#332 – Kanye ‘Ye’ West Interview

The following is a conversation with Ye, the legendary artist, producer and designer formerly known as Kanye west, and now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got shopify for e commerce, insight tracker for biomonitoring, exprsVPN for privacy, and athletic greens for nutrition. Two wisely my friends. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I hate those. They interrupt the conversation and I hate it when long form conversation is interrupted. Still, if you happen to want to listen to these, I try to make them interesting, but go ahead and skip them if you must. But still check out the sponsors in the description. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere, with a great looking online store that brings your ideas to life and tools to manage day to day operation. So since this conversation is with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, I should mention that I got a chance to hang out with him all day and discuss many things. But one of the things we talked about is design, fashion design. I got a chance to try out some of the things he's working on, sort of early ideas, middle ideas, and it's cool to just explore the way he thinks about design, how detail oriented he is, how he can spend minutes, if not hours, on a very specific detail. And even with people like me who are not deeply knowledgeable about fashion, at least like the behind the scenes of fashion, he's still able to make it clear to me and have a brainstorm with me and just talk the creative fire is there. No matter what he's going on through his personal life, the creative fire is burning bright, and that's really beautiful to see. Anyway, if the creative fire burns for you and you create something, you want to sell it, use Shopify. Get a free trial and full access to Shopify's entire suite of features. When you sign up at Shopify Lex. That's all lowercase. This show is also brought to you by our longtime friends Insight tracker, a service I use to track biological data, basically using signals that come from your body, and then take those signals and use machine learning algorithms to give you advice on diet and lifestyle changes. The amount of data that comes from your body is fascinating, and the fact that we're not capturing that data, we don't have devices or systems that, while respecting the privacy, are able to collect that data to give you, just you, not somebody else, just you. Advice on all kinds of things, on what to read next, what to eat to maximize your well being, your productivity, your everything, long term happiness and growth and all that kind of stuff. It's just obvious to me that's where the world is moving and should be moving. There's a lot of different trajectories that you can hurt people through doing that by being not transparent, being opaque about how the data is used, who it's sold to, all that kind of stuff. But as long as you respect the privacy and the value, the power of that data, I think you could do some magical things that help a lot of people, especially in health and medicine. I mean, it's obvious. And insight tracker is one of the great companies that represents that get special savings for a limited time when you go to insidetracker.com slash lex. This show is also brought to you by ExpressVpn. I use them to protect my privacy on the Internet. I'm actually talking to the creator of Tor on the podcast soon, which is a fascinating technology. There's so many interesting technologies that explore the way which you achieve privacy and the levels of privacy you're comfortable with. I think the first line of defense that everybody should be using when privacy is needed, especially is a VPN. And ExpressVPN has been the one I've used for many, many years. It's the one I love the most. I think it's the best. Most importantly, it's super fast, works on any device, including whatever operating system you use. Linux. Yes, the greatest operating system. Linux it works on. It works on beautifully with a big button, big sexy button that you press and it all just works. Super easy, super fun. Life is simple. The best security is easy security. Like making sure you do the low hanging fruit stuff. Also make sure using password manager or don't use the same password. Whatever you do, just stop using password 123456. That doesn't make it more secure if you keep adding numbers after the password or it does a little bit, but not much. Anyway, go to exprsvpn.com legspod for an extra three months free. Last but certainly not least, the legend. The greatest sponsor of all time. This show is brought to you by athletic greens and it's ag one drink. I actually noticed that they sponsor a lot of podcasts, which in some weird way makes me feel like. It makes me feel both joyful that a lot of people are spreading the word, but also it makes me feel like it's less of a secret that somehow I discovered. It's like when you were a fan of Green Day before. They were cool, man. You're like a pearl jam or whatever the band when they were not as popular as there are today, that you love them. That's how I feel about athletic greens. But probably I wasn't even the first wave of people that discovered and enjoy athletic greens. I'm probably like the fifth wave, the 10th wave, and now it's like the 15th wave. And so I'm incorrectly, from a historical perspective, making myself feel like I'm the Og of athletic greens, the Og of aG, but probably not. Anyway, I love them and doesn't matter where I am in the waves. I hope you love them, too. It's a great way to support your nutritional health. I drink one twice a day now. It's refreshing even when I'm traveling. Their travel packs are great. They'll give you one month supply of fish oil, which I also take when you sign up@athleticgreens.com. Slash Lex this is the Lex Friedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Yay.