“Hey, come see my baby boy!” Flea says excitedly, holding up his iPhone as he stands next to his motorcycle in the parking lot of the Silverlake Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles. Dressed in basketball shorts and a red bucket hat, the bassist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers is FaceTiming with his wife, streetwear designer Melody Ehsani, as she cradles their infant son, Darius, at home in Malibu, California.

Flea, 60, who has two older daughters (one 34, the other 17), admits he kind of forgot how exhausting it can be to take care of a baby. “This morning was an early one,” he says with a laugh. “But it’s unbelievable. He sleeps with us, and every night I get in bed and smell his soft little head.”

Darius isn’t the only demand on Flea’s attention at the moment. Last year the Chili Peppers released two new studio albums, “Unlimited Love” and “Return of the Dream Canteen” — the veteran LA band’s first in over a decade with guitarist John Frusciante.

Now the group, which includes singer Anthony Kiedis and drummer Chad Smith, is touring stadiums and headlining festivals, including August’s Lollapalooza in Chicago. When Flea (also known as Michael Balzary) is home between legs of the tour, he’s studying jazz trumpet with Kamasi Washington’s dad, Rickey.

He also has a podcast: “This Little Light,” on which he interviews artists such as Patti Smith, Earl Sweatshirt, Rick Rubin, Stewart Copeland and Margo Price about their experiences learning to love and play music. Proceeds from the show, which Flea produced in partnership with Parallel and Audacy’s Cadence13, benefit the nonprofit Silverlake Conservatory, which Flea founded in 2001 to provide the type of music education he felt was no longer being offered in LA’s public schools. The podcast’s finale, which features Kiedis talking about his unlikely journey as a vocalist, recently dropped.

Having moved inside from the parking lot to an airy practice room, Flea asks for a moment before we sit down to chat. “I’m gonna do my little ritual,” he says. Then he bows his head in silence for about 20 seconds.

This interview with Flea has been edited for clarity and length.

Q: Is that a daily thing for you?

A: Yeah, I’m a praying guy. I pray in the morning when I get up, when I go to bed, when I eat. And when I do an interview, I’ll just stop for a second — like, let me get out of the way and let go of everything.

Q: To whom are you praying?

A: To God. I’m not religious in any way, but I kind of believe in God. And I try to live a life that honors my idea of what God is — like a divine energy.

Q: You talk about this with Patti Smith on your podcast — the idea of finding God in music.

A: For me, music is the voice of God. I grew up virulently anti-religious, and there came a time in the early ’90s, right around when I turned 30, I got really sick with chronic fatigue. I’d been a drug-taking madman — party all night, play basketball all day. I just thought I was Superman. And all of a sudden it was like all the energy got sucked out of my body. I was like, I can’t go on tour, I feel too (expletive). And I was cut off from my friends because I wasn’t partying.

So I read this self-help book by this guy Jon Kabat-Zinn where he talked about how if you strip away all your thoughts and actions — your pain, your pleasure, your memories, your hopes — what’s the thing that’s left? And it really struck me because I’d been so caught up in the external. I started thinking about that emptiness, and in that moment God just made perfect sense. I mean, like I said, I’ve still never been religious. And I’ve tried — I’ve been to churches.

Q: How has parenting shaped what you do here at the conservatory?

A: It’s kind of the same thing — just wanting kids to grow up and be vehicles to let their light shine.

Q: Does music education feel especially important in an age defined by screens?

A: I think it’s always been important. But, yeah, I worry about screens. That’s why I didn’t give my middle kid a phone till she was 15. Kids don’t get time to just do nothing — to lay on the grass and look up at the sky into the infinite. That seems really vital.

Q: What has the podcast taught you about interviewing people?

A: The big lesson I learned before I ever interviewed anybody, just from having been interviewed 10 million times, which is that there’s nothing worse than being interviewed by someone with an agenda. You can feel it right away. Or someone with just a list of questions. “What’s your favorite color?” “I like blue because it reminds me of eggs.” Then the next question is, “Do you like eggs?” “I just told you I do!”

Q: What’s your favorite of the interviews you did?

A: A really good one was with Anthony. We were both kind of in tears because I’d never talked to him about stuff like that. Anthony doesn’t really consider himself a musician or that he’s had any music education whatsoever. He used to say we should change the band’s name to Idiot and the Three Geniuses. And people would be down on him, you know? Eddie Vedder’s up there like (expletive) Pavarotti, but the resonance is different with Anthony.

Q: You think he’s a good singer?

A: I think he’s a great singer. And he’s always learning and getting better. When we started the band, he couldn’t sing a note — he just yelled. Now he’s got melodies, and he doesn’t even stick to them. He flows around and improvises. Look, I know who the great singers are: Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Roger Daltrey. But for me, all I care about with any musician is that a person sounds like themselves. And nobody sounds like Anthony Kiedis.

Q: What’s the Chili Peppers’ best album?

A: I would say “Blood Sugar Sex Magik,” but there’s a couple tunes on there I don’t think should have gotten on in retrospect. “The Greeting Song” wasn’t good enough. “Californication” is pretty good top to bottom. I saw Adele a little while ago and she told me that was her favorite record of all time. That meant a lot to me because I’m a big Adele fan.

Q: And the worst?

A: I always regret the way we made the first one. I think the songs are really good. Our band was smoking at the time. But (drummer) Jack (Irons) and (guitarist) Hillel (Slovak) quit, and we hired these two other guys: Jack Sherman and Cliff Martinez. Both were great musicians, but the connection just wasn’t as profound as we had with the guys we started with. I’ve often wanted to go back and rerecord that album, but I can never talk anyone into it.