Behind the Music: The Journey to Happiness for a Music Icon with Moby & Lindsay Hicks

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 You're listening to the Radcast, a top 25 worldwide business podcast.
 If it's radical, we cover it.
 Here's your host, Ryan Alford.
 Hey guys, what's up? Welcome to the latest edition of the Radcast.
 They say it's radical, we cover it. Let me just say, if you told me, 20-year-old me
 while I was sitting in college at Clemson, listening to dance music and listening
 electronic music and playing this album, probably until I wore it out, that I'd be talking
 Moby one day. I wouldn't believe you, but I am blessed to have Moby on along with Lindsay Hicks,
 his co-host, a producer. Moby doesn't need any introduction, but we'll do it.
 Author producer, writer, badass musician, and one of my favorite artists of all times. It's great
 to have you guys on the show. It's wonderful to be here. Thank you. Hi. Lindsay, pleasure to have
 you. Been enjoying digesting your show. Moby Pod, which we'll talk about. I don't want to start
 too far down the path, but Moby, I know you need no introduction, but our audience,
 your career's fanned a lot, but let's go straight at setting the table for everyone on your career
 and your life and what's brought you here today, and we'll do the same with you, Lindsay.
 Okay, great. So I'm very comfortable being completely self-involved in describing my life
 and my career. If you want me to do that. Let's start there, man. I know you could talk,
 we could probably talk for two hours about that. You've had such longevity and success.
 There'd be a lot, but let's talk about all the, I don't know, the foundational things that
 led to your music career to just breaking all the rules and making actually electronic dance
 music, some of the hottest, best-selling music of the late 90s, early 2000s, like your game changer.
 It started, and I'm going to, as an old person, my stories tend to go way back. So I was born in
 Harlem in 1965, and I grew up for the first few years of my life in a basement apartment in
 Harlem, and my parents were academics. And then when I was three, my dad died, so my mom and I
 moved back to Connecticut where she grew up. And I then, for the next about 16 years, lived in
 dairy and Connecticut, which I assume you and a lot of your listeners are familiar with, because it
 is just about the waspiest, preppy is most absolute place on the planet. And what made my upbringing
 there so strange was my mom and I were on food stamps, we were on welfare, we bought our clothes
 at Goodwill and Salvation Army, but I went to school with the children of millionaires and billionaires.
 My, my first girlfriend in dairy and her dad owned a fleet of oil tankers, and my second
 serious girlfriend in dairy and her grandfather was Bill Hewlett, who started Hewlett Packard.
 So the contrast of living in a house with second hand furniture, having to go to the grocery store
 and buy things with food stamps, wearing second hand clothes, and then to put it in perspective,
 one of the first trips I ever took was with my then girlfriend in the mid 80s to Lake Tahoe to
 visit the Hewlett compound. So the Hewlett compound had a private railroad connecting the different
 houses of the Hewlett kids. So compare and contrast that to I'm groceries on with food stamps.
 So it was a very confusing upbringing, and you mentioned my weird name. So I'm related to
 Herman Melville, and when I was born, my parents thought it'd be funny to give me the nickname
 Moby, and lo and behold, 57 years later, I still have my infant joke nickname.
 Yeah, but was there ever a cooler name? What's you got to become an artist?
 The people who chose their name like sting, like that's a cool name. I love my name,
 that it's the literary aspects of it, the fact that I didn't have to invent it for myself,
 but my parents had a sense of humor and gave it to me. But so regarding music,
 when I was growing up, music to me represented refuge. It represented excitement, because
 as I mentioned, we were very poor. The home I grew up in, there was a lot of chaos, there was
 violence, there was drug addiction, and music to me was a way of feeling excited and safe at the
 same time. And I never thought I'd have a career as a musician. I thought I'd be an academic,
 and I'd teach philosophy at some community college and make music that known whatever
 listen to. So every single aspect of my career has been always accidental and completely surprising.
 Yes, but I'm thankful that you didn't end up the professor. You know, you could pass for one,
 I think. You've always had the look of the smartest guy in the room, professor Moby.
 When I went to college, I studied philosophy because I both loved philosophy,
 but also I learned early on, the moment you say you were a philosophy major, people immediately
 assume you're way smarter than you actually are. Maybe, but Moby, where does that side come from?
 Because even your music has always had, I don't know, every time I turn your music on now, maybe not
 as much as a 20-year-old kid that's hanging out listening to play, but it's always had that
 thoughtful, I don't know, I feel like I'm in deep thought when I listen to a lot of your music.
 And so we, where did that come from in you? Just, are we talking nature or nurture?
 That's a, it's a self-involvedly thing. It's a really interesting question.
 Not just as applies to me, but as applies to everyone like who, and sorry, I'll try not to sound
 like too much of a grad student, but who are we and how did we end up this way? How much of it is
 social economic? How much of it is cultural? How much of it is hereditary or epigenetic?
 And when I try and deconstruct myself, I think it's that sort of the intersection, and maybe this
 is very self-evident, but the intersection of nature and nurture and how they inform each other.
 Like it's safe to say, if I had been born in Madagascar and I was six foot five and really
 good at sports, we would, if we were talking right now, we'd be having a very different conversation
 as opposed to a nerdy little guy who played guitar in his bedroom when he was growing up.
 Yes, but equally good on the piano, I presume at least with the melodies and sounds, but we'll
 come back to it. Lindsay, I do want to, I want you to turn to you. I know you co-host Moby Pod
 with Moby, producer. Let's give our audience a little bit of your background before we come a
 little more further down the line. Yeah, as it relates to how I got here and working on this
 podcast with Moby, I, many years ago, wrote a web series that got bought by a TV network,
 which eventually got me a TV development job working at a production company.
 And then I worked at a couple of different production companies, amazing ones. I worked for
 Wanda Sykes for a while. I worked for the company that runs, that owns and operates the improvs,
 so I was doing TV development for the comedy side of that. And it was really fun. But then the
 pandemic happened and Moby and I have been friends for years. And we were talking one day and I was
 saying, okay, I'm furloughed from this job. I can wait until they hire me back. But I don't know,
 I want to do something where I feel like what I'm doing matters. It helps someone with their
 mental health or it helps animals or it helps the environment or brings awareness to climate crisis
 or just general things that I care about, something that I feel like moves the needle a little
 bit. We had this conversation about it in a few weeks later, Moby called me back and said,
 hey, I was thinking, and what if we work together and try to figure out what we can do in the
 content world to find something that could potentially make a difference. And he had this kind of
 fledgling production company where he shot a couple of things and done a couple of things, but
 wanted to do more with the production company. And so I came and was working with Moby and
 for a little walnut. And we've made, I came on and finished helped finish Moby doc. And we recently,
 in January released punk rock vegan movie that he had shot some of and then we put it all together
 and released it and premiered at slam dance in park city last January. And then we were talking
 about a podcast and trying to figure out what it was and eventually we just wanted to make it
 something that felt specific to Moby and what he cares about because he has this amazing platform.
 That consists of so many people that care about all the things that we care about, but also that
 care about his music and music in general. So we decided that a podcast would be an amazing place to
 talk to people that know about things or that care about things that could help someone or people
 that could help people enter into possibly a more plant based lifestyle or care about animal rights
 or things like that. So that was how Moby pod got started. So we produced it all in house. And it's
 been a really podcasting is so fun. It's so open. It's so free. You can do whatever you want. And
 it has this kind of like direct reach to an audience. And we have this email set up where people
 can contact us directly and say what they love and what they want more of. And it's been, it's
 just been really wonderful. Yeah. Well, let me say this. I've really enjoyed it. I listened to
 three or four episodes before you have a very soothing voice, Lindsey. It's therapeutic. It's very
 light. But it's like nice. I listened to a lot of podcasts. I have to a lot of people with guests and
 things like that. And then Moby's like exactly what I expected. Like he's I know he likes to say,
 oh, I'm not the smart guy or whatever, but just so thoughtful. It's exactly what I expect.
 And but it's very the variation in the episodes remind me a little bit of Moby's music. There's
 so many things going on variations. Like if you really listen to some of the tracks, I've really
 enjoyed it. So I think the audience, you check that out on all the podcasts that network some Moby
 pod, POD, easy. Remember Moby got a transition back. You've been in the music business for a long
 time. You've seen it all. I'm sure. Talk to me. Give me the real of it of what it was like going
 through the heyday of play and some of that. I don't want to say unexpected, but I think for
 other people's unexpected Moby's expected for you, the success of that and what the industry's been
 like to this evolution from records to CDs to now everything's streaming. I'd love just your
 broad based perspective on the music business. I started out weirdly enough playing classical music,
 which might seem very surprising, but now it's really young. I was playing piano and guitar and
 studying music theory. And then when I was around 13, I heard the clash and the sex pistols and I
 tried to unlearn everything I had learned about classical music. And I started playing in a punk
 rock band. And I got so involved in the world of New York based punk rock in the early 80s,
 seeing bands like Minor Threat and Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys. It was so exciting.
 And honestly, I just thought this was the be all and end all. Our first seven-inch record,
 the first record that my band of adding commandos put out. We sold 200 copies. And I was like,
 we're the biggest rock stars in the world. We sold 200 copies of a record that we made.
 That means there are potentially 200 people out there who know who we are. I was ready to retire
 at that point. But I kept working on music. I kept DJing. I was hanging out in nightclubs.
 And I got really involved in the world of electronic music. So then in the late 80s, I started
 releasing my own electronic music with the assumption that, okay, no one's ever going to listen to it,
 but who knows? Maybe I'll play a show and 30 people will show up.
 Through the 90s, I kept having very weird, unexpected success.
 And one of the things, again, that I never expected, but by definition, it was unexpected,
 so I never expected it. But also, what had made the world of punk rock and early electronic music
 so interesting is that they were sweet generis, meaning they were not reliant on corporations.
 We were making the records ourselves. We were printing the flyers. We were making the t-shirts.
 We were booking our tours. So it was all very DIY. Do it yourself.
 Or Danic is what I completely, and then I found myself being on the receiving end of mass media
 attention and signed to a major label, which didn't work out by the end of the 90s.
 And I'll try and keep this relatively brief, but by the end of the 90s, I lost my record deal.
 I'd been dropped because I'd made a record that people didn't like very much.
 And I was really in a dark place. I was battling drug addiction and alcoholism.
 My mom had cancer. Then she died of cancer. I was going broke. I was battling panic attacks.
 I lost my record deal. And that's when I made the album play, which I thought was going to be my last record,
 because it was a weird record that I made in my bedroom at the time.
 And it went on, as you mentioned, to sell 12 million copies and be this huge cultural
 phenomenon, where suddenly I'll put it in perspective. The first show on the tour for the album play
 was in the basement of a record store in between 20 and 25 people showed up.
 The last show was at Wembley Stadium in the UK. And it sold out so quickly. We had to book a
 second show at Wembley Arena. We're talking about tens of thousands of people, as opposed to
 that first show with 25 people. And so here's where hopefully the story becomes a little more
 psychological is, as I mentioned, growing up, I'd never expected to have any success.
 But I always assumed that when I had success, it would fix everything. As I think a lot of people
 makes that assumption. I just thought, oh, if ever I have fame and money and a good career,
 I'll be the happiest person in the world. And not surprisingly, that was not the case.
 And then I started wondering, what am I doing wrong? Like, I'm making money. I'm buying apartments
 in houses. I'm flying around the world. I'm standing on stage in front of hundreds of thousands of
 people. Why was I so anxious and depressed? And that became a huge challenge for years trying to
 figure out. And I think a lot of people who are probably listening, a lot of people, have had
 that experience of, you're given the keys to the kingdom with the assumption that you will be
 the happiest person in the world and then lo and behold, you're not. And then what, and then the
 questions, what do you do next? And I guess one option for me would have been like, get hair plugs
 and start trying to go to St. Bart's for new years. But the other option was to figure out
 what actually works, meaning if, I'm sorry, I'm rambling on. No, you're not. It's good.
 You're, you're a lot, very relatable to how people think about the journey and like the
 destination, you think the destination is going to be all the, it's great. Keep going.
 And it's not, and also I would say it's not just me, which was an interesting realization,
 like on one hand, there is the idea that fame and wealth fix everything. But then on the other
 hand, there's evidence. And I would say if fame and wealth fixed everything, Donald Trump would be
 the happiest person in the world. Kanye would be running through a field singing happy songs
 of each he would still be alive. Kurt Cobain would still be alive. Amy Winehouse would still be alive.
 Chris Cornell from Sound Garden would still be alive. And on so clearly, there's a disconnect
 where we all think that fame and wealth will fix everything. But in the real world,
 there's no evidence that that's actually the case. And it was a really interesting challenge
 to not just experience that academically, but personally.
 I bet because anyone listening to this, if they could be told, including myself, thinking through
 like the super stardom level that you were at in 2001, you know, what around that time frame,
 to go, he's anxious and not happy, you wouldn't believe it. You wouldn't believe it. It's the pinnacle
 of, I'm sure there's been other pinnacles now. But to not, and they say people say,
 the journey's everything. Once you get there, you know, you're not. But you got to figure out what
 makes you happy ultimately. And say money doesn't make you happy successes. I mean, you're happy.
 It's your helps, but it doesn't help if maybe the core isn't where it needs to be.
 Yeah. That's exactly what I slowly had to realize. And it was a lesson that was hard learned
 because I didn't want, I didn't want to learn that lesson. I had to be drag kicking and screaming
 to that realization, like I wanted to live in the belief that having houses, having apartments,
 having fancy friends, going to crazy red, like exclusive parties and red carpet events. I
 thought this was going to make me happy. And the more I did it, the less happy I was. And as I
 mentioned, for a while, I was thinking, what am I doing wrong? And then I realized, you know,
 what? Maybe I'm doing it wrong. Maybe someone else would be jumping up and down with happiness,
 given the same circumstances that I had. But I had to figure that out. And I had to really
 bottom out as an alcoholic, as a drug addict, as a human. And then figure out the next step of,
 okay, that didn't work. I could keep pursuing it. But that seems like the Einstein quarter,
 like the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different
 results. I was like, there's a lot of people, especially here in Los Angeles, who keep doing it,
 even though it's not working. And I've had to ask myself, okay, this doesn't work anymore.
 What does? And it's a really fascinating, at least for me, and challenging question that I had
 to ask myself. Lindsay, I bet you've been in and around this. You've been around Moe. You've been
 a lot of stars. I'm sure you're probably familiar with this, like seeing this exact thing play out
 with friends and colleagues. Yeah. It's a little bit of a kind of wherever you go, there you are,
 type of situation. It's you, nothing external is going to actually fix any problem that starts
 internally. So it's been very inspiring to hear about Moebe's journey and help reframe my
 perspective of, okay, having goals is necessary. But it's not all about getting there. There's so
 many more important things that will ideally happen along the way. And something else I've learned,
 especially from Moebe, is that where you think you'll end up is probably the farthest from where
 you'll actually end up, especially if you are following the journey and going with what feels
 best and most right in the moment and trying to keep your morals in check and make sure that you're
 doing the best, not only for yourself, but the world around you. Your path is going to get curvier
 than yeah, so that's something that I definitely learned from watching him. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
 Moebe, did you find ultimately that what brought you success wasn't necessarily what you wanted
 to do? Like if you could do play times four, you've had other success, but like that level of success,
 it I'm hearing maybe the music itself, maybe the what came with that success just ultimately did
 make you happy or was it broader and deeper than that? When I was growing up, as mentioned,
 I never expected anyone to pay attention to me or the music I was making so I could focus on music
 purely for the purity of music. There was no commerce involved because by definition there was
 no commerce involved, but then once I started being on the receiving end of attention and making
 money for music and feeling like my emotional needs were being met by the attention and the validation
 to my great but understandable shame, I found myself thinking of music as a way to keep the
 juggernaut going, which I think a lot I'm sure you've talked to other musicians who if they're
 willing to admit it will say that like when you have success you start looking at your next record
 not by the criteria of how beautiful is it, how interesting is it, how emotionally resonant or
 powerful is it, you start thinking like oh will it get played on the radio, will it sound good
 when I'm standing on stage in front of a hundred thousand people, will it get good reviews, will
 it sell, and that's where I went wrong. That was my sort of Faustian approach of I had a period
 where I was willing to compromise my creativity for commercial gain and ultimately for emotional
 validation and it didn't work and luckily the turning point for me was a very simple moment and
 I don't know if this is going to make sense to anybody but it makes a lot of sense to me is
 I met David Lynch for the first time, this was around 2007, 2008 and I was in a very dark place,
 I was actually like suicidal, I was bottoming out as an alcoholic in a really dark place.
 Twin Peaks David Lynch, Mahalindra, David Lynch, Mahalindra, and so I met David Lynch for the first time
 and I was in awe because I was such a huge David Lynch fan and David is really
 complicated and simple and equal measures like obviously the work that he does is incredibly
 complicated but sometimes he speaks like a child and he said something that was like I'd
 felt like the light of it was just this wonderful moment where he said creativity is beautiful
 and I know that might sound like something that a four-year-old would say but when he said it all
 of a sudden it was like the Rosetta Stone it was like the moment when I understood there's nothing
 wrong with commerce there's nothing wrong with the world there's nothing wrong with financial
 success but for me it can't be the focus the focus what got me into this originally was that
 love of creativity the spiritual aspects of creativity and if it creates wealth great that's fine
 but in that simple moment with David Lynch I just realized oh my focus has to be on the creativity
 it has to have integrity it has to be honest and not compromised to accommodate a world of commerce
 is inherently compromised so that was the big turning point there so I really thank David Lynch
 for setting knocking me off the path I was on and setting me on a better path I've been in the
 ad agency business for 22 years so nothing brings me more joy than here and creativity is beautiful
 because that's what the ad business is supposed to be it used to be like that I came up on
 I worked on Madison Avenue for six years and it was beautiful then the ideas where it's
 gotten a little trashy with the digital and everything else in between ironically yeah
 regarding advertisements for example I remember because there's a it's very easy and quick to say oh
 the world of commerce is cheap and taudary and terrible but it isn't it has a potential to be
 transcendent like I think of this moment I had I was in Germany in the mid 90s and I was watching
 TV and a Volkswagen ad came on that used the Nick Drake song pink moon and I found myself like
 many people crying while watching this commercial because it was so beautiful and Nick Drake sold more
 records granted he was dead but he's his estate sold more records on the back of this beautiful
 Volkswagen commercial then he had for the 40 years or 35 years before that so commerce can be
 so powerful and effective but for me I had to realize I couldn't prioritize commerce I couldn't
 accommodate commerce I couldn't compromise for commerce I had to focus on the beauty and the
 integrity of creativity and let and if commerce ensued that would be great but I couldn't be the
 it couldn't be the focus so I got some irony for you play was created in your closet with no
 commercial pressure insight and lo and behold that the beauty of that creation became what it was
 isn't there a lot of irony there that it's like improving your point that without maybe that
 wait you created some of your most beautiful work yeah I would say that as I've gotten older and maybe
 again this is a glib reductive thing to say but if I had to describe especially the human condition
 it's an ironic paradox that's the only thing that makes sense is and it's almost like the universe
 not to amplify is it but the universe is aware of this and keeps trying to remind us like
 you guess what everything is everything to paradox life is a paradox like we're so attached to life
 the only guarantee we have is at some point we'll die that's a paradox and if that central paradox is
 the bedrock of all existence of all human existence clearly everything that follows from that is
 also going to be paradoxical yeah so clearly free of chasing commercial success give us and people
 listening the difference between the music business play era and today like is it
 is yeah like it's all for teams is it badly because like I talked to people and there's this jaded
 perspective I think with a lot of it with the royalties and everything's like that
 I'm going to qualify it a little bit by saying I don't fully trust my perspectives because I'm
 a guy I'm 57 and it's unfortunately too easy for me to glorify the world of music
 20 30 40 50 60 years ago I will say there's some objective support for the idea that things used
 to be better if you look at like the top 10 songs and albums from 1969 it was
 let it be it's the Beatles it's the Rolling Stones it's Creedence Clearwater Revival it's Marvin
 Gay it's transcendent music that spoke to people as opposed to now the world of pop music is
 I'll say this politely 99% of it the garbage it's the criteria then was how can you change the world
 for music the criteria now tends to be how can we get kids to do a TikTok dance to it so
 I will say the quality of the music and there are people making remarkable music out there
 but a lot of the pop music considering let it be was a top 10 song compared to the top 10 songs now
 it's really hard to make the case that the quality of the music has benefited from the current
 state of the music business but to your question about music business itself for the longest time
 to state the obvious it's sold plastic from wax cylinders in the early 20th century to vinyl to
 seven inches to cassettes to eight tracks to LPs to CDs to mini discs like it was the business of
 shipping and selling plastic and that obviously changed in the early 2000s with lime wire with
 Napster and then here's what's so interesting I think is in the early 2000s into about 2008
 people thought oh the record business is done the music business is finished it's wrapped up like
 it's entered the realm of like broadcast news and free jazz think poetry slams things that
 are just going to be greatly diminished but then like a weird themex the music business came back
 and is now generating more money than it ever has without having to make plastic and I just
 find that so interesting that as an industry and I wonder if there's analogous lessons that
 other industries can learn other industry struggle look at the music business which was
 more abundant in about 2008 and now is more successful and ever been yeah like a lot of that's
 social media and other platforms of growth and awareness and all that when they stop fighting the
 downloads and the streaming I think they embraced it it came around it doesn't mean the quality
 improved but I think the money they can generate the awareness that it's able to generate
 yeah and the idea that what and I was just talking about this with a friend of mine who runs a big
 song fund and the one of the things that makes music so remarkably unique it's one of the only
 art forms that lives everywhere in a person's life for example if I watch a movie you don't watch
 a movie in the shower you don't watch a movie when you're driving to work you don't watch a movie
 at a funeral unless you're a sociopath so the fact that music lives at festivals but it also lives
 in churches it's it helps people sleep and it wakes them up they listen while they're making breakfast
 and while they're having sex and while they're dancing and while they're getting tattoos and
 getting their haircut and it's so interesting that music it's that the only creative art form that
 lives everywhere in a person's life and I think that's one thing that the music business has
 woken up to is realizing like oh we don't need to sell people plastic we just need to make music
 available for wherever people want to listen to it yes that's definitely sorry I know I'm rambling
 no it's good talking with nobi and Lindsay Hicks cohost of the mobi pod which we're going to get
 to in just a second he did mention everywhere and you didn't mention movies and I would be remiss to
 not bring up the born franchise and the song with that talk briefly about the impact of that or how
 that came about it's so recognizable and like people may not even know about play but know that
 song because that franchise was just the mega hit yeah do you know again the bedrock context of
 all this is that I never expected anything I never expected to make music people paid attention
 to so everything that's happened has been surprising but the to Lindsay's earlier point this the
 had this idea of irony or paradox is so the song extreme ways that's in all the born movies
 when it was released it failed it was the first single from the album 18 which was the follow-up
 to play and it was everybody in the world was paying attention to me and the record labels were
 spending tons of money to put it in perspective the video for extreme ways cost just shy of a million
 dollars and it got played once for good reason it's bad so we spent a million dollars on a video shot
 at Andrews Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert and no one watched it for understandably because
 it's just not very good and I thought oh no radio's not playing it MTV's not playing it the
 records not selling very well what in the world like it was a failure a very public failure
 and then my friend Doug Lyman made the first born movie and with Frank Marshall and a few other
 people caffeine elsin they came to me to license this song but no one expected the movie to be
 successful and it became hugely successful and all of a sudden the song was like this well-known
 part of the first movie so here's where I think it gets a little funny they came to us to license it
 again for the second born movie not because they wanted it to be the soundtrack or the theme of the
 movie because they had run out of time to license anything else and they knew I'd say yes
 so it's very accidentally became this well-known part of the born franchise because when they were
 finishing the second movie they ran out of time to license another song I hope the price tag
 went up as the popularity increased not that not that much surprisingly because I'm always so
 flatter that anyone would listen to my music or want a license it I think one of the reasons I've
 licensed a lot of music is because I don't charge that much for it it's good to know I have a lot
 to remember that with the brands we work with I can hear Southside on a few commercial spots we're
 sure it's yours so Lindsey talk to me about Moby pod what we've we talked briefly about at the
 beginning what do you guys hope and to do with the show where is it all going I know it's broad
 base but talk to me about Moby pod what you've done to date and any of the future episodes
 something that's been really fun is that we came in not the plan was to not have a plan so we are
 just doing what feels right in the moment the last episode we released Moby and I decided to
 write a song on as the episode the episode was just us writing a song from scratch and I'm not really
 a musician I did some pretty epic musical theater in college but I'm not a musician and it was
 really interesting to to do that with Moby and get to kind of mine different forms of
 showing his knowledge all of the things that he knows how to do because it's very rare that you
 can sit and get granular with Moby about how he makes a song and we had done it before for a
 different project and the whole time I was like God this is fun this is so cool I wish we had a
 place to put that and now we do have a place to put it but we also we had we've had some amazing
 guests some our next episode is with a psychiatrist named kirsten Thompson who is an amazing
 human being who her first day working in finance was on 9 September 11 2001 she then became a
 surgeon and now is this amazing psychiatrist and we also had Dan butiner on the show who wrote
 the book The Blue Zones which if you don't know about it it's so fascinating it's about longevity
 he figured out the spots in the world where people more people were living to and beyond 100
 and we had Ed Bagley on we are he's he'll be the next one after kirsten Thompson that we release
 to talk about his sustainability efforts and his vegan diet and all of the amazing things he's
 done in the world of renewable energy so it's this awesome place where we can just do whatever we want
 as we can get as serious as we want we can also get as silly as we want and it's nice to have
 that space to do that that's the one of the thing about podcasts like especially when you have built
 in interests bringing Moby's name to it but then like I said like I went into it kind of okay it's
 Moby so I'm going to listen and Moby's come on show and Lindsay's come to show I want to know
 these are but then listen I'm like I haven't found myself went down the I went down the rabbit hole
 I was like yes I got to keep at it Moby what's how are you feeling about where it's gone and where you
 headed it hopefully is a continuation of what we were talking about which is that moment in 2008 when
 I like I had to get sober I realized I was on a wrong path I was pursuing I was really involved
 in some very shallow pursuits and the question was what's next and I read an interview with the
 Dalai Lama and it annoyed me so much which is funny because I've met the Dalai Lama he's a delightful
 person and but this interview what annoyed me and I might be the only person in history who's
 ever said they were annoyed by the Dalai Lama but I love it but it annoyed me so much because
 he was talking about the importance of service and at this point this was 2007 2008 I was like
 no I don't want to be of service I want to be selfish I want the world to glorify me and make
 me the happiest person who's ever been but then as time passed also when I started getting sober
 I realized oh this is that paradox that we're talking about the more people pursue selfishness
 the less happy they are the more people pursue philanthropy altruism service the happier they are
 and so I found myself focusing more on trying to be of service I opened a restaurant here in
 Los Angeles called Little Pine that got shut down during the pandemic but we gave the money to
 charity it was basically being run it was a for-profit but the profits went to charity and I try to
 keep doing this is to do things for the right reasons and it just it creates a bedrock of integrity
 that I find so much more satisfying and rewarding than trying to disingenuously pretend that I'm
 doing the right thing while not doing the right thing and so regarding the podcast on one hand
 the impetus for starting it was the idea that and I'm maybe I'm really stating the obvious you
 probably know this better than anyone is controlling your platform in this environment is so important
 and essential if you care about communicating with people because as we know the algorithms on the
 other platforms change all the time like one minute Twitter is suppressing people's content then
 it's allowing all sorts of crazy people to say whatever they want one minute Instagram has a certain
 algorithm then it doesn't TikTok has an algorithm then it doesn't they are constantly changing and
 the idea of having a having platforms that can bypass these other platforms become so essential
 especially if you want to create meaningful content and the wonderful thing and again I know
 you know this better than anyone was a podcast is if people listen that's great but even if they don't
 you're having remarkable conversations with people you care about and you're having
 these wonderful conversations where people listen to each other because Ryan I don't know what's
 like when you're friends to get together but I have some really smart friends when we meet up
 we're idiots we meet up and we eat vegan pizza and we tell stupid jokes like this matters they might
 have IQs of 165 and work at masses jet propulsion laboratory when we're social we're idiots and there's
 something wonderful about a podcast where you listen you ask you we think about what we're going to
 talk about and you really listen and like Dan butiner who started the blue zones when we had him on
 I've known Dan forever I learned so much about him and I saw a side of him that I'd never seen
 before because we weren't just joking around eating vegan pizza no it does I people ask me all the time
 why did you start the podcast I started it because I wanted to have conversations and I thought
 it would be good for business it's been great for business but more than that I've gotten
 have conversations in the beginning I'd get didn't get to choose but then suddenly now it's like
 I get to talk to Movin Lindsey Hicks and listen and like my phones turned off and I'm got my headphones
 on and I'm like listening and absorbing and like having this real dialogue and in our lives now
 with so many distractions they're so little that I crave this now can I do it two to four times a
 week but I love it and because it force it not does it force me but it lots time to do that
 and now with the ability of our show being popular getting to have the depth of conversations
 with childhood idols and musicians and everything else it's a wonderful experience.
 Yeah and I think it's interesting because on one hand podcasts are they live and I'm stating
 the obvious and the most basic way but they live in the same world of content as other media
 but I given my limited experience with Lindsey hosting this hosting mobile pod I actually and I'm
 going to sound like such a hippie and I'm sorry but there's something potentially sacred about it
 like when you're speaking we're listening like we don't interrupt each other there's this
 really wonderful moment where you get to sit down and have a very really intentional remarkable
 conversation so I wasn't expecting that when we started mobile pod but I've been really
 satisfied and I think Lindsey I presumptuously think Lindsey has as well with how meaningful it can
 potentially be. Yeah we've had friends yeah friends I've known for years and I'm suddenly learning
 things about them that never would have come up in regular conversation it's deep in relationships
 and people I'm meeting for the first time I feel like we walk away friends good friends at the end
 so it's a great it's a great medium and even for just me and Moby when it's just TNI we can
 be as silly or go down rabbit holes of conversation that we probably never would have gone that
 in depth had we not been in this space for this reason and to get to talk about things we really care
 about like like animal rights like helping people be healthier and more like Moby has this
 incredible knowledge of the human body and diets and he's got this is now a place where he can
 put that information so it's really been a fascinating endeavor and I'm very excited to get to do
 more of them that's awesome I own a plant based a wellness company called vacant that's the
 hat I'm wearing can relate to that oh nice that's awesome yes so Moby what's the future of the music
 where what are we gonna have another round are we are you gonna unintentionally because you're not
 chasing fame are we gonna are we gonna have resurgence is there any desire for that to happen I know
 you're not chasing it but are you okay with it wouldn't you I'd be okay with it and I keep I make
 tons of music but I don't tour and I don't really do much promotion so I make music and then once
 I've made it I don't pay attention to what happens because there's one recurring there's a variable
 here which is both unavoidable but very scary to me and that variable is ego and I'm sure that
 I don't think it's possible to bypass the ego I don't think it's possible as a human to have a
 life without ego but I know that in my past I've lived a very ego driven life and it was bad like
 I suffered the people around me suffered my relationships suffered my family suffered my health
 suffered like some more selfish and ego driven I was it makes me think of did you grow up watching
 bugs bunny oh yeah do you remember I feel like this is a cartoon that sort of describes our current
 zeitgeist there's one where daffy duck they meet a genie and daffy duck gets turned into a tiny
 little duck sorry this is spoiler alert at the end of the cartoon and bugs opens a clam shell
 and there's a pearl and tiny little daffy duck runs in to grab the pearl and he's just yelling
 mind by mind that to me is the sort of the feral selfish ego that I know is within me I have to
 avoid it and I don't trust it so to that point of if someone said hey do you want to go on tour
 and play for millions of people and be celebrated and go to red carpet events my honest answer would
 be yeah there's a part of me that would love that but I don't trust it and I don't I want to make
 a concerted effort to not be on the receiving end of that attention I like the health and sustainability
 of living a normal life of going to the grocery store going hiking of talking to you guys of
 playing with dogs and cleaning my kitchen like I don't have a housekeeper I clean my house because
 it's this humble meditation that I really love so I just think I've also just done something
 quite interesting is I've just had a very ego driven soliloquy about how I don't trust ego so
 thank you for accommodating another paradox there what do you have tiktok because you wouldn't
 have to leave your house if we just blow hurry on tiktok like every night I'm on all the social
 meat I'm not really on I'm I posted the tiktok a few times but I'll be honest I don't think
 demographically it's for me I'm gonna sound like such an old person but every time I've tried to
 open tiktok I'm like why are these people yelling at me everyone's so loud so I think I need like
 tiktok for old people where they like it's just people who like wear cardigans and watch old
 episodes of 30 rock it is quiet and calm because I find tiktok just be way too noisy you don't have
 to watch it you just need to create for it I can see you blowing up on tiktok and the music
 discovery part of it but I won't push you that's just my industry but I can see it that's big
 big that's bagel the dog bagel has some pretty strong opinion oh I heard about bagel on the podcast
 that yeah yeah she's very big deal over here yeah I love it we're gonna everybody keep up with all
 things the show you personally Lindsay and obviously Moby I'm sure they can find you easily but
 give us some locations we're making keep up there than it's happening yeah Moby on all the
 platforms I left Twitter when Elon lost his mind he and I we were old friends and I just I don't know
 what's going on yeah but something happened and that the Elon who everyone knows now was not the
 Elon I've known for a long time and I like when he started posting insane conspiracy theories to
 his trillion followers I was like I don't want to be a part of this so I left Twitter but the other
 platform certainly are not ethically much better but they seem a little more neutral if Mark Zuckerberg
 starts posting insane conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi I probably would leave that
 Instagram and Facebook as well but for now those are like safe spaces for me Lindsay about you
 yeah Moby is very good about posting about the podcast so every time we come out he makes a big post
 because he has a lot of followers and I don't but I met Lin's Hicks if you want to watch what I do
 I post mostly about bagel so it's very valuable information going on over there hey the dog
 can take it the dog and animal content get some of the highest gazes sometimes yeah you never know
 they have their own channels and everything else now I know the personalities live through their
 hosts but guys I've it's been a joy it's been pleasure hearing more about the podcast in both
 of you and Moby it was truly I don't someone like yourself comes on people say these things but I
 have but I'm telling you it was on like repeat play then the soundtrack and then all the stuff a
 true fan and someone that respects your artistry and for someone that grew up they probably had no
 business enjoying everything that you did like some of the influence that I had or so like left
 field but I think you just totally flipped the expectation of electronic and dance music and how
 beautiful it could be but how interesting it could be and it's been great really getting to know
 you better oh thank you very much that makes me like I'm thrilled to hear you say that and it was
 yeah I'll speak on behalf of Lindy and I sorry Lindy I assume you agree with this it was really
 wonderful talking to you like this was great thank you so much awesome hey guys you know to find us
 the radcast.com search for Moby you'll find all the highlight clips from today if I'm links to their
 show and links to everything else I'm at Ryan Alford on the platforms blowing up on TikTok even if
 Moby don't want to we'll see you next time all right cast to listen or watch full episodes visit us
 on the web at the radcast.com or follow us on social media at our Instagram account v.rad.cast
 or at Ryan Alford stay radical
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