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

What if AI isn’t replacing creativity, but expanding it in ways we’ve never seen before? Rick Rubin joins Ryan to discuss the mysterious nature of using AI throughout the creative process. They talk about what vibe coding is, why structure can unlock freedom, and revisiting ancient philosophy to uncover new insights. Rick Rubin is a renowned American record producer and the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records. He has produced albums for a wide range of acclaimed artists, including the Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Metallica, Audioslave, Rage Against the Machine, and Johnny Cash. He has won nine Grammys and has been nominated for 12 more. He has been called “the most important producer of the last 20 years” by MTV and was named on Time‘s list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World”. 👉 Check out Rick’s latest project The Way of the Code: https://www.thewayofcode.com/ 📚 Grab copies of Rick’s book The Creative Act: A Way of Being https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-creative-act-a-way-of-being?_pos=1&_sid=d75240e91&_ss=r at The Painted Porch | https://www.thepaintedporch.com https://www.thepaintedporch.com/products/the-creative-act-a-way-of-being?_pos=1&_sid=d75240e91&_ss=r Check out Rick’s podcastTetragrammaton https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tetragrammaton-with-rick-rubin/id1671669052 and follow Rick on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/rickrubin/?hl=en and X https://x.com/rickrubin?lang=en @RickRubin https://www.instagram.com/rickrubin/?hl=en 📖 Preorder the final book in Ryan Holiday's The Stoic Virtues Series: "Wisdom Takes Work":https://store.dailystoic.com/pages/wisdom-takes-work 🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast/?hl=en: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast 🎥 Watch top moments from The Daily Stoic Podcast https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast: https://www.youtube.com/@dailystoicpodcast ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail 🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/ 📱 Follow us: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/dailystoic/,Twitter https://twitter.com/dailystoic,YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic,TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@daily_stoic?lang=en, andFacebook https://www.facebook.com/dailystoic See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast where each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, a short passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength and insight here in everyday life. And on Wednesdays, we talk to some of our fellow students of ancient philosophy, well-known and obscure, fascinating and powerful. With them, we discuss the strategies and habits that have helped them become who they are, and also to find peace and wisdom in their lives.

• 0:51Ryan Holiday?

  Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. I don't know when you'll be listening to this, but right now I am in Sundance, Utah. I flew in this morning and went for a long run up to Stuart Falls. It was quite beautiful. But it was funny, on the plane, I read this article in Semaphore about this idea of vibe coding. Do you ever have one of those things where like, a term you've never heard of, and then suddenly you hear it once and you go, oh, what is that? And then you hear it again, and then maybe you hear it two or three times in succession, you go, maybe this is a thing. That's like, when you start to sense maybe you're early on a trend, or a trend has passed you by, or there's something happening that you were like, previously not aware of. And

• 1:34Ryan Holiday?

  vibe coding is that for me, because I don't program stuff. Obviously, Daily Stoic is online, and there's a website and a store, and so much of what I do is, is digital, but I don't like, know how to code, not anymore. I mean, I understood some rudimentary code, and I built my first website when I was in elementary school or middle school on one of those, what are they called, woozy wig editors. The point is, I've been doing this a long time, and then generally know how it all works, but then you hear something, you go, oh, this must be a new thing. And this idea of vibe coding is one of those, because the guest that I just had on, that I interviewed, I guess this would be two days before I'm recording this message to you.

• 2:19Ryan Holiday?

  Has been talking a lot about vibe coding because they're sort of now become like the memified version. So, okay, coding is very complex. You speak in this language and it makes something, a website, an app, whatever you're listening to this podcast on, right? But vibe coding now with AI is the ability to describe what you want in the way that previously you might have talked to a coder or an engineer. Now you type it into a large language model like ChatGPT or whatever, and AI can make you that thing based on your description. But obviously, there's a certain amount of interpretation to that. It's about prompt engineering as opposed to code writing. So Rick Rubin, the great music producer, what does he have to do with vibe coding? Well, that's sort of the whole thing here.

• 3:03Ryan Holiday?

  So he is the vibe coder of music, right? He doesn't play instruments. He doesn't really even know how the little mobs work. He's a guy who knows how to get the best out of artists, how to describe what he thinks they should do, how to get them to a place of inspiration or creativity that brings out good work. So he has become like when people talk about vibe coding, they mean like to do digitally what Rick Rubin does musically. And I just had him on the podcast and he was talking about vibe coding and I had to go like, well, wait, what is that? I'd never heard that term. You will literally hear in this episode, me hearing that term for the very first time in my life. So then I read this article, which was about how many different startups in Y Combinator are not

• 3:44Ryan Holiday?

  coding themselves anymore, but using vibe coding. So anyways, all of that led to Rick's new book, which is called The Way of Code, The Timeless Art of Vibe Coding, which is really an adaptation of the Tao Te Ching with generated AI in it and it can be prompted and modified. It's a weird thing in the way that a lot of what Rick does is weird, but it's also brilliant and interesting and inspirational. And look, I don't care what he does. I'm going to take an excuse to talk to him because he's one of the greatest music producers of all time. He's worked with Johnny Cash and the Beastie Boys and Public Enemy and Chili Peppers and Metallica and Audioslave and Rage Against the Machine. Neil Diamond, when I do my preorder launches for my books, I almost always

• 4:29Ryan Holiday?

  Include a playlist. Like if you preorder Wisdom Takes Work, which is the new book, which is coming out in the fall, you can grab that at dailystoic.com/preorder. I always include like the songs I've listened to and Rick Rubin associated songs make up a good chunk of those lists year in and year out. The songs I listen to when I write, when I think, when I run. He's maybe the greatest producer of all time. He's won nine Grammys. He's been nominated for 12 more. He's called the most important producer of the last 20 years by MTV. He's been one of Time's most influential people. He's got a great podcast called Tetragramaton. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter. All links to those in today's show notes. You can grab copies of his first book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being at The Painted

• 5:11Ryan Holiday?

  Porch. It's one of our most popular books. And I think you're gonna really like this interview. It was awesome. I was honored to do it. And I'm excited to not just bring this to you, but to sort of that I got to capture this weird phenomenon where you, you know, you put yourself out there, you explore, you get exposed to something, and then you have to be open to seeing it again and again, and then go, hey, I think there's something here. I want to figure this out. I want to go down this rabbit hole. I want to learn about it. And hopefully this episode will do that. We have a part two of it coming shortly. I'll talk a little bit more about the Dowager Jing there. But I wanted to start with this little intro and then just get right into it. Enjoy.

• 5:54Ryan Holiday?

  You're not feeling well, though?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  I'm okay. It's just a little jet laggy time zone. Didn't sleep so much, so a little in space. But sometimes that that makes for an interesting conversation.

• 6:06Ryan Holiday?

  It's always a tension, right? Like, do you push through it? Or do you respect it? And there's something kind of, kind of zen about that. It's easier in some ways, I think, to push through than to respect it. When I'm not feeling it creatively, that's always a debate I have. Do you go, today's not the day. I'm going to respect that I'm not feeling into it? Or is that the resistance and you have to push through it, or you would never get anything done?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I tend to show up regardless. And I'm often surprised by what, what happens. But it's all out of our control. And I'm just a passenger on the boat.

• 6:49Ryan Holiday?

  Well, maybe that's actually the way to think about it is you show up, but you don't have expectations. So sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. But the part that you control is whether you show up or not.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And sometimes we're surprised, you know, some days I show up expecting nothing and something really good happens. And sometimes I'm excited about something the night before and I show up and it doesn't really work out. And it has a life of its own. The more we can respect it and show up and be present and see what happens.

• 7:27Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. There's a story I have in Discipline is Destiny about Lou Gehrig. He sort of struggled as a rookie when he was in the minor leagues and he's sort of getting in this kind of downward spiral where he's not performing well and he's down on himself. The owner of the Yankees dispatches some manager out to see him and the advice he gives him is he says that, you know, the most important thing you can learn as a young baseball player is that you can't be good every day. And, and I think about that a lot. Like what matters is you show up. What matters is that you try. But if you think you're going to be flawless every single day, and if you think it's going to be magic every day, you're going to be disappointed. And actually, that disappointment is going to prevent you from performing.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Yes, that sounds right.

• 8:13Ryan Holiday?

  I listened to this podcast the other day with John Mulaney, the comedian on it. And he said something that I was curious to get your take on it. He was saying that having a family has allowed him to be more of a maniac in his work because he knows there's people at home that love him. And I, I think we have this sort of myth or this image of the artist as this kind of lone wolf or this maniac, really, right? And we don't think about stability. We don't necessarily think about discipline or routine. We think about long nights. We think about disheveled clothes, you know, we think about all that. But I do, I do think there is something about creating order in your personal life

• 8:53Ryan Holiday?

  or stability or support in your personal life that allows you a certain amount of creative freedom that perhaps you couldn't get on your own.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Absolutely. The more grounded we could be in our life, the more free we'll be in our art and the more extreme it can get, which is usually where the most interesting things happen.

• 9:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, some artist was talking about how you have to keep your workstation orderly, so your work can be disorderly.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  I can see that. I can see that.

• 9:23Ryan Holiday?

  But I imagine you have dealt with artists on the broad spectrum, some of which were actually totally disorganized and crazy. And sometimes good stuff comes from that, too. And then you've probably seen this sort of more monkish Spartan drill sergeant types.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Both exist, and there is no right way. I will say, in the long run, it's hard to keep it going if you're not, if you're not taking care of yourself.

• 9:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  It's hard to sustain the long run.

• 9:58Ryan Holiday?

  Was that a transformation for you as you've done this longer and longer?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  I've always been, you know, I never, I was never a partier. I never drank. I never smoked. I never took any drugs. I used to work late hours, but only out of passion and excitement. And I grew to learn over time that more time in the studio didn't make it better.

• 10:22Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  I didn't know that in the early, in the early days, I just thought the more I do, the better it'll be. I came to see that after, you know, an eight hour day or 12 hour day or four hour day, depending on where you are in your life, there's an amount that really is like you can focus and you can get a lot done. And then tomorrow will be much more productive if you don't go way past it the day before.

• 10:50Ryan Holiday?

  I've always wondered that about football coaches. You know, they're always like, you know, I get up at three in the morning and then I get to the, the practice facility. I always wondered if like part of the collective bargaining agreement, if like coaches had to keep banking hours, if we would notice any difference on the field? Or if it's all just part of a kind of a narrative and a competition? Like it's a signal that you're serious, but it might not affect the product at all. And probably maybe even for musicians, it's like you want to show that you're in the studio late at night because it seems like that's a commitment to the art. But maybe commitment to the art is. Being a normal person and not a vampire, like it could be totally different than we think.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's different for every artist and they find their rhythm and their rhythms change over time. Sometimes, you know, in the early days, they work all night. In the early days, I worked all night. And then at some point, my schedule changed and I like it.

• 11:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's kind of coming into your own when you realize like all the affect and the, oh, this is what it's supposed to look like. When all that pressure goes away and then you just do it the way that you like to do it. That is natural and productive for you and you dispense with the pretense, basically, the performance part of the performing.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  True.

• 12:11Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I really like this. I really like this new book. I was curious, what made you think about it not as a physical book? Right? You're always, I think, part of what you do is you push the boundaries of things. But what made you specifically go, no, this should be on a computer, not a thing that you hold?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  It wasn't planned out at all. My original focus was the idea of writing a book. And it came and I thought it's a book that I want to get done very quickly, which is very different than The Creative Act, which was an eight-year project. This was essentially an eight-week project. I think of it as a joke project, started as a joke project. But I put all of my real projects aside to put all of my time and effort into the joke project, which was unusual. Hadn't done that before. It just felt like the right thing to do. It felt like timely in a way. I wanted it to exist in the world very quickly and that also probably ended up playing a role in how it was released.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  So it got to the point where I finished the text and I was excited about the text, but I still didn't have any release plan. And I happened to interview that week, I happened to interview Jack Clark, who's one of the seven co-founders of Anthropic for the Tetra Graham and then podcast. And that episode actually just came out today.

• 13:36Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, wow.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  And yeah, just incredible timing. But at the end of the interview, after we finished the interview, I said, I just wrote this thing. He was a journalist. He was a writer.

• 13:47Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 13:47Speaker 01

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

• 14:25Ryan Holiday?

  It almost seems like something you might, like a thought exercise you might put a musician through, where you're like, instead of taking eight years on this album, what would it look like if you only had eight weeks? And sometimes the constraints or the premise forces you to get outside your sort of normal way of doing things.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And it probably influenced the decision to do it related to the Tao.

• 14:51Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  And when it got related to the Tao, it went from a joke project originally. And the joke was, I'm gonna write a book about something I don't know anything about. That was the premise. It's like, okay, I don't know. The reason, there was a meme of me being associated with vibe coding.

• 15:13Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  I had nothing to do with that. It just happened. I was a bystander and I keep getting friends sending me a picture of me associated with vibe coding. I didn't know what vibe coding was. And it felt like I was being enlisted into something. And so much of creativity is like looking at the things going on around you and then seeing how does this, how do I participate in this thing that I'm noticing? So in this case, the noticing was me being associated with vibe coding didn't make any sense to me, but it did to someone because thousands of images are coming up of me being associated with vibe coding.

• 15:55Ryan Holiday?

  What is vibe coding?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Vibe coding is, do you know what traditional coding is? Writing computer language. And it's a very exacting, specific.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Time intensive, detail oriented. You want the computer to do something very simple and you write thousands of lines of code to get it to do this simple thing.

• 16:19Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  And it's both exhausting, difficult, and if there's a mistake, anywhere in these thousands of computer speak, anywhere in these thousands of lines, then it won't work. And you don't know why. So it's, it's, it's difficult. And again, I don't really know anything about this. I just know that coding is difficult. That's as much as I know. And then this idea of vibe coding happened about three months ago, which was a very famous coder said, I've been experimenting with a new thing. I'll call it vibe coding, where instead of writing the code, and this is a guy who's an expert at writing code, decided, I'm going to tell the AI what I want the code to do and let

• 17:05Speaker 01

  it do what it does.

• 17:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  And it does it. And what you get back is not really what you wanted. It might be related to what you want. It might be a bad version, or it might be something different, completely different. But he found that what he was getting back was interesting enough that he could then give it modifications, also like vibe coding on top of vibe coding to get it to do what he wanted it to do. So instead of writing thousands of lines, he says a few words to a computer. It gives him feedback, a mockup, let's say. He looks at the mockup and says, okay, now try it like this.

• 17:48Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 17:48Speaker 01

  And then it gives him a new iteration. So that's what vibe coding is. And I believe the reason I became associated with it in the hive mind was I'm the record producer who doesn't know anything about music. So he's talking about being a coder without knowing anything about coding.

• 18:08Ryan Holiday?

  Sure. Well, it's, it's interesting what, what radically different skillsets those are, right? The, the first is, is, you know, the equivalent of being an architect and an engineer and a contractor, you're, you're building something from scratch. Then the others feels much more like a humanities-based approach of like, hey, how can I describe what I'm after? What are the analogies and metaphors? And how can I paint a picture of the direction I'd like to go in? And then it has this other thing, which maybe we don't think of as a skill, but a kind of a detachment or an openness to spontaneity that is the ability to call and respond and improvise based on, on what you get.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and it's very much in tune with what happens in the recording studio, because we may go in with an idea, but very quickly through experimentation, it takes on a new form. We're very rarely directing. We may start with a direction, but then based on what we get back, we change direction often radically. And we may do 10 different versions, like, let's try it faster. Let's try it slower. Let's try it in a different time signature. Let's try it in a different key. Let's see, what's it like if the chorus becomes the intro? What's it like if we take the bridge out of the song? How does that change it? All of those things are normal things for us to try. What's it like if we program the drums instead of having a live drummer?

• 19:35Speaker 01

  What's it like if it's all electronic? What's it like if it's all wind instruments? What's it like if it's all string instruments? You know, there are a million versions. What's it like if, if it's only sung? If there's only vocals? What would happen if are the same things that happen in vibe coding?

• 19:53Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, that's a prompt.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  It's a prompt.

• 19:55Ryan Holiday?

  Well, it's funny, because people think of Stoicism as this very rigid philosophy, and I think it is rigid internally. Stoicism is saying, hey, I said I'm going to get up at this time, so I'm going to get up at this time. These are the standards I hold myself to. But it is funny, when you, when you read the Stoics more in depth, that there is a sort of a Taoism running through it. There's a lot about acceptance. There's a lot about flexibility. There's a lot about, one of my favorite passages from Meditations is where Marx realist is talking about how, he says, you want to be able to get to the place and go, this is just what I was looking for. That's what you want to be able to say. But of course, you actually weren't looking for it, because you weren't thinking about it at all. And I think the creative process and life is about.

• 20:39Ryan Holiday?

  I had this idea, I'm gonna start the process, I'm gonna try it. And then actually being able to to sort of go, actually, I can work with that. The ability to work with things and to take what happens and use it and respond to it. And then start this kind of feedback loop. That that's really what it's about creatively. And I think just being a person in an unpredictable world.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think when we start a project, it starts with a prompt. But it doesn't start with the final version. It starts with an idea of what it might be. And then through experimentation, what it wants to be reveals itself to us.

• 21:17Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  And we're surprised by it and thrilled by it when it happens. It's a it's a magical feeling when you're aiming for, you think you're aiming for this one thing. Yeah. And you end up in this whole other place. And it's much more beautiful than than your original idea.

• 21:33Ryan Holiday?

  When both Eastern and Western philosophy, and then you could sort of put Christianity in there, too. They both have some version of this this idea of the way. Right? And the Stoics call this the logos, which is the word in Christianity, but it just means the way. It connects to what you're just saying, which is like, there's something in here that's not us. That's actually choosing where this is going or what it will be. We have the idea, we start it, but the the song reveals itself. That is the weird thing you sit down to write. And then you're like, where's this coming from? How how is it heading towards a direction? You're partly in control of it. And yet there is an otherworldliness to it.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, and and you might come in contact with clues along the way where you're working on something. And you get stuck and you just it's impenetrable. There's nothing you can do. And then you go out for a walk and someone says to you exactly the thing that you're having the problem with. Or you overhear someone say something related or you read something and it's like. It's unbelievable how specific the information coming at us is.

• 22:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  When we're really open and paying attention to it, it's coming from all directions at all times.

• 22:50Ryan Holiday?

  Well, I think it was Aristotle who said that's one of the paradoxes of knowledge. It might have been Plato, which is like, how can you know that that's what you're looking for? If you've never found it before, there's something paradoxical about discovery and creation. You're finding something and you're recognizing it, and yet it's new to you. And so that's why the ancients often thought there was such a thing as the muses. It was like, that was an easy way to solve this impossible riddle of like, where did this come from? And why does it feel right?

• 23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And imagine going somewhere that you've never been before. And I'm sure you've had this experience in both directions. You go somewhere you've never been before and you get there and you think, wow, this is the greatest place I've ever been. I don't want to leave.

• 23:39Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  I have this experience sometimes. And then there are other places where I've never been and I go there and I feel like this place is making my skin crawl. I can't wait to get out of here and I don't know why. I don't know what's different about these places. This happened to me recently in two different cities in the same country. I went to two different cities and in one city, I got to this city and I felt like, ah, I feel this place. I could stay here. And then I went to another city in the same country and I felt like, I can't wait to get out of here. I have no business in this place. Just energetically, it felt wrong.

• 24:15Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  I don't know why, I can't explain it.

• 24:17Ryan Holiday?

  Right. And when something you're making or something you're consuming, when it speaks to you, that goes this idea of vibe. Like, why is the vibe right and why is the vibe wrong? You drive yourself insane trying to explain it, but at some level you know, and I think that's the idea of like the way or the universe, it just is. And you're, you're kind of in that rhythm or you're not. You're vibing or you're not. It was interesting looking through the book because I've always had this theory that what's interesting about physical books is what a remarkable piece of technology they are. Right? That like for thousands of years, we've basically been consuming long form information, the exact same way.

• 24:58Ryan Holiday?

  And that an ebook is obviously superior, an audiobook is obviously superior, doing it in this interactive way on the computer is superior and that it's auto generating, you know, new graphics or whatever. And yet there is something that endures about the book. And it struck me that that's kind of true in music, too. Like, there's no reason that songs have to be three minutes. There's no reason that albums have to have 10 to 15 songs on them, or that a TV show needs to be roughly 30 minutes. It's interesting how the constraints often start for a technological or a commercial reason, and yet they endure long after they have any real necessity.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and for no reason. And I'm not, I wouldn't say that I prefer one format over another. I would say I listen to more books, I listen to more audiobooks now than read because I like to be outside and walking.

• 25:56Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 25:57Speaker 01

  And I'll crash if I'm reading while I'm walking, or might crash.

• 26:02Ryan Holiday?

  Your introduction into the Tao, you were in a bookstore and you found this book and it changed the course of your life. There's something about that technology, too.

• 26:10Speaker 01

  I love bookstores. I've spent much time of my life hanging out in bookstores. Some of my favorite places to be.

• 26:17Ryan Holiday?

  What do you think drew you to this? What was it about that copy? Because you acknowledge it in the epigraph of the book, basically.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:26Ryan Holiday?

  I'm so fascinated in the books that change our life. Again, how did we know that that's the one we should grab off the shelf? What is it that spoke to me about meditations or you about Tao? Like, there's something otherworldly again about why we find the right book at the right time.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. I probably picked up most of the books on the new release table that day. And it's, it was a spiritual bookstore, so it tended towards that type of material. And I would probably go to that store three days a week and for a couple of hours. I also like the energy in the store beyond the actual book shopping.

• 27:08Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 27:08Speaker 01

  The feeling of being in the store around all this wisdom felt good to me.

• 27:13Ryan Holiday?

  And was it an immediate sort of revelation when you read it? Or was it a book that sat around for a while and you slowly came to understand it?

• 27:23Speaker 01

  It was a book that that spoke to me immediately and I bought many copies and gave it to many of my friends. Maybe a year later, I read it for the second time and that was the first time I realized, oh, it's a different book. This is not the book I read a year ago and have read it many times. I usually have a copy of it in my travel bag and then over the years, read many different translations. And it's just a book that has continued to spark my imagination.

• 28:05Ryan Holiday?

  Heraclitus had this idea that we don't step in the same river twice. And there is something beautiful about coming back to a book and realizing, not that you missed anything the first time, but there was just a whole other level beneath or above. And, and then, and then the magic of going, oh, this is true the third time and the fourth time. Like to have those texts that you go to over and over and over again, and find that they continue to reveal yourself is again, a very magical thing.

• 28:37Speaker 01

  I think it has to do with the nature of the writing being so open and poetic.

• 28:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  That the reader brings so much to the material. And as we change in our life, the material changes. It's not really what's changing. We're what's changing. But it's written in a way to highlight our changes.

• 29:01Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 29:01Speaker 01

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

• 29:24Ryan Holiday?

  Yes, if it's too specific, it can't become general. And yet, if it's so general, it's meaningless. And so they obviously were writing them in response to very specific problems or specific scenarios or sort of human vices. And so it's out of that specificity that it's clearly resonating. And yet, they're not just coming out and saying what they mean. So there's room for endless interpretation. Because also, yeah, the truth of an idea. I think there was something about Confucius once where he said one thing to one brother and then something else to another brother. And someone said, but this is a contradiction. What are you doing? And he's like, well, he needs this advice and he needs that advice.

• 30:09Ryan Holiday?

  And that seems very basic, but for some reason, we struggle with the idea that you're going to need different truths at different times in your life.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think the fact that something written 3,000 years ago is as prescient today

• 30:28Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  as it was when it was written, that's interesting to me.

• 30:32Ryan Holiday?

  Oh, I find that endlessly fascinating. The idea that this was an ancient text to ancient peoples. It's like, It occurred to me that Stoicism was 500 years old by the time Marcus Aurelius gets to it. For some reason, we compress that ancient period all down into one thing. And, you know, they were, they were reading texts that were as old to them as Shakespeare is to us. And so to them, this contained, it contained ancient wisdom and was talking about a world that they missed and romanticized, just as we ourselves are doing to them. And so there's a reason that it resonated with each subsequent generation. And that's why it's, it's not like it was lost for 2,000 years and then we just discovered it and we're

• 31:17Ryan Holiday?

  like, oh, how cool is this? It's actually been both ancient and relevant for every one of those thousands of years.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like the Bible. And the Bible was, the stories of the Bible existed for hundreds, if not thousands of years before the Bible was written.

• 31:38Ryan Holiday?

  Right.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Before there was writing.

• 31:40Ryan Holiday?

  Musically, a bunch of parents I know have been talking about this, like the world of Spotify has changed our children's interaction with music, which is, they don't understand that these are not new songs. You know, because they're, the primary means of hearing new music is not the radio, which has a bias towards new music. They're hearing stuff for the first time and they don't have any of the context of whether this is new or disruptive or old and not cool. Like, it's, it's interesting to watch like kids in the bookstore, listen to bands like Nickelback or Puddle of Mud, bands that I remember as

• 32:22Ryan Holiday?

  a kid having a certain reputation, you know, whether it was cool or not cool. And to them, it's just music. So that in a way, stripping that context out allows you to perceive it in a new kind of earnest way without the, without the self-consciousness.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  I think that's a, a good rule in life is to find a way to let go of any self-consciousness with anything that you're engaging with to see how you truly feel about it. Because all of the, whatever's said about something.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  Has such a big effect on us, this like group think idea.

• 33:02Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  That it leaves us not knowing our own taste.

• 33:07Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  So one of the things that in the creative act I talk about a lot is that developing and knowing your taste, both when it's in sync with other people and when it's against other people. And to hold firm on your taste, because that's your, as an artist, that's what you have to offer.

• 33:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yes.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  If all you're doing is regurgitating what is the popular thing now, there's no reason for you to exist. It already is.

• 33:41Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  The only thing you have to bring is a new perspective. And it's only a new perspective because everyone else is not doing that.

• 33:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you are unique. And then for some reason, you try to be like everyone else. There's this stoic named Chrysippus, and he tells this, we hear this story about him where someone says, you know, he's living in the time of Nero, which obviously would have been a time of conformity and danger. You don't want to stand out. And he's sort of asking him why he does. And he says, you know, most threads in the garment have to be white, but I want to be the red thread that makes the garment beautiful. And, and the idea that we each are totally unique, have a totally unique perspective, have totally unique experience, that is the one thing that, that we bring to the table creatively, entrepreneurially, in a relationship. And then for some reason, that's like the first thing that we throw away in favor of

• 34:37Ryan Holiday?

  like what everyone else is doing, or how it should or is supposed to be.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. And when I say bringing something new.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  It only means new to us. So you have built a career on very old information, but it was not in the mainstream at the time that you talked about it. So you essentially revived something. Same is true with Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan revived the style. Like, we think of folk music as from Bob Dylan's time. It was already a revival of something that was 100 years before that.

• 35:16Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, you know, there's that term columbusing, where you discover something that already exists. But to be able to do that earnestly as an artist or as a human being, to be like, this is exciting to me. This lights me up. And then to kind of become an evangelist or an interpreter of that thing. That's what it's, that's what it's all about. Because although you are discovering something that already exists, your interpretation and your understanding and your presentation of it, that's a fundamentally new and one of a kind combination that can never be created again.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  And you're talking about it in the context of today.

• 35:52Ryan Holiday?

  Sure.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Whereas it was written in the context of a very different day.

• 35:57Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah. I was curious, your experiences, you said you read the Dada Jing and you loved it, and then you read it over and over again, and then you read different translations. That's a really interesting experience, too, because you go, I know this text. I love this text. And then you read somebody else's version of it, and you go, this is a totally different thing. And then if you're not someone who knows a bunch of different languages, it was sort of a revelation to me to go, oh, I didn't know that translators had so much say. I didn't know the era in which the translator was existing. I just thought English was English. And then I go, oh, wait, somebody translating something from Latin or Greek in the 19th century is going to present it in 19th century Victorian English. And that's not going to

• 36:42Ryan Holiday?

  feel super accessible or relatable to me, although at the time, it might have felt totally groundbreaking and available to the common person. And so you go, oh, there's actually a, there's a lot of interpretation of the text itself. But then even in the translation, there's, they're making all these artistic choices.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yes. And regardless of whether it's a 3,000 year old text that we're reinterpreting, or something we noticed yesterday that we're explaining, or a comedian who does a joke about Starbucks. It's funny because the comedian is recognizing something we've all recognized, but we haven't said it. While we know it to be true, we never found it important enough to single out and say, isn't it strange that this happens in this place? That's how comedy works. And that's how really all art is essentially, it's like when Duchamp showed the urinal as a, you know, as a sculpture. It was a radical idea.

• 37:43Ryan Holiday?

  Yes. Yeah. Emerson said that we, we see a kind of alienated majesty in a work of art that we recognize as an idea we have also had, but failed to pursue. Like when you see, you see, oh, I could have done that, or, oh, I've had that thought before. Yeah. When you hear a comedian tell a joke about something you've noticed yourself, but you didn't sketch out enough to turn into this hilarious observation, you're both laughing at it. But there is also kind of a, I think to me that there's a call to action in that of like, you should be pursuing your own creativity this way, too. They're, they're not a superhero. They're doing something you're capable of doing also.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yes, they're paying attention to the world around them. And we all have all of these data points coming at us all the time. And we can choose to live on the surface, or we can choose to look deeper and try to see what's behind. What's going on behind this? Why is this thing this color? How did that happen? You know, why?

• 38:50Ryan Holiday?

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

• 39:32Ryan Holiday?

  or reflected back something that was always there, but wasn't the primary emphasis, because their own experience connected with that little piece, and remade the whole as a result.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Yes. When you're looking at something obvious through new eyes,

• 39:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  and can shed light on the ordinary, where you see it in a new way, and you can share that experience so other people get to see it in a new way.

• 40:03Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 40:04Speaker 01

  That's ultimately what everything is. Like, all songs are essentially... The language of music has been the same since Bach, since before Bach. So it's the same notes in often roughly the same order, but finding a new way to interpret it to re-present it.

• 40:30Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 40:31Speaker 01

  In a way that you haven't heard it before. When I say a way that you haven't heard it before, it doesn't mean a way that no one's heard it before. It might be a way that many people have heard it before.

• 40:40Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  But for some reason, right now, it feels good. It also happens where I'll see a movie, and it doesn't speak to me at all. And then, for some reason, I see it 20 years later, and I love it.

• 40:52Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 01

  And I didn't have that feeling the first time I saw it all, or the opposite, where you really love something at one point in your life, and then you come back to it later, it's like, hmm, I don't remember it being like this at all. Doesn't make me feel the same way at all.

• 41:05Ryan Holiday?

  Yeah, having kids, like, things that you watched before you had kids, things you consumed after you had kids. You're just like, oh, apparently there was just a huge part of me that was not accessible before, or there's a sensitivity now, or an openness to a set of experiences that I didn't know was there. And you realize, oh, there's these other levels that this thing is operating on. The other experience is you watch a movie with your kids. We've gone to see the Minecraft movie like five times. And they're laughing at it at one level, and I'm laughing at it another. Because I see the filmmaker who also made Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre is referencing things from his previous works. And if you haven't seen those things, you're not going to get those references.

• 41:50Ryan Holiday?

  And the ability, I think, to be a person who has a basis in a certain art form, there's just all these homages and allusions and connections that you couldn't make if you have only a surface level understanding. But the more in-depth you go, the more is revealed and the deeper the experience.

• 42:12Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.