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Oct. 12, 2022 - The Joe Rogan Experience

03:02:04

Joe Rogan Experience #1881 - Rick Rubin

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joe rogan

01:08:57

rick rubin

01:42:38

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jamie vernon

00:04

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Speaker	Time	Text
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The Joe Rogan Experience Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day Rick Rubin, ladies and gentlemen It's a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Same.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Happy to be here.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm happy to have you here, man.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm excited to talk to you.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Beautiful place.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
		And if you see shooting stars across the ceiling, you're not tripping.
		Every, like, 40 seconds or something.
		Star shoots across the ceiling.
		So what's happening, man?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Just hanging.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You wrote a book.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I wrote a book.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm excited to read it, man.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm excited for you to see it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You've had a wild life, brother.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It continues to surprise me on a regular basis.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Every time.
		It's like one thing after another.
		So much of it's unintentional.
		I would say all of it's unintentional.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How so?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		From the beginning, I never thought any of the things that I'm doing were possible or realistic.
		And I just did things out of the love of them, thinking I would have real jobs.
		That my passion would be my hobby, and I'd have a job to support my hobby.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And it just magically turned out different than that without me knowing it was possible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the best kind of story.
		I love those stories.
		Because when someone just follows their passion and it just leads them to being one of the baddest motherfuckers in music.
		How did you get started?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I just started making...
		I went to...
		I was in a punk rock band first, and I recorded a couple of punk rock things with my band and liked the feeling of being in the studio.
		It was fun.
		And hip-hop was just getting started at this time.
		And I would go to...
		There was a club called Negril on 2nd Avenue in Manhattan downtown.
		It was a reggae club most nights, but one night a week it was hip-hop.
		And this was when hip-hop was...
		It didn't really exist other than in the Bronx, Brooklyn.
		And it was this tiny little scene of people playing music in parks, really.
		It was not a...
		It's hard to explain how small it was, how much of a sub-genre it was in these days.
		So the fact that you could see it downtown was a big deal because it didn't really exist anywhere.
		You didn't hear this music in clubs.
		And there were very few at this time 12-inch singles would come out.
		And there would be, I don't know, I don't know if there were more than 30 or 40 rap songs in the world at this point in time.
		But there were these clubs where stuff would happen.
		And at this club that I went to called Negril, what you would normally only be able to see at a club in Harlem, like there was a club called Broadway International and there was a club called the Disco Fever, was brought downtown and people downtown could see it.
		So I started going every Tuesday night.
		That's when I was going to NYU. And I just loved the music.
		And then...
		I would buy every 12-inch single that would come out when it would come out, and none of them sounded like what it sounded like at the club.
		It wasn't related at all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How so?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Live, it was much more of a raw...
		It was like DJs and breakbeats, and it was harder...
		Whereas the record sounded more like an R&B record, but with somebody rapping on it.
		But it wasn't what we know as rap today.
		That's not what those records sounded like.
		They were live bands.
		They were made by people who made other kinds of music.
		So they made them the same way they made other kinds of music when hip-hop was really different.
		So I started making hip-hop records really with the idea of I just wanted, as a fan, to hear what it sounded like in a club.
		So it was almost like a documentarian style.
		And I would just start documenting what I heard and making things that sounded more like the energy of a club, which was, again, different than these slick records.
		And part of it was because I didn't know what I was doing.
		I didn't have any training or skill, but that allowed...
		That was what...
		What allowed it to be new was it wasn't doing it the regular way.
		It was doing it the way of hip hop, which didn't yet exist.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so how did you get in with the artists and start producing stuff?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I started meeting them.
		My favorite group at the time was called Treacherous Three.
		And they were on a label called Sugar Hill.
		They had put out three 12-inch singles that I loved.
		Those were the best 12-inch...
		They still sounded like R&B records, but they were the best of the rap records you could get at this time.
		Those first three came out on Enjoy records.
		They had a red label.
		And then they signed to Sugar Hill.
		And when they signed to Sugar Hill, they put out an album, and it didn't sound—it wasn't good like the ones on Enjoy.
		And then one night, Treacherous Three were playing at that club, Negril, and I met them after the show.
		Kumo D was the lead rapper, you'd say.
		And I went to Kumo D and just said—and again, I don't know anything about the music business.
		I don't know anything about what anyone does.
		I don't know that there's such a job as a producer.
		I don't know any of this.
		I just said, you know, I'm your biggest fan, and your new album doesn't sound like what's good about you guys, and let's work together to try to make something that's as good as you guys are.
		And he said, well, we're signing Sugar Hill, we can't really do that, but...
		You should talk to Special K, another member of the group.
		He's got a brother, T LaRock, who's a really good rapper, and you could do it with him.
		I was like, okay.
		And that was the first record I made was T LaRock.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so did they recognize once they heard that sound that, yeah, this is more like what we're doing in the clubs?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It ended up getting very popular.
		It took a long time.
		Probably took 10 months to really...
		Have impact in the New York scene.
		And it did.
		It was a really popular song.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was the difference in the way you were doing the sound versus the way the sound was?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		We could listen to it.
		If you listen to it, you'll hear the difference.
		I can describe it, but if you listen to it, you'll really understand.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		OK. Tell Jamie what to pull up.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		OK. So a typical rap record at that time would have been Curtis Blow The Breaks.
		So if you listen to that, you'll hear what rap sounded like.
		And then after that, we'll listen to T La Rock It's Yours and you'll hear the difference.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		OK. Jamie will find it.
		So this to you.
		And how old were you at the time?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Just starting first or second year of school, whatever age that is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		1920?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Something like that.
unidentified		Wow.
		Clap your hands, everybody, if you've got what it takes.
		Cause I'm Curtis Blow and I want you to know that these are the Braves Brakes in a bus, brakes on a car, brakes to make you a superstar Brakes to win and brakes to lose.
		Please hear brakes throughout your shoes.
		And these are the brakes.
		Break it up, break it up, break it up!
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		You hear guitar, you hear bass, you hear drums, and it's a band playing, and it sounds like it's at a party, and then there's rapping on top of that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And now play, It's Yours.
unidentified		Mmm.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		This is just a drum machine.
unidentified		This is just a drum machine.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Now you haven't really heard that on records yet because it was what would happen live.
		The DJs were the musicians, but to people who made other kinds of music, the DJs were only playing back a band, so they assumed the record's supposed to be a band playing.
		And my assumption was that's not what it was.
		It was the DJ playing a drum machine and playing parts of records that that's what was exciting.
		That was the music of hip hop.
		The rapping on top could be the same, but the music of it was different.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Who was the first person that started scratching?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know that much about it, but I believe it was DJ Kool Herc is considered the inventor, but I'm not sure if that's true.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm not the best person to ask.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What a wild idea.
		And revolutionary.
		It changed the way people thought about music, particularly hip-hop music.
		It became part of it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It comes out of the idea of the break, starting with the break.
		The break is, you have a song that has all different parts in it, a traditional song, but there's one little part in it that has a cool drum beat.
		Or a cool little percussion part.
		And what a DJ would do in those days was they would play just that little snippet of the song, might be four seconds, and they would have two turntables, and they'd play four seconds here, and then four seconds here, and then four seconds here, and four seconds here, to create a longer piece out of this four-second loop.
		But there was no such thing as a sampler then, so it only happened through live playing it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then when did people figure out sampling?
		A lot of times sampling was maligned, right, in the early days.
		People didn't sort of understand.
		They were like, oh, you're taking other people's music.
		But it was not just that.
		It was a creation of new music with samples.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's a long conversation.
		The first part of sampling is...
		The way it was used in hip hop in the early days, I was saying we would use a snippet of a record and then sometimes we would even create a tape loop.
		So you would take a little piece of music on tape and then have it come back around and you'd edit it and splice it.
		And there's at least one song on the first Beastie Boys album that uses that technique.
		But it was about extending these pieces of music to create something new.
		And hip-hop from the beginning was always a form of montage.
		It was finding things and making something new out of it.
		It wasn't finding things to make it sound like it sounded.
		It was finding something and changing it into something new.
		That's what was exciting about it.
		And this montage process is the basis of hip-hop.
		And up until the time of It's Yours, we didn't really hear it on the records because people still were making records using traditional methods, non-hip-hop methods.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Did you get a sense, like, while this was all happening, of how that was—this is like a completely new music genre.
		This is a whole new music scene.
		Like, it must have been very exciting.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was—being part of it was very exciting, and loving it was exciting, and there was a disconnect between that and the outside world.
		Because the outside world didn't recognize it, didn't even recognize it as music, much less something that was good, you know, like that could be good.
		It was viewed as this other thing, not music.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Other thing?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's how it was described.
		I can remember being in, um, once Def Jam happened and we started having a lot of success putting out music, and I'm still probably at NYU, um...
		Labels would come around and want to be involved in one way or another, and one label asks, like, what do you attribute the success of this to?
		After all, it's not music.
		Now, these are people in the music business who are wooing us, wanting to work with us, and they're telling us they don't hear it as music.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That doesn't even make sense today, right?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		The world has changed.
		The world has changed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But it was a completely alien underground form of music.
		And because people were rapping instead of singing, that was one piece that wasn't understandable.
		And then because the music was like...
		It's yours, where it's a drum machine, there's no melody, there's no...
		It was too foreign at that point in time for people to understand it as songs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's hard to...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's shocking.
		It's ridiculous.
		And in some ways, like, there's a song I produced with Run DMC and Aerosmith, Walk This Way.
		And the whole purpose of doing that...
		Was to demonstrate, this is music.
		This is music and this is, not only is it music, it's familiar music.
		You're just not, you're not seeing it.
		Like you're somehow removed from what's happening.
		But it's easy to see if you, so again, if you create a demonstration.
		So that's what Walk This Way was, was I looked for a song that was familiar.
		And that the way it was written in the original version, the Aerosmith version, the phrasing of it was essentially a rap record.
		The verses are...
		It's not melodic.
		It's all about the phrasing.
		That's how rap works.
		And the beat, you know, the intro, was already a known breakbeat in the hip-hop world.
		They had never heard...
		In hip-hop club, no one had heard of Aerosmith.
		No one had heard of Walk This Way, but they knew the Toys in the Attic break, which was just that beat, not the song.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Let's listen to that.
		Can we play the intro to Aerosmith's Walk This Way?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I remember when you did that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I remember that being a very polarizing song.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because people didn't know what to think.
		It's like some people thought you were ruining Walk This Way by adding Run DMC. And some people were like, why do you have Run DMC with rock and roll?
		It doesn't make any sense.
unidentified		Just that long.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That piece is the Toys in the Attic break.
		Because it says Toys in the Attic on the record.
		Just that.
		So that was...
		So if you went to a hip-hop club, you might hear that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But I grew up on Aerosmith, and I grew up on ACDC, and I grew up on Ted Nugent.
		I grew up on rock and roll music.
		And when I saw this disconnect...
		This was the way to bridge the gap, just to explain what was happening.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How was it received in the music business when you did that?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I guess the first thing was radio.
		I remember, I guess it was WBCN in Boston.
		Played it once.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Mark Parenteau?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I can't remember if it was Mark Parenteau.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Who else was there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Charles Laquadera?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		No, tell me another name.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		God, that's hard to remember.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Like DJs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The Morning Mattress was Charles Laquadera and Afternoons was Mark Parenteau.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't know that it was either of them, but it might have been.
		Again, I don't remember.
		I just remember that BCN played the song, and it was a big deal also because it was a rock station playing a hip-hop record.
		And I remember that there was this outrage from the audience, you know, take that garbage off.
		And then within a few days, it was the most requested song on the station.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow!
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so it was like it definitely divided the audience.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But the best things do.
		That's what's really exciting.
		When you hear something new and you don't have a reference for it, your first reaction might be to push it away.
		I remember the first time I heard the Ramones when I was in probably junior high school.
		And I heard the Ramones and that was the first really punk rock fast music I ever heard.
		I don't think there was any before the Ramones.
		So if you're used to hearing normal tempo rock and roll and then you hear the Ramones, I just laughed.
		It just seemed like a joke.
		You know, it just seemed ridiculous.
		And then eventually it became my favorite thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How did Aerosmith react?
		Did you come to Aerosmith and try to bring it to them?
		Did the label come to them?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I just had the idea of doing the song and recording the song with Run DMC, and then the label said, why don't we reach out to Aerosmith and ask if they would participate?
		I was like, that sounds crazy to me, but if they'll do it, obviously I'd love it.
		You know, I loved that band growing up.
		They were one of my favorite bands growing up.
		So that seemed like a dream.
		And then they came and we did it.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That was a groundbreaking moment in music.
		It really was.
		If you really stop and think about all the ripples that came out of that particular song, that song introduced so many people to hip-hop, and I'm sure so many hip-hop fans to rock and roll and Run-DMC. Absolutely.
		You know, combining with Aerosmith is like the perfect combination.
		Two iconic bands.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But also at that point in time, Aerosmith had fallen on hard times.
		I remember I saw Aerosmith play at Nassau Coliseum, sold out, incredible show.
		And then six months later, Aerosmith were playing at a club on Long Island called Speaks, which was like a...
		It was like where the cover bands would play.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Six months?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Six months.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What happened?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I don't really know.
		I think maybe Joe Perry left the band, which was part of it.
		But I don't know how you can go from that popular to in this new condition that quickly.
		But it happened.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's wild.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I wasn't aware that that had happened.
		That doesn't even make sense that something like that can happen in six months.
		Nassau Coliseum, which is like- Sold out.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		20,000, 18,000 something.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ, to a club.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, maybe a 600-person club, like a big club, but still a club.
		A big fall.
		A big fall.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In six months.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, really quick.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So was it a scandal when Joe Perry left?
		Is that what it was?
		Was it like everyone was upset?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I really don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they did that, and then did that song bring them back?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That song brought them back.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Holy shit.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		They had actually put out an album called Done With Mirrors, which was like their comeback album before Walk This Way, and that was not well received.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And then Walk This Way came out, and then it both broke Run DMC in a mainstream way and re-broke Aerosmith as a mainstream group.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		So then what happens with you after that?
		That song obviously is this giant smash and things just start happening then?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Things start happening right from the beginning.
		Honestly, the whole thing was miraculous because I'm working in this form of music that people don't think is music, nobody likes and nobody cares about other than the 200 people at the Negril Club that I would go to.
		And then...
		Bit by bit.
		The first album I produced was LL Cool J. He was 16 at the time.
		And the way I met LL was because of the It's Yours record, the Teela Rock record that we listened to, it had Def Jam Recordings' name and the address, Five University Place, which was my dorm room at NYU. And we started getting demo tapes to the dorm room.
		And Adam Horowitz from the Beastie Boys was listening to all of the demo tapes, and he found the LL tapes.
		Like, you should listen to this one.
		And we listened to it, and it made us really laugh, and we liked it.
		And so much of it has to do with humor.
		Like, when it's good, it makes you laugh, even if it's not funny.
		You know, like the...
		The surprise nature of things.
		When you hear the unexpected, you laugh.
		And it feels good.
		It's a good feeling.
		And I remember we laughed a lot at LL's...
		As a matter of fact, on LL's demo tape, the first thing he said before he started his demo rap was he said, Let me clear my throat.
		And then he started rapping.
		But he only said that because he turned on the recorder before he started rapping.
		But it wasn't supposed to be part of it.
		And we just thought it was the funniest thing.
		Let me clear my throat.
		And then on the Beastie Boys record, we have a song.
		We're in the middle of the song.
		We stop the song.
		And AdRoc says, let me clear my throat.
		And it's really based on hearing it, just this funny thing that didn't really make sense.
		Complete inside joke.
		And so we were making these things that were completely insider, personal, no expectation, right?
		You know, there was no expectation that anybody would like any of the things we were making outside of our small group of friends.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what you were doing, too, was that's a completely unique way of making music.
		That really didn't exist before.
		Like having, like, not just having samples, but having things like that.
		Pausing in the middle of a song, let me clear my throat.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was definitely odd.
		It was very free.
		Yeah, free is the great word.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the great word.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Very free.
		It was experimental.
		And it was intended to be fun and exciting and hard and all the things that we liked in music, but again...
		With no potential upside, no expectation that it was for anyone else.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, speaking of experimental, Paul's Boutique is one of my favorite albums ever.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's incredible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's fucking great.
		And that was such a radical shift.
		From the first album.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		I didn't produce Paul's Boutique.
		That's what's different about it.
		Radically different.
		And miraculously beautiful.
		Beautiful album.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, just completely different kind of music.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it speaks to the sort of freedom of that time.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		People would take these wild chances like that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I remember I was with Chuck D at the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles.
		And we got an advance of Paul's Boutique, and we listened to it together, and our minds were blown.
		We're just like, this is the future.
		It was so good, and we loved it.
		And then it came out, and it ended up not being, at the time, it was not wildly successful.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that was strange to me at the time, because I don't understand why people aren't loving this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is so interesting.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		So good.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		So good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's just like, I think then, is that what happens?
		It's like now there's like a form that people accept for hip-hop.
		There's like a form that people accept for a certain band at that time.
		And then Paul's Boutique comes along and it's like, well now we're going to try something even wilder.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's always been the case that people come to expect, or the audience comes to expect a certain thing, and if you veer outside of those lines, it's often not well received.
		An example also, even Public Enemy, when we put out the first Public Enemy record, None of the—at this point in time, there were already stations playing rap music, like Master Mix shows on WBLS and KTU would be like Saturday night.
		They'd be playing rap music.
		But they wouldn't play Public Enemy.
		They would play the instrumental versions.
		They wouldn't play Chuck's vocals, because he didn't sound like the other MCs at that time.
		And he even has a line on the second Public Enemy album about, some say no to the album, the show, Bum Rush the Sounds, I made a year ago.
		It's like, last time you played the music, this time you'll play the lyrics.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Mmm.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't know why anybody would listen to Chuck D and not think it was fucking awesome.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's incredible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that crazy that someone would think that his lyrics or his voice is not good?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's insane.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's insane.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's iconic.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But it was just new.
		It was new.
		And what he was talking about was new.
		So...
		It just wasn't what was in the culture at the time.
		But often the best things.
		I remember at the time that LL came out, another record came out called Roxanne Roxanne by a group called UTFO. And UTFO was a much bigger hit than LL's song.
		But over time, the consistency of LL's artistry Bypassed UTFO. But sometimes, like, the thing that catches on isn't the...
		It's a short-term thing, you know?
		It's a short-term taste.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		One of the things that I found interesting about hip-hop was I can really remember this clearly because the first time I listened to N.W.A., I was on a treadmill.
		Or a stair climber machine.
		And I was in Boston.
		And I was like, this is fucking crazy.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's incredible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, these guys are...
		It was so wild and so violent and so hard.
		I remember thinking, like, holy shit, this is popular?
		I remember thinking, this kind of music is going to have, like, ramifications on society.
		You know, because it was so powerful.
		And, like, shocking.
		Like, I'd never heard that kind of violence and that extreme lyrics and just their depictions of real life in South Central L.A. And, I mean, it really ignited this completely new branch of hip-hop in a lot of ways.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		It was...
		I had...
		Pretty much left hip-hop at that point in time.
		Once hip-hop...
		So when we started doing the stuff we were doing, hip-hop didn't really exist.
		And then all of a sudden it got popular.
		And once it got popular, it felt like the community changed.
		And it wasn't people getting into it out of love for hip-hop or wanting to continue pushing the boundaries of what was creatively possible.
		It just started all sounding like records we had already made.
		And it just wasn't interesting.
		It felt like derivative.
		Everything was derivative at this point.
		So I started producing other, produced Slayer and Danzig, different kinds of music that felt more challenging to me in that moment, that just spoke to me more.
		And then I heard NWA. Actually, it was Eazy-E. NWA hadn't recorded yet.
		There was the Eazy-E album, which is the first album from Dre in the sound of what became NWA. Yeah.
		And it blew my mind.
		And I went to California to meet with them, and I actually visited in the studio when they were recording Straight Outta Compton album.
unidentified		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, incredible.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's fascinating, too, that this new thing emerges, and then people just imitate the pattern of success, like whatever the successful pattern of that music.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It wasn't out of...
		Artistry.
		It was out of, oh, this works.
		Let's do what works.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And for someone like you, like, you seem to go on feel a lot.
		Or just, like, what resonates with you?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's it.
		Everything I do is just personal taste.
		And it's what the book's about, is, like, really for people to trust, artists to trust in themselves, make something that speaks to themselves.
		And hopefully someone else will like it, but you can't second-guess your own taste for what someone else is going to like.
		It won't be good.
		We're not smart enough to know what someone else is going to like.
		You know, to make something, well, I don't really like it, but I think this group of people like it.
		It's a bad way to play the game of music or art.
		You have to do what's personal to you, take it as far as you could go, really push the boundaries, and...
		People will resonate with it if they're supposed to resonate with it, but you can't get there the other way.
		The other way is a dead-end path.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When artists are not successful yet though, it's very difficult for them to find who they are because they're always just trying to figure out what's the path to success.
		Where success seems to be the carrot at the end of the stick.
		It's like there's always this something, you know, these guys have all this money, these guys have all these cars and these big houses, how do I get that?
		How do I get success?
		How do I fill up an arena?
		How do I become successful?
		And so there's this temptation towards imitation.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's a dangerous path.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And if you're getting into this business for that outcome, if that's the reason you're doing it, chances are it's not going to work out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Most of the time.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's not what makes it great is the personal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		With all of its imperfections, with all of its quirkiness, that's what makes it great.
		How you see the world that's different from how everyone else sees the world, That's why you're an artist.
		That's your purpose in sharing your work with the world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that seems to be the case with everything, with literature.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's definitely the case with stand-up comedy.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Everything.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We experience that in stand-up comedy where there's these kind of derivative voices where they're kind of like finding what they think other people want to hear and they start saying it because they've heard other people say similar things that are now successful.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And even if they have some sort of a short-term success doing that, it's not revolutionary.
		It doesn't change the world.
		It doesn't last.
		It can be a momentary thing.
		But it's never the thing.
		It's the people who you first see and you might not like that you come to like.
		Because you don't understand them at first.
		Those are the ones that changed the world.
		Those are the ones that you dedicate your fandom to for life.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I remember when Cypress Hill came out.
		At first, I was like, man, I don't know about this.
		You know, that nasally voice that Be Real had.
		I was like, I don't know about this.
		And then within like six months, they were like my favorite.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's so good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So good.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		His voice is so good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And it was also like one of the first cannabis-infused kinds of music.
		You know, they were so not just cannabis-inspired, but they would sing about it.
		They would rap about it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And also Snoop as well would lean into that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then The Chronic, of course.
		Literally the cover of the album.
		There was something about or there is something about someone like that that is completely unique.
		I think what you said, you said perfectly.
		That's what changes things and that's what lasts.
		Whereas something that's derivative or someone's just trying to do things that they think other people are going to buy that's going to be successful.
		You might start out that way and hopefully you can deviate and find your own voice, but if you don't, you can't keep imitating.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and who cares?
		It's a waste of your life.
		If your goal is to make money, Go work on Wall Street.
		Do something else where you get...
		There are ways to make money.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it's more of that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But if you're going to do it in art, it's different.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it's attention.
		I think they want the money, yes, but they also want to be stars.
		I think that's the thing.
		That's the real carrot.
		It's like the money is...
		That's big.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		You see the other side, too.
		There are so many artists who are...
		Shy, private people.
		And it's difficult for them to deal with any kind of success or fame.
		It's a weird world.
		And even the ones who think they want that when it actually happens...
		It's a shocking...
		It's not what it's cracked up to be.
		Obviously, there are great perks.
		It's nice to be successful.
		And there are things that happen when you're successful that you're not expecting, and things become a lot more complicated in your life.
		It can shrink your life to the point of, you know, I know some rock stars over the years who literally never left their house or did anything.
		Tom Petty would be a great example.
		The only thing Tom Petty did was record music, tour, watch television, read books.
		He wouldn't go out to dinner.
		He wouldn't go anywhere because if he went out, someone would be, oh, it's Tom Petty.
		And it just made him uncomfortable.
unidentified		It was too weird.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And for the people who really buy into it, who like that, that can do a whole other trip.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, like in wrestling, they say, living the gimmick.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Yeah, that happens with comics, too.
		You lean into your audience.
		You lean into what you think that they want to hear, and then you become them.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		How do you stay true to your voice as a comedian through success, through the ups and downs of doing it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		How do you stay true to what you're doing?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One thing I do is I don't read anything that anybody says about me.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Great.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That helps.
		And two is I spend a lot of time alone.
		I spend a lot of time alone.
		I do almost all my working out alone, all the sauna time and cold plunge and writing.
		I spend a lot of time just thinking.
		And not thinking about what people think about me.
		Just thinking about what I like, what's interesting.
		I think one of the things that really tempers me or keeps me sane is the workouts because they're so brutal and they're so hard that everything else is easy.
		And I think that's something that's missing from a lot of people's lives where you deal with the anxiety of fame and celebrity and just the attention and all the demands on you.
		And it's kind of overwhelming.
		And if all you're doing all day is like dreading those experiences, like if you're Tom Petty and you're hiding in your house, you're dreading going to dinner or dreading going out.
		Then those moments do become too big to deal with.
		And then you just want to get away as quickly as possible and go back to your house.
		You know, I mean, you see it in people that become famous.
		You know, as I've become friends with more and more famous people, you see the...
		And they're always, like, asking questions of other people that are also famous.
		Like, how do you deal with it?
		Like, what is your solution?
		And I think my solution is the best one for me.
		I think psychedelic drugs help a lot.
		It's just these big resets.
		These big resets where you're like, okay, this is all bullshit.
		Like all this little weird game you're involved in with life and society and culture.
		It's fun and it's great and it's meaningful and it's fun for other people, but it's kind of bullshit.
		Because the real thing is so much weirder and so much greater.
		And it's everything is connected in some very bizarre and unseen way.
		And that humbling experience of the psychedelic connection is also a nice way to just check you.
		Just put it back into perspective.
		But for day-to-day, you can't really just trip balls day-to-day.
		It would just be too weird.
		So day-to-day for me, it's the workouts.
		It's doing things you don't want to do and doing them rigorously.
		And then when you get over it, there's also these physical changes that happen.
		The endorphin releases and the alleviation of anxiety, which I think is critical to being able to manage those states of fame.
		But you also got to have perspective and realize like, hey man, this is just what comes with it.
		But the most important thing is like, hey, you're getting to do what you want to do, which for me as a kid, you know, starting out doing stand-up when I was 21, it was like this impossible idea.
		The impossible idea was just being a professional.
		Like, God, wouldn't it be great to not have a job?
		Just to be able to get money from stand-up?
		It seems impossible.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		How did it start for you, stand-up?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		How did you know that that was your path there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just open mic night.
		You know, my good friend Steve Graham, who was an ophthalmologist at the time and a flight surgeon, incredible guy that I'm still good friends with to this day, he's the one who talked me into it.
		He's the guy I did martial arts with.
		And he was like, you really should be a comedian.
unidentified		Because you were funny in real life?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		We would all have to spar, and everybody would be really nervous, and I would make everybody laugh.
		I'd do an impression of one of our friends, and I'd just be talking shit.
		Or we would be going to a tournament, which was really scary.
		So we'd all be on a bus together somewhere.
		And, you know, it was like all these guys going to go fight.
		And I would be the one that made everybody laugh.
		It was like gallows humor.
		And I would love it.
		I loved all the attention of getting everybody to laugh.
		So I would be the funny one.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And it was healing because you made everybody feel better and it served a purpose.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It did.
		It was a giant relief bout.
		I was just releasing all the gas in the room and everybody would laugh.
		And it was like a break from the tension.
		And at the time I was like 16, 17 years old.
		And then when I was 19, Steve was like, you really should be a comedian.
		I was like, come on, man.
		You think I'm funny because you like me.
		I go, other people are going to think I'm an asshole.
		And plus, this is like Boston, conservative, late 80s, early, you know, like the late 80s people were fucking pretty conservative about like what they thought was funny.
		And until Kinison came along.
		And then Kinison came along in 86. And that was right at the time when I started to consider it because I was, it's a funny story, I probably told this on the podcast before, but I was working at the Boston Athletic Club, which was a fitness club in South Boston.
		And I was like a trainer.
		I was teaching people how to lift weights.
		And there was this girl, I think she was a volleyball player.
		She was like big, like she was like 5'11", like really athletic, big personality.
		She was hilarious.
		She was really funny.
		And she worked the front desk.
		And she knew that I loved comedy.
		And she said to me, you gotta see this comedian.
		I saw him last night on HBO. And she takes me outside to the parking lot to tell me, like, because the bits were so outrageous.
		She didn't want to do them in the lobby.
		She takes me out in the parking lot.
		She's like, and this fucking guy is doing this bit.
		About homosexual necrophiliacs who are paying money to spend all this time with the freshest male corpses.
		And so he's like lying down.
		She lies down on the street, on the asphalt in the parking lot.
		And she's like, I'm lying there thinking, okay, I'm dead now.
		I'm going to be with Jesus.
		Like, oh!
unidentified		Hey!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What is this?
unidentified		It feels like some guy's got his dick in my ass!
unidentified		You mean life keeps fucking in the ass even after you're dead?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It never ends!
unidentified		It never ends!
		Ow!
		Ow!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She is making me howl with laughter in a parking lot!
		It's just me and her.
		She's just reciting Sam Kinison.
		And I remember thinking, what?
		That is crazy!
		And I was laughing so...
		And I had to find Sam Kinison.
		And so I got a cassette.
		I think it was like a VHS cassette.
		And I think it was at like Blockbuster or one of them type of video stores.
		And I brought it back to my apartment.
		And I remember watching it thinking, holy shit.
		This is comedy?
		Because I thought comedy was Jerry Seinfeld, comedy was Richard Pryor.
		I wasn't those guys.
		And I would watch Evening the Improv or The Tonight Show and these guys would have the blazers on with the rolled up sleeves and like, I gotta dress like that.
		But it wasn't me.
		I saw Kenneth and I was like, that's comedy?
		And that's when I started to listen to Steve.
		I was like, maybe I could be a comedian.
		Because if that wild shit could be comedy?
		Because I was just too wild.
		I mean, I never could keep a real job.
		I was super undisciplined with everything other than martial arts.
		And all I was doing was I traveled around the country trying to kick people unconscious.
		That's what I was doing.
		I mean, that's what my life was.
		So to me, my life was so extreme and so filled with violence and so wild that this stayed sort of sedate existence of like, did you ever notice?
		There was none of that in me.
		So Kinison was the first thing that I saw.
		I was like, wow.
		Maybe I could do comedy.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's amazing.
		And so much humor comes out of the extreme pain, discomfort.
		You were in the right place for it to work.
		And the fact that that was your life would make you a different kind of comedian than those other comedians, which is a great thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Well, and that girl.
		God, I wish I stayed in touch with her.
		I don't even remember her name.
		She was awesome, though.
		She was just fun.
		She was just a funny girl.
		And the fact that she laid down on the parking lot, she's like, Sam did too.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Sam did it that way too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		She reenacted his bit on this parking lot.
		But the fact that she did it, she was so crazy she acted it out.
		She was basically my age.
		So we were both like 19 at the time.
		And it was just...
		I couldn't believe it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I remember when I first saw Sam and it blew my mind and I loved him.
		I was really a Rodney guy.
		I loved Rodney Dangerfield.
		Loved Steve Martin.
		Loved Monty Python.
		All things comedy.
		I went through a phase...
		After being a little kid of listening to music like British Invasion, Beatles, Monkeys, that kind of music when I was a little kid, then I'd stop listening to music and only listen to comedy for years until junior high school when I started listening to hard rock.
unidentified		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But I remember seeing Sam and being blown away, and I was already doing music at this time and had a label, and I went to find him, and then I found out he already had a record out, and I was so bummed.
		He didn't have a record out, but he was signed to Warner Brothers, and I was bummed.
		And then I saw Dice, and Dice blew me away.
		And...
		I saw him, first I saw him on the Rodney, HBO, you know, Young Comedians, whatever it was called.
		I don't know what it was called.
		And it was just, I don't know, he did 10 minutes or something, and it was insane.
		It was a perfect dice set.
		And it was another one of those, like when I first saw Sam, it's like, he's not, it's a very different character than Sam, but it's as hard and as extreme.
unidentified		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I just loved it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And then came to LA and I saw that he was playing at, what's the name of the club, the comedy club next to Greenblatt's?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Laugh Factory.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		He was playing at the Laugh Factory.
		I watched him at the Laugh Factory.
		It was incredible.
		After he got off the stage, he walked to Greenblatt's.
		I followed him to Greenblatt's and we spoke as he was ordering it.
		Greenblats and started making records together.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		You guys did The Day the Laughter Died, which is one of my all-time favorite.
		Look at that.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The Day the Laughter Died, Cassette 1, which is one of my all-time favorite comedy CDs, specials, whatever it is, recordings, because it was so crazy that he did that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's in the peak of his stardom, for people who don't know the story.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, this guy's selling out Nassau Coliseum, and nobody had ever done that as a comic.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		He sold out Madison Square Garden two nights in a row the week we recorded the day the laughter died.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Just to give a context of what was happening.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So for people who don't know, when you see Dice perform in HBO and you see his specials, it's polished material.
		It's sharp punchlines.
		He's killing it.
unidentified		He's like, oh, what's in the bowl, bitch?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's powerful shit.
		So then he goes to Dangerfields with basically no material.
		Yeah.
		And just fucks around.
		And just fucks around for two hours.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It was incredible.
		What started it was I would go...
		He would go to the comedy store most nights.
		And I would meet him at the comedy store most nights.
		And most nights he would be great and the audience would love him.
		But certain nights...
		Wrong audience.
		Mood he was in.
		And he could bomb.
		Even when he was already dice.
		And he would bomb.
		And for me and Hot Tub Johnny, I don't know if you ever met Hot Tub Johnny.
		Me, Hot Tub Johnny would sit in the back.
		And for us, the funniest shows were when he bombed.
		Because his reaction to bombing was so funny.
		Whether it was...
		Pushing harder.
		Like he's already doing aggressive material.
		And then when he's not getting the response, he goes harder and people like it less.
		And it's so funny.
		It's because he just seems like a guy having a nervous breakdown.
		You know, it's like it's so crazy.
		It doesn't feel like comedy at all.
		It seems like this other thing.
		A guy losing his mind and turning red and sweating and screaming and nobody likes it.
		And we just died.
		And then in honor of doing The Garden, I remember saying, Andrew, how about instead of recording The Garden...
		Let's try to do a set at Dangerfields and let's find out what night would be the least, like the most suburban, like not anyone who likes comedy, people who are just going to a club because they're traveling through New York.
		The people who will most likely not like it.
		And let's record that.
		And he's like, great, let's do it.
		I'm in.
		So it was great.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But the ego, like most people's ego would not allow them to have something like that as a recording and then just release it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was incredible.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		We thought it was the funniest thing in the world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		One of my favorite parts of that cassette or that recording is when some guy in the audience goes, you're about as funny as a glass of milk.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Has anybody ever sampled that?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		If you listen to the recording, you'll hear me and Hot Tub Johnny in the back laughing.
		The only people you hear laughing on that record and The Day the Left Who Died Part 2 is us.
		And we're going crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It sounds like he's hitting punchlines that are just almost like he's speaking another language.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		No reaction.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But he's hitting them hard like they would kill.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and you hear nothing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Ow, we're back!
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Get it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		For comedians, there's a guy named Mike Donovan, who's like a comedy legend in Boston.
		And at the time, the day the laughter died, I was just a beginning comic.
		And he pulls me aside.
		He goes, you've got to listen to this.
		You've got to listen to this.
		It's fucking incredible.
		He goes, it's fucking incredible.
		He just bombs.
		He just goes up in front of this audience.
		They have no idea he's going to be there.
		And he fucking bombs.
		And I was like, why is that good?
		He's like, fuck it, you listen.
		So, you know, Donovan, who had been probably doing comedy at the time, 15, 20 years, he knew, like, the formula, and anybody could kill.
		You get your right set, hot night, hot audience, you can kill.
		But this guy fucking doing that, and Donovan is like, you barely breathe, because he's laughing so hard.
		Because he's talking about Dice doing an impression of Nixon eating ass.
		He's talking about eating a woman's ass.
		I was like Nixon in that ass.
unidentified		And it's fucking so ridiculous.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		So stupid.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And Donovan is crying, laughing.
		Tell me about it.
		I was like, wow, I gotta go get it.
		And I remember listening to it, and I guess at the time I was like 21 or 22. I was so confused.
		I was like, what the fuck?
unidentified		What the fuck is he doing?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's so weird.
unidentified		He's Dice.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like the first one, that first cassette, Dice, incredible.
		I listened to it.
		I was 19 years old.
		I was in my car, parked in front of my house with this girl I was dating at the time.
		And we were sitting in the car just howling, laughing at this cassette.
		And then he puts out that.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And he just like, no one knew what to do.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was his reaction to the reaction of that?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've never talked to Dice about that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		He loved it.
		He understood performance art.
		He liked things that were different.
		He liked doing not the regular thing.
		And we had already done, I think at that time we had maybe done either three, probably three full regular comedy albums by this point in time.
		So it was...
		Nice to shake it up a little bit.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Boy, did that shake it up.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And how did that affect his career?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		No effect.
		Not positive or negative.
		No effect.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's crazy!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How is that possible?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, comedians liked it.
		But it was, you know, it was meta.
		You know, it was an inside joke.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it was a two CD release.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That was part of the beauty of it.
		I remember we even put a sticker on it.
		Something like to the effect of...
		Two hours of new material, no jokes.
		Because it's what it was.
		It's like really no jokes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How was it reviewed?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		The same as people hated him.
		Reviewers hated him always.
		There was a story in...
		He played for the garden shows.
		There was a review in the Village Voice that was like...
		The Village Voice was a big format newspaper.
		And it was two entire pages...
		Of a review comparing it to a Nazi rally, a Hitler rally, that it wasn't funny at all, that it was just, this is the worst of society.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Just didn't get it at all.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		They didn't get it at all.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was a time where he was ostracized by mainstream media in a way where it was like they were...
		I mean, he was...
		Kinison got it a little bit.
		He definitely got it, but not like Dice.
		Dice got the full broad...
		Remember he was banned from MTV? And they were trying to say that...
		I remember Kurt Loder talking about it.
		This unfunny comedian, Dice.
		But everybody was laughing.
		What do you mean unfunny?
		When you say unfunny, you mean your own personal taste?
		Do you apply that to all music?
		Do you say that about other bands?
		Is this shitty band?
		Do you say NWA sucks because they're violent?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Another part of it is that they would always, to vilify Dice, they would always quote his jokes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But if you don't see that character telling that joke, it just sounds horrible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I have a whole bit about that.
		I'll tell you about it off the air.
		But that's a real thing.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like they would vilify him and portray him As if he was hateful when all he was doing was trying to make people laugh and succeeding tremendously in doing that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And obviously mocking himself, too.
		I mean, it was a character.
		It was the clearest.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was ridiculous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		His name is Andrew Silverstein, okay?
		And Andrew, when he would go, and I love Andrew to death, being friends with him Was one of the most surreal things at the Comedy Store.
		Because I was such a fan when I was a kid.
		I never got to meet Kinison.
		And I only got to meet Hicks very briefly.
		I mean, I literally said hi to him.
		That's it.
		When I was an open-miker in Boston.
		But I got to be friends with Dice.
		And I was mostly just doing the store at the time.
		And Dice pulled me aside.
		And he said, hey, you should do the road.
		He goes, you're fucking funny.
		You don't need these cocksuckers.
		He goes, these people telling you what to do and fucking, you gotta dance for them, do the show.
		He goes, you can make a lot of money on the road.
		You should be doing the fucking road.
		And I was like, I should do the road.
		Dice told me to do the road.
		I'm gonna do the road.
		And I started doing the road.
		That's when I started, like, I called my manager up and I said, let's start doing clubs in all these different cities.
		So when I wasn't doing news radio, when I wasn't on television, I would go off on the weekends and I would go, you know, do fucking wherever, Houston, Phoenix.
		And I started doing the road because of Dice's direction.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Amazing.
		And how different was it?
		Doing comedy for people not at the Comedy Store.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It was amazing.
		First of all, it made me a real comedian.
		Well, the store made me a real comedian, but the road made me a real headliner, because I was doing an hour in these towns, and I was doing two shows Friday, two shows Saturday, and I was getting the feel of different vibes, and that's really when I fell in love with Texas.
		It was 97 when I started coming to Texas, 98. And they were just so rowdy and fun and free.
		And there was a different, there was a rebellious friendliness to them.
		And I was like, God, I love these people.
		And the first album I recorded in 99 on Warner Brothers was the I'm Gonna Be Dead Someday.
		And I did that in Houston.
		And I did it.
		Really like the touring and all that was because it dies like that.
		That's what really ignited me Ignited my my inspiration to go do that and it is There's too many guys that were just staying in town and everybody at that time In the 90s and it was kind of starting to die off But there was this thing where everybody wanted a sitcom that was the Holy Grail the Holy Grail mean the real Holy Grail was the tonight show if you would be the hope that was out of my reach I was you know in my fucking 20s it was not gonna happen and But the holy grail was getting a sitcom.
		Because you could be Tim Allen.
		You could be Jerry Seinfeld.
		You could be Roseanne Barr.
		You could be Brett Butler.
		And if you got a sitcom, man, you were the fucking king.
		And, you know, they would make a sitcom around you.
		So I had had a development deal.
		At one point in time, and then I got on this show that was a crappy show on Fox.
		And so I was on that path.
		And then I got on news radio, which was great.
		And then the path after that was obviously get your own sitcom.
		But Dice was like, fuck that.
		Like, you should, you know, and this is that Dice had his own show, Bless This House.
		Remember that?
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, he was like, that's not the way.
		The way is the road.
		The way is comedy.
		You're a fucking comedian.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		He also made a movie, if you remember, Ford Fairway.
unidentified		Yes!
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I remember thinking, this doesn't feel right.
		Like, from the beginning, it didn't feel right.
		It felt like, what's so great about you is not in this movie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Right.
		It was like homogenized milk.
		They pasteurized it and homogenized it and took all the enzymes out of it.
unidentified		And it's like, I guess this is not the same thing.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And the way that people reacted to dice in the mainstream, the hatred from the mainstream...
		Really caused him to crack.
		You know, do you remember he appeared on, I can't remember what late night show it was, where he cried.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think it was Arsenio Hall.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Maybe.
		And he really changed his act after that, but not because it's what he thought was funny.
		He became a comedian because he wanted to be loved.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And even though he would go out in front of 20,000 people screaming, adoring fans, people would write terrible things about him.
		And it didn't compute.
		And somehow he just felt like...
		You know, they don't see me.
		They don't get me.
		And it really hurt him.
		It really hurt him.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was bizarre to us.
		Comics.
		Because we got him.
		And we loved it.
		And so we were like, why does he get so much hate?
		Like, it was so confusing.
		And the internet didn't exist back then in that sort of form.
		So it's like he couldn't find, like, fan...
		Like, today we'd have no problem.
		Like, you know, sure, like, MSNBC hates him.
		But all the YouTube people would love him, or a lot of them would.
		He would find his voice.
		He'd find his audience.
		And I don't think that Arsenio Hall moment would happen today.
		He'd probably push back against it.
		But back then, the only reviews you heard of him were negative.
		It was all negative.
		And you had to be a quiet Dice fan.
		You had to almost not tell people you were a Dice fan.
		I equate it to how it was to be a Kiss fan at one point in time.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Hip-hop music was the same.
		Hip-hop was like villainous music.
		Hip-hop was like the original...
		In the mid-80s, hip-hop was the...
		First populist uprising in New York City.
		It was like taking music out of the conservatory and bringing it back to the street.
		And the powers that be did not like that and wanted to cancel it and tried to cancel it.
		That's when the whole PMRC thing happened and they were trying to ban rap music.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was Al Gore's wife.
		Remember Tipper Gore?
		Al Gore's wife, Tipper Gore, at the time, was the one who was leading this fight against these lyrics.
		Because to a lot of these house moms and shit, they would hear those lyrics coming out of their son's bedroom, and they're like, what the fuck is this?
		What is going on?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But also, they wanted to negate Prince.
		They wanted to cancel Madonna.
		They wanted to cancel a lot of stuff.
		It's been going on for a long time, this pushing back against art that you don't understand, that you're too old to understand.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just the non-accepting of other people's interests or what other people enjoy.
		There's a lot of stuff that people really love that I don't get.
		I don't have the Grateful Dead gene.
		I have friends who love the dead.
		I hear it and I'm like, maybe if I did acid, maybe that's what they say.
		But I don't know.
		But then I'd hear the Allman Brothers and be like, fuck yeah.
		It was like, for whatever it is, it's like whatever your personality is, your life experiences, The place you grew up, that shit resonated with me.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Or finding the right way in.
		The Grateful Dead didn't speak to me for a long time until they did, and I found the way in.
		Maybe I'll share something with you that might find a way in, because it's always nice to find something else to like.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There was stuff that I liked that was like...
		Very different than that, like, I was a giant Cool G rap fan.
		I remember listening to Cool G rap when I first moved to New York, and I was like, God damn, this guy's good.
		He, to me, is one of my all-time favorite hip-hop artists, and to me, like, the most underappreciated.
		I mean, you go back to listen to, like, Cockblockin', that is a...
		Fucking great song.
		He has so many, the Ill Street Blues, so many great hip-hop songs that I remember listening to them at the time going, why isn't this bigger?
		Like, why don't more people know about this?
		Why isn't this, like, you know, to this day, you know, people will go back and they'll talk about, like, Nas, who's fucking incredible, but Cool G Rap slips by.
		Like, how the fuck...
		Go listen to that shit.
		Cool G Rap was incredible.
		Incredible.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		You never know.
		Sometimes it's not based on how good it is.
		The stars line up at certain times for certain things to happen, and they happen.
		And sometimes you can make something great, and it doesn't connect for whatever reason.
		I found this out from making a lot of stuff.
		Sometimes you make two things that you think are the two best things you've ever made, and one of them connects with the world, and one of them doesn't.
		And it might not have anything to do with...
		What's in the art?
		It might have to do with, oh, it came out the same day as this other thing came out and that got in the way.
		Or there was a bigger story at the time or there was some other Who knows?
		Or it's not in the cards for that person to have that success.
		It's like there's so much to it that we don't understand.
		All we can do is make something good and put it out and hope for the best.
		And that's all there is.
		We never know why things, why does something work?
		Even if you make a piece of art, you might, and it works, you may not know why.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Mmm, yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's mysterious.
unidentified		It is mysterious.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's mysterious.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to use the restroom.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
		Go ahead.
		We'll be right back.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm so glad you liked the day the laughter died.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god, I fucking love it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's so funny.
unidentified		It is.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's so crazy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's just so bold.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And knowing Dice, as long as I've known him and seen so many late night sets, like some of my favorite sets of Dice, Dice would go up in the OR and he would have a challenge he would do where he wouldn't talk.
		For as long as possible.
		And so he would go in front of the mic and everybody would be happy to see him and he'd go...
		He would just stand there.
		Just stand there like about to talk and not talk and go like minutes.
unidentified		Minutes.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Without a word.
		And the comedians were fucking dying.
		And there was like 40 people in the audience and they were so confused.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Just confused.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And my favorite Dice was insulting Dice, where Dice would find some, look at you!
		He'd find some guy in the audience and just tear him apart.
		Just insult the shit out of him.
		And the guy would be like, what the fuck, man?
unidentified		And we would be crying, crying, laughing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And Dice would just fuck around.
		He had no problem with bombing.
		He was fully confident while no jokes and no laughs.
		Fully confident.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		He often didn't prepare material.
		I'm friends with Chris Rock, and the difference in their...
		Work ethic is radical.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Radical.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Chris is always writing and Chris is meticulous and it's always game on.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And when he's on stage it really shows.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well Chris though, Chris will take a lot of chances on stage too.
		And Chris also has this very unusual approach where he will like Purposely try to find the beats and and you know and leave dead air because he's finding these beats and Like stand on stage the comics don't be like what else what else?
		And I'll have it like where he's you know, he's just like Thinking and like the audience is like I'm worried.
		I'm ready to see bring the pain.
		I'm ready to see you crushing Yeah, like why are you not crushing?
		And he, you know, he would even say sometimes, he would follow people and be like, relax, relax, not gonna be that good.
		Relax.
		Because he was working on new shit.
		And when he worked on new shit, he was working.
		He was working.
		This audience, I know you're here to see comedy and you're happy that Chris Rock just showed up, but Chris Rock was not announced, so it wasn't like this was a big production and he was going to do his very best material.
		He was there to try to put pieces together.
		And he would have a team of comics in the back.
		Guys that he'd hired.
		Great comics.
		Guys like Richard Jenney, Nick DiPaolo.
		And these guys would listen to his material and then they would all talk about it afterwards.
		And they would find whatever the embers were.
		And they're like, okay, we could fucking fan this and add some Tinder and this could be a bit.
		And try to find the beats.
		And that's what he did.
		And that's why he created so many great specials.
		Because he had that work ethic.
		Because he had that.
		He was an artist.
		But he was also, like, he was a craftsman.
		You know, he was crafting it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		I just saw him play at the O2 Arena a couple of weeks ago, and it was...
		The funniest I've ever seen him, which is unbelievable.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's on fire right now.
		Will Smith slapping him, I think, woke up...
		I mean, I haven't talked to him about this.
		My impression was that I think now he understands that those people, those Hollywood people, are fucking crazy.
		They're all in this weird, bizarre cult of actors And Oscars and parties and applause and in this this very bizarre Disconnected world,
		you know of these are our heroes and these are the most important people in the world and these people that win these awards and make these films they're the most appreciated most respected and Him getting slapped And then him trying to go back to comedy and seeing Will Smith just meltdown in front of him.
		And generally...
		That moment was probably the end of how anybody will ever think of Will Smith again as this movie star guy who's like this happy guy with his family who's like putting together all these incredible films and goes on to win the Academy Award that night goes on stage and they applaud him after he just assaulted one of the greatest comedians that's ever lived over the most innocuous roast joke The most innocuous.
		You know, I loved you in G.I. Jane.
		Like, what?
		That's it?
		It's so mild.
		And I think him seeing that just fired up that fuck you furnace.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's unbelievable.
		All I know is it's the funniest I've ever seen him.
		And I've seen him funny.
		You know, like, it's...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		He's angry now, though.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		He's on fire.
unidentified		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And it's great.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Him and Chappelle were playing together.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And both were...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Couldn't have been more different and both incredible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I've never been to the O2. I was there to the O2 for UFC once, but I'm there in two weeks.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was surprisingly good for comedy.
		I was on my way there thinking, prepared to be disappointed, because I don't usually like comedy in a big venue like that.
		I like it better in a club.
		But somehow, it felt intimate, and it completely worked for comedy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Dave loves it.
		He was excited that I was going there.
		We were talking about it, and he was saying, like, it's a great room.
		It's a great room for comedy.
		But Dave's got that arena timing.
		You know, he does a lot of arenas now.
		You know, he's...
		He knows...
		He can take...
		Like, we just did Columbus together a couple weeks ago, and he can take a fucking giant room and thousands of people and make it feel like you're just hanging with them in a living room somewhere or in a small club.
		He can transform it.
		But it's just like the different ways of approaching comedy, it's got a parallel with music, right?
		I mean, there's got to be some artists that, you know, they just want to riff.
		They want to figure it out on the fly.
		They want to do it all, you know, almost off the top of their head.
		And then there's other artists where every single word has gone over and meticulously analyzed and pieced together.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's no right or wrong way.
		You just have to find your way, whatever works for you.
		Yeah, I've worked with artists who do it completely different ways.
		You'll see Eminem, he's always writing in a book, always writing all the time.
		And he's always got notebooks writing.
		And I asked him, are these all rhymes to use?
		He's like, no, no, no.
		99% of what I write I'll never use.
		Just to stay engaged in the process of writing and finding new ways to write so that when I need it, it just comes.
		And then Jay-Z doesn't write anything down.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And he just listens to the beat and hums, hums, and then goes on the mic, you know, 20 minutes later and just says a whole complicated verse.
		Complicated verse.
		I don't know how he can remember it, much less have just written it and just be able to do it, like, free.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does he practice on his own?
		Does he...
		Create these raps on his own, alone?
		Or does he only do it when he's talking to people?
		Does he only do it on stage?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		This is for a record.
		When we were recording 99 Problems, I played the beat for him.
		He likes the beat, and then he says, okay, just keep playing it.
		And then he sits in the back of the control room on the couch, and you just hear him humming, like...
		As they say, 15 or 20 minutes, and then he jumps out and he's like, okay, I got it.
		And then he goes in, no paper, no writing, nothing.
		And delivers the whole thing and then says, let's try it again.
		And then he does it again.
		And the words will be the same, but the phrasing will be different.
		So it's more like an improvisational solo.
		You know, if you have a melody, you could play the same melody with putting emphasis on different parts of it.
		So he does it.
		It's not the same.
		The words are the same or close to the same.
		But the feeling of it and the rhythm of it changes when he does it again.
		And he does it a few times and he's like, okay, I think that one's good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But did you ever ask him these things that he's saying, has he said them before?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		He's not.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I know he hasn't because it's happening live in the room in this moment.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's not like he's not, even though it's live in the moment, it's not like things that he's thought of before?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just all off the top?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Wow.
		That's incredible.
		It's insane.
		Never said anything like it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's incredible.
		Yeah, he's famous for that.
		He's famous for having it all in his head.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But instantaneously, or, you know, relatively instantaneously.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Does anybody else do it like that?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Like, Nas doesn't do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Nas writes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I've never seen anyone else do that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's not uncommon for singers or rappers to hear something and immediately start, like, automatic writing, where they'll just start saying nonsense words.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		The first thing that comes to mind over the beat where you can feel a shape of what it can be.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And, like, we just made two new albums with the Chili Peppers.
		The second one just came...
		Just coming out now, I think, but the first one came out like six months ago, but two double albums.
		And the way Anthony works is he'll hear the music and he'll sing along, but he'll sing along with an idea of a melody, but he doesn't yet have words, and just sing nonsense words, and just sing along, making up nonsense words.
		Automatically, real-time, and then listens back and says, oh, okay, this phrase in this spot sounds good, and this phrase in this spot sounds good.
		What else goes with that?
		And then it's like a puzzle where you fill in the rest.
		It's like you don't necessarily have an idea of what the song's going to be about, or you might not even know what the song's about until you finish.
		You might not even know after the song's finished what it's about.
		You might not know for years what it's about because it's like a dream.
		It comes from the subconscious.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's a great way to work.
		It's a great way to write, to just like participate with what's going on in a free way and then listen back to what you did and look for clues.
		Look for where is the connective tissue here?
		Are there any things here that sound like they belong there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Dan Auerbach from the Black Keys, he does that.
		He says he gets really high, and he just makes up words.
		He'll make up words to the music, and just try to find how it works.
		He's just trying to figure it out as he's doing it.
		There's parallels to comedy, I think, because in comedy, you can write things, and I do.
		I write a lot of things, but sometimes...
		When you're on stage, there's a path that just opens up and you know that this is the way to do it.
		It's different than the way you wrote it.
		Because the audience is there and you feel it.
		Because you only feel it when you're performing.
		But with comedy, the thing that's so different is the only way we ever know it's any good.
		The only way we really can create.
		You can't create in a...
		I mean, maybe someone can.
		I heard Cosby used to do that.
		Cosby used to just write it all out and then he would go on stage or have it out and then not even need to rehearse it, not need to work it out in front of clubs.
		He would just do it in front of giant audiences and it would be done.
		But most people...
		They're creating with the audience.
		And until you have an audience, you don't have any idea how the bit really comes together.
		There might be a setup that you thought was just a setup, and it gets the biggest laugh of the bit.
		And you're like, what?
		Well, I didn't expect that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Does it change from night to night as well?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		100%.
		Changes from night to night.
		Changes depending upon your opening act.
		Changes depending upon the mood of the club.
		Tuesdays are different than Wednesdays.
		Everything's different, you know?
		It's one of the reasons why it's important to do...
		I always call it cross-training.
		I'm like, you can't just do arenas.
		You got to do little clubs.
		You got to do theaters.
		You got to do everything.
		You got to do clubs where they don't expect you to go up.
		You got to do clubs where they know you're going to work on new material.
		You got to do clubs where this is a fucking recording.
		This is a big one.
		You know, ready, polished, set, go.
		It's all different, and it all comes alive while you're performing, which I guess parallels with music, but the benefit of music is you can create it in the studio.
		You could put it together in the studio, and you can make fucking incredible music almost in a vacuum.
		Because you don't need the audience.
		It's you.
		It's you and the people you're working with, and you put it together.
		But we need people.
		They're an integral part of the process.
		The audience has to be there.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		How does it work for television?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		If you're doing comedy for television and there's no audience, how does that work?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In what way?
		What form?
		Comedy for television.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's a sitcom or whatever it is where there's a joke and there's no response coming back.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Or in a movie, there's no response coming back.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, you have table reads.
		And in the table read, you find the beats.
		Oftentimes, it's very fake, which is really weird.
		Because one of the things that happens when you're on a sitcom is the producers and the writers will laugh really loud at their jokes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I see.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And kind of fake sometimes.
		They've heard the joke a hundred times before.
		And so you walk into the room like, why didn't you tell me that yesterday?
		And everyone's like...
		It's off-putting for a comic.
		And you'll be like, hey, you guys are fucking killing me with this fake laugh.
		What they're trying to do is provide you with a feel of how the audience is going to laugh.
		But they're also juicing up their own writing.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But also, how do you know how the audience is going to react?
unidentified		You don't.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You don't know.
		So you do a first...
		We had the benefit of working with Dave Foley, who's brilliant.
		And Dave Foley was one of the kids in the hall.
		And Dave Foley was essentially like an uncredited producer on news radio.
		So when we would do run-throughs and takes, Dave had this incredible sense of how a scene should go.
		And so when we would do run-throughs, we would go over the script and Dave would go, well, this is...
		How about...
		How about instead of this?
		Why don't you come in this?
		Why don't we just cut this part out?
		And you come in here and you're just angry because of something that's incorrect.
		You're angry because of that.
		And then Matthew comes over and says that.
		And Lisa comes over and says that.
		And then we end it with this.
		And then he would just like rewrite the whole fucking scene.
		And so the brilliant...
		One of the more brilliant things about the producers and Paul Sims, the writer of that show, the head writer of that show, is that he would let you do that.
		He would let you come up with a totally alternative punchline.
		And then he would sit there and laugh and go, yeah, yeah, keep that, keep that.
		Okay, let's do that.
		That's the new scene.
		And he would let you fuck around with it.
		So it gave all the performers all this freedom.
		It also allowed the thing to come alive like while performing it the same way you would kind of do stand-up like you would figure out the beats while you were actually doing it and then you really didn't know until the audience was there and Then when the audience said this job lines that I didn't think were good and I would say I don't know do we have a better line for this and they were like just try it just try it I'm like okay I was like didn't believe it and I'd say the line and to get a huge laugh and I'd be like what the fuck I Like, I didn't even think that was funny.
		You kind of don't know.
		And sometimes you know.
		Sometimes the line's so good.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's always done with an audience there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Yeah, well, that kind of multicam, you know, you're always doing it with an audience.
		I've never done a single cam show like that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		You know, a show like The Office?
unidentified		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's hard.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Curb.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Curb has got to be the hardest.
		Because Larry, the way he does it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's not even a script, right?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No script.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you're just like, you and I are in an argument about who stole cigarettes or whatever, and then you just run with it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so the casting's really important.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Very important.
		And the vibe of the set is very important.
		It's got to be this thing where everybody's working towards the same goal.
		But when you watch Curb...
		One of the brilliant things about Curb is because he doesn't have that script, people are talking the way they talk in real life.
		They kind of talk over each other and they pause when the other person is talking and then they chime in and it seems like a real conversation versus like Big Bang Theory.
		Or one of those shows that's more formulaic, like Set Up, Punch Lines, where you train monkeys and you're teaching them how to get a piece of candy.
		Like, da-da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da.
		Ha-ha-ha.
		You know, Larry, the way he does it is so different.
		And it's one of the best sitcoms of all time.
		And if you watch Curb, particularly the early seasons of Curb, I remember thinking, oh, this is why Seinfeld was so good.
		This is why that show was so good.
		Larry David's a goddamn genius.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		So funny.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and that's his process.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And Seinfeld is incredible, too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Incredible.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Both shows, incredible.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, Seinfeld is one of the absolute best observational comedians that's ever existed.
		And the best at the flow and the sound and part of what he was doing...
		Was the way he was doing it.
		Like he had a flow and that flow was infectious and it was contagious and you would like fall in love with the way he talked about things.
		And he was so casual and confident in the way he was describing things.
		And he would improvise too.
		I stole something from Jerry in that he would do his whole set and then afterwards he would take questions from the crowd.
		And he would just riff.
		And I was like, God, why don't I do that?
		What a great way to come up with comedy.
		You already did an hour of comedy, and then go up and take questions.
		And I was, I think I was 20 years old.
		I saw him at The Paradise, which was a comedy club, was next to Stitches.
		It was a rock club in Boston.
		And he was a little too big for Stitches, so he would do The Paradise, which is still at the time relatively small.
		I want to say it was like 400 or 500 seats.
		And he did his whole set and then, you know, killed.
		And then afterwards, just took questions and would riff.
		And it was genius.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And this was after the Seinfeld show already happened or no?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When did Seinfeld start?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it was before Seinfeld.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What year was Seinfeld?
unidentified		1991, somewhere in there.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Let's find out exactly so I can tell you.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because I'm curious.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		If it's 1991, then it was before.
		Then this was before Seinfeld.
		This was when he was just a popular comedian.
unidentified		First episode, 89. So that was probably two years before that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I'm saying this was probably 87. Wow.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I could see it more for someone who has a popular TV show than for someone who's a comedian to do that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's very interesting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think it's how he worked out material.
		I think that's how he would fuck around.
		And taking suggestions from the audience, I was like, that is such a great idea.
		Because he already killed.
		The show was over.
		They already knew they loved him.
		It was an amazing show.
		You already got your money's worth.
		So now he would just go fuck around for...
		15 minutes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And do you do it like an encore?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Like he would leave the stage and come back?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't remember if he left the stage.
		I'm trying to remember.
		Because it was a small stage.
		It wasn't a big place.
		He might have just stepped aside, grabbed a glass of water, and then come back.
		Or he might have actually gone through the curtain and back.
		I don't remember.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Must have been really exciting for the audience just to feel like, okay, now the show's over, but we still get to hang out with Jerry.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's even more personal.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And for me, it was only like...
		I'd only seen a handful of live performances at the time.
		So for me, I'd seen like an open mic night once, which was bizarre because that was inspirational.
		Rich Jenny had a great observation.
		He said, one of the great things about terrible comedy is it gives other people the confidence to do comedy.
		Because you would go to see an open mic night and the people were so awful.
		You'd be like, oh, the expectations are not that high.
		Like, I thought I had to be like Richard Pryor.
		It's so daunting.
		The obstacle was so far away.
		It was so out of reach.
		But then you would see people that were amateurs that were clunky and terribly like, okay, at least I won't be as bad as that guy.
		And it gives you the confidence to give it a try.
		Just fucking see what happens.
		And the feeling of going on stage for the very first time, I'll never forget, was so alien, so bizarre, just to hear my voice and a microphone.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		How many people were there?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, a bunch of my friends were there, so that was like 10% of the crowd, four or five of my friends, maybe 50 people.
		But there was a guy named George McDonald, and he would have this thing called Comedy Hell.
		And Comedy Hell was open mic night.
		And he was a professional, so he would joke around about how this is Comedy Hell, and you're going to watch people bomb, it's going to be terrible.
		But then you'll see professionals that night and they'll go up.
		So the first night I ever went to see comedy, I got to see people that were awful.
		And then I got to see like a couple of like real world class comics would go on stage and kill for 10-15 minutes.
		I was like, wow!
		Just the contrast and the difference.
		So you get to see the levels of it.
		It's like getting to see someone who's taking their first jujitsu class versus a world champion black belt.
unidentified		And you're like, what a journey that is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And to see...
		The way I describe it to people, I say stand-up comedy is like...
		You're making a mountain one layer of paint at a time.
		That's what it's like when you're starting.
		It's like you go there and if you see Seinfeld, they're like, oh my god, that's a mountain.
		It's already there.
		I mean, you realize this is one layer of paint at a time.
		One, you know, 13 sets a night hopping around, catch a rising star and fucking the cellar and going to all these clubs in New York and then puts it together and then takes it to Boston or takes it to Cleveland or takes it to all these places.
		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's wild.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so I stole that move of going on stage afterwards and taking suggestions from the crowd.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Great idea.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was genius.
		And it's just a smart thing to do, to do this whole set and then fuck around.
		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Did you ever read Born Standing Up?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Steve Martin?
unidentified		Yes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Such a great book.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's a great book.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's interesting him talking about setting a deadline.
		If I'm not successful in 10 years, whatever it is, like a long time, then I'm going to quit.
		And he gets to the 10 years and he's not successful and he just keeps going because there's nothing else he wants to do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's nothing like it.
		There's nothing like killing.
		There's nothing like performing.
		My friends and I, we talk often about people who quit comedy.
		How do you quit?
		A lot of us almost quit during the pandemic or resigned ourselves to the possibility that it's never coming back.
		You're sitting there in your house every day, and you're like, I guess I could get used to this.
		You know, at least I don't have the anxiety of having to perform, and you know, I could just fucking find some other way to make a living.
		At the time, I was making money doing podcasting, so I was like, okay, maybe I'm not doing comedy anymore.
		And a lot of us wanted to do it.
		And Ron White, he's the best example, because he was like, Well, I think I'm going to retire.
unidentified		I'm going to take my boat and fucking play golf every day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I made a shitload of money.
		I don't give a fuck.
		I'll sell my jet.
		He was just resigned to not doing comedy.
		And then Tony Hinchcliffe had a show...
		At the Vulcan Gas Company here in Austin.
		And he was like, just do a guest set.
		Just come on and do a guest set.
		And Ron was like, man, I don't know.
		I think I'm fucking done.
		And then the next day, after Ron had said that, Tony was like, so have you thought about it?
		Are you going to do a set tonight?
		He goes, fuck yeah, I'm doing a set.
		I'm doing 15 minutes.
		And so he had gone over his recordings.
		He had an iPad.
		And his girlfriend said that he was listening to recordings and writing shit down.
		I was like, oh, this would be interesting.
		And so we're hanging out.
		And we're in the back of the club and Ron White goes on stage.
		And the first, sold out show.
		First thing that happens, because people are so excited to go out.
		And this is in mid-COVID. These are wild, reckless fucks in the middle of a pandemic.
		Not a mask in the place.
		Everyone's drinking.
		And laughter is like the worst way to not spread a respiratory disease.
		You know, they're ha!
		You know, they're ha!
		They're exhaling into giant bursts of fucking particles and spittle and, you know.
		Ron White goes on stage and fucking murders.
		Murders!
		I mean, like he had never missed a beat.
		And the audience, first of all, just goes insane.
		Because he's from Texas.
		So they see him and they're like, that's our guy.
		He comes off stage, and I'm going on after him, and he grabs me by the shoulders.
		And he goes, whatever the fuck we have to do, we're gonna keep doing this.
		He was so fired up.
unidentified		I mean, he just grabbed my shoulders.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Whatever the fuck we have to do, Joe Rogan, we're doing this.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I was like, we're doing this, Ron.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And you put up with having to travel and having to sleep in strange places and all the drudgery of going on the road for that little hit of the excitement to being on stage.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's not just the hit.
		It's the knowledge that the knowing that you're giving these people an experience.
		They're having a moment.
		They're having a great moment.
		You're When you're entertaining a group of people like that, you're taking them on this wild journey of laughter and ideas and they leave like you just hit them with a drug.
		You just fucking BOOM! You just drop this drug on them and they walk out of there feeling better.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Beautiful.
		And it's for everyone.
		It's like you feel better, they feel better.
		Everyone heals in the process.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A hundred percent.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Amazing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You know, and it's your responsibility to do that work so that that can happen again.
		And you got to be on point and you got to go over your notes and you got to be prepared and you got to do a lot of sets so that you're polished and smooth and Confident.
		You got all the beats in your head and then you also have to be loose and relaxed so that it can flow and then you can adjust to some chaos if something happens in the crowd and it's the best.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		In the studio recording, it's similar in that there's a lot of time where nothing good is happening, you know, and it's out of our control where Everybody's playing and they're doing their best, but it doesn't matter for whatever reason.
		When you're listening to it, it's just not great.
		And it's just really a game of patience, of waiting or trying different things.
		Like, how about if we do it like this?
		How about if we do it like this?
		Let's try it with the lights off.
		Let's try it with crazy things, whatever it is.
		Turn the lights off, see what happens.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How important is the ambiance and the setup of the studio?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's really important.
		One of the things that's most important is the feeling of...
		I'll use the word like a protected space where you feel like you could be very vulnerable and it's okay.
		A place where you could be naked and it's okay.
		So the safety of the environment.
		If you feel like you're going to try something and someone's going to tell you that was no good, that wouldn't feel like you want to do that again.
		So part of it is like the headspace of less people around, no audience.
		Literally, it's set up similar to this, where it'll be the producer and the artist, one engineer, and nobody else.
		And if it's a band, it's just this group of people.
		The least amount of people, not friends hanging out, not anybody watching.
		So there's a sense of we're there to work.
		We're there to really do something.
		But we're also there to play, and it's free.
		And there's no expectation that it has to be good.
		And we try to have as far of a...
		No feeling of deadlines or we have to do this by this or this is going to be the first single.
		Never any talk like that.
		It's more let's have fun, make music, let's see what happens, and then down the road we'll look back on it and see if there's anything good there.
		Then in terms of the physical location, You want to create a space where it feels like a place you want to hang out and it's a good feeling and sometimes we'll do something like on the first album I produced with the Chili Peppers we recorded it in a house instead of recording it in a recording studio because they had made four albums prior to that in a recording studio and they had told me None of those experiences were good.
		Not necessarily because of the studio, but it was just an interesting point.
		They had four studio experiences.
		They didn't like any of them.
		What can we do to do something different than that?
		So we rented this big mansion and we recorded Blood Sugar Sex Magic in this house.
		And it was a very different experience for them.
		So instead of it feeling like the fifth album after four bad experiences, this is the first time we're doing it in a house.
		And it was like an adventure.
		Just now, a few months ago, I was in Costa Rica recording a new album with The Strokes.
		And we rented this house up on the top of a mountain and set up the band outside.
		So they're playing.
		It's like they're doing a concert for the ocean on the top of a mountain.
		It was incredible.
		And we did that every day playing out.
		I'll show you videos later on.
		And they didn't want to leave.
		It was like best experience.
		So it's, in a way, adding the adventure element, especially for someone who's done it multiple times.
		You know, if it's your first time, your chance to go into the big professional studio is really cool.
		But if you've done a bunch in a big professional studio, what else can we do that'll spark the feeling of we're doing something new and different?
unidentified		Hmm.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I can imagine what it's like for them to just...
		Blood Sugar Sex Magic was so fucking good.
		And it had so much power to it.
		There was like, you know, Give It Away is such a great fucking song.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I love that song.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		God damn, that's a good song.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I love that song.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's just, there's so much...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's so alive.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how much of that had to do with that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Impossible to know, but it certainly didn't hurt.
unidentified		Right.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, we did it that way, and you like it, so...
		Again, we don't know that that's what it was.
		The songs were good.
		It was the right time in their career.
		John and Chad were both in the band, and they were really locked in and playing well together.
		And that lineup of the Chili Peppers is the band now.
		It was a great moment for them.
		Yeah.
		That was in the house.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		This is in the house.
unidentified		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was so cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's pretty dope.
unidentified		I want to ask the crewman a question.
		What sounds better, this?
		Or this?
		I like the fingers.
		He doesn't try to plug us into a certain formula.
		He doesn't have a way that he works and tries to make us like that.
		He's just trying to bring the most out of us for what we are.
		He manages to keep his emotional distance from the music and have his objectivity.
		Which is, you know, what he has to do.
		Especially because we're so completely caught up in a, we run on pure emotion.
		That's what we're all about.
		And we're making an amazing, amazing, groundbreaking, revolutionary, beautiful, artistically heightened, incredible record.
		If Baron von Munchausen had ejaculated the four of us, being the Red Hot Chili Peppers, onto a chess board, I would have to say that Rick Rubin would be the perfect chess player for that particular board.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's so funny.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What a great quote.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What a great way to end that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Amazing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Your job is such a unique job.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like you're part muse, you're part director.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like a coach.
		It's not unlike a coach.
		It's helping to get the best performance, talk about if the material's good enough, how it could be better, create an environment where it's exciting to do what we're going to do, and make any suggestions, not just as it relates to The task at hand, but anything you can do in your life that would benefit the task at hand.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And when you decide to work with an artist, how do you make that determination?
		Do you meet with them?
		Do you hang out with them?
		Do you have dinner?
		Do you hang out at their house?
		How do you know if you're going to vibe with them?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		We usually get together and talk, and it comes more from the...
		The energy in the conversation can feel it.
		And if we share a way in, like the Chili Peppers had asked me to produce them before that, and I went to a rehearsal and the energy wasn't right.
		Like I could feel, I didn't know what it was.
		But the energy in the room didn't feel good to me.
		And it turns out at that time, they were really heavily into drugs, like serious drugs.
		And you could see this, like, these are not people who trust each other.
		You know, that was a feeling in the room, was like, just the way they were looking at each other, it wasn't like...
		We're doing this together.
		It was more like apprehensive of each other.
unidentified		Oh, wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I just remember the feeling in the room was like, I don't want to be around that.
		I didn't understand it.
		I didn't know what it was.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What drugs?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's probably heroin and cocaine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so they were probably burnt out and fucked up and their mind was frazzled and...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Whatever it was, you could feel...
		All I know is, you know, I've never been a drug person.
		I came into this room and it was like being in a different...
		The energy was different in the room and it didn't feel like I want to be in this energy.
		But then I met them right before we made that and they were like transformed.
		It's like, great, let's do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So they got out of it.
unidentified		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And sometimes it'll be material, like The Strokes had asked me to produce them several times in the past, and they would send me demos, and I listened to the demos, and I just couldn't see a way in.
		Like, I didn't have any thoughts.
		I didn't know...
		I didn't think I had what they needed.
		But then they sent me this for the last album, which was the first album I produced with them.
		It's called...
		I can't remember what it's called.
		Um...
		They sent me these demos that were probably the worst demos they ever sent in terms of, you know, like a 20 seconds into an iPhone would be at one song.
		Like completely bullshit demos.
		But I could hear in those, this is going to be good.
		Like I can see these little seeds coming.
		Or exciting.
		And I'm curious to know what is...
		I like this little 20 seconds.
		What's the three-minute version of that like?
		And I'm down to go on that journey with them to discover it.
		Then there's a band called the Avett Brothers I worked with, and I remember I met them.
		And I just loved them as people.
		They were the most beautiful, soulful people I ever met.
		I've never hung around people who were so...
unidentified		Nice.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I just loved it.
		And actually, Judd Apatow made a documentary about them called May at Last.
		And he called me after and he's like, that was the best experience of my life.
		He's like, we don't know any people like this.
		We hang out with crazy comedians.
		These are like actual nice people.
		It's weird.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so just that alone...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, just like I want to be around this.
		Whatever this is, I want to be around these guys.
		And any chance I get to hang out with them, life's better if you're hanging out with the Avett brothers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Beautiful people.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's awesome.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You must get inundated by requests for people that want to work with you.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yes and no.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But I mean how do you – I mean it's – I would imagine there's a lot to filter out.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm kind of outside of – I've always been sort of outside of the industry.
		So I'm not in the normal channel of where things get plugged into.
		I'm not on any of those lists because I just kind of am outside.
		I don't know why that is.
		But it's always been that way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But how do you get comfortable with what...
		Do you just accept who you are?
		Do you just go on instinct in that regard too?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Always.
unidentified		Always.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Everything is on instinct.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		There's a valuable lesson in that.
		I mean, imagine like a lot of the things that you're saying would translate to so many different endeavors.
		Not even just art.
		Because I think it all is art.
		I think when people create anything, it is art.
		You're creating in different formats and different structures, but the best stuff seems to come out of that...
		It's a unique aspect of your own perspective, your own thoughts, your own whatever creativity is.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Being true to yourself.
		And it's what the book's about.
		The book's not about music.
		And it's not about painting.
		It's about...
		If you want to live in a creative way, which will benefit everything in your life, be a better person in your family, be a better...
		If you're starting a new business, do a better job of starting a new business.
		It's all the same.
		I don't really know anything about music.
		It's more a way of looking at the world.
		And wanting it to be the best it could possibly be and doing whatever it takes to be the best it could possibly be and being true to knowing that no one else knows.
		I'm not saying I know, but that everyone's idea is as valuable as mine.
		We're all creators.
		We all have the chance.
		If we can be true to ourselves and show it, At least that's been my experience, you know, because I never went into anything thinking anything was going to be successful at any point in time.
		It's always been, I make this thing because I like it.
		I'm excited to show it to my friend, you know, a friend or two friends.
		Can't wait till they laugh at this.
		That's it.
		That's the audience.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And when you set out to write this book, what was the start process?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What made you initiate it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'll tell you the way it happened.
		I got a call from Robert Hilburn, who is the music critic of the LA Times.
		This is probably eight or nine years ago.
		And he was writing the definitive book about Johnny Cash.
unidentified		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I got to work with Johnny Cash for the last ten years of his life, so the last few chapters of that book was gonna be about my time with Johnny Cash, so he asked to spend a few days with me.
		So we hung out, and he asked me a lot of questions, and we listened back to some of the recordings, and I tend not to listen back to things I've worked on in the past because I'm always working on something new.
		And I've listened to it a million times when we were making it.
		There's no reason to listen back.
		So it was interesting to go back and listen with him to answer questions.
		And I listened back and I learned through those conversations, I learned about my relationship with Johnny that I didn't know that I knew.
		Do you know what I'm saying?
		It's like through the questioning...
		I had a better understanding of that relationship, and it was interesting to me, and I liked it.
		And then I thought, okay, if this is what book creation could be like, where I could learn something, and if I learn it, I could share it, and what can I possibly share that would be helpful?
		And I thought, well, I only get to work with a handful of artists every year.
		Wouldn't it be great if the things that happen in the studio or this way of looking at the world could be available to other people?
		That was the idea.
		How do we...
		And I didn't know what it was.
		I still don't really know what's in the book.
		The information is fleeting.
		So if you ask me, you give me a hypothetical question, or if I think back to something that happened in the past and a good outcome happened, I would try to reverse engineer why those decisions were made.
		In the moment, they weren't made for any thoughtful reason.
		They were made out of reactions or trying something.
		But they're rarely based on a principle.
		So the book was trying to reverse engineer all things that have worked out To see if there were principles underlying that could be applied to other things.
		And that's what the book is.
		It's all useful tools that have led to good things.
		That said, nothing in the book, the book's not about me and there's no example of anything I've made in that book.
		It's the principles by which the things got made.
		And a way of looking at the world and a way of being in the world, which is the subtitle of the book is A Way of Being.
		I started, when I started, I thought it was going to be about how to do things.
		And I realized it's how you live in the world.
		It's how you see things all the time, 24 hours a day.
		How you experience the world is what makes you the artist that you are or the creative person that you are.
		And that's what the book shares, that information.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why the bullseye?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's funny you say it's a bullseye.
		That is a bullseye.
		To you, it's a bullseye.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Or a reticle.
unidentified		It's like a dot on a bullseye.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the alchemical symbol of the sun.
		That's one thing that it is.
		But it's open to interpretation.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like many things.
unidentified		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Like everything.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Like everything.
		It's an invitation to think about why is that there.
		And if you look at the back of the book...
		So what's that?
		If the front is a target, what's the back?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The lens.
		And the target's a dot.
		I mean, that's how I would look at it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But that's you based on your experience.
		And that's also what the book's about.
		It's like everything we do...
		make up the idea that that's a target.
		Your experience of life tells you that's a target.
		My experience of life is that's the alchemical sun.
		Someone else's is that's a circle of people sitting around a fire.
		It's a lot of things, but we all see it differently.
		And the more open we can be to the different interpretations allows us to make better stuff because we start looking for connections in the world you'll you'll You'll notice something on your drive that doesn't make sense or someone will recommend something to you that sounds like that's not for you.
		In the past, when someone would recommend something to me, it sounded like it wasn't for me.
		It's like, oh, okay.
		Now, if more than one person recommends something to me, That sounds bad.
		I always check it out because like the universe wants me to know about this.
		The way it tells me is a couple of people came up and said, why don't you check this out?
		That's if we listen to what's going on around us, you can overhear a conversation in a coffee shop.
		And it is the setup for an idea that you're talking about, the right way to say a particular joke that you're working on.
		You hear a phrase.
		It's not a phrase you commonly use.
		You hear someone else say it.
		My experience is when you are open and looking for these clues in the world, they're happening all the time, and they're happening often right when you need them.
		There's a story, there's a song, System of Down song called...
		I think it's song Chop Suey, I think.
		And it has this big, do you know that song?
		It has this big bridge section in it where Serge, the lyric writer, the singer, lyric writer, didn't have words for this one part of the song.
		And we're sitting in the library in my old house.
		And he said, you know, I don't have words for this.
		And we were finishing.
		It's like, okay, any ideas?
		He's like, he didn't have any ideas.
		And I said, okay, pick a book off the wall.
		I picked a book randomly off the wall.
		I said, open it to any page.
		Tell me the first phrase you see.
		He opened it.
		First phrase he sees.
		That's what's in the song, and it's a high point in the song.
		It's incredible.
		It's like magic.
unidentified		What was it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the part farther unto your hands you have it.
unidentified		Why have you forsaken me?
unidentified		I think it's right here.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's wild.
		Play it from a little before, so you see the context.
		It doesn't really make sense in what's going on.
		It's rad.
unidentified		It's rad.
		In my self-righteous suicide, I cry when angels deserve to die.
		It's rad.
		your thoughts forsaken me In your heart forsaken me I'll trust in my self-righteous suicide I cry when angels deserve to die It's
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		radical.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I get chills.
unidentified		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		So cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is so cool.
		So when you start writing and you decide that you're going to do this, are you writing longhand?
		Are you sitting in front of a computer?
		Are you dictating?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		All interviews.
		All through questioning an interview, recording, loads of conversations, and it's just random, just looking for information.
		And it got to the point where it had like a thousand pages of information.
		And then the task was getting from that format into the book, and it took four years to get the content, and then it took three years to get the form.
		So it's been a long process.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so you had this idea to do it, and then as it's coming together, did it become what you initially thought it was going to be, or did it become its own thing?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It became its own thing.
		The only thing that I wanted it to do was to be helpful to someone who wants to make stuff.
		That's the purpose of the book.
		So that was the only aspiration was, I know that it's done if someone reads this and it makes them want to make something.
		And there was a version of it a few years ago that was really beautiful prose, but it didn't give me that feeling.
		It didn't feel like a call to arms.
		Whereas this book, I feel like I read this and I want to make something right now.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So the first version, what did you do with it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It still exists.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you just decided, let's try again in a different form.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But it has more to do with the form because the information was similar.
		It just didn't find its best...
		One of the breakthrough ideas was in the old version, there weren't sections.
		It was just like one long thing.
		It wasn't chapters or anything.
		And I read that and every time a new subject came up, I gave it a name.
		And originally it was 68 areas of thought.
		And those were things that came up that I thought, okay, even if it didn't do a deep dive into each of these areas of thought, this is something related to creativity that's interesting.
		So I had this list based on an earlier version of the book.
		This list of topics, and then I did another round of interviews referring to what the reference was in the old version, and then another set just using the words.
		I'll give you an example, because one of the areas of thought is collaboration, and you would think collaboration is about working with other people.
		That's not what that section of the book's about.
		So if I were to do it just based on the word, I would probably go to collaborating with other people, but when I knew the context, it would be different, because what collaborating is about is we're always collaborating at all times with the universe.
		That's how it works.
		Like, we're taking in information, we're vibing on it.
		I'm looking at this skull, and I'm looking at the teeth, and then if I were to It's not really my thought about this.
		I can say, oh, it's cold.
		It's this piece.
		I'm collaborating with this piece to understand something or to have a point of view into something.
		So the collaboration section is about how we're always collaborating with everything we've ever learned in our lives.
		You were collaborating with bow hunting by seeing a target.
		That's a collaboration with something you've learned.
		If you never bow hunted or never shot anything, I don't think that would seem like a target to you.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		If you were an eye doctor, I guarantee you wouldn't think of it as a target.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		So we're always like, how we're in the world impacts how we see everything.
		Then there's another section in the book called cooperation, and that's about working with other people.
		And that section's about having worked with a lot of bands, I see that There's often this friction where, and I'm sure you've seen it in a writing room for comedy, where people are trying to get their idea in.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's not a collaboration.
		No.
		That's a, that's, that's, um, it's something else.
		A real collaboration is when everyone who's there is working together towards whatever is the best thing for the whole thing.
		And whether it's your idea or someone else's idea, it doesn't matter.
		And if you're invested in the collaboration, you want the best idea to win.
		You don't want your idea to win.
		And so it's just things that you can, habits you can, things to watch out for and habits you can develop that'll make you better at working with other people in that section, for example.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So when you got the first version, which you said was great prose, but there was something missing, whatever that was, how did you make that determination and why did you decide to try again?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I just, I read it and I felt how it made me feel.
		I read it and thought about how it made me feel.
		And I felt like there were a lot of words, nice sounding words, but it didn't feel essential.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Essential.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Essential.
		I want every sentence of the book to have to be there.
		I want it to be...
		The most concise and the most specific, and it's explaining, sometimes it's explaining what I'll describe as technical things.
		It's almost like I see things as like a machine, like the world's a machine and the way the gears work together.
		So I could look at a description and say, that sounds like the machine, or I could read the descriptions like, well, that's not how that machine works at all.
		Do you know what I'm saying?
		I don't know if I'm explaining it clearly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		No, you are because you're explaining it the way you feel.
		You're using words that are sort of making a facsimile of feelings.
		You know, whenever someone's saying something and they're trying to describe a feeling, you're like on a dance together.
		Like, where's this going?
		You know, I feel what you're saying.
		I understand what you're saying.
		But it's a bold move to take something that was, you know, you're done.
		And you're like, nope.
		It's not it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's not done.
		It's never done until you think it's great.
		I had an experience happen a few months ago where we were living in a new house we bought in a little town in Texas.
		And we were asleep, and we'd just moved in.
		We'd bought the house maybe a year before, and we had some work done on it, and we were excited to stay in it.
		And we stayed in it, and it was the end of the first week of staying there.
		And in the middle of the night, my wife—I'm sleeping.
		My wife is sleeping.
		We're all sleeping.
		My son sleeps in bed with us.
		He's five years old.
		My wife wakes up, grabs Ra, my son's name is Ra, and screams fire and runs out of the room.
		We're on second floor.
		And I'm thinking, she's got this.
		All good.
		I'm going back to sleep.
		And I went back to sleep.
		And that was my first mistake.
		Then...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You went back to sleep after she screamed fire?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because I assumed, ah, it's a little fire in the kitchen, she's going to put it out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What a bizarre assumption.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		That's me.
		That was my assumption.
		She takes care of everything.
		I know she's going to handle it.
		Nothing that would upset my sleep.
		I know she's got this.
		She's very capable.
		So I go back to sleep.
		And then I hear her screaming for help from outside.
		That wakes me up.
		And I go to the window in the next room to tell her to stop screaming.
		Is she crazy?
		What are you doing?
		So I go to the window.
		I open the window.
		It's like, stop screaming.
		What's going on?
		And she's like, fire, fire.
		And I said, where?
		She's like, the house.
		I said, where?
		The whole house.
		Jump.
		Now I'm like 15 feet up and it's a brick, a brick floor.
		And I still don't really understand the severity, although I do hear her excitement.
		So I think, okay, I'm going to find a way out.
		I'm not going to jump.
		I'm going to find a way out.
		Another very bad, another bad call on my part.
		Go back into the house and open the door to where I think the stairs are.
		Met with a ton of black smoke.
		Go down on my hands and knees and start scampering towards the stairs.
		Hit a wall.
		Start scampering around the wall.
		I'm just moving around, running into walls.
		And I'm not able to...
		Like, I'm getting to the point quickly, very quickly.
		This happens very fast.
		Getting lightheaded.
		Can't breathe.
		Have no idea where I am in the house.
		Can't get back to the window I was at.
		Can't find the stairs.
		And everywhere I crawl to find the stairs, I'm hitting a wall.
		And I'm starting to, like, lose consciousness.
		I don't know if I was losing consciousness, but I was definitely fading.
		And I had the thought, okay, I know Moody Allen and Ra are outside.
		They're safe.
		Family's safe.
		And I'm so happy the book's done.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because the book is going to live on with whatever information I have.
		It's in the book.
		So I'm okay.
		I can...
		It's going to be all right.
unidentified		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And then I'm still scampering because crashing into wall, crashing into wall.
		And then I end up on the whole opposite side of the house.
		Not what I was going for at all.
		And I open a window, push out the screen, and by now, because Muriel's been screaming for help the whole time, some neighbors came, and they're outside, and they're like, jump!
		Jump!
		It's gonna hurt, but you'll live!
		And now I'm so happy to be out the window and being able to breathe after not being able to breathe.
		It's like, no, I'm fine.
		And they're like, you're not fine.
		And it's like, no, no, I'm fine.
		I can breathe.
		And they're like, get out, get out.
		And they tell me to climb onto a tree and I climb out.
		I breathe a little bit first.
		But in my mind, I'm fine because if you go from not being able to breathe to breathe, the world's a good place.
		So I climb out.
		I hang on to the tree.
		And at this point, they find like a six-foot ladder.
		I'm 15 feet up.
		They bring the ladder around.
		They prop it up against the tree.
		And then these two neighbor guys climb up the ladder and they grab my legs.
		And they like guide my legs down to the top of the ladder.
		And I make it out.
		And my pulse ox was 82 when I got out of the building.
		What's normal?
		It's 99, 98. Pulse ox?
		You know pulse ox, don't you?
		Yeah.
		It's like you want to be as close to 100 as possible.
		But I felt fine.
		I felt like I'm okay.
		And then I'm walking and they're like, okay, we can't walk next to the house because the house is really burning.
		And they walked me out into the street, and then I said, okay, I have to sit down.
		And I just sat down in the middle of the street.
		It's in the middle of the night.
		It felt like 4 o'clock in the morning.
		And I sat there, and in three minutes, I watched this 100-year-old two-story house completely burn to the ground, flames higher than the trees.
		It was insane.
		It was insane.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The going back to sleep is so crazy.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's 100% the opposite of what I think my instincts would be.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		So did she smell smoke?
		Did she see fire?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		She heard crackles and thought someone was in the house.
		So she heard what sounded like someone walking in the house.
		So she went down to check and she saw the fire and then came up to get rot and scream at me to get out and I went back to sleep.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Jesus Christ.
unidentified		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you were three minutes away from dying?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I would say...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		a minute.
unidentified		Jesus.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's such a horrible way to die, too.
		Wow.
		The crazy thing is that you were happy the book was done.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That was the key.
		That was the – it was an interesting – I want to have a very interesting story related to this, which is Lex.
		I did Lex's podcast maybe five days before this, four days before this.
unidentified		Yes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And we're talking about art and music and what you'd expect a conversation with me to be about, the only things I know about or care about, talking about.
		And long interview.
		And in the middle of the interview, he asked me, are you afraid of dying?
		And it was completely different than the whole rest of the conversation.
		And it was the weirdest question.
		And I answered the question, and then I went home and saw my wife, and I said, it was a really interesting interview, but he asked me if I'm afraid of death.
		It didn't make any sense.
		Non sequitur in the course of this interview.
		And then, four days later, this happens.
		And then the next day, there's a clip.
		The first clip I see from the Lex interview is him asking me that question and me answering about death.
		After this thing just happened.
		It was unbelievable.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What was your answer?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Can't remember.
		You can find the clip.
		You want to find the clip?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay, we can play it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I think it's actually interesting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, let's play it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But that's like saying, I don't know the information in the book.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right, right, right.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		When you're in the moment, you answer the question, but it's not like a rehearsed answer.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, more than anybody I think I've ever met, you're on instinct in that way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's almost like you consciously try to stay in the moment.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		I don't think that knowing anything helps.
		I don't think there's anything to know.
		I think we're here and we're in this and we pay attention and it's almost like we're animals and getting in tune with our animal selves.
		It's very animal, what we're talking about.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		No, it is.
		Is that why you're into, like, physical things like cold and sauna?
		Are you into those?
		To just feel the animal part of you?
		To feel the body?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I was sedentary my whole life.
		I was in...
		I basically laid on a couch listening to music my whole life.
		That was my job and what I did not for my job.
		It's what I like to do, and that's all I did.
		And I was vegan for 22 years and got very big.
		I weighed 320 pounds, 318 at my max, with no exercise.
		So it's only just not good.
		Huge.
		And I went out to lunch with Mo Austin, who just recently passed away, who was He was Frank Sinatra's attorney, and then he ran Warner Brothers and Reprise.
		You might have met him through Warner Brothers.
		If you were on Warner Brothers, Mo Austin was the chairman of Warner Brothers Records.
		Beautiful guy.
		He signed the Sex Pistols.
		He signed Jimi Hendrix.
		He signed Black Sabbath.
		Amazing guy.
		And he was one of my mentors in the music business.
		And we went out to lunch one day, and he said, you know, Rick, I know you watch what you eat, and you...
		You take care of yourself, but you're really getting big, and I'm worried about you, and I want you to—I'm going to get the name of a nutritionist, and I want you to go to my guy and do whatever he says.
		And I said, okay, I'll do whatever you say, knowing it's not going to work, because I've been overweight my whole life, and nothing ever worked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But you didn't look overweight in that Red Hot Chili Peppers thing.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That was a weird moment in time.
		It was like a weird moment.
		I had just moved to California.
		I worked out with a trainer that Dice connected me with for the first time and was in—I still was not in good shape, but I was in better shape than at any point prior to that, and that was before I became a vegan.
		The vegan thing really took me down a dark path.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How so?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, I was eating chicken and vegetables, and I was healthier then.
		And then a friend of mine gave me a book called Diet for a New America, and he said, if you read this book, you're not going to want to eat chicken anymore.
		And I said, well, I already gave up everything else.
		I'd given up red meat.
		I'd given up...
		Soda.
		I used to drink a 64-ounce Pepsi with every meal.
		I grew up eating Jack in the Box and McDonald's every day.
		I grew up on fast food.
		My mom was a terrible cook.
		So I didn't have a good relationship with food.
		And then I started giving things up when I was in college, and I'm not even sure why.
		I don't know why.
		I don't know why I decided to give up Pepsi-Cola and start drinking a pitcher of iced coffee instead, which is what switched.
		But I didn't know why I did that.
		I just did that.
		And then I stopped that caffeine and just drank water.
		And then...
		Gave up red meat, gave up basically everything other than chicken and vegetables, and then I started getting in better shape when I was eating chicken and vegetables.
		Then I met Dice's trainer, started training, got into better shape, and then I read this vegan book, became a vegan, and then it all went the other way for 22 years until I got very big.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what about veganism got you that big?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's a carb-only diet.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's just carbs.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But were you eating vegetables or were you eating pizza?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Vegetables, pizza, whatever they serve in the vegetarian restaurant.
		They would serve like a...
		It'd be like a tofu steak with a gluten brown sauce.
		Super unhealthy stuff, but I didn't know.
		I thought I was eating healthy.
		It was just bad information.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so what shifted?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What did you do to shift it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I read a book.
		So now I'm big and I'm unhealthy.
		And I read a book by a guy named Stu Middleman who ran 1,000 miles in 11 days.
		And I remember thinking, how can it be?
		How can we both be human beings?
		And if I walk to the end of the block, I'm exhausted and out of breath.
		And there's a human on the planet who can run 1,000 miles in 11 days.
		I don't have good information.
		I'm doing something wrong.
		Because it's not like I was lazy.
		I was diligent.
		I just had bad information.
		It's hard being a vegan.
		It was hard being a vegan.
		Harder to be a vegan then when nobody was a vegan.
		You know, there weren't vegetarian restaurants all over the place.
		There was one.
		There was real food daily.
		It was the only place you could eat.
		So I read the Stu Middleman book and he talks about meeting this performance expert, Phil Maffetone, who changed the way he trained and that's why he could run a thousand miles in 11 days.
		So it's like, okay, Phil Maffetone is the answer.
		I email Phil Maffetone.
		I want to become your patient.
		And he said he just retired, gave up his medical practice and isn't doing that anymore.
		And he gave up doing medicine to pursue his dream of being a songwriter.
		And I said, well, I work in music.
		Maybe you can mentor me with my health and fitness, and I'll help you with your songs.
		We became friends, and he started treating me.
		He very much wanted me to eat animal protein, which I wouldn't do because I was a vegan.
		He got me to eat fish and eggs as a, to get animal protein, neither of which I liked at any point in my life.
		Growing up, I didn't eat eggs and I never liked fish.
		So he said, "Don't even think of it as food.
		Just think of it as medicine.
		You need this medicine." And I started eating fish and eggs.
		And he ended up living with me for two years, Phil.
		And he was with me all the time.
		He trained me.
		He got me to do heart rate-based cardio, doing stairs, but still super low level.
		I was still big, but still getting my...
		My system turned back on, you know, getting my vitality back.
		And I got much healthier working with Phil and I didn't lose any weight.
		I might have lost five pounds over two years.
		And he's living with me and he said, I watch everything you eat.
		I watch how you train.
		He said...
		999 people out of 1,000 who are doing what you're doing, all their weight would fall off.
		For some reason, yours is not coming off.
		Couldn't figure it out.
		And then I was thinking, well, my mom was obese.
		It's just a genetic thing.
		I've always been overweight.
		It's just what it is.
		And then the thing happened with Mo, where I was really big.
		Now I'm healthier.
		But still big.
		Go out to lunch with Mo.
		He sends me to his nutritionist.
		I go to see the guy.
		And he puts me on seven protein shakes a day.
		Like egg, white protein.
		Seven a day.
		And then fish, soup, salad for dinner.
		Like super low calorie, high protein, no carb diet.
		And in 14 months, I lost 130 pounds.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Whoa!
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And it was like a miracle because nothing, over the course of my life, nothing had worked.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I guess in some ways when I was doing chicken and vegetables, it worked.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Why didn't you go back to chicken and vegetables if that worked?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because I believe the, I believe veganism was good.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like I was brainwashed.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So did you believe it was good for the planet?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Both.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		The healthiest diet in the world.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How was that possible that you could look at your own body, though, and the effects that it was having on it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It didn't make sense.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you were just, there's something wrong with me.
		Something's wrong with me.
		It's not wrong with the diet itself.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's not the diet, it's me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So what is it like when you go on this very low-carb, high-protein diet and lose all that weight?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was...
		It changed my life more than anything else that has ever changed my life.
		And it taught me something.
		I've always lived in my head.
		I never lived in my body.
		I always lived in my head.
		And now I started feeling like I had a body to go with my head.
		And it was an interesting feeling having never had that before.
		And I met...
		Laird Hamilton on the beach.
		I think I was working with Kid Rock at the time, and Kid Rock introduced me to Laird and Don Wildman and this group of Malibu athlete guys.
		And Chris Chelios, the first person I ever went into a sauna with was Chris Chelios, who was really a fanatic.
		Sauna guy for 30 years.
		And he played in the NHL longer than anybody.
		And he blamed Sauna on his ability.
		You know, he gave credit Sauna for his ability to play for as long as he was able to play.
		So, started doing Sauna with him.
		And then Laird invited me to start training at the gym.
		Which was like...
		Seemed crazy.
		But I liked him and was so...
		Inspired by him, and he was so different from the musicians I hang around.
		I never hung around athletes before.
		So, meeting people who are good at anything Is interesting.
		And to meet someone who's so good, world class at something so foreign to what the people that I know who are world class at stuff, it's like a different universe.
		So I wanted to go to hang out with Laird, really just to hang out with him and see how he thought about the world because he's such an interesting character.
		And I started going.
		I remember when I went the first day, he said, okay, let's do some push-ups.
		And he asked me, and I couldn't do one push-up.
		And I said, I can't do it.
		I can't do it.
		He's like, no, don't say you can't do it.
		Say you haven't done it yet.
		And he would break up a movement.
		For every exercise, if I couldn't do it the full way to start, he would have me do a piece of the exercise.
		And then another piece, and then another piece, and then put the first two pieces together, and then put the second two pieces together, and finally put all three together until I could do things.
		And with his help, I went from not being able to do one push-up to working up to 100 consecutive push-ups, which was...
		I couldn't believe it.
		So what I learned through this process of both listening to the nutritionist and listening to Laird in the gym...
		I gave over control of myself.
		Up till that point, I always thought I knew what was best for myself.
		And what I thought was best for myself was being a vegan.
		But when I gave myself up to, in this case, other people, I lost weight, I got fit, My life changed and then started doing the ice and sauna was another part of it.
		And the ice, I was terrified to go in the ice at first and then worked up to, you know, sometimes we'll do 30 minutes in the ice before even getting in the sauna.
		Like insane.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		30 minutes?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		How cold is the ice?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		39 degrees.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		30 minutes?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Wow.
		If you do it every day, Like, that was during the lockdown.
		We're in Hawaii.
		And we were doing sauna and ice every day.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Are you doing it 30 minutes consecutively?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		In that case, it was 30 minutes consecutively.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So just in there, up to your neck, 30 minutes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		In there, up to your neck.
		I keep my hands out.
		I sit like this.
		I blow into my hands and focus on the heat, the sensation of the heat in my fingers.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You weren't worried about hypothermia?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		You weren't worried about anything?
unidentified		No.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because you'd built yourself up to that.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		I couldn't have done it.
		I wasn't forcing myself past what I could do.
		If I got too much, I'd get out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What's the benefit of being in there for that long, though?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was just like a game.
		It's like during lockdown, something to do.
		Like, let's see how long we can go.
		It's like you get to five.
		Let's say we typically did five minutes between rounds.
		So you do five minutes, and it's like, I feel like I could stay longer.
		Let's stay longer.
		Let's see.
		I was doing it with my other friend Jack.
		We would both do it together, and we're looking at each other in the sauna.
		I could stay.
		You want to stay?
		Stay.
		And, like, maybe we got up to 10 minutes once.
		Then we got up to 15 minutes once, and it was just like seeing what you could do.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So are you going from sauna to the cold back and forth?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Back and forth four times, but we started...
		In the old days, we would do sauna first and then cold and back and forth.
		And then we started doing cold first.
		It was like a challenge.
		It's harder to get into the ice not coming out of the sauna.
		One of the tricks that I would use to get into the ice was...
		Staying in the sauna too long and psyching myself up.
		I just want to cool off.
		I just want to cool off.
		Talking myself into jumping into the ice was like the best gift.
		Right.
		So then it's like, okay, so now I could do it that way.
		And then once I got comfortable with it, it's like, okay, can I just jump into an ice tub and just stay there?
		And it was just fun to try these things.
		It was just experimenting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what did that do for your body?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was great.
		First of all, I would say the number one thing that it did was put me in a great mood.
		I would say that I can be moody at times, and nothing has made me feel better in my life than the combination of the sauna and the ice back and forth.
		By the fourth round, you do not have a care in the world.
		And whatever difficulties you have in life to deal with are not as bad as getting in the ice, whatever they are.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like you described earlier with your workout.
		Same thing.
		So if you're doing something really hard, then the things that seem hard in life don't seem so hard.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Someone said this once, that the worst thing that's ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you.
		Doesn't matter what it is.
		It could be you got a scratch in your car.
		I can't believe this.
		That's why spoiled children, like spoiled children cry about things that's just nonsensical.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Like, why...
		What the fuck is wrong with you?
		Why are you getting so upset about this?
		Because they've never had anything bad happen to them.
		So their ability to be...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Resilient.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, resilient.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I had that issue as well because I grew up in a way where I was never challenged and I was not resilient.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And then I've gotten better at it since I went through depression and that was also part of getting to the resilience through depression.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so what is your diet like now?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Pretty close to carnivore.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		We just came, we were in Italy for four months, so the rules are different in Italy.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I go off the rails in Italy.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I definitely gained weight, and I don't feel great about it, but I'm excited now when I leave here, I'm going right back to, I'll probably do shakes now for, to get back to where I want to be, and then I'll go more carnivore.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so the shakes are just a calorie deficit thing?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And there's something about, again, according to the nutritionist who I saw, having the protein all through the day.
		Because when we do carnivore, we usually intermittent fast and just eat twice a day or maybe even twice a day close together.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And eat just meat.
		Often, I'll be the least strict in that I might have a romaine salad with mine, which is not carnivore, but I will have a romaine.
		And it's just romaine and olive oil and salt and steak and butter and salt.
		Um...
		So I'll probably do the shakes just to cut weight.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what's in these shakes again?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's egg white protein?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, J-Rob egg white protein.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And what do you mix it with?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Water.
		And it tastes great.
		It's good.
		And sometimes I'll mix in coffee if there's too many of them and it starts tasting boring.
		Or I don't like the vanillas as much as the chocolate, but if I mix a little bit of vanilla into the chocolate, it's like a new flavor.
		Find ways to keep it interesting.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And do you have goals in terms of like body fat or weight or are you just trying to feel good?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Just trying to feel good.
		I would say that when I... I'm just trying to feel good.
		It's like, you know, if I weigh myself and if the numbers are going up...
		I'm aware of it.
		If the numbers are going down, I'm aware of it.
		And it's better when they're going down than when they're going up.
		But I've never really been a goal-oriented person.
		It has never been...
		I don't set a goal and work towards it.
		I like working on something and when it feels good to me, then I know that it's good.
		It's like the goal seems like a false...
		It's like a fiction, you know?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think the goal is just to get people to work.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And then along the way, you find what you're really trying to do.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But the getting people to work thing is oftentimes the most difficult.
		I was going to ask you that about music.
		Like, how difficult is it and how important is it to have people that are disciplined, that show up and do the work?
		Because a lot of artists are very impulsive.
		And oftentimes, one of the things that comes with impulsiveness is this unwillingness to sit and be uncomfortable.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		The best ones will work through that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's part of...
		It's like there are a lot of talented people who never make it because they don't have the work ethic to make it.
		It's not just talent.
		Like, talent's a piece.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And you could argue, for some people, the work ethic Trump's the talent, you know?
		Chris Rock's a great example.
		Like when I first met Chris, he was my comedian friend who wasn't very funny.
		And I know him when he wasn't funny.
		He was my music friend because he's got great musical taste and we would just hang out and talk about music.
		And then I saw him get funny and it was remarkable because he went from okay to all of a sudden incredible.
		Couldn't believe it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Just hard work.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Just hard work.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		All hard work.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Hard work and determination and some understanding of what you're trying to do.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
		This is such a valuable conversation for people.
		It's valuable for me and I already do it, you know?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's like you need to hear these things from different people, different journeys, you know, and try to understand We're all the same in some way.
		At some core essence of our being, we're all the same in many ways.
		We all want to be loved.
		We all want to be happy.
		We all want to be appreciated.
		We all want to be surrounded by people who love us and who we love.
		And then it's expressing through creativity and art and creation and this thing.
		But very few people figure out how to do it the way you're describing it.
		And I think it's really magical, what you're saying.
		Because it's such a pure pursuit.
		The purity of it is what's most inspiring about it.
		You're really just trying to do it.
		Whatever it is, you really shouldn't even have a word.
		It's a thing you're trying to get to.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, words are insufficient for what we're thinking about.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And that's probably the hard part about putting that down, right?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In a form where people can digest.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Really difficult to do, and that's why it took so long.
		And as I say, it's elusive.
		I can read through the book and read something and like, wow.
		I didn't know that.
		It's mean now.
		I'll still have these epiphanies reading the book because it's heavy stuff and it's not understandable.
		We really are talking about magic.
		We're talking about Like, the universe conspiring on our behalf if we let it.
		And to be in this flow of catching these waves that anyone can catch if you're trying to catch it, you're open to it, you see it coming, you...
		You take off on every chance you get, and sometimes the ride happens, and it's remarkable.
		It's remarkable how it happens.
		And it doesn't come from...
		It's not preconceived.
		It's not an idea.
		It's through the doing.
		These things that want to be, that the universe wants to happen now, comes through us.
		And if we don't do it, maybe someone else will do it.
		Have you ever had that experience where you have an idea for something and you don't do it and then six months later you see that someone else has done it?
		It's not because they took your idea.
		It's that it's time for that.
		And you can act on it or not.
		And the best artists are the ones who have the best antenna for this material that's available.
		It's coming through.
		The best comedians see the best jokes.
		They see them coming.
		We all live in the same world.
		The way you see it, you have the best joke because you see it best.
		And one of the reasons I believe that you can see it best is because you don't believe what the structure around you assumes to be the case.
		I mentioned before, I grew up watching pro wrestling and I still...
		I watch 11 hours of pro wrestling every week, something like that.
		There's a lot of wrestling on TV. And I love pro wrestling.
		It's the only sport I watch.
		Really?
		100%.
		Pro wrestling.
unidentified		Wow.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I feel like pro wrestling's where it's at because you don't know...
		Where the line is.
		We know that the people involved are working together to put on a good show.
		I like that.
		They're not guys trying to hurt each other.
		They're trying to put on a good show.
		I'm with that.
		I like that better than watching guys trying to hurt each other.
		So I like that they're putting on a show for the audience.
		But they might have beef in real life, and that might work its way into the fight.
		Or there may be a storyline where one guy steals another guy's girlfriend.
		And that may be true, and it may not be true, and you never know.
		And I feel like the reality of wrestling is closer to what the world is really like than we think.
		We think, oh, that's fake and the world is real.
		I think that's closer to how it really is.
		Everything is like wrestling.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I would have never anticipated that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I would have never anticipated you have a love for pro wrestling.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the best.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the best.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I gotta get you together with Tony Hinchcliffe.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the best.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Does he love it?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh my god.
		You know who Tony is?
		Brilliant comedian.
		Brilliant.
		He's the host of the best live television show, the best live comedy podcast in the world.
		It's called Kill Tony.
		And it's a show where he takes...
		Stand-up comedians, he has professionals that come and sit on this panel, and then amateurs will go up and do one minute.
		And there's this incredible band behind him.
		The band is like, some of the members are the guys that work with Gary Clark Jr., and just these incredible musicians.
		And they play along with it, and then these people go up and they do one minute, and then Tony asks them questions and riffs with them, and he fucking loves pro wrestling.
		He loves it.
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So hearing you talk about this is going to give him a boner.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the best.
		It's the best.
		It's so wild.
		So surprising.
		It makes you feel good.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't get it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Really?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I don't get it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the most relaxing thing.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the only thing that relaxes me.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's so wild.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'll watch it before I go to sleep, and I sleep good.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		If I watch wrestling before I go to sleep, the world's a good place.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I am so engrossed in the world of martial arts competition.
		To me, it's nonsense.
		It's just like, you know, I get that people like it.
		I don't understand it.
		To me, it's just like, yeah, yeah.
		But they know what's going on.
		This is fake.
		And it just...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's different than that.
		Fake and real is not what it is.
		It's something else.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well also, what you're saying, like people trying to hurt each other, that's not what it is either.
		My description of mixed martial arts is high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences.
		There's this thing that they're doing where they're trying to achieve excellence in this insanely difficult endeavor.
		And through doing that, you create some of the most exceptional people I've ever met.
		Because they're the people that can rise and figure out their own bullshit through all this chaos and through these moments and there's so many variables in there like fatigue, mental and physical fatigue, because so much of fatigue is mental.
		You know, when you're inspired, you can do more work.
		And how do you decide when to turn up the gas, when to hit the gas and when to coast, when to attack, when to defend, when to move, when to lure your opponent into a false sense, when to set traps?
		And to me, I'm just so engrossed in that world.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like physical chess, would you say?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's more so, because chess pieces are limited in their movement.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I see.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Whereas with mixed martial arts, there's so much creativity that's happening while it's going on.
		And again, these people that are the best at it are some of the most interesting and exceptional people that I've ever met.
		And some of the nicest people.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I bet.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Which is really weird.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because you assume the people that beat people up are just brutes.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It has to be some level of respect to be good at something like that, I would imagine.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The great ones.
		Yeah.
		The great ones have a level of respect and the discipline is unparalleled.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I only watched it at the beginning when the first Gracie.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Hoist.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I saw Hoist.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And that was fascinating to me because I didn't understand it at all, what was happening, but it always seemed like He was losing, and then the other guy would give up eventually.
		And it was like, I don't even understand what's happening.
		It's so wild.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was one of the challenging things about my job when I first came aboard with the UFC is to explain that aspect of it to the casual, to the person that's at home.
		Like when someone's, like if Hoist was, I never, I commentated some of Hoist's fights, but later in his career.
		The challenge is to explain the jiu-jitsu.
		Because everybody kind of understands all that guy who just punched that guy, that guy that just kicked that guy.
		That makes sense to people.
		That's an impact.
		He got hurt.
		But when you watch a complicated technique like an omoplata.
		Omoplata is a rare move that rarely gets pulled off in the UFC. Ben Saunders and maybe one or two other people have ever pulled it off.
		It's a shoulder lock.
		It's fairly common in gi jujitsu because of the friction involved in wearing the kimono, but in MMA where it's slippery and there's punches and all this, and it's a technique where...
		You isolate a person's shoulder.
		You throw your leg over the shoulder and the shin goes across their face.
		You rotate behind them.
		Your leg is wrapped around their shoulder.
		Their arm is pointing.
		Their hand is almost like scratching their back.
		And through the leverage of your legs and your upper body controlling their body, you put extreme torque and pressure on their shoulder until they're forced to tap.
		To explain that to people while that's going on, explain how this person's setting this up and what they have to do next, and to try to explain it in a way that's going to make sense to people that have never felt it, they don't know what's happening, and just to convey my excitement of this very difficult maneuver being pulled off.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Would that be as dangerous as, let's say, a figure four leg lock?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		A bunch of wrestlers got mad at me because Tony and I were watching pro wrestling.
		I was trying to explain how dumb a figure four leg lock was.
		Because I was like, he's literally giving up an inside heel hook.
		Because an inside heel hook is one of the most devastating submission techniques because once someone gets it, the time you have to tap is so small before your knee gets ripped apart.
		And so a figure four leg lock...
		You will never see in a jiu-jitsu competition.
		Because as someone...
		It doesn't work.
		So as someone's setting up that figure four, you're literally giving up an inside heel hook.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's pretty funny.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It's kind of funny in that regard.
		That, you know, you're doing this thing, but this thing in the real world is like the worst thing you do.
		But in pro wrestling, it's like, oh, he's got the figure four leg locked!
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's great.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And the crowd's going wild.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Going wild.
		I remember Ric Flair telling a story, because Ric Flair's famous for doing the figure of four.
		That's his finishing hold.
		And he didn't invent it.
		Someone did it before him.
		And he remembers the first time it was put on him, he was so afraid because he believed it was as deadly as the announcer said.
		It's so funny.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		There's some techniques that really do work, like the Boston Crab.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's a real move.
		And guys have done that in MMA, and it's crazy when someone pulls it off.
		It's only been pulled off a handful of times, and it's usually a mismatch.
		It's usually someone decides to pull it off.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Because they're like, I'm beating this guy so bad, dude, I'm going to put a fucking Boston Crab on him.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's so funny.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it works.
		Boston Crab works.
		Yeah, here a guy's got it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he tapped a guy with a Boston Crab.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Look at that.
unidentified		Ha ha ha!
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you have to understand, that guy on top must be so much better than that guy.
		To get him into that position, I mean, that guy's got to be hilarious.
		That's a funny move.
		That guy on the bottom has got to be so bummed out, too.
		So he just gets on top of him.
		He's like, oh, here it is.
		He's setting it up.
		He knows what he's doing.
		Because, look, he turns to him, punches him in the face, and then the guy flattens out.
		The right move is to turn and face him belly to back.
		Because belly to back, you get the rear naked choke.
		This guy must be hilarious.
		Because setting up this is like, he's being silly.
		Look at it, he's got his tongue out and everything.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's great.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That fucking never happens.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Maybe he's a Shawn Michaels fan, because I think that was Shawn Michaels.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wrestlers now don't call that a Boston Crab anymore, because it's...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		What do they call it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That would be...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The Walls of Jericho.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		A sharpshooter, maybe?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The Walls of Jericho?
unidentified		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's it?
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		That's what another video's calling it, yeah.
jamie vernon ▲ ● ▼		This fighter pulls off Walls of Jericho with a sim clip.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		But it's called different things depending on who...
		Walls of Jericho is Chris Jericho's version of that.
		Right.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		That shit works.
		Yeah.
		You would never get a guy in that.
		I mean, unless you're that much better than the guy.
		You could say that.
		That guy was already done.
		Because when that guy goes belly down and he's reaching for his legs, that guy stayed belly down.
		He's done.
		A guy who is good would go to one hip.
		You would immediately go to your side and you would hip escape and you would put a hand on the hip and you would try to get to a defensive position which would either be half guard.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		That's how wrestlers get out of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		They turn to the side.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they turn to the side and then put their head under and they can get out.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, it's real wrestling, like real actual catch wrestling.
		the beginning of pro wrestling.
		Catch wrestling was catch as catch can, was like a very brutal physical form of submission fighting.
		And these guys like Farmer Burns back in, I guess it was the turn of the century, would go on the road and they would go to carnivals And they would compete with any man who wanted to get in the ring with them.
		And they would have these submission matches.
		And you could either pin a guy, you could win by pin, or you could win by tap.
		Or a guy would tap out from a submission.
		And there's a lot of techniques that came from catch wrestling.
		That are applicable today, including there's some catch specialists that compete and win against very high-level guys in submission matches and against jiu-jitsu guys, including the Gracies.
		One of the best examples is Josh Barnett.
		Josh Barnett is the youngest guy to ever win the UFC Heavyweight Championship.
		Elite, top of the food chain, professional mixed martial arts fighter, who's also a catch wrestler and a huge fan of pro wrestling and has competed in pro wrestling in Japan, done it in America, does commentary on pro wrestling, is just a huge pro wrestling proponent and connoisseur.
		And Josh would use catch wrestling techniques on elite jiu-jitsu fighters and tap them.
		And it's a big deal.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		There's a guy named Timothy Thatcher in pro wrestling who's...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I think comes from the catch world and he's pretty treacherous.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		Well, it's a very violent form of submission wrestling because wrestlers compete very differently than submission fighters.
		Wrestlers kind of go all out and sprint because matches, although you have to have incredible endurance to compete in an amateur wrestling match, there's a time limit.
		And these time limits are fairly short in comparison to, say, like Gordon Ryan, who's the greatest jiu-jitsu athlete of all time, who's only 27 today.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And he is one of the most disciplined people I think I've ever met in my life and one of the most driven and intelligent.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Trains 365 days a year.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Doesn't matter if he's sick, doesn't matter if he's tired, he'll just train less hard.
		Trains every single day.
		Holidays, birthdays, fuck you, you're at the gym.
		And he has...
		These no-time-limit submission matches against the best jiu-jitsu fighters in the world.
		And people are terrified to compete against him in this because it's a matter of time before he gets you.
		And so he has this slow, steady approach where he's slowly ramping up the heat and slowly putting his foot on the gas until the guys start to break and then he gets them.
		And he was competing recently against this guy, Felipe Pena.
		And Felipe is also elite, world champion, top of the food chain.
		And Gordon got him to quit at 45 minutes.
		Because he was so on his way to getting defeated.
		But his pace was a pace that was set up for time limit jiu-jitsu matches.
		Where it's a lot of explosivity, a lot of quick movement, a lot of technique.
		But it's also you're recognizing that you can only do this for so long.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he's a sprint expert.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I have to use the restroom again.
unidentified		Alright.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I think I'm gonna use the restroom too.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Then we'll come back and wrap this up.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm gonna watch the catch wrestling guy you met.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Josh Barnett?
		Yeah.
		There's a ton of stuff about him on the internet and great mixed martial arts fights and a lot of submission grappling matches and all kinds of stuff.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Cool.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I would have never imagined you for a pro wrestling fan.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That's the most shocking thing about this conversation, I think.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's the most fun.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever been?
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		To a pro wrestling match?
		Yes.
		What did I go see?
		I definitely saw one when I was younger.
unidentified		And I think that was it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Tony's always trying to get me to come to see Wrestlemania.
		He's like, if you go to Wrestlemania, you'll get it.
		You'll get it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		You'll understand.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's actually better on TV than in person, honestly.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Really?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
unidentified		Why is that?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because the commentators are a big part of it.
		And the commentators are super funny.
		Wildly funny.
		Everything's a crazy exaggeration.
		Like I can remember one call from a WrestleMania from childhood where one of the Japanese wrestlers would throw some, you know, had a little bit of salt in his palm and throw it in the guy's eyes.
		And Gorilla Monsoon was the commentator at that point.
		And he said, he just threw about five pounds of salt in the man's eyes.
		You know, everything is just insane.
		But that's the show.
		It's like the show isn't...
		It works on this other level where everything is ridiculous and insane, and you're not going to see a fight.
		Do you know what I'm saying?
		If you reframe it for, I'm not going to see a fight, I'm going to have fun seeing this crazy show.
		It's like the circus.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And it really is.
		And it's edgy.
		Like, they'll do crazies.
		You know, women getting hit with chairs.
		It's insane.
		It's completely wrong.
		But that's the...
		What's so cool about it is that they cross lines in the name of telling the story...
		Where it's like a bad guy could do something really bad.
		Because you're supposed to hate them and boo them, so they do something really vile.
		And it's funny because it's so crazy, and it's funny because it's so wrong.
		It's like with Dice.
		A lot of the jokes were, what was funny about it was, it's wrong.
		Do you know what I'm saying?
		Knowing that it's wrong is where the humor is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is that the only thing you consume on television?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Mainly.
		I'd say I watch some documentaries.
		But mainly wrestling.
unidentified		That's amazing.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It just takes so much time.
		There's so much.
		And it's not like watching a fight.
		It's all this, like a soap opera.
		There are all these storylines that keep going.
		If you miss a week...
		You're not in the story.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, right.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's like the matches are the least of the story.
		Sometimes they'll resolve themselves in the ring, but the storytelling rarely happens in the ring.
		It's part of it, but it's not the big part of it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever talked to Billy Corgan about this?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, of course.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		When I had him on, I thought that was surprising.
		I knew that he owned some pro wrestling organization.
		He was one of the owners.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		He owns the NWA now.
		I actually started a pro wrestling company called Smoky Mountain Wrestling in the 90s at a time when...
		Wrestling wasn't serving me, you know, as a fan, wrestling changed and it became a different show.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		In what way?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		The real wrestling is really edgy and crazy and like it's outlaw.
		And something happened when Hulk Hogan got popular.
		WWE, maybe even WWF back then, changed to be more like aimed at little kids.
		And when it became aimed at little kids, they were more like everybody was dressed like a superhero and it was goofier.
		Whereas the other wrestling was more like Badass barroom brawlers.
		So it was different.
		One was like a Western, one was like a kids' show.
		So when wrestling turned into a kids' show, and WWE was the biggest, the other league used to be called the NWA, and it became WCW, and WCW followed suit, and they started chasing kids also.
		So for all of the real wrestling fans like me, nobody was doing wrestling anymore.
		Everybody was doing shows for kids.
		So, just again, as a fan, I want wrestling, so I funded a league to start in the South that was more like real wrestling.
		And then the Attitude Era happened in WWE, and they turned back into being hard wrestling.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The Attitude Era.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		That was like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Triple H, where it got more like it's not for kids anymore.
		Got serious.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I want to watch pro wrestling with you.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		We'll do it.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I want to sit down with you while you're watching pro wrestling.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		We'll do it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		We'll watch some highlights.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		You're going to love it.
		Because you have a good sense of humor.
		If you have a good sense of humor, it's the most fun.
		It's the most fun.
		Just can't think of it as a fight.
		You can't compare it to anything else.
		It's its own thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Maybe that's my problem.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Maybe my problem is wanting it to be real.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		It wouldn't be better if it was real.
		That's the thing.
		It wouldn't be better.
		This thing is better as it is.
		There's good versions of it and not.
		But when it's good, it's the best.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So when you started your own organization, how did you go about doing that?
		How did you get talent?
		How did you find the right people?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		There was a...
		So in wrestling, there were wrestlers and there were managers.
		There are less managers today than there were, but there's still...
		Paul Heyman manages Roman Reigns, the head of the table who's current champion.
		Longest reigning champion in decades, I believe.
		And...
		The best managers were always really entertaining, kind of like comedians.
		And the best ones of all time were Bobby Heenan, Jim Cornette, and Paul Heyman.
		And when NWA turned into WCW and started going soft, Jim Cornette left wrestling, and he's one of the great minds of pro wrestling.
		And I met him, and through him, I talked about, we talked about together.
		It was really his dream, but we had the same dream.
		We both wanted real wrestling at a time when wrestling was going through this, turning into a kid's show.
		So he managed it, and it was based in Louisville, Kentucky, which is where he lived.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And so you would go to the events?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Rarely.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I went one time.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		So you just set it up?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Set it up, funded, and he'd run stuff by me and I would share my creative opinion, but ultimately it was his show.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		And you were just doing it because you wanted that kind of thing to exist?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I wanted...
		I felt like...
		I'm the audience.
		Nobody is serving my needs.
		Same reason I started making hip-hop records.
		Same thing.
		It's always been.
		Everything I make, I make it because if someone else would make it, I wouldn't have to make it and it'd be fine.
		I just want to like stuff.
		So if I can see a way to make something crazy and interesting that probably no one else is going to make, then that's a thing for me to make.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Is there anything else like that in your life that's unusual that you're involved in creatively?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I don't know how to answer because to me it's not odd.
		So, I don't know.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's just whatever you like.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Whatever you like.
		Yeah, there's no right or wrong.
		It's like we all like what we like.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Listen, that's a beautiful way to live life.
		I mean, it sounds like you've got a fucking formula.
		And not just that, something that's...
		I think it's going to resonate with a lot of people.
		I really do.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's really...
		If you think about it this way, if someone were to give you two plates of food and say, taste both, and you taste both, and say, okay, which one do you like better?
		That's not a hard question to answer usually.
		That's all it is.
		It's as simple as that.
		As like, try to get it down to two choices and say, A or B, which one is better?
		And then continuing setting up A and Bs.
unidentified		Keep...
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		And you know it.
		You taste it.
		There's no other...
		You just have to block out any other, oh, what so-and-so's going to say or what this one does or what that other person did or what they're playing on the radio.
		None of those things matter.
		All that matters is when I hear this, do I want to lean forward?
		Do I get excited?
		Or do I feel like I want to change channel or I want to put on something else?
		If I want to turn it off...
		It's not for me.
		If I'm excited and want to hear more, great.
		And that's all...
		Everything comes down to that.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		That is one of the most insidious things about social media, is that it gives people so many of those what does everyone else think about what I'm doing thing.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't matter.
		It really doesn't matter.
		It can't...
		If you're aiming towards greatness...
		You don't get there by what other people think.
		It doesn't work that way.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It doesn't.
		It really doesn't.
		And so many people are intoxicated by other people's opinions.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that said, when someone likes something, it's nice.
		I'm not saying you don't care what they think.
		It's nice, but you can't make decisions based on what anyone else thinks.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Right.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Again, if I make something and if I have a choice for people to like it or not, I would hope they like it.
		But I'm not changing one note with the idea of They might not like this, so I'm gonna change the note.
		Never, ever, ever.
		Not one note.
		Not one word.
unidentified		I think that's the best way to end this.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		My pleasure.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much, brother.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Thanks for having me, man.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It was fun.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		The book is called The Creative Act, A Way of Being, Rick Rubin.
		It's available now.
		Did you do the audio version of it?
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		Not yet, but I'm hoping to.
		I know there will be an audio version.
		If I can do it justice, it will be me.
		If I can't do it justice...
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it has to be you.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to try.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It's got to be you.
		You can do it justice.
		You can do it.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like acting.
		It's not just reading.
		Reading out loud is a very particular thing.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		It is.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		But it's got to be in your voice.
rick rubin ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to do everything I can to make it happen.
joe rogan ▲ ● ▼		I have all my faith.
unidentified		Thank you.
unidentified		Bye, everybody.

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