Rick Rubin: Protocols to Access Creative Energy and Process

Andrew Huberman:
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is a world-renowned music producer, having worked with an enormous number of incredible artists, producing, for instance, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys, Jay-Z, Johnny Cash, Adele, Lady Gaga, Tom Petty, and of course, Slayer. This last year, Rick also authored his first book, which is a truly incredible exploration into the creative process. His book is entitled "The Creative Act: A Way of Being." Rick has appeared once before on the Huberman Lab podcast, and during that appearance, he offered to answer listeners' and viewers' questions. Those questions were put in the comment section on YouTube, and we received thousands of them. So today, Rick answers your questions about the creative process. I also took note of the feedback that when Rick previously appeared on the Huberman Lab podcast, that perhaps I spoke a bit more than the audience would have preferred. So today, I refrain from speaking too much and try and give as much airtime as possible to Rick in order to directly answer your questions. You'll notice that today's discussion gets really into the practical aspects of the creative process. The most frequent questions that I received for Rick were ones in which people really want to understand what his specific process is each and every day, as well as when he's producing music or other forms of art. And of course, people want to know what they should do specifically from the time they wake up until the time they go to sleep, even whether or not they should take note of their dreams, et cetera. We get into all of that. So today's discussion is very different from the one I held with Rick previously and, at least to my knowledge, from any of the other interviews or discussions that Rick has had publicly. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast.

Speaker 3:
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Andrew Huberman:
And now for my discussion about protocols for creativity with Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin, welcome back.

Rick Rubin:
Thank you, sir. Happy to be here.

Andrew Huberman:
We're going to answer, or rather you are going to answer, the questions of the listeners of our previous podcast episode. Before we do that, however, when we were out in the lobby, you mentioned that you have a breathing exercise, a coherence breathing exercise, that you thought might be useful for us to do now and perhaps for some of the listeners to join in.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah, let's do it, and then if you want to talk about it after, we can.

Andrew Huberman:
Sounds good.

Rick Rubin:
The reason I started doing this is I have relatively low heart rate variability, and you want to have a higher one.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
So I looked at all the things that can raise your heart rate variability, and I started doing this breathing technique specifically for heart rate variability, and it went up.

Andrew Huberman:
Awesome.

Rick Rubin:
So it's-

Andrew Huberman:
Great

Rick Rubin:
... tested.

Andrew Huberman:
Great.

Rick Rubin:
Let's do it together here, please. It'll say take a deep breath, and then you'll hear the sound of a... If you follow me for the first inhale and exhale, you'll know what sound means what.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay. And you do this eyes closed, typically?

Rick Rubin:
I do it eyes closed, yes.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay, we'll close our eyes.

Speaker 3:
Breathing exercise. Thank you.

Rick Rubin:
That was five minutes.

Andrew Huberman:
I like that.

Rick Rubin:
Feels nice, doesn't it?

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. I notice I don't spontaneously breathe at that cadence.

Rick Rubin:
No.

Andrew Huberman:
I breathe quite a bit faster.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
So especially on the exhale.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
So once I got into a rhythm of it, yeah, the mind just goes pseudo-random for me. What about for you? Does your mind tend to go one place?

Rick Rubin:
Now I count. So the reason I knew it was five minutes is because it's six breaths per minute, and I counted five. One, one, one, two, one, three, one, four, one, five, one, six, two, one. So I was occupied with a task.

Andrew Huberman:
How often do you do that?

Rick Rubin:
At least once, and sometimes twice a day. I aim for 10 minutes a day, but if I get to 20 minutes a day, it's noticeable in my heart rate variability results.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you do the coherence breathing at particular times of day, or just whenever it occurs to you?

Rick Rubin:
I think it depends on where I am and what else is going on in my life. So I had a window of a very specific thing that I was doing. I would do coherent breathing, and I would do squats, just air squats.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
In one location where I didn't have any other equipment. And And then I found a way, where I was doing treading water, which you got to experience with me. I would tread water, and then after treading water, I would get out of the pool, sit in the sun, and do the coherent breathing.

Andrew Huberman:
Great. Yeah, we should probably mention what the treading water was about because people will wonder. Very briefly, I went and visited Rick overseas this summer, and we spent a fair amount of the daytime treading water while listening to podcasts from a speaker on the side of the pool, and it was awesome. Time together as friends is awesome. Time in the sun is awesome. Learning from podcasts and listening and being entertained by podcasts is awesome. And then treading water is awesome. You're much better at treading water than I am. I was fatiguing.

Rick Rubin:
It's just as I said when we were doing it, it's like doing stairs. If you practice doing stairs, it gets easier to do stairs. But nobody's good at doing-- Marathon runners can't run up the stairs. It's a particular thing. And treading water, if you just do it, even in the little bit of time that we were doing it every day, by the end of your stay, it was easier for you than when you started.

Andrew Huberman:
Definitely.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. You acclimate quickly.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. I was able to adapt. I was impressed at your endurance in treading water early on. By the way, I've continued the treading water practice-

Rick Rubin:
Oh, great

Andrew Huberman:
... because I'm fortunate to have a pool in my new place.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I listen to your podcast, truly.

Rick Rubin:
Wow.

Andrew Huberman:
"Tetragrammaton." Love it. Love it. I listen to a few other podcasts, and I've started listening to more episodes of the podcast that you introduced me to, which was-

Rick Rubin:
"History of Rock Music in 500 Songs."

Andrew Huberman:
Andrew Hickey's podcast.

Rick Rubin:
It's an English podcast.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
Great podcast. Real in-depth information about music.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. Yeah, that was such a great trip. Thanks for having me over there.

Rick Rubin:
Thanks for coming.

Andrew Huberman:
Loved-

Rick Rubin:
It was fun treading water.

Andrew Huberman:
It was. Loved the time with you and your family. So I'll invite myself again.

Rick Rubin:
You're always welcome.

Andrew Huberman:
On the topic of meditation, one of the questions in this list of questions, we'll talk about the list itself in a moment, was about this anecdote that you've told me and you've mentioned a few other places, apparently, that you've once meditated all the way from, was it San Francisco to New York, or a Los Angeles to New York flight?

Rick Rubin:
It was either LA to New York or New York to LA, I can't remember. And I may have done it more than once.

Andrew Huberman:
The question specifically was, which meditation did you do?

Rick Rubin:
TM. TM was the first meditation I learned, transcendental meditation. Learned when I was 14. It's pretty much a default setting for me. Now, sometimes it'll evolve from TM into breathing. I might start by doing breathing before the TM piece starts, and the breathing may just take the whole time. Or it may turn from breathing into a gratitude practice, or a Metta practice, which is four phrases. May I be filled with loving kindness. May I be well. May I be peaceful and at ease. May I be happy. And you repeat those phrases over and over. And it starts, may I, and then eventually, if you've done it for a year or so, you could start saying, may we, for your immediate family. And then as you build up the charge for your immediate family, in another year or so, you can spread it to your community. And eventually, after maybe five years, you can do it for the planet.

Andrew Huberman:
So that's the Metta.

Rick Rubin:
Metta. M-E-T-T-A.

Andrew Huberman:
Amazing.

Rick Rubin:
Loving kindness practice.

Andrew Huberman:
And are there any particular links maybe you could pass us later, and we could put in the captions-

Rick Rubin:
I'll find one

Andrew Huberman:
... maybe one that you've used.

Rick Rubin:
I learned it from Jack Kornfield, who's a Buddhist scholar and a brilliant teacher.

Andrew Huberman:
Terrific. What do you think meditation has allowed you, afforded you, as well as what it's helped you avoid in terms of a daily practice? Or maybe in just how doing it once in a while has wicked out into areas of your life. This is probably a long list of things, but if you were to pick maybe the top three where you go, "Yeah, when I'm meditating regularly, blank happens and blank doesn't happen. And when I'm not, those things disappear."

Rick Rubin:
Because I've been doing it for such a long time, it's so part and parcel of who I am that I don't know who I would be without it. That said, I don't always do it, but at this point, I don't have to always do it to be in this zone where I've been for almost 45 years, it's been a big part of my life. So a great deal of the benefits are in me now. When I practice, it gets amplified. But as Maharishi described it, every time you meditate, it's like making a deposit in a bank. So it's always there. Every time you do it, you're building a base. And the goal of the practice is less about the practice. It's about the practice is to change the way you are in the world. So it's a practice for life. Do you know what I'm saying? The changes that come in the meditation are to help your reactions in the real world.

Andrew Huberman:
In some ways, not to trivialize it, but it's like physical exercise. During a good workout, your blood pressure is really elevated. You're secreting all sorts of inflammatory cytokines. If we were to draw your blood mid-workout, you'd say, "This person is in trouble."

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But then all these wonderful adaptations occur that allow you to sleep better, better mood, walk upstairs easily, and on and on.

Rick Rubin:
It's funny about sleeping better. This morning, I was walking on the beach And had my headphones on, wired headphones, and I was listening to a podcast. I can't remember what I was listening to, but I was listening to a podcast. And someone flagged me and interrupted me, who I didn't know, and went over to talk to him, and he said, "I heard you talking about Steve Martin on a podcast." And, he told me a story about Steve Martin that he got to see him in 1979. I would say this person was probably mid to late 60s. And he was wearing all black. He was wearing shoes on the beach, tennis shoes. He was wearing dark sunglasses and a hat. And he said, "Just want to talk about comedy and things" that he heard me say on a podcast, and we talked about it for a while. And then he said something about he loves podcasts and he listens to them at night because he's got terrible insomnia and he can't sleep. And I'm looking at a guy in the sun wearing sunglasses, and I say, "Well, the reason you can't sleep is because you're wearing sunglasses now." He said, "What are you talking about?" I said, "Well, the way the human body works is we react to the sun. The sun is what tells us we're awake, and then at night when it's dark, that's what tells us to go to sleep. So you're mixing the signals to your body by wearing the sunglasses." And he said, "Well, I'm a dermatologist and, I've been a... " He said he was a dermatologist for the last 40 years. "And my whole practice is about getting people to get out of the sun." And, we started talking about it. And, he was all covered up. I was wearing my board shorts and nothing else. And I said, "Well, I'm in the sun hours every day." And he's like, "Aren't you worried about cancer?" And I said, "No, I feel pretty healthy. I feel okay." And then he said, "Let me see your back." And I turned around, and he looked at my back, and he's like, "You have perfect skin." He's like, "They should study you in an institute." I said, "This is what normal healthy skin looks like if you expose it to the sun." And he said, "So you're saying everything I've been teaching in my medical practice for the last 40 years was wrong?" I said, "Yes. Everything." It was funny. Funny conversation.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, it's interesting. We could go down a deep rabbit hole with this, but listeners of this podcast will know that I'm very much a proponent of getting those sunlight signals to the eyes at least once a day in the morning, but also in the evening. I'll just share with you. Now, I learned from a guest whose episode we haven't aired yet, that what is so special about that morning and evening sunlight are the contrasts between blues and oranges, blues and reds, blues and pinks, that we can't always see if there's cloud cover, but they come through. And it's the mathematical difference in their presence, the subtraction of a lot of blue and then next to it a lot of orange, or a lot of blue and then next to it a lot of pink, that triggers the body's understanding that this is morning and evening, and that night is coming in the evening and that it's time to be awake in the morning and throughout the day. In the middle of the day when the sun is out and it's overhead, it looks like white light. And white light includes the blues and the oranges and the pinks and the reds, but they subtract to zero because they're all mixed together. That's why it looks just blue and white. And so while bright light is great throughout the day, it's those morning signals. Now, I think the dermatology community is starting to come online with the idea that low solar angle sunlight early and later in the day, sun rising and sun setting. And I say that because people always go, "Oh, do you have to see it cross the horizon?" That would be ideal, but rising and setting do not create the kind of skin damage or eye damage that they've been so concerned about. And I think the next step for the field of dermatology is going to be to start communicating with the neuroscientists and the circadian biologists and really learning that. So thanks for bridging that gap on the beach this morning. I do think that's how it starts, and then it wicks out. Headphones. So, I made the choice a few years ago to stop using the Bluetooth headphones based on my personal experience, which was I kept getting these cysts behind my ears, which I was told were swellings of lymph. They would actually drain lymph if they got big enough. It was really gross and kind of troubling. I stopped using them. I didn't get them. I started using them again. I started getting those lymph things. And there was some significant heat effects as well. And I've interviewed a couple people, including a neurosurgeon on the podcast, about the level of EMFs that come from them, and they were not concerned. Others I've spoken to are concerned. I'm going to try and balance out the conversation over time. But my feeling was, look, if there's any concern whatsoever, why would I use them? And so I use the ones with wires.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
But use the ones with wires that are even one step further away from WiFi transmitters.

Rick Rubin:
There are ones with air tubes that I use, depending on what's going on, and those have no electrical... There's no electric near your head. It's just an air tube where the sound is traveling. This actual sound is traveling in the tubes to your ears.

Andrew Huberman:
I definitely sleep better with the phone out of the bedroom. Some people are now turning off their WiFi at night. I think you and I are both really aligned in the sense that we've seen enough things come and go in the health space, like disparaging remarks about lifting weights like that's just for bodybuilders and now everybody knows.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah, muscle bound. You become muscle bound.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. Now men and women, elderly and young, are encouraged to do resistance training. Yoga used to be cast in this kind of magic carpet realm.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
Breathwork. All this stuff has become, over time, mainstream, but it's taken a very long time and the road has been choppy and sometimes, in my opinion, really unfair To the practices and their value. These are zero-cost practices in many cases that can really help people. And so when I look at something like sunscreen or Bluetooth headphones, or we're talking about some of these things, I wish I had a portal into the future where we look back and go like, "Of course." So what are your thoughts on just kind of health and wellness as you've observed it in the last 20, 30 years? You've been in this for a while. You've paid attention to mindfulness and mind-body stuff. What are your thoughts?

Rick Rubin:
I try to live in as natural way as possible. I try to eat as few processed foods as possible, try to eat grass-fed animals. And I use hardly any products of any kind, that aren't just something that grows or lives on the planet.

Andrew Huberman:
There were a couple questions about this, so I'll ask now. You lost a tremendous amount of weight. You look great, by the way.

Rick Rubin:
Thank you.

Andrew Huberman:
You look super fit. Every time I see you, you're in better and better shape. And-

Rick Rubin:
That's your perception. It's not, in fact, the case, but-

Andrew Huberman:
Well, you're-

Rick Rubin:
I'll accept it.

Andrew Huberman:
I don't know. When I see you each time, you're extremely mobile. You're sleeping well. You have a robust life, all the marks of health and vitality. So I've heard you mention before that you lost a significant amount of weight. How much weight, and how did you do it?

Rick Rubin:
135 pounds through a high-protein, low-calorie, low-carb diet.

Andrew Huberman:
And that went against the convention at the time?

Rick Rubin:
Well, the person who suggested it was someone at UCLA. So it was a mainstream doctor who helped me with my weight loss. I had been a vegan at that time, which was not mainstream then, and it was very unhealthy, but I did that for 20 some odd years because I believed in the theory of it, but it proved not to be healthy for me.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you think that different diets likely work for different people?

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
So that not everyone necessarily should do what you did?

Rick Rubin:
No.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
No, but I think most people would probably benefit from healthy red meat.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
I'm saying that only because it's so vilified in our culture.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. And I think the healthy piece is key there, too, the non-factory farmed animals.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Which fortunately, reasonably cost sources of that are becoming more available.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, I'm going to start pulling from the list of questions. By the way, folks, there were more than 1,000 questions in just the one-third printout that I did.

Rick Rubin:
It's an intimidating stack in front of you.

Andrew Huberman:
It's the most notes I've ever put in front of me during a guest discussion here on the podcast, and we are not going to ask you every question, but I've organized them in some sense of a coherent order.

Rick Rubin:
Did you organize them, or did AI organize them?

Andrew Huberman:
I organized them, but that's a great opportunity to ask you one of the questions that came up several times, which was, what are your thoughts on AI and its ability to shape how music is made, how visual arts are made? Are you one of these, scared of AI, or do you embrace new technology?

Rick Rubin:
I don't know enough about it yet to talk about it. What I will say is what I find interesting about art is the point of view of the person making it, and I don't know that AI has a point of view of its own. So, and I don't know how interesting it would be, AI's point of view. But I like people's points of view, and what makes an artist a great artist to me is something about their point of view does something to me.

Andrew Huberman:
Childhood. A question for Rick Rubin was, what activities did you find most enjoyable and easy to get lost in as a child? I love this question.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
For you, in particular.

Rick Rubin:
Reading was a big part of my life. Listening to music was a big part of my life. Playing guitar along with music. Can't really play, but the idea of playing along. So it didn't have to actually be good enough to play along because I didn't have that skill set, but I liked the experience of doing my best to play along with something I was listening to. And, also magic. Learning, like shuffling cards in front of a mirror and coin tricks and sleight of hand was just interesting to me.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you still do magic?

Rick Rubin:
I don't.

Andrew Huberman:
Okay.

Rick Rubin:
At the time that music took over my life, I had to choose between the two because both of them were full-time life pursuits.

Andrew Huberman:
I went and saw a mentalist in New York this summer with my sister. Asi Wind is his name. A-S-I, first name. Last name, Wind. Every time I see a mentalist, and especially when I see Asi, I've seen him twice, it blows my mind. What are your thoughts on mentalists as-

Rick Rubin:
It's my favorite form of magic.

Andrew Huberman:
Really?

Rick Rubin:
It's the most interesting because it doesn't rely on props. It feels like pure magic.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
If you have a box and you pull something out of the box, there's probably something tricky about the box. But when someone can look at you and tell you what you're thinking, it's just wild. It's really wild. So I love that.

Andrew Huberman:
After Asi did his act, when we pseudo-returned to reality, because it really does change the way you look at things after that For quite a while, maybe forever. I asked him if he was willing to share maybe just one nugget of insight into how he does what he does. And of course, I wasn't expecting he was going to give away the whole thing. And he said, "A lot of it has to do with forming and erasing memories in people quickly." Which sounds very kind of dark and mysterious.

Rick Rubin:
That's really interesting.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, that maybe it's possible to erase memories-

Rick Rubin:
Wow

Andrew Huberman:
... in people. Maybe what we thought we saw, we really didn't see or hear.

Rick Rubin:
Wow.

Andrew Huberman:
So I dig that.

Rick Rubin:
Great description.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. I'm going to bring him out here, by the way.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So we should all get together.

Rick Rubin:
I would love to.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
I would love to see him.

Andrew Huberman:
I want to get him on the podcast. Okay, a full 10% of the questions for you were around writer's blocks, sticking points, this kind of thing. Like feeling stuck in the creative process. Now, people didn't specify whether or not they were stuck at the beginning, the middle, or the end, but based on my read of all of these questions, I got the sense that people were feeling like there's something in them that they want access to, they want to create, but they don't know how to get past that initial stage, as opposed to somebody who's 90% done and they just can't finish the last 10%. What are your thoughts about these kinds of blocks and how to overcome them? Any experience you've had with them yourself and perhaps with working with other artists?

Rick Rubin:
The first thought is to go past the idea of the block and think about what's the cause of the block. And the block is usually something like, it's either a personal, I'm not good enough. It can be a confidence issue. I don't have anything to say. Or it could be thinking about someone else. Nobody's going to like what I make. Do you know what I'm saying?

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
So it's either a self-judgment or fear of outside judgment.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
So if you're making something with the freedom of, this is something I'm making for myself for now. That's all it is. It's a diary entry. Everything I make is a diary entry. The beauty of a diary entry is, I can write my diary entry, and you can't tell me my diary entry wasn't good enough, or that's not what I experienced. Of course, it's what I experienced. I'm writing a personal diary for myself. No one else can judge it. It is my experience of my life. Everything we make can be that. Can be a personal reflection of who we are in that moment of time. It doesn't have to be the greatest you could ever do. It doesn't have to have any expectation that it's going to change the world. It doesn't have to be, this has to sell a certain number of copies for any reason. It doesn't have any of those things. All it is is, I'm making this thing. I'm making this thing for me, and I want to do it to the best of my ability, to where I feel good about it, and where it's honest. It's honest of where I'm at. And if you're living in this world of just being honest to where you're at, there's nothing blocking that. Do you know what I'm saying? There are no blocks. The blocks are all based on dealing with a different force or a different perception that is made up. You make up this story, and you're living the story. I'm in this block because I just can't do it. The reason you can't do it is because you're afraid someone else is not going to like it. There are no blocks. There's infinite amount of information out there to work with, because it also doesn't stem from us. So we're vehicles for this information, and it's coming through us all the time. So if you don't have an idea when you're sitting at your desk, if you go for a walk, chances are you'll see something that'll spark something in you as a seed to take off from.

Andrew Huberman:
That makes a lot of sense. And I had a thought while you were saying that one of the challenges that I have in completing work and getting into a good work groove is that, especially nowadays because of phones and so easy to communicate with other people, it's not that they interrupt me. And this happened the other day. I set up my new office really nicely. I'm living in a very quiet place now. It's almost completely silent unless I'm playing music. It's really interesting.

Rick Rubin:
That's great.

Andrew Huberman:
Or the coyotes sometimes come around and start doing their thing at night. But completely silent, and I realized I was having a hard time getting into a work groove, and I realized that I felt compelled to continue to reach out to people. And then I realized, as you just provided your answer to the last question, that there's probably something in me that has a bit of a fear of separation or abandonment from people, based on my own experience. And I feel very well supported by my friends and coworkers these days. Very well supported. I'm in a kind of pinch me place around that. But I realize now that what's happening in my mind is, it's not a challenge of getting into the work. It's a fear that if I spend a couple of hours really in that tight tunnel of creation, that There might not be anyone there when I exit it, which is a crazy thought.

Rick Rubin:
That's a crazy thought.

Andrew Huberman:
But that's the anxiety.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I only realize that now.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So thank you.

Rick Rubin:
Great.

Andrew Huberman:
I trust that you guys will be there when I exit the tunnel.

Rick Rubin:
We'll be there.

Andrew Huberman:
And when there's a deadline, I have no choice but to jump into that tunnel. That's actually what helps. Deadlines really help me. Do deadlines help you? Do you like deadlines?

Rick Rubin:
Deadlines don't help me at the beginning of a process. They can help at the end.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm.

Rick Rubin:
Once the code's been cracked. Usually when I start something, I have no idea what it's going to be. So it's a very open process in the beginning. And if there's any sense of required timing, that would undermine the freedom needed for it to be all that it could be. But once the code's cracked and you know what it is, and it's all there, and you're dealing with the fine points, then it can be really helpful to have a deadline.

Speaker 3:
There is so much NFL on ESPN right now. Monday Night Football, plus pre-game and post-game. NFL Live, NFL Prime Time. Everything you need to stay on top of every game, every week. Unbelievable. And now NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on all season long on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

Andrew Huberman:
A number of questions were sort of comments about what people believe your process is. And one of the repeating themes there, which I thought was interesting, was it seems that Rick Rubin is comfortable with uncertainty and the unknown.

Rick Rubin:
Yes. That is true. Yes, I am comfortable with it because I accept that's the way things are. That said, when I start a new project, I always have anxiety because I'm uncertain of what's going to happen, and I want it to be good. Now, I know it won't be done until I feel good about it. So in that way, there's no real pressure, but I do still feel this anxiety of, "I wonder what's going to happen today. I hope it's good."

Andrew Huberman:
When you've worked with musical artists, let's say, how important is it to you to know what challenges, maybe even what successes, but certainly what challenges they happen to be going through at that period in time? Put differently, do you end finding yourself playing therapist and guide and psychological/emotional mentor to artists you work with during the creative process, or is that separate?

Rick Rubin:
If they're going through something that's interfering with the work, anything that gets in the way of the work is something worth discussing. Our focus there together is to get the work done. Sometimes it ends up being more therapeutic to allow that to happen.

Andrew Huberman:
One of the questions that really stood out to me in this vast list of questions, involved a quote from your last discussion on this podcast, our last discussion on this podcast. So I'm going to read a little bit of it because it's fairly long. But I found this to be a really important question that we should get into in a bit more depth. Somebody, I don't know who said, "If you happen to talk to Rick," I happen to be talking to you, "Ask him this for me. In his book, in the section on self-doubt, Rick said, quote, 'One of the reasons so many great artists die of overdoses early in their lives is because they use drugs to numb a very painful existence. The reason it is painful is the reason they became an artist in the first place, their incredible sensitivity. If you see tremendous beauty or tremendous pain where other people see little or nothing at all, you're confronted with big feelings all the time. These emotions can be confusing and overwhelming.'" Excuse me. So this goes on for some pages. And then this person says, and I think they're speaking for many people when they said, "This resonated with me personally, and I wonder whether or not this is something that maybe you've experienced yourself or that you just notice about artists in similar situations." And what sort of advice do you give the artists you work with in order to embrace those painful tones within them and transmute them into great work?

Rick Rubin:
I've definitely felt them myself. I'm unusually sensitive in the world. I'm wearing red glasses in here for a reason. I live a very protected, monk-like life because stimulation gets in the way of my ability to be where I want to be. So I tend to stay away from things. And it seems to be the case with many artists, a desire for nurturing their internal life. And if the goal is to nurture our internal life, it invariably leads to sacrifices.

Andrew Huberman:
Did you spend a lot of time alone as a kid? I'm asking this question.

Rick Rubin:
I did. Yeah. I was an only child and I spent most of my time alone.

Andrew Huberman:
When you talk about controlling this amount and type of stimulation in your life to protect that inner landscape, does that pertain to certain personality types, even voice types? I've found at various times in my life, I love people, but there are certain voices that just grate on me, and I can't be around them. I just can't be around them. They drive me-- It's like ... a cacophony inside. I just feel like I'm being asked to drink something that tastes awful. Does that resonate?

Rick Rubin:
I try to curate the people around me to be people I want to have around me.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
Whatever that is.

Andrew Huberman:
Right.

Rick Rubin:
Whatever that is.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, you said you protect the inner landscape, but certainly you're not averse to high-intensity stimulation. Last night we went to the AEW, and by the way, thank you for taking me. That was such an incredible experience.

Rick Rubin:
It was really fun.

Andrew Huberman:
It was really fun. It reminded me of early punk rock shows, some of my first punk rock shows where I went and just was like, "Oh my gosh, this is exciting and scary, and I love it."

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And it felt loving, too.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
Which is also the community of punk rock that I observed and have been blessed to be a part of. It's like, yeah, there's aggression, but there's also love, and then there's romance, and then there's also betrayal, and there's all the elements. But there's still a sense of like, everyone wants to be here, and that there's a sense of goodness behind it all.

Rick Rubin:
Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman:
Even though some of it was bloody and violent.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
So for you, what does wrestling allow you to feel in those high-intensity environments?

Rick Rubin:
It completely relaxes me because there are no stakes. You know, everyone's working together in the show to protect each other. No one's trying to hurt anybody, regardless of what the storyline is.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
It's like a ballet, where there's a fight in the ballet. There's no actual aggression of people towards each other. It's just the opposite. But you get to experience this wildly dynamic, exciting, surreal theater piece, where people are doing these gymnastic and acrobatic things that are truly death-defying. And it's fun, and the storylines absorb you in a way where you never know what's true and what's not. We know wrestling's fake, we're told wrestling's fake. But there's something legitimate about it that seems, to me, more legitimate than anything else. The most legitimate. Because it's the closest to what the world's actually like. People don't always tell you what they really think. And when someone tells you a story, it might not really be the true story. They may think they're telling you the real story, and that might not be the real story. We don't know. We know so little. We experience something, and then we make up a story to understand it ourselves. And then forevermore, when we tell that story, it was our version of an experience. But we don't know that's what happened. That was our take on it. Wrestling is like, that's what the real world is like. Because when you watch wrestling, you never know what's true. If you watch the news like you watch wrestling, and you never know what's true, it would be more accurate. You'd have a better sense of the world if you took it all in like it was pro wrestling.

Andrew Huberman:
I think we're in a place in human history where people are starting to feel that way about the media.

Rick Rubin:
It's also why wrestling's so popular. It's more popular than it's ever been.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, that's interesting. Things like UFC, the kind of gladiator-like octagon fights, and wrestling are increasing in popularity, despite the fact that supposedly we're evolving . So I think it reflects something both primitive and evolved about the human brain.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
Right? Primitive in the sense that, yeah, there's some violence, it's physical. That's down in the hypothalamus, as we'd say.

Rick Rubin:
No, it scratches that itch.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
But they're actually protecting each other. It scratches that itch of seeing the gladiators. But it's like watching a movie. They're not really hurting each other. They get hurt, but only because the things they're doing are so crazy.

Andrew Huberman:
I think in order to be able to thoroughly enjoy wrestling, one has to be able to give up narrative distancing just a little bit, right? Narrative distancing is this sense that this is a story, it's a movie, it's not real. But there were moments, like yesterday, the jump off the top rope onto the guy who's splayed out on the ladder. The ladder breaks. This was right in front of us. It couldn't have felt good.

Rick Rubin:
No.

Andrew Huberman:
He walked away. He seemed fine.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Ish. But that, and then there was a match between two women where a woman put a metal plate into the bottoms of her suit and then ran and then jumped onto the other woman and hit her with the metal plate. And then the metal plate kind of slipped out, and she was walking around, and everyone knew she had cheated because you're not supposed to use the metal plate. But so it was sort of exciting because she had done it, exciting because she had gotten away with it, and then at the same time, exciting and upsetting that the referee saw it but then didn't call it. I mean, this is like Twitter, X.

Rick Rubin:
Like real life.

Andrew Huberman:
This is like Instagram. This is like politics.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
This is real life, right?

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Like, seeing people get away with things is so frustrating.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
If you feel they shouldn't have. Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
That's all part of it.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
It's a very accurate representation of the world.

Andrew Huberman:
Love it. It's weird because I never would've thought I'd be hooked. I'm hooked. It's like archery and professional wrestling now. It's like I'm going to be a busy guy in '24. I'm going to come back to this very practical question and ask a different question first. There are a few comments in here that are just priceless, by the way. Someone wanted to point out that you're a Pisces, and so was Einstein A couple of historical questions. I know you're not big on answering historical questions necessarily, maybe you are, but I can't help every time I see you asking a question about The Ramones or asking a question about Joe Strummer, but I like this question. First of all, it starts off, I love Rick Rubin. He's so fascinating. There are so many questions that start that way. On the podcast that you did with Joe Rogan, you talked about your experience with Johnny Cash and seeing him in a new light after doing interviews for a book about Johnny or something like that. The question this person asked was, from your present view, what was the most impactful moment or moments from being with him and working with him? Or simply, do you recall a moment working with Johnny Cash that you particularly enjoyed?

Rick Rubin:
I enjoyed any time I got to spend time with him. He was a really soulful, serious, shy, quiet man. Incredibly knowledgeable. He knew a great deal about history and so much about music. He knew every song. He may not have known modern songs, but he knew the history of music really well. And there was just a humble honesty about him that came through. I think that the strength of him as an artist was when he said words, even if he didn't write the words, if he told a story in words, you believed that story. So he had a credible gravitas. And he was great because of who he was. It wasn't his ability as a singer. It wasn't his ability as a songwriter, although he was a great songwriter and he was a great singer, but that's not why he was Johnny Cash. He was Johnny Cash because of the human being underneath. And anything that that guy would've done, we would be interested in, because that's how much of a beam of light he was on the planet.

Andrew Huberman:
It just happened to be music.

Rick Rubin:
Just happened to be music.

Andrew Huberman:
I love that. One question that came up a lot, and I think I can understand why, which is, how does one convince themselves that what they're doing and working on is worth it? And I think here we have to define worth it.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And we can define that any number of ways, but I think this is a feeling that I hear people express a lot. Like, how do I know if I'm on the right path? And I just want to remind your earlier answer that you're pretty comfortable with uncertainty.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
This and the unknown.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I think that's a rare trait.

Rick Rubin:
The question of worth it is reliant on an outcome. We don't make these things for an outcome. It's not the mindset to make something great. The outcome happens. You're making the best thing you can make. It's a devotional practice. Whatever happens after that happens, and that part that happens after it is completely out of your control. Putting any energy into that part that's out of your control, it's a waste of time. All it does is undermine your work. Your work is to make the best thing you can. So any thought you have about outcome undermines the whole thing.

Andrew Huberman:
Let that one sink in. I think that's so important for people to hear.

Rick Rubin:
And I'll say, it's okay to think about outcome after you've finished the thing you're making. Once you've made it, then you can say, "Hmm, what can I do to turn people onto this?" But in the making of it, it's premature.

Andrew Huberman:
Which brings my mind back to that diary entry-like approach. Because when you do a diary entry, if you lie to yourself, you're going to get a lot less out of it.

Rick Rubin:
It's a ridiculous idea, lying in your diary entries.

Andrew Huberman:
It is. Well, it's so interesting because when you learn how to do really good science, and I was fortunate to work with someone who was truly committed to the truth and accuracy. She used to just say, whenever there was a scandal published, like someone fabricated data, she was like, "This is so crazy. Why would you get into science?" If you want to make stuff up-

Rick Rubin:
Defeats the whole purpose

Andrew Huberman:
... you'd be better off going to something else. So clearly, those people who make up data were not in science for discovery of truth as best we can understand it. They were into it for something else. But it's the same way you formulate a question, then a hypothesis, and then you just go see what is and what isn't.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And then afterwards you decide, well, is this a paper that's sent to a top journal or a mediocre journal? But you can't control the outcome. So it's very similar.

Rick Rubin:
Exactly the same. And you'll see it in so many different aspects of life beyond art. I think one of the things that was interesting that came up in writing the book is it started being about art, and I came to realize as I was putting the ideas together that it seems like regardless of what you do in life, if you follow these principles, your life will probably improve. You'll probably be a better husband or a better father or a better whatever it is. It seems like the art is an outgrowth of-- It's why the subtitle is "A Way of Being." It's like you create yourself in a way in the world where the things that you make are tapped into something deep. But that comes from you being tapped into something deep. That's how it works.

Andrew Huberman:
So tapping into self, grounding in self, not thinking about outcome, diary entry-like approach to creating stuff That seems to be the-

Rick Rubin:
And I think one thing I'll say to that, because I say tapping into self, it doesn't come from the self, but you have to tap into yourself because you're the vessel to allow it to come out. Everything in the vessel is coming from somewhere else. It's not your creation. It's like you're the sculptor or you're the data analyst, where you're taking these things from different places that you've noticed. Some things that you've noticed, some things that you don't know that you've noticed, but you did. That's how we learn. We take in a lot of information that we don't even know we're taking in. But the way we can take these data points that are inside of us, that came from outside of us, and create a constellation, that's what the artist's job is. But also, that's what we all do all the time. And to get better at it, it's getting more in tune with yourself and opening yourself to things outside of... I'll say if you have a narrow belief system, you'll have less information to work with, less data points.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
So being open-minded and allowing surprise, to be surprised. Holding all of your beliefs very loosely.

Andrew Huberman:
It's interesting because the way you describe this, and from knowing you as well, it seems that this whole process is best served by having really good boundaries, like not getting foggy about what's about you and what's about somebody else, or about what other people want or the world wants. But also having really good antennae and being able to see what's happening in the world.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
You can't be cloistered and like this.

Rick Rubin:
No.

Andrew Huberman:
But part of the creative process kind of feels and looks like you're in a tunnel, but then you have to bring in from the outside. So it seems like making these two separate compartments that you can bridge seems important and healthy. Here, as you mentioned, it's a way of being. It's not just about creating things. That's also a healthy way to be in the world, because if you're constantly getting pulled around by everything emotionally and things are upsetting you, that's not good. But if you're just cut off from everything, that's not good either. Do you cultivate that way of being through these practices? Or do you think there's something about the way you're wired that you started off that way?

Rick Rubin:
It feels natural to me. And I'll tell you, when I was younger, I thought I would live in New York City my whole life, and there was a time when I felt like having that energy and noise around me felt good. Now I feel best in the jungle or the forest.

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm.

Rick Rubin:
I didn't decide that. I didn't decide what feels good. It just happened.

Andrew Huberman:
So you're clearly willing to update and adapt.

Rick Rubin:
All the time.

Andrew Huberman:
Change your nutrition, change your-

Rick Rubin:
All the time

Andrew Huberman:
... city, change the way you feel.

Rick Rubin:
Get new information, update.

Andrew Huberman:
Love it. You're a scientist after all.

Rick Rubin:
Well, I don't know anything. Again, we start with I know nothing. We all know nothing. So if something sounds interesting, worth trying, I'll try it, see, does it work, does it not work? At one point in time, I thought veganism was a good idea. I was excited about it. And I did it for a long time. I didn't get the results I was hoping for. I didn't have better health. I had much worse health. I had a tremendous amount of weight gain, and I was very ill through that diet. But my intentions were good.

Andrew Huberman:
How do you approach resistance, especially resistance in other artists you work with? Presumably, people hire you, they want to work with you, they do want to work with you. But I think what the person is asking here is, if somebody you're working with is stuck, like they're stuck, do you ask them to think? Do you ask them to feel? Do you ask them to take a day off? Do you do a Dennis Rodman on them and send them to Vegas to party for a couple of days because that's what worked for Dennis? Do you leave them alone? Let them come to you? I think people are very curious about what those sorts of interactions are like.

Rick Rubin:
I think it's always a case-by-case situation. It really depends on the artist. It depends on the situation, and usually by the time that we're working together, any resistance they had in the past has already been overcome. Usually, I'm together with someone where we make a team with the idea of making the best thing we possibly can, and we'll both do anything we can for that thing to be the best it can be.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
We're past the resistance.

Andrew Huberman:
I notice you remain friends with a lot of the people you've worked with, which is a great testament to you and your work and who you are. I just want to mention that. That's not always the case, folks, with other producer-artist relationships, so it's worth pointing out. A practical question, but I think one that is worth asking is, do you handle the finances around your work with artists, or do you have someone else do negotiations and all of that kind of stuff?

Rick Rubin:
I honestly have no idea how it works. I have no clue. Everything seems to get done, but I have no idea the inner workings of any of it. I try to stay out of as much. If it's not about making the beautiful thing in the moment, I don't really want to think about it too much. I don't want to be involved in that aspect

Andrew Huberman:
It was interesting when I was visiting you this summer, we had a really delightful dinner conversation with one of your other guests. And at one point, probably due to me, frankly, the conversation veered a bit into the business realm. And I'll never forget, you said, in a very polite way that didn't feel dismissive at all, you said, "Let's talk about art instead." Right? Like, "Enough about business. Let's talk about art instead."

Rick Rubin:
Wow.

Andrew Huberman:
And in that moment-

Rick Rubin:
I don't remember that.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, I gleaned a lot of gems from that visit. I wasn't there to study you, I was there to hang out with you, but I gleaned so many gems, treading water in the pool, some of the other practices we'll talk about. But I remember that, and I think about that in myself a lot. In the morning, the emails and things coming in, and then I think my purpose in life at this point in my life is to collect, organize, and disseminate health and science information.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
So that, for me, is art in a sense. And anything else feels kind of boring.

Rick Rubin:
Someone else can do that.

Andrew Huberman:
Right.

Rick Rubin:
Someone else can do it. You have a particular gift, in that you can take complicated scientific ideas and explain them in a way that all of us who are not scientists or not medical students can understand. And it's really helpful. And you do it in a kind and loving way where we get the sense that you care that we understand. You explain it in a way that there's a care in it that really speaks to us. So thank you for thank you for teaching us.

Andrew Huberman:
Thank you. And thanks for the words. That means a lot to me. That is indeed what it is for me. I want people to know the information because I think it's so cool and so important, and they need the information, and it's not about me.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's like they have to know.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And you did it this morning for this guy on the beach, so he'll see the light, pun intended. Do you prefer the WWE or the AEW, Rick?

Rick Rubin:
I love them both. I love pro wrestling. Pro wrestling is great.

Andrew Huberman:
How often do you abandon an idea or project? Is there a pile of journals with crossed-out ideas someplace in Rick Rubin's basement?

Rick Rubin:
I would say there are many ideas that have not yet come to fruition, but I wouldn't say I've abandoned any. It seems like the ideas have a time when they want to come to fruition, and regardless of what I think, I don't get to determine the calendar. The ideas come, I can get excited about it, I can work on it, and then hit a wall. Nothing else, and nothing, it's just impenetrable. And then there'll be another project that's just sailing along easily, and the universe is working to help support that idea. So I tend to work where there's several balls in the air at once, and I don't fight against... If the universe is not helping a project, I'm wary to fight with the universe.

Andrew Huberman:
How many projects are you working on right now, or typically?

Rick Rubin:
It's impossible for me to even say. There are so many ideas, and some of them are in idea phase, and some of them are in mid-making stage, and some of them are in the final detail stage. There's always something happening. I'm always thinking about a lot of stuff. And some of it is stuff that I get to share with the world, but some of it might be remodeling a space or I'm always thinking about some creative puzzle.

Andrew Huberman:
I have to imagine that for you, when the internet came to be, that it must have been really exciting because, like me, you love foraging for information. And I used to go to the library and Xerox copy papers, and I loved looking through the stacks, but frankly, it was physically exhausting and time-consuming, and financially, it was hard for me at the time. And then you'd always get those copies where the book crease obscured the text closer to the spine of the book. And I love PubMed. The world's at my fingertips. The world of research is at my fingertips. My goodness. How do you feel about smartphones and the internet? To you, does it feel like a giant gift for your creative process, or is it an inhibitor?

Rick Rubin:
It's both. I love that all the information is at our fingertips, and sometimes having so much information is hard to sort. I'll tell you a quick story, which was when the music streaming revolution happened. I was really excited. The idea that all of music is in my pocket now, and I can listen to any song, any album from any point in my life where I get to hear about something, and it's all accessible right now in this moment. And I was thinking at that time, "I'm just going to DJ. All I'm going to do is DJ, and I'm going to listen to anything I can think of that I'm excited about. Haven't heard the Talking Heads in a while. Let's listen to Talking Heads." Just how great that freedom is to have everything at your fingertips. And what I came to learn very quickly is I don't want to DJ all day. I love that I have the ability to DJ all day. I love that when there's something I want to hear, I can find it, but I don't want to have to do the work of picking everything I'm going to listen to. I like being programmed to. And I like the discovery of somebody else playing something that I wasn't expecting and getting to enjoy that. So now I do more listening to either somebody's curated playlists or online radio stations, and I do less picking music to listen to But I never would've known that before because I always thought, well, if I could listen to anything I want, I want to listen to what I want to listen to. I didn't know that I didn't want to have to pick it.

Andrew Huberman:
I love the rare live versions and B sides and whatever Z sides that one can find on YouTube. The other day you sent me, just at random, a clip from, I think it was a Japanese television show with the Ramones opening up. And Johnny opens up with, "You're a loud mouth, baby, you better shut up." And then they dive into "Loudmouth."

Rick Rubin:
With "Loudmouth." Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And it's the song I could've heard anywhere else, but it was the fact that it was shot from above, that it was black and white, and that he adds this little riff at the beginning, "You're a loud mouth, baby, you better shut up," and then just dives into it. That made it for me, as a huge Ramones fan. I was like, "Yeah." I think I did that in my kitchen. "Yeah." I was so hyped. Because when you go and just listen to a song that's recorded as part of an album, you're not going to get those additional pieces. Back in the day, and still now, if you went to a live show, you might see that and hear that and never forget that. But in that sense, to me, YouTube and the internet is like, whoa. It's this archive of gems.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That I potentially have been there. Maybe it was '79. I would've been four years old.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So, anyway, thanks for sending me that clip. Loved it, because you know how much I love the Ramones. But things like that, I just think, God, the internet is just amazing and so spectacular.

Rick Rubin:
Absolutely. Yeah, and the amount of lectures you could find on YouTube are unbelievable. The greatest thinkers in the world, I don't want to say are on YouTube because they probably didn't post on YouTube, but their material is on YouTube and it's unbelievable. Things from old films from the '50s and '60s.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
It's all on YouTube.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. I've been listening to Bible interpretation on YouTube.

Rick Rubin:
Wow.

Andrew Huberman:
And it's interesting to hear different interpretations-

Rick Rubin:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... from different perspectives. I would've never found these people. Most of them are dead.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. Send me links, please.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, they're so good. I'm trying to work through the Old Testament start to finish now as a learning and a practice, and wow. Okay, so the question was, are smartphones the chains that bind us and prevent our creativity? But I think you answered that it's both a rocket ship to creativity and chains to the ground.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. And it's like all other tools. It's like the tools don't make or break your art. It's another tool. You can use it or misuse it.

Andrew Huberman:
Someone wanted to know, and I would like to know, whether or not you have any recurring dreams, and what are your thoughts on dreams and dreaming in general? Do you write down your dreams? Do you spend time thinking about them?

Rick Rubin:
I've gone through phases of my life where I've written down dreams. I'm not doing it right now. I think we can learn a lot from writing our dreams. I tend not to analyze them in the moment, but I've noticed when I've kept a dream journal and looked at it years later, these surreal things that made no sense were all saying the same thing, and they were all very clear based on my life experience at that time. So it gives us clues as to what's actually going on, the way our subconscious is experiencing our lives. It's giving us, I don't know if I would call them pointers. Reflections would maybe be a better word.

Andrew Huberman:
Our mutual friend, Paul Conti, believes that the unconscious or subconscious, both used interchangeably, is the supercomputer of the human brain. That the misconception is that the forebrain, which is involved in planning and context and anticipation of outcomes, et cetera, people think that's the supercomputer, but that the supercomputer is the unconscious. That's Paul's belief. He's stated that very clearly on this podcast and elsewhere, and he believes that in dreams, the unconscious mind is controlling more of the dialogue. Which makes a lot of sense.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
But also that the unconscious mind is constantly trying to teach us things in the way that we learn best. So, my dreams, for instance, are all analogies, because that's pretty much, if people listen to me talk on the podcast, I often will use analogy. And I'm very visual, so it will present things to me in visual symbols. So Paul said in terms of dream interpretation that we would all be wise to think about how we learn best, and our unconscious mind is trying to toss us things in dreams to explain things in the way that we learn.

Rick Rubin:
It makes sense. And I would say also, unconscious and our instinct, the way we act instinctually is a reflection of our unconscious.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm.

Rick Rubin:
And as artists, that's tapping into that. The instinct and the unconscious is where the great ideas are, and then the things that come from our intellectual selves, they have much less of a charge. They're much smaller ideas.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. I think the conscious mind and the intellectual mind, as you're calling it, are bound to outcome in a big way. I'm going to inject a question of my own. I'm fascinated by the way you've discussed people's real underlying motivations and how that shapes their creative process but also their career. If you would be willing to talk a little bit about the story of Andrew Dice Clay. That's the story that, to me, captures it best.

Rick Rubin:
Andrew Dice Clay was a comedian who told really offensive jokes, and his audience loved him for it But the people who weren't his audience didn't really understand it, and they vilified him. And he became a comedian because he wanted people to love him. He didn't become a comedian to hurt anybody. He wanted to entertain people. And while he was playing to sold-out Madison Square Gardens full of people, newspapers would write terrible things about him, and it really got to him. And he decided to change his artistic output to try to make the people who didn't like him like him. And when he did that, it undermined his whole gift, and it seemed like things fell apart. I think he's in a better place now. I haven't seen him in a while, but I think he's in a better place now, and he's back to caring less about the reaction and in turn, getting a better reaction Because he's being pure in what he thinks is funny.

Andrew Huberman:
I liked him very much. In fact, I thought he did a spectacular job as playing the female artist's father in "A Star is Born," which had Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

Rick Rubin:
He's a really good actor. He's a great actor.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. Well, I really like the story about him because it encapsulates so much that if people can think about why they do what they do, they're going to avoid pitfalls, potentially. But how much time do you think people should spend introspecting about what makes them tick and why they want to entertain or make jokes or--

Rick Rubin:
I don't think it's a one-size-fits-all. I don't know that I could answer that question.

Andrew Huberman:
Is it true that Ad-Rock encouraged you to give LL Cool J a chance?

Rick Rubin:
Yes, that is true. Ad-Rock heard the demo tape and insisted that I listen to it.

Andrew Huberman:
Love that. This is a kind of generic question, but I think it's good to put these in every once in a while. What is your advice to a starting comedian? These are the sort of like-- I always think of these like, sophomore in high school kind of question, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're bad.

Rick Rubin:
No, not at all.

Andrew Huberman:
In some sense, that's what makes it such a great question. Like, what would your advice be to a starting comedian?

Rick Rubin:
Be true to yourself and not to listen to anyone.

Andrew Huberman:
There you go. It would be a great book, except it'd be a very short book, which would also make it a very great book.

Rick Rubin:
Well, it could be a blank book.

Andrew Huberman:
It could be a blank, exactly.

Rick Rubin:
You can just put all the things that you want to put in it.

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, man. I'm working on a book now, and I'll tell you, it's hard. By the way, I asked Rick for advice about book writing, because I've been trying to write this book for a while, and he gave me the following advice. So I'm injecting my own question. He said, "The sooner you can get to a complete draft that you're happy with or happy-ish with, the better the process will go." So I'm working on getting that complete draft.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. I would say don't focus too much on any of the individual details until you have the whole thing down, and then you can focus on making everything better that you want to make better. Don't get bogged down in that at the expense of getting through the project.

Andrew Huberman:
Your advice has really been helping me, by the way.

Rick Rubin:
Great.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm doing it like diary entries.

Rick Rubin:
Great.

Andrew Huberman:
And I've kept a diary for many years, so that's somewhat natural.

Rick Rubin:
Tell me a little bit about your diary entries. How long is a diary entry?

Andrew Huberman:
Sure. Yeah. A diary entry is anywhere from one to eight handwritten pages, single-line spacing, going back and forth between-- I usually start in all capitals and then switch over to cursive as I speed up. I've been doing that since, gosh, since high school. I've got a drawer filled with them, dated and everything. And it's usually a process of just trying to get something out of my system that I feel is clogging me, some frustration with the outside world. But sometimes, like this morning, I journaled in the room before you showed up, and I just was like, I think I was riding high off wrestling last night. I was marveling at how similar the great experiences of my life are now as they were to every other stage of my life, in the sense that they give me this feeling of like, okay, like there are these gems of people, you and others, and experiences, and I'm finding them. I'm experiencing them and reminding myself that there are long periods in between those moments where things feel kind of like, not empty, certainly not empty, but kind of frustrating in the sense that I'm busy and I'm dealing with a bunch of things, and things don't feel smooth. But I've been through enough of these cycles that I just am really learning to enjoy the cycles. And that was it. And I think the last line in my entry was something like, "And I can't wait for more," or something. So this morning was just a very positive entry, but sometimes there are definitely some tear-stained entries, and there are definitely some entries where I'm just so pissed I can barely get the writing out. But it's a process of getting that stuff out so then I can lean into the day.

Rick Rubin:
Do you ever go back and look at them?

Andrew Huberman:
I did the other day because I recorded an episode on a very particular type of journaling that's supported by over 200 peer-reviewed studies, which is called expressive writing. I can tell you about it in brief.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah, I'd love to hear about it.

Andrew Huberman:
It's a process that was developed by James Pennebaker, who is a professor at University of Texas Austin, and he had his students write as part of an experiment for 15 minutes a day for just four days ... either consecutive days or a week apart, but about the same thing. And the thing that they're supposed to write about is the most challenging, upsetting, or even traumatizing experience of their life. And it shows that the data from over 200 studies show incredible positive shifts in psychology, physiology, immune system function, and ability to combat infections. I was so struck by the data from this work that I decided to dedicate a whole podcast episode to it. It'll probably be out by the time this episode airs. But I haven't done that one yet. I'm going to do it. It's a little bit of a higher bar of entry because it's like, okay, I hear that the first day especially is pretty upsetting because you're purposely picking something really hard. But most of the journaling I do is just kind of diary, like here's what happened, here's what's going on, and my biggest fear is that somebody would find them. But in preparation for that episode about Pennebaker, I went and looked at my journals and was like, "Well, what do I write about?" And I realized they're pretty autobiographical. Sometimes about troubling things, but never before had I written four times in a row about the exact same thing.

Rick Rubin:
Interesting.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. Pennebaker, I think, deserves a Nobel Prize. If you look at the data on this compared to, and I'm not disparaging prescription drugs per se, but like SSRIs for depression, it's at least as good a treatment. It's zero cost stuff. And on and on. To be careful, I'll start giving the podcast again now. There were a number of questions about, quote unquote, "entertainment and music industry." None of which, unfortunately, were particularly complimentary of, quote, "the industry." And I think this is something that comes up a lot because people often focus on the marketing, the personalities that may or may not be so pleasant at times. I'm sure there are a ton of pleasant personalities in the industry, too. But the question is this: how do you deal with the, and these are their words-

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... soul-crushing, anti-creative aspects of the entertainment industry and hold on to that sense of creativity and love for the work?

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

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

Rick Rubin:
I make notes in my phone. I do it all the time. I don't have a great way of doing it, and sometimes I'll make a note and then come back to it later and have no idea what it means.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you make those notes by writing or by voice memo?

Rick Rubin:
Writing. That said, voice memo might be something worth trying. I've never tried that.

Andrew Huberman:
How do you view money in relationship to your work? Meaning, how do you place it in the constellation of things related to a project? You mentioned earlier you let other people do the negotiations, but money is just another form of energy. How do you place it in the contour of what you do?

Rick Rubin:
I try not to think of it at all. And because I come from a punk rock background, which was like a do-it-yourself background, it was always more about the idea and the execution of the idea with whatever you could use to do it. So if I didn't have enough to go to a professional recording studio, then I would find a friend who had a home recording studio and record or whatever it was, or borrowing a drum machine before I had a drum machine. I would always find ways to make the things I wanted to make. And I can't remember a time where a financial boundary got in the way of making something. And I see it happening a lot around me, and I think some people look at it as the money is what allows it to happen. And I think I just see it as the idea is what allows it to happen, and then the ingenuity is figuring out how to do it by any means necessary. Just got to make it. Whatever that version is. It may not be the dream version, but whatever version you can execute is the one for you to make.

Andrew Huberman:
I can attest to the fact that I launched my podcast in my closet in Topanga Canyon.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Which felt totally natural because I also come from the skateboarding, punk rock thing where it wouldn't ever occur to me to get a professional studio built like we're in now. We had this one built for us. But at the time, of course, you use a closet because you just need a black backdrop and, I think starting from there makes so much sense. And you also realize in the minimalist approach, anything added is just something added. So you don't really know what you need if you start with a lot of stuff around you.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. It can just be a distraction. I'm friends with Darren Aronofsky, who's a great director, and his first movie was called "Pi," and he made it for practically no money, and it was really well-loved. And then the next movie he made was also wildly successful, and he made it for very little money. And then he made this huge $100 million movie, and it turned out not to be a success, that movie. And it was a case of where having more money didn't help him tell a story. It's just one particular case. And it's no rule to follow. But there is something about making the version that you can make with the means that you have that adds something real to the project that may be better than the one that has a lot of money thrown at it.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm letting that sink in around a lot of online tutorials for science have a lot of visuals. But we knew we wanted to do YouTube, but also just pure audio, and there's nothing more frustrating than somebody talking about something or somebody that you can't see because you're just listening to it. And the visuals were really expensive to do right. And in the end, I firmly believe in the classroom as well as via podcasting, if people can hear something clearly enough and create an image in their own mind of how they would visualize it, then it's in there for good. Whereas just having people look at a slide with a bunch of beautiful illustrations on it, that does nothing for retention of material. So I think the minimalist approach, I think sometimes is really the best one. Maybe it's always the best one because it forces the better solution. In any case, I do realize I editorialized there, folks. I entered the answering portion of the, not just the question-asking portion. Have you ever felt that something was too obscure for mainstream audience appeal to the point where you did not release it?

Rick Rubin:
Never.

Andrew Huberman:
Tell us more.

Rick Rubin:
If I like something, someone else, maybe they'll like it. I don't know. How can I judge? I've been told with every new thing that I've done, it's a terrible idea and it won't work, every single time.

Andrew Huberman:
Really?

Rick Rubin:
Every single time.

Andrew Huberman:
Geto Boys, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, Slayer, Adele.

Rick Rubin:
Every one of them.

Andrew Huberman:
Eminem.

Rick Rubin:
Every one of them. Every time when I went from producing rap records to producing Slayer, "You can't do that. You're a rap producer. It's going to be terrible. Don't do it." Or then Johnny Cash, "You can't do that. You're a metal rap producer. You can't do that. It's going to be terrible, don't do it." Every single time. Still to this day.

Andrew Huberman:
I was so excited when you launched Tetragrammaton, and it's going so well. I listen to every episode. I love the interviews. I've been fortunate to be on there twice. I think the second one still hasn't been released yet, but I mention Tetragrammaton because it just feels so you. The ad reads, which I talked about it during my intro, but the ad reads are amazing. I listen to the ad reads over and over again because they're so clever, and they put me in a state. I feel like I'm watching, like I'm transported to as if I was born in the 1940s and I'm listening to television for the first time.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
There's really something there.

Rick Rubin:
It came out of solving a problem. The problem was when I decided to do the podcast, I'd even recorded the first several episodes. A friend of mine said, "Well, if you want to have ads on the show to support being able to do the show, then you're going to have to read the ads." And I said, "I don't really feel comfortable reading ads. I don't think that's something I can do well." I said, "I'm cool with the idea of only advertising products I believe in or that I use, because if I get to essentially promote something, I'll do that with things that I use, but I don't feel comfortable reading it." And he's like, "Well, you have to. It's going to be expected of you." And it was just an opportunity. It was like a, "Okay, I understand it's expected of me. What can I do that's true to me that adds something?" Instead of it being less than, how can I make it more than? And it was just solving this problem of needing a way to have an advertisement that I didn't feel bad about. And then got inspired and had this idea and started making them, and now they're my favorite thing in the podcast. In many podcasts, honestly, when the ads come up, I forward through them as a listener. On Tetragrammaton, when a commercial comes on, I always listen to them. It's a highlight, and they make me smile. And again, I didn't set out to do that. I just was trying to solve a creative problem. So sometimes the innovative ideas don't come when you're looking for an innovative idea. It's just there's this slot to fill. This is the way it's normally done. I'm not comfortable doing it the normal way. How else can we solve this problem? And sometimes it doesn't just solve the problem, but it becomes an actual feature.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, there's something about that solution-seeking that is part of or at least is aligned with the creative process, right? Yeah, the ads are extraordinary. We were listening to them in Italy. I'm like, "Play that one again." I love the way the guy who says the word shilajit.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
He says shilajit or something like. But I can't do the accent, folks. Don't take what I just said as evidence of what the ads are like.

Rick Rubin:
I think he had an Australian accent, that guy.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. Shilajit. And the chimes in the background. It's so good. You don't drink alcohol, correct?

Rick Rubin:
Correct.

Andrew Huberman:
Have you ever had a sip of alcohol?

Rick Rubin:
I drank alcohol once as part of a class experiment and had to mix all these drinks and taste them, and it was a terrible experience. But it was a requirement in the class I was taking.

Andrew Huberman:
Wow, school was different back then.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Or that school was different.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I think school was different. We used to prick our fingers and do our own blood tests in science class.

Rick Rubin:
I remember that. I never did it because I was always needle phobic, but that was definitely something that was asked of us to do.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, you could never get away with that now-

Rick Rubin:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... in a high school classroom. The reason I ask about alcohol is, first of all, I'm not the anti-alcohol crusader, even though I did an episode about alcohol, which discouraged many people from drinking more of it. But I think for a lot of people, the idea of smoking cannabis, drinking alcohol, for them, in their mind, is synonymous with the creative process, especially music, for a lot of reasons that people can imagine. I think it's remarkable and impressive and worth spending a few moments with you sharing with us how is it that you were around all of that? You're clearly part of the crew, meaning you're part of the creative process. Presumably, people offered you alcohol, drugs, et cetera, but something in you seems resistant to any kind of peer pressure. And as an adult, that's impressive, but to think when I was 15, 16, sure, I sort of regret it. But yeah, I drank, I had my experiences and then eventually stopped that. But most people are not good at not drinking if they don't want to drink, ever, or just once from a high school class. What was the internal narrative in your mind when that stuff was around, and what allowed you to just say, "No, I belong here, but I'm not going to do that"?

Rick Rubin:
It just was never interesting to me, and I think maybe it had to do with being an only child. Being an only child, I think, made me less resistant to peer pressure because I felt more confident in who I was, whatever that was, just from being with myself and not with other siblings. I'm guessing. I don't know if that's right, but that's my first inclination is to guess that would be the case. Also, I've always known what I like and known what I don't like and know there are things I want to try, there are things I don't want to try, and I feel very good about not doing something I don't want to do. I feel great about it.

Andrew Huberman:
Have you ever been curious about psychedelics, given that-

Rick Rubin:
I'm very curious. I've never done it, but I'm very curious, and I've been curious for a long time. There may be a time when I experiment.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, there are two psychedelics in particular that I find really interesting. One is macrodose psilocybin, which I've done as part of a clinical trial.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And my understanding is it reveals, in a very intense and experiential way, some component of the unconscious mind.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And it allows for plasticity and rewiring of the brain that's permanent if you come to some understanding through the so-called integration. It's not without its risks. The other one that's really interesting that I've been hearing more about, and I have not tried, and it carries some dangers, is ibogaine, which is 22 hours long. And people experience the world as normal with their eyes open, but when they close their eyes, they get a high-resolution, movie-like version of prior experiences, but they have agency within those movies.

Rick Rubin:
Wow.

Andrew Huberman:
They can reshape their reactions.

Rick Rubin:
That's wild.

Andrew Huberman:
This is being used to treat PTSD in veterans to great success. It has some cardiac risk associated with it, and it's not legal in the United States, and it's not being explored in clinical trials yet. But the state of Kentucky recently took, I think it's $40 million from the OxyContin settlement and is putting it to ibogaine research.

Rick Rubin:
Interesting.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. So those are the two that kind of spring to mind, kind of the classic psychedelic experience.

Rick Rubin:
I've also heard good things about MDMA, but I've never done that.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, I have done MDMA, again, as part of a therapeutic trial. It's a strong empathogen. The danger with MDMA, I think, is that if you don't stay in the eye mask or if you're listening to music or something, you can easily get anchored to some external cue and see a plant and be like, "I love plants," and spend the whole four to six hours thinking about your love of plants, which might be valuable, but I think the strong introspective work is best done with a therapist there, and you in the eye mask, and occasionally leaving the eye mask and writing things down. So, the reason I put that detail in there is that the psychedelic experience is very different with eyes open versus in the eye mask, with a clinician there versus recreationally. And it's not just about dangers versus safety. It's a big investment, and what one stands to get out of it, I think, depends on how much introspection you're willing to do.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
We won't be doing it this afternoon. There were at least 1,000 questions about attention deficit and neuroticism, people who feel like they can't organize themselves. And I thought a lot about these questions and tried to distill them into a single question, and eventually I did, and it's this. For many people, they associate the creative process with disorganization. I think what's so striking about you is that you embody both the creative process but also a strong sense of organization around it. Like nothing seems harebrained or random or haphazard about anything that you do. And yet, for a lot of people who call themselves creatives, they'll say, "I'm a creative," this, that, and you look at the space they're in and it's like chaos. Or their life is kind of chaos. Not all of them, but is what I'm saying making sense? Because I think why people orient toward you and one of the reasons for your success with the creative process is that you're extremely organized, but not to the point of being rigid. Be willing to embellish a little bit on that perception, whether or not it's accurate, inaccurate?

Rick Rubin:
Well, I would say there's a part in the process early on where it is before it can get organized, where it's free and it's playful, and it can be chaotic. It's a byproduct of whatever's happening. It's good because it's chaotic, and it just happens to be sometimes chaotic in that experiment in the beginning, where we're really playing with this idea of having fun and creating stimulation and seeing how it makes us feel. And we could try wacky things to get there. But then when it happens, when you get that feeling of like, "Oh, this is interesting. I haven't seen this before," then it gets more controlled. But it starts in a very free place, and I don't know if I would really use the word chaotic, but it could be. It certainly wouldn't be wrong. I would say more free would be the word. Free, like no expectation and total immersion in an improvisation that you're participating in that can go wherever it wants to go. And you're cool allowing it to go wherever it wants to go. And sometimes when it goes somewhere dangerous, that's when it gets interesting. So I can understand that danger aspect. Maybe that's why I like pro wrestling. I don't know. But there's something about when you get to these edges where this is not for everybody, it can get very interesting.

Andrew Huberman:
Speaking of stuff that's not for everybody and that to some people might have been shocking, I remember hearing Geto Boys for the first time and like, whoa, they're taking certain things pretty far. When you're working with an artist and they venture out into that place where things are maybe even a little shocking, what is that feeling for you internally? How do you distinguish between shock value for its own sake and something that's really opening up a new creative avenue or insight? Do you recall the first time you heard Bushwick and those guys do their thing?

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
What was your internal narrative?

Rick Rubin:
I can't believe it. I can't believe what they're saying. It's really pushing the boundaries of what anyone has said in this music before. It had switched because originally in rap, there was a lot of boasting about themselves, bragging. And then we got to The Message happened, and there was some social commentary. And then there was gangsta rap, and then the Geto Boys took a version of gangsta rap and turned it into horror rap, which was much more graphic than gangsta rap. Gangsta rap was talking about a real-life situation, whereas the Geto Boys took it into horror movie territory. It was more fantasy. But it seemed really scary at the time in the way that you're scared at a great horror movie.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you like horror movies?

Rick Rubin:
I don't.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you like monster movies where you know it's not real, like it's impossible, as opposed to horror movies where it's people getting killed by another human, like stuff that could happen in the world versus monsters and zombies and that kind of thing?

Rick Rubin:
I don't think I really like either of them very much. I like things that make me feel good. I don't really like adrenaline. I don't like to be excited. For some reason, in audio, I like something that makes me excited, but in visuals, I tend not to like things that make me excited.

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm. Interesting. And you're able to clean yourself of experiences easily, right? It seems. If you listen to something that's really shocking, you don't carry that shock to your sleep or to the next day. It doesn't trouble you.

Rick Rubin:
But a movie can impact me. There was a movie called "Melancholia" that I saw years ago, Lars von Trier movie, and I thought it was a very beautiful movie, but I was in a bad mood, I would say, for three months from the time I watched that movie on. It just did something to my brain that didn't feel good, and I couldn't snap out of it.

Andrew Huberman:
It's so interesting. There are a few movies that have done that to me. The movie "Blue Valentine," which has done really well, which is with Ryan Gosling and someone else where it's a relationship. I won't explain what happens in the arc of the relationship, but the movie haunted me.

Rick Rubin:
Hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
There's one scene where he's wearing a Misfits shirt, and I was like, "Oh, I like this." And that's a particularly good scene where he's singing to her, but the rest of the movie just brings about such feelings of just how hard life can be sometimes and how misguided people can be in relationship. And it's interesting how movies can just embed in us. It's not pleasant. I don't want to talk about it anymore. There were a number of questions asking about how you consume information in the world related to what's happening in the world. Where do you get your news from? You and I talk about this a lot. How do we know what to trust these days? Should we have ever trusted the news, or is it less trustworthy now? Where do you get your information about what's happening in the world and stay abreast of world affairs.

Rick Rubin:
Honestly, I don't feel like I know anything about it. I tend to look at it all like wrestling. So if the story's good, I might be more interested in the story, but I still don't hold much belief that that story is true.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, I don't know what to believe anymore. I was asked to comment on a particularly well-known person, who's not considered very savory, by a couple news avenues in the last couple of years, and I don't know how people had in mind that I would have knowledge about this person. And I gave zero information to these news outlets, and nonetheless, they didn't publish quotes from me, but they published things that I know to be completely false, and they know to be completely false. So I was just struck by the fact that, like in scientific publishing, you'd lose your job forever.

Rick Rubin:
Well, at one point in time, you would've lost your job. Now, I don't know if that's true.

Andrew Huberman:
Right.

Rick Rubin:
If you lose your job, because we see it happening a lot.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. Yeah. It's wild.

Rick Rubin:
Have you ever read anything about you that's not true?

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, yeah.

Rick Rubin:
Okay, so based on that-

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, absolutely. Some of it is playful stuff, like on Reddit.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
And now they have a little flag that they can put as comedic or something. But, oh, sure, things, not just taken out of context, but things like completely wrong.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I don't even know where people get this stuff from.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I keep waiting for the thing that I'm going to see that says that I'm dead.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
That'll be the moment.

Rick Rubin:
So based on that experience, why would you believe anything you read about anyone else? You get to see firsthand that they are just stories, just not true.

Andrew Huberman:
And presumably, you've seen things written about you that are not true.

Rick Rubin:
Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman:
All right.

Rick Rubin:
Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman:
Right.

Rick Rubin:
And artists I know, friends of mine, they write things about them, I know it's not true.

Andrew Huberman:
Wild.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
What do you think about the state of play, and the experience of being a parent and having a young child, has that allowed you more opportunities for play and to see the world through childlike lenses in a greater capacity, or is it just separate from your creative process?

Rick Rubin:
I would say I'm fairly childlike all the time. I try to stay as open. The beauty of childhood is that you haven't been indoctrinated yet. So you see things and you have wonder about them. And it's a great feeling, that feeling of wonder. I'll tell you a story. This is a true story. My friend Owen came over one night in the middle of the night, and he had just seen luminescence in the water for the first time. And he didn't know what it was and thought he was having a mystical experience. And he was so excited. He's like, "You won't believe what happened. The waves were like there was light everywhere. It was so cool. I'd never saw anything like it." And I said, "Oh, yeah, that's luminescence." And I explained what it was, and it destroyed the magic for him. He was really having a childlike, magical experience, and I destroyed it by telling him the science behind it. I try to live in a world where I can experience what he experiences, and I don't let the story ruin what's-- I allow the possibility to go past what I'm told the story is, but that things can be even wilder than the rational explanation.

Andrew Huberman:
For me, learning the reductionist science behind something, to me, adds depth and beauty. But then again, I realize I've been indoctrinated into the field of science.

Rick Rubin:
The matrix, they call it.

Andrew Huberman:
The matrix. This is one I didn't understand, but I'm going to assume that you understand because it has to do with people you've worked with. If Rick had casually dropped that the Ramones named themselves after the fake last name Paul McCartney used to check into hotels during Beatlemania, would that have blown Andrew's mind? It's a kind of weird question. I guess the question is, is it true that the Ramones named themselves after the fake last name that Paul McCartney used to check into hotels during Beatlemania?

Rick Rubin:
I don't know if that's a true story. I do know that Paul McCartney used the name Paul Ramone when checking into hotels, but I don't know if that's where the Ramones got the name.

Andrew Huberman:
Got it. And here is how rumors turn into, quote-unquote, "facts" on the internet.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
So we have to be careful.

Rick Rubin:
And also, maybe the Paul Ramone story is not true either, but that's the story I've heard.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. That reminds me, and I think this is an important case in point, that there's a what I consider a very famous photograph of you, Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer, and Henry Rollins.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
You're wearing a Dead Kennedy shirt. The four of you are facing one another. And I love that photograph because of who's in it. And I remember hearing a rare track from Strummer and the Mescaleros called "On the Road to Rock and Roll." And then, for some reason, probably because my phone is tapped into my brain, I was served up a video on social media of Henry Rollins telling the story of that gathering of the four of you, where Rollins is describing the story of Joe Strummer leaning into ... Johnny Cash and saying, "Hey, I wrote a song for you." It goes, "On the road to rock." Okay. And I remember coming to you and saying, "Rick, guess what? Remember that photo?" You're like, "I remember the photo." I said, "Yeah, Rollins has the story of what was happening in that moment," and I was so excited. And you said , "Yeah, I don't remember that. It might be true."

Rick Rubin:
It might be true.

Andrew Huberman:
But it might be entirely made up also.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And we're not calling Henry a liar.

Rick Rubin:
No, no, no.

Andrew Huberman:
But I believe Henry believes it.

Rick Rubin:
I believe Henry remembers that story.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
And that was his experience. That was not my experience, or I don't remember it being my experience, but who knows? Anything could've been said. It's true. Anything could've been said. Like, the fact that I don't remember has as much to do with whatever I was thinking about when that happened, and the story that Henry told had as much to do with what was going on in Henry's head when it happened. We have no idea. We have no idea.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you remember somebody shooting the photograph?

Rick Rubin:
I do not.

Andrew Huberman:
I'll put a link to that photograph on the internet. It's a really incredible gathering of folk.

Rick Rubin:
I've seen the photo, but I don't remember it being shot.

Andrew Huberman:
I'm looking for a high-resolution version of that photo. If anyone can find me one, I'll be happy to compensate you well. There were a lot of questions about your daily routine. People love this. The morning routine, the daily routine. And while I have to believe that everybody's necessary routine is quite different from the next, if you wouldn't mind just giving us a sense of the first couple of hours of your day, what that typically looks like when you're not traveling and you're settled into a place.

Rick Rubin:
It's different depending on the place that I'm in. But typically, it involves waking up, going out into the sun as naked as possible to start the day. I try to wake up slowly. And probably within an hour of that, I'll leave the house and go for as long of a beach walk as possible. Or if I'm in a place where there's a gym, several days a week I'll go to the gym instead. But I'll do some activity, I would say, about an hour after waking up. Sometimes it's an hour and a half, sometimes it's less, depending on the place I'm at. I also might do stretching before I go on the walk and do just several stretches on yoga mats on the floor, or with foam rollers, or balls, or some different things. I don't start my day until those things are out of the way. I try to avoid any work-related anything. Now, that said, if a thought comes up that I'm excited about, I'll note it. I won't avoid thoughts, but I tend not to engage in any work until probably 11:00. 11:00 a.m. would be the soonest, and some days not until 1:00. And then I do focused work until maybe 6:00, and then I spend the rest of the night trying to wind down out of work mode.

Andrew Huberman:
So 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. are really the peak-

Rick Rubin:
Probably

Andrew Huberman:
... quote-unquote "work hours."

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. Could be 11:00 too. Like today, we started here at 11:00, and I felt like I'd be good by 11:00, and I already did my morning walk. I had the argument on the beach. I was in the sun. I was in the hot tub. I had a whole morning already.

Andrew Huberman:
And then what does your evening wind-down look like in terms of the space that you're in, or trying to create, and your internal landscape?

Rick Rubin:
Well, it's only red light. From the time the sun sets, I'm wearing red glasses. I'm in a space with only red light. I'm 99% of the time home with my family, and we talk. I might watch wrestling or a documentary with red glasses on. We eat dinner together, or we eat dinner in shifts, depending on how it's working. But we're all together. And I find something to occupy my mind that gets me out of the workday. That said, sometimes the ideas still flow, and I'll note them. But I avoid any kind of a work phone call or anything that's stimulating or that will get me thinking about it. I aim for sunset, and then I'm usually in bed by 10:00 and fall asleep within 15 minutes.

Andrew Huberman:
Your relationship to light is fascinating. The sunlight piece makes a lot of sense and will make sense to the listeners of this podcast. We haven't done too many episodes, but we will do more, that covers the trying to avoid bright light exposure in the evening. You're wearing the red lens glasses now, even though it's the middle of the day. That's because we've got these bright lights around us, correct?

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And have you found that limiting your bright artificial light exposure in the evening has benefited you, and in what ways?

Rick Rubin:
Absolutely. And once you've done it, once you've changed and avoid looking at screens or my phone turns red at night. When I see someone else's phone, if someone comes to visit, and their phone lights up at night, it's blinding And it's so disturbing. And for them, that's normal. They're in this heightened, blown-out place all the time. I'm staying at neutral. I'm staying at the more natural, how the world would be if man didn't create all of these loud things

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah

Rick Rubin:
... loud devices.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. I've switched my phone, thanks to your input, and we will have released a clip on this by the time this episode airs, on the triple-click approach to the phone that you can put in very easily to allow it to go from regular screen to red screen at night, so that you don't have to go into the settings each time. You just triple click. We'll provide a link to that explanation. And Rick taught me that when I was over in Italy. Everyone in his home turned to me and said, "Wait, your phone is so bright. You got to do the red light thing." I said, "I don't know how." And he taught me that, so it's a very useful trick.

Rick Rubin:
Have you noticed a difference since looking at-

Andrew Huberman:
Huge positive difference.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
I sleep better. There are great data now because, of course, I go then find the data that-

Rick Rubin:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... for shift workers, people that have to be up at night working, if they put them under red light, the amount of cortisol at that time is suppressed, which is great, as compared to when they're under bright artificial lights without red lens glasses, or if they're in red lights, it's far more beneficial. Less cortisol. You want cortisol high early in the day. Viewing sunlight early in the day-

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... increases it by at least 50%, then you want it to taper off, and on and on. I heard something recently which is going to make a lot of sense. One thing that's happened in the last 30 years, which may at least partially explain the obesity crisis, is that calories which are depleted of nutrients, micronutrients, are very cheap now. They're very cheap to get calories, but they aren't nutritious calories.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
In addition, there's been a change in lighting technology so that blue light photons are very cheap. When I was a kid, my parents would say, "Turn off the lights. It's costing us all this money." Now, it's very cheap to keep the lights on in a home.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
The heat is a different story, but with respect. So we have a lot of cheap photons. So I think of blue light as cheap photons, not the good-for-you photons.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
Not nourishing photons.

Rick Rubin:
That's correct.

Andrew Huberman:
And consuming calories too often or at the wrong times of day we know is bad for you. Consuming photons in the wrong form at the wrong time of day, bad for you. And I think those two things combined, plus all the downstream negative cascades, can largely explain the obesity and, in some sense, mental health crisis.

Rick Rubin:
Interesting.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. There I editorialized again. I realize that we're trying to shift the ratio to more Rick, less Andrew, but-

Rick Rubin:
He can't help himself.

Andrew Huberman:
He can't help himself, and Rick indulges me, so. Actually, there were a number of questions in here that asked me, how has Rick helped you? And I'm refraining from answering those because people want your answers for them. But I do all the things that Rick's referring to. I'm not wearing red lens glasses now, but I have changed a lot of my health practices and/or sought out science to test whether or not some of the things that you've been doing for a while make sense, and indeed, in every case, they've made sense. I'm not just saying that because you're here. But you and I do a lot of the same things.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah, we're interested. And if it didn't work, we'd probably stop doing it eventually.

Andrew Huberman:
Right.

Rick Rubin:
It's like we're testing things.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. And I do believe that what starts out as crazy, like Mike Mentzer stuff of low volume weight training with heavy weights, it works so much better than the high volumes. All that stuff is being shown to be true in these peer-reviewed trials, so that's the nature of science. Science often follows the practitioners by many decades.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
It doesn't get there first because it's a slower, more iterative process.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
But some people need to see those clinical trials to feel comfortable doing something. I think the creative process is uniquely separated from academic science and academic scholarship in a way that I think has really benefited it. Can you imagine it if the Geto Boys had to get a degree in music theory in order to do what they do?

Rick Rubin:
They wouldn't be the Geto Boys.

Andrew Huberman:
Right. Or Slayer.

Rick Rubin:
They would not be Slayer.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. Or Public Enemy.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
Or Adele.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
Or Eminem, right?

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
It's almost by virtue of the fact that there is no degree for that-

Rick Rubin:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... per se, that allowed them to do what they did, right? Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman:
So what are your thoughts on schooling and higher education or just education? You were at NYU when you launched your record label. You graduated NYU, right?

Rick Rubin:
I did.

Andrew Huberman:
What are your thoughts on getting a quote-unquote formal education?

Rick Rubin:
It seems like an obsolete idea. I think maybe there was a time where it would've been helpful, and maybe depending on if the thing that you want to study can only be learned in an institution, maybe it would make sense. But I think the real world, getting an internship or finding the right mentor and going into whatever the thing is that you're interested in learning about, learning from people who do it as opposed to the system, I think might be a better use of your time.

Andrew Huberman:
The creative process doesn't exist in a vacuum, and relationships are a huge part of life. One thing that I've heard you say and that certainly I've been working to internalize is this idea that whatever relationships one has in their life, romantic relationships or not, married or not, kids or not, that the ideal circumstance is where one's work ... is the most stressful part of their life.

Rick Rubin:
Yes.

Andrew Huberman:
Can you tell us more about that?

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. The home is the safe place from which you can go out and be a warrior and do all these great things and these crazy things. I'm fearless when it comes to art. I'm not fearless when it comes to life. Life is my relationships. Art is where we can do these crazy things and have fun and try extreme things and see what happens. And that's a safe place to do that because it's just expression. The things we make don't have to represent who we are. They're just the things we make. And that's a point of view. It's like, "This is interesting to me in this moment. Check it out." That's all it is. May have a completely different feeling tomorrow. Within a relationship, it's long term, hopefully. And it's as long term as it's a productive relationship where everybody's getting what they want from that relationship. Everybody's needs are being met, and everybody cares enough to meet each other's needs.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, I've always admired how rational you are about relationships and this notion that if everybody isn't being honest, there's no relationship, actually.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Not it's a bad relationship, but there's actually no relationship.

Rick Rubin:
No, because if someone's not telling the truth, then each person is experiencing a different understanding of the world. They're living in two different worlds. So they're never actually together when you're experiencing a different world. You don't have to agree. I'm not saying you have to agree on everything, but you have to be truthful in saying, "This is how I see it," and your partner is clear in, "Yes, this is how I see it," or, "No, this is how I see it." You're on the same page, even in disagreement, but it's real. Each of you are being who you are for and with the other.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
But if you're not opening yourself up in that way to your partner, you're in a different world. They have an idea of what's happening that's completely different than what you have an idea of what's happening. That's not being together.

Andrew Huberman:
No masks.

Rick Rubin:
No. No. It's the same as when you said earlier about lying in your diary. You'd only be doing a disservice to yourself. Lying in a relationship would only be doing a disservice to yourself.

Andrew Huberman:
Mike Ness of Social Distortion has a song called "Cheating at Solitaire," which seems like an appropriate title to mention right now.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
Lying in the diary, cheating at solitaire.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. It's ridiculous.

Andrew Huberman:
Doesn't make any sense.

Rick Rubin:
No. You're not actually playing the game. Do you know what I mean? If you're cheating at it, you're not actually playing the game. The whole point of the game is the game. If you cheat at it, you're not playing the game.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you have any must-read books for people? I'll throw one out, Rick's book on "The Creative Act: A Way of Being." But in addition to that book, what are some books that you recommend to people for stimulating thought or for, I don't know, health purposes or things that you found particularly beneficial in book form?

Rick Rubin:
My favorite book about meditation is called "Wherever You Go, There You Are."

Andrew Huberman:
Oh, I love that.

Rick Rubin:
And I just got sent the 30th anniversary edition, which is completely rewritten. I have not yet read the rewritten version, but I love the original version, and I know the rewritten version. I'm guessing the rewritten version is just more refined and even better.

Andrew Huberman:
Such a great book. That book was given to me when I was about 14 and a half, when I was released from a particularly uncomfortable, non-voluntary state of affairs. And one of the things that I remember about that book that helped me through so many years of life, and I have to go back to, is this mountain visualization meditation.

Rick Rubin:
Being a mountain.

Andrew Huberman:
Mm-hmm.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
I don't know why it was so helpful, but goodness was it helpful for me.

Rick Rubin:
It's a beautiful idea.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah, I don't know why I thought of that just now, but I'm going to go back and read it. Do you think that there's genetic, epigenetic, family lineage stuff unrelated to genetics that leads us to create things that are really about our ancestors? For instance, let's take Johnny Cash, for instance, or an artist that you've worked with more recently, Chili Peppers, that when they got together to make music, that something from Anthony's family line was being transmuted through him into the songs. Is that happening? Do you think that we can work out and include things that are generations far back enough that we don't even really know what happened to them? I mean, it's coming through in our genes.

Rick Rubin:
I think it's certainly possible, but I don't think we can know, and I don't think it's necessarily even helpful to know. It just is one of those mysterious things. I don't think we know why we do many of the things we do, and it's just another example of that. And that's a possible theory to explain why we do the things we do, maybe. But there may be another one. It may be UFOs are controlling us. I don't know. Do you know what I'm saying? It could be anything.

Andrew Huberman:
There are people on the internet that think that it's UFOs that are controlling us.

Rick Rubin:
Could be. I wouldn't disagree with that.

Andrew Huberman:
More and more evidence is coming out that unidentified flying objects might actually be a documented phenomenon by the US government. I haven't looked into it yet, but-

Rick Rubin:
I wouldn't be surprised

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

Rick Rubin:
I'm open to just see what's happening. I listen and recognize, is this making me lean forward? Am I curious to see what's going to happen next? Is the thing that happens next different than what I thought was going to happen next? That could be interesting. I listen to a lot of music. When it doesn't do what's expected, that's really interesting, especially if it sounds good, if it works. So I'm just open to experiencing what it is. And I'll say something funny about it, which is, this will sound mystical, I don't understand it, but often you can tell a lot about the piece of music you're going to listen to based on the first sound you hear. Like the first moment. It's not about what note it is. It's not about what instrument it is. It's intention in the performance, and that performance could even be a machine. The way when something starts, sometimes there's this feeling of, "Oh, this is going to be good," just out of the boom, the downbeat. Can't explain it.

Andrew Huberman:
Reminds me of dating. And you know within half a nanosecond, this is going to be a fun night. This will be an interesting night. This person's interesting.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
Or, okay, this is not a night to continue. Right? I don't know. And it's not what's said necessarily or even how it's said, just it's a feeling.

Rick Rubin:
I know that depending on how I'm feeling, I'll avoid listening critically to something. If I'm not feeling well, if I don't feel like I can be completely there and open, I'll not listen. I know I want to really be there for the thing that I'm listening to.

Andrew Huberman:
Do you inform people if, like, "Hey, I'm not here today. I can't-"

Rick Rubin:
Sometimes.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah.

Rick Rubin:
Sometimes.

Andrew Huberman:
As somebody who has never been part of the music production process, how long does it take, like for an album, let's throw out an artist you've worked with, like you worked with Eminem. You did some songs on that album or the whole album?

Rick Rubin:
I did some songs.

Andrew Huberman:
So did he come in with those written and then you guys worked together on those songs? How long, was that a week, a month, a day?

Rick Rubin:
I think we were together for several weeks. It's been long enough now that I can't remember the specifics, but there is no rule of how that works. And sometimes things come together very quickly. An album can be made in a weekend, and some albums are years in the making. When it's years in the making, it's rarely every day for years in the making. It's usually more episodic. But there is something, both versions are very interesting, and it's something that comes out almost fully formed very quickly, has particular energy. And then something that's made over time can have all of those individual moments, all the changes that happen within you over that period of time, those can all be reflected and be the difference between a daily diary journal and reading three months. It's different. They're two different things. Can't say one's better than the other. They're just two different things. So some projects are more like a year's diary, and some are more like a weekend. And same, you watch a movie, some movies, the movie story takes place in 24 hours. And sometimes it's a person's lifetime. One's not a better method than the other. It's whatever suits the work.

Andrew Huberman:
Speaking of your work with Eminem, but also with Jay-Z and with Beastie Boys and others, you are featured in a number of the videos. You show up in those videos. Whose decision was that, and what are your thoughts on music videos? I remember when music videos first came out, the whole MTV era, and just thinking like, "This is so cool. I can see the artists, see how they're dressed," all of the crazy styles and all of that that accompany the music. Two questions. One Whose decision was it to be in the videos? Because producers often are not included in the videos.

Rick Rubin:
It would always be if the artist asked. That'd be the only reason I would be there.

Andrew Huberman:
And two, what are your thoughts on music videos and the idea that then it puts a very strong visual to the song, whereas were there not to be a video, people could just imagine something based on what they're hearing and hearing alone?

Rick Rubin:
They're two different things. There's not a better or worse. There are some times where the video makes the song better, and there's often the case where the poetry of the words, if you close your eyes and listen to what the words are, as a listener, you get to participate in creating that world in your head. So sometimes photographs can tell us too much information. It's too leading. It limits the story to just this photograph. The photograph tells you much more than the words. The words can be interpreted in many ways, and then we each get to have that experience. It's something in the book that I was cognizant of in picking the words, was never to be specific to the point of where the reader doesn't get to participate in this act. So it doesn't tell you what to think. It's an invitation to think. It's an invitation to say, "Where am I in this? What's my version of this?" It's not about anyone else. It's about the reader. From the beginning, that was always part of my understanding of what I thought would be the most helpful.

Andrew Huberman:
The cover certainly embodies that, that it's not clear exactly what the cover design is, quote-unquote, "supposed to be."

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It's open to interpretation.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah, you can interpret it as you wish, and different people see different things.

Andrew Huberman:
Let's get current. What are you working on now that you're excited about, if you can share?

Rick Rubin:
Let me see what I can and can't share.

Andrew Huberman:
Could be broad categories of things, too.

Rick Rubin:
Okay. I'm working on a couple of documentary projects that I'm excited about, and some albums that I've been working on over time are coming out. One is an incredible singer-guitar player named Marcus King. His album's about to come out. The Gossip is a band that I made an album with 10 years ago, and we just made a new album, or we made an album maybe 18 months ago, and that's coming out now. Those are the first ones that come to mind.

Andrew Huberman:
Is the documentary process fun for you, and how do you approach that?

Rick Rubin:
I watch a lot of documentaries to learn what I don't want to do. I don't think I've been inspired-- Well, maybe some cases where I get inspired by what I'm seeing, but more often, I see things and I say, "Okay, these documentaries all have this format, so I know I don't want it to be this format." It's more of a ruling out. And it's fun to find new ways that reveal different information than the standard format allows. It's interesting to me. We'll see if anyone else cares.

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

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. I didn't set out to do what I'm about to tell you. I didn't set out to do this, but it's something that after I started doing it, I came to realize it's an interesting thing. And I actually learned this from listening to your podcast. It was actually Lex's podcast with you.

Andrew Huberman:
Hmm.

Rick Rubin:
And I was listening to the podcast, and I know you know Lex, and I know you guys are friends. And both of you, in addition to you talking to Lex, you're talking to the audience. And Lex, in addition to talking to you, talks to the audience. And the audience was a participant in your conversation. And I realized that at the Tetragrammaton podcast, it's different than that. It's more of an intimate, personal, like the interview with you that hasn't come out yet. That was me talking to you. I certainly didn't have any idea that anybody else was going to hear it other than, yes, someone else is going to hear it, but that's not what this is. I was asking you the questions I was interested in, and I wanted to learn as much as I could. And if you said something either that I didn't understand, I'd ask you to explain it. Or if you told me a story about something that sent me on a tangent that I want to know more about this left side of what you said or the right side of what you said, I would ask, but only following my own interests. So it has an intimacy. If I listen to a Tetragrammaton podcast, it sounds like I'm overhearing a conversation, a personal conversation. And It has turned into parts of certain decisions we've made, like there's music at the beginning, and then you hear the guest more often than not is in the middle of a story. And it's almost as if you've walked into a room and people are in this deep conversation, and you're just sitting on the side quietly and hearing this conversation, and it's a real moment that's happening there, and it's just different. I can't say it's better, I can't say it's worse. I don't know what's interesting about it, but something about it's interesting to me, and when I listen to it, I feel a different kind of an intimacy. And again, it wasn't premeditated. This is after the fact I'm looking back and understanding, oh, this is what it is. This is why this is different.

Andrew Huberman:
Yeah. The podcast that I did with you on your podcast-

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm

Andrew Huberman:
... when I was featured as a guest the second time, I completely forgot that we were podcasting.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
It was also good we'd had a few days together overseas there. We were in a very kind of isolated environment. That helped me get out of the mode of, there are listeners.

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. There's no sense of performance involved. It couldn't be more casual. And the reason I chose not to film it is because the nature of lights and cameras make it harder to forget that you're doing it. So I aim for it to be as natural an experience, so that you can have the conversation that you really would have if there were no lights and cameras. Not that we want to reveal anything. It's a level of comfort and openness where you're talking to somebody you like, and you're enjoying the conversation.

Andrew Huberman:
And that's so you. I just have to share that, the first time we met in person, you and I had FaceTimed a number of times previous to that, but the first time we met in person, I came over to your house. We ended up doing sauna and cold, and I was going through a particularly challenging time in my life. It had really just hit me square in the face. And I remember saying, "Hey, listen, I don't know if we can talk about this," but I just opened up about all of it. And that's the moment when, we would've become friends anyway, but that's where things really took off, because I kept apologizing at the end. I said, "I'm so sorry," and you said, "No. No. This is actually what we're supposed to do."

Rick Rubin:
Yeah.

Andrew Huberman:
And I feel very grateful that we've remained close friends ever since, and that catalyzed a lot. But I think that one of the things I love about podcasts, not just podcasting, but podcasts, is that the really effective podcasts, like yours, like Lex's, like Rogan, like Rich Roll, Tim Ferriss, they really reflect the love and passion that the person has for that kind of conversation. I can certainly say this about my podcast. I've been learning, organizing, and distributing information since I was six years old.

Rick Rubin:
Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman:
So my podcast is just that. You like real conversation and real things that are unbarriered by the idea that maybe someone's going to listen, and how will it work out? Just like we talked about earlier, and you answered the questions that way. And I think Lex likes Lex's form of thing, and Joe is doing his form of thing. And I think that's, to me, one of the great gifts of podcasting. If anyone wants to know how to create a successful podcast, quote unquote, successful, it's have the kind of conversations and talk about the kinds of things you really love. Like Cameron Hanes has this "Lift, Run, Shoot" podcast, where you go to his house, you do a workout, then you go for a run, and then he teaches you archery. And the reason it's so effective is that he loves lifting, running, and shooting. And then he-

Rick Rubin:
It's honest

Andrew Huberman:
... and he loves teaching people that. So at the end of the day, you're sitting down talking about a great day-

Rick Rubin:
Yeah

Andrew Huberman:
... that embodies everything that he's about and the person learned. And I couldn't do that podcast. I can go on as a guest, and I loved being a guest. But I think that's the message, and it brings us back to what you were talking about earlier, and throughout today's discussion, which is that if you're thinking about how it's going to land, how the hell could it ever work?

Rick Rubin:
Yeah. It's just a different thing. I had a conversation yesterday, for the podcast with Daniel Kaluuya, who I've never met before. Incredible actor and beautiful human being. And we probably talked for about three hours, and it was a deep conversation, and I feel like I might have a new best friend. He's unbelievable, the coolest guy. If I wasn't doing the podcast, I don't know if I would've met him. It just worked out. It worked out that I got to meet this incredible person.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, Rick, we covered most of the most frequently asked questions, and you've been extremely gracious with your time and thoughtfulness in answering them. And I don't know what to say except thank you for taking the time to do yet another podcast to answer the audience's questions. They were here in this podcast in the form of this very large stack of questions. And of course, your book includes a lot of information that encapsulates this, but I think this really fleshes out some of the details of how you go about things, how certain things can't be the same for everybody. And I think in answering these questions, you provided a great service to people who are perhaps still struggling with getting the creative process going or flowing. I'm certain that it's going to change the way that I focus and lean into my day. I've got a number of different notes here. And maybe I'll be willing to share them with people, but then that would go against the principle of, this is for me, and everyone's going to work it out their own way. So we'll provide links to everything that was mentioned where there's a link that's relevant. And Yeah, man, I just want to say thank you so much for being such an incredible educator and such an incredible friend as well.

Rick Rubin:
Thank you. It's a funny idea of being an educator. I can't imagine that, but I appreciate those words.

Andrew Huberman:
Well, you are indeed an educator. We're learning so much from you. And if you just step back for a second and think about all the creative works that have stemmed and are going to stem from the learnings that people have achieved from hearing your experience and wisdom, it's incalculable.

Rick Rubin:
Wow. I'll take it. Thank you, sir.

Andrew Huberman:
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion about protocols for creativity with the one and only Rick Rubin. Please also be sure to check out the links in the show note captions, in particular to Rick's incredible book all about the creative process, entitled "The Creative Act: A Way of Being." If you're learning from and/or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific zero-cost way to support us. In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five-star review. If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or guests you'd like me to consider on the Huberman Lab podcast, please put those in the comments section on YouTube. I do read all the comments. Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support this podcast. Not so much on today's episode, but on many previous episodes of the Huberman Lab podcast, we discuss supplements. While supplements aren't necessary for everybody, many people derive tremendous benefit from them for things like improving sleep, for hormone support, and for improving focus. To learn more about the supplements discussed on the Huberman Lab podcast, go to Live Momentous, spelled O-U-S, so livemomentous.com/huberman. If you're not already following me on social media, I am hubermanlab on Instagram, X, formerly called Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Threads. And at all of those places, I discuss science and science-related tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content covered on the Huberman Lab podcast. So again, it's hubermanlab on all social media channels. If you haven't already subscribed to our Neural Network Newsletter, our Neural Network Newsletter is a zero-cost newsletter that comes out every month. It includes podcast summaries, as well as protocols in the form of short PDFs of maybe just one to three pages, where I list out the specific protocols, for instance, for improving dopamine functioning, or for improving your sleep, or for deliberate cold exposure, deliberate heat exposure, or fitness protocols, and on and on. All of which are presented in brief fashion, very direct, just the protocols listed out. Again, completely zero cost. To sign up, you simply go to hubermanlab.com, go to the menu function, scroll down to Newsletter, and enter your email. And I should point out that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Rick Rubin. And last but certainly not least, thank you for your interest in science.