{"id":39157,"date":"2021-10-01T09:00:40","date_gmt":"2021-10-01T16:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=39157"},"modified":"2021-09-30T14:10:55","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T21:10:55","slug":"austin-kleon-author-of-steal-like-an-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/austin-kleon-author-of-steal-like-an-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Our guest this week is <a href=\"https:\/\/austinkleon.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Austin Kleon<\/a>. Austin is the author of Steal Like an Artist, and other bestsellers about creativity. His books have been translated into dozens of languages and have sold over a million copies worldwide. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and two sons. The <a href=\"https:\/\/austinkleon.com\/steal-audiobook-trilogy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Steal Like an Artist Audio Trilogy<\/a> collects all three of his books into one audiobook. You can find Austin on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/austinkleon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/austinkleon\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Instagram<\/a> @austinkleon.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/1133917180%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-ptx1Rkp7W3P&amp;color=%23ff5500&amp;auto_play=false&amp;hide_related=false&amp;show_comments=true&amp;show_user=true&amp;show_reposts=false&amp;show_teaser=true\" width=\"100%\" height=\"166\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"font-size: 10px; color: #cccccc; line-break: anywhere; word-break: normal; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap; text-overflow: ellipsis; font-family: Interstate,Lucida Grande,Lucida Sans Unicode,Lucida Sans,Garuda,Verdana,Tahoma,sans-serif; font-weight: 100;\"><a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"Cool Tools\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/cool-tools\" target=\"_blank\">Cool Tools<\/a> \u00b7 <a style=\"color: #cccccc; text-decoration: none;\" title=\"298: Austin Kleon\" href=\"https:\/\/soundcloud.com\/cool-tools\/298-austin-kleon\/s-ptx1Rkp7W3P\" target=\"_blank\">298: Austin Kleon<\/a><\/div>\n<p><strong>Show notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39164\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/riteintherainnotebook.jpg\" alt=\"riteintherainnotebook\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/riteintherainnotebook.jpg 500w, https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/riteintherainnotebook-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/riteintherainnotebook-300x300.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>Waterproof Writing Pads:<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/geni.us\/J3OW\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Aqua Notes Water Proof Note Pad<\/a> ($10)<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/geni.us\/GfBn7sA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rite in the Rain Notebook<\/a> ($13)<\/strong><br \/>\nThere&#8217;s a thing called AquaNotes and this comes in a pad with suction cups on the back. I keep one of those in the shower, because I&#8217;m one of those really clich\u00e9 people who gets ideas in the shower. But then, for the pool, I discovered this brand of notebooks called Rite in the Rain, and I believe these are mostly used by naturalists and outdoors-people. So I keep this pad out on the side of the pool, and when my kids get really, really bad in the pool, we stop, and I&#8217;ll either draw a comic of them in the notebook, or we&#8217;ll do a pool poem together. I&#8217;ll say, &#8220;Okay, I need an A-word. I need a B-word. I need a C-word,&#8221; and we&#8217;ll make a poem out of it. I&#8217;m a big believer that making space is a way to invite creative stuff, and so I literally think the dumb act of having a waterproof notebook on the side of the pool actually invites me to come over and use it for something.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39165\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/earplugs.jpg\" alt=\"earplugs\" width=\"500\" height=\"472\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/earplugs.jpg 500w, https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/earplugs-300x283.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/geni.us\/rt4j9\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">3M Classic Foam Earplugs<\/a> ($39, 400ct)<\/strong><br \/>\nSince we were just talking about my children, this is very applicable. Just plain old foam earplugs. You can get them in a big box for Father&#8217;s Day. That&#8217;s when I get them. There&#8217;s a guy that just died. His name is Murray Schafer, and he was a Canadian composer, and he wrote a couple of books about music and music education. One of the books is called Ear Cleaning, and one of the things that Schafer said that just blew my mind, it&#8217;s such a simple observation, but it&#8217;s so good, is that you can close your eyes, but you can&#8217;t close your ears. Your body has a device for closing your eyes, but there&#8217;s no device to shut off your auditory input. I love my Sony wireless Bluetooth noise-canceling headphones. I love those. But I&#8217;m a guy who can&#8217;t listen to music with words when I&#8217;m working, so the plain old earplugs, they do the job, and I feel like they will turn almost any situation into a potential \u2014 what Joseph Campbell called \u2014 a bliss station. The other thing is they&#8217;re a godsend in hotel rooms and then on planes and stuff. I really, really appreciate technology that just does one simple thing, and a earplug is just that. It does this one thing, and they&#8217;re disposable and cheap, and I love them.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39166\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/reincubate-e1633035337822.png\" alt=\"reincubate\" width=\"500\" height=\"319\" \/><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/reincubate.com\/camo\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Camo app by Reincubate<\/a> ($40 annual subscription)<\/strong><br \/>\nThis thing has changed my life. This is a piece of software, and the name of the software is Camo and it&#8217;s by a company named Reincubate. What this software does is you run it on your iPhone, and then you run it on your computer, and it turns your iPhone into a webcam. It is the best webcam I&#8217;ve found. I&#8217;ve bought a $200 Logitech fancy 4K webcam. Doesn&#8217;t look anything as good as my iPhone X. The way I use it, I stick it in airplane mode, and then I use an actual Lightning cable and plug it right into the computer. You can zoom in with it. You can change the lighting. I have a little ring light tripod with an iPhone attachment, and so I just stick it on there, I turn the ring light on, and it pretty much works with the default settings. I think you can do the depth of field, so you could make yourself clear and the background blurry. You can do all kinds of stuff. I like situations in which you can repurpose old tech for new situations, and so I wanted to include this, because I&#8217;m always thinking about my turntable, which is 15 years old now, and how you can plug that into any amp, and it still sounds great.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39163\" src=\"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/u1piano.jpg\" alt=\"u1piano\" width=\"512\" height=\"444\" srcset=\"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/u1piano.jpg 512w, https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/files\/2021\/10\/u1piano-300x260.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px\" \/><br \/>\n<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/usa.yamaha.com\/products\/musical_instruments\/pianos\/upright_pianos\/u_series\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Yamaha U1 upright piano<\/a> ($11,400)<\/strong><br \/>\nI went out and bought a used piano right before my kids were born, because I wanted them to live in a house with a piece of furniture you could make music on. But then we moved houses a couple times. I had to get rid of one. And so when we bought this new house, the first piece of furniture I bought was a used Yamaha U1. It&#8217;s like the Honda Accord of pianos. I actually have my office in our little music room at the front of the house. And so, I will stop working, I&#8217;ll turn around, and I&#8217;ll play some Bach. My kids have an open invitation. They are allowed to come in here and play on the piano unless I&#8217;m doing a podcast. There&#8217;s something particularly magical about pianos for little people, because if you&#8217;re standing up, you walk right up to a piano, and it&#8217;s like a magical height for you. They keys are right there in front of you. It&#8217;s eye level, and you can&#8217;t help but touch it. You just want to go to it. That&#8217;s a nice loop back to the waterproof notebook on the side of the pool. You want to go to it. I like tools that invite you. Almost like they call to you, and they make you want to work, or in this case, play.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>About <a href=\"http:\/\/austinkleon.com\/newsletter\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Austin Kleon&#8217;s Weekly Newsletter<\/a>:<\/strong><br \/>\nEvery Friday, I send out a list of 10 things I think are worth sharing, and it&#8217;s stuff I&#8217;m reading, stuff I&#8217;m looking at, stuff I&#8217;m listening to, watching, stuff I&#8217;ve written. I do that every week, and that&#8217;s free. It\u2019s become my ritual. It&#8217;s like my weekly ritual of looking back and figuring out where I&#8217;ve been and what I&#8217;ve done and stuff. So, I can&#8217;t let go of it.<\/p>\n<div class='ctx-module-container ctx_default_placement ctx-clearfix'><\/div><span class=\"ctx-article-root\"><!-- --><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cool Tools Show 298: Austin Kleon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":39158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1559],"tags":[1555,1472],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39157"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39157"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39170,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39157\/revisions\/39170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}