Latest / The Joe Rogan Recap / Skylar Grey (2026) - Mountain Lions, Eminem and Artistic Evolution

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Skylar Grey (2026) - Mountain Lions, Eminem and Artistic Evolution · The Joe Rogan Recap

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap, and before we get going, please
• 0:03
  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
• 0:06
  our latest episodes in your feed.
• 0:08
  Today we're jumping into something really wild.
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  Oh yeah, this one is. It's a massive, deeply
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  unpredictable conversation, right?
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  We're looking at Joe Rogan's deep dive with singer-songwriter
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  Skylar Grey. And I mean, how does someone go
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  from hallucinating graphic anatomical imagery while editing
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  adult films to surviving Mountain Lion attacks in the
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  wild? Not to mention writing one of
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  Eminem's biggest global hits in just 15 minutes.
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  Exactly. It's an insane trajectory.
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  But to be clear, this isn't just a biography.
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  No, not at. All our mission today is to tear
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  apart that sanitized, predictable myth of the creative
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  process. We want to map the actual wild
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  anatomy of a creative life. Right.
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  And figure out how extreme high stress environments forge human
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  ingenuity in ways that a machine just, you know, never could.
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  Yeah, and I'm talking directly to you listening right now
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  because whether you're an artist staring at a blank canvas or a
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  manager trying to solve a brutal logistics problem.
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  Or just someone trying to figure out your own unconventional path
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  in life. Exactly.
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  This deep dive is going to fundamentally challenge how you
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  view failure potential and the safety of a traditional career
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  pipeline. To really understand that
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  chaotic trajectory, though, we have to establish what makes
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  human creativity so valuable in the first place.
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  Right, which they get into pretty early on.
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  Yeah, early in their conversation, Rogan and Gray get
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  into this really fascinating debate about artificial
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  intelligence and music, and it perfectly sets the stage for why
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  the messiness of actual human achievement is so irreplicable.
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  They both acknowledge that technologically speaking, AI is
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  super impressive. I mean, it can perfectly mimic a
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  voice or synthesize a melody. Yeah, it can generate a track
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  that mathematically sounds exactly like a Skylar Gree song.
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  But Gray argues that it fundamentally lacks the
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  emotional spirit of a human being sitting down to write.
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  Right. She points out that it's the
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  nuance and honestly, the mistakes that make art
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  relatable. A beautiful painting isn't
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  supposed to be perfect. No, the perfection actually
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  detracts from it. Exactly.
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  It's the essence of the flawed person behind the canvas that
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  we're drawn to. OK, let's unpack this.
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  It's like comparing a perfectly rendered CGI face in a huge
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  blockbuster movie to a gritty, slightly out of focus, poorly
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  lit photograph of someone you love.
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  Oh, that's a great way to put it.
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  Right. The technical perfection of the
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  CGI actually triggers the uncanny valley.
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  It makes it less human, less compelling to look at.
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  Yeah, it just feels cold. But that begs A biological
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  question. If an algorithm can perfectly
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  mimic the exact acoustic frequency and sound of
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  heartbreak, why do we biologically still care if a
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  human actually felt it? Like why do we care about the
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  source? What's fascinating here is a
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  psychological value that we intuitively place on the origin
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  of the creation, right? Evolutionary psychology tells us
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  that art isn't just about consuming pleasing audio waves
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  or visual patterns. It's a complex form of social
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  bonding and communication. We're attempting to connect with
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  the consciousness that actually produce those waves.
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  Exactly. When we hear a flaw or a a
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  slight vocal break or just a weird lyrical choice that breaks
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  the rhythm, our brain recognizes another human mind.
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  A mind that's navigating the chaotic, unpredictable
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  experience of being alive. Right, we crave that friction.
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  And for Grey, that need to communicate through art wasn't
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  some calculated career choice she made in a.
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  Boardroom. Oh, definitely not.
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  It was an innate organic compulsion from the time she was
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  a toddler. It's literally the exact
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  opposite of algorithmic output. And the timeline of that early
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  spark is almost unbelievable, like she was singing intricate
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  vocal harmonies at two years old. 2 That's insane.
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  Right, she didn't even know all the words to Happy Birthday, but
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  she intuitively found the harmony notes to accompany the
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  melody and by age 6, she and her mom had a full hour long set
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  they were performing at libraries and elementary schools
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  around their tiny 1500 person village in Wisconsin.
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  She. Was digging as a kid.
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  Yeah, she was making her own money gigging, and by 12 she had
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  saved up enough to buy her own grand piano.
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  The drive was just undeniably, almost obsessively there from
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  the very beginning. But having that raw, organic
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  drive is actually incredibly dangerous when you're forced
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  into a system that demands compliance.
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  Oh, for sure. The central conflict of her
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  early life, and honestly the conflict for a lot of people
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  listening to this right now, is what happens when a divergent,
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  obsessed mind collides with a rigid institution.
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  You see exactly what happens when that collision occurs
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  during her teenage years. Yeah, she's, she's 16 years old,
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  generally a good student acing our tests.
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  But she misses a single homework assignment because she had a gig
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  the night before. Right.
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  And her algebra teacher looks her dead in the eye and says
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  music isn't a career. Which is just brutal.
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  Yeah, but Gray's internal monologue didn't shrink or
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  apologize. No, her immediate reaction was
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  literally I'll show you, bitch. Yeah, and she drops out of high
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  school entirely. Never went back.
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  And this specific anecdote sparks a massive, sweeping
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  critique from Rogan about the education system as a whole.
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  Right. We should impartially report his
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  stance here. He argues that the traditional
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  schooling model, historically speaking, was essentially
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  designed to churn out obedient factory workers.
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  Yeah, his view is that you take kids at five years old, separate
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  them from their parents and basically brainwash them to walk
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  in single file lines. Sit straight and follow strict
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  repetitive commands for 8 hours a day.
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  And his perspective is that the system actively pathologizes
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  natural human behavior. Like with ADHD, right?
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  Exactly. Rogan points out that if a child
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  can't pay attention to a rigid, under stimulating curriculum,
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  the system labels them with a disease and medicates them to
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  force compliance. You've used things like ADHD not
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  as a deficit, but as a potential superpower.
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  Right, because in an evolutionary context, the
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  ability to hyper focus on things that genuinely capture your
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  interest while ignoring mundane repetitive tasks is exactly what
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  drives innovation. But the school system treats it
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  as a bug rather than a feature. And to provide the full picture
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  on this, they also note a massive structural flaw fueling
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  the issue, which is the tragedy of teacher compensation.
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  Oh, this is a huge point. Rogan pulls up the stats during
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  the interview, and the national estimate for a starting teacher
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  salary is roughly $48,000. With averages only hitting about
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  74 to 75,000. Which, you know, it just drives
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  top talent away from what should theoretically be the most
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  important job we have. Absolutely.
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  So here's where it gets really interesting.
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  Gray completely rejects this system.
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  She dropped out, leaves Wisconsin and moves to Los
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  Angeles alone at 17. Talk about a culture shock.
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  Oh, massive culture shock. She goes from a tiny rural
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  village straight into the deep end in her first month living in
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  Venice. There is a bloody mattress and
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  an active murder scene right next door to her apartment, and
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  the corner is literally hitting on her while loading a dead body
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  into a truck. It's a surreal, brutal
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  introduction to the world. I can't even imagine.
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  But you know, I have to push back a little on Rogan's
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  overarching theory about school. Is the system actively and
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  maliciously trying to crush creativity to make factory
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  workers? Or is it just terribly outdated
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  and heavily bureaucratic? Right.
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  Exactly. Is it just massively
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  underfunded, making brilliant outliers like Gray feel totally
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  alienated by accident? Well, if we connect this to the
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  bigger picture, intent almost matters less than the the
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  outcome. That's a fairpoint.
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  Whether the system was designed by 19th century industrialists
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  to suppress creativity, or whether it's simply too under
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  resourced to nurture individual brilliance today, the result is
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  the same for a nontraditional mind.
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  Society at large just deeply struggles to accommodate hyper
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  focused divergent thinkers. Right.
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  Think about your own workplace. The standard corporate pipeline
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  requires a generalized compliance filling out the right
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  forms, sitting in the right meetings.
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  Which is completely toxic to someone with an obsessive
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  creative drive. Exactly because the system can't
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  hold them, they are forced to carve their own deeply chaotic,
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  unpaved paths. And as Gray quickly learned upon
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  arriving in LA, leaving the system doesn't mean entering a
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  utopia. No, escaping the factory just
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  means stepping into the wilderness.
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  And the wilderness of the Los Angeles music industry turned
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  out to be just as brutal as a literal jungle.
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  Yeah, it was rough. She gets a deal early on,
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  records an album under a different name, and it
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  completely flops. So the label drops her, right?
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  Then her manager drops her. Her lawyer drops her.
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  She's entirely broke, having burned through all her savings.
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  And she is forced into taking bizarre survival jobs just to
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  pay rent. Which leads to one of the
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  craziest stories. How does someone with a pristine
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  organic musical drive end up answering a vague Craigslist ad
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  for video editors? Only to find themselves in a
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  windowless room watching hardcore pornography.
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  It speaks to the utter desperation of the creative
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  grind. I mean, when the safety net is
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  gone, survival takes over. She actually walks into this
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  interview wearing a professional suit.
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  Oh wow. Yeah, and they ask her.
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  You know this is adult content, right?
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  And she still takes it. She ended up taking a job
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  editing hardcore extreme adult films for 30 bucks an hour.
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  Her daily responsibility was to scrub through feature length
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  adult films from 9:00 to 5:00. Hunting for specific search
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  terms and splicing together the most graphic clips.
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  Right, but that wasn't just a quirky self deprecating
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  anecdote, it had a severe neurological impact on her.
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  It really did. She only lasted 2 weeks because
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  and she developed a severe case of what is known as the Tetris
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  Effect. Which is terrifying in this
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  context. Completely.
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  If you've ever played a video game for 10 hours straight and
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  then tried to go to sleep, you know you start seeing the little
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  falling blocks behind your eyelids.
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  Yeah, your brain just keeps looping it.
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  Well, Gray's brain was doing that, but she was hallucinating
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  totally inappropriate anatomical images.
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  Superimposed over the light socket in her bedroom.
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  Every time she tried to sleep, the visual trauma of the job was
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  literally rewiring her visual cortex.
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  So she quits. Yeah, she gets out, and to
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  escape the noise, the pressure, the visual trauma and the
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  so-called industry experts who kept trying to package her into
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  a generic pop * she swings the pendulum to the absolute extreme
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  opposite end of the spectrum. She abandons Los Angeles
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  entirely. Yep, and moves to a fire lookout
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  cabin in the middle of nowhere in Oregon.
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  The contrast is staggering. I mean, she moved into absolute
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  unforgiving isolation. We are talking about a single
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  room with one light bulb. There is no Internet, no cell
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  service, and absolutely no plumbing inside the cabin.
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  She had to park her car at the bottom of the hill and hike 1/4
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  mile up a sand dune just to reach her front door.
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  And the bathroom was a stand alone structure further down a
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  dark path in the woods. Which was a massive problem
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  because she was in the deep woods of Oregon and she was
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  absolutely terrified of mountain lions in the dark.
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  Yeah, and her coping mechanism for surviving those nighttime
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  bathroom trips is just wild. It's unbelievable.
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  She read somewhere online that big cats are ambush predators
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  that attack from behind, right? So to walk down the path at
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  night, she crafted a mask with a human face on it and wore it on
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  the back of her head. Which sounds crazy, but it's an
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  actual legitimate tactic used by honey collectors in the Sundar
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  bins in India to stop tiger attacks.
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  Yeah. So picture this scenario.
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  She is completely broke, a music industry cast off, creatively
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  blocked, deeply depressed and wearing a plastic face on the
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  back of her head in the Oregon woods.
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  Just trying to use the. Bathroom, right?
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  And yet it's in this bizarre, extreme isolation that she hikes
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  down to a local cafe, download to hip hop, beat over their
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  spotty Wi-Fi, sits there humming into her laptop, and in 15
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  minutes. Writes the hook for M&M's Love
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  the Way You Lie. A global generational
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  record-breaking Smash it. Let's pause there, because I
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  need to understand the mechanics of this.
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  That's fascinating. Like how does a writer go from
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  months of paralyzing depression and creative block to writing a
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  worldwide number one song in 15 minutes?
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  What is actually happening neurologically in that cafe?
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  Well, this is perhaps the most profound look at the mechanics
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  of the creative process in their entire conversation.
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  During the interview, they bring up Steven Pressfield's famous
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  book The War of Art, specifically his concept of
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  summoning the muse. OK, the breakthrough didn't
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  happen despite her extreme isolation in the woods.
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  It happened entirely because of it.
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  Meaning you can't just force it. Exactly.
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  Creativity isn't something you can just force in a sterile
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  corporate boardroom by staring at a whiteboard.
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  When the human brain is constantly overwhelmed with
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  survival stress, the noise of Los Angeles traffic, the
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  conflicting opinions of music executives, or the intense
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  visual trauma of her editing job, the brain's default mode
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  network cannot make the delicate subconscious connections
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  required for great art. Because it's too busy managing
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  threats. Exactly.
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  By removing all that external noise, ditching her phone and
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  retreating to a cabin with a single light bulb, she created a
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  vacuum. She allowed her brain to finally
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  process her own raw, suppressed emotions.
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  Right. Those 15 minutes in the cafe
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  wasn't the total time spent writing the song, it was simply
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  the dam breaking. I love that analogy.
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  It was the culmination of months of silent subconscious
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  processing, finally breaking the surface of her conscious mind.
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  The damn analogy perfectly explains the sudden flood of
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  inspiration, but the music industry's reaction to that
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  flood almost broke her again. Oh, absolutely.
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  Because the sudden, massive success of Love The Way You Lie
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  wasn't a magic fix for her mental health.
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  In fact, it triggered crippling imposter syndrome.
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  Yeah, suddenly everyone in LA wanted a piece of the hit maker.
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  She's being flown into these high pressure, expensive studio
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  writing sessions with huge pop stars and producers and they're
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  looking at her expecting a hit on demand.
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  Which is terrifying. She confessed to Rogan that she
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  was so overwhelmed and so inherently shy that she would
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  literally leave these sessions in tears, feeling like a total
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  fraud. She genuinely believed that the
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  hit was just a fluke and she couldn't replicate it under
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  pressure. Is an incredibly common
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  phenomenon. Oh, among high level creatives
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  and executives alike, when the muse finally speaks, or when
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  that big breakthrough happens in isolation, the sudden elevation
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  in status feels entirely unearned.
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  Why? Because the process itself felt
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  almost out of their direct control.
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  Exactly. It felt channelled rather than
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  manufactured. When you are asked to
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  manufacture that same organic magic on an assembly line for
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  executives, the brain just locks up.
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  So to hold on to that authentic voice, she realizes she cannot
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  do the city grind. She needs nature permanently,
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  right? So she and her partner decide to
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  buy a 400 acre ranch in Napa, CA.
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  They take this conventional vineyard and undertake the
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  grueling process of transitioning it into an
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  organic, biodynamic dry farm setup.
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  Which on paper, sounds like the ultimate romantic retreat.
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  Totally. You leave the toxic city, live
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  off the land, grow your own grapes, raise sheep and
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  chickens, and write music in peace.
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  Except the romantic, idealized idea of farm life and the
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  biological, brutal reality of nature are two completely
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  different things, yeah. When you strip away the
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  concrete, you don't just get peace, you get the food.
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  Exactly. We tend to view nature through
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  this Disney filter, but living in it is actually like being
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  dropped into an unscripted survival documentary.
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  They quickly find out that nature is unbelievably chaotic,
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  calculating and violent. First, it was the Coyotes.
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  Gray tells Rogan how these Coyotes actually played a
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  strategic long game. Which blew my mind.
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  They would come up to the fence line over weeks and literally
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  make friends with their 140 LB mastiff Johnny Cash.
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  They got this massive guard dog completely accustomed to their
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  scent and presence. And then one day, the gate is
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  accidentally left open. The coyote somehow tricks or
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  incites this massive dog into smashing open a protected,
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  highly secure, brooding chicken coop.
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  The dog couldn't process what he was doing, he just thought they
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  were playing. Yeah, but the coyote used the
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  dog's brute strength as a battering ram to get to the
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  chickens. Gray's kids are standing there
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  watching a coyote literally tightrope leap over a six foot
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  wrought iron fence with a dead chicken in its mouth.
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  It's a striking reminder of the cunning and ruthless
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  adaptability of wild predators. They don't respect your romantic
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  farm retreat. Not at all.
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  And as Gray explains, the threat level escalated significantly
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  from coyotes to genuine apex predators.
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  Mountain lions, yeah. In one terrifying week on the
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  ranch, mountain lions killed 17 of their sheep. 17.
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  Gray actually saw a Mountain Lion walking across the property
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  in broad daylight, but when she reported it, the local wildlife
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  officials didn't even believe her at first.
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  Right, they condescendingly told her it was probably just a large
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  bobcat. It wasn't until she walked
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  outside and found a mother sheep standing defensively over her
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  dead, half eaten lamb right near the main house that the
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  officials finally brought in Fish and Wildlife teams.
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  And the details of the subsequent hunt reveal a lot
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  about the terrifying reality of the ecosystem she deliberately
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  stepped into. It is straight out of a
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  thriller. Seriously.
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  The officials. Bring in professional animal
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  trackers with a pack of 6 highly trained hunting dogs.
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  But for a full week, the dogs are getting completely
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  scrambled. They're wandering in circles,
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  barking at nothing, picking up trails that suddenly split and
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  vanish. The professional trackers have
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  no idea what's going on. They've never seen a pack of
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  dogs get this confused by a single cat.
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  Until they figure out the horrifying truth.
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  It wasn't 1 Mountain Lion. It was 2A mother and her
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  juvenile cub were actively hunting together.
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  The mother. Was using the farm as a training
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  ground, teaching the cub how to kill.
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  They weren't even eating all the sheep they slaughtered, they
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  were just practicing. It's so visceral and brutal,
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  which leads me to ask, why do creative subject themselves to
• 18:21
  this? Why would a highly successful,
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  wealthy songwriter willingly take on the intense stress of
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  managing a complex biodynamic farm and literally fighting off
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  apex predators when she could just leave in a luxury penthouse
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  in Manhattan? This raises an important
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  question about what truly grounds the human psyche.
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  During the discussion, both Rogan and Gray note that place
• 18:46
  is completely disconnected from the grid.
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  Places where you can't even get a cell signal fundamentally feel
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  cleaner. They describe it as a vortex,
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  yeah. When you are living in a
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  penthouse, you are completely insulated from the weather, from
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  the reality of the food chain and from physical risk.
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  In that environment, the mind can become incredibly abstract,
• 19:06
  neurotic, and disconnected from reality.
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  Exactly. The harsh, sometimes violent
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  realities of nature provide an authentic, unavoidable friction
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  managing a farm facing predators.
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  And as Rogan notes when discussing his experiences
• 19:21
  hunting the overpopulated axis deer in Hawaii, taking direct
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  part in the cycle of life and death.
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  Yes. It demands absolute, unwavering
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  presence. It forces you to respect
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  reality. For a creative mind that spends
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  its working hours floating in the abstract clouds of
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  imagination and emotion, that visceral physical grounding is
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  vital. It resets your baseline
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  dopamine. It keeps the art honest because
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  it reminds you of your own mortality.
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  It's the ultimate antidote to the artificial matrix we live
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  in. You can't fake a Mountain Lion
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  attack. You can't CGIA Coyote
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  manipulating your dog. It's terrifyingly real.
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  Very real. And coming face to face with
• 19:57
  that raw, unfiltered reality of life, death, and the unstoppable
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  passage of time, ultimately. Forces a final, deeply personal
• 20:04
  evolution for Gray. Yeah, she had to confront her
• 20:07
  own aging and her own expectations.
• 20:09
  She recently turned 40, and she admits to Rogan that she was
• 20:12
  initially deeply depressed about crossing that milestone.
• 20:15
  Because she looked back at her career and felt like she hadn't
• 20:18
  hit the arbitrary massive milestone she had set for
• 20:21
  herself as a kid. She realized she'd been caught
• 20:23
  in these grueling, agonizing 5 year cycles of perfectionism.
• 20:28
  Right. She would spend half a decade
• 20:31
  agonizing over making perfectly cohesive, serious, critically
• 20:35
  acclaimed albums. Leaving countless incredible
• 20:37
  songs sitting unreleased on hard drives because she was terrified
• 20:41
  they weren't perfect enough. And the profound irony of her
• 20:44
  career is that the very perfectionism she used as a
• 20:47
  shield to protect her art was actually the exact thing
• 20:50
  stifling it. So she decides to blow the whole
• 20:53
  framework. Up.
• 20:53
  I love this part. She is releasing a new album and
• 20:56
  she titled it Wasted Potential. It is her way of directly,
• 21:00
  almost mockingly, confronting those past feelings of laziness,
• 21:04
  the immense pressure she put on herself and her regrets about
• 21:07
  stepping away from the spotlight when the industry pressure felt
• 21:10
  too heavy. Her new goal moving forward is a
• 21:12
  complete paradigm shift. Stop taking it all so intensely
• 21:16
  seriously. Actually have fun in the studio
• 21:19
  and just release an album every single year, whether it's
• 21:21
  perfectly cohesive or not. She is finally completely
• 21:25
  letting go of the factory pipeline expectations that she
• 21:27
  had internalized in her own head.
• 21:29
  Which is huge. It is a profound place to arrive
• 21:32
  at as an adult, the realization that the tight, anxious grip of
• 21:36
  professionism doesn't actually serve the work, and it certainly
• 21:38
  doesn't serve the artist. So what does this all mean for
• 21:41
  you? Well, if we look at the totality
• 21:43
  of this journey from a toddler singing harmonies in a tiny
• 21:46
  village to an angry teenager dropping out of school to
• 21:50
  editing hardcore adult films to pay rent.
• 21:53
  To isolating in a dark cab and wearing a mask on the back of
• 21:56
  her head. To writing global hits in 15
• 21:58
  minutes, to fighting off mountain lions on a biodynamic
• 22:01
  farm. It absolutely destroys the myth
• 22:04
  that the linear path to success is real.
• 22:06
  The idea that you go from point A to point B to Point C, follow
• 22:09
  the rules, and arrive safely at fulfillment is an illusion.
• 22:13
  Genuine growth is inherently chaotic.
• 22:15
  It requires periods of intense isolation, baffling and
• 22:19
  sometimes humiliating detours and constantly confronting your
• 22:23
  own perceived inadequacies. It's all just raw material for
• 22:26
  who you are becoming. Which brings us all the way back
• 22:29
  to our debate about artificial intelligence.
• 22:31
  At the very beginning of this deep dive, Skylar Grey called
• 22:35
  her new album Wasted Potential because she felt she didn't meet
• 22:38
  her own arbitrary factory style deadlines and expectations.
• 22:42
  But think about it if human mistakes, bizarre career detours
• 22:47
  and raw, unfiltered, painful experiences are exactly what
• 22:51
  make our work, our art and our lives valuable and relatable?
• 22:55
  And those are the exact chaotic elements that a perfectly coded
• 22:58
  algorithm can never ever replicate.
• 23:00
  Exactly what if your own wasted potential is actually the most
• 23:03
  essential, beautiful part of your story?
• 23:05
  I love that the grit, the mistakes and the out of focus
• 23:08
  edges aren't the flaws in the picture, they are the picture.
• 23:11
  Something to think about the next time you feel like you've
• 23:13
  fallen off the safe, traditional path.
• 23:15
  Maybe you're just finally walking your own.