Rick Rubin — Timeless Methods for Unlocking Creativity, The Future with AI, and More

1. 0:00 – 6:28

   Start

   1. TFTim Ferriss0:00

      This episode is brought to you by Peloton and their brand-new Peloton Row. Peloton Row brings personalized form features and guidance to rowing to help you learn and master your stroke. This was always a weak point for me, meaning before I used Peloton Row, and I got to test a unit a few weeks ago here in Austin, which blew me away, my form was just a question mark, and I also tended to flame out after 5 or 10 minutes on a rower. I just really didn't know what I was doing, and with Peloton Row, that all changed. The instructors, first and foremost, highly trained fitness pros, many different types, who motivate you through every rowing workout. I really enjoyed my training sessions with Alex Karwowski specifically. He's a current high-level international competitor in rowing, so you know his technique has been refined. Peloton offers a huge variety of workouts, like high-intensity interval training, HIIT rows, endurance rows, and more. With the feedback that I was able to get, so you effectively see a profile of yourself, and based on sensors at different points in the machine, you will see feedback. I was able to then do a much more sustained workout to actually tax different metabolic systems, and I felt spectacular afterwards. Form features like Form Assist indicate how to improve your stroke in class in real time, and you also get a detailed post-class breakdown, so you can hit the row harder but more technically next time. In my opinion, you can turn off the Form Assist after about three minutes or so. You'll probably get most of what you're gonna get in each of those sessions, and you don't wanna become too overly concerned with that so that it detracts from your experience. With all these features, you can personalize your target metrics. You become the expert at the level and pace that feels good for you. You get all the cardio and strength in one shot while protecting your joints and ligaments in a high-intensity but low-impact method of exercise. And this blew my mind also. My ankles sometimes hurt when I've tried rowing in the past, and by getting the proper instruction, I felt no pain in my feet or my ankles whatsoever. And the Peloton Row fits seamlessly into your life. So whether you have a 10-minute segment of time, a little break between calls, or if you wanna do something longer in a low-impact row on a recovery day, all of those options are available. And the Peloton Row also can be stored vertically. So when you're not using it, it's out of sight, out of mind. It's also effectively near silent when you're using it. There's a class for every schedule. You can work out hard for the time that you have and trust that you're getting the most out of each workout. Right now, it is the perfect time to get rowing with Peloton Row. I can promise that you've never rowed like this before. The form feedback, the form assist, I was really, really impressed. Peloton Row offers a variety of classes for all levels, plus game-changing features that help you get rowing or advance the rowing you already do. So explore Peloton Row at One Peloton. That's O-N-E, onepeloton.com/row. One more time, that's onepeloton.com/row. [upbeat music] This episode is brought to you by You Need a Budget. What is You Need a Budget? You Need a Budget is a cult favorite budgeting app for a reason. The app and its simple four-rule method will change the way you think about your money and help you gain total control so you can plan for the things you need and get the things you want without guilt or stress. To give you an idea on the cult favorite side, to date, they know of at least seven customers who have customized their license plates to mark the occasion of purchasing a new car in cash, and these fans do this by including YNAB, You Need a Budget, on their license plates. So people love this app. You Need a Budget has helped millions of people transform their finances, save their marriages, and live life on their own terms. I even asked Pete Adeney, who's been on the podcast, best known as Mr. Money Mustache, super popular episode, what he thought, and he's a big fan of the founder and what they're doing. You Need a Budget's simple four-rule method will actually teach you how to manage your money. You will learn a new way of thinking, new habits, and new behaviors that will help you get out of debt, break the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, and build wealth faster. The You Need a Budget team is committed to your success. They offer free live classes every day of the week, video courses, boot camps, challenges, and active fan groups in every corner of the internet. If you want to learn, they can teach you. On average, new budgeters save more than $600 by month two and $6,000 in their first year. So try the app free for 34 days, no credit card required, at youneedabudget.com/tim, spelled as you would expect in proper English. Try You Need a Budget free for 34 days, no credit card required, at youneedabudget.com/tim. And just to explain 34 days, that's because most people reconcile at the end of the month or 30-day period, so having a couple of days of cushion helps folks out. So 34 days with no credit card required at youneedabudget.com/tim.

   2. SPSpeaker4:58

      Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat-out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would a seem an appropriate time. What if I give you the answers? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show.

   3. TFTim Ferriss5:22

      Ladies and gentlemen, this is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today needs no introduction, but I will provide one regardless. Rick Rubin, you can find him on Twitter, @RickRubin, is a nine-time GRAMMY-winning producer, one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World, and the most successful producer in any genre according to Rolling Stone. He has collaborated with artists ranging from Tom Petty to Adele, Johnny Cash to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Beastie Boys to Slayer, Kanye West to The Strokes, and System of a Down to Jay-Z. That is just the tip of the iceberg, believe it or not. You can find my 2015 interview seven-plus years ago with Rick at-

   4. SPSpeaker6:01

      Unbelievable

   5. TFTim Ferriss6:02

      ... Isn't that crazy? tim.blog/rickrubin. His new book is The Creative Act, subtitle: A Way of Being. We're gonna dig into that. Rick, seven-plus years ago

   6. RRRick Rubin6:12

      I can't believe it. Was that the first year of the podcast? How many years has the podcast been?

   7. TFTim Ferriss6:16

      That would've been the second year of the podcast.

   8. RRRick Rubin6:21

      Wow.

   9. TFTim Ferriss6:21

      And we recorded it in your sauna, which was a condition-

   10. RRRick Rubin6:24

       Yes

   11. TFTim Ferriss6:24

       ... of yours.

   12. RRRick Rubin6:25

       Yes.

   13. TFTim Ferriss6:25

       We did a lot of heat, we did a lot of cold.

2. 6:28 – 9:24

   Why Rick wrote The Creative Act.

   1. TFTim Ferriss6:28

      So the creative act. Why make this book? And I've had some close-up seats to watch the seeds germinating for quite a while now.

   2. RRRick Rubin6:38

      I feel like we may have talked about this even back in the sauna.

   3. TFTim Ferriss6:41

      Yeah.

   4. RRRick Rubin6:41

      I don't know if we talked about it on the podcast, but-

   5. TFTim Ferriss6:43

      We did the same day. Yeah

   6. RRRick Rubin6:45

      ... talking about, "This is a book I wanna write," and I remember you amongst others, you were not the only one, you were one of everyone else who said, "That sounds like a bad idea." The general consensus was, "That sounds like a lot of work, and it's not the book that anybody necessarily wants from you. Why don't you just do the one that's easy?"

   7. TFTim Ferriss7:06

      Well, hold on. Hold on. [laughs] Let me, let me defend myself here for one second. I definitely said the first part. I think what I probably said was, "Rick, you have a lot going on. If you put this book out in the world, you're gonna have to live with it forever, so are you sure you are willing to put or can find the time and the space to create this book?" I wouldn't have said, "I don't think this is the book people wanna read." I would've just said, "Man, you have a lot of optionality in your life. Are you sure this is the path that you wanna take?" I could see saying that, but here we are.

   8. RRRick Rubin7:35

      Well, I'll say, this is the book that was interesting to me to write.

   9. TFTim Ferriss7:38

      Mm-hmm.

   10. RRRick Rubin7:38

       And there were definitely simpler books to write-

   11. TFTim Ferriss7:40

       Mm-hmm

   12. RRRick Rubin7:40

       ... but I wasn't interested. So-

   13. TFTim Ferriss7:42

       Yeah

   14. RRRick Rubin7:42

       ... and that was the general consensus with everyone I talked to, including publishers at that time-

   15. TFTim Ferriss7:47

       Yeah

   16. RRRick Rubin7:47

       ... who just said, "Well, you know, why don't you do a biography? Why don't you do the stories of your life?" It's like, if that was the book, I wouldn't do the book.

   17. TFTim Ferriss7:54

       Right. Totally.

   18. RRRick Rubin7:55

       This is the only book that was interesting to me to work on. What the purpose of it is is over the course of a year, I might get to work with a handful of artists. Probably the most albums I've ever produced in a year would be eight, which is a lot for a record producer. But in the world of artists, it's a tiny fraction. So even though I've been doing it for a long time, and even though I get to work with a lot for someone who does my job, I'm still talking to a very few people. And it seems like what goes on in the studio is helpful for the artists, and the idea that maybe there's some way that this information can be shared, and it's difficult because I don't know what it is. You know, that was maybe part of when I described it to you-

   19. TFTim Ferriss8:43

       I remember that. I remember that. [laughs]

   20. RRRick Rubin8:44

       [laughs] You know? I don't know. It's like, I don't know what's in the book. I don't even know where to start.

   21. TFTim Ferriss8:50

       Publishers love that pitch, by the way. [laughs]

   22. RRRick Rubin8:53

       [laughs]

   23. TFTim Ferriss8:53

       I'm just kidding. No, I remember you saying that though, and I was like, "Okay, that's interesting." I mean, you have the ability at this point in your life and at that point in your life to actually play with that emergence though, and I guess you've done that a lot in your life.

   24. RRRick Rubin9:09

       Mm-hmm.

   25. TFTim Ferriss9:09

       Not limited just to this book project.

   26. RRRick Rubin9:11

       That's the way I like to work.

   27. TFTim Ferriss9:12

       Yeah.

   28. RRRick Rubin9:12

       It's like I go in with the, with kind of a blind belief that something good will happen-

   29. TFTim Ferriss9:18

       Mm-hmm

   30. RRRick Rubin9:19

       ... and until it's proven impossible, I will continue banging my head against the wall.

3. 9:24 – 12:16

   The Tao of Rick Rubin.

   1. TFTim Ferriss9:24

      So I wanna talk about banging the head against the wall. I wanna talk about creative process, how you work with artists, how you work with yourself also in the case of this book. I must say something before I forget to mention it, which is I was reading the book. I didn't read all of it because I didn't wanna spoil it for myself, but I, I was reading the book and I thought, "You know, this reminds me of something." Something that I have, and something now that I think about it that Rick Rubin has mentioned before. This is not the exact book you've mentioned. But The Tao Te Ching-

   2. RRRick Rubin9:54

      The Tao. Absolutely

   3. TFTim Ferriss9:55

      ... that bears a resemblance just in terms of the flow and the bite-sized nature and the lyrical prose, if I can put it that way. The way that you've encapsulated your thinking in the writing. Am I totally off base or is this, is, is that an echo?

   4. RRRick Rubin10:12

      That was always one of the wishes, was to have a Tao-like experience.

   5. TFTim Ferriss10:19

      Mm-hmm.

   6. RRRick Rubin10:19

      The material in the book isn't very much like the Tao, and there's a lot-

   7. TFTim Ferriss10:22

      Yeah

   8. RRRick Rubin10:22

      ... more content in this book than is in the Tao.

   9. TFTim Ferriss10:25

      Yeah.

   10. RRRick Rubin10:25

       The Tao is 81 short pieces. This is 400 and some odd pages. That was one of the threads. Another one was The Artist Way. Even though I don't think-

   11. TFTim Ferriss10:34

       Yeah

   12. RRRick Rubin10:34

       ... the book's like The Artist Way, but what's special about The Artist's Way is that it's not Julia Cameron's story in any way. It's a book with things that might be helpful.

   13. TFTim Ferriss10:48

       Mm-hmm.

   14. RRRick Rubin10:48

       And I wanted it to be like that. I didn't want it to be about any of my experiences, any of my projects, any of the people I've worked with. I wanted it to be about the mindset that allows the creation to happen.

   15. TFTim Ferriss11:03

       Mm-hmm.

   16. RRRick Rubin11:03

       And because it comes to me intuitively and I don't know how it works, it took since seven years ago to get to this point of understanding it. And even now, I don't know that I could clearly explain it to you, 'cause the nature of the stuff that we're talking about is fleeting. It's like if you-

   17. TFTim Ferriss11:23

       Mm-hmm

   18. RRRick Rubin11:23

       ... read the Tao every year, you'll get something completely different out of it.

   19. TFTim Ferriss11:28

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   20. RRRick Rubin11:28

       It's like that. It's not vague. It's pretty specific.

   21. TFTim Ferriss11:32

       Mm-hmm.

   22. RRRick Rubin11:32

       But it is open to interpretation in the best way, where it's inviting you, the reader, to see your picture. I'm not telling you what to think. I'm setting up a world that you can participate in yourself.

   23. TFTim Ferriss11:50

       Mm-hmm. Well, it strikes me that you're in a, of course metaphorical sense, explaining how one can calibrate their instrumentation. You're not telling them what to read or what to sense, but you're saying, "This is how you might increase the spectrum of frequencies or inputs that you are able to register. And then what you choose to do with that is up to you." But let's talk about-

   24. RRRick Rubin12:15

       Absolutely

   25. TFTim Ferriss12:15

       ... sensitivity.

4. 12:16 – 15:00

   Making the creative toolbox multi-purposeful.

   1. TFTim Ferriss12:16

      Let's talk about awareness. And I was struck by a number of examples. So there were examples in the book of opening other books and flipping to, say, a random page, and finding a line, and using that line as a catalyst of some type. And if you don't mind me hopping around a little bit, I wanted to go back to our first conversation to discuss how the very small can lead to the very big. So this is an anecdote that you shared after I asked you how you help musicians break through barriers the same way that Laird Hamilton helped you break through certain physical and psychological barriers, often interrelated. And what you mentioned then was that in some cases you give artists homework, very small doable tasks, and you told the story of working with a musician who had a very good career at one point, was trying to get back into songwriting, and he had all these unfinished songs. And I think the homework assignment was, "Come back tomorrow with one word that you like." And then you were able to string those together and help him to build a certain momentum that then led to, of course, larger finished pieces. Did you use that yourself with this book at all? And/or is there another example you could give of breaking something down into very small pieces that then produce their own momentum?

   2. RRRick Rubin13:43

      In the case of the book, the way that I was able to get to the information in it was through doing hundreds of hours of interviews, either about specific projects, or on the day of a studio session, I would come home from the session and I would make notes on, "Okay, this happened today." I would take whatever happened and the specific of whatever happened in the studio that day where something good happened, where no one knew what to do, and the next thing you know we're all talking about it, and then something happens and we, like, solve the problem all together, everyone-- wherever the idea came from, it was solved. And then I would look at that and see, is there a principle at work in that solution bigger than this problem, where it's applicable to other problems? It's the same, you could imagine in any work that you've done, if you solve one kind of a problem, there could come up something similar or something that rhymes with it. [laughs] You know, years later and you're like, "Oh, maybe we could try it like this."

   3. TFTim Ferriss14:45

      Mm-hmm.

   4. RRRick Rubin14:45

      It worked once before. You know?

   5. TFTim Ferriss14:47

      Yeah.

   6. RRRick Rubin14:47

      So it's like increasing the toolbox of potential methods-

   7. TFTim Ferriss14:53

      Mm-hmm

   8. RRRick Rubin14:53

      ... all based on ones that have worked in the past for one reason or another. And some of them are pretty esoteric. [laughs]

5. 15:00 – 19:50

   Collaborations: ensuring the best ideas prevail over egos.

   1. TFTim Ferriss15:00

      Mm-hmm. So some are esoteric. Not all of them are esoteric. So I was-

   2. RRRick Rubin15:04

      No

   3. TFTim Ferriss15:04

      ... I was texting with someone who read your book, and what he said was one of your-- well, I shouldn't say your. One of his favorite parts in the book was your take on collaborations. Advice for people working together, whether as business partners or artists, when they disagree strongly on something.

   4. RRRick Rubin15:24

      Yes.

   5. TFTim Ferriss15:24

      So would you mind introducing maybe your philosophy or tactical toolkit for helping to navigate that? Because in your career-

   6. RRRick Rubin15:36

      Yes

   7. TFTim Ferriss15:36

      ... I mean, you've dealt with many strong personalities. It's not said in a pejorative way. Many big, many unique personalities. How do you think about interpersonal conflict resolution?

   8. RRRick Rubin15:49

      In most collaborative projects, most of the bands I've worked with, the way that I've noticed it working is that there'll be many ideas and there'll be like a battle of wills to see which idea wins.

   9. TFTim Ferriss16:06

      Mm-hmm.

   10. RRRick Rubin16:07

       It's not necessarily based in which idea is best.

   11. TFTim Ferriss16:10

       Right.

   12. RRRick Rubin16:10

       It's more of a ego conflict battle.

   13. TFTim Ferriss16:13

       Yep.

   14. RRRick Rubin16:14

       And then someone w- who's either willing to fight more or, uh, is more insensitive is able to push their way through-

   15. TFTim Ferriss16:24

       Mm-hmm

   16. RRRick Rubin16:24

       ... and that becomes the direction. And from my experience, those are not how the best decisions are made. That's how a decision can get made, but not the best decision. And really what we want always is, out of all the possible decisions, we want the best one to end up in the piece. So we start with an agreement that we try not to even know whose ideas are which.

   17. TFTim Ferriss16:52

       Hmm.

   18. RRRick Rubin16:53

       To take the personal out of it-

   19. TFTim Ferriss16:55

       Mm-hmm

   20. RRRick Rubin16:56

       ... and to have it be, let's say there's a band with three different songwriters in it, and then they might send me demos and in the past they would say, "Okay. These three are Bill's, and these four are Sam's, and these are Sally's." And then when I'm listening to them, I'm listening, "Okay. I have three of Sam's, four of Sally's," but I'm not focused on what's the best of everything there, because I'm thinking about the individuals.

   21. TFTim Ferriss17:24

       Mm-hmm.

   22. RRRick Rubin17:24

       So I always ask for any information shared with me to not be labeled and not explained at all.

   23. TFTim Ferriss17:32

       Hmm.

   24. RRRick Rubin17:32

       And then I'm only reacting based on the actual material, not based on what I think. Same goes when we're hiring a mix engineer for something. I might have as many as five different mix engineers mix the same song, and then I listen to them without knowing who did what.

   25. TFTim Ferriss17:48

       Mm-hmm.

   26. RRRick Rubin17:48

       Because if one of them is a superstar mixer who everybody wants, and one of them is our assistant engineer who works in the studio, we might think, "Oh, the guy," you know, "the superstar guy probably did the best job," and it, it clouds the decision-making. Not intentionally.

   27. TFTim Ferriss18:04

       Yeah.

   28. RRRick Rubin18:04

       Even unintentionally, knowing the information is not helpful. So we do as much blind testing as possible. And the same is true is when we're working together, we all know, because we talk about it, that what's best is that the best idea wins, and that there's no ... personal benefit. And if your idea makes it, it doesn't make it better than if the other team member's idea makes it. Because whichever idea actually is best, we all win. So the, the goal is to get to the best, it's not to get to ours. And to foster that relationship in all of the projects we do with other people. If someone's always politicking to get it their way, it's a different job. It's like you don't wanna win because of the politics, you wanna win because the idea works.

   29. TFTim Ferriss18:56

       Totally. No, I was just gonna ask you if that is an explicit conversation you have upfront with people you're working with so that you're setting the expectations, getting the buy-in, having everyone on the same page with this is about the best ideas winning because then we all win. It's not about the strongest egos winning the day and pushing things through. Is that a explicit conversation that you have with folks or encourage them to have?

   30. RRRick Rubin19:21

       It can be if I'm aware that it's an issue.
6. 19:50 – 26:44

   Creative revisions are experiments, not guaranteed improvements.

   1. RRRick Rubin19:50

      about it.

   2. TFTim Ferriss19:51

      You were talking about listening to, say, mixes, if I'm using the right term, with fresh ears. And I remember in our first conversation, we talked briefly about, I, I think the term was, or the phrasing was, leaving music in the studio so that you can come back to it with fresh ears if you've heard something 100 times. Actually, I'll give you a personal situation, and then maybe I can turn this into a, a free therapy session. So-

   3. RRRick Rubin20:14

      [laughs]

   4. TFTim Ferriss20:14

      ... I have been doing a bunch of fiction writing for the last six months for the first time, and I'm having so much fun with it. It may in some ways tie into one of your other true, true passions. People may not realize this. It's not bullshit. Professional wrestling. I don't know if that's still the case, but oh man. It may actually tie into this in a, in a way that I can explain another time. But I've really been enjoying the fiction. What I have found myself running into is I will have a short, short story, a few pages long, and I will revise it 47 times. I'll revise it 56 times. And when I look at the amount of time I've spent on it, a few things become apparent. Number one is that I'm not convinced revision 56 is any better necessarily than revision 49.

   5. RRRick Rubin21:01

      [laughs]

   6. TFTim Ferriss21:02

      So maybe I could have spent less time on that and done more original drafting. And then the second is when I look at something that many times, it all begins to get blurry and it becomes so familiar that I... it's very challenging to look at it with fresh eyes. And I imagine that happens to folks you work with. Maybe it happened to you in this creative process. What advice would you give, say, me, or how would you talk through that with me if I'm experiencing those things?

   7. RRRick Rubin21:30

      First thing I would suggest is always referring back to the thing that you're revising. I would never assume because you put more time into something, it's getting better.

   8. TFTim Ferriss21:41

      Yep.

   9. RRRick Rubin21:42

      Most people equate work time with progress, and that's not the case. We're scientists experimenting, and it's all an experiment. And sometimes we get the experiment right, right at the beginning and we don't know it, and we won't know it until we may do 100 other iterations that are not better.

   10. TFTim Ferriss22:05

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RRRick Rubin22:05

       So what I'll say is there's no way to save the time that you're hoping to save. There are no shortcuts.

   12. TFTim Ferriss22:12

       [laughs] You gotta do the 100 experiments no matter what, even if you get it right the first time.

   13. RRRick Rubin22:15

       It's the only way to know.

   14. TFTim Ferriss22:17

       Yep.

   15. RRRick Rubin22:18

       And in addition to that, I would add on top of it having patience and being able to step away long enough that you can compare idea 56, your latest, with idea one, iteration one at the beginning and see is it in fact better? Because sometimes, I mean, there's a whole history of albums that have come out where people always say, "Oh, the album didn't really work, but the demos were great." You know, "It was so much better."

   16. TFTim Ferriss22:44

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RRRick Rubin22:45

       "The songwriting was great, but we didn't really execute it right." So the craft part of-

   18. TFTim Ferriss22:51

       Mm-hmm

   19. RRRick Rubin22:51

       ... iteration after iteration could just as well be making it worse as better.

   20. TFTim Ferriss22:56

       Yeah.

   21. RRRick Rubin22:56

       It also can be making it better. It's like there's no rule to it, so that's why it's dangerous. And then in terms of staying present and leaving the work and working on something else is-

   22. TFTim Ferriss23:09

       Mm-hmm

   23. RRRick Rubin23:10

       ... a really good thing to do because then when you come back, you've really exhausted another part of your brain. You know, work on something hard, not that.

   24. TFTim Ferriss23:18

       Mm-hmm.

   25. RRRick Rubin23:19

       And then when you come back to read it, you have a better chance of being closer to, uh, a neutral view.

   26. TFTim Ferriss23:26

       So let's take an album as a parallel. If you have a-- You're working on an album and there are X number of tracks. Just for the sake of simplicity, let's say there are 10 tracks, and with this fiction I was working on 10 different stories related to greater houses and clans and all this stuff in this fictional world. So I had the ability to leave one and go to another. If you're working with a band and they have this hypothetical album, what are your guiding principles for how much to revise a given track before moving on to something else? Or if someone's feeling stuck, how much you push before moving to something else? How do you think about getting that album done in terms of origination, iteration, skipping around?

   27. RRRick Rubin24:15

       If an idea is new and it's flowing, I would get as much of at least a first draft of it all the way through, a first draft of that idea. I would probably not do any revision past the first draft, and then I would move on to piece two. I would wanna get to the 10 that you're doing from, in my case, if I wanted to release 10, I would be working on 30 to get to 10 to release.

   28. TFTim Ferriss24:40

       Right.

   29. RRRick Rubin24:41

       So everything's the best of. In my mind, it's like we have the best of these three projects and make that one project, it's certainly gonna be better than the first 10.

   30. TFTim Ferriss24:52

       For sure.
7. 26:44 – 33:07

   Knowing when to be defined by or to deviate from an established genre.

   1. RRRick Rubin26:44

      of seeing them all.

   2. TFTim Ferriss26:45

      Okay, so I have a question for you about genre, and that might not be the right word, but you'll see where I'm going with it. On one hand, you have been involved with some albums like Reign in Blood, Slayer, right? Which has an undeniable style to it. It is just unmistakable. And [laughs] I remember getting that album, horrified my parents. But I got that on cassette back in the Stone Ages, and it is one of a kind. On the other hand, I've read about examples, let's just say Red Hot Chili Peppers circa 1991, where you're encouraging them to reinvent their sound by incorporating different aspects. And maybe they thought, at least in this New York Times piece, that the Chili Peppers defined themselves as roughly, let's just say, rap infused with funk, and you imagined expanding that. When do you go one direction versus the other? If that's even a sensible question.

   3. RRRick Rubin27:45

      Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a completely, uh, case-by-case thing, and I don't know how to judge it. It has to do with the whole arc of an artist's work. If you look at The Beatles, Beatles are always a great example because they're really as good as it gets.

   4. TFTim Ferriss27:59

      Yeah.

   5. RRRick Rubin27:59

      And The Beatles made 13 albums over seven years, and they're pretty radically different. Over that seven years, they're not recognizable as the band before. You might even see them go through several. They probably went through at least three, maybe four different phases within seven years. If you think of-

   6. TFTim Ferriss28:18

      That's wild

   7. RRRick Rubin28:19

      ... a big artist today, over seven years you might get two albums that would probably be pretty similar. So it's really a, a radical thing. Then on the other hand, two of the greatest groups of all time, AC/DC and The Ramones, they pretty much do AC/DC and The Ramones every time, and it doesn't change, and you don't want them to change. And there's not a right or wrong, and it's not like-

   8. TFTim Ferriss28:43

      Yeah

   9. RRRick Rubin28:43

      ... The Ramones is better than The Beatles or The Beatles are better than The Ramones. They're just two different trajectories.

   10. TFTim Ferriss28:49

       Totally.

   11. RRRick Rubin28:50

       And it's helpful to figure out what your trajectory is, and it comes through the process. I'll give you an example of a band that I worked with. Linkin Park is a band that was-- there was a, a movement called, I don't even know what you'd call it, like the rap-rock movement. The first of the rap-rock groups would've been Rage Against the Machine, let's say.

   12. TFTim Ferriss29:09

       Mm-hmm.

   13. RRRick Rubin29:10

       And then a bunch of groups came in Rage Against the Machine's wake, and it was a big movement that got really big. And then the last of those groups was Linkin Park, and one of the most successful. And they came to me after they had made, I think, three of the biggest rap-rock albums ever made, and there was some question about what do we do next. And an important point in this is that rap-rock as a genre was disappearing. So they had a choice, and maybe this is part of the key. I never thought about this before. If you're part of a movement, and if you're riding a wave of a movement, and if the movement goes away, look closely at whether you wanna keep riding that same wave or not. So in the-- whatever reason, my feeling was for Linkin Park at that time, if they made another one like their last one, it would've been wildly successful, and maybe one more, but then it would've sounded like the oldies station.

   14. TFTim Ferriss30:11

       [laughs] Yeah, right.

   15. RRRick Rubin30:13

       You know? Like it would've been retro music.

   16. TFTim Ferriss30:15

       Mm-hmm.

   17. RRRick Rubin30:16

       And at the time that they were making what they were making, it was really cutting edge, and their aspirations were bigger than being Another rap rock group

   18. TFTim Ferriss30:30

       Yeah

   19. RRRick Rubin30:31

       So for them, the idea to shift out of being just a rap rock group and try different things was a good thing. In the case of the Chili Peppers, they had made funk records with rap vocals for, I think, four albums up until the time that I worked with them. And it was going fine, and they could have done that forever. But in spending time with them and seeing the musicianship and seeing what they did, their potential, and seeing the relationship with the audience that they had, it was clear that the audience didn't love them just because of the style of music they were playing. The audience loved them because they loved them, and they put all of themselves into it. So there was an opportunity to put all of themselves into more, in the case of the Chili Peppers, and just widen that envelope. Same with Linkin Park, just, like, widen the envelope. And there have been other artists I've worked with where I suggest doing the exact opposite, you know, where I suggest going back to what you used to do that worked. There's not a right or a wrong way. It really is looking at all of the elements, and so much of it has to do with how they see themselves and what their long-term goals are.

   20. TFTim Ferriss31:45

       For sure.

   21. RRRick Rubin31:46

       You know, I got to make an album with AC/DC. They never wanted to sound any different than AC/DC. For them, that's all that music sounded like.

   22. TFTim Ferriss31:54

       [laughs]

   23. RRRick Rubin31:54

       That's what music sounds like, AC/DC. We do the good version of what music is.

   24. TFTim Ferriss32:00

       [laughs]

   25. RRRick Rubin32:01

       There was no chance that they were gonna start doing ballad, pi- piano ballads. It's not gonna happen.

   26. TFTim Ferriss32:05

       [laughs] That's a great example, and it also strikes me that I have to imagine, I don't know if this has been your experience, but for long-term endurance and just creative output sustained over longer periods, it would seem to me most people, this is certainly true for a lot of writers, need to have some congruency between, like, what they're feeling and what they want to be and what they're actually doing, right? Even if you're surfing for a wave that is a huge movement and you happen to do pretty well, if that isn't resonating intrinsically with what you deeply want to do, it's gonna be very hard to sustain that for a period of time, I would have to imagine.

   27. RRRick Rubin32:52

       I think it's impossible.

   28. TFTim Ferriss32:54

       Yeah.

   29. RRRick Rubin32:54

       I, I would think it's impossible. And I think if you are trying to ride a wave and you're not already connected with all of yourself, chances are that won't even be successful.

   30. TFTim Ferriss33:04

       Yeah.
8. 33:07 – 37:10

   Why Rick resisted advice to make his first book an autobiography.

   1. RRRick Rubin33:07

      it won't matter.

   2. TFTim Ferriss33:08

      Yeah. So let me ask you a question about the book compositions and some of the decisions. So the publishers who said to you, [laughs] like, "Rick, let's share what we think is gonna work great. So for you, we're gonna get on, get somebody to help you with a bio. We're gonna put it in all the stories about the rock stars and this and that." And then Father Rick said, "No, thank you. Thank you, but no, thank you," and you've written this book. My question for you, because I know there's thinking behind it or feeling behind it, or both, why not do both? In the sense that you could sprinkle a little bit of this inside a foundation of the other and probably make it work. Why was it important for you not to move strongly in the direction of where you were feeling the external pressure?

   3. RRRick Rubin33:58

      Two reasons. First one is I want the book to be a timeless book.

   4. TFTim Ferriss34:03

      Yeah. That's what I thought.

   5. RRRick Rubin34:04

      And if the examples were about me and my life, they would be attached to me and my life. They may not mean something in 20 years or 30 years or 50 years, and I want it to be a forever do- like the Tao. The Tao was written 3,000 years ago. I want it to be able to live outside of time. That's one. The other reason is, in terms of the nature of wanting the reader, inviting the reader to participate in the book, if I tell you a possible solution to a problem, and if I paint a picture of the problem and the solution and you see the way it works, when you're reading it, you're envisioning yourself solving that problem. It's written in that way to allow you to see it happen for yourself. If I do that same exercise and it's a story about Jay-Z, you're not picturing yourself solving that problem. You're thinking, "Wow, Jay-Z's such a great artist."

   6. TFTim Ferriss35:07

      [laughs]

   7. RRRick Rubin35:08

      Do you know what I'm saying? It's like-

   8. TFTim Ferriss35:09

      I do

   9. RRRick Rubin35:09

      ... it removes you from it. I never wanted the sensational nature or the celebrity nature of how you hear a story when you know who's involved and it's someone you like or don't like, either way. It's just like the AB testing I was saying earlier of not wanting to know any information.

   10. TFTim Ferriss35:30

       Mm-hmm.

   11. RRRick Rubin35:30

       I'm giving the audience the chance to hear the information without the sensational stuff that's a distraction.

   12. TFTim Ferriss35:39

       Mm.

   13. RRRick Rubin35:40

       I didn't want it to have the distraction. I wanted it to actually be helpful. [outro music]

   14. TFTim Ferriss35:48

       Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by Wealthfront. There is a lot happening in the US and global economies right now. A lot. That's an understatement. Are we in a recession? Is it a bear market? What's gonna happen with inflation? So many questions, so few answers. I can't tell the future. Nobody can. But I can tell you about a great place to earn more on your savings, and that's Wealthfront. Wealthfront is an app that helps you save and invest your money. Right now, you can earn 3.8% APY, that's the annual percentage yield, with the Wealthfront Cash Account. That's more than 15 times more interest than if you left your money in a savings account at the average bank, according to FDIC.gov. Getting a Cash Account is easy. It takes just a few minutes to sign up, and then you'll immediately start earning 3.8% interest on your savings. And when you open an account today, you'll get an extra fifty dollar bonus with a deposit of five hundred dollars or more. Visit wealthfront.com/tim to get started. There are already nearly half a million people using Wealthfront to save more, earn more, and build long-term wealth. So why wait? Earn three point eight percent on your cash today. Plus, it's up to two million dollars in FDIC insurance through partner banks. Visit wealthfront.com/tim to get started. That's wealthfront.com/tim. This was a paid endorsement by Wealthfront. [electronic bass booming]

9. 37:10 – 38:07

   Even a solo project is a collaboration.

   1. TFTim Ferriss37:11

      So coming back to the split testing for a moment, you had indicated at the beginning of that story that I think that is, or that section is within cooperation?

   2. RRRick Rubin37:23

      I think the AB testing's in a whole different section. I don't know which one.

   3. TFTim Ferriss37:26

      Oh, okay. All right. But the cooperation and the collaboration are different, I think.

   4. RRRick Rubin37:30

      Yes. Collaboration you would expect to be working with others.

   5. TFTim Ferriss37:35

      Mm-hmm.

   6. RRRick Rubin37:36

      But it's not. The collaboration section is about working with yourself and the universe, that everything we make is a collaboration because we're not doing anything ourselves. Everything we do is based on the information that we take in, our experiences in life, what we learned in school, a conversation we had yesterday. All of the things that make us who we are, we bring into all of our projects. So we're always in collaboration. It's never our idea.

10. 38:07 – 40:24

    Noticing what nobody else sees.

    1. TFTim Ferriss38:08

       To build off of that, there's a quote that I wrote down from page forty-one, which is, "Look for what you notice but no one else sees." And perhaps this is related, right, to that collaboration between the seer and the seen, the receiver and the sender. Maybe one and the same, but [chuckles] I don't want to take us too esoteric. What does that mean to you? Look for what you notice, but no one else sees, and maybe if there are any examples that come to mind, or how could someone begin to hone that?

    2. RRRick Rubin38:36

       If you speak to a scientist or a mathematician about some problem that was very difficult to solve, that eventually when they get to the solution, it's not exotic. It more often than not, it was right there the whole time. It was so obvious. We miss what's right in front of us. We have great opportunities to participate in incredible beauty and inspiration every day everywhere we go, and opening ourselves to be in that state that allows for us to see the thing that everyone else is walking by. And happened to me, uh, yesterday. I was walking by a tree with my son, and I noticed that there was a big tree and a very narrow tree, and the narrow tree had these like flat... I don't even know how to describe them. They looked like almost the shape of butterflies, big flat protrusions sticking way off this little tree. They were dark in color, and it wasn't clear to me, are those part of the tree? Is that something that's growing on the tree? Have no idea. But I've walked by that same tree every day for six weeks, and I never noticed that before, and here I noticed it, and now I have a question. It's like in addition to it being beautiful and in addition to having the conversation with my son, it's like, "Do you think that those are growing on the tree, or is that part of the tree?" And he's like, "I think maybe they're growing on it." Fascinating.

    3. TFTim Ferriss40:09

       Mm-hmm.

    4. RRRick Rubin40:10

       But I walked by it many times without noticing it. I noticed it, and if I was gonna draw something that day, I would probably try to analyze and draw those [chuckles] 'cause it was so... it's so cool looking, and I never saw anything like it before. Hiding in plain sight.

11. 40:24 – 42:22

    Being in the wonderful state “which makes art inevitable.”

    1. TFTim Ferriss40:24

       Hiding in plain sight. So I'm gonna pull up something else, which is at the very beginning of the book. There's a quote, and I'm not sure how to pronounce his name, so I'm gonna give it a go. Either Robert Henri or Robert Henri, I'm guessing, H-E-N-R-I, and the quote is-

    2. RRRick Rubin40:39

       He's American. I think it might be Henri, but I'm not-

    3. TFTim Ferriss40:42

       Henri.

    4. RRRick Rubin40:42

       I'm also not sure.

    5. TFTim Ferriss40:43

       Okay.

    6. RRRick Rubin40:44

       I think so.

    7. TFTim Ferriss40:45

       All right. So I'll go with Robert Henri, H-E-N-R-I. "The object isn't to make art. It's to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable." I would love for you to flesh this out a little bit, and maybe the way to do it would be to peer stories of your own. I mean, you may have just given one, but how you cultivate the precursors, the elemental pieces of this state that makes art inevitable. And that could be through yourself, could be through people you've worked with, but what does that look like when it's done well?

    8. RRRick Rubin41:24

       The whole book is, is the answer to that question, and the reason the subtitle of the book is A Way of Being is being a great artist, we think of it as the person who makes the thing. We think about it the, as the making. What makes an artist great happens not in the making. It happens in the way of being in the world, the way of experiencing the world, the way of noticing the thing that someone else doesn't notice, the way of seeing what's beautiful when everyone else sees the mundane, and being able to re-present that back in a way that other people get a glimpse of what we saw that they didn't notice. We get to walk around in awe [chuckles] all day-

    9. TFTim Ferriss42:10

       Mm-hmm

    10. RRRick Rubin42:11

        ... and have our breath taken away, and then we get to portray that in something where someone else hopefully could have that same sense of awe from something we

12. 42:22 – 44:29

    Craftsperson vs. artist.

    1. RRRick Rubin42:22

       made.

    2. TFTim Ferriss42:23

       So this for me begs the question of, is there a way to distinguish between good distraction and bad distraction? So bad distraction might be commercial considerations that lead you to chase this- ... hungry ghost in a way that completely impedes your creative process, right? So maybe that's a bad distraction, which we talked a bit about in our last conversation on the podcast. Somebody from the outside looking at you staring at this growth on the tree might say, "Rick's got a lot of important stuff to do. He's getting really distracted," right? So is there a good light in which to paint distraction or a way to think about that? To what extent you immerse yourself in the, the sublime details that the rest of the world misses, and alternate that with periods of taking it into the workshop, so to speak?

    3. RRRick Rubin43:19

       The work is the work of a craftsman, the building of things. That's the craftsperson's job. And there's a difference between a craftsperson and an artist. One's not better than the other. They're both fine. It's just a different way of looking at it. The craftsperson is making the thing and making them all the same and making them all match, or making the one that, that somebody ordered, and it's a very specific, "How do you want it? Okay, I can make it that way, the way you want it." That's the craftsperson. The artist is making the thing that you didn't know you want-

    4. TFTim Ferriss43:59

       Yeah

    5. RRRick Rubin43:59

       ... the thing that you didn't know that you couldn't live without, the thing that you didn't know was possible. And to do that, it's different than learning how to make things.

    6. TFTim Ferriss44:09

       Yeah.

    7. RRRick Rubin44:09

       It's a different process. It has more to do with our connection to the world than anything else. And when I say connection to the world, that could mean watching old movies. It could mean reading great literature. It could mean going to museums. It could mean being in nature. It could mean doing something physical,

13. 44:29 – 46:40

    Good distraction vs. bad distraction.

    1. RRRick Rubin44:29

       like I would consider exercise a form of distraction from our work. If you're concerned about something, if you go exercise really hard, chances are you won't be thinking about what you're concerned about if you're-

    2. TFTim Ferriss44:43

       [laughs]

    3. RRRick Rubin44:43

       ... working hard enough.

    4. TFTim Ferriss44:44

       Yeah.

    5. RRRick Rubin44:44

       Same with the ice tub that we got to do together. When you're in the ice, nothing else matters.

    6. TFTim Ferriss44:49

       Yeah.

    7. RRRick Rubin44:49

       Everything's fine. There are also specific distraction that's really helpful for the artist, where because we tend to be overthinking creatures, this goes back to your earlier [laughs] question about, "Do I move on to number two before, you know, before I finish number one?" We tend to overthink. It's like, "Oh, well, I could work on number one forever. I'm never gonna get to number 10." There are certain distractions we can do that make it easier. There was an artist I was working with, I can say, Neil Diamond, the singer, and Neil Diamond sings. He has this incredible voice, and he sings like, almost like an opera singer, like very big projecting voice, and people tend to think of him as a overly dramatic singer. Some people might even make fun of him for being an overly dramatic singer. And he's a rudimentary guitar player at best. He writes his songs on guitar, but he's not a studio musician. When we were working together, I insisted that when he sang, he also played guitar. And he's like, "I never play on my records. Why would I play guitar on my records? I could have a great guitar player." Say, "No, no, no, I just want you to play." And what happened was, through his playing, he was distracted enough by having to hold down the chord changes, he was able to sing just like himself. There was no potential to make it a performance.

    8. TFTim Ferriss46:20

       Right.

    9. RRRick Rubin46:20

       And the goal was to not make it a performance. The goal was to get closer to reality, where it's real, where you believe what he's saying.

    10. TFTim Ferriss46:29

        Mm-hmm.

    11. RRRick Rubin46:29

        You know, we didn't want a Shakespearean performance. We wanted his heart opening.

    12. TFTim Ferriss46:36

        Mm-hmm.

    13. RRRick Rubin46:37

        And we were best able to get that when he was playing guitar.

14. 46:40 – 49:24

    Breaking out of sameness.

    1. TFTim Ferriss46:40

       Hmm. So this example ties in perfectly to where I was going and where I'd love to go, which is breaking out of sameness. When we have these habits, we may have these defaults, and there are different reasons for sticking with sameness, right? Or different explanations. One is we found this, let's just say, genre that works. It's doing well. Let's kind of milk this as long as we can. There's a at least one other form of sameness, which is I have these habits, and I don't know how to break these habits, right? Like, I would love to try something new, but I'm not sure how to do it because I've been doing more or less something that rhymes with this for so long. What are some other ways you've seen people successfully innovate, experiment, and maybe get off of those well-worn tracks?

    2. RRRick Rubin47:32

       An example for you writing fiction is a great example-

    3. TFTim Ferriss47:35

       Yeah

    4. RRRick Rubin47:35

       ... 'cause you've written nonfiction up till now, although I still think you don't have that issue because you wrote your first book, which was a business book. It was wildly successful, and then I remember your second book was a fitness book, and publishers were like, "You're the business guy. What are you writing a fitness book [laughs] for?"

    5. TFTim Ferriss47:51

       Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

    6. RRRick Rubin47:52

       So you don't have this problem, or at least you didn't have the problem then when we talked about it then.

    7. TFTim Ferriss47:57

       No, I don't have a problem with it, yeah.

    8. RRRick Rubin47:59

       I think if you look back at your work and you notice a pattern that runs through it, there are two choices. One, you can double down on that pattern, and s- through recognizing it, go deeper into it, and that could be interesting. Or you could recognize the pattern and say, "Okay, what would it be like if I went in a different direction?" If your work tends to be dark, you've done dark, dark, dark, dark, dark. What would the light version be like?

    9. TFTim Ferriss48:28

       Mm-hmm.

    10. RRRick Rubin48:28

        Interesting. Who knows?

    11. TFTim Ferriss48:30

        Yeah.

    12. RRRick Rubin48:30

        What's the other end of the seesaw? And even if you do that experiment and don't like the results, when you come back to working in the dark- You're gonna have a different relationship to it.

    13. TFTim Ferriss48:42

        I'm gonna say-

    14. RRRick Rubin48:42

        You're gonna be able to do something new. Even if you're gonna go back to the same thread that you've been following, breaking out of it, even as a failed experiment, can help you get firmly back on the thread in a way maybe more secure than you ever understood it before.

    15. TFTim Ferriss49:04

        Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me. If you're always in the cave and you wanna describe the cave and the darkness in the cave, then you're gonna have maybe a broader spectrum of vocabulary and certainly personal experience to use if you spend some time walking around in the sunlight, and then you go back in the cave, right? [chuckles]

    16. RRRick Rubin49:20

        Yeah, you'll notice completely different things.

    17. TFTim Ferriss49:23

        Yeah.

15. 49:24 – 51:39

    Filtering out non-constructive feedback.

    1. TFTim Ferriss49:24

       I like that. And question, this is also self-interested question, but I'm writing this fiction, and I'm not using public consensus or requests to drive any creative decisions. And I feel that's important for me to say up front because I know that's a risk. When you start letting mass opinion or crowd input drive the entire creative process, I think you can end up being a camel as a horse designed by a committee type of situation. So I'm not doing that. What I have noticed is, unlike with my nonfiction, on one hand, I, I really want to get some positive reinforcement because I'm new and it's a little wobbly. I'm proud of certain aspects of it. But looking for that can be a risky business because if you go online, if you go on Twitter, there are, for every one person who may give constructive feedback, there are 10 others who are just going to try to lop your head off with really destructive feedback. What type of advice do you give to your artists or would you give to me with respect to fully ignoring or cherry-picking or soliciting feedback? It doesn't have to be from the internet, but just given that context, what would you say?

    2. RRRick Rubin50:43

       I would say to try to find a way to get feedback from people who genuinely care about you and your work, not a general reader. And in your case, specifically, because you write a blog and you email that blog to people, you have a big mailing list. So I would start, if I were you, not posting things on Twitter, but just sending them to your mailing list-

    3. TFTim Ferriss51:08

       Hmm

    4. RRRick Rubin51:08

       ... and getting response that way. Because if someone signed up to your mailing list, they're not signing up to hate you.

    5. TFTim Ferriss51:12

       [chuckles] Yeah, right.

    6. RRRick Rubin51:14

       They're invested. They don't wanna be erasing your emails every time you send them.

    7. TFTim Ferriss51:18

       [chuckles]

    8. RRRick Rubin51:20

       They're welcoming them.

    9. TFTim Ferriss51:21

       Mm-hmm.

    10. RRRick Rubin51:21

        So I would start with s- with a welcoming audience if you're gonna be getting any, any feedback, and I would have a... because they are a welcoming audience, have a big enough scale where it's not just, "I love this, I love this, I love this," you know-

    11. TFTim Ferriss51:37

        Yeah

    12. RRRick Rubin51:37

        ... to, to get some actual helpful information.

16. 51:39 – 55:36

    Does artificial intelligence deserve a role in the creative process?

    1. TFTim Ferriss51:39

       Let me ask you, this is a bit of a left turn, but I'm so curious to get your take. And my apologies if a lot of people have asked you this, but I've never heard you speak to this publicly. I, first and foremost, would consider myself a nonfiction writer. And in the last few months, I've been tracking artificial intelligence enhanced or dependent copy production, blog posts. Tell me a story about a guy trying to get a piece of toast out of his toaster with a butter knife in the style of the King James Bible. Some of what you're seeing with ChatGPT and so on is astonishing. And most recently, a- and this is speaking as someone who comes from an art family and as someone who wanted to be a comic book penciler for a long time, I've been watching with some degree of awe these tools like Midjourney and Stable Diffusion and so on, some of which are now being applied to music. And they're interpolating from, say, keyboard strokes to improv jazz with a touch of funk, and it's been astonishing to watch how much this has gone vertical in the last few months, at least in terms of mass adoption and experimentation. Fifteen years ago, a- at least as covered in The New York Times, two thousand and seven, you said that the way or one of the ways to counter, not counteract, but offset file sharing was to offer people a subscription model, much like cable, right? So lo and behold, that has happened. And people have these subscriptions, and they have music at their fingertips, in their living room, in their car, et cetera. What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence and how it fits or doesn't fit into creativity?

    2. RRRick Rubin53:20

       I think of it as an end. It doesn't strike me as interesting. As a means, it could be helpful. For example, what's interesting about the things we make, again, isn't the making. The computer's doing the making. It's not doing the noticing. So I might ask, in the same way that we spend time, like hip hop producers do crate digging, where we'll listen to hundreds of old albums, track by track, looking for a moment that's interesting. We're not looking for the song. We're not looking for the piece of work. We're looking for a moment where things go right or a moment that just strikes us, and then that's an element that we can integrate into our work. So I might consider having a music-making program, constantly making music, and then listen for, at any point in time, over the hours and hours all day long, I would probably have it playing in the background all, all day. And then any time there was a moment that made me look, you know, that would catch my ear, I would sample that moment and try to build something with human taste with that as a seed to build from or as an element used. I think what's interesting, the human curation Aspect of art is it's what makes it art. So I don't even know what it is. If a computer makes it, I don't know. I've also not seen any... Personally, thus far, I've not seen any computer-generated images based on instructions that have moved me in any way. I haven't felt them. I haven't felt them. I may see them, I might laugh at them, or I might think, "Oh, that's a funny cartoon," but never does it make me wanna learn more or go deeper or, uh, feel something bigger.

    3. TFTim Ferriss55:22

       There's also the question of if humans are going to want to or be willing to feel something if they know that it's been generated by a computer, right, by AI.

    4. RRRick Rubin55:32

       Well, they won't always know. I can't imagine they would always know, right?

17. 55:36 – 56:54

    What happens when new music catches Rick’s ear?

    1. TFTim Ferriss55:36

       Yeah. It's gonna get harder and harder to distinguish. When you hear something that catches your ear or when you think back to some of these songs, whether it's from The Beatles or Neil Young or otherwise, that move you deeply, what does that feel like? Can you describe that quickening? Because it strikes me that you use your felt sense in response to things as a guiding rod of sorts. Can you describe what that feeling is like?

    2. RRRick Rubin56:06

       One of the elements is surprise. It holds my attention and it surprises me. If it comes on and I like it and it only does what it did to make me in- initially like it, I might lose interest.

    3. TFTim Ferriss56:24

       Mm-hmm.

    4. RRRick Rubin56:25

       But if it does something that's interesting and catches my ear and makes me lean forward to understand what's happening, why am I feeling this, what, what's going on here, and it holds that curiosity, and any time it makes me wanna turn it off, I know that's not for me. If I wanna turn it off, it's not for me, and if I wanna listen to it forever, I really like it.

    5. TFTim Ferriss56:51

       [laughs]

18. 56:54 – 1:00:17

    How to be the best music producer possible.

    1. TFTim Ferriss56:54

       If your son comes to you, who knows when, could be tomorrow, but let's just say it's, it's a handful of years from now and says, "Dad, I really wanna be a music producer," and somehow made the plea, "Could you walk me through this Padawan training to become the best music producer possible?" how would you begin to respond to that, or how might you think about that? Would there be certain things you'd want to impart? He's probably absorbing a lot just through exposure to you and osmosis and so on, I'm sure.

    2. RRRick Rubin57:27

       I think it would really just start with talking about, learning about, seeing lots of art, listening to lots of music, seeing as much as we could and trying to understand why do we like the things we like and not like the things we don't. What are the qualities in there? Some of them are not describable. Some of them are beyond words. But to get in tune with these feelings that language doesn't do justice to and to feel that feeling when your breath gets taken away. I feel like for young children, they probably have it more often than we do as jaded adults because the world is still new to them, so the first time you see anything grand... I've never been to the Grand Canyon. I imagine the first time I go, even though I haven't been there and I've seen pictures, I will probably have some feeling of, "Wow, can't believe it's that big." That's my guess. And whatever my imagination is of it won't be as dramatic and grand as what I expect to see when I get there. We'll see when that happens. There was a sunset yesterday. I was doing a Tai Chi exercise on the beach, and there was an incredible sunset. And the, the way the light was reflecting on the water and the colors in the sky and the changes, and in one direction it was orange and like a bright light, and in the other direction it was dark and almost stormy even though it wasn't stormy at all. But the sense of it was like if you were on a boat, it would feel like we're going into the storm. And feeling all of that drama was so exciting, and I came back after and it's like I wasn't even here anymore. You know? I... Like I was taken into another world. And the more often you can do that and experience that feeling of being just taken out of your body by art or by nature or by stimulus, whatever it is, and then having that as your meter setting for what we're looking for. What's the thing that we can make that starts touching those buttons? The button of I never wanna leave here. Amazing, this is the same world that I... You know, when I got out of my car and walked here, this is the same place. It's unbelievable.

    3. TFTim Ferriss59:55

       That dissolution of time, that stepping into the slipstream where things seem to disappear, but at the same time everything is present all at once, which might have been the experience-

    4. RRRick Rubin1:00:06

       Yeah. And amplify, I would say.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:00:07

       And amplify.

    6. RRRick Rubin1:00:09

       More. It's just like there's so much to take in.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:00:13

       Mm-hmm.

    8. RRRick Rubin1:00:14

       And it's just overwhelming and

19. 1:00:17 – 1:04:12

    Artists who seem to best channel wonder from the mundane.

    1. RRRick Rubin1:00:17

       all beautiful.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:00:18

       Who have you met, and you don't have to name names, but I'm curious if you could describe anyone, I mean, you could also name names, but people who've been able to access that type of state with regularity without becoming dissociated from this consensus reality, right? Because there are people you meet who are almost always in, and, uh, I don't wanna say altered, but sort of a parallel state like that, but they're not able to-

    3. RRRick Rubin1:00:48

       Yeah

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:00:48

       ... operate in the world very well. What have you seen in terms of people who are able to regularly access that and also are able to operate well in this reality?

    5. RRRick Rubin1:01:01

       I would say the ones who really can do it best manage in this reality, but I wouldn't say that they-- I feel like they live in the other place.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:01:10

       [laughs] Yeah.

    7. RRRick Rubin1:01:12

       So n- Neil Young would be an example, who lives in the place where the music is, and he's great on a day-to-day basis and fine, but when the music starts and when he's playing his instrument, and when he's inside of that, every time, not sometimes, it's like he's goes to another place, and it's magic. Wherever he's going, the music there is real.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:01:40

       Mm-hmm. How much of that do you think is, is like an inborn ability to have a very high vertical jump or to have the hamstring and tendon attachments of like an Usain Bolt for sprinting versus cultivated? Now we can all become faster runners. We can all learn to jump-

    9. RRRick Rubin1:02:00

       Yes

    10. TFTim Ferriss1:02:00

        ... a bit higher. Have you met anyone who has really trained that ability or are most of them just by virtue of being these brilliant artists who enter your orbit coming into it with just a very high set point for entering those phases?

    11. RRRick Rubin1:02:21

        You can definitely get there in different ways. That said, not everyone can be Da Vinci.

    12. TFTim Ferriss1:02:27

        Yeah.

    13. RRRick Rubin1:02:28

        We can all be the best we can be. That's all we can ever be is the best we can be. Being the best we can be doesn't necessarily mean that when we do our best, we are the best in the world or even world-class. We're not all world-class at everything all the time. Doesn't matter though. The people who are great, who find their way in, some people might say Bob Dylan doesn't have a great voice, but he's a singer-songwriter who's maybe the most loved in the world. So he wasn't born with this virtuoso. He doesn't sing like Neil Diamond, for example. [laughs] And some people, I'm sure, are very happy that he doesn't.

    14. TFTim Ferriss1:03:07

        [laughs]

    15. RRRick Rubin1:03:09

        Do you know what I'm saying? It's like we're not all great at everything.

    16. TFTim Ferriss1:03:12

        Mm-hmm.

    17. RRRick Rubin1:03:13

        So if we get great at the thing that we're great at, and if we could get great at the thing that we're great at that not so many other people are great at in the way that we are, and that's usually the case with music. Like, the reason there are so many musical artists and the reason, you know, I have thousands of albums of artists and thousands of artists that I follow that I love isn't because they're all the best one, it's they all do something really good particular to them, and I want the one who really does the good thing particular to them. And Johnny Ramone can't play guitar like Eric Clapton, but he can play guitar like Johnny Ramone, and I'm good with that.

    18. TFTim Ferriss1:03:55

        [laughs]

    19. RRRick Rubin1:03:56

        I'm good with both. Do you know what I'm saying?

    20. TFTim Ferriss1:03:58

        I do. I do.

    21. RRRick Rubin1:03:58

        It's like find your thing. Where's your connection? What's interesting? And hopefully it aligns with what you're interested in doing because that's probably the only way that it becomes, uh, a sustainable thing.

20. 1:04:12 – 1:05:24

    Managing massive inspirational intake.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:04:12

       How do you manage your inspirational intake on that many artists? Are you listening all the time? Do you have set time where you'll sit down and listen for a handful of hours? What does that look like?

    2. RRRick Rubin1:04:25

       I'm a mass consumer of information and, and art all the time.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:04:29

       All the time.

    4. RRRick Rubin1:04:29

       So I'm always reading, listening, taking in stuff, but I'm not always taking in... It's what I enjoy. I'm not doing it like homework.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:04:37

       [laughs]

    6. RRRick Rubin1:04:37

       I'm doing it because that's the reason I am who I am is because that's how I've always done it. That's my default mechanism is I wanna hear as much as I can. I wanna understand more. I don't wanna hear stuff I don't wanna hear.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:04:50

       [laughs]

    8. RRRick Rubin1:04:51

       But I wanna hear everything that I might wanna hear, and I want to exhaust the list to make sure I'm not missing anything as best I can. I try to dive as deep as I can. Lately it's hard just 'cause there's so much of all kinds of content.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:05:04

       Mm-hmm.

    10. RRRick Rubin1:05:05

        So certain things fall by the wayside. For example, movies, I haven't seen very many new movies in a long time.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:05:12

        Hmm.

    12. RRRick Rubin1:05:12

        On occasion, but not so many.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:05:15

        Why is that?

    14. RRRick Rubin1:05:16

        I don't know. It's just one of the things that fell out. I'm not sure why.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:05:19

        Hmm.

    16. RRRick Rubin1:05:20

        There are a couple of movies I'm excited to see now, and I may or may not get

21. 1:05:24 – 1:06:23

    New movies on Rick’s radar.

    1. RRRick Rubin1:05:24

       to see them.

    2. TFTim Ferriss1:05:24

       Well, this will be topical. I'm curious why you're interested to see them. What are the movies? What is one or two?

    3. RRRick Rubin1:05:31

       Two that I wanna see. There's a new David Bowie documentary that I'm curious about. A friend of mine directed it, and it sounds really beautiful, and I tend to like documentaries.

    4. TFTim Ferriss1:05:42

       Mm-hmm.

    5. RRRick Rubin1:05:42

       The other is a, a movie called Tár, which several people told me they really loved. And usually when several people tell me something's good, I feel like the universe wants me to see this.

    6. TFTim Ferriss1:05:54

       [laughs]

    7. RRRick Rubin1:05:54

       Like, uh, like it's-- The way I can interpret it is if more than one person is recommending something, I don't talk to that many people. If multiple people are telling me, "You gotta see this," chances are something in the universe wants this to happen, so I, I wanna follow through. I wanna do my part.

    8. TFTim Ferriss1:06:15

       The muse is winking at you from across the room being like, "Hey pal, come on." [laughs] I'm giving you the cue. All right. Tár.

22. 1:06:23 – 1:12:06

    Tips for artists who want to endure the ages.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:06:23

       What is your coaching or your wisdom to artists who are concerned about endurance? And the endurance could come in the form of touring before they do their next studio recording. Could come in in many different species, I'm sure. In my case, there's definitely part of me that wonders, how will I continue to execute as I hope for at least a while In writing one short fiction piece per week. That's what I would like to do because I feel like that cadence is something I can probably manage. There will be weeks where it'll be tougher than others because of the revision, but there's certainly a small part of me that's concerned that that will begin to stack up, right? I'll be like, "Ah, shit. I thought I was gonna finish one a week, but now I have two that are in revision, one that's in draft, and it's Thursday. What am I gonna do?" So that's my personal context, but we could expand it to others you've worked with who h- might have some concerns.

    2. RRRick Rubin1:07:27

       How many hours will it take to do the one?

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:07:29

       This is a very fair question, and I will say that in some, I don't know what the magic is. I sit down, I've had the right coffee with the right omelet. I don't know what the pixie dust is, and I zoom through, and in two hours I am done. And it just comes out and I look at it a week later, I'm like, "I'm not gonna change anything." Maybe I'll tweak a few words, but it's done. And then there are others that will take 10 to 15 hours, which is in addition to all of my other projects, right? The podcast and everything else. So there's a lot, there's a lot of other things going on which I enjoy doing.

    4. RRRick Rubin1:08:09

       Yeah. Yeah. Always for you.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:08:10

       Yeah, but let's, let's, let's say 15 hours.

    6. RRRick Rubin1:08:14

       Okay. So you can decide how important it is to you, and if it's really important to you, you can say, "I'm gonna make a commitment where I'm gonna do this even if it takes 15 hours." You could decide, "I'm gonna do it every Monday."

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:08:32

       Mm-hmm.

    8. RRRick Rubin1:08:33

       You know, I, the, "I'm not gonna go to sleep until I have the one for the week." You could do it every day. You could do it as often as you want if you're willing to make that commitment. And in terms of running dry, clearly they won't-- some will be better than others. The whole process will make you better. You know, this whole adventure at the end of, uh, 50 weeks, you'll be better at it than you were the first week, clearly, and it'll be a rollercoaster ride, and there'll be highs and lows on the way. And by the way, you put this on yourself. You're like-

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:09:07

       [laughs]

    10. RRRick Rubin1:09:07

        ... "I am deciding I want one a week." It's not like there's a gun to your head-

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:09:13

        No

    12. RRRick Rubin1:09:13

        ... and you know you're not gonna make it if you don't do it. So it depends on how strong your commitment is. But 15 hours out of all of the hours of a week, regardless of anything else you have to do, if you commit to it, that's absolutely doable because there's a lot more than 15 hours in a week. You could commit to doing it your every waking hour if you decide to commit.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:09:36

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    14. RRRick Rubin1:09:37

        It's purely a commitment. Now, you can't control what comes out of it, and maybe at some point you might realize this is not the right cadence for me. Who knows?

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:09:48

        Yeah.

    16. RRRick Rubin1:09:49

        Or you may decide to do two a week at some point. Like, this is, it's rolling. Be open, but starting with a commitment that you think is a doable commitment. If you think this is a doable amount, commit to it and just do it. I mean, you've exercised before. You have great discipline. It's purely a matter of discipline. You could do anything you commit to.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:10:10

        Gotta get it on the calendar. Just have it blocked out. It's a case of me also taking something that is new and maybe mistaking it for entirely new. Does that make sense? Because I don't think about fiction in the same way that I think about exercise. So I'll do my exercise and that's on autopilot, and I've done it and I understand it, whereas the fiction, I, I might over exaggerate in terms of its exotic nature and the newness and the alien life form that is this new narrative approach I'm trying to take. But I suppose on so many levels, it's just like getting the groceries or [laughs] doing something else.

    18. RRRick Rubin1:10:50

        It's absolutely the same as everything else you do. And maybe there's a way that you can think about it as an opportunity to have fun because in those times you're gonna get to find out what these characters are doing, and I'm, I hope you're curious. Like-

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:11:04

        Yeah

    20. RRRick Rubin1:11:04

        ... I hope you wanna know what, what's gonna happen next, and that's a good feeling. It's like if you watch any type of a series, when you get left at the end of the first week of a series, second week or third week, and there's another one and you can't wait till the next one comes.

    21. TFTim Ferriss1:11:19

        [laughs]

    22. RRRick Rubin1:11:19

        Maybe you can train yourself to know that I get to see what happens in the story next week.

    23. TFTim Ferriss1:11:27

        So I am there. This is the good news. The good news is that part of why I wanted to play with fiction is that I get to set the initial conditions and this space and this world. I get to throw in all of these weird loose ends that I don't know how I'm gonna tie up, and then I get to tap dance and sort of rap Morse code on the wall and see what comes back. And that's fun.

    24. RRRick Rubin1:11:51

        Right.

    25. TFTim Ferriss1:11:51

        It's because it's totally different from nonfiction.

    26. RRRick Rubin1:11:53

        Super fun.

    27. TFTim Ferriss1:11:53

        It's totally different. And so this is the first time that I've really on a weekly basis been dancing with the muses, in a sense, in such a direct way. Yeah, it's been

23. 1:12:06 – 1:15:39

    Pacing the book — as the writer and the reader.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:12:06

       fantastic. How did you think about pacing with the book? Because there's on one hand the not knowing of what's going to emerge, but you could wait and wait and wait and the book would never manifest. So how did you think for yourself about commitment and pacing or timescale, anything? How did you think about the book?

    2. RRRick Rubin1:12:31

       I thought of it as I'm willing to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes for it to be as good as it could be, until I don't know what to do anymore. And that happened some time ago really, but at that time it wasn't in the present form. So it didn't start with, okay, there are gonna be 78 areas of thought and these are what the 78 areas of thought are, and then I write those. That is not what happened It was a general conversation over years about the philosophy of the creative process, and then looking at, you know, one point a thousand pages of talk that's-- it's all about creativity, but it's not in any order, and it's not in any form. And then it was years to figure out how to turn that into what this is.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:13:20

       Right. To go from the transcripts and the exploration and conversation to the book and the format that we, we currently see it.

    4. RRRick Rubin1:13:29

       Yeah. It wasn't planned this way at all. I went in with a blank slate. I had an intention. I had an intention of what I wanted it to accomplish, but that's all. How I wanted it to feel, I would say. That's another part of it. When you read it, it feels a certain way. There were earlier versions where the information was another version of the same information, but it didn't make you wanna make something.

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:14:01

       Mm.

    6. RRRick Rubin1:14:01

       It didn't hit you in an emotional way. I can only read the book, you know, a couple of sections at a time, and I-- for me, it's a very slow read.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:14:11

       Yeah.

    8. RRRick Rubin1:14:11

       Not because it's complicated, but because there's just a lot to think about. It's talking about internal experiences, and it's just a lot to consider.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:14:23

       Well, I think you and I were texting about the way one might approach reading this book, and I think you were saying that one approach could be just one short chapter, a few pages before bed, and that's it, right? Because I'm reading it, and if you actually sit to assimilate this and to soak in it, if you read a hundred pages, it's-- you're gonna be getting waterboarded by [chuckles]

    10. RRRick Rubin1:14:49

        Absolutely

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:14:50

        ... uh, so much potential energy in so many different directions that it'd be very hard to digest over a really short period of time. When this book comes out, and the book will be out shortly, and let's just say six months have passed, are there any sections you really hope people don't overlook? And of course, you want people to read the whole thing, but there are people who will pick it up and probably try to go to whatever the sexiest shiny objects are that draw their attention. Are there any particular sections that you would hope people do not miss?

    12. RRRick Rubin1:15:25

        Nope. I hope anyone who's interested opens it randomly, reads something wherever their eyes go. I hope they find something that's helpful, and if so, maybe they wanna do that again. That's all.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:15:37

        [chuckles]

24. 1:15:39 – 1:25:02

    Parting thoughts.

    1. TFTim Ferriss1:15:40

       I would expect no less from Rick Rubin. [chuckles] Well, Rick, is there anything else that you would like to talk about or mention? I mean, we need to set a date so that I can actually see you in person and give you a hug. It'd be nice to see you again.

    2. RRRick Rubin1:15:53

       I would love that.

    3. TFTim Ferriss1:15:54

       And we've covered a lot already. Is there anything else that you would like to share in terms of closing comments, questions, suggestions, public complaints, anything at all?

    4. RRRick Rubin1:16:06

       I can't think of anything. Anything you can think of?

    5. TFTim Ferriss1:16:09

       I can say this, Rick, that your book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, has found me at the perfect time. So I'm glad it took so long, in a sense, because it's catching me right at the time that I'm flying by on this train called experimental fiction, and I can sort of grab the book as you hand it off to me. And I think it will be of tremendous help, because you have been not just the creator of so much, you've been the shepherd of so much, and you've also had an opportunity to work in so many different capacities with so many different artists that your pattern recognition and your way of interpreting and conveying that, I think, is unique. It really is one of a kind, and I can say that also just having spent time with you. I appreciate the way that you think. And furthermore, because humans are built for thinking, we have this thing, the blessing and the curse of this huge prefrontal cortex, but I am particularly impressed with how you are able to use your other means of knowing and senses to inform what you do with this incredible brain of yours. And reading the book, I am very optimistic that you're gonna help people to calibrate and open themselves up to greater possibilities. So I just wanted to congratulate you. I know how long this has been in the making. So congratulations, Rick.

    6. RRRick Rubin1:17:39

       Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Um, so thank you so much for giving it some time.

    7. TFTim Ferriss1:17:43

       Oh, yeah. What I need, because I only have a PDF, I need a physical copy, and I'll take a galley. It doesn't need to be finished. Just something I can carry around, because I'm still very old-fashioned. I like to scribble.

    8. RRRick Rubin1:17:54

       It looks like th-this is the prototype edition.

    9. TFTim Ferriss1:17:57

       Oh.

    10. RRRick Rubin1:17:57

        I- I don't know if you can see this because I can't see the camera.

    11. TFTim Ferriss1:17:59

        I can see it. I can see it. Oh, that's, that's nice.

    12. RRRick Rubin1:18:02

        The main version is the opposite. The background is gray, and the type is black, and it's equally beautiful.

    13. TFTim Ferriss1:18:07

        Love it.

    14. RRRick Rubin1:18:08

        But this was just first as a, like an, a sample for us to understand how it worked.

    15. TFTim Ferriss1:18:11

        Yeah, yeah. I love it. Very iconic, very simple, very sort of zen painting, brushstroke. I dig it, man. Well, Rick, thank you so much for the time. People can find you on Twitter @RickRubin. We'll link to everything, including the book and anything that came up in conversation at tim.blog/podcast for people listening. But to be continued. I'm excited now that we're not in lockdown and have to get a, get a date on the calendar to say hello, so please give my best to the family.

    16. RRRick Rubin1:18:43

        Will do, and I can't wait till we see each other in person too.

    17. TFTim Ferriss1:18:46

        Yeah. Great to see you, Rick.

    18. RRRick Rubin1:18:47

        Same, man.

    19. TFTim Ferriss1:18:49

        Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is 5-Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called 5-Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests, and these strange esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday. Type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday. Drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by You Need A Budget. What is You Need A Budget? You Need A Budget is a cult favorite budgeting app for a reason. The app and its simple four-rule method will change the way you think about your money and help you gain total control so you can plan for the things you need and get the things you want without guilt or stress. To give you an idea on the cult favorite side, to date they know of at least seven customers who have customized their license plates to mark the occasion of purchasing a new car in cash, and these fans do this by including YNAB, You Need A Budget, on their license plates. So people love this app. You Need A Budget has helped millions of people transform their finances, save their marriages, and live life on their own terms. I even asked Pete Adeney, who's been on the podcast, best known as Mr. Money Mustache, super popular episode, what he thought, and he's a big fan of the founder and what they're doing. You Need A Budget's simple four-rule method will actually teach you how to manage your money. You will learn a new way of thinking, new habits, and new behaviors that will help you get out of debt, break the paycheck to paycheck cycle, and build wealth faster. The You Need A Budget team is committed to your success. They offer free live classes every day of the week, video courses, boot camps, challenges, and active fan groups in every corner of the internet. If you want to learn, they can teach you. On average, new budgeters save more than $600 by month two and $6,000 in their first year. So try the app free for 34 days, no credit card required, at youneedabudget.com/tim, spelled as you would expect in proper English. Try You Need A Budget free for 34 days, no credit card required, at youneedabudget.com/tim. And just to explain 34 days, that's because most people reconcile at the end of the month over a 30-day period, so having a couple of days of cushion helps folks out. So 34 days with no credit card required at youneedabudget.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by Peloton and their brand new Peloton Row. Peloton Row brings personalized form features and guidance to rowing to help you learn and master your stroke. This was always a weak point for me, meaning before I used Peloton Row, and I got to test a unit a few weeks ago here in Austin, which blew me away, my form was just a question mark, and I also tended to flame out after five or 10 minutes on a rower. I just really didn't know what I was doing. And with Peloton Row, that all changed. The instructors, first and foremost, highly trained fitness pros, many different types, who motivate you through every rowing workout. I really enjoyed my training sessions with Alex Karwowski specifically. He's a current high-level international competitor in rowing, so you know his technique has been refined. Peloton offers a huge variety of workouts, like high-intensity interval training, HIIT rows, endurance rows, and more. With the feedback that I was able to get, so you effectively see a profile of yourself, and based on sensors at different points in the machine, you will see feedback. I was able to then do a much more sustained workout to actually tax different metabolic systems, and I felt spectacular afterwards. Form features like Form Assist indicate how to improve your stroke in class in real time, and you also get a detailed post-class breakdown, so you can hit the row harder but more technically next time. In my opinion, you can turn off the Form Assist after about three minutes or so. You'll probably get most of what you're going to get in each of those sessions, and you don't want to become too overly concerned with that so that it detracts from your experience. With all these features, you can personalize your target metrics. You become the expert at the level and pace that feels good for you. You get all the cardio and strength in one shot while protecting your joints and ligaments in a high-intensity but low-impact method of exercise. And this blew my mind also. My ankles sometimes hurt when I've tried rowing in the past, and by getting the proper instruction, I felt no pain in my feet or my ankles whatsoever. And the Peloton Row fits seamlessly into your life. So whether you have a 10-minute segment of time, a little break between calls, or if you want to do something longer in a low-impact row on a recovery day, all those options are available. And the Peloton Row also can be stored vertically. So when you're not using it, it's out of sight, out of mind. It's also effectively near silent when you're using it. There's a class for every schedule. You can work out hard for the time that you have and trust that you're getting the most out of each workout. Right now, it is the perfect time to get rowing with Peloton Row. I can promise that you've never rowed like this before. The form feedback, the form assist, I was really, really impressed. Peloton Row offers a variety of classes for all levels, plus game-changing features that help you get rowing or advance the rowing you already do. So explore Peloton Row at onepeloton, that's O-N-E, onepeloton.com/row. One more time, that's onepeloton.com/row. [upbeat music]

Episode duration: 1:25:12