EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,160 words- 0:00 – 4:08
Rick Rubin
- AHAndrew Huberman
(peaceful music) 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. Today my guest is Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is credited with being one of the most creative and prolific music producers of all time. The range of artists with whom he's worked with and discovered is absolutely staggering, ranging from artists such as LL Cool J, Public Enemy, Minor Threat, Fugazi, Beastie Boys, Jesus and Mary Chain, Jay-Z, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Green Day, Tom Petty, System of a Down, Joe Strummer, Kanye West, Johnny Cash, Adele, and many, many more. Not surprisingly, therefore, Rick is considered somewhat of an enigma. That is, people want to know how it is that one individual is able to extract the best creative artistry from so many different people in so many different genres of music. Well, as today's discussion reveals, Rick's expertise in the creative process extends well beyond music. In fact, our conversation takes us into the realm of what the creative process is specifically and generally across domains, including music, of course, but also writing, film, science, and essentially all domains in which new original thought, ideas, and production of anything becomes important. Our conversation ventures from abstract themes, such as what is creativity and where does it stem from? To the more concrete, everyday tool-based approaches to creativity, including those that Rick himself uses and that he's seen other people use to great success. That took us down some incredible avenues ranging from a discussion about the subconscious, to how the subconscious interacts with our conscious mind, and how the subconscious and conscious mind interact with nature around us and within us. Indeed, our conversation got rather scientific at times, but all with an eye and an ear toward understanding the practical tools that any and all of us can use in order to access the creative process. We also spent some time talking about Rick's new book, which is all about creativity and ways to access creativity. The title of the book is The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin. This is a book that I've now read three times from cover to cover, and I'm now reading it a fourth time, because it is so rich with wisdom and information that I'm applying in multiple domains of my life. Not just my work, but my everyday life. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Rick has an incredible ability to translate his understanding of the creative process in a way that is meaningful for anybody. So if you're in music, if you're a musician, it will certainly be meaningful for you. But it is not about music. It is about the creative process. And so whether or not you consider yourself somebody creative or not, or whether or not you seek to be more creative, Rick's book and today's conversation sheds light on what I believe to be the fundamental features of what makes us human beings. That is, what allows us, unlike other animals, to look out on the landscape around us, to examine our inner landscape, and to come up with truly novel ideas that thrill us, entertain us, entertain other people, scare us, make us laugh, make us cry. All the things that make life rich are essentially contained in the creative process, and to be able to sit down and learn from the Rick Rubin how the creative process emerges in him and his observations about how it can best emerge in others is and was truly a gift. So I'm excited to share his knowledge with you today. One thing that you'll quickly come to notice about today's conversation is that Rick is incredibly generous with his knowledge about the creative process. In fact, he very graciously and spontaneously, I should add, offered to answer your questions about creativity. So if you have questions about the creative process for Rick, please put those in the comment section on YouTube. And in order to make those questions a bit easier for me to find, please put "QUESTION FOR RICK RUBIN" in capitals, then colon or dash, whichever you choose, and then put your question there. I do ask that you keep the questions relatively short so that I can ask Rick as many of those questions as possible. We will record that conversation and we will post it as a clip on the Huberman Lab Clips channel.
- 4:08 – 8:23
Maui Nui Venison, Thesis, WHOOP, Momentous
- AHAndrew Huberman
Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui, which I can confidently say is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available. Maui Nui spent nearly a decade building a USDA-certified wild harvesting system to help balance invasive deer populations on the island of Maui. I've talked before on this podcast, and we've had guests on this podcast that have emphasized the critical role of getting quality protein, not just for muscle repair and protein synthesis, but also for repair of all tissues, including brain tissue on a day-to-day basis. And the general rule of thumb for that is one gram of quality protein per pound of body weight per day. With Maui Nui meats, you can accomplish that very easily, and you can do that without ingesting an excess of calories, which is also critical for immediate and long-term health. I should say that Maui Nui meats are not only extremely high quality, but they are also delicious. I particularly like their jerky, so their venison jerky. I also have had Maui Nui venison in various recipes, including...... ground venison, some venison steaks, and I love the taste of the venison. It's lean, but it doesn't taste overly lean or dry at all. It's incredibly delicious. So if you'd like to try Maui Nui Venison, go to mauinuivenison.com/huberman to get 20% off your first order. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com/huberman to get 20% off your first order. Today's episode is also brought to us by Thesis. Thesis makes custom nootropics, and as many of you have probably heard me say before, I am not a fan of the word nootropics, because nootropics means smart drugs, and frankly, the brain doesn't work that way. The brain has neural circuits for focus. It also has neural circuits for creativity and neural circuits for task switching and for imagination and for memory. There is no such thing as a neural circuit for being smart, and therefore the word nootropics doesn't really apply to anything specific neurobiologically speaking. Thesis understands this, and therefore has designed custom nootropics that are tailored to your unique needs. I've been using Thesis for over a year now, and their nootropic formulas have been a game changer for me, in particular in the realm of cognitive work. My go-to formula for when I'm doing any kind of cognitive work is their Clarity formula. That's the one I've been using most often lately. If you'd like to try Thesis customized nootropics, you can go online to takethesis.com/huberman. You'll take a brief three-minute quiz, and Thesis will send you four different formulas to try in your first month. Again, that's takethesis.com/huberman and use the code huberman at checkout for 10% off your first box. Today's episode is also brought to us by Whoop. Whoop is a fitness wearable device that tracks your daily activity and sleep but goes beyond activity and sleep tracking to provide real-time feedback on how to adjust your training and sleep schedules in order to feel and perform better. Six months ago, I started working with Whoop as a member of their scientific advisory council as a way to help Whoop advance their mission of unlocking human performance, and as a Whoop user, I've experienced firsthand the health benefits of their technology. It's clear based on quality research that Whoop can inform you how well you're sleeping, how to change your sleep habits, how to change your activity habits, even how to modify different aspects of your nutrition, exercise, sleep, and lifestyle in order to maximize your mental health, physical health, and performance. So whether or not you're an athlete or you're exercising simply for health, Whoop can really help you understand how your body functions under different conditions and how to really program your schedule, nutrition, and exercise and many other factors of your life in order to really optimize your health and performance, including your cognition. If you're interested in trying Whoop, you can go to joinwhoop, spelled W-H-O-O-P, .com/huberman. That's joinwhoop.com/huberman today and get your first month free. Huberman Lab Podcast is proud to announce that we are now partnered with Momentous supplements, because Momentous supplements are of the very highest quality, they ship internationally, and they have single ingredient formulations. If you'd like to access the supplements discussed on the Huberman Lab Podcast, you can go to livemomentous, spelled O-U-S, so livemomentous.com/huberman. And now for my discussion with Rick Rubin.
- 8:23 – 12:26
Creativity & Ideas, Cloud Analogy
- AHAndrew Huberman
Great to have you here today, Rick.
- RRRick Rubin
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So of all the topics in science and in particular in neuroscience, I confess that creativity is the most difficult one to capture, because, um, you can find papers, scientific studies, that is, on convergent thinking versus divergent thinking, and there are definitions to these. I mean, they take on different forms. But in a str- strict definition form, it seems that creativity has something to do with either rearranging existing elements or coming up with new elements. But as I went into your book, which I've done now twice, I've read it twice, and by the way, I feel so blessed and honored to have gotten an early copy from you, um, or a final copy early, that is. But having gone through it twice, I'm now convinced that there may not actually be an internal source of creativity that exists on its own, right? And, and the example that you give that, for me, really is serving as an anchor, and tell me if I'm wrong here, is this idea that ideas and creativity are a little bit like a cloud. If you look at it at one moment, you might think that it looks like one thing, or it has a certain shape and texture, but then you look at it a moment later, it could be quite a bit different, and if you look at it an hour later, it very well could be gone. And the, the reason I think that serves as such a powerful hook for me to think about creativity and why I think neuroscientists and scientists in general have never actually captured a way to even talk about creativity, uh, stems from somebody that you knew in person but that, as you know, I greatly admire. I don't have many heroes, but I would put Joe Strummer among the short list of heroes that I have, and I remember once an interview with him, fairly disjointed. Uh, he was sort of, uh, you know, off on different tangents that I couldn't follow, but at one point, he just kind of blurted out that if you have an idea, you have to write it down. And you may end up throwing it away, but if you wait, it will be gone. And I remember that, and as a consequence, I have a whole system that I use to try and capture ideas. But what are your thoughts on what Joe said, this cloud idea that comes up, um, in one form in one area of the book but then I think is thread throughout the book in different ways? You know, how did that come to you, and, um, and how does it serve you in trying to ex- I don't want to say extract, but trying to access creativity?
- RRRick Rubin
I think the best way to think about it is like a dream. It's like, if you think about your dreams, they don't, they don't necessarily make sense. When you wake up, you'll re- you might remember part but not the whole thing. Then if you start writing them down, they'll, they'll, they'll come back, and they may not make sense to you. They're, they're, they'll be, um, a series of abstract images.... and may- you know, maybe some day in the future, you'll be able to look back and understand what they mean, and maybe not. And that's sort of how this, the art-making, uh, process works. It's like we're making things, and we're looking for a feeling in ourselves. And it's, it could be a feeling of excitement or enthusiasm, a feeling of interest, a feeling of curiosity, "I wanna know more," um, a feeling of leaning forward. And w- we've, we're following that energy in our body when we feel th- this, "There's something here. There's something here. I want to know more. I want to know more. I want to know more." And, um, but it's not, it's, I'll say it's not an intellectual process. It's a different thing. That's why it's ha- it's hard even to talk about it, because it's so, uh,
- 12:26 – 17:36
Language & Creativity; Kids
- RRRick Rubin
elusive, you know?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Recently, I was listening to a podcast by our friend, um, Lex Fridman.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I think it was an episode with Balaji Srinivasan, where this, w- with Balaji, who's a investor-type guy, thinker-type guy, um... This is like an eight-hour episode. He says something in the beginning that I, I'd love your thoughts on. He said, "Look, you know, we can train a rat to lever press every s- other time, or to expect reward at an every even number press, or every odd number press, or ev- even every fifth number press. But a human and a rat can't do that for, like, prime number presses." You can't actually train that. And then you think about the reward systems and the way that we follow life from when we get up until we go to sleep, and what he said is, "The fact that we can't do that means that we may not actually be in touch with the best schedules of doing things." Like every time I'm thirsty, I take a sip. I assume that's the right way to do it, but it might not be optimal, right? Optimum for whatever purpose. When I was reading your book, I was thinking about there's a, there's a, there's a r- set of things to follow, things to pay attention to, you talk about this, things to access, that none of the creative process comes from just within us. It can, but it's always being fed by things outside of it. And so what I started to do is, the second time I read through the book was think about it through the lens of what Balaji was saying was that there may not even be a language for this thing that we call accessing creativity. I mean, there's a process, but that language in the form of words is a little bit like, um, trying to use even numbers to try and access prime numbers.
- RRRick Rubin
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Like, the, the math becomes so convoluted-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... that we end up in a conversation like this, where I'm confident we can get to the kernels of it, because in the, what's remarkable about the book is that you do. You, you, you show and inform the process. But there may not be a English or any other language for saying, "Do this, then this, then this, then this, and you'll have something of creative value."
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Does that capture it?
- RRRick Rubin
Yes. I think language is insuffici- insufficient to, to drill down on creativity. It's more, um, it's closer to magic than it is, uh, science.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So when kids come into the world, um, do you think that they have better access to this creative process than we do as adults? Because we start to impart role plays and books like, "Will it get likes? Will people like it?" But also, um, like all the things that are available to us that we're not paying attention to, like the texture of this table, right? They, we're discarding things i- kind of systematically. We get, quote unquote, "set in our ways." Do you think kids are more, are just by definition and by design more creative than adults?
- RRRick Rubin
Yes. K- kids are, they're open, and they have no baggage. They don't have any belief system. They don't know how things are supposed to work. Um, they just see what is, and if we pay attention to what is, we learn, we learn much more than if we, uh... Most of us select from an endless number of data points a- available to us to, well, as a s- as a species to make sure that we don't die, and to procreate, and to feed ourselves are probably the primary functions first, and then, and then we learn things about what's right and what's wrong. And we learn things about, uh, how to do certain things, or we're inspired by someone who makes something we love, and we want to do it the way they do it. And all of those things undermine the purity of the creative process. They can be, um, tools to build your skill set to be able to do it yourself, like if you're a, a, a singer, you might imitate a singer you really like for a while to get good at it and then eventually come to find your own voice. It doesn't always, it doesn't always start with your own voice. But if you're three years old or five year- years old, and you try singing, you're not singing like anyone else. You're, you're singing with your own, your own voice. And when you make something, you're making it based on not, not knowing. And I, I think, um, I had the advantage early in my career of starting making music without any experience, which was helpful, because I didn't know what rules I was breaking, and so it wasn't intentional breaking of rules, I just did what seemed right to me. Um, but I didn't realize that I was doing things that other people wouldn't do.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I mean,
- 17:36 – 22:01
Feelings & Creative Ideas
- AHAndrew Huberman
there is this idea that there are no new ideas, you know? I, I sort of disagree, because every once in a while, I'll see or hear something that at least seems different enough. Um...
- RRRick Rubin
I think it's a, a, a com- a combination of a new combination of existing ideas presented in a new way. I think that's, I think that's how it works. I don't know. Um, but I will say, it does seem like the things that are most interesting to me have a series of familiar elements joined together in a way that it's creating something that I've never seen before.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You mentioned that it's, um, that when you are close to or you o- see hints of creativity, that is of real value, that you can f- that it's a feeling. And I also believe that the body is a great source of information. I mean, which, um, you know, once people realize that the brain, of course, is in the skull, but the nervous system extends everywhere in the body, the whole mind/body thing just falls away, you know? F- philosophers have argued about this forever, but it's a silly argument. It's also true that, you know, f- God forbid, if I were to amputate all my limbs, have them amputated, I'd fundamentally still be me, right? The same is not true if we took out big enough chunk of my brain and I still survived, I would be fundamentally different human being.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, I'd still have the same name, and identity, and Social Security number, but I would behave very differently.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, who knows? Maybe better. (laughs) Uh, the signals from the body w- we know, or at least we assume, are pretty generic. Like I can think of 50 different ways or 100 ways that we could talk about creativity today, and we could define it, and redefine it, and carve it up, and serve it up like sushi in a bunch of different ways, but the body sends signals that most of us are, um, we have a kind of coarse understanding of. It's like, "Oh, my stomach hurts," or, "My stomach feels good," or, "I'm not sensing my stomach." Or, um, "Oh, that feels good. It feels warm. It feels cold." Like what, most of us aren't trained in understanding how to interpret those signals, so it's almost like you have a few vowels, a few syllables, and there isn't a lot more w- whereas when we talk about our thoughts and our experiences, depending on how hyper-verbal somebody is and how much emphasis they put on different sounds, it, it's kind of near infinite, right? Um, not infinite, but near infinite. So for you personally, when you know that you're on the, on the, uh, the end of a thread of creativity, maybe you're listening to an artist or you're, or you're hearing something and y- and you're like there and the, the, your antennae start to deflect in a certain way.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right? Do you feel that in your body as a recognizable sensation, or is it a thought and a sensation?
- RRRick Rubin
It's a, it's a feeling in my body.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Is it lo- is it localized?
- RRRick Rubin
No. It's a, it's a, it's a feeling of, um, I would say it's like a surge of energy.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Do you remember the first time you experienced that?
- RRRick Rubin
Probably, you know, hearing The Beatles when I was three or four years old.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Three or four years old?
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Wow.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Is there something wrong with me that The Beatles have never done it for me?
- RRRick Rubin
No. Maybe you just weren't exposed at the right time in the right way. It's, there's no, no right or wrong way. And, and everyone, um, I can love The Beatles and you cannot, and we're both right. You know? There's not a-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay. I'm glad we can still be friends.
- RRRick Rubin
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
I was a little concerned. I was a little scared to ask (laughs) you that question. I know my taste in music is a little bit obscure, but, um, and, and kind of fragmentary, but, um, okay, good. I've always felt like, "Gosh, there must be something wrong with me." I like their songs-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... but they don't, there's no juice for me there.
- RRRick Rubin
I think maybe we'll watch, um, there was a, an eight-part series called The Beatles Anthology, which is out of print, but I, I can try to find it somewhere and we can watch that together.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay.
- RRRick Rubin
And maybe that'll m- make the case for The Beatles.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay. Yeah, but I, I mean, nothing against them. It's just, and I'm always bothering you for a story, but like Ramones, I saw that and I was like, "Wow, like jeans, aviators." Everyone had to change their last name to Ramone. Um, a lot of them (laughs) hated each other.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- 22:01 – 30:20
Rules, Choice & Art; Personal Taste & Other’s Opinions
- RRRick Rubin
- AHAndrew Huberman
So that brings me to a question of when, when something feels creatively right and you're sensing it and, um, and you're there, let's say, in the studio, or maybe even you're listening to something that somebody sent you.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
How d- how do you translate that? Given the absence of, of language, how, how do you translate that into a conversation with the artist? And again, this could be about writing, or comedy, or, you know, or science, or podcasting for that matter. How do you say that, "Keep going that way," when they might not even recognize that they did it? And I'm guessing a lot of times they don't.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah. Sometimes they don't. It depends. When we're in the... I'll, I'll try to be in a, in a setting where, as we're talking about it, we can engage with it in that moment, so it's not much good. Um, let's say, I was producing your new record and you played me something and I had some thoughts about it. It wouldn't be so helpful for me to tell you what those were. It'd be better for us to wait till we were in a place where we could try things and see where it goes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- RRRick Rubin
Um, so the first thing is, I wouldn't rely on language to do it. It would be more of a making a suggestion of something that's actionable. We try it and then we have more data, and either we're moving in a good direction or we're moving away from it. We're moving towards it or away from it, and we never know. And so it's always an experiment. And maybe a simple way to talk about it would be like, um...... if I gave you two dishes of food and asked you to taste them and tell me which one you like better. It's pretty, usually it's pretty straightforward, you know when you have two choices which you like better. And I think most creativity can be boiled down to that. That's very different than, "I wonder how this is gonna perform on certain social media platforms?" That's different than, what is it, when I'm tasting these two things, which is the one I want to finish eating? And, and if I were to say, "Mm, I like this one better but it needs a little salt," and then put a little salt on it. It's like, "Hm, maybe I put too much salt." And you'll, and you know when you taste it. (laughs) It's like, it's, it's that simple. Um, being in tune enough with ourselves to really know how we feel in the face of knowing that other people might feel very differently, which is part of the challenge. It's like, um, if everyone tells you, "A, A, A, A, A, A, A," and you listen and you're like, "That's B." (laughs) Um, as an artist, it's important to be able to say, "To me it's B." And that's a dis- it's a disconnect because so much of, you know, when we go to school, it's to get us to follow the rules. And in art it's different because the, the rules are there as a scaffolding to be, um, chipped away as need be. Sometimes they're helpful, sometimes they're not. And sometimes we'll even impose our own rules to give something its shape. So we can decide to make a, um, we're gonna make a painting but we're only gonna use, uh, green and red, are the only colors we're, we're allowed to use. We decide that in advance. And then how do we solve the problem knowing all we have is green and red? Um, it c- it can... Because otherwise if there's an infinite number of choices, anything can be anything. You know? It's like it's, it's, um, sometimes more choices is not better. So limiting your palette to something manageable forces you to solve problems in a different way. Now in our, um, in our digital age, um, music-wise, you can make anything, um, digitally. There's no, like, in, in, there was a time when if you didn't have a guitar in the studio, you couldn't record guitar. Or if you didn't, if you couldn't hire an orchestra, there couldn't be orchestra on your recording. Now you can just call any of those things up. So there's infinite choices and infinite choices don't necessarily lead to better, uh, better compositions or better final, uh, final works. Understanding how, how you feel in the face of other voices without second guessing yourself is probably the single most important, um, thing to practice as an artist or skillset to develop as an artist, is to know how you feel and own your feelings. And the, and the key to that is not, "I know, so I know what's right for you." It doesn't work that way. It's just, "I know for me, and the reason I chose to be an artist is to demonstrate this is how I see it." If I'm, if I'm undermining my taste for some commercial idea or, uh, it, it defeats the whole purpose of doing this. This is not, that's not what this process is about. This process is, "I'm doing me and I'm showing you who I am and you can like it or not, but either way, this is still how I see it."
- AHAndrew Huberman
I love that because, um, in science, you know, having trained graduate students, having been a graduate student, I, I was very blessed to have mentors, one of who was a real iconoclast. He's dead now. Um, actually all my advisors are dead. Um, suicide, cancer, cancer. The joke is you don't want me to work for you, so they were all had a morbid sense of humor so they're laughing about this someplace right now. (laughs) Um-
- RRRick Rubin
I thought you were gonna say they all ate the poison mushrooms. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
No, but the last one, uh, said to me, "You're the common denominator, Andrew." And I thought, "Oh my goodness." And he said, "Kind of just kidding, but not really." (laughs)
- RRRick Rubin
Oh yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So yeah, it's a little bit eerie. But in any case, um, he, he always said, uh, his name was Ben. He always said, "The, the one thing I can't teach is taste, and the one predictor I have of the people who will never develop it are the ones who are perfectionists because they're filtering their perfec- uh, perfectionists that filter their perfection through the feedback of others." He was always looking for the person that was k- putting up a little bit of a middle finger to feedback, not so much that they would get things wrong-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... 'cause you can be badly wrong in science. You can be wrong for the right reasons but you can also be w- wrong, for the wrong reasons.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
But people that just had almost a compulsion to do it their way or to believe in what they were doing. And I, I'm hearing some of that, um, or I'm hearing that in what you're describing. I, I also think that there's something about the human empathic process or the emotional process where when we see somebody doing something and they seem to really not be paying attention to what anyone else is doing-
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... I mean, like I said, the crazy person on the street is one version of it where we go, "They're just in their experience and it's just crazy." But when somebody seems to be enjoying themselves or the, the emotion seems to be real, I think there are...... are a good fraction of people who, uh, feel a kind of gravitational pull. They go, "Yeah, that." And the best example I have of this is I remember growing up in the skateboard thing. W- we were the first, we were the first to start doing the baggy, like sagging the clothes thing, and we got teased endlessly one year in school. Then there was a bunch of hip hop that came out, and guys were wearing, sagging their, their jeans or their shorts. Next year we come back, and the very same people who were making fun of us were all doing it. And that's when the, it clicked for me. I was like, most people don't actually know what they like.
- RRRick Rubin
No.
- AHAndrew Huberman
They like what they like because of the certainty of the people that they like.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And, um, so the question
- 30:20 – 33:55
Changing Perspective & Creativity
- AHAndrew Huberman
then is, uh, in this, um, landscape of creative stuff, what's real? What's not real? Um, you know, th- these are, it's almost like whoever can create the most convincing story at least captures a good number of, of, uh, good fraction of audiences. But that's not what the creative artist needs to do. They need to actually depart from that. Do I have that right?
- RRRick Rubin
Well, they're just two different things. Like, uh, coming up with a story with the purpose of pleasing someone else is a skillset, but it's more of a com- it's more of a commercial endeavor than an artistic endeavor.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's like tactical, yeah.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. I was thinking, in your book you describe, again, when you're thinking about i- the creative process as a, the cloud. For me, again, it just serves as such a powerful anchor, and then I think about the, the biology, the neurobiology of like strategy formation or strategy implementation. And then almost by sheer luck or miraculously, I turn a few pages later into the book, and there's a description of how animals that are trying to accomplish something, eat, mate, find water, you know, accomplish their, their, the requirements of living, it requires a narrow visual focus. This is something my lab is kind of obsessed with and I've been obsessed with. And in that more narrow visual focus, we know that the r- the playbook becomes more narrow. The rule set is more narrow.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Now, at some point, in order to come up with a new creative idea, that means, uh, broadening vision is essential in some way, or broadening thinking.
- RRRick Rubin
Well, it could either be a broadening or a narrowing, but it's changing the aperture from the standard. The reason we do this is to present something new that maybe you already knew but didn't know you knew it. And for that to be the case, you have to be looking at it... It's not unlike what a comedian does. You know, a comedian makes you laugh, usually what they're saying, it's outrageous, but you know that it's right. You know? Just no one says it that way, or no one has said it that way before. But it's always the truth in it that makes it funny. It's, it's like that. It's the same, it's the same idea, is recognizing something that seems really obvious once you see it, but it seems like nobody else sees it or no one else points it out. And I feel like science is like that too because-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Oh, absolutely.
- RRRick Rubin
... how much of science, when once the, uh, you know, the, the light flashes over your head, it's like, "I got it." Of c- uh, it just seems like, well, I, we knew that forever. No one knew it, but do you know what I'm saying?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Oh, absolutely.
- RRRick Rubin
It's like it's so obvious.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Absolutely.
- RRRick Rubin
It's so obvious. And I think another superpower of artists is, is this accepting we don't know anything. Eh, when we think we know things, that also limits our, our world. We think we know. It's only like this. This is all that's possible. We're mice in this little box. But in reality, who's to say that's, that's the case? Who's to say any of the... We could take all of the, uh, what we believe in science now and decide to throw all of that away and start from scratch, and we'd probably create a different, a whole different one.
- 33:55 – 35:04
AG1 (Athletic Greens)
- RRRick Rubin
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge our sponsor, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens is an all-in-one vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also contains digestive enzymes and adaptogens. I started taking Athletic Greens way back in 2012, so that's ten years now of taking Athletic Greens every single day, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring this podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens is that it covers all of my foundational nutritional needs. So whether or not I'm eating well or enough or not, I'm sure that I'm covering all of my needs for vitamins, minerals, probiotics, adaptogens to combat stress, and the digestive enzymes really help my digestion. I just feel much better when I'm drinking Athletic Greens. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman, and for the month of January, they have a special offer where they'll give you 10 free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2. Vitamin D3 and K2 are vital for immune function, metabolic function, hormone health, but also calcium regulation and heart health. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to claim their special offer in the month of January of 10 free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3 K2.
- 35:04 – 41:27
Scientific Knowledge; Opinions & Art
- AHAndrew Huberman
In an offline conversation, um, one time, uh, you asked a good friend of mine, who's been a guest on this podcast, Eddie Chang, who's chair of neurosurgery and w- I, I would place him in the top, top 1% of neuroscientists, you know, he's pulling speech out of people who are completely paralyzed with Locked-in syndrome, et cetera. And you asked him, uh, what percentage of what's contained in medical textbooks and training-
- RRRick Rubin
Today?
- AHAndrew Huberman
... today-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... is-
- RRRick Rubin
If you went to medical school today-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. Right.
- RRRick Rubin
... and you learned what was in the textbook, what percentage of that information is accurate and what percentage is not? And he said, "Maybe half."
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right. And you asked, "And what is the consequence of that?" And he said, "Incalculable." And I, I completely agree. And, um, and I asked him a second time, and he still came up with the same answer, so that's a good sign. Um, reliability from experiment to the next is good. Yeah, I think that the, there is this idea that we really know things. Um, i- in science, I mean, you've seen, we've observed amazing discoveries from chance. We've observed amazing discoveries, um, from incredible bouts of hard work. In both cases, people were spending a lot of time in the lab. (laughs) Like, no one walked into the lab, saw something one day, and had a Nobel Prize-winning discovery or fundamental discovery. They were all hanging out in lab a lot. Just some of them, um, came up with something that they didn't expect. Others were, were drilling toward an answer.
- RRRick Rubin
And in all those cases, when the breakthroughs happen, I'm guessing, I don't know this, that considering we, we assume this information, then this discovery is true based on everything that came before it. But if everything that came before it is wrong, then the discoveries are probably built on a... Do you know what I'm saying? It's like-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh-huh.
- RRRick Rubin
... the, the, the context e- everything that happens takes into account that the context that it's sitting in, it fits in that context. Maybe that context isn't right. Who knows? We don't know. So I'm saying we're too, we're too close to most things in thinking when we know, when we think we know things where there are a lot of assumptions that go into it and that any new discoveries are essentially built on top of these beliefs, you know?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Well-
- RRRick Rubin
But they're beliefs.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Well, I remember, um, you know, learn... Of course, I listened to The Beastie Boys growing up. Who didn't? I was a child of the '90s. And they were in the s- you know, Sabotage was, you know, sort of an outgrowth of a skateboarding movie, like Spike Jonze and, like, the girl movies and those worlds, The Beastie Boys and skateboarding w- were really closely interwoven for a while. Some people know this, some people don't. And Spike sort of formed the bridge, and then Spike went off and started making more tr- bigger movies, um, that more people watch. But y- let's just use them as an example. I heard you say once before that, yeah, you guys were kind of joking around, like, The Beastie Boys, like, you know, these guys doing hip hop, but it was kind of like the hardcore scene in New York and punk rock scene, and it was sort of a joke. There were a lot of inside jokes. When you were working together, was there the thought that people might love it, might hate it, or you just weren't paying attention at all?
- RRRick Rubin
Weren't paying attention at all. Never considered it. Th- there were no, um... At that point in time, when we were making Licensed to Ill, hip hop music was a tiny underground thing. And there was... No one making hip hop at that time thought it would ever mean anything. It was, it was not a realistic thought. So we were making it really for our crazy friends, and that's it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So do you think nowadays the fact that one can create something and quote unquote "release it" quickly. I can put something out onto Twitter or Instagram now. I could do it in 10 seconds from now, and I will get immediate feedback that, which is external feedback, of course, but then I can iterate on the basis of that feedback. Do you think that's problematic for the larger opportunity for creativity? In other words, if we were to go back 20 years or even 15 years when the opportunity cre- to create was certainly still there, but you really didn't know what the... how it was gonna land until you quote unquote "released it."
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
There was... It seems to me there was more opportunity to stay in that magical, uh, rainforest that is the, the cr- the creativity itself.
- RRRick Rubin
I don't think it's wrong or right. It's just, it's more information that you can use or not use and use it in a useful way, and, you know, you can make something and put it out, and people could not like it, and you're like, "Oop, they still don't get it. Here, I'm gonna, I gotta go harder." You know, like, "I gotta go harder in that direction," not... Do you know what I'm saying? It's like not, um, to react away from information.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah.
- RRRick Rubin
It can be helpful. It can be helpful when, um... There could be different stories that happen at the same time where you're making something and you have an idea of what it is, and then other people engage with it, and they have a different idea of what it is, and they like it for a different reason than you did or dislike it for a reason different than the reason you like it. We can't control any of those things, you know? The only part of it that we can control is how we relate to the thing that we make. And any external information that undermines the clarity of that connection is probably bad for the art is my, is my guess. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- RRRick Rubin
Oh, uh, and I, and I, again, I, I'm only saying this from my experience. Like, I, I try to make things... All I've ever tried to make were, was something I like or something that I felt like was missing as a fan that I wanted and I... Nobody was making it, so I'll, I'll make it, you know? But it wasn't, um... It was always in the service of, "I love this thing. I want something like this. No one else is making one. I have to make one."
- 41:27 – 47:40
Finishing Projects; The Source & Nature
- RRRick Rubin
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, it's, uh, it's beautiful, 'cause I... The word that keeps coming to mind is this, I mean, it's almost like a compulsion. Like, there, there are other options of ways to be and to behave and to function and work in life, but there, if something's a compulsion, it-... yanks us away from those other opportunities, just enough that we have to get back to it. Yo- you've talked before about, and you talk in the book, this notion of the source. And, uh, to me, uh, again, I can't help but put my neuroscientist lens on this. I think of, um, the source as not one brain area, but some function within the brain where we- we're in touch with our bo- bodily signals, like what feels right, what doesn't. Sort of like tasting the two foods. I love that example. And that it's a- it's a playbook that is far more vast than the- the short term adaptive playbook, like this, "How I'm gonna get from point A to point B." And yet, when I listen to an album or a song, I mean, I have to assume that there, at some point, it becomes not strategy development or creativity, but strategy implementation. Like there needs to be, like songs are gonna come in this order, and like th- I don't know much about music. Uh, my musician friends are always, you know, uh, laughing
- RRRick Rubin
I don't either. It's not-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay. (laughs)
- RRRick Rubin
It's not so much about music.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Well, the- Um, right. Well, well put. Um, but the ordering of- the sequence of the melodies, et cetera. So at what point d- does one decide, "Okay, like now's the time to get into that more narrow focus of- of effort." Like, "We've got it. Let's run with this." Because there is a component of that creative process that involves packaging and finishing, and, um, is that part less satisfying to you or is it just all part of the same larger arc?
- RRRick Rubin
It's all part of the same. It's- it's nice. There's a good feeling. There's usually a good feeling when something is done. On the one hand, it's, um, it's a commitment because up until the time that you say it's done, you can keep experimenting and changing it, you know? If y- if you think, "Well, maybe tomorrow I can make it better," then it's not finished. And you keep thinking that for a long time, you can do that forever and never, never put out anything. So getting to the point where you're ready to sign off is a good feeling, um, and it allows you... One of the things I talk about in the book is, um, because it is a difficult thing to do, 'cause it's fun to play and it's fun to, maybe it's not the best it could be yet, you know? Um, to use whatever the next project is gonna be as motivation to finish the one you're working on now. Like, "I'm working on this. I'm spending all of my time on this thing. It's really good. I believe it can be better, but there's this other thing that I really want to make. And if I keep tinkering with this one, I'll never get to make the other one." So using other projects as a impetus to finish something and release it into the world's a good one. And you said the- your description of s- of source as something within us, um, I- I don't know if I would accurate- if I would say that was accurate. It's definitely in us too, but it's not only in us. And it's, um... I think of source as the organizing principle of everything, and it's how everything exists, how the trees grow, and why there are mountains. And a- anything that we can see in the outside world and- and every discovery and every piece of art and every, uh, new design and every machine are all outgrowths of this source energy. Our part of it is the antenna that like connects to it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- RRRick Rubin
And- and maybe we're the, um, we're the- the vehicle for source to allow things to happen in the world.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, and thank you for that, 'cause I- I did indeed misspeak because I recall very distinctly in the book you described how, you know, the physical world is constrained i- by the laws of physics and certain things, uh. The imagination is unconstrained. And y- uh, I think I have this right, that you said that, you know, the work sits somewhere between those. It's neither of one nor the other, but that ultimately what feeds into all of that, our imagination and the way indeed that our- our brain is a physical entity, the nature and the outside world provides at least what appears to be near infinite, if not infinite options. And I- th- I love the example of the color palette, that if we restrict me to whatever sorts of paints or medium I have, then, um, it's- it's restricted, but in nature there's a- an infinite number of shades and tones and combinations.
- RRRick Rubin
And even on one, you know, if you pick up a rock and look at the color of the rock and tried to find a paint to match that rock, it would never match. There's too much... There- there are too many variations in nature within a- a- a single color rock, um, for us to get close. There's- there's too much information. We- we scratch the surface. We're only scratching the surface.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And we love when we are able to peer in at different scales, spatial scales. Time scales too, but spatial scales. The delight that comes from that, you know, like these nature pictures. Seemed like there were more of these in the '80s, like where you'd see a drop of oil shot at high, very high resolution.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And there's beauty in a drop of oil. And then you'd see the- the Earth and the galaxy. There's beauty in that too, right?
- RRRick Rubin
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
These extremes. Um, and of course, our daily perception is mostly through the filter of these kinds of interactions, walls and sometimes outdoors. There's
- 47:40 – 58:42
Perception Filters, Contrast & Novelty
- AHAndrew Huberman
a, um, a brilliant neuroscientist, and, um, not surprisingly, he has a Nobel. His name is Richard Axel. He's at Columbia University. Um, he's outrageous.... personality, um, chews Nicorette nonstop. Um, you guys would get along great, not because of the Nicorette but because, um, his perspective on things is, is very abstract for a guy who's solved, uh... He won the Nobel for solving, um, a great problem within how we smell, um, perception of odors and taste. And he says, you know, that everything that the brain does is an abstraction. Like I could take a photograph of your face and show it to you and say, "Yeah, that's me." Or let's say, for the moment, I call myself an abstract artist. Let's just play a game 'cause I've never been accused of being an artist but... And I do three dots and a squiggly line and I say, "That's you." And you say, "Well that doesn't look like me." And I say, "But that's my abstraction of you."
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay, well the brain essentially does that-
- RRRick Rubin
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... because, or something in between that, because there's no actual photograph of you in my brain. It's just a bunch of neurons playing what we call an ensemble, like different keys on a piano, and we go, "Rick, I recognize you. Rick Rubin." And so everything is an abstraction and it's only once we start tinkering with the parts, and this is the essence of science, to remove and add and manipulate. And the best example I can come up with would be, uh, Rothko. And, uh, I only come up with this example 'cause I started off in vision science and maybe this will make the most sense to everyone except the folks who've been blind since birth and they can swap something in here, that if I show you a Rothko and I don't tell you it's a Rothko, you may or may not actually think it's that impressive. It depends on your taste in art. But what Rothko did which was amazing, even if you don't like Rothkos, and I happen to, is that he removed all the white and high contrasty stuff, and when you do that, you alter color space and so the colors look very different. Some people saw that dress a few years ago, "Is it orange or is it gold?" Or whatever. That was a little bit of the same phenomenon. I doubt, in fact I'd be willing to bet my left arm, that Rothko knew nothing about the neuroscience of color perception but somehow got to this place where if there was no canvas showing and no high contrast and the paintings were large enough and on the appropriate wall, you saw them a certain way that tapped into something fundamental. And this is where I think art and science really converge, is that every once in a while we see something that feels amazing to enough people and not just like the baggy pants phenomenon, w- not just because other people think it's cool, but there's something there. And again, this defies language. And I have to imagine that in your, um, y- years of life, and music and other creative endeavors, that you've... that every once in a while, do you, have you ever encountered something where like something fundamental keeps showing up in different form or there's something f- like a, like a, almost like a rule or a principle? Does it ever come about? 'Cause in science we think of this as like this reveals something about our limitation to abstract the world. I hope I made that clear.
- RRRick Rubin
Um, not exactly but I have a thought.
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs)
- RRRick Rubin
Uh, you talked earlier about the, um, the drop of oil, the photograph of the drop of oil and the photograph, or we could use the, on the other side like Hubble telescope images of these, these vast things in high, high definition. What we see every day is as impressive as those things but we're numb to them because we see them all the time. And if we were to look at drops of oil every day in, in a microscope, uh, a month from now we would not, we would not find wonder in that image. So i- it's, sometimes it's the novelty of not seeing it from that perspective before that's really thrilling. You could, and I could imagine, and this probably relates to the Rothko idea, that you could see something from a particular angle and have this magical experience and then walk three feet to the side and see it from a different way and it just evaporates. It only works, th- it only triggers this thing in us, um, when we look at it just the right way. Um, there was a paint- uh, a, an experiment I just heard about, heard about the other day that, that sounds fascinating that, um, a painting teacher recommended where instead of painting, you know, having a model in the room and painting the model, that you have the model in the next room and you go into the next room without your equipment. You don't have your equipment. And you can study the model for as long as you want and then you go into a different room where you can't see the model and paint the model instead of... And it, it's, it changes your relationship where it's not, we're not just painting the lines. We're painting what is interesting enough about what I saw, what are the data points that stuck in my mind? And when I string those together, what do I get? And, and what do I... How do I form it to get as close to whatever that, the experience of that person was which the close, the closest of, of getting to the experience of that person in the painting might not look like a photograph. You know, it might look more different than more the same to really see what you see. If we think about, um, the Picasso paintings that were inspired by African art where the eyes are on different, different levels, they may give us more information than a photograph would give us.... and I'm thinking about the, um- when you were describing th- th- the sensation of when something takes your breath away, and we all have that when we see a dramatic sunset. Anyone you know, when there's a really dramatic sunset, or if there's a whale, and if anyone's on the beach, and there's a whale, everybody's really interested that there's a whale. It- it- it's- Do you know what I'm saying? Th- these feelings of wonder, we get to experience them depending on where we are, or, you know, a dragonfly, or a bird flies into your space. These things happen. And when they happen, it's like we're- we're, uh, confronted with the- the mystery (laughs) of the world when we change the perspective. Normally, we don't think of whales in our backyard or birds in our house, you know, flying freely. Uh, but- but they do happen. These things do happen, and they- they, like, break us out of our trance (laughs) when these things happen. It's like, "Oh, yeah, there are birds like this everywhere. I'm just not paying attention. This guy's coming in to, like, tap me on the shoulder." It's like, "Remember me? Here I am." You know?
- AHAndrew Huberman
So I would say that- that- the whale example and what you're describing is it's revealing to us how, in a delightful way, how deficient our perceptual filters normally are.
- RRRick Rubin
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's a little bit like the Rothko is revealing how... I've never thought about it this way until this moment. Is revealing to us how color normally looks is actually n- first of all, not the only way it looks. Those colors we think are one way, but all o' color- this gets into the biology of color vision- is all about contrast. What something is next to dictates what it looks like.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And that's the origin of that dress meme or whatever you call it. I still can't figure out exactly what a meme is. Someone will eventually tell me. The- in the same way, when you see a whale, and it's delightful, I think it's revealing to us the extent to which those whales are- the ocean is vast. There's a whole universe there, and we are blind to it all the time, and I think the misperception or the m- misconception, excuse me, is that we're delighted 'cause we see the whale. We might be just as delighted because we're getting hit with the contrast of how little we recognize all the time. And in that way, it reminds me a little bit about comedy, where... And I've s- I've been watching more comedy lately, and, um, sometimes, it's the shock. Sometimes, it's the- the absolute truth that's revealed, and then other times, what I've noticed... And I saw Rogan do comedy at the Vulcan Club in Austin, which he does every once in a while, and it was s- small club in Cisca- f- and he was leading out this story during his routine or bit, I think, ish, right? This bit, he's leadi- and everyone knew where it was going. We all knew, and then when he finally told us, it was exactly where we thought it was going, and it was hilarious.
- RRRick Rubin
And it felt good.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And it felt amazing, and I- and I thought in th- in that moment, I was like, "Wait a second. How did he pull that off?" That was masterful because normally, it's this thing, like, you create one story. There's, like, a scripting out, almost like a courtroom lawyer, and then they kind of pull the curtain, and it's something different. It's the-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And- and if you look at the- the science, the neuroscience and brain imaging of- of laughter and humor, which I've looked into, to be honest, and no disrespect to the people in that field, it's pretty lame. It's lame because it's always the- the jarring nature of a surprise, but what he led us to was something that, "Oh, no, he's actually going there. Oh, wait, he's really going there," and it was this in- anticipation with a- with a beautiful delivery at the end.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And so I'm convinced that, based on what we're talking about here, that there's something about when we see something, we think it's about that, but the de- the delight that we feel could be about all the other experiences that now (laughs) become, i- in a subconscious way, kind of like, ha. It's almost like laughing at this perceptual deficit that we have. It's almost like laughing at how little we actually know, which is p- what you've said.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah. It cu- it could be that. It also could be the sense of community of when you think it's gonna go a particular way and it goes that way. It's like reinforcement of you. You know? So you- it's like, "Yeah, we- he's saying it, but in a way, we're saying it together. I'm listening. He's saying it, but we're in this together," and that's a good feeling.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... to think about that for
- 58:42 – 1:03:03
Music & Identity, Evolving Tastes
- AHAndrew Huberman
a second. I was trying to think about why certain music, um, still can evoke such powerful emotions in me, and- and there does seem to be something special about the music we listen to when we are teenagers. You know, from about, you know, 14 until about 25, it seems to get routed into our nervous system in some way, maybe because that phase of our life is- is really one of identity crisis. I mean, you don't find too many 40-year-olds, some, who are wondering, like, who they are.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Occasionally, but almost every young teenager, pre-teen, and s- are like, "Who am I?" You're defining personality, so I always likened it to that. But leaving out the- the sort of critical period biology stuff, what do you think it is about the music that we hear at that time? Are we that much more emotionally tuned? Have we not shut down our sensors quite as much? Is there... The songs and the artists don't matter 'cause they're very individual to me. Other- for other people, it'll be the Beatles or something. Um, now I just really wish the Beatles did it for me too, but, um, do you think that's important? Because I could see how it's really terrific. I could also see how it sets up one of these, what I'll just use nerdy language and call the- a- like a s- semi-deprived filter because if I'm only looking for the way that, like, a Stiff Little Fingers track made me feel the first time I listened to one when I was 15...... the feeling is worthwhile, but if I'm looking for that, I'm missing all the other stuff. I'm missing The Beatles, I'm missing Fleetwood Mac, which never did it for me either. I'm like, I'm missing all this stuff that, you know, people I love and respect really love.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So, um, I've never worried about it because there's kind of a infinite, um, treasure trove of other things-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah. Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... that I do love. But I do sometimes wonder whether or not my life experiences diminish because I'm not allowing, um, kind of range. And you've obviously worked in a huge number of different genres of music. Punk is one thing, hip-hop is... I mean, Neil Diamond too, right? Eminem too, (laughs) Slayer too, right? Uh, and in some senses, I list these off, I mean, just think about how much in high school, maybe nowadays less so, but even in college and as an adult, we, societally, we're sort of asked to constrain ourselves to one of these groups.
- RRRick Rubin
Mm-hmm.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I... I didn't know it was okay to love Bob Dylan and love punk rock as much as I do, until I heard Tim Armstrong said he loved Bob Dylan.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And I was like... And recently, he told me he loves the Grateful Dead, and I was like, "Whoa."
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
But to a...
- RRRick Rubin
And, and both-
- AHAndrew Huberman
I remember when you had to pick.
- RRRick Rubin
... both the Ramones and the Clash loved The Beatles, so we can-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. Okay, I've got work to do. (laughs)
- RRRick Rubin
That might... No, but I think we'll do it together.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Okay.
- RRRick Rubin
We'll do it together. It'll be fun.
- AHAndrew Huberman
So, so-
- RRRick Rubin
I have a feeling part of it is the reason it gets in at that age is it's at a time when we're defining who we are, and the music is part of the definition of how we see ourselves. So it's the f- Like, the music that we hear before that might be the music that's on the radio, or our parents' music, or our older brother or sister's music. And then when you're 14 or 15 and you start choosing what you're, you're listening to, it's like, "Now it's finally mine. And my parents might not like it, and my elder brothers and sisters may or may not like it, but this one is mine." And e- it always ha- it always has that, um, impression in us, that this is, this is ours. That's my th- that's my thought of wh- of why it, it, l- why it continues to last, you know?
- AHAndrew Huberman
How do you wipe the slate clean, then? Like, so for instance, if you're going to go in and work with somebody new. And again, as people are hearing this, I hope that they're transplanting this to whatever it is that they do, 'cause in the realm of science and podcasting and communication, it's not music, but, um, there's a contour and a, away. You know, hopefully this podcast will look nothing like it does in five years. That's my hope, is it will still have the core features of the beauty and utility of biology coming through, but I hope it doesn't look anything like episode two.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Right? (laughs)
- RRRick Rubin
And, and I think it'll evolve as you evolve. It's just the, the truer it is to what interests you, and if you're not interested in biology in the same way in five years, I would hope it's not the same.
- AHAndrew Huberman
I'll be doing psychoanalysis in real time here.
- RRRick Rubin
(laughs) And it will, whatever it is.
- AHAndrew Huberman
We'll do therapy. We'll all be lying down
- 1:03:03 – 1:04:14
InsideTracker
- AHAndrew Huberman
on couches.
- RRRick Rubin
Whatever it is, whatever it is.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. We probably won't be on psychedelics, but we might be levitating, you know?
- RRRick Rubin
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
(laughs) I'd like to take a brief break and thank our sponsor, InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done, for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test. The problem with a lot of blood and DNA tests out there, however, is that you get data back about metabolic factors, lipids and hormones and so forth, but you don't know what to do with those data. InsideTracker solves that problem and makes it very easy for you to understand what sorts of nutritional, behavioral, maybe even supplementation-based interventions you might want to take on in order to adjust the numbers of those metabolic factors, hormones, lipids, and other things that impact your immediate and long-term health, to bring those numbers into the ranges that are appropriate and indeed optimal for you. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can visit insidetracker.com/huberman and get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans. That's insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20%
- 1:04:14 – 1:13:22
Focus, Disengaging & Subconscious; Anxiety
- AHAndrew Huberman
off. So h- how do you... Let's talk a little bit, if you would, uh, 'cause I know, uh, I'm very interested in, you know, your process. All right? I'll spare you the daily routine, uh, question. It's very cliché. But you and I are both lovers of sunlight, of horizons, and not as a trivial source, as an amazing, um, gift of energy, all right? Um, and it, and there aren't words for it, really. (laughs) Um, aside from your daily routines, um, when it comes to, you know, somebody, you're going from project to project and, and you know you're gonna be doing work with somebody, could be your own work, and we'll talk about the writing of this book, uh, and its structure, which is very unique. I've never encountered a book with this kind of structure before. And it's the, it's the most facile read ever, and yet every single page, I underlined, took notes, starred, and... (laughs) Like, as you'd notice, it's very worn, hav- Uh, very, very worn already, and only more so over time. W- Do you have a process for, you know, like, removing the functions of the day, and the, what you were doing last week, and what's going on, and, um, in order to get more access to the, this, um... I wanna think of it now more as, uh, as a receiver inside of you, right? Almost like tuning a radio.
- RRRick Rubin
Right.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Chu-shu-shu-shu-shu-shu-shu. And then it comes in. Like the beginning of, like, a Strummer Clash thing, right?
- RRRick Rubin
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
You love the radio. Joe loved the radio, right? The chu-shu-sha, and then it comes in clear, and there it is. How do you clear the static? What, what are some of the operational steps that you think might be more, um, generalizable to, regardless of where some- somebody in, you know-Um, Africa is listening to this now.
- RRRick Rubin
I would say when I'm- when I engage in a particular project, whatever it is, I- I dedicate all of myself for that period of time, whatever it is, whether it be 20 minutes or whether it be five hours, whatever it is, um, total focus and no, um, outside distraction whatsoever. And when I leave that process, I do my best not to think about it when I'm away from it. I don't bring any materials with me. I don't leave the studio with works in progress and spend time listening to them during the day or looking for ideas. I- I stay as far away from it when I'm not dir- directly engaging in it as possible. And in the best of situations, I have something else to totally engage myself in in between. So instead of working on project A for five hours and then leaving and doing nothing, I'm hoping to engage in a project B or B, C and D with all of myself before going back to project A again, which might be the next day, let's say.
- AHAndrew Huberman
This, um, relates to an amazing, uh, chapter and series of writings in your book that I'm not going to describe because I want people to find it for themselves about disengaging, about disengaging from the process. One question I had as I read that chapter and as you're saying this now is, even though you're disengaged, do you believe that your subconscious is working it through, that-
- RRRick Rubin
I believe so. I believe so. Uh, and I think in general, to stew over a problem is not the way to solve a problem. I think to hold the problems lightly, and- and if, a- when I say a problem, you know, and where, when we're starting a project, there's usually this feeling of, um, there's a question mark at the beginning of every project. I- I- I'm always anxious when I start a new project b- because I have no idea what's going to happen. I never know. I never, I never ask. I may have, in some cases, a potential backup plan if, you know, if nothing works, but I really try not even to have that. It's- I prefer not to have that. I prefer to go in, maybe to calm myself down enough to be able to show up. There'll be an idea of like, "Oh, if nothing works, maybe we could try something (laughs) like this." But that would only be for my own anxiety. That would- it wouldn't be for actual practical use. (laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- RRRick Rubin
Um, but there's always a sense of anxiety because I know whatever's going to happen is completely out of my control. Something's gonna- something either interesting or not will appear, and then we're going to follow that wherever it goes. And until something appears for us to follow, I have a lot of anxiety. Even though I kn- even though it has never not come, you know, it has come every time, but there's something about it, because I also feel like there might be expectation on me that I'm going to m- make it happen, and I know that's not happening. That's not how it works. It's- it's, um... I show up ready for it to happen and am open to whatever we have to do to find that first thread. And once we find the thread, then it's like, "Oh, okay, we have a..." And it- that thread may lead us to anything, you know, could lead us to in a million different directions, but something about having that glimmer that w- it's not a bla- we're not looking at a blank page. You know, we're looking at, okay, we have a- we have, uh, the beginnings of, um, I would say a map, but it's a map that we don't know where it takes us, and it's just the beginning. It's just like, it's just a sta- you know, you are here. (laughs) What is it?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- RRRick Rubin
If you have a map and it says, "You are here," even if you can't see the directions, knowing where we are feels okay. Um, and once we get... And usually, a- a- again, usually in the first day, first couple of days, it happens. Um, but up until then, it's- it's really an anxiety-producing, uh, situation. And then I can't- I can't remember the original question. It's like, that was the beginning of-
- AHAndrew Huberman
Mm-hmm.
- RRRick Rubin
... of something completely different. But I- do you remember what you asked? I don't remember.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, well, in j- we were talking about disengaging and is your subconscious into it? And you were- and then we were talking about, you know, sort of, I love this, so sort of like what are- what is your process of- of wading into this thing? And- and you're revealing that now. I mean, I- I think of anxiety as readiness, you know. I mean, think about the characteristic, um, features of anxiety. It tends to be a bit of a constriction of the- the visual field into more of a narrow vision. But that's appropriate because you want to shed the what's going on elsewhere. And then, you know, even when people talk about the shakes or this, like, not feeling okay sitting still, anxiety was designed to mobilize us and not always to run away. This is one of the, I could, you know, r- rarely do I talk about the work in my own laboratory, but one of the things that, frankly, I didn't discover, but it was done in my laboratory, but this brilliant graduate student, Lindsay Sallay, who's now at Caltech, was that we can often observe animals or humans in very high states of anxiety as they move forward toward a goal. And we always think of moving forward as like this calm thing, you know, we... These heroes, you know, Rosa Parks telling people like, "F you," like, "I'm not getting off the back, I'm not leaving the- the- giving up my seat on the bus," or Muhammad Ali. Like, I bet you they were experiencing tremendous anxiety, but it was in the forward tilt.And so I think anxiety s- is, is least, um, comfortable when we are forcing ourselves to stand still. So it's a, it's an activating energy. And, you know, that brings up a word that, uh, you know, I have, uh, written in my notebook as an extraction of a lot of themes from within the book that you and I have talked about before, which is im- and here I'm going to sound very West Coast, uh, woo, but I mean it as seriously as it can be stated, that I feel like everything is energetic, right? We can do things from a place of anger. We can do things from a place of joy. Uh, we can do things from a place of delight. Um, uh, I like to think maturing into the idea that joy, and delight, and love is the, kind of the ultimate reservoir of energy. But, you know, a lot of the music that I liked from when I was younger was because of the anger that was thread into it or, um, or the sadness.
- RRRick Rubin
But if you think of your relationship to that music, it's a relationship of love.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Absolutely.
- RRRick Rubin
You didn't listen to that to get angry.
- AHAndrew Huberman
No.
- RRRick Rubin
You listened to it because you loved it.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. And I felt loved by it-
- RRRick Rubin
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... because it matched where I was at, at the time.
- RRRick Rubin
Yes. It was true to who you were and where you were.
- 1:13:22 – 1:18:26
Collaboration, Art & Rigorous Work
- RRRick Rubin
- AHAndrew Huberman
I know that collaboration, there's a wonderful chapter on collaboration, uh, but it's collaboration, as you mentioned before, with the universe, not with others. But in terms of the, especially the kind of work that you've done and do, when it comes to working with artists, um, I do wonder, and here I'm not looking for any, uh, gossip or stories. It's, I've never been interested in gossip. I love stories, but I'm not interested in gossip. But once you see that thread kind of dangling there, and you're going to, k- as you're going to go after this, and, or you grab onto it, and you're like, "Okay, now you have a little bit of a map and an orientation within that map," I often wonder, you know, scientists are complicated people. People think they're very boring, but they're actually very complicated, because they're often living in one limited rule set of the prefrontal cortex. That's how you get good at getting degrees, is by understanding the rules of academia and playing by those rules.
- RRRick Rubin
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, people tinker with the rules, you get your Richard Axels who are very playful in how they go about it, but they are systematic. He's known for rigor, rigor, rigor, right? When I think of creative artists and musical artists, I think of a bit more zany or loose, or you watch the documentary about the Ramones, and you're like, "Wow, there was all this chaos." How... Because so many of the brilliant artists, musical artists that are out there seem to have some chaos inside them, or their lives aren't always structured. Oftentimes, and science too, by the way, there are substance abuse issues and personal life issues. How... Since you don't have 100% control, right? You need to play the instruments, sing, et cetera, h- how do you work with people who have it in them, but are l- getting in their own way, right? Um, and do you think that that kind of, the internal chaos that a lot of artists seem to have, do you think that sometimes is actually an essential piece of the creativity picture?
- RRRick Rubin
I don't-
- AHAndrew Huberman
That you can't disentangle it?
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah, I don't think it's an essential piece in general. But certain artists, that's their p- that's how they do it. Um, I would say I rarely get to see the chaotic part of artists. For whatever reason, they, they rarely show it to me. And most of them, like, like most comedians I know, are much more serious about what they're doing than what it looks like from, if you see them on stage. There's much more to it, and there's much more, um, focus on craft going on, and digging deep than would necessarily be obvious seeing them jump around on stage.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah. Um, um, I'm a fan of boxing, track and field and boxing, the sports nobody really cares about now that UFC is so popular and, (laughs) and track and field is a, it's a little bit like wrestling. When you go, the people that there are there 'cause they really love it.
- RRRick Rubin
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Uh, we'll talk about wrestling in a little bit, uh, professional wrestling. Um, but, you know, Floyd Mayweather is, uh, obviously a colorful character, and one of the best records in boxing of all time. And a few years back, I got into watching his stuff, and, and it, it, what one sees is the, the cars and the money, they call, literally call themselves The Money Team, you know, and the spending and the, and, and there's all the outrageous stuff. But I know someone who was in his, in camp with him, um, who actually was a sparring partner for him, and the lore has it, they had very closed door, uh, sparring, um, or camps, but the lore is that he would do, you know, 'cause nowadays it's 12 three-minute rounds, right? With a minute in between. Used to be 15, but now neuroscientists stepped in, and it turns out a lot of the deaths were occurring when it was more than 12 rounds.
- RRRick Rubin
Wow.
- AHAndrew Huberman
For whatever reason.
- RRRick Rubin
That's interesting.
- AHAndrew Huberman
You cut off at 12. Really seemed to truncate the deaths. There are other things too. If the dad is app- apparently a cornerman, we have someone else here at the podcast who knows more about this than me.
- RRRick Rubin
That's fascinating.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yeah, the kid not wanting to disappoint the parent-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... correlated with death. There's, anyway, I'll get some of this wrong, and then, and this, they can come after me. Um, but in any case, he- this guy who was in Floyd's camp said that he would do 30 to 60 minutes of sparring, bringing in fresh sparring partners with no rest, that he would run three or four times per 24-hour cycle, despite all the critical need for sleep. That his training was unbelievably intense, to the point where he would just, just chew out, chew up and destroy all training partners. And yet, the perception that we see is it's kind of a, it's playful for hi- for him. So it sounds very similar, like, what we see is often not what goes into it, that people are intensely rigorous.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah. And I think, in a way, from a psychological perspective, if you knew you were fighting someone who wasn't taking it seriously...... that would give you some confidence, and that would not be a good thing if you're, if the person was actually, um, working really hard, outworking you. (laughs) Do you know what I'm saying?
- AHAndrew Huberman
Yep. Yep.
- RRRick Rubin
Like it, from a psychological perspective, that makes sense to me.
- 1:18:26 – 1:29:13
Process & “Cloud”; Perception & Storytelling
- RRRick Rubin
- AHAndrew Huberman
So what I keep coming back to is that I, I'm imagining in my mind kind of two ends of the continuum, one that is about fairly narrow-focused training, training, strategy implementation, cultivating craft, building craft, and then the other side is this, the cloud.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
It's very nebulous, right? And it, um, there's this, uh, word that I, uh, learned from a colleague of mine when I was down at the Salk Institute when my lab was there, 'cause he studies this. There's this phenomenon, um, that I don't wanna mispronounce 'cause then it sounds like something else, but the correct pronunciation is pareidolia. And pareidolia is our tendency to look at an amorphous shape like a cloud or a tree and think that it looks like something else, an ice cream cone-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... the man in the moon.
- RRRick Rubin
Yep.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And that, again, reveals the extent to which the brain wants to place symbolic s- filters on things. And we need this, right? Because I see you walk in the door and, "Rick, I n- I recognize you." In fact, we have a brain area called the fusiform face gyrus, (laughs) that literally is a face recognition area. And y- you could be at any orientation, or I could just see your eyes and know that it's you. Uh, there's a phenomenon called prosopagnosia, where people can see faces, they can describe everything in the face, but they don't know, for instance, that it's JFK, or Madonna, or Lex Fridman.
- RRRick Rubin
It's quite the list.
- AHAndrew Huberman
Quite the list. There you go, Lex.
- RRRick Rubin
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, run for office, Lex. Just kidding. (laughs) It's hard enough to get you to respond to my texts as it is.
- RRRick Rubin
(laughs)
- AHAndrew Huberman
Um, so th- we have these filters, and so we're taking this cloud, and we're, we're deciding what things are.
- RRRick Rubin
Yes.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And what I wanna go, drill into your process a little bit, uh, more deeply, when you approach a project, so everyone's meets each other, shakes hand, "Here are the engineers. We're gonna sit down where everyone knows what they're doing," 'cause you work with professionals, and you start going, are you trying to be with the cloud or in the implementation? Like where are you in that continuum? And forgive me if I'm like trying to, um, surgically go into your process in a way that would disrupt it in any way.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah. I-
- AHAndrew Huberman
But I trust you've been doing this for a while-
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah.
- AHAndrew Huberman
... and there's no, there's no threat in that.
- RRRick Rubin
I'm not at, I'm, I'm in the cloud with the exception of I'm aware of what could go wrong on a technical side, and I might, like if something good is happening, I might look over and make sure that we're rolling. Um, but-
- AHAndrew Huberman
So that's a leap over to here momentarily, but then you're back in the cloud.
- RRRick Rubin
Yeah, maybe. I, I, maybe. If I, if I feel like s- if I was n- in the moment, I would be in the cloud, and if something good starts happening, it would trigger something in me like, "Uh-oh, I hope this is o- I hope we're really doing this because I don't know if we could ever do this again." That'll, that, that would be a thought of when the first time the real world would come into the picture (laughs) would be, "Something good is happening. Let's not lose it."
- AHAndrew Huberman
And when that happens, do you, uh, never been in a s- uh, in a studio besides a podcast studio, do you say, "Hey guys, that sounded good. Uh, more of that"? Or do you wait, you let them continue? Because obviously you don't wanna break their, their flow.
- RRRick Rubin
We'd, we'd never wanna break any flow once it's happening. Yeah, once something's happening, just kinda sit back and watch.
- AHAndrew Huberman
And d- do you think there's resonance, like the, the, uh, the team of engineers and other people know when it, quote-unquote, is happening?
- RRRick Rubin
If everyone's paying attention, yes. When everyone's paying attention, it's usually pretty obvious. Sometimes the thread'll be something different than expected and maybe not everybody would pick up on it. And that might be a particular, that might be particular based on my taste, or an artist's taste, or, um, someone involved might, might say, "That was... Let's listen back to that. I think that was better than, than we thought." That can happen. "I, uh, you, you said several things and, um, it was like, you said enough for there to be several conversations, so I-"
- AHAndrew Huberman
I tend to do that, sorry. Especially with you. I don't get to see you as, nearly as often as I would like, and so when I do, I confess that I'm a little bit of a kid in a candy shop.
- RRRick Rubin
I wrote down, "The brain tells us stories." So you talked about, um, I walk in, certain data points, you recognize me, but it's a real, like looking at a cloud shorthand. We go through th- we go through our lives doing this all day with everything we see, and the shorthand, in the case of me, you know me, the shorthand turns out to be right. It, it, it checks out. Um, if it's something we don't know and something we're not familiar with, something happens, we, we, we experience something on the street, something happens, and it doesn't make sense. Something out of the ordinary happens. First thing is, is s- this doesn't make sense. Then what we do is, again, sub- subconscious, unconsciously, I don't know if it's unconscious or subconsciously, without thinking, we create a story that explains what just happened, a hypothetical that makes it okay that what just happened happened, and, "Oh, maybe he's running 'cause his dog ran away and he's chasing his dog. Maybe that's why he's running." And as soon as we have that thought of what it might be, we relax because now it's not just a guy running and this is weird, but it's a guy running, "Oh, he's probably running after his dog." And now-... we register that story that we just made up, without even knowing we were making it up, as what happened. And then later in the day, if someone says, "Yeah. Did you see that guy running out on the box?" Say, "Yeah. He was chasing his dog. I saw that." And you, you won't even realize that it was the maybe hypothetical story that was the first possible explanation that allowed you to continue walking. Do you know what I'm saying? That's our whole lives. We, our whole lives are reacting to things, making up a story of what we think may have happened, without realizing that's what we're doing, and then living the rest of our lives as if that thing that we made up really happened, and we never know.
Episode duration: 3:00:38
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode ycOBZZeVeAc
Get more out of YouTube videos.
High quality summaries for YouTube videos. Accurate transcripts to search & find moments. Powered by ChatGPT & Claude AI.
Add to Chrome