area

02:39:02.440 | that's definitely making its headway

02:39:04.640 | inside of standard academic science and medicine now.

02:39:08.120 | - I'm interested in non-formological approaches to things,

02:39:15.680 | whatever they are.

02:39:16.800 | - Well, I'm a big believer that also

02:39:19.000 | that behavioral dos and don'ts first are the,

02:39:22.880 | they're the most fun to explore,

02:39:24.760 | because in general, unless it's something like, you know,

02:39:27.760 | jumping between buildings, doing parkour or something,

02:39:30.400 | most of the time you're not going to injure or harm yourself.

02:39:33.460 | There's more room for iteration

02:39:35.300 | than there is with a pill or a potion.

02:39:37.200 | Although, you know, certainly pharmacology has its place.

02:39:41.200 | So you've had creative works,

02:39:46.440 | certainly within the realm of music,

02:39:48.040 | also comedy and producing film and other things.

02:39:52.240 | For somebody out there who of whatever age that they,

02:39:57.080 | maybe they're creating, maybe they're,

02:39:59.840 | they know they have this creative antennae.

02:40:02.960 | Not, the source is outside.

02:40:04.960 | What was it that Strummer said?

02:40:07.480 | I actually wrote this on the wall of my laboratory.

02:40:09.820 | No input, no output.

02:40:11.960 | That's Strummer's law.

02:40:13.520 | It's written in my laboratory.

02:40:14.740 | The people in my lab were so like, what's going on here?

02:40:16.520 | I think one guy knew what that was,

02:40:18.240 | but it was a picture of him and picture of my bulldog

02:40:20.700 | and, you know, no input, no output.

02:40:22.620 | I don't think I can just stay in a room with four walls

02:40:25.920 | and a ceiling and nothing else and create.

02:40:27.780 | I mean, I know that there are a certain number

02:40:29.080 | of things in here, but I do think accessing the world

02:40:32.440 | is important.

02:40:33.280 | - And the world is giving us clues all the time

02:40:34.820 | if we're paying attention.

02:40:35.900 | That's another part of it.

02:40:36.900 | Like, if you're paying attention,

02:40:38.940 | the thing that you are looking for

02:40:43.180 | is being either whispered or screamed at you

02:40:48.420 | in the outside world, if you're paying attention.

02:40:51.720 | - Well, and I forget the exact title of the chapter,

02:40:57.080 | but there's a chapter about staying open to clues

02:41:01.380 | or being on the lookout for clues.

02:41:05.780 | Now I feel tempted to look for the exact title

02:41:09.560 | of that chapter, but-

02:41:10.760 | - It's probably "Look for Clues" is my guess.

02:41:12.380 | - "Look for Clues" sounds like it sounds right.

02:41:14.440 | And since you wrote it, I'm guessing that's right.

02:41:17.560 | So do you think there are clues in everywhere?

02:41:21.760 | - Yes, I think there are clues everywhere.

02:41:24.360 | If we pay attention, we'll hear a phrase,

02:41:27.780 | we'll trigger a thought, we'll see something unexpected.

02:41:32.780 | If someone recommends something to you,

02:41:38.660 | maybe it's a coincidence.

02:41:40.240 | If three people recommend the same thing to you,

02:41:42.360 | maybe it's not, you know, who knows?

02:41:44.320 | Who knows?

02:41:47.520 | I do believe the universe is on the side of creativity

02:41:52.520 | and the universe is supporting things to happen

02:42:00.440 | and they can happen through you

02:42:02.460 | or they could happen through someone else.

02:42:04.780 | So if you're paying attention,

02:42:07.280 | maybe it'll happen through you.

02:42:08.840 | - We had a guest on the podcast named Justin Sonnenberg.

02:42:12.560 | He's an expert in the gut microbiome

02:42:14.600 | and he applied something that, without knowing,

02:42:17.440 | he applied the opposite principle,

02:42:21.460 | the opposite is true principle.

02:42:23.360 | We were talking about these trillions of gut microbiota

02:42:25.900 | that clearly are doing amazing things

02:42:27.480 | to create our transmitters and govern our brain

02:42:30.020 | and even decision-making,

02:42:31.800 | how much sugar is in our system, driving appetite, et cetera.

02:42:35.520 | And he said, you know, we think of them as cargo,

02:42:38.480 | but like maybe we're just vehicles and they're in charge,

02:42:42.720 | that all of our interactions,

02:42:44.040 | like every time we shake hands or touch our eyes,

02:42:45.760 | we're exchanging gut microbiota.

02:42:47.840 | And we think of intelligence as thinking and intelligence.

02:42:52.280 | And he's a microbiologist.

02:42:54.360 | And in all seriousness, he said,

02:42:58.040 | maybe we're the ones being manipulated.

02:43:00.260 | We're the house cats.

02:43:01.560 | And we think here we are,

02:43:02.640 | we're falling in love and kissing and shaking hands

02:43:04.800 | and washing hands and doing all sorts of things

02:43:07.960 | to isolate or connect with one another.

02:43:09.920 | And maybe the gut microbiota

02:43:11.320 | are really trying to optimize their survival.

02:43:13.720 | - That's what Laird Hamilton said that at one point

02:43:17.520 | in the sauna, that when you're in the sauna

02:43:19.840 | and it's really hot,

02:43:21.120 | the feeling that you have of wanting to get out

02:43:24.920 | could be the bad critters in your body that can't handle it.

02:43:30.920 | - Let's get out of here.

02:43:31.920 | - Are trying to convince you from the inside to get out.

02:43:36.920 | Maybe that's where that feeling

02:43:39.000 | of being compelled to get out comes from.

02:43:41.360 | So Elon getting us all to Mars might be a bit of,

02:43:45.580 | maybe they just want to get to Mars.

02:43:47.620 | And so they're- - Or maybe.

02:43:50.120 | - 'Cause I'm starting to feel

02:43:51.120 | like I'm channeling Lex Friedman here for a moment.

02:43:54.000 | No, I think this considering the opposite is really key.

02:43:56.800 | And while it might sound mystical to people

02:43:58.680 | or a little bit like we're just playing with ideas,

02:44:01.000 | it's exactly what you do in science.

02:44:03.460 | Someone walks in with a result and says, I found this,

02:44:06.160 | this is true.

02:44:07.000 | And you say, but what if it's all something else?

02:44:09.520 | A good example might be here I'm pulling

02:44:11.220 | from podcast episodes that we've had,

02:44:13.400 | but Alia Crum is this amazing psychologist

02:44:16.680 | who works on belief effects.

02:44:18.720 | Your knowledge strongly shapes the physiological outcome.

02:44:21.360 | And she had this amazing graduate thesis where she said,

02:44:25.500 | what if all of exercise is placebo?

02:44:28.920 | All of it.

02:44:29.740 | Yeah, it burns some calories and does some things.

02:44:32.120 | Turns out this isn't the case,

02:44:33.240 | but it turns out a lot of the effects of exercise,

02:44:35.800 | positive effects, lowering blood pressure,

02:44:37.480 | relieving stress, positive or placebo.

02:44:40.160 | But nobody thinks of it like that

02:44:43.180 | because we're so attached to calories burned, et cetera.

02:44:46.440 | - I think that's a big point that the belief part of it

02:44:51.240 | is a huge part of the conversation about everything.

02:44:56.240 | What we believe has power.

02:44:58.700 | If we believe we could make something great,

02:45:01.160 | the chances of us making something great are better

02:45:03.960 | than if we don't believe we can.

02:45:06.640 | So I would say any ability to harness your belief

02:45:11.640 | on your behalf is a really healthy thing to do.

02:45:15.380 | - And one thing that you make very clear is that

02:45:20.320 | while our own abilities may come into question

02:45:23.440 | from time to time, you absolutely believe

02:45:27.480 | that the elements from which to create are out there.

02:45:32.120 | - Absolutely.

02:45:33.380 | All the elements are here.

02:45:36.340 | Everything is here.

02:45:37.960 | We get to pick and choose.

02:45:39.060 | We get the conveyor belts going by with the little gifts

02:45:43.420 | and we can, first we have to notice there's a conveyor belt.

02:45:48.420 | Then we notice the gifts and then that's the starting point.

02:45:52.580 | And then we may even feel empowered enough

02:45:56.020 | to grab one of the gifts and open it up

02:45:59.820 | and see what's inside.

02:46:01.460 | And then maybe that started something really beautiful

02:46:04.380 | that we wouldn't have done.

02:46:06.840 | Everything that I make or have made

02:46:11.840 | has always been based on something that I see or hear

02:46:18.580 | that allows me to see something that I didn't see before.

02:46:23.940 | - So I was going to ask you whether or not

02:46:27.120 | it's important to be happy in order to create,

02:46:30.140 | but certainly a lot of people that were unhappy

02:46:32.100 | were still able to create.

02:46:33.660 | But the more I listen to you,

02:46:35.760 | it seems that it's really about an ability to pay attention.

02:46:39.820 | - Yes.

02:46:40.660 | - So if I'm unhappy or if I'm happy,

02:46:43.940 | may not be as relevant as whether or not

02:46:46.220 | I'm able to stay undistracted.

02:46:49.040 | - Yes.

02:46:50.060 | I would say that's, I would say being able to stay present

02:46:54.140 | in the work is probably the most important part of it.

02:46:59.460 | And how you feel is less of an issue unless how you feel

02:47:04.460 | gets in the way of you feeling how the work makes you feel.

02:47:08.900 | Do you know what I'm saying?

02:47:11.260 | If you're in a lot of pain

02:47:13.300 | and you're looking at a piece of art,

02:47:16.820 | it may be hard to know how that art makes you feel

02:47:20.140 | because the big signal in your body is the physical pain.

02:47:24.440 | I'm sure there are some people who can do that too,

02:47:27.260 | who can even through the physical pain can feel it.

02:47:29.860 | - There's this idea of transmutation of taking one emotion

02:47:34.380 | and contorting it and co-opting it into another action

02:47:38.380 | in an adaptive way.

02:47:39.900 | But this idea of distraction being a problem,

02:47:43.220 | this really resonates.

02:47:44.260 | I think when I think of times of great productivity

02:47:46.780 | is when I was able to be undistracted.

02:47:49.420 | I could also see how success can be its own distraction.

02:47:52.040 | This is often discussed in the context of fighting sports

02:47:55.020 | where someone starts making a lot of money

02:47:56.520 | and pretty soon their focus becomes all the things

02:47:58.500 | they can access with their success,

02:48:00.220 | as opposed to the thing that got them there

02:48:01.500 | in the first place.

02:48:02.560 | Keeping an underdog mentality.

02:48:07.240 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

02:48:08.420 | Before we conclude, I do want to ask you

02:48:10.400 | about one other aspect of process, which is meditation.

02:48:14.440 | Meditation is interesting to me

02:48:17.240 | because when we close our eyes,

02:48:19.260 | as most meditations are done,

02:48:20.740 | and we focus on our brain, our brain has no sensation.

02:48:25.500 | Like if we- - I wouldn't say

02:48:26.520 | we focus on our brain.

02:48:27.720 | - Oh, or we focus on something

02:48:29.600 | other than our normal experience.

02:48:31.840 | How would you define meditation?

02:48:34.240 | - Well, there are different types of meditation.

02:48:38.200 | Usually, either way,

02:48:42.880 | I would say there's no form of meditation

02:48:44.980 | where we're focused on our brain.

02:48:46.600 | - Okay, good, I'm glad we disagree.

02:48:49.580 | - I would say here are the things that happen.

02:48:51.520 | We either are engaging in a mantra,

02:48:55.900 | which would be a version of almost like

02:48:59.900 | creating a trance for ourselves,

02:49:02.700 | not unlike listening to something when we go to sleep

02:49:05.760 | that would distract our conscious mind

02:49:08.460 | from participating.

02:49:11.940 | We would be overriding the talking mind

02:49:16.940 | with just a sound that we're generating,

02:49:20.520 | or a word, or a phrase, series of phrases.

02:49:23.740 | A meta meditation is a loving kindness meditation

02:49:28.480 | with phrases, could be that.

02:49:31.040 | Or it could be focused on the breath.

02:49:33.320 | But the purpose of being focused on the breath

02:49:35.960 | is to not hear the self-talk that we normally have.

02:49:40.960 | It's a single pointed focus exercise

02:49:47.920 | in those that I described.

02:49:49.160 | The other version is an awareness meditation

02:49:52.440 | where you're closing your eyes

02:49:54.800 | and you're being with whatever is and noticing.

02:49:59.800 | So if we were to do it now,

02:50:03.760 | and you could do it eyes open or eyes closed

02:50:05.880 | with an awareness practice.

02:50:08.240 | But the first thing that I would do is I would feel,

02:50:11.420 | I feel a little ringing in my ears.

02:50:14.920 | It might be from the electronic equipment around us,

02:50:18.360 | and I don't mean that I hear the sound.

02:50:20.140 | It's like a vibration.

02:50:23.200 | I hear cars passing in the distance.

02:50:26.200 | See what else comes up.

02:50:29.780 | I can feel a feeling in my chest.

02:50:35.660 | I can feel this part of my face, not sure why.

02:50:47.920 | Feels like it's related to my jaw, more car sounds.

02:50:52.920 | I'm aware of a little feeling of warmth.

02:50:57.460 | So now I would say the room feels a bit warm.

02:51:02.760 | I wasn't aware of that before

02:51:04.000 | when I wasn't just being with what's happening.

02:51:07.240 | Feel a little itch on my left shoulder.

02:51:10.760 | So that would be an awareness practice,

02:51:16.400 | which is another kind of meditation

02:51:17.840 | where you're just paying attention to what's going on.

02:51:20.880 | There's no story.

02:51:21.840 | There's no this means this, none of those things.

02:51:25.380 | Just like an inventory almost

02:51:29.140 | of everything that comes up when it comes up,

02:51:32.200 | and you do that for a period of time.

02:51:34.400 | But in all of those cases,

02:51:36.600 | in the example of doing the awareness meditation

02:51:39.720 | or doing a mantra meditation or focusing on the breath,

02:51:43.700 | in none of them am I thinking,

02:51:46.740 | in none of them am I concentrating on,

02:51:49.200 | I'm being aware of sense perceptions in the awareness one,

02:51:56.540 | or in the other meditations, I'm doing a practice

02:52:03.980 | so that I'm not aware of thinking about anything else.

02:52:08.280 | - When did you start meditating

02:52:09.520 | and how often do you meditate now?

02:52:12.180 | - I learned when I was 14 and I started with TM,

02:52:15.540 | and that's probably the meditation

02:52:17.560 | that I've done the most in my life, and I come back to,

02:52:20.600 | although I tried many different kinds

02:52:23.480 | and also different physical forms of meditation,

02:52:26.600 | Tai Chi, things like that.

02:52:28.480 | I meditated for five or six years,

02:52:31.520 | and then I stopped when I went to school to university,

02:52:36.240 | and then I started again several years later.

02:52:38.780 | And when I started again,

02:52:39.760 | I realized how profound it was in me

02:52:43.600 | that I had done it when I did it.

02:52:45.760 | So I usually have some sort of a practice.

02:52:50.760 | In some ways, the beach walks could be a form of meditation,

02:52:56.340 | but for me, typically I would wake up,

02:53:01.720 | it'd be the first thing I would do

02:53:03.560 | during that sort of in-between time,

02:53:06.440 | maybe go out in the sun, close my eyes and meditate

02:53:10.080 | before starting my day.

02:53:13.380 | If I'm doing it twice a day,

02:53:14.680 | the second time would probably be right before dinner,

02:53:17.840 | if I'm doing it on a regular schedule.

02:53:20.700 | Then if I find myself on an airplane,

02:53:23.940 | I might meditate for an hour or for the,

02:53:27.320 | I can remember one time meditating the entire flight

02:53:30.700 | from New York to LA,

02:53:31.780 | just was a great opportunity to do a deep dive.

02:53:35.820 | And time passes, you lose track of time,

02:53:38.980 | you know, you don't even know.

02:53:41.920 | It's like going to sleep and waking up.

02:53:43.560 | You don't feel like that was eight hours.

02:53:45.780 | You know, it's just time stops.

02:53:49.480 | Not always, but when it does, it's a great feeling.

02:53:54.280 | - Yeah, you've sent me some meditations

02:53:56.300 | including the one that you did on that trans-Atlantic,

02:53:58.600 | or transcontinental flight.

02:54:00.120 | And I've been trying to do longer and longer meditations,

02:54:04.020 | but I've always meditated a little bit,

02:54:06.580 | but your meditation practice is one

02:54:08.320 | that I'm starting to adopt.

02:54:09.620 | If maybe we could convince you to give us suggestions

02:54:13.100 | of one or two and we can link out to them for listeners.

02:54:15.540 | I'm sure they'd appreciate that.

02:54:16.720 | - And there's also meditation-like practices to do

02:54:21.020 | that involve, like there's something called

02:54:24.600 | the Surgical Series from the Monroe Institute,

02:54:29.600 | which I used when I had a surgery.

02:54:34.300 | You listen to this recording

02:54:36.420 | and it both allows your body to heal much faster

02:54:41.420 | and remove some of the trauma that goes on

02:54:46.540 | when getting cut open, it's traumatic.

02:54:50.840 | But just through listening to certain things,

02:54:56.260 | you can have a really powerful effect, heal much faster.

02:55:00.860 | I remember I was about to be put under

02:55:06.740 | for a surgery and my eyes were closed

02:55:11.620 | and I wasn't communicating with anyone there

02:55:16.620 | because I was going inside and my wife was with me

02:55:21.740 | and they came in and they said,

02:55:23.620 | "Oh, so they already gave Rick the sedative

02:55:26.720 | "because he's ready to wheel in."

02:55:28.100 | She's like, "I didn't give him anything."

02:55:29.620 | He's like, "But look at his numbers."

02:55:31.980 | Yeah. (laughs)

02:55:32.940 | - I love it.

02:55:34.340 | - Yeah, it's an amazingly powerful practice.

02:55:37.980 | I like 'cause anyone can cultivate Chanel.

02:55:41.060 | - Absolutely, absolutely.

02:55:43.580 | And there's no good or bad version.

02:55:45.980 | It really is just if you learn a technique

02:55:49.360 | and show up and do it, it works.

02:55:52.100 | - Well, I love that you're so willing to share

02:55:56.340 | what you do and your process.

02:55:58.060 | And listen, I just wanna say thank you

02:56:00.400 | for a number of things.

02:56:02.100 | I wanna thank you for the music you've created

02:56:05.740 | and that you are to create

02:56:07.280 | because we're gonna be still ongoing,

02:56:09.720 | certainly for your time today

02:56:12.460 | and sharing your thought process

02:56:14.740 | and a bit of what goes into

02:56:16.660 | this incredible creative process.

02:56:19.100 | And I wanna thank you for writing the book.

02:56:21.340 | I don't talk about or feature many books on the podcast.

02:56:24.160 | It's just not something we typically do,

02:56:26.320 | but I've seen a little bit of the evolution of it

02:56:29.700 | and then I've seen it now

02:56:30.980 | and read through it in its final form twice, as I mentioned.

02:56:34.140 | And I'm going to continue to read through it again.

02:56:36.360 | It is one of those books where it is so filled with gems,

02:56:39.820 | like every chapter,

02:56:41.300 | like I could take notes on this and take notes on this.

02:56:43.280 | And it's assembled in a very digestible way

02:56:47.100 | that allows people to extract the meaningful parts

02:56:52.100 | in every chapter.

02:56:53.660 | And there are so many in a way that's very straightforward.

02:56:56.760 | So I love the book.

02:56:58.700 | So thank you for doing it

02:56:59.720 | because you certainly didn't have to write a book,

02:57:02.860 | but I'm so happy that you did.

02:57:04.840 | And I know that I've already benefited.

02:57:07.200 | I know so many people are going to benefit.

02:57:08.840 | It's an amazing book

02:57:10.060 | and I couldn't help but put my neuroscience lens on it.

02:57:12.240 | But I also, about halfway through,

02:57:14.320 | I learned to discard my preexisting lens a bit

02:57:18.400 | and start to see things

02:57:20.080 | through what I think is a different perspective.

02:57:22.100 | So I just wanna thank you

02:57:23.040 | for being such an incredible portal

02:57:24.860 | and also for being an amazing friend.

02:57:27.260 | - Thank you.

02:57:28.100 | I love you.

02:57:28.920 | I'm happy to be here with you.

02:57:29.900 | And anytime I get to see you, it's a good day.

02:57:32.300 | - Likewise.

02:57:33.360 | Thank you for joining me today

02:57:34.460 | for my discussion with Rick Rubin,

02:57:36.280 | all about creativity and the creative process.

02:57:39.320 | Please also be sure to check out his new book,

02:57:41.540 | "The Creative Act, A Way of Being" by Rick Rubin.

02:57:44.340 | As I mentioned earlier,

02:57:45.380 | it's an incredible book and such a wealth of knowledge

02:57:48.500 | for you creative types out there,

02:57:50.100 | for those of you that seek to be more creative

02:57:51.860 | or to understand the creative process generally.

02:57:54.660 | And as I mentioned at the beginning of today's episode,

02:57:57.060 | Rick has very generously offered

02:57:58.860 | to answer your questions about creativity.

02:58:00.780 | So if you have questions for Rick Rubin about creativity

02:58:03.900 | or the creative process or anything else for that matter,

02:58:06.720 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube

02:58:09.240 | by writing in capital letters, question for Rick Rubin,

02:58:11.980 | and then please put the question there.

02:58:13.440 | That will make it easier for me to find those questions.

02:58:15.700 | I will record the conversation

02:58:17.180 | where I ask Rick those questions.

02:58:18.940 | And of course, we will post his answers to those questions

02:58:21.980 | on our Huberman Lab Clips channel.

02:58:24.460 | If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast,

02:58:26.740 | please subscribe to our YouTube channel.

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02:58:38.580 | If you have questions for us or comments

02:58:40.620 | or topics that you'd like me to cover

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02:58:45.060 | please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

02:58:47.140 | I do read all the comments.

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02:58:50.820 | at the beginning and throughout today's episode.

02:58:52.760 | That's the best way to support this podcast.

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02:58:56.700 | but on many episodes of the Huberman Lab Podcast,

02:58:59.220 | we discuss supplements.

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02:59:25.340 | if you're going to develop the most cost-effective

02:59:27.640 | and biologically effective supplementation regimen.

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03:00:25.540 | Thank you for joining me for today's discussion

03:00:27.100 | with Rick Rubin,

03:00:28.040 | all about creativity and the creative process.

03:00:30.800 | And as always, thank you for your interest in science.

03:00:33.820 | [upbeat music]

03:00:36.400 | (upbeat music)

Rick Rubin: How to Access Your Creativity

Chapters