Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin

Mark Ronson is a record producer, DJ, and songwriter. Beginning his career in the mid-1990s as a DJ, he gained wide recognition in 2006 for his work with Amy Winehouse and Christina Aguilera, earning Producer of the Year for Winehouse’s Back to Black. Over his career, he has earned nine Grammy Awards, along with a Golden Globe and an Academy Award, for projects including “Uptown Funk” with Bruno M...

In this bonus episode, Ian Rogers turns the tables and interviews Rick Rubin, recently named one of TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, about The Way of Code: The Timeless Art of Vibecoding. Ian Rogers is a pioneering executive whose career spans music, luxury, and crypto, with leadership roles at Beats Music, Apple, LVMH, and now Ledger. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel o...

Ian Rogers is a technology and business executive whose career spans music tech, luxury retail, and crypto. He began by building early music websites in the 90s, including one for hip-hop group The Beastie Boys, before leading digital music at Yahoo!. Rogers went on to serve as CEO of Topspin and then Beats Music, which was acquired by Apple. In 2015, he became Chief Digital Officer at LVMH, helpi...

Randall Wallace is a screenwriter, director, and producer. He is best known for writing the screenplay of "Braveheart", later making his directorial debut with "The Man in the Iron Mask", and going on to direct "We Were Soldiers", "Secretariat", and "Heaven Is for Real". Braveheart became a critically and commercially successful film, winning multiple Academy Awards and earning Wallace a nominatio...

Bernard MacMahon is a filmmaker, most recently directing Becoming Led Zeppelin, a music documentary that holds the record for the highest-grossing opening weekend across IMAX theaters worldwide and is currently the highest-grossing documentary of 2025. He gained international acclaim with the American Epic series, which chronicles the origins of American roots music and the revolutionary impact of...

Ed Ruscha is an artist whose six-decade career spans painting, photography, printmaking, film, and book art. His first artist’s book, Twentysix Gasoline Stations—featuring 26 photographs taken along Route 66—marked the beginning of his ongoing exploration of the interplay between image and text, while later works such as Tulsa Slut and The End expanded this approach across different media. He draw...

Dr. Joe Dispenza is an author, researcher, and lecturer whose work bridges neuroscience, epigenetics, and quantum physics to explore the science of personal transformation. Known for books like New York Times bestseller You Are the Placebo, Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself, and Evolve Your Brain, he teaches how meditation and self-regulation can lead to measurable changes in health and conscio...

Bob Pittman is the former CEO of MTV Networks and co-founder of MTV. Beginning his career in media at age 15 as an on-air radio announcer, he went on to play a central role in launching MTV in 1981, targeting a youth audience with music video programming. Throughout his career, Pittman has held executive positions at several prominent companies, including AOL Networks, Six Flags Theme Parks, Quant...

Ian Astbury is the longtime frontman and founding member of The Cult. He began his music career in 1980, initially gaining recognition with the post-punk group Southern Death Cult. The band later evolved into The Cult, with guitarist Billy Duffy, bassist Jamie Stewart, and drummer Raymond Taylor Smith. Known for their blend of post-punk, gothic rock, and hard rock, The Cult released several succes...

Alex Spiro is a partner at Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and one of the most prominent trial lawyers in the United States. A Harvard Law School graduate, he serves as Co-Chair of the firm’s Investigations, Government Enforcement & White Collar Defense Practice. Spiro has represented a wide range of high-profile clients—including Elon Musk and New York City Mayor Eric Adams—and has served as le...

Chris Carter is a television writer, producer, and director best known as the creator of science fiction series The X-Files. He began his screenwriting career at Walt Disney Studios in 1985 before moving to Twentieth Century Fox Television. There, he developed The X-Files, which ran for 11 seasons and earned him multiple Golden Globe Awards, Emmy Award nominations, and a Peabody Award for Excellen...

Urs Fischer is a contemporary artist renowned for his experimental and highly unpredictable practice of sculpture, installation, painting, and photography. He often uses unconventional materials, such as wax, bread, and everyday objects, which he employs to explore themes of transformation, impermanence, and creative destruction, allowing his works to transform or decay over time. Fischer’s work,...

Tobias Lütke is the founder and CEO of Shopify, an e-commerce platform that enables businesses to sell products online and in person. Channeling his background as a self-taught programmer, he built Shopify out of a need for e-commerce solutions while running an online snowboard shop. Under Lütke’s leadership, the company, founded in 2006, opened its platform to third-party developers in 2009, went...

Dan Reynolds is the lead vocalist and founding member of Imagine Dragons. Alongside guitarist Wayne Sermon, he founded the pop rock band in 2008, releasing their debut album, Night Visions, in 2012. From the album, hit single “Radioactive” won a Grammy for Best Rock Performance and achieved RIAA Diamond Status. As the frontman of Imagine Dragons, Reynolds has led the band through a string of Plati...

Gwyneth Paltrow is an Academy Award-winning actress and wellness entrepreneur. Spanning a career over three decades, she is celebrated for her performances in critically acclaimed films such as Shakespeare in Love, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and also in her recurring role as Pepper Potts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Beyond acting, Paltrow is the founder and CEO of lifestyle brand Goop, and she...

Jack Clark is the co-founder of Anthropic, an AI research company focused on building reliable and interpretable artificial intelligence systems. Before Anthropic, he was a policy director at OpenAI, where he shaped strategy, communications, and policy. With a background that spans journalism at Bloomberg, policy leadership, and deep involvement in AI governance, Clark has built a reputation for h...

Benedikt Taschen is a publisher, contemporary art collector, and founder of TASCHEN, one of the world’s most successful international publishing houses. Starting from a comic book store in Cologne, Germany at age 18, he built a global brand by making visually striking, high-quality books accessible to a wider audience. Under Taschen’s leadership, the illustrated publications celebrate a wide range...

David “Avocado” Wolfe is a prominent figure in the alternative health and wellness movement, best known for his advocacy of raw food diets, superfoods, and holistic living. He has dedicated over 30 years to exploring the world’s most potent foods and natural health practices. The best-selling author of books such as Superfoods: The Food and Medicine of the Future, The Sunfood Diet Success System,...

André Benjamin, popularly known as André 3000, is a rapper, singer, songwriter, producer, and actor best known as one half of the Southern hip hop duo Outkast. Described by Rolling Stone as “one of the genre’s most gifted lyricists,” André helped redefine Southern rap with classic albums like ATLiens, Aquemini, Stankonia, and the Grammy-winning Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, producing hits such as “...

David Mamet is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright, screenwriter, and director. He first gained acclaim in the 1970s with plays like Sexual Perversity in Chicago, American Buffalo, and later the landmark Glengarry Glen Ross, which earned him both a Pulitzer and a Tony nomination. A founding member of the Atlantic Theater Company, Mamet’s prolific career spans theater, television, film, an...

Adam D’Angelo is the co-founder and CEO of Quora, the online question-and-answer platform. Before founding Quora in 2009, he was Facebook’s first Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering, playing a key role in the company’s early technological development. Aiming to provide more personalized and efficient responses to users’ questions on Quora, which is valued at $900 million, D’...

M. Night Shyamalan is a director, screenwriter, and producer. He first gained international acclaim in 1999 for his psychological thriller, The Sixth Sense, which earned six Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Picture. Over the next 24 years, he followed with a series of high-profile films including Unbreakable, The Village, Split, and most recently, Trap. With a distinctiv...

Palmer Luckey is an inventor, innovator, and the founder of Oculus VR and Anduril Industries. At 16 years old, he built Oculus’ first offering, the Oculus Rift VR headset, eventually selling the company to Facebook for $2 billion. He went on to establish Anduril Industries in 2017, a company focused on developing autonomous systems and AI solutions for military applications. Aiming to modernize th...

Gene Simmons is the co-founder, bassist, and co-lead singer of KISS. Best known for his on-stage persona as “The Demon,” he became synonymous with the band’s theatrical performances and signature makeup. Offstage, Simmons built KISS into a global brand, with over 30 distinct tours spanning from the 1970s to their more recent “End of the Road World Tour.” He has been recognized for his contribution...

Aravind Srinivas is the co-founder and CEO of Perplexity AI, the world’s first generally available conversation answer engine. Founded in August 2022 with Johnny Ho, Andy Konwinski, and Denis Yarats, Perplexity delivers accurate, sourced answers to any question. Born and raised in Chennai, India, Srinivas moved to the U.S. in 2017 and earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Califor...