How to be creatively inspired (w/ Hrishikesh Hirway)

Hrishikesh Hirway is a musician and producer, but you probably know him best as the host of the podcast Song Exploder. Hrishikesh has a new album out, “In the Last Hour of Light,” and he shares with Chris his creative process. Hrishikesh also talks about his definition of success and why he values the act of creating over the insecurity of whether his work is “good enough.” Finally, Hrishikesh shares his advice for how people can become more attuned to their creative side. Featured guest Follow Hrishikesh Hirway on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/hrishihirway/?hl=en, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/hrishikeshhirway/, YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjS4yjHfgM-BkOgFIqpa-Hw, and at https://hrishikesh.co/Subscribe to Hrishikesh's Substack, accept cookies https://hrishikesh.substack.com/Buy Hrishikesh's album, In the Last Hour of Light https://keeledscales.com/products/hrishikesh-hirway-in-the-last-hour-of-light Connect with the team Follow Chris on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/chrisiduffy/?hl=en and at chrisduffycomedy.com https://chrisduffycomedy.com/Buy Chris’ book, Humor Me https://t.ted.com/ZGuYfcL Watch How to Be a Better Human videos on YouTube at TEDPods https://www.youtube.com/@TEDPodsFollow TED on X https://x.com/TEDTalks, Instagram https://www.instagram.com/ted, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/TED, LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences/, and TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoksVote for our show in the Signal Awards for Best Advice & How To https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/advice-how-to podcast! For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts https://go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Fill out our survey at bit.ly/BHSurvey6 https://bit.ly/BHSurvey6 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 2:15Speaker 00

  This is How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. I'll be honest with you, I'm in a little bit of a creative rut right now. I feel like I have a lot to do every day, a lot of responsibilities, a lot of chores. And when I do find myself with a free hour, the last thing I want to do is write, or create, or make art. Really, what I want to do is just sit and do nothing. And that hasn't always been how I felt. I've had other periods of my life where I have had a lot going on, but art has felt like a really amazing release and a way to recharge and shake off the dust of the day. But that's not really where I'm at right now. Creative inspiration can feel like an elusive, mysterious thing. Where does it come from? How can we or should we harness it? What do we do when it's not there?

• 2:59Speaker 00

  I think that there's no one better to talk to about creativity than today's guest, Rishikesh Hirway. He is a musician, an incredible musician. He's also an incredible thinker about music who hosts the fantastic Song Exploder podcast, where he interviews artists about how they put together some of their most iconic songs. To get us started, here's a clip from Rishikesh's TED Talk where he's explaining the genesis of the Song Exploder podcast, his attempt to answer the questions that he had both as a musician and as a listener.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Inside a song, there are all these parts that get imagined and written and recorded that are so full of thought and beauty, but only the people who've made the song ever get to hear those pieces on their own. All those pieces get smushed together in the final version that comes out. Whenever I put out a song, I was always a little sad that no one else was going to get to hear the things that I had heard when I was making it. Let me show you what I mean. Here's a clip from a song of mine.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  Okay, what's your experience when you listen to that? You might like it, maybe, or you might hate it, or you might say, I don't know, dude, it's 20 seconds of a song. What do you want from me? Which is fair. What I hear is impossible to expect anyone else to hear. It's not just the cello part and the guitar part and the drum beat. It's also all the things that I lived through in order for that music to exist. So in 2014, I started a show to try and solve this distance between the creator and the audience. I interviewed musicians about one of their songs and then combined that with the different layers of music that make up that song.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  I thought this way, an artist could bring a listener in and give them a guided tour of this house they made. They could point to the foundation and say, this is how the song got started. And then, as more and more layers get built on top, eventually, the full song gets revealed.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Over the course of this episode, we are going to hear a lot more from Rishikesh about how music has opened new worlds for him, how it's created opportunities for human connection, and how he's been able to find creative inspiration, both in his own work and in the work of his musical heroes. All that and more after this quick break.

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• 8:58Speaker 00

  And we are back. Today, we are talking about how to find creative inspiration with Rishikesh Hirway.

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Hi, I'm Rishikesh Hirway. I'm a musician and the host of the podcast Song Exploder, and I have a new album out called In the Last Hour of Light.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  So, Rishikesh, I'm so glad that you're here. I love Song Exploder. I really love your new album. I have been listening to it on repeat.

• 9:21Speaker 04

  Well, thanks so much for having me, Chris. It's great to get to do this. I mean, I guess, full disclosure, we are also friends in real life.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 9:28Speaker 04

  If that's something that needs to be disclosed, but it's wonderful to meet you in a professional context as well.

• 9:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is funny. It's funny. We have had many friendly conversations, and yet I've never sat down and been like, and now let me grill you for 45 minutes. You have a unique ability in many different ways to see the world and to create music and to think about music in a way that I don't, I don't think any of the rest of us can. But I think there's something that everyone can relate to, which is that question of hearing music that you love and that you're moved by and wanting to know how it works. And then also thinking about what would it be like if you made your own music? And you have this career where you've interviewed incredible musicians, some of the most famous. You've literally interviewed people who are in the Beatles, and you make your own

• 10:15Speaker 00

  music. For people out there who have not achieved the same level of success as you on either side, as a musician or as an interviewer, what have you learned about taking the things that inspire you and then putting them into your own creative work?

• 10:28Speaker 04

  Hmm. I think that the drive to be creative is just something that I've lived with my whole life. You know, whether it was as early and as basic as just like playing with Legos. You know, my way of playing with Legos as a kid was to throw out the instructions of whatever the set was for, you know, like I was never interested in that. I think even as a kid, I kind of like looked at the instruction manual as like, don't tell me what to do.

• 11:01Speaker 04

  And it was more fun for me to just make, make something up. And I feel like that instinct has just sort of stayed with me my whole life. So the inspiration almost is like a way to channel that feeling as opposed to the other way around. You know, it's not like something happened, I got inspired, and then the desire to make something came out of that. It's like the, the force has kind of been hovering the whole time, and then something happens, or I live through something, and, and then that gives me a direction to point that feeling in.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Let's talk about one of my favorite songs on your new album, Stray Dogs. Can you tell us the story that became that song?

• 11:43Speaker 04

  That is a song that I, I wrote in 2023. I was working on the album. I was a few songs in. I knew that I was working towards an album. And I was really trying to make time to write songs, which has been tough, you know, having a full-time job making podcasts to try and carve out time, not just in terms of like the logistical difficulty, but also sort of the emotional justification to spend time on your own creative pursuit when you have this other thing that's maybe more practical and has like clear parameters and deadlines.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  In any case, that was what I was trying to do. And in order to sort of set the table for that writing, I was looking for opportunities to, to kind of really dedicate myself to songwriting. And I got the chance to go to do a songwriting residency at this place called The Blue Rock Studio and Ranch in Wimberly, Texas. They offered a week-long songwriting residency program that I applied for and got in. And I had originally been acquainted with that location because I did a Song Exploder live taping there the year prior as a benefit event. And my guest for that Song Exploder event was Iron and Wine, an artist who I really, really love and who has been a huge influence on me. And it

• 13:10Speaker 04

  was a really memorable experience. So I was going back there to do this songwriting residency, and I was worried about having enough momentum internally to make the most of the time that I was going to spend there. I had been coming out of years and years and years of writer's block where I, I just lost my way. And there were many times when I felt like I just couldn't write at all. And even though I was writing music again after that period, there was this creeping feeling that like that writer's block could come back any second. And I just didn't, I didn't want to waste that beautiful opportunity to go there and, you know, taking this time away from my life to just spend on songwriting.

• 13:52Speaker 04

  All this is to say, besides my own ideas for songs and the things that I was hoping to write, I started looking around to ask other folks if they might have some songwriting prompts that they could give me, that I could turn to as a way to sort of turn off my own brain in a way and just be like, okay, I'm stuck. Let me look at this external prompt, and maybe it'll jog something, maybe it'll, maybe it won't come to anything, but maybe it'll be an exercise and that'll loosen things up. Who knows? This was just sort of like insurance that I was going to take with me.

• 14:27Speaker 04

  So, since I was going back to this place where we first met, I wrote to Sam Beam from Iron and Wine and said, I am going back to this place and I'm going to do this songwriting. I'm working on this album. Do you by any chance have a songwriting prompt for me? I've written to prompts before, which is why I kind of had faith in this idea. Anyway, he sent me a few prompts, and one of them was so beautiful and so evocative to me. He said, describe a street you grew up on from the point of view of a stray dog. That sentence just brought me to a memory from when I was eight years old and I was in India for the

• 15:06Speaker 04

  first time in my life. And I was in my mother's hometown, this little village called Saswad in Maharashtra. And I saw stray dogs for the first time running down the street. And I, I just remembered what they looked like and how they acted. They were just so carefree and playful and just, they just seemed like they were having the time of their life, and they also were absolutely oblivious to the people around them. Like, we were just scenery. And that memory was so surprising for me and also so evocative. And the feeling was so strong that I started writing the song basically right then and there. And

• 15:50Speaker 04

  then that memory led me to a time in my life when I felt like those stray dogs, which was when I was a teenager, when I was in college, and when I was playing music with my, my closest friends. And, and I kind of got ricocheted from one memory to another memory. And I, I felt this connection between that image and then the image of, of me and my friends when, when we were 19 years old. And so then I wrote another verse about that. And all of a sudden, within a day, I had this song basically written, which was incredible. I don't usually write that quickly. It was really special, but it also kind of didn't help me when I got to Texas because I'd already written this song.

• 16:33Speaker 00

  Okay, let's actually listen to a clip from that song, Stray Dogs, right now. And I should mention that Sam Beam of the band Iron and Wine ended up singing on this song with you.

• 16:44Speaker 05

  A pack of stray dogs by my uncle's house, tearing down the street.

• 16:55Speaker 05

  A streak of hard legs and open mouths, in love with their lives, let's be.

• 17:09Speaker 05

  I can't believe the joy that poured out of them, mangy and lean.

• 17:20Speaker 05

  We live in between parked cars and people taking turns in the lead.

• 17:32Speaker 05

  We used to be that free.

• 17:43Speaker 00

  Well, one of the reasons I wanted to ask you about that song in particular, in addition to just the fact that I really love that song, is this idea of feeling uninhibited and carefree and spontaneous and in the moment, I think is a really powerful emotion that we can all relate to. But it's also something that you capture, not just in the writing of the album, but in the way that you actually made this album. Rather than having this be like a heavily produced, everyone goes in and records each separate track and then you're tinkering around. You basically recorded this album live, right? Like you were playing it together and it was like, what is recorded in the room is what goes on to the album.

• 18:25Speaker 04

  I love that you connect that to a feeling of being carefree, because that's not how it felt for me personally. To be honest, the idea of recording that way and, and recording everything live wasn't my idea. In fact, it was the opposite of how I'd made music my entire life. I was used to the idea of making a song sort of track by track and piecing it together over days and weeks and months and sometimes years. And, and going in and sort of polishing everything and making sure that all the gears fit together kind of perfectly. But one of the things that got me out of the writer's block that I mentioned was collaborating, getting out of my own head. And that had been the case on the songwriting side.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  And I wanted to try and see what the experience would be like on the producing side as well. In my past, the, the four albums I'd made previously, I had produced everything myself. But I sort of knew what that was and I wanted a new experience and I wanted to see where else collaboration could take me. And also from having had so many conversations on Song Exploder, where I got to hear from artists and producers about how a producer was really able to transform song, a song. I wanted that for myself. I just wanted to see what that might be like in principle. I didn't know what the realities of it would actually entail, but it entailed recording this way, because I worked with a producer named Philip Weinroeb.

• 19:53Speaker 04

  And this is his way of making albums. He records everything live, everybody in one room. Nobody is using headphones. There's no like click track, no metronome, you know, sort of keeping everybody. It's just, we're all listening to each other and playing live. And you don't listen back to what you've recorded. You just, you just go and you just put your trust in him that, that you've got, gotten the take. And also everything happens extremely quickly. You come in, you show the session musicians the song, they learn their parts. And sort of we're all coming up with parts at the same time. And then we just record everything in a matter of hours.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  We start in the, in the morning, we finish one song by lunch, take a break, come back, do another song, finish, break for dinner. That's it. And I was very stressed out about it because, yeah, I just, I, I was worried about what it would reveal, you know, like what flaws in my playing and, and me as a performer, just everything. I just thought this felt like such a risky way of making something. So I didn't feel carefree. I really was, when we were making it, I was like, okay, I'm, I'm doing this on faith alone. But internally, the, the place where I, I took the conversation

• 21:17Speaker 04

  was that the songs were all sort of pulled from my life and the real experience of, of my life, including a lot of things that haven't gone as planned. I mean, really, nothing in my life has gone as planned, but there are songs about like an, like a literal accident that, that my, my father had that hospitalized him. And also just losing my mom, um, uh, who passed away after a long, um, after many years of suffering from a neurodegenerative condition. None of these things were planned and none of these things were polished and, and perfect in any kind of way. Like that's just not what life is.

• 22:02Speaker 04

  And I felt like since so much of the songwriting was about that and drawn from that, it felt appropriate to try and record it in a way that also preserved the kind of, I don't know, the honesty of something just happening.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Sometimes people get into these blocks, professional or amateur. People get into a place where they don't make work. And sometimes it's because I don't think my own work is good enough. But other times people get stuck because they're comparing, right? They're thinking like, well, I'll never make something that's as good as what that person made, or I'll never get paid for this work. There's, you know, all sorts of ways in which we justify or don't justify creative work. So how do you get outside of the good enough? And instead get into, I'm going to make something because I care about making things?

• 23:03Speaker 04

  At this point, I come at it from an experience of having lived with both. There was a long period in my life where I wasn't making music specifically for that reason, you know, where I just felt like I couldn't live up to what my own expectations were, either for my own career or just what I saw other people achieving. And, and it was kind of a loop, you know, a feedback loop where I'm like, oh, well, they have success because they must be more talented than me and that's why they have more success, you know? And I talked myself out of doing the thing that I loved for, for many, many years.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  And I guess at a certain point, I just felt like that was one kind of unhappiness, not making stuff. And I preferred the unhappiness of making stuff. It was a matter of like recognizing how much of myself was missing at a certain point. I felt like to be complete, I needed to be engaged with the part of myself that wrote songs, that made music, um, that was personal and that I could really pour all of myself into. I guess it was still kind of a comparison. I wasn't comparing myself to other people. I was comparing myself to myself, the version of myself that wasn't making music.

• 24:21Speaker 04

  And, um, and the idea of what it might feel like if I were making music again, whether or not it was good enough was secondary actually to the question of whether or not it exists.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  I also wonder how that's changed what you think about with success when you're working on a creative project. Like you have this album, it's out. What is success for an album for you?

• 24:46Speaker 04

  I think that the fact that it's out does feel like success. All the work, all the sort of struggle that I, I had to, uh, uh, overcome just internally, not like a real struggle, but just, just me versus my brain. I know how much, uh, I had to put into it. And so I'm really trying to kind of end the idea of success at that point, where I'm like, it's done and I have released it into the world. Anything else that comes afterwards is completely out of my control. And so to measure success by that is kind of what got me in trouble in, in the first place.

• 25:29Speaker 04

  And I think that it's pretty, it's pretty futile and also pretty dangerous. I also think that like, I've been able to get some comfort from, again, from interviewing other musicians and talking to them about often their biggest song in their career. And hearing so many stories about how they had no idea that that was going to be a big hit, let alone their biggest hit, you know? It didn't feel inevitable to them at all. And in some cases, you know, it didn't blow up at first. You know, I remember I interviewed Seal about Kiss from a Rose. And like that song came out and it kind of, I don't know, didn't make a big splash.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  It was only until later when, uh, it got put into the, the Batman movie that it became, and, and came out on that soundtrack. It had a completely different life after that and became the like, sort of colossal song that, that everybody knows. It wasn't just on the merits of the song, you know, because he was already an established, successful artist. And even with that, it didn't happen. So anyway, it's been a good education for me to try and decouple the work with what happens to the work once it leaves your hands.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  Hmm. It's only, it's so interesting to hear you say that too, because for me personally, I feel such a stark divide between how I feel about my own work and how I feel about other people's work. I'm so, um, able to make that distinction between how it's received or whether it's popular and whether it's good and seeing those as separate things with other people's work.

• 27:08Speaker 04

  With other people, yes.

• 27:09Speaker 00

  Instantly like, that has nothing to do with whether it's good. But with my own work, I'm like, but if it doesn't succeed in every possible way that it could succeed, then it's not a success.

• 27:17Speaker 04

  Yeah. I think one of the dangers of being a, a person who tries to be professional at being creative is that you take this thing that you do originally because it brings you joy. And then you attach all these sort of professional growth ideas to it. And it's crazy sometimes to think like, oh yeah, there, there are people who play music because they like, like because it's just fun and that's it. And that's the only thing, joy is the only thing they're hoping to derive from it. I, I feel so, so, uh, far from that. I mean, I feel a little bit closer to it now.

• 27:58Speaker 04

  And I've been really, really working towards trying to reconnect to that feeling of just like, I made this thing and, and can I feel the satisfaction of having finished something that, that is really born out of something that I love?

• 28:16Speaker 00

  We're not finished with this interview yet. There is so much more to come, but we are going to take a quick ad break, so don't go anywhere. We'll be right back.

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• 31:32Speaker 00

  And we are back. It's really interesting to me to just think about like the value of the work that we make and what something like music or comedy or writing should have in our lives, right? Whether it should be like, okay, I'm doing this and it's going to lead towards a career and money and all these things, or whether it should be like, it's fulfilling for my soul. In a world where people are using AI more and more, I feel like there's this desire to get to the outcome, right? Like, I can make an album in AI by just typing in a prompt. And it's like, well, you've kind of missed the whole point, which is, like, it's not about how quickly can you get to the album. It's about how can you enjoy the making of the thing, right?

• 32:14Speaker 00

  I know that you are someone who has been working with clay recently, and that's a new thing that you do. It's like, if you just want a plate, you could go to the store and get a plate.

• 32:23Speaker 04

  Right.

• 32:23Speaker 00

  The whole point of making your own plate out of clay is that you get to have the process and the feeling of the clay in your hands as you make this plate that isn't probably as perfect as the one you'd get in the store that's made in a factory.

• 32:34Speaker 04

  Yeah. And in fact, if it were perfect, it might be a little less beautiful.

• 32:41Speaker 00

  So another part of art that I think, and especially your work, is something I think, again, is relevant to everyone, whether you're a professional or, you know, someone who just likes to listen, is the way that music especially lets us connect with other people. And you have that in the sense that you have audiences and fans that listen to your work and connect with it. But you also have that in the creation in that you get to talk to these people who you admire and then have them play music with you and create these songs.

• 33:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. I mean, I think that working on this album has been especially poignant because I was telling such personal stories about my life and putting them into songs and sometimes writing those songs with people who I didn't really know that well. I would sometimes invite people to work with me because I was just a fan of their music. Like you said, I loved their music and felt some kind of kinship with it. There's always the possibility that like, a song is going to open up a door into something really, really personal. And for me, that was the explicit goal. As a result, for me, I feel like it kind of puts turbo fuel into the, into the like

• 33:56Speaker 04

  friendship machine. Anytime I even just do an interview with somebody, I often feel very close to them by the end, especially after I've finished like editing everything and, you know, I've spent weeks with their words and their music, then I always feel like much closer to them. With songwriting especially, I feel like it has really brought me some very dear friendships that I think might otherwise take years to develop, happened in hours. With Song Exploder, I always think of it as like, it's a way to try and understand a person's creative mind. And you're looking at it through the song. The song is the lens. But the hope is that like, it gives you, it's a little keyhole that gives you a glimpse

• 34:40Speaker 04

  into this person's brain and how they think. And I think with an interview, not just an interview, just a profound conversation between two people, you know, you can get really deep into someone's way of seeing the world. But with music, it happens on a few different levels because there is the conversation about what the song is about. Then there's also this idea of translating ideas and coming up with new ideas that frame that story in music. And it's maybe not always easy to articulate, but, but the way that someone might hear one note moving to another or one chord moving to a different chord is also a fascinating way to learn about someone.

• 35:22Speaker 04

  So you're kind of, you're getting both the conversational proximity to someone's brain, but then you're also getting exposure to this, these other things, you know, writing with someone and they're like, oh, what if we did this? And you're like, whoa, I would have never thought of that. That's really interesting. And it also indicates, like, now I've just learned a huge piece of information about you just by, by the fact that you think we should drop a bar here and, and jump into the, I don't know. The end result is I do feel like now I know someone even better.

• 35:52Speaker 00

  On In the Last Hour of Light, is there a moment or a sound or a chord progression or something that you feel like was particularly emotionally resonant or revealed something to you?

• 36:06Speaker 04

  There is a specific moment from the recording process that I really loved, which was when we were recording What's the Last Song on the album, a song called Home Movies. There's an instrumental section in it. And we were going through the song, we were kind of doing the process I was describing. You know, I showed everybody the song and then all the musicians kind of were picking out their different parts. The wild thing is that, you know, the people I was playing with, they're so talented. They all play multiple instruments. So the first step after I would show them the song, when people would say, okay, I think I'll play this instrument. And there's a musician named Shazad Ismaili, who's incredible, incredible player. He plays everything.

• 36:51Speaker 04

  And he sat at the piano for this song. And it's a song about my, my late father-in-law, who I never met. He and my wife had a complicated relationship and he passed away just a couple of weeks before she and I met. And we were going through the song and we were playing it and kind of arranging it. And, and I did something that I didn't always do during the session, you know, we kind of had gone through a take and I said, let me just tell everybody kind of like what the song is about and what the, what the deal is. And I explained a little bit about my wife and my, my father-in-law's relationship and who he was and how he, how he ended up dying and, and that, you know, he'd had a troubled life.

• 37:36Speaker 04

  And the song is called Home Movies because I was going to include little clips of these home movies that, that my wife had discovered from her childhood. And they include, you know, bits of conversation between the two of them. And so while we were recording the next pass, the next take of the song, we actually listened to those clips live in the room during the, you know, Philip actually hit play on them, put them through a speaker so everybody could, could hear them. And Shazad played this piano solo that was completely different from what he had been doing before.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  And it really just felt so chaotic and tragic and disjointed. I couldn't really wrap my head around it, even as it was happening. And then even listening back later, I think it's such an amazing part. And it really spoke to me about the meaningfulness of talking about a song, talking about where an idea came from, talking about sort of like the, the origin point for creativity because the expression of the thing is, is so ephemeral. And especially when we're working in a moment like that where, where, you know, Philip's process was, let's capture a moment. That is a moment that I think will always stay with me.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  You, I think of as a person who is extremely talented across a number of different fields. And I think that sometimes people

• 39:16Speaker 00

  Professionally feel that they have to stick with the one thing that they've done. It's scary to take a risk to do something else. But even with podcasting, right? You have this incredibly successful podcast, Song Exploder. And then you said, you know what? I have my friend Samin and I'm gonna do a different podcast. That's not about music at all. It's called Home Cooking. And that has become a really big fun thing that now you get to do these live events every once in a while together. And you had this dedicated fan base for that. But it was very different than what you were already doing. So can you tell people about home cooking and also about the part of you that lets yourself try something that is really different? That is outside of your lane?

• 39:51Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, I didn't for a long time sort of allow myself that. I really felt for the first decade of my life after college, you know, when I decided that like music was gonna be the thing. I really felt like I needed to single mindedly focus on that. I moved to Los Angeles because I wanted to score films. I thought that would be the two lanes, you know, that I would, I would work on my own music and I would also score films. But even at a certain point there, I felt like I kind of had to pick. And when my third album came out, I decided I was like, I'm gonna just keep working on that. And, and set aside the, the film scoring stuff for a little bit because this part's really important to me.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  And, you know, even though they're, they're so closely related, they're both music. Even that I felt like I had to choose. And it was only in the moment when I had writer's block that I started to think like, what else is there? I started sort of just casting around for, for what other ideas lived in my head. And Song Exploder was one of them. And making a podcast just happened to be incredibly liberating because it was something that I could do on my own. It really appealed to sort of my punk DIY spirit. I didn't need any kind of gatekeeper to just like make the thing and put it out. And so it started with that. And then the next podcast I made was The West Wing Weekly, um, which was an episode by episode recap discussion of the West Wing.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  And that was really, really because I happened to become friends with Josh Molina, an actor who was on The West Wing. And, and then similarly, I later met Samin and, um, and we became friends. And through that, you know, I, I pitched on making this podcast and making home cooking. And it's kind of related to the way that I cook, which is that like, I don't have a plan and then go to the grocery store and buy all the ingredients. And then like follow a recipe and make a thing. Usually when I cook, I'm just sort of confronted with, uh, feeling hungry and then trying to figure out what I can do with what I've got. And our friendship was this thing that I valued so much.

• 42:05Speaker 04

  And making a podcast was like a way of putting a container around that and, um, and doing something with it.

• 42:12Speaker 00

  I want to just draw a thread that I see in, in all your work and, and honestly, even in the album, which is you have such a generosity where you really appreciate other people's talents and you want to give them a platform, right? Like Song Exploder is so much about your own curiosity, of course, but it's also about being like, I want people to see the brain behind this incredible song. Home Cooking is about, I want people to, uh, get to experience Samin and see the joy of her in the way that I have the joy of Samin Nosrat. Yeah. West Wing Weekly is about being like, oh, Josh is so incredible. I wish that other people would get to hear about this. So, and then the album is like, I'm gonna find someone else. I'm gonna trust them and I'm gonna bring us all together to have this experience together.

• 42:54Speaker 00

  There's this real thread of generosity and giving other people a platform that I think threads through everything that you make.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  Well, I think it is a falsehood. The idea, like, I think we're always collaborating with other people. Ideas come to us in reaction to, to our experiences with the rest of the world and with other people's art. And, you know, you might see a movie and then write a song on it. Like to imagine that that is your own creation and not in some kind of way of collaboration with this thing that you experienced. I think is, is a very narrow way of looking at it. So I think as I've gotten older, I've tried to kind of expand the aperture of how I see how things get made. And if I'm gonna do that, well, then why not let other people in?

• 43:44Speaker 04

  Like, why not expand the world? Because I think the idea of having new experiences and growing and becoming a new, more evolved version of myself, either as a, just as a person or as a songwriter or as an artist in any kind of way. I feel like it comes from the friction of, of bouncing against other people's ideas. And if you stay entirely on your own, maybe you still have that evolution, but it happens much, much more slowly. And for me, it's less fun too.

• 44:18Speaker 00

  If someone is listening to this and they want to get started in a career in music, what advice would you give them?

• 44:27Speaker 04

  I think for me, you know, the things that have worked have been sort of finding a way to, uh, make space in my brain for my own ideas, which is hard. It feels like such a cliche, the idea of just like, oh, put your phone down. But it's really, it's really true. Like there's a power in boredom, a creative power in boredom. And I don't mean like the kind of like terrible version of boredom. I guess maybe even just more like, maybe idleness is a better, uh, way of, of thinking of it. Like putting your brain in neutral is, um, such an important part of, of making things, for me at least. And, and so this is the only way I can offer any advice.

• 45:09Speaker 04

  It's so tempting, I think, not just with the phone, but in so many parts of our life, to attend to the, the thing that is, that feels most pressing. But just because it's the most pressing doesn't mean that it's the most important. So time management is maybe something that I, that I think is a really important skill for people who want to make anything. Creating time where you don't have to do something else and where you're not doing something else. Like so many of my song ideas don't, they don't begin when I, I'm like holding a guitar and I'm like, now I'm working. It's when I'm on a walk or when I'm driving or I'm, you know, yeah, on a plane or something like that.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  And I'm in these spaces where I'm just, I'm just occupied enough that I don't feel like I'm doing nothing. But I'm not so busy that my brain is thinking like, oh, what about this? And what about this? And oh, let me respond to this person and oh, let me look at this and let me, you know?

• 46:12Speaker 00

  I think it's really interesting that your answer to how to make music is not some sort of technical thing, right? It's not like, make sure you buy this exact brand of guitar or you're gonna need this software program on your computer. Or even like find, you know, five people or three people. I think it's really interesting that the, the core of it for you is give yourself the permission and the explicit time that this is what you do.

• 46:35Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:35Speaker 00

  Like, it kind of is like, the way you do it is by doing it, by not doing something else.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  Exactly. And I think I've had to redefine what doing it kind of looks like. So that's, that's kind of like the first thing. Certainly, yes, all the other things you mentioned are good too. Like learn an instrument, of course, you know, but I think you said making more music. So I'm, I'm speaking maybe to someone who's already started.

• 47:00Speaker 00

  Yeah. In any career, in any path, there's this like drift where you can kind of go with the current. And then there's this really intentional, that's where I want to be. And I'm fighting to get there and I'm gonna swim with all my might to get to that point. And you have a really interesting example of a career that I know is really satisfying and has opened all sorts of doors and led you to experiences that you would have never been able to predict. And it's also not the thing that you probably would have, you know, 20 years ago said, that's exactly what I want to do.

• 47:31Speaker 04

  Right.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  I want to host a podcast where I interview people about a song and find out how they made it. Like that wasn't the exact point. What advice do you have for, for people who are navigating their own careers, whatever they may be? In fighting the, the drift when you need to fight it, but in also accepting that like you might find something really satisfying and that you're really uniquely talented and rewarding for you. That isn't exactly the thing you would have predicted in the past that you wanted to do.

• 47:57Speaker 04

  I, I think about it exactly in the middle of those two things, you know? I do pick a, a point and I, and I aim for it and I swim as hard as I can or sail or whatever the, you know, mode of getting through the water is, I go as fast as I can and, you know, with as much intensity as I can. And I just had to learn over many years of doing that and then ending up in a different place that you have to just sort of accept where you've, where you've landed and then make something from that. And then you can set a new course and be like, okay, well, okay, so I'm here. All of that, you know, propulsion brought me to this place. That's not what I was expecting, but it did bring me to a place.

• 48:41Speaker 04

  I think it's, you have to be able to accept the idea that like, for all your force of will, the outcome might not be one that you control, but you can at least control the idea that like you're trying. And then when you get to that, that dot on the map, you pick another point. You plot that and you go as hard as you can there. And yeah, the tides are gonna pull you into some other spot that it wasn't where you expected. And then you do the same thing over and over again. That, that's sort of what I feel like my career has been is I was like, I aimed for this thing. This is what happened. Okay, well, what do I do with this? All right, I'm gonna do this and now, you know, rinse and repeat.

• 49:21Speaker 00

  You know, we talked about how on the album, the song Stray Dogs came out of a prompt that Iron and Wine gave you. Can you give us a prompt to write for a song?

• 49:32Speaker 04

  Hmm. What is a painful memory that you look back on now with gratitude?

• 49:39Speaker 00

  Okay, get writing, make your songs. There's a producer credit in there for you on all the, on all the number one hits. Richard, guys, thank you so much for being here. It was such a pleasure talking to you. I can't thank you enough and I, I love the album. I love all of your work and it's just always a pleasure to talk to you.

• 49:54Speaker 04

  You too. Thank you so much for having me.

• 49:59Speaker 00

  That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Since you are listening, we would love to hear your feedback. You can find a link to click on in the episode description that will take you to our listener survey. Tell us how we can improve, things you're loving, topics you want us to cover. We would love your feedback. You can click on that link in the episode description, or you can go to bit.ly/BH Survey 6. That's B-I-T dot L-Y slash B-H Survey 6. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you as well to today's guest, Rishikesh Hirway. His podcast is called Song Exploder, and his fantastic new album is In the Last Hour of Light, which you can stream wherever you get your music. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and my book, Humor Me, is out in stores now.

• 50:42Speaker 00

  You can find out about my book and all my other projects at ChrisDuffyComedy.com. This episode of How to Be a Better Human exploded into the world thanks to the best team in audio. On the TED side, we've got Songbirds Daniella Balarezzo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohanini, Laney La, Tansukasun Manivong, Antonio Le, and Joseph DeBryan. Ryan Lash is the Mozart of video editing, and Mateo Salas fact checks every episode to remove any wrong notes. On the PRX side, they are destroying hotel rooms and they are rocking out like an 80s hairband. Send the bill to Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks to you for listening. Please send this episode to someone who you think would enjoy it. We'll be back next week with even more How to Be a Better Human. Until then, take care.

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