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A | Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Rick Rubin. Rick Rubin is credited with being one of the most creative and prolific music... |
B | Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. |
A | So of all the topics in science, and in particular in neuroscience, I confess that creativity is the most difficult one to capture because you can find papers, scientific studies, that is on convergent thinking versus divergent thinking. And there are definitions to these, and they take on different forms, but in a str... |
B | I think the best way to think about it is like a dream. It's like if you think about your dreams, they don't necessarily make sense. When you wake up, you might remember part, but not the whole thing. Then if you start writing them down, they'll come back and they may not make sense to you. There'll be a series of abst... |
A | Recently, I was listening to a podcast, bye. Our friend Lex Friedman. I think it was an episode with Balaji Srinivasan, where Balaji, who's an investor type guy, thinker type guy. This is like an eight hour episode. He says something at the beginning that I'd love your thoughts on. He said, look, we can train a rat to ... |
B | Yes. I think language is insufficient to drill down on creativity. It's closer to magic than it is science. |
A | So when kids come into the world, do you think that they have better access to this creative process than we do as adults? Because we start to impart rule plays and books like, will it get likes? Will people like it? But also all the things that are available to us that we're not paying attention to, like the texture o... |
B | Yes, kids are. They're open, and they have no baggage. They don't have any belief system. They don't know how things are supposed to work. They just see what is. And if we pay attention to what is, we learn much more than if we, most of us, select from an endless number of data points available to us to. Well, as a spe... |
A | I mean, there is this idea that there are no new ideas. I sort of disagree, because every once in a while, I'll see or hear something that at least seems different enough. |
B | I think it's a combination of a new combination of existing ideas presented in a new way. I think that's how it works. I don't know, but I will say it does seem like the things that are most interesting to me have a series of familiar elements joined together in a way that it's creating something that I've never seen b... |
A | You mentioned that it's that when you are close to, or you see hints of creativity that is of real value, that it's a feeling. And I also believe that the body is a great source of information, which once people realize that the brain, of course, is in the skull, but the nervous system extends everywhere in the body, t... |
B | It's a feeling in my body. |
A | Is it localized? |
B | No, it's a feeling of. I would say it's like a surge of energy. |
A | Do you remember the first time you experienced that? |
B | Probably hearing the Beatles. When I was three or four years old. |
A | Three or four years old? |
B | Yeah. |
A | Wow. Is there something wrong with me that the Beatles have never done it for me? |
B | No. Maybe you just weren't exposed at the right time in the right way. There's no right or wrong way. And everyone. I can love the Beatles and you cannot, and we're both right. |
A | There's not a. I'm glad we can still be friends. I was a little concerned. I was a little scared to ask you that question. I know my taste of music is a little bit obscure, but. And kind of fragmentary, but. Okay, good. I've always felt like, gosh, there must be something wrong with me. I like their songs, but they don... |
B | I think maybe we'll watch. There was an eight part series called the Beatles Anthology, which is out of print, but I can try to find it somewhere, and we can watch that together, and maybe that'll make the case for the Beatles. |
A | Okay. Yeah. I mean, nothing against them, it's just. And I'm always bothering you for story, but, like, Ramones, I saw that and I was like, wow. Like jeans, aviators. Everyone had to change their last name to Ramona. A lot of them hated each other. There's so much drama in there and three chords. But to me, it just was... |
B | Absolutely. |
A | So that brings me to a question of when something feels creatively right and you're sensing it and you're there, let's say, in the studio, or maybe even you're listening to something that somebody sent you. How do you translate that, given the absence of language? How do you translate that into a conversation with the ... |
B | Yeah, sometimes they don't. It depends. When we're in the. I'll try to be in a setting where, as we're talking about it, we can engage with it in that moment. So it's not much good. Let's say I was producing your new record, and you played me something, and I had some thoughts about it. It wouldn't be so helpful for me... |
A | I love that. Because in science, you know, having trained graduate students. Having been a graduate student, I was very blessed to have mentors, one of who was a real iconic class. He's dead now, actually, all my advisors are dead. Suicide? Cancer. Cancer. The joke is, you don't want me to work for you. They all had a ... |
B | I thought you were going to say they all ate the poisoned mushrooms. |
A | No, but the last one said to me, you're the common denominator, Andrew. And I thought, oh, my goodness. And he said, kind of just kidding, but not really. So that's a little bit eerie. But in any case, he always said his name was Ben. He always said, the one thing I can't teach is taste. And the one predictor I have of... |
B | Well, they're just two different things. Like coming up with a story with the purpose of pleasing someone else is a skill set, but it's more of a, it's more of a commercial endeavor than an artistic endeavor. |
A | It's like tactical. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was seeing it in your book. You describe, again, when you're thinking about the creative process is the cloud for me. Again, it serves as such a powerful anchor. And then I think about the biology, the neurobiology of strategy formation or strategy implementation. And then ... |
B | Could either be a broadening or a narrowing, but it's changing the aperture from the standard. The reason we do this is to present something new that maybe you already knew but didn't know you knew it. And for that to be the case, you have to be looking at it. It's not unlike what a comedian does. You know, comedian ma... |
A | I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, athletic greens. Athletic greens, now called ag one, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking athletic greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The rea... |
B | If you went to medical school today and you learned what was in the textbook, what percentage of that information is accurate and what percentage is not? And he said, maybe half. |
A | Right. And you asked, and what is the consequence of that? And he said, incalculable. And I completely agree. And I asked him a second time and he still came up with the same answer. So that's a good sign. Reliability from experiment to the next is good. Yeah. I think that there is this idea that we really know things ... |
B | And in all those cases, when the breakthroughs happen, I'm guessing, I don't know this, that considering we assume this information, then this discovery is true based on everything that came before it. But if everything that came before it is wrong, then the discoveries are probably built on a. Do you know what I'm say... |
A | Well, I remember, you know, learn. Of course, I listened to the BC boys growing up who didn't. I was a child of the nineties and they were in the, you know, sabotage was, you know, sort of an outgrowth of a skateboarding movie, like Spike Jones and like the girl movies and those worlds, the Beast Boys and skateboarding... |
B | Weren't paying attention at all. Never considered it. There were no. At that point in time when we were making licensed ill, hip hop music was a tiny underground thing, and there was no one making hip hop at that time, thought it would ever mean anything. It was not a realistic thought. So we were making it really for ... |
A | So do you think nowadays, the fact that one can create something and, quote, unquote, release it quickly, I can put something out onto Twitter or Instagram now. I could do it in 10 seconds from now, and I will get immediate feedback, which is external feedback, of course, but then I can iterate on the basis of that fee... |
B | I don't think it's wrong or right. It's just more information that you can use or not use, use it in a useful way, and, you know, you can make something and put it out and people could not like it, and you're like, oop, they still don't get it. I gotta go harder, you know, like, I gotta go harder in that direction. Not... |
A | Yeah, it's beautiful. Because the word that keeps coming to mind is this. It's almost like a compulsion. Like there. There are other options of ways to be and to behave and to function and work in life, but if something's a compulsion, it yanks us away from those other opportunities just enough that we have to get back... |
B | It's not so much about music. |
A | Right. Well put. But the ordering of the sequence of the melodies, et cetera. So at what point does one decide, okay, now's the time to get into that more narrow focus of effort? Like, we've got it, let's run with this. Because there is a component of the creative process that involves packaging and finishing. And is t... |
B | It's all part of the same. It's nice. There's a good feeling. There's usually a good feeling when something is done. On the one hand, it's a commitment, because up until the time that you say it's done, you can keep experimenting and changing it. If you think, well, maybe tomorrow I can make it better, then it's not fi... |
A | And thank you for that, because I did indeed misspeak, because I recall very distinctly in the book you described how the physical world is constrained by the laws of physics and certain things. The imagination is unconstrained. And I think I have this right that you said, the work sits somewhere between those. It's ne... |
B | And even on one, if you pick up a rock and look at the color of the rock and tried to find a paint to match that rock, it would never match. There's too much. There are too many variations in nature within a single color rock for us to get close. There's too much information. We scratch the surface. We're only scratchi... |
A | And we love when we are able to peer in at different scales, spatial scales, time scales, too, but spatial scales, the delight that comes from that these nature pictures seem like there were more of these in the eighties where you'd see a drop of oil shot at very high resolution. There's beauty in a drop of oil, and th... |
B | Not exactly, but I have a thought. You talked earlier about the drop of oil, the photograph of the drop of oil and the photograph, or we could use on the other side, like Hubble telescope images of these vast things in high definition. What we see every day is as impressive as those things, but we're numb to them becau... |
A | So I would say that the whale example and what you're describing is it's revealing to us how, in a delightful way, how deficient our perceptual filters normally are. Yes, it's a little bit like the rothko is revealing how. I've never thought about it this way until this moment is revealing to us how color normally look... |
B | Yeah, it could be that. It also could be the sense of community, of when you think it's going to go a particular way and it goes that way. It's like reinforcement of you. You know? It's like, yeah, he's saying it, but in a way, we're saying it together. I'm listening. He's saying it. But we're in this together, and tha... |
A | To think about that for a second. I was trying to think about why certain music still can evoke such powerful emotions in me. And there does seem to be something special about the music we listen to when we are teenagers. From about 14 until about 25. It seems to get routed into our nervous system in some way. Maybe be... |
B | Two. |
A | Slayer. Two. Right. And in some sense, as I list these off, I mean, just think about how much in high school maybe nowadays, less so. But even in college, and as an adult, we societally were sort of asked to constrain ourselves to one of these groups. I didn't know it was okay to love Bob Dylan and love punk rock as mu... |
B | Both the Ramones and the clash loved the Beatles, so we couldn't. |
A | Okay, I've got work to do. |
B | We'll do it together. I have a feeling part of it is the reason it gets in at that age is it's at a time when we're defining who we are, and the music is part of the definition of how we see ourselves. So it's the like, the music that we hear before that might be the music that's on the radio, or our parents music, or ... |
A | How do you wipe the slate clean then? So, for instance, if you're going to go in and work with somebody new, and again, as people are hearing this, I hope that they're transplanting this to whatever it is that they do. Because in the realm of science and podcasting communication, it's not music. There's a contour and a... |
B | And I think it'll evolve as you evolve. It's just the truer it is to what interests you. And if you're not interested in biology in the same way in five years, I would hope it's not the same. |
A | I'll be doing psychoanalysis in real time here. We'll all be lying down on couches, whatever it is. |
B | Whatever it is. |
A | Yeah, we probably won't be on psychedelics, but we might be levitating. So how do you. Let's talk a little bit, if you would, because I know I'm very interested in your process. I'll spare you the daily routine question. It's very cliche, but you and I are both lovers of sunlight, of horizons, and not as a trivial sour... |
B | I would say when I engage in a particular project, whatever it is, I dedicate all of myself for that period of time, whatever it is, whether it be 20 minutes or whether it be 5 hours, whatever it is, total focus and no outside distraction whatsoever. And when I leave that process, I do my best not to think about it. Wh... |
A | Let's say this relates to an amazing chapter and series of writings in your book that I'm not going to describe because I want people to find it for themselves. About disengaging. About disengaging from the process. One question I had as I read that chapter, and as you're saying this now, is even though you're disengag... |
B | I believe so. I believe so. And I think, in general, to stew over a problem is not the way to solve a problem, I think to hold the problems lightly. And when I say a problem, when we're starting a project, there's usually this feeling of, there's a question mark at the beginning of every project. I'm always anxious whe... |
A | Yeah, well, we were talking about disengaging, and as your subconscious into it and you were. And then we were talking about, you know, so I love this sort of like, what are. What is your process of wading into this thing? And you're revealing that now. I mean, I. I think of anxiety as readiness. Think about the charac... |
B | Woo. |
A | But I mean it as seriously as it can be stated that I feel like everything is energetic. We can do things from a place of anger, we can do things from a place of joy. We can do things from a place of delight. I like to think maturing into the idea that joy and delight and love as the kind of the ultimate reservoir of e... |
B | If you think of your relationship to that music, it's a relationship of love. You didn't listen to that to get angry. |
A | No. |
B | You listened to it because you loved it. |
A | And I felt loved by it because it matched where I was at at the time. |
B | It was true to who you were and where you were. |
A | I know that collaboration, there's a wonderful chapter on collaboration, but it's collaboration, as you mentioned before, with the universe, not with others, but in terms of the, especially the kind of work that you've done and do when it comes to working with artists, I do wonder, and here I'm not looking for any goss... |
B | Yeah, I don't think it's an essential piece in general, but certain artists, that's their. That's how they do it, I would say. I rarely get to see the chaotic part of artists. For whatever reason, they rarely show it to me. And most of them, like most comedians I know, are much more serious about what they're doing tha... |
A | I'm a fan of boxing, track and field, in boxing, the sports nobody really cares about, now that UFC is so popular and track and field is a little bit like wrestling. When you go, the people that they're there because they really love it. We'll talk about wrestling in a little bit, professional wrestling. But Floyd Mayw... |
B | Wow. |
A | For whatever reason, it cut off at twelve. Really seemed to truncate the deaths. There are other things, too. If the dad is apparently a corner man, we have someone else here at the podcast who knows more about this. |
B | Than me, but fascinating. |
A | Yeah. The kid not wanting to disappoint the parent correlated with death. I'll get some of this wrong and then they can come after me. But in any case, this guy who was in Floyd's camp said that he would do 30 to 60 minutes of sparring, bringing in fresh sparring partners with no rest, that he would run three or four t... |
B | Yeah. And I think, in a way, from a psychological perspective, if you knew you were fighting someone who wasn't taking it seriously, that would give you some confidence, and that would not be a good thing if you're, if the person was actually working really hard, outworking you. Do you know what I'm saying? From a psyc... |
A | So what I keep coming back to is that I'm imagining in my mind two ends of the continuum. One that is about fairly narrow, focused training, training strategy implementation, cultivating craft, building craft, and then the other side is this. The cloud. It's very nebulous, right? And there's this word that I learned fr... |
B | It's quite the list. |
A | Quite the list. There you go, Lex. Run for office, Lex. Just kidding. It's hard enough to get you to respond to my text as it is. So we have these filters, and so we're taking this cloud and we're deciding what things are. |
B | Yes. |
A | And what I want to drill into your process a little bit more deeply when you approach a project. So everyone meets each other, shakes hands. Here are the engineers. We're going to sit down. Everyone knows what they're doing because you work with professionals and you start going, are you trying to be with the cloud or ... |
B | Threat I'm in the cloud with the exception of, I'm aware of what could go wrong on a technical side. And I might, like, if something good is happening, I might look over and make sure that we're rolling. |
A | So that's a leap over to here momentarily. But then maybe. |
B | If I feel like if I was in the moment, I would be in the cloud, and if something good starts happening, it would trigger something in me, like, uh oh, I hope this is. I hope we're really doing this, because I don't know if we could ever do this again. That would be a thought of when the first time the real world would ... |
A | And when that happens, do you never been in a studio besides a podcast studio? Do you say, hey, guys, that sounded good. More of that, or do you, wait, you let them continue because obviously you don't want to break their flow. |
B | We'd never want to break any flow once it's happening. Yeah, once something's happening, just kind of sit back and watch. |
A | And do you think there's resonance, like the team of engineers and other people know when it, quote unquote, is happening? |
B | If everyone's paying attention, yes. When everyone's paying attention, it's usually pretty obvious. Sometimes the thread will be something different than expected, and maybe not everybody would pick up on it. And that might be a particular. That might be particular based on my taste or an artist's taste, or someone inv... |
A | I tend to do that. Sorry. Especially with you. I don't get to see you nearly as often as I would like, and so when I do, I confess that I'm a little bit of a kid in a candy store. |
B | I wrote down the brain tells us stories. So you talked about. I walk in certain data points. You recognize me, but it's a real like looking at a cloud. Shorthand. We go through our lives doing this all day with everything we see. And the shorthand, in the case of me, you know me, the shorthand turns out to be right. It... |
A | I completely agree. We confabulate from birth until death. There's this well observed phenomenon in people who have memory deficits. There's the sad example of this, and then there's the everyday typical, who knows? Sad or not sad example. For instance, if somebody has a slight memory deficit or someone has Alzheimer's... |
B | But do they believe? |
A | They believe that's what happens with 100% certainty. And this actually relates to a lot of the now better understood controversy around repressed memories, especially from young people. You can pull memories from them of things that never happened. This has been demonstrated over and over again. So courtrooms know to ... |
B | That's good to know. |
A | Yeah. Very, very complicated area of the law, as you can imagine, because we tend to want to trust victims for understandable reasons. But in terms of accuracy of details, two people have very different accounts of the same experiences. And this has been shown over and over again that you can do well in the laboratory.... |
B | I was going to say we're storytelling machines, but that's great. |
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