← People I (Mostly) Admire
People I (Mostly) Admire
Rick Rubin on How to Make Something Great (Update)
00:53:24
From recording some of the first rap hits to revitalizing Johnny Cash's career, the legendary producer has had an extraordinary creative life. In this episode he talks about his new book and his art-making process — and helps Steve get in touch with his own artistic side.
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- [00:02]
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- [01:08]
Steve Levitt
Today's episode is an encore presentation of a conversation I had with music producer Rick Rubin back in 2023. Rick Rubin has the reputation for being able to elicit things from the musicians he works with that other people can't. The last thing I expected was that he would find ways to bring things out of me that I hadn't previously seen. But he absolutely did, which for me.
- [01:33]
Stephen J. Dubner
Makes this one of the most memorable.
- [01:34]
Steve Levitt
Episodes we've ever done. My guest today, Rick Rubin, has been a major player in the music industry for four decades. He started Def Jam Records out of his college dorm room, and in 2007, MTV called him the most important music producer of the last 20 years. And he hasn't slowed down. He's been a producer for everyone from Metallica to Adele, from Jay Z to Johnny Cash, from Public Enemy to the Chicks. And now, for the first time, he's put on paper the ideas driving his creative process.
- [02:12]
Rick Rubin
The ideas in the book are like smoke. They're very difficult to grasp. Stuff that when you read it, you feel like you already know it, but it's difficult to hold onto.
- [02:28]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.
- [02:33]
Steve Levitt
His new book is entitled the Creative A Way of Being, and it's not at all the book you might expect from a big wig in the music industry. It's a book about I honestly can't even explain what the book is about, even though I loved it. I'm going to need Rick Rubin to do that for me. But before we get into the book, I'm hoping he'll explain to me how a white college student in the early 1980s became foundational to the development of hip hop.
- [03:02]
Stephen J. Dubner
So, Rick, I spent some time on the Internet learning about you in preparation for our conversation And I actually laughed out loud at one point because the same adjective is used over and over to describe you. Legendary. The legendary Rick Rubin. Do you like having legendary as your adjective, or would you prefer a different one?
- [03:24]
Rick Rubin
If you got to choose, I would prefer none. Just my name is fine. It's odd having any label attached to anything that we do.
- [03:31]
Stephen J. Dubner
So I have to confess, I know very little about the music industry, and it never would have occurred to me to invite you on the show. But as we were brainstorming potential guests, someone in the meeting noted that Rick Rubin's got a new book out and he's legendary. I picked up a copy of your book knowing literally nothing about it, and I was honestly shocked. This book isn't a memoir or an expose. It's a book of philosophy and meditation. And it spoke deeply to me from the very first pages. I got to say, I rarely have been so surprised by a book in such a positive way.
- [04:11]
Rick Rubin
That's beautiful. I'm so happy that it gave you that experience. The hope in writing it was that somebody would feel that way. So at least I know one person does. It's great.
- [04:23]
Stephen J. Dubner
I can't believe I'm the first to say that to you. Let's pretend that I am. Before we talk about the book, can I ask you an embarrassing question? It's embarrassing for me and not for you?
- [04:33]
Rick Rubin
Sure.
- [04:33]
Stephen J. Dubner
I don't really even know what it means to. To be a music producer. Could you explain that to me?
- [04:39]
Rick Rubin
The closest thing I can compare it to would be a movie director. It's not like a movie producer. It's like a movie director. We're responsible for the overall creative content. So that could include performance. It could include hiring musicians or putting a band together. It could include hiring the technical people, editing the material or finding the best material or helping the artist write the best material. Whatever's necessary for a project. If you know anything about movie directors, they run the gamut of different styles. One can be really into the performance of the actors, and another could be really into cgi, and they know how to do CGI well. And another one, like Alfred Hitchcock, would storyboard every frame of the movie so he knew exactly visually what an entire movie looked before shooting a scene. Music production is like that. And there are some producers who are experts at one thing. They make beats. They make the musical track. Some are experts at working with super pop artists. So I can't say there's, like, one thing that we do. Each one has their own way in and also depends on how they became a producer. Some start as music studio engineers and then work their way up. Some start as musicians and work their way up. I came at it from fandom. I was really a fan of music and have become like a professional fan.
- [06:11]
Stephen J. Dubner
I love ideas. I especially love simple ideas. And the hallmark of a simple idea is that even though they're incredibly hard to come up with, as soon as someone has the idea, everybody says, oh, that's obvious. Of course that's true. So it's a paradox where something is right there. It's hidden in plain sight, but no one can see it until someone who thinks differently, who has a special way of seeing, points it out. And I feel like, and I mean this in 100%, a complimentary way, that simple ideas are one of your specialties. The first one that comes to mind is when you were working with Run DMC on the Raising Hell album back in the mid-1980s. Can you try to transport us back to that time? I think people forget just how marginalized hip hop was back then.
- [07:03]
Rick Rubin
At that point in time, there were people who liked hip hop music. We loved it, but it was a very small community. It was an outsider group. And to everyone else, including the recording industry, radio stations, they didn't view it as bad music. They didn't view it as music. Run DMC were the biggest and best rap group at that time and are still considered one of the greatest of all time, maybe the best group of all time. And we had finished their. It would have been their third album. It was my first album with them, and I was still going to NYU at the time. And I would meet with them at the dorm room and we'd talk about these ideas there.
- [07:47]
Stephen J. Dubner
How did you. I mean, you're a white guy. I presume you were one of the few white guys who was in hip hop at that time. You were a COD student. How in the world were you the one who's producing Run DMC's third album?
- [08:00]
Rick Rubin
It's an incredible series of events that led to it. The first hip hop recording I ever made was called It's Yours by T LaRock and Jazzy J Seeking people love the universe, this is yours. I had made a couple of recordings of my punk rock band before that. So I knew how to make a recording in studio. Not by any technical way, but just. I went through that process before as an amateur and understood enough to be able to do it because I'd done it. I'd done it two times, but I had that experience. I recorded It's Yours by T LaRock and Jazzy J, which ended up being a hit hit in the way that any rap record could ever be a hit at that point in time, which means it got played in the three or four clubs that would play hip hop music that would be a hit. There was no airplay for hip hop. It was before those things. And there was one show on WHBI that had one one hour hip hop show called Mr. Magic's Rap Attack. That was the only place you could hear hip hop at all. So I made this record and people liked it. And the address for the record company, which I called Def Jam was 5 University Place, which is my dorm at NYU Weinstein Hall. And I started getting demo tapes sent to the dorm room because people liked the first record. And then I got a demo tape from an artist named Ladies Love Cool J, who was a 16 year old kid from Hollis, Queens, and decided to make a record with him. And then he turned out to be LL Cool Jeff.
- [09:34]
Stephen J. Dubner
Yeah, that turned out to be a good choice.
- [09:36]
Rick Rubin
Yeah. So those were the first two things that I did. And then based on the success of the first record, It's Yours, I'd met Russell Simmons, who was five years older, and he was actually a big deal in the hip hop world already. He was run from Run DMC's brother, and he managed Run DMC and Curtis Blow and Houdini and all of the top rap groups at the time. And I met him at a party. Someone introduced me to him and said, you know, this is Rick. He made that record, It's Yours. And he looked at me and he did a double take. And he's like, you're white. I know. And he said, how did you make It's Yours? It's the blackest record I've ever heard in my life. It's the blackest rap record ever made. And I said, I don't know. I just did what felt natural to me. I didn't have that conversation in my head. I just made what sounded good. Then he heard what I did with LL Cool J and that led to us starting Def Jam. And then based on that, he said Run dmc, he. And they asked me to produce their next album.
- [10:43]
Stephen J. Dubner
Okay, so you produce this album. What you were saying before was that people didn't even think of rap music as music.
- [10:51]
Rick Rubin
Correct.
- [10:52]
Stephen J. Dubner
And that created a problem for you?
- [10:55]
Rick Rubin
Well, it just seemed like there would be some way to demonstrate that rap music was music. And we had already finished the Run DMC Raising Hell album without the song Walk this Way on It. And I was just thinking, I feel like there's some way to tell this story that this is music. And I thought, well, if I could find a song that people are familiar with, that they accept as music. And we did it with Run dmc and we didn't change it from music into non music to, but did it true to the song, yet with the hip hop inflection integrated into it, that people would hear it and say, oh, I see what rap music is. I always knew what rap music was. I just didn't know I knew it. So that was the idea. And I just looked through my record collection and found Walk this Way. Because I was looking for a song that had memorable verse phrasing. The. That wasn't melodic because that's basically what rap music is. It's based more on the phrasing, you know, the meter of the words instead of the melody. And that's the way the phrasing of Walk this Way works. At that point in time. You could probably find a rap song that had phrasing like that that wouldn't have been unusual. So recorded the song with Run dmc.
- [12:31]
Stephen J. Dubner
You came to them and said, hey, I want you to do an Aerosmith song. And they said, yeah, good idea. That sounds great. Did they know who Aerosmith was? Aerosmith was this really washed up band by then, right?
- [12:42]
Rick Rubin
Yeah, they were not into the idea at first. Although there's always this element in hip hop where you can use a reference from something else to make something new. That's kind of what the basis of hip hop is. It's a form of a montage. So you take an element like four bars from an old James Brown song and you loop that up and then you do something new on top of it. And the song is nothing like the James Brown song, but you're inspired by some little quirky moment in it and make it into this whole new thing. No one knew it as Walk this Way, even though that's the name of the song. In the hip hop world, that was called the Toys in the Attic break, because the name of the album it's on is Toys in the attic. And DJs would play the intro beat. Just a psst, psst. So when I said we'll use the toys in the attic break, they're like, oh, we love the toys in the attic break. Of course we'll do that. And I said, and here are the words. And I played them the song and they're like, what is that? We're happy to write a rap Record and put it on the toys in the attic. Break. I said, but that won't explain hip hop. What'll explain hip hop is if you say Steven Tyler's words like Run dmc and people can say, oh, I know this. I already know what this is. And that will allow people to understand and accept hip hop. I didn't do it thinking it was gonna be a hit or anything like that. It was more just a demonstration, just to play for the people who would say to me, what is this? I know it's not music. How do you think of it? I thought that if I could play somebody this, they would understand.
- [14:30]
Stephen J. Dubner
And did the recording go smoothly? Did it just work?
- [14:33]
Rick Rubin
Yeah, it got recorded easily and it ended up being impactful in the world. But again, none of that was. There's never been a time in the history of my career where I've made anything and felt like, oh, this is gonna be big. I just try to make very interesting things that I love. And maybe like in the case of this song, has some purpose to it, trying to make some point, but that's all I wanted to do. And at that point in time, the glass ceiling was very low for hip hop music. Incredibly low. The music was reviled by the people who were not making it.
- [15:22]
Stephen J. Dubner
Yeah, I was one of those people. I was not an early understander of hip hop, but that song turned out to be roughly one of the biggest songs, most important songs ever in hip hop, both in terms of sales, but also it did change people's view of the world. And it changed, I think, what future artists were doing. And what's interesting is how quickly it happened. That's why I call it this simple idea. Because it wasn't like you did this and it took 20 or 40 years for people to catch on. It was instantaneous, which is what makes it so interesting that no one could see it ahead of time.
- [15:54]
Rick Rubin
Yeah, it was instantaneous, and it was right in front of us the whole time. Really. A big part of what the book's about is that the artist's work is to live in the world in a way where you notice the thing that no one else notices. It's all right there. The best ideas are always simple, but we just are in our own way a lot of the time and miss it. Or we think it's impossible because often the obvious thing seems ridiculous.
- [16:27]
Stephen J. Dubner
So can I highlight another thing you did which really does seem ridiculous?
- [16:31]
Rick Rubin
Sure.
- [16:31]
Stephen J. Dubner
That was when you hooked up with Johnny Cash. So Johnny Cash had been a big star in the 1950s and 60s. But by the 1970s, I was a kid. I remember he was doing TV commercials for STP and Lionel trains. And by the 80s, he must have been virtually the definition of a has been. But what did you see in him that no one else could see?
- [16:55]
Rick Rubin
The idea didn't start with Johnny Cash. I was a young record producer, and I had all of this success, incredible success. And all of the bands I was working with were young bands. Everybody was kids like my age. And most of the people I was working with, they were making their first album or second album, tops. I hadn't worked with anyone with experience at this point. Based on the success, I was wondering, I don't really know what it is that we're doing, but I wonder if whatever it is that's working would work with a grownup artist. That's how it started. And then I started thinking about who's a legendary artist who hasn't done their best work for a while. I didn't want someone who was doing their best work because that wasn't the test. Again, I was, like, testing this principle of, we're doing something new. I have no experience. It's coming from this naive place. Is it only gonna work with other kids, or might this work with a grown adult? And the very first person I thought of was Johnny Cash because he has this mythological quality about him, even though he was viewed, even in his mind, as past his prime.
- [18:09]
Stephen J. Dubner
What was he doing when you found him?
- [18:11]
Rick Rubin
I got to see him playing at a dinner theater in Orange county for about 200 people who were, you know, eating dinner while he was playing.
- [18:21]
Stephen J. Dubner
What did you say to him?
- [18:22]
Rick Rubin
I don't remember so much about the meeting. Both of us are shy people, and we sat on a couch together, and I remember we sat there for a long time, and we didn't say very much, but being in each other's presence felt good. Like, it felt like not so much had to be said. I remember he said, I hear you want to record me. Why do you want to do that? And I said, I think we could make something really great. I don't know exactly what that would be, but I'm interested in going on the adventure with you to figure out what it would be. And he said, well, so many people have tried. Nothing's worked. What would you do different? I said, just come to California and come to my house, and we'll sit in the living room, and you could play me songs on the guitar that you love, that you grew up listening to, and I can get some Understanding of who you are musically, who you really are musically. Not just about the records you've made, but play me what inspires you and what you like. It's exactly what we did. He came to California. We sat on the couch in my living room, and I recorded everything we did with no idea of thinking it would ever be public. They were essentially demos for us to just go on this song hunt. We were looking for songs, and he probably, you know, played a hundred songs. And then we looked at all the songs, like, mm, this one is good, and this one and this one together is good, and this one. And then we went into the studio with a band, and we did that one time. Then we went into studio with a different band. And I'm talking about the greatest bands in the world, the greatest players in the world. And for some reason, none of the recordings that we did when we thought we were making a record sounded more interesting than what was recorded in the living room. When we weren't making a record, when we were just documenting what we were doing so we'd have something to refer back to. There was just something about that, and it sounded different. We've never heard Johnny by himself before. Playing guitars, intimate. I believed everything he said. It became clear. And then we made these albums, and people really liked them.
- [20:23]
Stephen J. Dubner
The song that sticks with me, and I think many other people will also never forget, is perhaps his most unlikely hit song of all time, which was Hurt, a song originally done by the Nine Inch Nails. How did that come to be?
- [20:38]
Rick Rubin
I'll tell you an interesting story. I started a new podcast called Tetragrammaton, and I'm interviewing Trent Reznor, who wrote that song. And I'm interviewing him on my birthday. And it's a funny relationship. Cause I consider him a good friend, and I never speak to him or see him. So Ninetine Nails was my favorite group. And in looking for songs for Johnny Cash, all that mattered were the lyrics. The music didn't matter. All that we were looking for were lyrics where the words would be meaningful coming from Johnny Cash and not Johnny Cash, the human being, Johnny Cash, the man in black, the mythical figure of Johnny Cash, like the image from the Western movie Johnny Cash. And I was just listening to songs from all different eras, and I came across Hurt. And I remember looking at the words and just thinking, wow, if Johnny sings these words, they mean a whole different thing. When you're 22 years old, I think Trent was when he wrote it. And you're singing about looking back over your life with regret. You still have your whole life ahead of you to fix that. When you're 70 and you're singing about looking back over your whole life with regret. It's really tragic just seeing that in the lyrics, the opening lines. I hurt myself today to see if I still feel. Also hearing an old man, starting with, I hurt myself today. Okay, we think he fell. To see if I still feel. I focus on the pain. The only thing that's real. It's unbelievable. Brutal lyrics.
- [22:22]
Stephen J. Dubner
I hurt myself today.
- [22:27]
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- [22:38]
Stephen J. Dubner
The only thing.
- [22:45]
Rick Rubin
I'm feeling chills in my body now from saying those words. By changing its context from a young person to an old person, changing it from a loud, bombastic song to more of a deep, quiet, meditative song seemed to have a profound effect.
- [23:09]
Stephen J. Dubner
I was a big Nine Inch Nails fan at the time, and when I heard that there was a Johnny Cash version, I was extremely skeptical and I was really affected by it. But in particular, the video.
- [23:22]
Rick Rubin
Absolutely. It's heartbreaking.
- [23:24]
Stephen J. Dubner
He really played the part in the video. His hand was shaking. He's pouring the wine on the table, man. I still remember that video from whenever it was 20 years ago.
- [23:33]
Rick Rubin
No, it's unbelievable. Story of the video is interesting because Mark Romanick, who's a good friend of mine, offered to do a video for Johnny Cash. And he's, if not the best music video director of all time, one of. And he had a whole vision. Johnny was going to come to LA and there was a set and it was a really cool idea. And then Johnny called me and he told me he was too ill to come and that it wasn't going to happen. Mark was bummed. And then he offered to go to Nashville, where Johnny was, and just see if he could shoot something with Johnny in his house. So everything you see is either filmed at his house or the then closed Cash Museum. That all was real life. And he wasn't playing the part. That's where he was. His hand was shaking because that's how much his hand shaked then. And I remember when Mark first made the video and I got the first edit of it and I watched it, I felt like I was gonna throw up. It was so upsetting. I was not prepared for what I saw. It was so emotional. Johnny's manager didn't want the video to come out. And I remember it was Rosanne Cash, Johnny's daughter, who saw the video and she said, this is an incredible piece of art, dad. This has to be in the world. This is Johnny cash. This is what it is. This defines you. It's so real, it's so personal. There's no theatricality about it. And Johnny decided to put the video out into the world.
- [25:09]
Steve Levitt
We'll be right back with more of my conversation with music producer Rick Rubin.
- [25:13]
Stephen J. Dubner
After this short break.
- [25:23]
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Rick Rubin
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- [27:39]
Stephen J. Dubner
I have a hard time knowing how to describe your book. Do you have a wit that makes sense to people?
- [27:45]
Rick Rubin
It's difficult to talk about and it's difficult to even know what's in it. Honestly, I have a strange relationship to the material in the book because it came over eight years of reverse engineering real life experiences. The real life experiences are not covered in the book. But the way I got to what's in the book was looking at creative things that worked in the studio. And when I say worked, I don't mean we're commercially successful. They may have been, but that's not the metric that we use. We're trying to make great things and when we know it's great once we send it out into the world. It's nice when people like it, but that's not what it's about. It's about self expression and getting closer to some. Can you believe we made this beautiful thing? We can't believe it. It's a great feeling. It's a very personal endeavor. That's what I said earlier. Whenever anyone likes anything, I'm surprised because so much has to go right after you make this beautiful thing. The stars have to align for people to even know about it. At so many steps that are out of our control. The marketing, the distribution, the radio. I remember I put out an album the day of 9, 11. There's not enough bandwidth for everything going on and none of that stuff is in our control. So all we can do is make the best thing that we can and put it out into the world and hope for the best. So tell me the question again, because I got lost.
- [29:15]
Stephen J. Dubner
I asked you to describe your book to people and I think you just did with the same kind of difficulty I have when I try to explain to my wife what your book was about.
- [29:23]
Rick Rubin
The ideas in the book are like smoke. They're very difficult to grasp. It's stuff that when you read it, you feel like you already know it, but it's difficult to hold onto. I wanted it to be written in a way where the reader is participating in the material as much as the writer is participating in the material. So the book doesn't tell you what to think. It invites you to think about something. On every page, there's an opportunity to find a new way in to solve the problem that you're looking for. And when I say problem, everything we do with art, every step of the way is like, am I gonna do it like this or this? Is it gonna be bigger or smaller? Is it gonna be louder or softer? All of those decisions are creative choices and they're problems. Until you decide that's the way it's gonna be.
- [30:18]
Stephen J. Dubner
It still fits with my own experience with the book. The years I was getting a PhD were a special time. I had always been a fantastic student in the sense that I got great grades, excelled on standardized tests. But then I showed up at MIT's Economics PhD program, and I was both woefully underprepared in terms of the math I knew, and also I just wasn't as smart as the other students.
- [30:43]
Steve Levitt
I had always been at the top.
- [30:44]
Stephen J. Dubner
Of my class and. And it only took a few weeks for me to understand that I was near the bottom of my MIT class. And that was a shock for me. But my reaction wasn't what I myself even expected. I didn't feel bad about myself. I felt awe towards the people around me. It was fun just to watch them think. It was amazing to always be the dumbest person in the room. I mean, what a privilege to always be that person. And. And I felt this amazing sense of freedom. I couldn't compete against these people. So I was free to do whatever research interested me and it didn't matter whether anyone else liked it. And for the first time in my life, I wasn't just memorizing and regurgitating. I was thinking and I was creating. Okay, so what does that have to do with your book? Page after page, something you wrote would resonate with that young version of me. It's hard to convey with words because.
- [31:42]
Steve Levitt
It was so visceral, but it was.
- [31:44]
Stephen J. Dubner
Like, for just a little while, I was that kid again. I was full of wonder and excitement, but I was in way over my head and I was making things up as best I could. And for you to bring me back to that time in my life, it was just such a gift from you to me.
- [32:00]
Rick Rubin
There's something about that childlike state. There's a story I tell in the book. There was a film that Google made about the AlphaGo experiments probably seven years ago, eight years ago. It's where the world grandmaster of the game Go plays the computer. And Go is considered the most difficult game for AI to conquer because there are more possible combinations in the game than there are grains of sand on the beach on the planet.
- [32:28]
Stephen J. Dubner
Super complex.
- [32:28]
Rick Rubin
So it was believed if the machine could ever beat the human, the world changes. And I'm watching the video and we see the grandmaster preparing. And then they have the game and the computer makes a move that stuns everyone. Not because it was so smart, it stuns everyone because they thought it was a mistake. Nobody made the move before the grandmaster got up from the table and left. The table. The announcers on television said, oh, the computer made a mistake. We can't believe it. The Grandmaster comes back, they finish the game, the computer wins the game, and then the computer ends up winning the whole tournament. And I'm watching the story and I'm crying, and I didn't understand why I was crying. It's like, what's happening in me doesn't make sense. I don't care if the computer wins or the man wins. Why would I be crying? I don't care. And what I came to realize was the computer didn't win because it was smarter than the man. The computer didn't know more than the man. The computer knew less. The computer wasn't steeped in the lore of the game. All the computer knew were the rules. So it did a move that no seasoned player would ever do, because seasoned players are taught by seasoned players, and the seasoned players, players are following whatever the accepted version of playing the game is, not the rules of the game, but the socially acceptable way to play the game. When he made the move that ended up leading to him winning the game, the Grandmaster got up and left the table. It wasn't because you're not supposed to do that. It's because everyone thought you can't do it. But when it turns out you can do it, and it changed the world. One of the commentators said, it seems that for 3,000 years, no one has even touched the edge of the game of Go yet. And that's what made me emotional. It's the way the creative process works. We're not good at what we do because we know more. We're trying to get back to the state that you described when you felt like you were the dumbest one in the room. And you're trying to make sense of things that don't make sense. And. And you're in wonder and awe about the world. That's the greatest place to be creating from. That's where creation comes from. When you know more, you know what's impossible. Knowing what's impossible doesn't help you do the impossible. You have to believe in something that's impossible to allow it to come into existence.
- [35:15]
Stephen J. Dubner
You say something in the book like, the most damaging rules aren't the ones we can see, but the ones we can't. When I read that, I immediately thought about when Stephen Dubner and I began writing Freakonomics. We spent a few months mapping out the book together, abiding by all sorts of unconscious rules we had about what a nonfiction book should look like. It should have a thesis. Each chapter should build on and reinforce that thesis. The voice should be authoritative. We outlined that book and we were ready to get writing. And I still remember we were sitting in a hotel in Las Vegas and Dubner turns to me and he says, it doesn't feel like this is going to be much fun to write this book. And I agreed. And then one of them said, well, nobody's going to read the book anyway. Maybe we should just make a book that's fun to write.
- [36:11]
Rick Rubin
Great.
- [36:12]
Stephen J. Dubner
And we stayed up late that night figuring out that the book that would be fun to write it would break all sorts of rules that subconsciously had constrained our first outline. And the publisher didn't really know what to think of the book that we delivered. And honestly, neither did we. But it was really fun to write and nobody expected it to be a commercial success. But, man, we had so much fun creating it that we didn't even care. And like you said, what hums the next is totally out of your control. And in our case, all the stars aligned and we ended up selling just a ton of copies.
- [36:51]
Rick Rubin
That's how it works. Had you had expectation, if you had to write the big book and it had to follow the rules, it couldn't have done any of the things that it did. I like to say, if you make something and you're excited to show it to one friend who you think has good taste, then it's ready. How many songs, if you look at the history of music, where the song that was on the B side of the single ends up being the hit song, the song on the A side, that's the focus, and the song on the B side is the extra thing you get with it so that the other side isn't blank. You know, there's no pressure on the B side. And then you hear all the stories of hope. The DJ decided to turn the record over and it became a big hit. Like, we don't know. We don't know what's good, we don't know what's big. We don't know anything like that. If we make something and we get excited about it, that's the best we can do. And to think past that undermines the whole thing.
- [37:52]
Stephen J. Dubner
It really feels to me like the rare book that's evergreen, right? Almost every book has a moment in time and. And then disappears. But your book, it's a book I wish I would have had my shelf when I was 25.
- [38:05]
Rick Rubin
Yeah, me too.
- [38:05]
Stephen J. Dubner
It's a book I would give to people who are 25. Maybe it will be the ultimate graduation gift.
- [38:11]
Rick Rubin
It's stunning. How could you predict? I can remember when I started the whole endeavor about eight years ago, meeting with publishers and explaining how I envisioned the book. All of them said like, yeah, but you're going to tell stories about in the studio and you're gonna talk about Johnny Cash and you're gonna talk about Jay Z. And it's like, no, that's not what the book is. And at that point, even though they still wanted to be my publisher, I could feel they just wanted a different book than the book that I wanted to write. And I decided at that time, you know, I think a better bet would be not to make a deal with the publisher now. Write the book that I wanna write and then show that book to publishers and say, do you want to publish this book? Not the one that you fantasize that I could write, but this book. Because I never want it to be about me. I always want it to be about the process. It was harder for me to talk about it then than it is now because I really didn't know anything in the book then. I still barely grasp the material in the book because it's so out there, you know, it's so hard to pin down. We're talking about magic.
- [39:19]
Stephen J. Dubner
You've done music producing your whole life. Did you feel like the lessons you learned in that creative process carried over to the writing process, or did you feel like you were starting completely from scratch?
- [39:33]
Rick Rubin
I think they're all the same. The book was written by the principals in the book. One of the things that the book talks about is the seed phase, the experimentation phase, the craft phase, and then the completion phase, and how the rules of each of those phases are slightly different. I didn't know that before starting the book. The completion phase has always been the hardest for me. And part of the reason was I treated the completion phase in the same way that I treated the seed and experimentation phase, which are open ended free play. It can always be better, will work forever, it doesn't matter. But once you know what it is and once you've done all the experimentation and you get to the point of where you can see what it's going to be, the completion phase is more refining the thing that you know what it is. And by putting a timetable on that or a deadline, it could actually improve the work. In the past, I always viewed a deadline as something that would undermine the work. I've come to learn the deadline only undermines the work at the beginning. Once you really have the code cracked and it's just down to putting the frame on it. You can do that on deadline and it will help the work, not hurt the work.
- [40:59]
Stephen J. Dubner
One of the things you talk about is to get to the best thing. The last step in some sense is stripping away. Did you try stripping away at this? How much fell off?
- [41:08]
Rick Rubin
A lot. I would say the first four years was just gathering the material to be in the book and I got to having a thousand pages of notes. And then the next three years were trying to come up with the format to how to present that material. Now there are 78 areas of thought. I tried to get as many of the helpful ideas into the book as possible, but in the most succinct way. I tried to not have a sentence in the book that didn't need to be there.
- [41:38]
Stephen J. Dubner
You cut words without losing ideas.
- [41:40]
Rick Rubin
Exactly. And I like the idea that there are ideas going in lots of different directions and ones that don't work with each other all over the book. I like that about it because it's how life is. It's honest and it's real in that respect. Never do this and always do the same thing. You know, it's kind of like that.
- [42:01]
Stephen J. Dubner
Yeah. I like how you say right at the beginning, take the parts that speak to you and ignore the rest. I think that's hard for readers to do. I'm not going to call your book a self help book, but they want the formula. They want someone to tell them These are the 14 tactics you have to follow. It's rare to read a book where the author starts by saying, I expect you're going to throw most of what I say out. Just keep the pieces that speak to you.
- [42:25]
Rick Rubin
My publisher in the uk, he said every book is a self help book. It's pretty good.
- [42:38]
Steve Levitt
You're listening to people I mostly admire. I'm Steve Levitt and after this short break, Rick Rubin and I return to talk about what Rick learned from the Beatles.
- [42:58]
Mattress Firm Advertiser
If you could hear love, what would it sound like?
- [43:08]
Rick Rubin
Son, can we talk about your drinking? Yeah, Dad, I think we should. Helping those closest to you think about their excessive drinking. Maybe that's what love sounds like. More@rethinkthedrink.com An OHA initiative.
- [43:28]
T-Mobile Advertiser
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- [43:49]
T Mobile is the best mobile Network in the US based on analysis by Ookla of Speedtest Intelligence data 1H2025CT mobile.comnetwork sound familiar?
- [44:00]
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- [44:32]
Steve Levitt
Rick Rubin is a very spiritual person today. But I have to believe that the college age punk rocker, hip hop pioneering Rick Rubin was was very different from today's Rick Rubin. I'd love to know how that transformation unfolded.
- [44:49]
Rick Rubin
I learned to meditate when I was 14 and I've had a spiritual practice most of my life. You know, I like crazy things, I like wild things, I like outsider things, I like aggressive things. I like to be surprised. So I think the spiritual grounding allows me to understand what's going on inside myself, to know when I'm being pulled forward towards something, to know when I'm being pushed away from something and then be able to feel in my body when it's getting better and when it's getting worse without any thought. There's very little thinking involved in the process. The thinking comes after. It's like if you make something that's good or something happens that's good. The first experience of it is this feeling of excitement, joy, laughter. You have an emotional reaction first and then like the story with why was I crying? You then try to understand it intellectually what's making me lean forward, what's making me want to rewind it and listen to it again. What makes me want to, when I'm walking in the museum, go back and look at that painting again. Why do I like that one? But that comes after first. It's just the experience and I think the meditation really helped with the experience. Part of being able to be in my body and be aware of what's going on around me.
- [46:20]
Stephen J. Dubner
Where did the 14 year old version of you find meditation in a pre Internet world?
- [46:25]
Rick Rubin
It was a miracle. My neck hurt when I was in school and my parents brought me to see my pediatrician who was the doctor who delivered me, who happened to be a hip doctor in the 70s and he said oh, your neck hurts in school, that's stress. I think you need to learn to meditate. And we researched how we could learn to meditate. And there was a person teaching Transcendental meditation in my town. And I learned TM when I was 14.
- [46:54]
Stephen J. Dubner
Wow. My mom was kind of out there when I was a kid. She also taught me to meditate, but it didn't stick with me. My mom was weird when I was growing up. And so I think if the source had been my pediatrician, I might have been more open to it.
- [47:06]
Rick Rubin
In my case, I wasn't rebelling against anything at that point in time. I knew that the Beatles meditated and I loved the Beatles. So if it was good enough for the Beatles, it was good enough for me.
- [47:19]
Stephen J. Dubner
I'm going to tell a story now that I fear will offend my audience, which I believe to be full of rational minded, scientific folks. But I think it's very consistent with the point that you make over and over in the book, which is about listening to the universe. And I'm using my own words, not yours, but I think I'm saying something in line with what you believe, which is that if one can adopt a mindset of openness, of simply watching and absorbing what's swirling around you, the answers are out there, they're given to you. You just have to be watching for them so you can recognize them when they come. And some way or another, I found myself incredibly open during graduate school. And I felt like the ideas were just finding me. And as one example, I remember I was in the basement of a bookstore in Harvard Square and I can still clearly visualize the entire scene, even though it took place 30 years ago. There was a table of books with remainders on it, the discount books that hadn't sold. And I picked up a political science book. I had no interest in political science. And I opened to a random page and I read a paragraph and an idea popped in my head. But not just an idea. The entire research paper essentially revealed itself to me, whole cloth. Now, this is. Even though I had literally never thought about this problem before. And the paper turned out almost exactly as I imagined it in that first moment. And it gave me completely the wrong idea about doing research. I thought, wow, this is easy. If that's what it means to do research, it's easy. Only two or three times in my whole life have I had that experience where an idea just came to me and wrote itself. To a scientist, there might be other explanations, but to me it has always felt like what you're writing about in the book about almost being a vehicle for ideas coming through me, as opposed to being the creator of the ideas.
- [49:12]
Rick Rubin
If you talk to people who make creative things on a regular basis, most of them will tell you that it happens. The way I describe and the way you just described this is in no way unique, in no way. The fact that that happened to you and the fact that that happened to me, does that make us special. That's not what it is. That's how the world works. You can choose not to believe it, and you don't get the benefit. What's the Raoul Dahl quote? Those who don't believe in magic will never find it.
- [49:45]
Stephen J. Dubner
I'm embarrassed to admit to you now, in the middle of this conversation, that somehow along the way, this openness I had in grad school, it just disappeared completely. And I feel like for the last 10 or 15 years that I was doing academics, all I could do was talk. I couldn't listen to anything, much less to the universe. Reading your book, I suddenly stopped in my tracks in so much of what you were describing about the process of creating art without even really realizing it. That's exactly what I try to do when I make this podcast. I start with a huge pile of raw material, the things I can learn about my guest. And then I really try to feel who my guest is and how a conversation might play out. And I have this lofty goal of somehow making a connection with my guest. And while at some level I hope the audience likes it, for me, it's really about creating a little moment in time between me and the guest that feels special. And every once in a while, it happens. It's a really magical feeling for me. And I've never in my entire life considered myself an artist. I absolutely cannot draw. I cannot sing, I cannot play an instrument. I can't dance.
- [51:04]
Rick Rubin
I.
- [51:05]
Stephen J. Dubner
But somewhere towards the end of your book, I broke out in this big smile, and I thought, maybe I am an artist and this podcast is my canvas.
- [51:14]
Rick Rubin
It's beautiful. We tell ourselves stories that are just stories. We tell ourselves what we can't do and the nature of us being here. Every day, we're making incredible creative decisions. That's what being a human on the planet is. And the better our decisions, the more interesting life gets. And sometimes the bad decisions lead to a very interesting chapter that we bounce back from. You know, the failure teaches us something that we need to know to allow the next success to really work.
- [51:49]
Stephen J. Dubner
You have an interesting point in the book about being, like a spectator to your own failures.
- [51:56]
Rick Rubin
Imagine that you're watching a movie and when something tragic happens to you, imagine you're seeing this happen to a character in a film. When it happens to a character in a film, it'll make you feel bad, but it's different than when you're in it. And when it happens in the movie, you can look at it and go, wow, how is our hero gonna get out of this? And if we can put ourselves in that place of zooming out and not being in the pain of the moment, but letting go of it, and imagine seeing the movie and wondering, wow, where's this gonna lead? What's gonna happen next?
- [52:48]
Stephen J. Dubner
Of the guests I talked to, many of them, I think, lose their passion for something along the way. Many of them have an insatiable appetite to just keep on doing more and more. Where do you fall in that continuum? Are you feeling like you're full right now or still really hungry and empty?
- [53:06]
Rick Rubin
It's so much fun making things. I've spent more time recently focusing on, in addition to music things, doing more visual projects, and I'm enjoying that. But it's that feeling of something not being good and watching it turn into something good. It's thrilling to be in the presence of that happening. And I'm patient. A lot of the time I'll be in the recording studio and we're sitting around and it's just kind of like, well, it's okay. It's not so good. And then all of a sudden, something changes and no one knows what it is. That's the other part of it. It's not like somebody had the good idea and that fixed everything. It doesn't really work like that. It just sort of evolves into something great. That's the subtlety involved in it. Going from mediocre to mind blowing. No one in the room knows what changed, but all of a sudden it's undeniable. It's just great to feel.
- [54:10]
Steve Levitt
There was a lot in Rick Rubin's book that spoke to me, but if there's one big message, one that I would love for you to carry away, it's something.
- [54:17]
Stephen J. Dubner
Early in the book he writes, creativity.
- [54:20]
Steve Levitt
Is not a rare ability. It's not difficult to access. Creativity is a fundamental aspect of being human. It's our birthright, and it's for all of us.
- [54:29]
Rick Rubin
I think that's so true.
- [54:31]
Steve Levitt
I meet so many people hobbled by the limiting belief that they're not creative. It makes me think about one of the first PhD students I had when.
- [54:38]
Constant Contact Advertiser
I came to the University of Chicago.
- [54:40]
Stephen J. Dubner
He was in his fifth year and.
- [54:41]
Steve Levitt
He was working on a terrible project with no potential at all.
- [54:45]
Stephen J. Dubner
When I first met him, I asked.
- [54:47]
Steve Levitt
Him how he picked that project. One of my other advisors suggested, don't you have any ideas of your own? I asked. He said, I'm just not very creative. So I responded, look, I don't believe you. How about you take some time, just focus on ideas, Come back in a week with your three best ideas. So he came back in a week and two of his three ideas were phenomenal ideas I would have loved to have come up with. He turned those ideas into great research papers and he's never stopped generating ideas since. He's tenured now at one of the world's best law schools. Like so many people, all he needed was just to have a little belief in himself. Since we were replaying his episode, I reached out to Rick to see what project he's most excited about right now.
- [55:33]
Rick Rubin
Hey man, hope all is well. Since we spoke last, I'm sending a link to the project that hijacked most of my time for the last few months. It's called the Way of the Timeless Art of Vibe Coding. One aspect of it is an introduction to interactive art using Vibe Coding. Feel free to share it with your friends. For some reason, the online hive mind drafted me into the Vibe coding explosion caught me completely by surprise. My choices were to ignore it or accept the invitation to participate. I decided the most interesting way in was to write a book on Vibe coding. Keep in mind, at the time, I didn't know what Vibe Coding was. The Way of Code is based on Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, a 3,000 year old wisdom text. We've also been creating experiential practices based on the philosophy in the Creative act, and we share those weekly on Substack. We're also working on adding a couple of more music channels to the tetragrammaton.com website. If you haven't checked it out, it's worth your time. Let's speak again soon. Peace.
- [56:44]
Steve Levitt
Next week we're back with a brand new episode featuring Harvard economist Stephanie Stancheva. She's the most recent winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, given annually to the most distinguished economist under the age of 40. As always, thanks for listening and we'll.
- [56:59]
Stephen J. Dubner
See you back soon.
- [57:02]
Podcast Host/Announcer
People I mostly admire is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network, which also includes Freakonomics Radio and the Economics of Everyday Things. All our shows are produced by Stitcher and Renbud Radio. This episode was produced by Morgan Levy with help from Lyric Bowditch. It was mixed by Jasmine Klinger. Our theme music was composed by Louise Guerra. We can be reached@pimaeconomics.com that's P I M A at Freakonomics. Thanks for listening.
- [57:44]
Rick Rubin
What's the Raoul Dahl quote? See if I can remember it.
- [57:55]
Podcast Host/Announcer
The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.
- [58:03]
Rick Rubin
Stitcher.