The Daily Stoic - AI Isn't Stealing Creativity, It's Supercharging It | Rick Rubin (PT. 1)

Episode Date: June 25, 2025

What if AI isn’t replacing creativity, but expanding it in ways we’ve never seen before? Rick Rubin joins Ryan to discuss the mysterious nature of using AI throughout the creative process. They talk about what vibe coding is, why structure can unlock freedom, and revisiting ancient philosophy to uncover new insights.Rick Rubin is a renowned American record producer and the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. He has produced albums for a wide range of acclaimed artists, including the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Audioslave, Rage Against the Machine, and Johnny Cash. He has won nine Grammys and has been nominated for 12 more. He has been called “the most important producer of the last 20 years” by MTV and was named on Time‘s list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”. 👉 Check out Rick’s latest project The Way of the Code: https://www.thewayofcode.com/📚 Grab copies of Rick’s book The Creative Act: A Way of Being at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.comCheck out Rick’s podcast Tetragrammaton  and follow Rick on Instagram and X @RickRubin📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work": https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives. Hey, it's Ryan.

Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I don't know when you'll be listening to this, but right now I am in Sundance, Utah. I flew in this morning and went for a long run up to Stewart Falls. It was quite beautiful. But it was funny, on the plane I read this article in Semaphore about this idea of vibe coding. Do you ever have one of those things where like a term you've never heard of, and then suddenly you hear it once and you go, oh, what is that? And then you hear it again, and then maybe you hear it two or three times in succession

and you go, maybe this is a thing. That's like when you start to sense maybe you're early on a trend or a trend has passed you by, there's something happening that you were like previously not aware of. And vibe coding is that for me, because I don't program stuff. Obviously, Daily Stoic is online, and there's a website and a store, and so much of what I do is digital,

but I don't know how to code, not anymore. I mean, I understood some rudimentary code, and I built my first website when I was in elementary school or middle school on one of those, what are they called, WYSIWYG editors. The point is I've been doing this a long time and then generally know how it all works,

but then you hear something, you go, oh, this must be a new thing. And this idea of vibe coding is one of those because the guest that I just had on, that I interviewed, I guess this would be two days before I'm recording this message to you, has been talking a lot about vibe coding because they're sort of now become like the memeified version.

So, okay, coding is very complex. You speak in this language and it makes something, a website, an app, whatever you're listening to this podcast on, right? But vibe coding now with AI is the ability to describe what you want in the way that previously you might have talked to a coder or an engineer. Now you type it into a large language model like ChatGPT or whatever, and AI can make you that thing based on your description. But obviously there's a certain amount of interpretation to that.

It's about prompt engineering as opposed to code writing. So Rick Rubin, the great music producer, what does he have to do with Vibe coding? It's about prompt engineering as opposed to code writing. So Rick Rubin, the great music producer, what does he have to do with vibe coding? Well, that's sort of the whole thing here. So he is the vibe coder of music, right? He doesn't play instruments. He doesn't really even know how the little mobs work.

He's a guy who knows how to get the best out of artists, how to describe what he thinks they should do, how to get them to a place of inspiration or creativity that brings out good work. So he has become like, when people talk about vibe coding, they mean like to do digitally what Rick Rubin does musically.

And I just had him on the podcast and he was talking about vibe coding and I had to go like, well, wait, what is that? I'd never heard that term. You'll literally hear in this episode, me hearing that term for the very first time in my life. So then I read this article, which was about how many different startups

in Y Combinator are not coding themselves anymore, but using vibe coding. So anyways, all of that led to Rick's new book, which is called The Way of Code, The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding, which is really an adaptation of Code, The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding, which is really an adaptation of the Tao De Jing with generated AI in it, and it can be prompted and modified.

It's a weird thing in the way that a lot of what Rick does is weird, but it's also brilliant and interesting and inspirational. Look, I don't care what he does. I'm going to take an excuse to talk to him because he's one of the greatest music producers of all time. He's worked with Johnny Cash and the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy and Chili Peppers and Metallica and Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine.

Neil Diamond, when I do my pre-order launches for my books, I almost always include a playlist. I could be pre-order Wisdom Takes Work, which is the new book coming out in the fall. You can grab that at dailystoic.com slash pre-order. I always include like the songs I've listened to and Rick Rubin associated songs make up a good chunk of those lists year in and year out. The songs I listen to when I write, when I think, when I run. He's maybe the greatest producer of all time. He's won nine Grammys. He's been

nominated for 12 more. He's called the most important producer the last 20 years by MTV. He's been one of Time's most influential people. He's got a great podcast called Tetragrammaton. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter, all links to those in today's show notes. You can grab copies of his first book, The Creative Act, A Way of Being at The Painted Porch.

It's one of our most popular books. And I think you're gonna really like this interview. It was awesome. I was honored to do it. And I'm excited to not just bring this to you, but to sort of that I got to capture this weird phenomenon where you put yourself out there, you explore, you get exposed to something, and then you have to be open to seeing it again and again,

and then go, hey, I think there's something here. I wanna figure this out. I wanna go down this rabbit hole. I wanna learn's something here. I want to figure this out. I want to go down this rabbit hole. I want to learn about it. And hopefully this episode will do that. We have a part two of it coming shortly. I'll talk a little bit more about the Dao De Jing there,

but I wanted to start with this little intro and then just get right into it. Enjoy. ["The Day of the Dead"] You're not feeling well though? I'm okay. It's just a little jet laggy time zone. You're not feeling well though? I'm okay. It's just a little jet laggy time zone.

Didn't sleep so much. So I'm a little in space, but sometimes that makes for an interesting conversation. It's always a tension, right? Do you push through it or do you respect it? And there's something kind of zen about that. It's easier in some ways, I think, to push through than to respect it. And there's something kind of kind of Zen about that. It's easier in some ways, I think, to push through than to respect it. When I'm not feeling it creatively. That's always a debate I have. Do you go, today's not the day, I'm

going to respect that I'm not feeling into it? Or is that the resistance? And you have to push through it, or you would never get anything done. Yeah, I tend to show up regardless and I'm often surprised by what happens, but it's all out of our control and I'm just a passenger on the boat. Well, maybe that's actually the way to think about it

is you show up, but you don't have expectations. So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't, but the part that you control is whether you show up or not. Yeah, and sometimes we're surprised. Some days I show up expecting nothing and something really good happens. And sometimes I'm excited about something the night before and I show up and it doesn't really work out.

And it has a life of its own. The more we can respect it and show up and be present and see what happens. Yeah. There's a story I have in Discipline is Destiny about Lou Gehrig. He sort of struggled as a rookie when he was in the minor leagues. And he's sort of getting in this kind of downward spiral where he's not performing well and he's down on himself. The owner of the Yankees dispatches some manager out to see him. And the advice he gives him is he says that the most

important thing you can learn as a young baseball player is that you can't be good every day. And I think about that a lot. Like what matters is you show up, what matters is that you try, but if you think you're gonna be flawless every single day, and if you think it's gonna be magic every day, you're gonna be disappointed. And actually that disappointment

is gonna prevent you from performing. Yes, that sounds right. I listened to this podcast the other day with John Mulaney, the comedian on it, and he said something that I was curious to get your take on it. He was saying that having a family has allowed him to be more of a maniac in his work

because he knows there's people at home that love him. And I think we have this sort of myth or this image of the artist as this kind of lone wolf or this maniac, really, right? And we don't think about stability. We don't necessarily think about discipline or routine. We think about long nights. We think about disheveled clothes. You know, we think about all that. But I do think there is something about creating order in your personal life or stability or support in your personal life that

allows you a certain amount of creative freedom that perhaps you couldn't get on your own. Absolutely. The more grounded we could be in our life, the more free we'll be in our art and the more extreme it can get, which is usually where the most interesting things happen. Yeah, some artist was talking about how you have to keep your workstation orderly so your work can be disorderly. I can see that. I can see that. But I imagine you have dealt with artists

on the broad spectrum, some of which were actually totally disorganized and crazy, and sometimes good stuff comes from that too, and then you've probably seen this sort of more monkish Spartan drill sergeant types. Both exist and there is no right way. I will say in the long run, it's hard to keep it going if you're not,

if you're not taking care of yourself. Yeah. It's hard to sustain the long run. Was that a transformation for you as you've done this longer and longer? I've always been, you know, I never, I was never a partier, I never drank, I never smoked, I never took any drugs.

I used to work late hours, but only out of passion and excitement. And I grew to learn over time that more time in the studio didn't make it better. Yeah. I didn't know that in the early days. I just thought the more I do, the better it'll be. I came to see that after an eight-hour day or a 12-hour day or a 12 hour day or four hour day, depending on where you are in your life. There's an amount that really is like,

you can focus and you can get a lot done. And then tomorrow will be much more productive if you don't go way past it the day before. I've always wondered that about football coaches. You know, they're always like, you know, I get up at three in the morning and then I get to the, the practice of Sicily., they're always like, you know, I get up at three in the morning, and then I get to the the practice facility. I always wondered if like part of the collective bargaining agreement, if like coaches had to keep banking hours, if we would notice any difference on the

field, or if it's all just part of a kind of a narrative and a competition, like it's a signal that you're serious, but it might not affect the product at all. And probably maybe even for musicians, it's like you want to show that you're in the studio late at night because it seems like that's a commitment to the art. But maybe commitment to the art is being a normal person

and not a vampire. Like it could be totally different than we think. Yeah, I think it's different for every artist and they find their rhythm and their rhythms change over time. Sometimes, you know, in the early days, they work all night. In the early days, I worked all night. And then at some point, my schedule changed and I like it. Yeah, that's kind of coming into your own

when you realize like all the affect and the, oh, this is what it's supposed to look like when all that pressure goes away. And then you just do it the way that you like to do it that is natural and productive for you. And you dispense with the pretense basically, the performance part of the performing. True.

Well, I really liked this. I really liked this new book. I was curious what made you think about it, not as a physical book, right? You're always, I think part of what you do is you push the boundaries of things. But what made you specifically go, no, this should be on a computer, not a thing that you hold. It wasn't planned out at all. My original focus was the idea of writing a book. And it came and I thought it's a book that I want to get done very quickly, which is very different than the creative act, which was an eight-year project. This was essentially an eight-week project. I think of it as a joke project, started as a joke project.

But I put all of my real projects aside to put all of my time and effort into the joke project, which was unusual. I hadn't done that before. It just felt like the right thing to do. It felt like timely in a way, I wanted it to exist in the world very quickly. And that also probably ended up playing a role in how it was released. So it got to the point where I finished the text and I was excited about the text, but I still didn't have any release plan. I happened to interview that week, I happened to interview Jack Clark, who's one of the seven co-founders of Anthropic for the Tetragrammaton podcast.

That episode actually just came out today. Oh, wow. Yeah, just incredible timing. But at the end of the interview, after we finished the interview, I said, I just wrote this thing. He was a journalist. He was a writer. Yeah.

And he's involved in AI. So I thought, I just finished this thing. Can you take a look at it? Tell me what you think. He looked at it, and he said, I really finished this thing, can you take a look at it, tell me what you think?" He looked at it and he said, I really like this. We have a big push coming in a few weeks for Anthropic and maybe we can use this as part of our release. My interest was to get it in front of people's eyes and he said, I think we can help do that.

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And if this podcast lasts longer than 45 minutes, call your doctor. It almost seems like something you might like a thought exercise you might put a musician through where you're like, instead of taking eight years on this album, what would it look like if you only had eight weeks? And sometimes the constraints or the premise forces you to get outside your sort of normal way of doing things. Absolutely. And it probably influenced the decision to do it related to the Tao.

And when it got related to the Tao, it went from a joke project originally. The joke was, I'm going to write a book about something I don't know anything about. That was the premise. It's like, okay, I don't know. The reason there was a meme of me being associated with vibe coding. Yeah. I had nothing to do with that. It just happened. I was a bystander and I keep getting friends sending me a picture of me associated with

vibe coding. I didn't know what vibe coding was. And it felt like I was being enlisted into something. And so much of creativity is like looking at the things going on around you and then seeing how does this, how do I participate in this thing that I'm noticing? So in this case, the noticing was me being associated with vibe coding didn't make any sense to me,

but it did to someone because thousands of images are coming up of me being associated with vibe coding. What is vibe coding? Vibe coding is, you know what traditional coding is, writing computer language, and it's a very exacting, specific, time-intensive, detail-oriented, you want the computer to do something very simple, and you write thousands of lines of code to get

it to do this simple thing. And it's both exhausting, difficult, and if there's a mistake anywhere in these thousands of computer speak, anywhere in these thousands of lines, then it won't work. And you don't know why. So it's difficult. And again, I don't really know anything about this. I just know that coding is difficult. That's as much as I know. And then this idea of vibe coding happened about three months ago, which was a very famous coder said,

I've been experimenting with a new thing. I'll call it vibe coding, where instead of experimenting with a new thing, I'll call it vibe coding, where instead of writing the code, and this is a guy who's an expert at writing code, decided, I'm going to tell the AI what I want the code to do and let it do what it does. And it does it. And what you get back is not really what you wanted. It might be related to what you want. It might be a bad version or it might be something different, completely different. But he found that what he was getting back was interesting enough that he could then give it modifications, also like vibe coding on top of vibe coding,

to get it to do what he wanted it to do. So instead of writing thousands of lines, he says a few words to a computer. It gives him feedback, a mock-up, let's say. He looks at the mock-up and says, okay, now try it like this. And then it gives him a new iteration. So that's what vibe coding is. And I believe the reason I became associated with it in the hive mind was I'm the record producer

who doesn't know anything about music. So he's talking about being a coder without knowing anything about coding. Sure. Well, it's interesting what radically different skill sets those are, right? The first is, you know, the equivalent of being an architect and an engineer and a

contractor, you're, you're building something from scratch. Then the others feels much more like a humanities based approach of like, hey, how can I describe what I'm after? What are the analogies and metaphors? And how can I paint a picture of the direction I'd like to go in? And then it has this other thing, which maybe we don't think of as a skill, but a kind of a detachment or an openness to spontaneity that is the ability to call and respond and improvise based on what you get. Yeah, and it's very much in tune with what happens in the recording studio because we may go in with an idea,

but very quickly through experimentation, it takes on a new form. We're very rarely directing. We may start with a direction, but then based on what we get back, we change direction often, radically. And we may do 10 different versions, like let's try it faster, let's try it slower, let's try it in a different time signature, let's try it in a different key. Let's see what's it like if the chorus becomes the intro? What's it like if we take the bridge out of the song?

How does that change it? All of those things are normal things for us to try. What's it like if we program the drums instead of having a live drummer? What's it like if it's all electronic? What's it like if it's all wind instruments? What's it like if it's all string instruments? There are a million versions. What's it like if it's only sung, if there's only vocals? What would happen if are the same things that happen in vibe coding? That's a prompt.

It's a prompt. Well, it's funny because people think of Stoicism as this very rigid philosophy. And I think it is rigid internally. Stoicism is saying, hey, I said I'm gonna get up at this time, so I'm gonna get up at this time. These are the standards I hold myself to. But it is funny when you read the Stoics more in depth,

there is a sort of a Taoism running through it. There's a lot about acceptance. There'sism running through it. There's a lot about acceptance. There's a lot about flexibility. There's a lot about one of my favorite passages from meditations is where Mark Sturlus is talking about how he says, you want to be able to get to the place and go, this is just what I was looking for. That's what you want to be able to say. But of course, you actually weren't looking for it because you weren't thinking about it at all. And I think the creative process and life is about, I have this idea, I'm going to start the process, I'm going to try it. And then actually being able to sort of go, actually, I can work with that. The ability to work with things and to take what happens and use it and respond to it and then

start this kind of feedback loop, That's really what it's about creatively and I think just being a person in an unpredictable world. Yeah, and I think when we start a project, it starts with a prompt, but it doesn't start with the final version. It starts with an idea of what it might be. And then through experimentation, what it wants to be reveals itself to us.

Yes. And we're surprised by it and thrilled by it when it happens. It's a magical feeling when you're aiming for, you think you're aiming for this one thing and you end up in this whole other place and it's much more beautiful than your original idea. When both Eastern and Western philosophy, and then you could sort of put Christianity in there too, they both have some version of this idea of the way, right? And the Stoics call this the logos,

which is the word in Christianity, but it just means the way. It connects to what you're just saying, which is like, there's something in here that's not us, that's actually choosing where this is going or what it will be. We have the idea, we start it, but the song reveals itself. That is the weird thing. You sit down to write and then you're like, where's this coming from? How is it heading towards a

direction? You're partly in control of it and yet there is an otherworldliness to it. Yeah. And you might come in contact with clues along the way where you're working on something and you get stuck and you just, it's impenetrable, there's nothing you can do, and then you go out for a walk and someone says to you exactly the thing that you were having the problem with or you overhear someone say something related or you read something and it's like, it's unbelievable how

specific the information coming at us is when we're really open and paying attention to it. It's coming from all directions at all times. Well, I think it was Aristotle who said that's one of the paradoxes of knowledge. It might've been Plato, which is like, how can you know that that's what you're looking for if you've never found it before? There's something paradoxical about discovery and creation. You're finding something and you're recognizing it, and yet it's new to you. And so that's why the ancients often thought

there was such a thing as the Muses. It was like, that was an easy way to solve this impossible riddle of like, where did this come from and why does it feel right? Yeah. And imagine going somewhere that you've never been before. And I'm sure you've had this experience in both directions. You go somewhere you've never been before and you get there and you think, wow, this is the greatest place I've ever been. and you get there and you think, wow, this is the greatest place I've ever been.

I don't want to leave. Yeah. I have this experience sometimes. And then there are other places where I've never been and I go there and I feel like this place is making my skin crawl. I can't wait to get out of here. And I don't know why. I don't know what's different about these places.

This happened to me recently in two different cities in the same country. I went to two different cities and in one city, I got to this city and I felt like, ah, I feel this place. I could stay here. And then I went to another city in the same country and I felt like I can't wait to get out of here. I have no business in this place.

Just energetically, it felt wrong. Yes. I don't know why, I can't explain it. Right, and when something you're making or something you're consuming, when it speaks to you, that goes this idea of vibe, like why is the vibe right and why is the vibe wrong? You drive yourself insane trying to explain it,

but at some level you know, and I think that's the idea of like the way or the universe, it just is and you're, you're kind of in that rhythm or you're not, you're vibing or you're not. It was interesting looking through the book, because I've always had this theory that what's interesting about physical books is what a remarkable piece of technology they are, right? That like, for thousands of years, we've basically been consuming long form information the exact same way.

And that an ebook is obviously superior, an audio book is obviously superior, doing it in this interactive way on the computer is superior in that it's auto generating, you know, new graphics or whatever. And yet there is something that endures about the book. And it struck me that that's kind of true in music too. Like there's no reason that songs have to be three minutes.

There's no reason that albums have to have 10 to 15 songs on them or that a TV show needs to be roughly 30 minutes. It's interesting how the constraints often start for a technological or a commercial reason, and yet they endure long after they have any real necessity. Yeah, and for no reason. And I wouldn't say that I prefer one format over another. I would say I listen to more books.

I listen to more audio books now than read because I like to be outside and walking. And I'll crash if I'm reading while I'm walking or might crash. Your introduction into the Dow, you were in a bookstore and you found this book and it changed the course of your life. There's something about that technology too. I love bookstores. I've spent much time of my life hanging out in bookstores. Some of my favorite places to be. What do you think drew you to this? What was it about that copy?

Because you acknowledge it in the epigraph of the book, basically. Yeah. I'm so fascinated in the books that change our life. Again, how did we know that that's the one we should grab off the shelf? What is it that spoke to me about meditations or you about the Tao?

Like, is there something otherworldly again about why we find the right book at the right time? Yeah, I probably picked up most of the books on the New Release table that day and it was a spiritual bookstore, so it tended towards that type of material. And I would probably go to that store three days a week and for a couple of hours. I also liked the energy in the store beyond the actual book shopping.

Sure. The feeling of being in the store around all this wisdom felt good to me. And was it an immediate sort of revelation when you read it, or was it a book that sat around for a while and you slowly came to understand it? It was a book that, that spoke to me immediately. And I bought many copies and gave it to many of my friends. Maybe a year later, I read it for the second time. And that was the first time I realized, Oh, it's a different book. This is not the book I read a year ago and I read it for the second time and that was the first time I realized, oh, it's a different book.

This is not the book I read a year ago and have read it many times. I usually have a copy of it in my travel bag and then over the years read many different translations. It's just a book that has continued to spark my imagination. Heraclitus had this idea that we don't step in the same river twice. And there is something beautiful about coming back to a book and realizing, not that you missed anything the first time, but there

was just a whole other level beneath or above. And then the magic of going, oh, this is true the third time and the fourth time. To have those texts that you go to over and over and over again and find that they continue to reveal yourself is again a very magical thing. I think it has to do with the nature of the writing being so open and poetic that the reader brings so much to the material. And as we change in our life, the material changes, it's not really what's changing, we're what's changing, but it's written in a way to highlight our changes. Yes.

And it was something that I set out, I can't remember if I told you this when I first started working on the Creative Act, but it was one of the things I hoped would happen. Yeah. One of the things I wanted the Creative Act to do was to be a book that if you read it and you read it at another point in your life, you'd get something different from it to be written in an open enough style for

that to happen. Yes, if it's too specific, it can't become general. And yet, if it's so general, it's meaningless. And so they obviously were writing them in response to very specific problems or specific scenarios or sort of human vices. And so it's out of that specificity that it's clearly resonating. And yet, they're not just coming out and saying what they mean. So there's room for endless interpretation. Because also, yeah, the the truth of an idea, I think there was something about Confucius once where he said one thing to one brother

and then something else to another brother. And someone said, but this is a contradiction. What are you doing? And he's like, well, he needs this advice and he needs that advice. And that seems very basic, but for some reason we struggle with the idea that you're gonna need different truths

at different times in your life. Yeah, and I think the fact that something written 3000 years ago is as prescient today as it was when it was written, that's interesting to me. Oh, I find that endlessly fascinating. The idea that this was an ancient text to ancient people. It's like it occurred to me that Stoicism was 500 years old by the time Marcus Aurelius gets to it. For some reason, we can press that ancient period all down into one thing. And they were reading

texts that were as old to them as Shakespeare is to us. And so to them, this contained, it contained ancient wisdom and was talking about a world that they missed and romanticized just as we ourselves are doing to them. And so there's a reason that it resonated with each subsequent generation. And that's why it's not like it was lost for 2000 years and then we just discovered it and we're

Like oh, how cool is this? It's actually been both ancient and relevant for every one of those Thousands of years. Yeah, it's like the Bible and the Bible was the stories of the Bible existed for Hundreds if not thousands of years before the Bible was written. Right. Before there was writing. Musically, a bunch of parents I know have been talking about this,

like the world of Spotify has changed our children's interaction with music, which is they don't understand that these are not new songs. You know, because the primary means of hearing new music is not the radio, which has a bias towards new music. They're hearing stuff for the first time and they don't have any of the context

of whether this is new or disruptive or old and not cool. Like it's interesting to watch like kids in the bookstore listen to bands like Nickelback or Puddle of Mud, bands that I remember as a kid having a certain reputation, you know, whether it was cool or not cool. And to them, it's just music. So that in a way stripping that context out allows you to perceive it in a new kind of earnest way

without the self-consciousness. out allows you to perceive it in a new kind of earnest way without the self-consciousness. I think that's a good rule in life is to find a way to let go of any self-consciousness with anything that you're engaging with to see how you truly feel about it because all of the whatever said about something has such a big effect on us, this like group think idea that it leaves us not knowing our own taste. So, one of the things that in the creative act, I talk about a lot is that developing and knowing your taste, both when it's in sync with other people

and when it's against other people, and to hold firm on your taste, because that's your, as an artist, that's what you have to offer. Yes. If all you're doing is regurgitating what is the popular thing now, there's no reason for you to exist.

It already is. Yeah, yeah, sure. The only thing you have to bring is a new perspective. And it's only a new perspective because everyone else is not doing that. Yeah, you are unique. And then for some reason, you try to be like everyone else. There's this stoic man, Chrysippus, and he tells this,

we hear this story about him where someone says, he's living in the time of Nero, which obviously would have been a time of conformity and danger, you don't wanna stand out. And he's sort of asking him why he does. And he says, most threads in the garment have to be white, but I wanna be the red thread that makes the garment have to be white, but I want to be the red thread that makes the garment beautiful.

And the idea that we each are totally unique, have a totally unique perspective, have totally unique experience, that is the one thing that we bring to the table creatively, entrepreneurially, in a relationship. And then for some reason, that's like the first thing that we throw away in favor of like what everyone else is doing or how it should or is supposed to be. Yeah. And when I say bringing something new, it only means new to us.

So you have built a career on very old information, but it was not in the mainstream You have built a career on very old information, but it was not in the mainstream at the time that you talked about it. So you essentially revived something. Same is true with Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan revived the style. Like we think of folk music as from Bob Dylan's time. It was already a revival of something

that was a hundred years before that. Yeah, you know, there's that term Columbusing where you discover something that already exists. But to be able to do that earnestly as an artist or as a human being to be like, this is exciting to me. This lights me up. And then to kind of become an evangelist or an interpreter of that thing.

That's what it's all about because although you are discovering something that already exists, your interpretation and your understanding and your presentation of it, that's a fundamentally new and one of a kind combination that can never be created again. And you're talking about it in the context of today. Sure. Whereas it was written in the context of a very different day.

Yeah, I was curious your experiences, you said you read the Dazheng and you loved it, and then you read it over and over again, and then you read different translations. That's a really interesting experience too, because you go, I know this text, I love this text. And then you read somebody else's version of it, and you go, this is a totally different thing. And then if you're not someone who knows a bunch of different languages, it was sort of a revelation to me to go, oh, I didn't know the translators had so much say. I didn't know the era in which the translator was existing.

I just thought English was English. And then I go, oh wait, somebody translating something from Latin or Greek in the 19th century is going to present it in 19th century Victorian English. And that's not going to feel super accessible or relatable to me. Although at the time, it might have felt totally groundbreaking and available to the common person. And so you go, oh, there's actually a, there's a lot of interpretation of the text itself, but then even in the translation, they're making all these artistic choices.

Yes. And regardless of whether it's a 3000 year old text that we're reinterpreting, or something we noticed yesterday that we're explaining or a comedian who does a joke about Starbucks, it's funny because the comedian is recognizing something we've all recognized, but we haven't said it.

While we know it to be true, we never found it important enough to single out and say, isn't it strange that this happens in this place? That's how comedy works. And that's how really all art is essentially, it's like when Duchamp showed the urinal as a sculpture. It was a radical idea. Yes, yeah, Emerson said that we see

a kind of alienated majesty in a work of art that we recognize as an idea we have also had, but failed to pursue. Like when you see, oh, I we have also had, but failed to pursue. Like when you see, oh, I could have done that, or oh, I've had that thought before. Yeah, when you hear a comedian tell a joke about something you've noticed yourself, but you didn't sketch out enough

to turn into this hilarious observation, you're both laughing at it, but there is also kind of a, I think to me that there's a call to action in that of like, you should be pursuing your own creativity this way too. They're not a superhero, they're doing something you're capable of doing also. Yes, they're paying attention to the world around them.

And we all have all of these data points coming at us all the time, and we can choose to live on the surface, or we can choose to look deeper and try to see what's behind. What's going on behind this? Why is this thing this color? How did that happen?

You know, why? Yeah, and the idea of translation or interpretation, we tend to think of that as either a professional philosopher or whatever discerning some, you know, complex text or somebody who knows two languages transferring from one to the other. But obviously, Johnny Cash covering Trent Reznor is a translation, and it becomes something totally different even though the lyrics are the same or the notes are the same and you realize, oh, this person noticed, even though this thing is popular and millions of people have heard it, somehow this person noticed something totally

new in it or reflected back something that was always there but wasn't the primary emphasis because their own experience connected with that little piece and remade the whole as a result. Yes. When you're looking at something obvious through new eyes and can shed light on the ordinary, where you see it in a new way and you can share that experience so other people get to see it in a new way. That's ultimately what everything is. All songs are essentially the language of music has been the same since Bach, since

before Bach. So, it's the same notes in often this roughly the same order, but finding a new way to interpret it to re-present it in a way that you haven't heard it before. When I say a way that you haven't heard it before, it doesn't mean a way that no one's heard it before. It might be a way that many people have heard it before. When I say a way that you haven't heard it before, it doesn't mean a way that no one's heard it before. It might be a way that many people have heard it before. But for some reason right now, it feels good. It also happens where I'll see a movie and it doesn't speak to me at all. And then for some reason I see it 20 years later and I love it.

And I didn't have that feeling the first time I saw it all or the opposite where you really love something at one point in your life and then you come back to it later. It's like, hmm, I don't remember being like this at all. Doesn't make me feel the same way at all. Yeah, having kids, like things that you watched before you had kids, things you consumed after you had kids, you're just like, oh, apparently there was just a huge part of me that was not accessible before. or there's a sensitivity now, or an

openness to a set of experiences that I didn't know was there. And you realize, oh, there's these other levels that this thing is operating on the other experiences, you watch a movie with your kids, we've gone to see the Minecraft movie like five times, and they're laughing at it at one level and I'm laughing at it at another because I see the filmmaker who also made Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre is referencing things from his previous works.

And if you haven't seen those things, you're not gonna get those references. And the ability, I think, to be a person who has a basis in a certain art form, there's just all these homages and illusions and connections that you couldn't make if you have only a surface level understanding, but the more in depth you go,

the more is revealed and the deeper the experience. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it. And I'll see you next episode. If you like The Daily Stoic and thanks for listening, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

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