Best Of: The Tao of Rick Rubin

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
If you like YouTube, you'll love YouTube Premium. Hi, I'm Tabitha Brown. With YouTube Premium, I get ad-free videos, offline downloads, and so much more. Try YouTube Premium for two months free. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime.

**Ezra Klein** (0:15)
We're off this week, but we wanted to repost a really nice conversation for Labor Day, which is my 2023 conversation with the legendary music producer Rick Rubin. Hope you enjoy.
I'm Ezra Klein. This is The Ezra Klein Show.
How do you introduce a podcast with Rick Rubin? So he may be the most influential music producer alive, and it seems like a fair statement. He holds nine Grammys. He co-founded Def Jam Recordings. He was a co-chair of Columbia Records, and he has just worked with the most stunning array of artists. Just a very, very partial roll call. Jay-Z, The Beastie Boys, Run-DMC, Slayer, Slipknot, Neil Diamond, Johnny Cash, Eminem, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West, Brandi Carlile, Adele.
It is a lot of very different kinds of artists who trust him, who seek him out. So what does he have to offer them? What is he giving them? Rubin just came out with this really fascinating unusual book called The Creative Act, A Way of Being. I expected stories of late nights in the studio with famed musicians, but it is not that at all. This is a spiritual tract. It's a guide finding and cultivating and inhabiting states of mind that foster creativity, but not just a kind of creativity that leads to art. You don't have to be an artist to get a lot out of this. How to really listen to another person, how to deepen your openness to the world, and then also deepen your discernment in it, your judgments about it, your taste. How to know when something is for you good. How to know and trust yourself when it's not good enough or not done yet. There's a funny way in which the conversation ended up playing out themes of the book. We did two versions of it because the first one didn't quite find the right level. And then as we began, and this is a conversation about a book, all about achieving more open states from which to listen, Rubin's suggestion was we get ourselves closer to that state by taking a few deep breaths in sync. And so we did, and I left that in the audio because it may open your taste and it may change your experience of the conversation too. As always, my email is rekleinshow.nytimes.com.
Rick Rubin, welcome to the show.

**Rick Rubin** (3:02)
Thank you, sir.

**Ezra Klein** (3:04)
So this is going to be a conversation about finding the states of mind that help you listen, that help you discern, that help you create. And so, as we start it, how should we find the right state of mind for this?

**Rick Rubin** (3:18)
Well, we can do maybe five slow deep breaths together to get us rolling. And on the inhale, think about the inhale. And on the exhale, when I say think, maybe that's not the right word. Maybe say, say to yourself, cue yourself, inhale. As you're inhaling, we're inhaling. And then when you exhale, focus on the exhale. We're exhaling now. And nothing else.
Let's do it.

**Ezra Klein** (4:35)
So, assuming you're about to take about the same amount of time as mine, where are you that you weren't a minute ago?

**Rick Rubin** (4:42)
Um, we had a little technical issue before we started, which created some energy in my body that was like a rattle.
And by the second breath, it felt like that settled. And by the, I don't know, towards the end, I realized I don't know how many breaths I've done because I'm feeling very relaxed. And that felt really good. That's what it did for me. And I also felt like, and I don't know this, but it tuned us to each other, that now we're starting at least on a closer wavelength than before that happened.

**Ezra Klein** (5:27)
I think that's right. So I normally think it's cliche to begin by asking anybody about the title of their book.
But I do think there's an interesting interaction for you between the title and subtitle, The Creative Act and A Way of Being. So tell me about the way of being side of this.

**Rick Rubin** (5:47)
The way of being is really what the book is about. The creative act is what I started out wanting to write.
And through the process of looking at what were the decisions made to make things to the best of our ability, it came back to a way of being. And that right now, regardless of what else is going on in my life, the most important thing in the world to me is this conversation that we're having. This is what we're doing now. And as long as it takes is as long as it takes. And if it went all day, I would go all day. And that's the way of being in the world. It's a combination of paying attention and commitment to doing whatever it takes to do your best, whatever that is.