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Speaker 1: Ah, what's Scott my at? What's Dilbert my guide? Is

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Speaker 1: probably the way we should introduce this because if I

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Speaker 1: say Scott Adams is the subject of today's episode, like

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Speaker 1: sixty percent of people are going to go huh uh.

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Speaker 1: So I'm going to say this is an episode about

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Speaker 1: the Dilbert Guy. Welcome to Behind the Bastards, a podcast

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Speaker 1: about terrible people. Now listen, folks, I know what you're

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Speaker 1: all saying, the Dilbert guy. Didn't he just draw comics?

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Speaker 1: How could he be one of the worst people in

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Speaker 1: all of history? And the answer to that question is

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Speaker 1: because he irritates me, Like yes, let's let's let's clear

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Speaker 1: the air here. We're talking about a guy who has

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Speaker 1: drawn cartoons. He's not a well, he did kill one

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Speaker 1: guy maybe by an action. We'll get to that, but

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Speaker 1: we're not talking about like a war criminal or a dictator.

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Speaker 1: But he's a really unpleasant man. And the way in

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Speaker 1: which he lost his mind and became even more unpleasant

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Speaker 1: and eventually had a racist breakdown that got his comic

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Speaker 1: strip removed from like a thousand newspapers is super interesting.

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Speaker 1: So that's that's who we're talking about today. And in

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Speaker 1: order to help me peruse the life of Scott Adams,

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Speaker 1: flip through it like a collection of Gilbert comic books

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Speaker 1: or comic strips. I have Randy mill Holland. Randy is

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Speaker 1: the author and illustrator of the Something Positive web comic

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Speaker 1: which I've been reading off and on for like a decade,

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Speaker 1: and he is now legally the legal recognized guardian of

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Speaker 1: Popeye the Sailor. Randy, how are you doing today?

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Speaker 2: I'm fine, Thank you so much. And I feel like

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Speaker 2: I should say, to keep being fired that my opinions

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Speaker 2: are my own and in no way reflect King Feature

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Speaker 2: Syndicate or their parent company Hurst, just to kind of

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Speaker 2: save my ass. But yes, I do in fact own Popeye.

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Speaker 2: I am destroying him according to everyone who reads Boat part.

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Speaker 1: So, yeah, you have been a you have been a

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Speaker 1: professional cartoonist for longer than I've been doing just about anything.

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Speaker 1: And you also have one of the things because like

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Speaker 1: obviously with webcomics, there's a lot of people who have

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Speaker 1: been professionally cartooning, but who don't have kind of experience

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Speaker 1: with the syndicates or with you know, kind of the

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Speaker 1: old traditional any of the old traditional structures of like

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Speaker 1: newspaper cartoons, and you've kind of got your foot in

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Speaker 1: both of those worlds, which I think will probably be

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Speaker 1: helpful for context on this stuff. So I wanted to

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Speaker 1: start by asking, what do you think about Scott Adams?

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Speaker 1: Where have you been on Scott most of your life?

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Speaker 2: Most of my life I've managed to avoid him, Like

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Speaker 2: in a friend of mine introduced me to his comic

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Speaker 2: in ninety five or so, one of his books, my

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Speaker 2: friend Eileen's, because I was We met through computer Bulltromport

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Speaker 2: Systems because I am old, and she was like, well,

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Speaker 2: you like text shit, so you'll enjoy Dilbert. And I

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Speaker 2: read a page of it and said, I do not,

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Speaker 2: in fact enjoyed Dilibert, And to read it further, I

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Speaker 2: remember it replaced Pogo in the fort Restar Telegram, which

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Speaker 2: annoyed me a little bit, And then I remember the

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Speaker 2: TVC is. The opening song was Danny Elton's theme from

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Speaker 2: Forbidden Zone, a movie his brother made.

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Speaker 1: Ah, I know Elkman, I didn't realize that.

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Speaker 2: He made public accounts. Yeah, it's a repurposed theme song

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Speaker 2: from a movie that Richard Elfman made with the Knights

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Speaker 2: of Aungo Bongo in nineteen eighty.

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Speaker 1: I think oh man, so uh yeah.

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Speaker 2: That song fuck you. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's the musical equivalent of one of those like glass

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Speaker 1: soda bottles that's got like a ring around it because

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Speaker 1: it's been recycled so many times.

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Speaker 2: Just shaking the theme song out like no, no, no, this

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Speaker 2: will be fine, this will work for Delberton show. Ye,

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Speaker 2: honestly it did. It was better it was. That song

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Speaker 2: was probably the best part of that show. Years later,

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Speaker 2: I know he made some song accounts to defend himself

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Speaker 2: and then he hated black people.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he so. Kind of the thing about Scott is

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Speaker 1: that he was a successful cartoonist and there was not

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Speaker 1: much that you would note about him other than that

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Speaker 1: if you weren't super paying it, if you paid attention

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Speaker 1: to Scott because I as a kid read not just

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Speaker 1: his comics but a bunch of his nonfiction books, if

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Speaker 1: you paid a lot of attention to him, there were

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Speaker 1: there have always been some weird things that you would notice,

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Speaker 1: but it was just kind of like, oh, that's an

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Speaker 1: odd thing to believe. Oh, that's an odd thing to believe.

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Speaker 1: And then about five years ago he really pretty sharply

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Speaker 1: started getting very racist and very bigoted and super right

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Speaker 1: wing and kind of at the same time convinced himself

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Speaker 1: that like he had discovered the kind of almost supernatural

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Speaker 1: secret secrets to persuasion, and it was his job to

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Speaker 1: explain how Donald Trump was ushering in like a new

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Speaker 1: era for humanity by his magical persuader skills. This is

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Speaker 1: all like his kind of heel turn has been fascinating,

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Speaker 1: and so I wanted to just kind of like dig

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Speaker 1: into what happened with this guy because very few people

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Speaker 1: Scott kind of had a lifelong license to print infinite money,

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Speaker 1: and he decided to give that up in order to

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Speaker 1: get really angry in his like video blog and and

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Speaker 1: just like spout bullshit to a fairly small audience of

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Speaker 1: like weirdo Trump supporters. And it's it's interesting to me

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Speaker 1: how he gets to that point because he's not there's

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Speaker 1: not anything kind of he's not always someone for whom

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Speaker 1: there's warning signs. So I think I think he's interesting,

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Speaker 1: and we're going to talk about him because I'm interested

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Speaker 1: in Scott Adams, the Dilbert guy. So let's start.

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Speaker 2: Randy Will if you can't yeah none twenty years ago

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Speaker 2: and said, Hey, Scott Adams is going to be like

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Speaker 2: this psycho conservative, you know, shit bag like the guy

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Speaker 2: who made all the weird vegetarian food for seven to eleven. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: that guy like that. No, that was a weird unexpected No.

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Speaker 1: Of course, if you were to say one of the

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Speaker 1: one of the newspaper cartoonists you read is going to

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Speaker 1: turn out to be like a weird fascist, I would

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Speaker 1: have been like, oh yeah, high and lowess. Definitely the

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Speaker 1: high and lowest guy, right, that's the let's.

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Speaker 2: Not go for the Brown family, and they've had a lot.

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Speaker 1: Scott Adams was born on June eighth, nineteen fifty seven,

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Speaker 1: in Wyndham, New York. His father was a postal worker

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Speaker 1: and his mother was a stay at home mom. And

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Speaker 1: I always like to point out when guys who grow

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Speaker 1: up into like far right, uber capitalist influencers grow up

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Speaker 1: in a comfortable, safe, stable environment as a child, because

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Speaker 1: they're born in a period of time in which a

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Speaker 1: government employee can support a family and own a house

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Speaker 1: on one income. And Scott's one of those people, So

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Speaker 1: just keep that in your mind when he has his heel. Course,

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Speaker 1: we get most of our information on Scott's early life

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Speaker 1: through him off and on in some of his books.

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Speaker 1: My primary source for his childhood, although I'm not My

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Speaker 1: only one is the twenty Years of Dilbert Comic collection,

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Speaker 1: which he published in like two thousand and two. If

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Speaker 1: you're into comm obviously, which you are, Randy, you know

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Speaker 1: how like you had those like the Far Side big collection.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Garry Larson. Yeah, he writes a bunch of

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Speaker 1: stuff at the beginning, and he kind of like explains

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Speaker 1: different comics. There was another one for Calvin and Hobbes.

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Speaker 1: Most of like the really big cartoonists get one of

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Speaker 1: those at some point in their career. And Scott at

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Speaker 1: this is this that like this is what I'm using

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Speaker 1: as a big source for his childhood, right so sorry, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean this is he was starting to become a

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Speaker 1: little bit of a maniac when this came out in

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Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. He hadn't fully healed turned, but

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Speaker 1: he was starting. It's like it's like the pivot document

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Speaker 1: of his like turn into a far right like fascist weird.

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Speaker 2: As I hate sand moment.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, where he's not fully broken bad yet,

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Speaker 1: but now you can tell he's about to go murder

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Speaker 1: the young lynks.

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Speaker 2: Oh Jesus Christ, Ratbert and like just have like weird animation.

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Speaker 2: M M.

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Speaker 1: It's interesting because we're going to talk about like some

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Speaker 1: of his early drawings as a kid too, which are

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Speaker 1: weirdly enough a lot technically better than Dilbert. So why not,

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Speaker 1: I mean, hey, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Part of comics is how fast can you draw something? Yeah,

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Speaker 2: so that's why you see a lot like yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 2: like there's some old high lowist trips. I remember thinking

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Speaker 2: this is some stunning stuff, amazing angles, but it probably

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Speaker 2: took for way too damn long for hel muchs are

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Speaker 2: being paid.

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Speaker 1: Well, Yeah, and this is one of those things where

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Speaker 1: like Scott himself pokes a lot of fun at the

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Speaker 1: Dilbert art but obviously like it works like it was

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Speaker 1: a successful comic for years and years. But anyway, it's interesting.

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Speaker 1: We'll get into that in a second. But yeah, this

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Speaker 1: collection gets published in two thousand and eight, and it's

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Speaker 1: kind of like right at this hinge period where I

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Speaker 1: think before this, most people who knew anything about Scott

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Speaker 1: would have default kind of assumed, oh, he's probably like

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Speaker 1: a vaguely liberal, maybe even kind of like lefty guy,

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Speaker 1: because the comics are kind of, at least super officially

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Speaker 1: seem like they might be kind of critical about capitalism

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Speaker 1: and about like corporate they're not, actually, but most people

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Speaker 1: I think probably just sort of assumed that if they

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Speaker 1: weren't super up on the Dilbert lore. Yeah, so it's

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Speaker 1: a very interesting period. We'll be talking about that and

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Speaker 1: a couple other recollections that have been published about that

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Speaker 1: period of his life as sources here. In nineteen sixty three,

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Speaker 1: when Scott's six years old, his family was in the

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Speaker 1: habit of taking him on trips to his uncle's farm

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Speaker 1: up the road from their house. This uncle had a

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Speaker 1: collection of Peanuts comic strip books, and Scott would sit

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Speaker 1: down and stare at them eagerly, even before he could read.

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Speaker 1: In his book, he describes being fascinated by them because

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Speaker 1: they had what he calls the X factor, but which

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Speaker 1: I would say is just the result of kids being

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Speaker 1: drawn to comics, and Peanuts being a particularly good comic

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Speaker 1: at drawing kids in. But you know, I had more

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Speaker 1: or less the same experience as a kid, right Like,

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Speaker 1: my uncle was the guy and my family who had

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Speaker 1: a bunch of published comic book collection collections, and I

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Speaker 1: certainly read a shitload of Peanuts. I read all of

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Speaker 1: his Calvin Calvin and Hobbess books, I read Bloom County, Farside, Foxtrot,

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Speaker 1: even some like deeper cuts like gay Han Wilson's Demented Uvra.

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Speaker 1: Who oh yeah, I love Gayhan if you if you,

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Speaker 1: if you like Farside, you should check out Gayhan Wilson's stuff.

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Speaker 2: My early memory is getting a hands on Pogo books.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah art, which was just astounding because

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Speaker 2: my family tends to be a little more on the

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Speaker 2: left side, so like Pogo was definitely something my dad

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Speaker 2: was a big fan of.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. I I read a little bit of

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Speaker 1: Pogo as a kid because we were just talking about

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Speaker 1: those like big collections of comics for like Bill Watterson

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Speaker 1: and stuff, his big Calvin and Hobbs collection. He writes

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Speaker 1: about being a Pogo fan, and so that was like

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Speaker 1: one of the comics I looked into because I was like, oh,

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Speaker 1: my favorite artist likes Pogo.

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Speaker 2: You need to know, like he did a whole storyline

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Speaker 2: making fun of the John Bird Society and at their

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Speaker 2: height he was taking them when he could have gotten

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Speaker 2: in trouble for it.

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Speaker 1: That's awesome.

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Speaker 2: Fucking hated him. It was beautiful.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, no, bas Pogo, I love it. So Scott

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Speaker 1: kind of goes through this this journey, and it's one

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Speaker 1: of those things where like he has this quote in

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Speaker 1: the book where he says, my parents always told me

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Speaker 1: I could grow up to be anything I wanted to be.

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Speaker 1: I decided to grow up to be Charles Schultz. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: don't don't tell him that.

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Speaker 2: It never ends. Well, my parents told me I could

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Speaker 2: grow up to work in an office. Yeah, and uh,

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Speaker 2: I rebelled against it, and I draw comics. But it

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Speaker 2: seems like everyone who like their parents told him that.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to tell my daughters that I, like, you're

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Speaker 2: gonna work in a factory.

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Speaker 1: I did have. I mean that's what my more or

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Speaker 1: less how my childhood was. Because I also wanted to

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Speaker 1: be a cartoonist, and I told my mom and she said,

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Speaker 1: do something that has a pension. But the joke was

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Speaker 1: on her because those don't exist anymore.

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Speaker 2: Oh my god. It's yeah, yeah, like my same things,

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Speaker 2: like I'm gonna be a cartoonist of my dad just

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Speaker 2: said you don't have to, yeah, just do something else.

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Speaker 1: It's this quote from Scott is really funny because it

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Speaker 1: gives you an idea of how different things were back then.

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Speaker 1: So he's like, this is him talking about like why

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Speaker 1: he wanted to be a cartoonist after how hard could

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Speaker 1: it be? You draw pictures, you write some words. It

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Speaker 1: seemed like easy work to me. And from what I heard,

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Speaker 1: the pay was good.

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Speaker 2: I will say, in the fifties, if you had a

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Speaker 2: good comment, yeah, it was great.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, in the fifties, yes, chastically.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You don't hear a lot of people being like I

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Speaker 1: want to get rich. I'm gonna I'm gonna get into comics.

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Speaker 2: Not a lot of smart people anyway.

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Speaker 1: No, yeah, I mean generally, whether you're taught, like especially

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Speaker 1: if you're talking about like you know, it's like superhero comics,

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Speaker 1: like the most famous stories are all. He created this

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Speaker 1: character that's worth a billion dollars and then he died

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Speaker 1: of starvation.

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Speaker 2: Oh getting Yeah, except the artist losing his eyesight by

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Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, living in a nursing home and like

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Speaker 2: Warner Brothers, having to be guilted into paying them thirty

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Speaker 2: thousand dollars each ye year for rest Our Lives hated

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Speaker 2: doing it.

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Speaker 1: But but this this was the fifties and none of

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Speaker 1: that was known yet. So no, little Scott falls in

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Speaker 1: love with Peanuts and grows up being like, I'm gonna

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna make all those sweet, sweet cartoon dollars, and

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Speaker 1: he draws a lot of little cartoons as a kid.

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Speaker 1: These are mostly kind of like one panel strips. They're

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Speaker 1: sort of similar, and they're not really far side in

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Speaker 1: terms of the kind of sense of humor. It's like,

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Speaker 1: I mean, he posts some of the drawings he did

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Speaker 1: as like a six and seven year old in here.

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Speaker 1: They're like, I mean, they're like cartoons a little kid draws,

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Speaker 1: but yeah, they're like single panel strips, a lot of them.

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Speaker 1: By the time he was eleven years old, he'd moved

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Speaker 1: on to Mad Magazine, which makes sense. Mad was super

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Speaker 1: big back then. Very there, absolutely absolutely and Mad Magazine,

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Speaker 1: for those of you who kind of missed the Mad era,

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Speaker 1: had a brilliant artist named Sergio Aragonez, who I learned

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Speaker 1: while researching this episode is still alive.

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Speaker 2: He's one of the last of the original Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I was pleasantly surprised to hear that.

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Speaker 2: We just lost I can't remember now the gentleman who

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Speaker 2: did the fold In's he just died at over one hundred.

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Speaker 2: Oh I didn't know well, but yeah, our Ghones is

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Speaker 2: still doing his Combat group. He still does a lot

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Speaker 2: of stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a he's a He's an amazing guy, an

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Speaker 1: incredible cartoonist. He was kind of known as being the

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Speaker 1: fastest cartoonist on Earth for a while, and he did

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Speaker 1: if you were a Mad reader, he did the marginal cartoons,

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Speaker 1: like he did other stuff too, but like those little

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Speaker 1: bitty like joke cartoons kind of stuck in between panels

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Speaker 1: and on like the side margins of the papers in

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Speaker 1: Mad magazine, And it was like, this guy is for

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Speaker 1: those of you, like one of my biggest influences as

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Speaker 1: a comedy writer, because when I worked at Cracked, one

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Speaker 1: of my first jobs was picking images to go in

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Speaker 1: between paragraphs of the articles and write little joke captions

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Speaker 1: for them. And like, Sergio's work was kind of the

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Speaker 1: thing that I figure like that was kind of my

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Speaker 1: earliest inspiration for that kind of humor and stuff. I

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Speaker 1: always loved him a lot.

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Speaker 2: The influence Cracked again.

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Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, this is the only time. That was

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Speaker 1: the one influence Mad hat on cra.

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Speaker 2: Ford from the head of Zeus one day.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, no way, I'm the only one who sullied it

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Speaker 1: with Mad magazine vibes. Yeah, so Scott Scott and I have,

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Speaker 1: like I I identify a lot with elements of his

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Speaker 1: early childhood like mine was was not dissimilar other than

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Speaker 1: that I had a more comics yeah.

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Speaker 2: Like especially comics kids. Yeah, yeah, we were all most

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Speaker 2: of us, especially heard an outsider kid. It was a

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Speaker 2: little nerdy mad magazine kind of was a siren song,

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Speaker 2: like it's here's the weird stuff. You can be a

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Speaker 2: little cynical, you can be a little mean, and you

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Speaker 2: have fun with it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, it was.

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Speaker 2: It was.

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Speaker 1: It was really special for a while. You know. Now

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Speaker 1: now it's yet another zombie brand, but boy in its day.

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Speaker 3: Ye.

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Speaker 1: So Scott, his parents do kind of like realize he's

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Speaker 1: he's got this love for cartooning and he's drawing consistently

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Speaker 1: for years. So they get him like books on cartooning

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Speaker 1: and how to draw, and he he becomes pretty dedicated

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Speaker 1: to like learning some of the tougher technical things like drawing,

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Speaker 1: like proper hands and stuff. So this is a kid

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Speaker 1: who's got the ability to kind of like stick with,

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Speaker 1: you know, the stuff that he's fascinated and he's more

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Speaker 1: disciplined than I think most of us who wind up

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Speaker 1: being comics nerds but don't get into cartooning, which makes sense. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and he's he's pretty good as a kid. In nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty seven, he applies to a serial box contest, which

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Speaker 1: was a thing that used to happen for who could

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Speaker 1: do the best drawing of Old Faithful. He doesn't win

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Speaker 1: the contest, but he gets a camera as a runner

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Speaker 1: up prize. And this is in some ways that will

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Speaker 1: turn out to be kind of dark a foundational moment

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Speaker 1: for him, not because like it con seem it, not

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Speaker 1: because it convinces him to be a cartoonist, which is fine,

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Speaker 1: but like his his so basically like, as he enters

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Speaker 1: this contest, he's super excited that he's going to win,

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Speaker 1: and his mom does the generally responsible thing and she's like, look, honey,

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Speaker 1: a lot of kids are going to enter. Most of

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Speaker 1: them aren't going to get prizes, Like, you're probably not

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Speaker 1: going to win anything, don't you know, get your hopes

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Speaker 1: up too much. But then Scott gets a prize and

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Speaker 1: so this kind of like hits his brain like a sledgehammer. Quote.

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Speaker 1: I started to suspect that beating the long odds wasn't

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Speaker 1: as hard as it seemed, this became a pattern that

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Speaker 1: repeated itself throughout my life. God damn, that doesn't sound sinister,

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Speaker 1: but it's going to metastasize into something like oh, okay, good,

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Speaker 1: okay good. Yeah, that is a weird way to think

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Speaker 1: about it.

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Speaker 2: That sounds like a super villain. I read too many

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Speaker 2: cogbooks to like the long odds. Oh God damn it,

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Speaker 2: e'l O'Brien, it's almost.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it is, like I do think it's odd his

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Speaker 1: obsession on like winning this, meaning that he's beaten the

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Speaker 1: odds as opposed to like, oh, maybe I'm better at

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Speaker 1: cartooning than I'm thought. That's cool, Like I should work

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Speaker 1: more on this. It's like, ah, like I managed to

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Speaker 1: like hack reality. Like that's really is kind of the

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Speaker 1: road he's going to start traveling down.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So the next year, his town holds an Easter egg

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Speaker 1: hunt and the ground prize is a golden egg with

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Speaker 1: like ten bucks in it. Now, obviously this is like

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Speaker 1: the fifties or sixties, so ten dollars is roughly equivalent

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Speaker 1: to the GDP of Mississippi today. It was it was

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Speaker 1: a big incentive, good prize. Ye Scott. Scott found the

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Speaker 1: egg and he got his picture in the paper, which

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Speaker 1: he says is what gave him a taste for fame.

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Speaker 1: It also furthered his.

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Speaker 2: Don't again everything. It's just like, uh, he's that shitty

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Speaker 2: kid who's like, I'm getting attention?

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Speaker 3: Yeah?

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Speaker 2: Can I get more attention?

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Speaker 1: Every time I look at like influential culture and like

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Speaker 1: the dark side of TikTok, I get more convinced that

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Speaker 1: no one should get their picture taken or video taken

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Speaker 1: of them until they're like fifty five. And that way,

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Speaker 1: when kids are like, hey, do you want to I know,

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Speaker 1: do you want to become influencers? People will be like, no,

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Speaker 1: those are all like weird looking old people. Let's uh,

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Speaker 1: let's let's paint watercolors.

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Speaker 2: Partony wants to say, oh, say a lesser being shame,

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Speaker 2: But you know what, some people will enjoy that.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and unfortunately Scott is one of them. So he

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Speaker 1: this is what gives him mistaste for fame. It also

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Speaker 1: furthers his understanding that quote beating long odds seemed easier

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Speaker 1: than everyone kept saying. Again, this is like says a

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Speaker 1: lot about Scott. It's interesting that he's so focused on

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Speaker 1: like the odds and that he's special for beating the

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Speaker 1: odds as opposed to like, oh, like, you know, this

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Speaker 1: was a nice experience in my childhood. It's also like

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Speaker 1: weird because none of this seems like to be particularly

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Speaker 1: the result of luck. He probably did well in that

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Speaker 1: cartooning contest because he worked hard on drawing, and the

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Speaker 1: egg contest. Like it's a small town, there's not he says,

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Speaker 1: there's like thirty kids in his graduating class. The fact

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Speaker 1: that you would have like gotten, you know, won the

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Speaker 1: Easter egg hunt one year in your childhood actually seems

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Speaker 1: pretty likely. Like when you're talking about like a town

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Speaker 1: with maybe thirty kids in it, that's not weird to me.

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Speaker 2: It's not like he is trying to solve some weird

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Speaker 2: riddle like yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: He didn't like stumble upon like an unsolved math equation

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Speaker 1: in the on the in like the chalkboard of his

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Speaker 1: high school and like fix it or anything like that.

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Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, I mean, there's thirty kids in your town.

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Speaker 1: You probably did ten of these Easter egg uns. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: it's not weird that you won one of them. Anyway.

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Speaker 1: Scott was now growing convinced that the universe had picked

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Speaker 1: him for greatness. So the next thing he does as

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Speaker 1: a like, I don't think he's think it's ten or eleven.

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Speaker 1: At this point he applies to a correspondence course called

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Speaker 1: the Famous Artists Course for Talented Young People. This still

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Speaker 1: exists today in some form. It may I mean it

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Speaker 1: may have been. That was not like. I don't think

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Speaker 1: that was it at the time when he was doing

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Speaker 1: it. It was found it was founded in part by Norman Rockwell.

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Speaker 1: It's like a long distance course. Oh it's interesting, like

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Speaker 1: the ads make it look, and I think this is

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Speaker 1: an errant belief. But looking at the ads from back then,

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Speaker 1: you get the feeling that it's like a con because

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Speaker 1: it's really focused on how cartooning can teach you how

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Speaker 1: to make money at home. I don't think it was like.

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Speaker 1: People still sell the books online. There's folks who will

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Speaker 1: say they're pretty good, like guides to like or like

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Speaker 1: drawing and stuff. So I'm not gonna shit on this program.

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Speaker 1: It just weird. Anytime anytime something tells me today that

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Speaker 1: you can make money at home, I assume that it's

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Speaker 1: some sort of a gone But I don't know that

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Speaker 1: that was the case.

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Speaker 2: Because he gave Scott Adams hope.

434
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:13,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, I did give him hope, although it's about to

435
00:21:13,080 --> 00:21:17,199
Speaker 1: crush his hope. But before it does that, he files

436
00:21:17,240 --> 00:21:20,520
Speaker 1: an application packet which shows he's got some talent. So

437
00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:22,800
Speaker 1: this is going to show you the drawings he's trying.

438
00:21:22,840 --> 00:21:24,600
Speaker 2: He's actually putting the effort in. I give him that.

439
00:21:25,280 --> 00:21:27,879
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, like he's got there's an an early like

440
00:21:27,960 --> 00:21:30,680
Speaker 1: he's there's a drawing of a Jaloppi in there. That's

441
00:21:30,720 --> 00:21:33,520
Speaker 1: like pretty good for like a little kid, Like the

442
00:21:33,600 --> 00:21:36,240
Speaker 1: perspective is decent, like cars are heart. When I was

443
00:21:36,280 --> 00:21:38,920
Speaker 1: a little kid drawing cartoons, I was never any good

444
00:21:38,920 --> 00:21:43,639
Speaker 1: at drawing cards. So like he's he's not bad for

445
00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:46,720
Speaker 1: his age. Yeah, yeah, that's quite a good. Yeah.

446
00:21:46,720 --> 00:21:49,160
Speaker 2: You're looking at the drawing of the man really good.

447
00:21:49,840 --> 00:21:53,439
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, no, was really well done. That's skill. Like

448
00:21:53,520 --> 00:21:55,400
Speaker 2: I did not realize he had that ability.

449
00:21:55,760 --> 00:21:57,840
Speaker 1: No, yeah, it's like not like Sophie, scroll down, show

450
00:21:57,880 --> 00:22:00,080
Speaker 1: him the geloppee because like the perspective on the car.

451
00:22:00,080 --> 00:22:02,800
Speaker 2: Is also cars are not easy, so.

452
00:22:02,720 --> 00:22:10,520
Speaker 1: That yeah, he's solid. He's like he's these are good cartoons. Yeah.

453
00:22:11,080 --> 00:22:13,199
Speaker 1: I think that kind of surprised me because they're like

454
00:22:13,280 --> 00:22:17,160
Speaker 1: technically a lot more nuanced like Gilbert is again, as

455
00:22:17,160 --> 00:22:20,280
Speaker 1: we said, effective in terms of it's art style obviously,

456
00:22:20,720 --> 00:22:24,960
Speaker 1: but it's not complicated, right, Whereas like you know, that

457
00:22:25,320 --> 00:22:27,639
Speaker 1: shows that he's got some some more some deep or

458
00:22:27,680 --> 00:22:30,000
Speaker 1: at least had at some point like deeper technical ability.

459
00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:35,280
Speaker 2: It's interesting, like you need to learn the basics before

460
00:22:35,320 --> 00:22:40,560
Speaker 2: you create your style. Yeah, early Schultz versus what Panis was.

461
00:22:41,240 --> 00:22:44,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean even just like a guy like

462
00:22:44,359 --> 00:22:47,120
Speaker 1: everyone knows is a great cartoonist, Bill Watterson. You look

463
00:22:47,160 --> 00:22:49,199
Speaker 1: at kind of a normal strip of Calvin and Hobbes,

464
00:22:49,200 --> 00:22:51,320
Speaker 1: and then you look at the you know, the ones

465
00:22:51,400 --> 00:22:54,080
Speaker 1: like these big Sunday spreads he did where he's he's

466
00:22:54,119 --> 00:22:56,240
Speaker 1: got like Spaceman spiff and shit, and it's a lot

467
00:22:56,280 --> 00:23:02,199
Speaker 1: more kind of like almost uh uh psychedelic fantastic in

468
00:23:02,240 --> 00:23:02,919
Speaker 1: a lot of ways.

469
00:23:04,160 --> 00:23:06,119
Speaker 2: They were also called back to the golden age of

470
00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:08,600
Speaker 2: comics when yeah, like, no, you're going to run this

471
00:23:08,640 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 2: comic the way I present it. You're not going to

472
00:23:10,440 --> 00:23:13,800
Speaker 2: butcher up the panels and put different draws. Wagon also

473
00:23:13,760 --> 00:23:16,159
Speaker 2: started off as a political cartoonist, so his training is

474
00:23:16,200 --> 00:23:19,280
Speaker 2: a lot different and he's yeah, very thick heavy line work.

475
00:23:19,640 --> 00:23:23,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and you see Berkeley breadth Breath that is

476
00:23:23,760 --> 00:23:26,520
Speaker 1: a kind of in a similar vein where like he

477
00:23:26,960 --> 00:23:29,479
Speaker 1: would do especially when he did like Outland and stuff

478
00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:32,840
Speaker 1: these like so much more lavish strips that today you

479
00:23:32,880 --> 00:23:35,119
Speaker 1: could know, I mean you could, thankfully. One of the

480
00:23:35,119 --> 00:23:37,879
Speaker 1: things that I love about online cartooning is you you

481
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:40,600
Speaker 1: do get there's a lot more of that stuff available

482
00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:42,800
Speaker 1: if you know where to look for it, because you

483
00:23:42,800 --> 00:23:45,320
Speaker 1: can publish anything online if you have like the right

484
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:49,040
Speaker 1: kind of you know, uh platform to put it up on,

485
00:23:49,520 --> 00:23:52,560
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, when you read that book

486
00:23:52,720 --> 00:23:56,480
Speaker 1: Waterson did, like the collection of his where he writes

487
00:23:56,520 --> 00:23:58,879
Speaker 1: a lot about his background. A lot of it is

488
00:23:58,960 --> 00:24:02,640
Speaker 1: him kind of mourning how much comics pages are shrinking,

489
00:24:02,680 --> 00:24:04,760
Speaker 1: how much less space there is, how much less like

490
00:24:04,800 --> 00:24:08,119
Speaker 1: option for putting in color there is, and how sad

491
00:24:08,160 --> 00:24:10,080
Speaker 1: that makes them is a lover of the art form,

492
00:24:10,119 --> 00:24:12,640
Speaker 1: and I do think like that's one of the things.

493
00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:17,719
Speaker 1: Internetic comics have kind of reversed the slide on to

494
00:24:17,760 --> 00:24:20,080
Speaker 1: an extent, which is yeah, makes me happy.

495
00:24:20,480 --> 00:24:24,320
Speaker 2: It is heartbreaking, but it's also like you're on deadlines too.

496
00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:27,520
Speaker 2: Like I did a storyline Popeye where I got behind

497
00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:29,680
Speaker 2: because like I'm gonna do really hyper detailed art, and

498
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:32,960
Speaker 2: it's like that's great, but you're getting behind and we

499
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:34,600
Speaker 2: have a deadline that this these get in.

500
00:24:35,359 --> 00:24:36,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is one of those like.

501
00:24:38,640 --> 00:24:41,400
Speaker 2: Sorry, no, Yeah, it's just like you know you're being

502
00:24:41,440 --> 00:24:44,960
Speaker 2: paid for this, don't You don't have to go beyond it, buddy.

503
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean obviously, like when you're doing anything

504
00:24:48,280 --> 00:24:50,919
Speaker 1: five times a week, like a comic or I don't know,

505
00:24:50,960 --> 00:24:53,520
Speaker 1: a news podcast, it will grind you down if you

506
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:58,680
Speaker 1: let it. It's yeah, it's those production schedules quite brutal,

507
00:24:58,720 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 1: but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

508
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:00,119
Speaker 2: Oh.

509
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 1: Scott does pretty well on this application to a cartooning school,

510
00:25:04,160 --> 00:25:07,160
Speaker 1: but the school rejects him for being too young, which

511
00:25:07,240 --> 00:25:09,919
Speaker 1: temporarily causes him to give up on his dreams of

512
00:25:09,920 --> 00:25:13,280
Speaker 1: being a cartoonist and pick a more attainable life goal.

513
00:25:14,160 --> 00:25:16,480
Speaker 1: God he's got, he's like in his early teens. Maybe

514
00:25:16,480 --> 00:25:21,600
Speaker 1: at this point I think like, yeah, I don't know.

515
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:25,600
Speaker 1: I think he was just like the way he describes it,

516
00:25:25,760 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 1: he had kind of because of these other incidents of

517
00:25:28,440 --> 00:25:33,160
Speaker 1: like unlikely in his eyes. Yeah, exactly, I found it. Egg,

518
00:25:33,280 --> 00:25:34,960
Speaker 1: Surely I'll get into this cartooning.

519
00:25:36,640 --> 00:25:40,080
Speaker 2: Look, honey, I found ten dollars in it. I think

520
00:25:40,119 --> 00:25:41,879
Speaker 2: I'm ready to replace al Cap.

521
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:44,719
Speaker 1: Yeah. He always has these like weird leaps in his

522
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:47,840
Speaker 1: head of like, well, because this happened, this seems possible.

523
00:25:47,840 --> 00:25:50,400
Speaker 1: But anyway, he gets bummed out, so he decides, I'm

524
00:25:50,440 --> 00:25:53,520
Speaker 1: not going to be a cartoonist, and he goes to

525
00:25:53,560 --> 00:25:57,280
Speaker 1: the work of kind of like picking another career for himself. Quote.

526
00:25:57,320 --> 00:25:59,640
Speaker 1: I looked around my town and learned that exactly two

527
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 1: people had high incomes. One was the only doctor in

528
00:26:02,440 --> 00:26:04,720
Speaker 1: town and the other was the only lawyer. I didn't

529
00:26:04,760 --> 00:26:07,280
Speaker 1: like touching other people's guts and tendons and whatnot, so

530
00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:10,399
Speaker 1: I set my sights on a career in law. He

531
00:26:10,440 --> 00:26:12,320
Speaker 1: has always kind of focused in this point at a

532
00:26:12,400 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 1: job that's going to make him a lot of money.

533
00:26:15,160 --> 00:26:17,320
Speaker 1: I do think it's kind of worth noting. And this

534
00:26:17,400 --> 00:26:19,639
Speaker 1: is a thing that like he's open about in his

535
00:26:19,760 --> 00:26:23,040
Speaker 1: early Dilbert career that like, yes, was always about making

536
00:26:23,080 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 1: money for me before he kind of gets weirder into

537
00:26:26,320 --> 00:26:31,200
Speaker 1: evangelizing some of his spiritual ideas. Nothing.

538
00:26:32,400 --> 00:26:35,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, always this was a career path he went to.

539
00:26:36,200 --> 00:26:40,760
Speaker 2: The diference is Jim Davis is not trying to incite riots.

540
00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:45,399
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jim Davis has never tried to convince anybody of

541
00:26:45,440 --> 00:26:48,720
Speaker 1: his like philosophical conclusions from a career of drawing guard

542
00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:53,640
Speaker 1: he seems to have mostly been happy to get. Jim

543
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: Davis is one of it, like seems to have a

544
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:59,360
Speaker 1: pretty realistic understanding that like, wow, I've got I made

545
00:26:59,440 --> 00:27:02,280
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars drawing a cat just kind

546
00:27:02,320 --> 00:27:05,560
Speaker 1: of kind of let that one ride. Not gonna poke

547
00:27:05,680 --> 00:27:10,879
Speaker 1: lady faith too much over this. So in his nearly

548
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 1: unreadable book win Bigley, Scott claims that during this first

549
00:27:15,880 --> 00:27:19,879
Speaker 1: period of interest in drawing, he was a regular church goer.

550
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:22,640
Speaker 1: His parents had him attend the Methodist church near their house,

551
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:25,359
Speaker 1: and he claims he started experiencing doubt in his faith

552
00:27:25,400 --> 00:27:28,040
Speaker 1: when he noticed that prayer didn't seem to influence what

553
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:30,640
Speaker 1: happened in his life in any way. The tipping point,

554
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:32,680
Speaker 1: as he describes it, is when he heard the story

555
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,439
Speaker 1: of Jonah and the Whale. The nut of that story,

556
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:38,080
Speaker 1: if you weren't raised Christian, involves a guy getting stuck

557
00:27:38,080 --> 00:27:40,160
Speaker 1: in a whale's belly for three days before he gets

558
00:27:40,200 --> 00:27:44,720
Speaker 1: spat out, and he's not dead because God's stuff. Scott

559
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:45,920
Speaker 1: as a little kid is like.

560
00:27:46,480 --> 00:27:48,439
Speaker 2: It's one of those amazing stories in the Old Testament,

561
00:27:48,520 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 2: Like don't you feel inspired? God's a socialist?

562
00:27:51,720 --> 00:27:54,639
Speaker 1: Yeah? Why would he do that to somebody? That seems yeah,

563
00:27:54,680 --> 00:27:57,840
Speaker 1: but Scott has the Scott's problem with it is that like, well,

564
00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:00,800
Speaker 1: people couldn't survive being in a whale, so he decides,

565
00:28:00,960 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 1: you know, that means that the Bible's not real. I

566
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:06,119
Speaker 1: called a meeting with my mother and announced I was

567
00:28:06,119 --> 00:28:09,639
Speaker 1: discontinuing my religious education. I explained my new hypothesis that

568
00:28:09,680 --> 00:28:11,800
Speaker 1: she and all other believers were being duped for reasons

569
00:28:11,840 --> 00:28:13,680
Speaker 1: I couldn't understand, but I planned to get to the

570
00:28:13,680 --> 00:28:15,840
Speaker 1: bottom of it. My mother listened to my reasoning, I

571
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:18,199
Speaker 1: acknowledged that I was making a well informed decision, and

572
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:21,800
Speaker 1: never asked me to attend church again. And that's, you know,

573
00:28:21,880 --> 00:28:24,760
Speaker 1: fine enough on his mom's behalf. But it's weird to

574
00:28:24,800 --> 00:28:28,359
Speaker 1: me the lesson. He always takes such odd lessons from things,

575
00:28:28,960 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 1: because what he writes about this is according to my

576
00:28:31,680 --> 00:28:34,000
Speaker 1: new worldview. I was the only person, as far as

577
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: I knew, who could see religion for the scam that

578
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:38,840
Speaker 1: it was. Obviously, there were plenty of non believers in

579
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 1: the world, but they were invisible to me in my

580
00:28:40,680 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 1: pre internet small town life. And I find that really peculiar.

581
00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:46,520
Speaker 1: Not the fact that, like, obviously you're in like the

582
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:49,520
Speaker 1: fifties sixties, you decide you're an atheist, you live in

583
00:28:49,560 --> 00:28:52,280
Speaker 1: a small town, pretty good chance that you you know,

584
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:57,160
Speaker 1: might not like know anybody right or like that else

585
00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:58,600
Speaker 1: that identifies as an atheist.

586
00:28:58,680 --> 00:29:01,000
Speaker 2: Now we're all going to be honest, Like, if you're

587
00:29:01,040 --> 00:29:04,680
Speaker 2: a small town like that, you're like, yeah, I'm an atheist.

588
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 2: Oh cool, you're leaving town now.

589
00:29:06,680 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's not weird to me that he didn't know

590
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:10,840
Speaker 1: anyone else like that. It is weird that he didn't

591
00:29:10,880 --> 00:29:13,720
Speaker 1: know it existed right like that he claimed, because he

592
00:29:13,720 --> 00:29:16,120
Speaker 1: basically claims, I didn't realize there were other people who

593
00:29:16,120 --> 00:29:18,760
Speaker 1: weren't believers. That seems a little peculiar to me. But

594
00:29:18,800 --> 00:29:22,960
Speaker 1: also information was much more difficult to acquire in that era.

595
00:29:23,040 --> 00:29:25,360
Speaker 1: So I'll give that one to Scott. What's odd to

596
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:26,880
Speaker 1: me is that the kind of beliefs.

597
00:29:27,880 --> 00:29:30,120
Speaker 2: Oh, I just think I also give parents who will

598
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:33,480
Speaker 2: actively shield their kids from the idea, like you know,

599
00:29:33,720 --> 00:29:36,360
Speaker 2: you and I grew up in Texas, and yeah, Texas,

600
00:29:36,360 --> 00:29:39,440
Speaker 2: which is a you know the taint of the Bible belt.

601
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 2: You know how it goes parents anything they can to

602
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:43,000
Speaker 2: shield their kids.

603
00:29:44,120 --> 00:29:47,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'll give him that one, you know, especially

604
00:29:47,800 --> 00:29:49,560
Speaker 1: given the ara that he comes up in. But what's

605
00:29:49,600 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 1: odd to me is that when he decides he doesn't

606
00:29:51,920 --> 00:29:54,680
Speaker 1: believe in God, the schema, the belief schema that he

607
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:58,240
Speaker 1: develops for himself is something he later describes as the

608
00:29:58,280 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 1: alien experiment filter. And it's I don't know, I'm not

609
00:30:03,360 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: I try not to criticize the beliefs of children on

610
00:30:05,800 --> 00:30:07,280
Speaker 1: this show, but I'm going to read a quote for

611
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:10,760
Speaker 1: you about Scott deciding what he believes, and you tell

612
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:11,960
Speaker 1: me what you think about this.

613
00:30:12,160 --> 00:30:13,360
Speaker 2: As a parent, I'm happy.

614
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:18,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, well someone should have done that with Scott. Here

615
00:30:18,720 --> 00:30:22,360
Speaker 1: quote the alien experiment filter imagined that intelligent creatures from

616
00:30:22,360 --> 00:30:25,000
Speaker 1: another world impregnated my mother so they could find out

617
00:30:25,040 --> 00:30:28,120
Speaker 1: what happens when humans and aliens make According to that filter,

618
00:30:28,240 --> 00:30:32,840
Speaker 1: the aliens were watching me at all times. That's an

619
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:35,880
Speaker 1: odd thing for a child to decide they believe about

620
00:30:35,880 --> 00:30:41,920
Speaker 1: the world. What the fuck the fact that alien impregnation

621
00:30:42,120 --> 00:30:49,920
Speaker 1: is involved. Yeah, that's that is a really weirdly specific belief.

622
00:30:50,440 --> 00:30:53,160
Speaker 1: It's not like I wonder if I'm an alien, but

623
00:30:53,280 --> 00:30:56,640
Speaker 1: like specifically I wonder if the aliens, yeah, like did

624
00:30:56,640 --> 00:30:58,680
Speaker 1: it with my mom so that they can see if

625
00:30:58,720 --> 00:31:03,320
Speaker 1: it worked. That's peculiar. That is peculiar. No judgment, he's

626
00:31:03,320 --> 00:31:06,160
Speaker 1: a kid, but that's weird. That is a little bit

627
00:31:06,160 --> 00:31:07,040
Speaker 1: of a weird belief.

628
00:31:08,040 --> 00:31:11,320
Speaker 2: I mean, look, we were weird kids. Our brains went

629
00:31:11,360 --> 00:31:13,480
Speaker 2: to weird places. I'm sure if I sat down and

630
00:31:13,520 --> 00:31:15,520
Speaker 2: looked at my thoughts like, oh, I can't really judge

631
00:31:15,560 --> 00:31:18,080
Speaker 2: them on this one, but as still looking at him.

632
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:22,640
Speaker 1: Like really, that's yeah, it's about judgments and being being

633
00:31:22,680 --> 00:31:31,000
Speaker 1: like scarring. Scott consistently draws strange conclusions. Yeah, so, uh,

634
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:36,080
Speaker 1: you know who doesn't develop strangely elaborate childhood fantasies of

635
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:38,960
Speaker 1: their mother being impregnated by aliens?

636
00:31:39,240 --> 00:31:43,720
Speaker 2: Would it be the sortied gold cellars that might be providing.

637
00:31:45,720 --> 00:31:48,360
Speaker 1: The gold cellars? Definitely do, but like, I don't know,

638
00:31:49,040 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 1: probably does it right? Is that right, Sophie? Can we

639
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:54,000
Speaker 1: say that or is getting it angry if we say

640
00:31:54,040 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: that they don't have alien impregnation fantasies?

641
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:59,160
Speaker 3: I don't know. I believed what you just said.

642
00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:04,120
Speaker 2: Fair enough and prague fan it needs to be a thing.

643
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:07,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, make it happen used chat GPT or whatever

644
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 1: one of the GPPs. Uh get give us, give us

645
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:16,440
Speaker 1: some AI drawings of impregnation, Dilbert fetish ark Dilbert.

646
00:32:16,160 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 2: Like just birthing a yeah box and.

647
00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 1: Don't don't send it to me, send it to Scott Adams.

648
00:32:22,600 --> 00:32:27,440
Speaker 1: He'll love that. He's got time. Now he's not cartooning anymore.

649
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:39,720
Speaker 1: He is cartooning still anyway, here's it. Ah, we are

650
00:32:39,960 --> 00:32:44,120
Speaker 1: back and we're talking about the Dilbert guy. So he

651
00:32:44,240 --> 00:32:47,280
Speaker 1: spends several years believing this alien stuff, but it doesn't

652
00:32:47,280 --> 00:32:50,280
Speaker 1: make him happy, so eventually he lands on atheism as

653
00:32:50,320 --> 00:32:54,120
Speaker 1: a teenager. Now he claims it like that he decided

654
00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:56,320
Speaker 1: to be an atheist because it gave him something to

655
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:59,400
Speaker 1: argue about with people, which does make him ahead of

656
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 1: the curve that movement. Yeah, no, that was me as

657
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:04,520
Speaker 1: a teenage atheist for sure.

658
00:33:04,680 --> 00:33:04,880
Speaker 2: Yes.

659
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:10,920
Speaker 1: Now what's odd about that is that it's not odd

660
00:33:10,920 --> 00:33:12,480
Speaker 1: that he's kind of unhappy with that. A lot of

661
00:33:12,480 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: people like have a period when they're younger of atheism

662
00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:18,640
Speaker 1: and then move, you know to something else that's like

663
00:33:18,720 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 1: a thing that happens, Just like people have a period

664
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:23,280
Speaker 1: where they're super Christian or whatever, and then choose something else.

665
00:33:23,880 --> 00:33:27,400
Speaker 1: Why Scott is unhappy with atheism specifically is that he

666
00:33:27,440 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 1: feels like it doesn't let him predict the future. That's

667
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:34,360
Speaker 1: an odd reason to not like atheism to me, I

668
00:33:34,680 --> 00:33:39,600
Speaker 1: do so weird. Yeah, that's that's not the point of atheism,

669
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:45,560
Speaker 1: Scott J Yeah. I don't understand why that would be

670
00:33:45,600 --> 00:33:48,680
Speaker 1: a thing that you would ever have expected to get

671
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:53,000
Speaker 1: out of atheism. I also don't think that's generally a thing.

672
00:33:53,560 --> 00:33:55,480
Speaker 1: There's definitely it's one of the It's one of the

673
00:33:55,520 --> 00:33:57,120
Speaker 1: things that's compelling this to me is that it kind

674
00:33:57,120 --> 00:34:00,320
Speaker 1: of hints at something that Scott never writes about, which

675
00:34:00,360 --> 00:34:02,560
Speaker 1: I've come to suspect, which is that as a kid,

676
00:34:03,120 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 1: just the culture the community was into was more sort

677
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:10,520
Speaker 1: of into apocalyptic evangelical Christian culture than maybe he lets on.

678
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:14,399
Speaker 1: I don't know this, but it's one of those things

679
00:34:14,400 --> 00:34:16,320
Speaker 1: where like most people I know who are like Christian,

680
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:18,400
Speaker 1: who are Muslim, who are Jewish, who are Hindu, who

681
00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:22,200
Speaker 1: are you know, zoroastri and whatever, generally like when they

682
00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:24,359
Speaker 1: talk about what they get out of faith, it's not

683
00:34:24,560 --> 00:34:27,560
Speaker 1: it lets me know the future, Like it lets me

684
00:34:27,600 --> 00:34:32,880
Speaker 1: predict the future. But within certain strains of evangelical Christianity prophecy,

685
00:34:33,080 --> 00:34:35,919
Speaker 1: the ability of the Bible to be used as a

686
00:34:35,920 --> 00:34:38,680
Speaker 1: as a prediction instrument to determine what's going to happen

687
00:34:38,680 --> 00:34:40,720
Speaker 1: in the future is a huge deal.

688
00:34:41,320 --> 00:34:43,320
Speaker 2: And that I remember real.

689
00:34:43,160 --> 00:34:46,520
Speaker 1: Things exactly, And that's that's if you're like Catholic, right,

690
00:34:46,520 --> 00:34:48,080
Speaker 1: you don't grow up being like the Bible is a

691
00:34:48,080 --> 00:34:49,560
Speaker 1: tool that lets me predict the future.

692
00:34:49,640 --> 00:34:49,840
Speaker 4: You know.

693
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:53,239
Speaker 1: That's not really like a thing for Unitarians or Anglicans

694
00:34:53,640 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: or Episcopalians, which I was, but it is a thing

695
00:34:56,280 --> 00:35:00,799
Speaker 1: for that chunk of like Pentecostals, Baptists, a whole bunch

696
00:35:00,840 --> 00:35:04,600
Speaker 1: of like chunks of kind of like really kind of

697
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: very American sorts of Christianity. Not exclusively, but yeah, that's

698
00:35:09,040 --> 00:35:10,799
Speaker 1: kind of a hint I think I have maybe about

699
00:35:10,800 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 1: like what sort of the surrounding religious culture that Scott

700
00:35:14,640 --> 00:35:16,840
Speaker 1: is raised in is Like maybe he doesn't really notice

701
00:35:16,840 --> 00:35:19,520
Speaker 1: this much, but the fact that he the fact that

702
00:35:19,560 --> 00:35:22,319
Speaker 1: he wants whatever kind of belief system he adopts to

703
00:35:22,400 --> 00:35:24,919
Speaker 1: help him predict the future is interesting to me because

704
00:35:24,920 --> 00:35:27,399
Speaker 1: you don't run into that with most people, nor should

705
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:30,840
Speaker 1: you yeah, nor should you don't. Yeah, Predicting the futures

706
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:33,560
Speaker 1: not a not a fun business to be in one

707
00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 1: way or the other. Take that one from me, folks.

708
00:35:36,800 --> 00:35:39,880
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy five, s Good graduates high school.

709
00:35:39,920 --> 00:35:42,880
Speaker 1: He's about there's about forty people in his graduating class,

710
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:45,600
Speaker 1: and as he notes, it's really easy to excel in

711
00:35:45,640 --> 00:35:47,680
Speaker 1: a really small school like that if you work hard

712
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:49,560
Speaker 1: and you've got you've got like a pretty good chance

713
00:35:49,600 --> 00:35:51,920
Speaker 1: of being the best at like what everything you're into,

714
00:35:51,960 --> 00:35:55,400
Speaker 1: because there's not that many other people. He opted not

715
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,040
Speaker 1: to take chemistry or physics in high school instead of

716
00:35:58,080 --> 00:35:59,960
Speaker 1: in favor of focusing on a class that was un

717
00:36:00,120 --> 00:36:02,800
Speaker 1: common for a man to take in that period, typing.

718
00:36:03,400 --> 00:36:06,200
Speaker 1: Now Scott claims he picked typing because it was easy,

719
00:36:06,280 --> 00:36:09,120
Speaker 1: and the people who took chemistry got bad grades. Because

720
00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:11,279
Speaker 1: typing was so easy, his grades were really good and

721
00:36:11,320 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 1: he was able to graduate his valedictorian of the class

722
00:36:13,719 --> 00:36:16,920
Speaker 1: and get several scholarships. As a young adult, he was

723
00:36:16,960 --> 00:36:19,040
Speaker 1: regularly struck by how little use he got out of

724
00:36:19,120 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: chemistry and physics and how often typing came in handy

725
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:26,120
Speaker 1: On that one, he's he's not wrong. The lesson he

726
00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:28,920
Speaker 1: takes out of this is like a weird one about

727
00:36:28,960 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 1: how they're basically a brain hacking thing where it's like, no,

728
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:35,719
Speaker 1: if you like stack, you know, these different talents and

729
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:38,440
Speaker 1: stuff together you can get like we'll get to that

730
00:36:38,480 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 1: a little bit later. He doesn't just take like, uh

731
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:45,319
Speaker 1: yeah again, He's always kind of like makes these odd conclusions.

732
00:36:45,640 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 1: Like his conclusion from this is sometimes doing the wrong

733
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:49,520
Speaker 1: thing works out.

734
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:52,560
Speaker 2: He used to be one of like Andrew Tate's flunkies

735
00:36:52,600 --> 00:36:53,239
Speaker 2: more and more.

736
00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:57,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's he's got this obsession with like because something

737
00:36:57,239 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 1: worked out for me. I have been bestowed secret knowledge

738
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:03,040
Speaker 1: as opposed to it like I don't know being Like

739
00:37:03,040 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, I had this experience of

740
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:07,239
Speaker 1: like I played a lot of online video games, and

741
00:37:07,320 --> 00:37:09,960
Speaker 1: my mom and dad were worried about it because they

742
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:11,960
Speaker 1: were like, that's not going to help you, you know,

743
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,800
Speaker 1: get a career or succeed. You should be focusing on school.

744
00:37:14,960 --> 00:37:17,680
Speaker 1: And as it turned out, playing online video games like

745
00:37:17,760 --> 00:37:19,880
Speaker 1: taught me how to touch type, taught me how to

746
00:37:19,920 --> 00:37:22,400
Speaker 1: like organize groups of people online, all of these skills

747
00:37:22,440 --> 00:37:25,840
Speaker 1: that were most useful in my career. I don't translate

748
00:37:25,880 --> 00:37:28,319
Speaker 1: this as like sometimes doing the wrong thing works out.

749
00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:31,759
Speaker 1: I translate this as like, sometimes old people don't understand

750
00:37:32,040 --> 00:37:36,040
Speaker 1: the world as well as young people, right, Yeah, Like sometimes.

751
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:38,800
Speaker 2: When you just see how trends are changing.

752
00:37:38,680 --> 00:37:43,360
Speaker 1: That's just the world, right, Like I inherently think TikTok

753
00:37:43,600 --> 00:37:46,480
Speaker 1: is silly, but like, obviously it's a huge deal for

754
00:37:46,520 --> 00:37:49,120
Speaker 1: a lot of people, and like the fact that, like

755
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:51,319
Speaker 1: I don't know, some kid gets really good at making

756
00:37:51,320 --> 00:37:54,120
Speaker 1: TikTok videos and makes a millionaire isn't an example of

757
00:37:54,160 --> 00:37:56,360
Speaker 1: them doing the wrong thing, And it's an example of

758
00:37:56,400 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: the world having changed in me being an old man. Now, yeah,

759
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:02,680
Speaker 1: good for that little shit. Yeah, good for that little

760
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:09,319
Speaker 1: piece of shit. Anyway, interesting the way he translates things.

761
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:11,839
Speaker 1: So Scott goes to Hartwick College in New York State

762
00:38:11,880 --> 00:38:13,759
Speaker 1: and the major's in economics because he heard it was

763
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,280
Speaker 1: good prep for law school and he wanted to understand

764
00:38:16,280 --> 00:38:19,800
Speaker 1: how money worked. He only takes one art class in college,

765
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:22,439
Speaker 1: and this time he does really badly at it. There's

766
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:24,680
Speaker 1: more kids in college than he had never been around before,

767
00:38:24,680 --> 00:38:26,359
Speaker 1: and a lot of them had spent you know, when

768
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:29,080
Speaker 1: Scott kind of stopped drawing, they'd kept honing their art,

769
00:38:29,760 --> 00:38:32,359
Speaker 1: and this is Yeah, it fucked him up. I don't

770
00:38:32,360 --> 00:38:33,640
Speaker 1: think that's an uncommon experience.

771
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 2: Well, also, you go from being a kid in a

772
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,840
Speaker 2: small school where you're the art kid, to go to

773
00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:40,080
Speaker 2: a place where, oh, this is all the art kids

774
00:38:40,080 --> 00:38:41,719
Speaker 2: from all these in the schools. Oh, and they've been

775
00:38:41,719 --> 00:38:44,640
Speaker 2: working harder than you. Yeah, that's gonna humble your well,

776
00:38:44,920 --> 00:38:46,640
Speaker 2: it should humble you a little bit.

777
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:49,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, in his case, it seems more like he just

778
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:54,120
Speaker 1: kind of gives up on art. But he does start

779
00:38:54,160 --> 00:38:56,480
Speaker 1: to smoke a shitload of weed in his college days.

780
00:38:56,880 --> 00:39:00,319
Speaker 1: He was influenced during this period of time when he's

781
00:39:00,360 --> 00:39:03,200
Speaker 1: getting high a lot by the realization that people seemed

782
00:39:03,239 --> 00:39:06,239
Speaker 1: a lot nicer when he was high. This caused him

783
00:39:06,239 --> 00:39:09,520
Speaker 1: to realize that people could experience different realities based on

784
00:39:09,600 --> 00:39:13,680
Speaker 1: their perception. Now that's one of the most basic philosophy

785
00:39:14,040 --> 00:39:16,880
Speaker 1: things in the world, right, the fact that like reception

786
00:39:17,320 --> 00:39:21,319
Speaker 1: alters exactly Like everyone has this realization one way or

787
00:39:21,320 --> 00:39:25,360
Speaker 1: the other. So I don't think Scott is like taking

788
00:39:25,440 --> 00:39:28,719
Speaker 1: a lot of classes on philosophy. I also don't think

789
00:39:28,760 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: he listens a lot when other people are talking. His

790
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:34,680
Speaker 1: youth seems to have been a process of a precocious kid,

791
00:39:34,920 --> 00:39:37,840
Speaker 1: avoiding any reading that might have challenged him and opened

792
00:39:37,840 --> 00:39:41,640
Speaker 1: his eyes to thinkers who had had an experimented and

793
00:39:41,920 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: developed these kind of ideas more than maybe he did.

794
00:39:44,560 --> 00:39:46,880
Speaker 1: He seems to him be convinced that like, all of

795
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:50,600
Speaker 1: these very normal revelations are him, like inventing the wheel

796
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:53,399
Speaker 1: for himself basically, as opposed to like, I don't know, man,

797
00:39:53,400 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 1: that's like what happens to everybody when they get high,

798
00:39:55,600 --> 00:39:58,680
Speaker 1: Like the fucking billions of people would have experienced Scott,

799
00:39:58,760 --> 00:39:59,640
Speaker 1: it's not really weird.

800
00:40:00,040 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 2: He obviously feels he's the main character, and therefore every

801
00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:06,160
Speaker 2: experience he is the main character, Every expec he has

802
00:40:06,640 --> 00:40:10,440
Speaker 2: is him. Yeah, I mean at first it's never oh

803
00:40:10,520 --> 00:40:12,719
Speaker 2: shit to other people feel like it's like, no, it's me.

804
00:40:13,440 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 2: I will educate you on me.

805
00:40:16,480 --> 00:40:20,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting he has these perfectly normal experiences and

806
00:40:20,120 --> 00:40:22,719
Speaker 1: then that a lot of people have. And like when I,

807
00:40:22,760 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 1: you know, started taking psychedelics and realized how fragile the

808
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:29,839
Speaker 1: bonds of what we consider reality are and how much

809
00:40:29,880 --> 00:40:33,000
Speaker 1: it can be influenced and changed in very fundamental ways

810
00:40:33,040 --> 00:40:37,160
Speaker 1: by things that simply altered perception, it was very humbling,

811
00:40:37,320 --> 00:40:39,399
Speaker 1: and it caught a lot of things that I had

812
00:40:39,440 --> 00:40:42,239
Speaker 1: held on to from my belief systems as a young

813
00:40:42,280 --> 00:40:44,680
Speaker 1: person who grew up you know, very right wing and conservative.

814
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:48,000
Speaker 1: Like melted at that point because I realized that all

815
00:40:48,000 --> 00:40:50,600
Speaker 1: of this certainty I had been raised with did not

816
00:40:50,840 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 1: adequately describe the world anymore, and that, I think ever since,

817
00:40:56,520 --> 00:40:59,920
Speaker 1: has made me less certain about the things I believe,

818
00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:02,239
Speaker 1: because I know how easy it is to influence my

819
00:41:02,320 --> 00:41:02,840
Speaker 1: own mind.

820
00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:05,400
Speaker 2: See, I knew it with anxiety. Anxiety to it for me,

821
00:41:05,440 --> 00:41:07,520
Speaker 2: I never had to do any drugs. Yes, I just

822
00:41:07,880 --> 00:41:11,319
Speaker 2: have absolute fear, NonStop, all time.

823
00:41:11,640 --> 00:41:16,960
Speaker 1: Very mind altering drug anxiety. Scott I think mean like

824
00:41:17,080 --> 00:41:21,880
Speaker 1: concludes basically, like I I have had a realization that

825
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:24,560
Speaker 1: other people don't have, and so now I like understand

826
00:41:24,640 --> 00:41:29,439
Speaker 1: the world at a fundamentally different level, which I is odd.

827
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: I wonder how much he spent time like talking to

828
00:41:31,640 --> 00:41:34,440
Speaker 1: people while he was high, because again, this is pretty

829
00:41:34,480 --> 00:41:37,280
Speaker 1: basic stuff people chat about when they're stoned at nineteen

830
00:41:37,840 --> 00:41:38,839
Speaker 1: whatever at them.

831
00:41:38,840 --> 00:41:41,319
Speaker 2: He didn't talk to them, He talked at them if

832
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:44,160
Speaker 2: they said something. He wasn't paying attention because he wasn't talking.

833
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:47,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, you get that feeling a little bit so age

834
00:41:47,080 --> 00:41:50,239
Speaker 1: twenty one, Scott moves to San Francisco after he what

835
00:41:50,320 --> 00:41:53,399
Speaker 1: he describes as a near death experience. Again. He's he's

836
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:55,799
Speaker 1: living up in the frigid North. He's driving home one

837
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:58,640
Speaker 1: night it's snowing and you know, it's in the middle

838
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:01,799
Speaker 1: of February, so it's probably below freezing outside, and his

839
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:05,200
Speaker 1: car dies on the highway. He hasn't brought a coat

840
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:07,040
Speaker 1: with him, you know, because he didn't think he was

841
00:42:07,080 --> 00:42:09,480
Speaker 1: going to be outside much and because young people are dumb,

842
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: and so he winds up being like, I'm gonna freeze

843
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:13,680
Speaker 1: to death in this car unless I can find someone

844
00:42:13,719 --> 00:42:15,560
Speaker 1: to rescue me. So he gets out of the car

845
00:42:15,880 --> 00:42:18,480
Speaker 1: and he just like sprints down the highway like trying

846
00:42:18,520 --> 00:42:20,680
Speaker 1: to find somebody, and you know, eventually gets picked up

847
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:24,120
Speaker 1: and he doesn't die, obviously, but this whole thing terrifies him,

848
00:42:24,120 --> 00:42:27,080
Speaker 1: this like brush with death. And he promised himself while

849
00:42:27,120 --> 00:42:29,520
Speaker 1: he was like sprinting down the freezing highway that if

850
00:42:29,520 --> 00:42:31,880
Speaker 1: he survived, he'd sell his car and buy a ticket

851
00:42:31,880 --> 00:42:33,640
Speaker 1: to California, which he does.

852
00:42:33,960 --> 00:42:35,399
Speaker 2: That's a weird fucking leap.

853
00:42:36,040 --> 00:42:38,920
Speaker 1: That is an odd I mean, yeah, I do know.

854
00:42:39,000 --> 00:42:40,880
Speaker 1: I will say a lot of people who wind up

855
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 1: in California are there because they grew up in like

856
00:42:43,160 --> 00:42:46,080
Speaker 1: Minnesota and were like, never again, never again will I

857
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: go through a winter like that.

858
00:42:47,800 --> 00:42:50,480
Speaker 2: I live for nine years, and the idea of having

859
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:53,680
Speaker 2: returned to winter does make my butthole pucker. Yeah.

860
00:42:53,680 --> 00:42:55,720
Speaker 1: I feel the same way about the fucking Texas summer.

861
00:42:55,800 --> 00:42:59,120
Speaker 1: But that's just that's come for all of us now. Yes, so.

862
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 2: You thought you great gave Robert, No, Robert, we smelled

863
00:43:03,520 --> 00:43:05,360
Speaker 2: where you went, We followed the trail.

864
00:43:05,960 --> 00:43:11,080
Speaker 1: Texas comes for us all. So he moves to San Francisco.

865
00:43:11,120 --> 00:43:13,160
Speaker 1: He's got a brother there, so he crashes with his brother.

866
00:43:13,719 --> 00:43:16,439
Speaker 1: Eventually he gets a job as a bank teller, which

867
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:18,279
Speaker 1: is you know, it doesn't go great for him. He

868
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:20,920
Speaker 1: gets robbed at gunpoint twice. So he decides I'm going

869
00:43:20,960 --> 00:43:26,719
Speaker 1: to apply for a management training position. Yeah, no, sounds reasonable, Yeah, no,

870
00:43:27,160 --> 00:43:30,959
Speaker 1: normal reactions here. He rises pretty steadily at the bank,

871
00:43:31,000 --> 00:43:32,880
Speaker 1: and they kind of he flits around a bunch of

872
00:43:33,320 --> 00:43:36,880
Speaker 1: different jobs. He does sometime programming computers, he manages like

873
00:43:36,920 --> 00:43:40,880
Speaker 1: a contract negotiation team, and by his own kind of recollection,

874
00:43:40,960 --> 00:43:43,560
Speaker 1: he's bad at all of these jobs that like, they

875
00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:46,719
Speaker 1: move him to because and he I think this is

876
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:49,800
Speaker 1: pretty reasonable. He's like, yeah, they never kept me because

877
00:43:49,840 --> 00:43:52,440
Speaker 1: I was good enough at my job. They kept moving

878
00:43:52,480 --> 00:43:54,839
Speaker 1: me to other jobs, but they never give me enough

879
00:43:54,880 --> 00:43:57,799
Speaker 1: time there to get good at them. I don't think

880
00:43:57,800 --> 00:44:00,840
Speaker 1: that's an uncommon experience people have in the corporate world, definitely.

881
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:04,600
Speaker 1: And he kind of learns as a defensive mechanism during

882
00:44:04,600 --> 00:44:07,520
Speaker 1: this period to deflect from his ignorance by developing a

883
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:09,520
Speaker 1: sense of humor that he was able to use to

884
00:44:09,560 --> 00:44:13,440
Speaker 1: kind of like please audiences of business executives and make

885
00:44:13,520 --> 00:44:16,200
Speaker 1: them maybe less likely to judge him when he's bad

886
00:44:16,200 --> 00:44:18,239
Speaker 1: at the stuff that he's doing. This is going to

887
00:44:18,280 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 1: be an invaluable skill for writing Dilbert quote. Several of

888
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,000
Speaker 1: my jobs at the bank involved making presentations to upper management.

889
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:28,319
Speaker 1: I seasoned my presentation with presentations with comics to keep

890
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:30,600
Speaker 1: the audience awake and to have a business reason for

891
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:33,760
Speaker 1: sitting around drawing comics at work. My comics weren't funny

892
00:44:33,760 --> 00:44:36,400
Speaker 1: in the haha sense, that's certainly true, Scott, but they

893
00:44:36,480 --> 00:44:39,040
Speaker 1: reminded people of their jobs, and that seemed to be enough.

894
00:44:39,280 --> 00:44:41,480
Speaker 1: I believe my first published comic was the Mole that

895
00:44:41,520 --> 00:44:45,960
Speaker 1: I drew on the cover of the company newsletter. So yeah,

896
00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:48,719
Speaker 1: this is kind of how he gets back into cartooning

897
00:44:49,360 --> 00:44:51,520
Speaker 1: over the course of a couple of years. There's two

898
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:54,439
Speaker 1: characters that he draws more than the other characters he's doing.

899
00:44:54,600 --> 00:44:56,560
Speaker 1: And one of these is like a guy with glasses

900
00:44:56,600 --> 00:44:58,720
Speaker 1: and a weird looking tie who's going to become Dilbert.

901
00:44:59,160 --> 00:45:01,719
Speaker 1: Another's a daw that's based on his old family dog

902
00:45:01,760 --> 00:45:03,799
Speaker 1: that's going to become dog. Those are the I'm be

903
00:45:03,880 --> 00:45:06,279
Speaker 1: sure most people are at least vaguely familiar with the

904
00:45:06,280 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: fact that those are the two big characters in his

905
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:12,160
Speaker 1: comic strip. Now, the timing here is a little unclear,

906
00:45:12,239 --> 00:45:14,440
Speaker 1: but while this is all going on, as he's kind

907
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:18,080
Speaker 1: of like entering the corporate world, Scott starts experimenting with

908
00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:22,399
Speaker 1: hallucinogenic mushrooms. Now, the San Francisco Bay Area is a

909
00:45:22,480 --> 00:45:25,920
Speaker 1: wonderful place to experiment with mushrooms, and Scott has a

910
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:28,080
Speaker 1: good time. He came his first trip is like right

911
00:45:28,120 --> 00:45:30,480
Speaker 1: after he moves there. He's twenty one years old, and

912
00:45:30,520 --> 00:45:32,799
Speaker 1: he says that it's the best day of his life, like,

913
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:34,640
Speaker 1: or at least in two thousand and eight, he wrote

914
00:45:34,640 --> 00:45:36,360
Speaker 1: that that was like the best day of his life.

915
00:45:36,400 --> 00:45:39,719
Speaker 1: Well he hadn't killed yet, so yeah, yeah, he hadn't

916
00:45:39,800 --> 00:45:44,520
Speaker 1: killed anybody yet, he hadn't taken a life. Now, I

917
00:45:44,520 --> 00:45:46,920
Speaker 1: don't think that's uncommon. I think a lot of people

918
00:45:47,880 --> 00:45:50,040
Speaker 1: look back at like their first time on mushrooms is like, yeah,

919
00:45:50,040 --> 00:45:51,799
Speaker 1: it was the best experience of my entire life. Some

920
00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:54,600
Speaker 1: people it's the worst. But generally a lot of people

921
00:45:54,640 --> 00:45:57,719
Speaker 1: have this experience of it. That's not an uncommon thing.

922
00:45:57,920 --> 00:45:59,960
Speaker 2: I will Scott your knowledge as I have never tond

923
00:46:00,040 --> 00:46:00,800
Speaker 2: on any drugs.

924
00:46:01,239 --> 00:46:04,200
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't like recommended ad hoc to people, but

925
00:46:04,800 --> 00:46:06,960
Speaker 1: I mean there's actually data on this, right like they did.

926
00:46:07,000 --> 00:46:09,279
Speaker 1: There is this famously, the Good Friday Experiments, where they

927
00:46:09,360 --> 00:46:12,560
Speaker 1: give gave mushrooms to a bunch of Divinity students and

928
00:46:12,680 --> 00:46:15,879
Speaker 1: like an overwhelming number of them. Twenty years later, we're like, yeah,

929
00:46:15,920 --> 00:46:19,160
Speaker 1: it's still one of the most influential spiritual experiences of

930
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:20,040
Speaker 1: my life.

931
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:22,919
Speaker 2: Any microdosing shrooms, it is supposed to be pretty good

932
00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 2: for a lot of like mental health.

933
00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 1: It can be, it can be. It's one of those

934
00:46:28,120 --> 00:46:30,720
Speaker 1: things like I'm this is a little off topic of Scott.

935
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:34,520
Speaker 1: I'm very pro people having the right to and experimenting

936
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:37,600
Speaker 1: with hallucinogens, there are. I mean, one of the things

937
00:46:37,640 --> 00:46:40,520
Speaker 1: that does increasingly concern me is what we're learning about

938
00:46:40,840 --> 00:46:44,719
Speaker 1: the ways in which people who have a family tendency

939
00:46:44,760 --> 00:46:49,319
Speaker 1: towards schizophrenia can have schizophrenic breaks as a result of

940
00:46:49,360 --> 00:46:53,520
Speaker 1: taking psychedelics or even just marijuana. So whenever I talk

941
00:46:53,560 --> 00:46:56,759
Speaker 1: about I do think many, perhaps even most people can

942
00:46:56,800 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 1: benefit from psychedelics. It all pays to be aware of

943
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:03,880
Speaker 1: your family history and take great care when doing that

944
00:47:03,880 --> 00:47:08,720
Speaker 1: stuff because there are potentially consequences with it too. It's important,

945
00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:11,279
Speaker 1: not no, yeah, but Scott has a great time, right,

946
00:47:12,440 --> 00:47:16,640
Speaker 1: great experience, not an uncommon experience. He benefits from it

947
00:47:16,680 --> 00:47:20,320
Speaker 1: by developing an understanding that his own interpretation of reality

948
00:47:20,440 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: is just one of many, and not necessarily the truest one.

949
00:47:24,000 --> 00:47:26,839
Speaker 1: That's a good thing to realize about the world. It's

950
00:47:26,880 --> 00:47:29,080
Speaker 1: certainly a thing. I think most people who become healthy

951
00:47:29,080 --> 00:47:34,160
Speaker 1: adults have some version of this realization. Scott writes it

952
00:47:34,239 --> 00:47:37,040
Speaker 1: as a positive realization. But then at the end of

953
00:47:37,120 --> 00:47:39,840
Speaker 1: this section of his book Win Bigley, which is a

954
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:42,759
Speaker 1: stupid book about winning arguments and how Donald Trump is

955
00:47:43,400 --> 00:47:47,400
Speaker 1: fucking god King, he writes, quote, kids, please don't take drugs.

956
00:47:47,480 --> 00:47:50,840
Speaker 1: Drugs can be dangerous. I don't recommend trying marijuana or psychedelics.

957
00:47:51,000 --> 00:47:53,920
Speaker 1: You'll get a similar perceptual shift by reading this book.

958
00:47:53,960 --> 00:47:56,560
Speaker 1: I designed it to do exactly that. Right now, I

959
00:47:56,600 --> 00:47:57,320
Speaker 1: love him.

960
00:47:58,280 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 2: I fucking hate him.

961
00:48:01,160 --> 00:48:04,160
Speaker 1: Oh my fucking I know what I just said about

962
00:48:04,200 --> 00:48:06,920
Speaker 1: being cautious with drugs. But if your choices between reading

963
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:11,560
Speaker 1: Scott's book and doing drugs choose drugs every time, avoid

964
00:48:11,640 --> 00:48:12,680
Speaker 1: Scott's someone.

965
00:48:12,719 --> 00:48:15,359
Speaker 2: Needed to be bullied more than I were.

966
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:23,000
Speaker 1: Too much confidence, too much confidence, Scott Christ Yeah, I

967
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:25,920
Speaker 1: mean what's unsettling to this about this to me is that,

968
00:48:25,960 --> 00:48:28,600
Speaker 1: like the lesson Scott gets from mushrooms and the lesson

969
00:48:28,600 --> 00:48:30,759
Speaker 1: a lot of people do, is that, like, Wow, the

970
00:48:30,800 --> 00:48:33,840
Speaker 1: actual meaning of reality and the nature of it is

971
00:48:33,880 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 1: actually is extremely open ended and dictated by perception. And

972
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 1: maybe you shouldn't buy into your own bullshit to such

973
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:45,640
Speaker 1: a strong extent or believe anything so strongly because so

974
00:48:45,800 --> 00:48:48,800
Speaker 1: much of reality is kind of altered by your brain, chemistry,

975
00:48:48,800 --> 00:48:50,520
Speaker 1: by what's in your stomach, all this kind of stuff.

976
00:48:50,560 --> 00:48:53,080
Speaker 1: That's a good thing to learn. It's a different thing

977
00:48:53,120 --> 00:48:56,160
Speaker 1: to be, like, don't do drugs, kids. I have developed

978
00:48:56,160 --> 00:48:58,880
Speaker 1: a way to manipulate your mind using my books. That

979
00:48:58,960 --> 00:48:59,840
Speaker 1: works even better.

980
00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:01,360
Speaker 2: That's cult shit.

981
00:49:01,440 --> 00:49:04,359
Speaker 1: That is culty, right, Yeah, that's unsettling as fun.

982
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:07,680
Speaker 2: That is something I like. I remember a youth minister

983
00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:09,520
Speaker 2: when I was a kid telling us that, you know,

984
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:13,520
Speaker 2: we didn't need to try drugs because he could help

985
00:49:13,600 --> 00:49:16,000
Speaker 2: us get high on Jesus and be like, I don't

986
00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:18,759
Speaker 2: like this guy at all. Yeah, nothing about this is good.

987
00:49:19,400 --> 00:49:24,319
Speaker 1: No, no, And Scott, he kind of stops experimenting with

988
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:28,680
Speaker 1: hallucinogens I think pretty early here and gets really into

989
00:49:28,760 --> 00:49:31,959
Speaker 1: something that is not necessarily culty, but it's very cult

990
00:49:32,080 --> 00:49:36,479
Speaker 1: adjacent and it's called he gets into a practice of affirmations. Now,

991
00:49:36,719 --> 00:49:39,800
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong inherently with the idea of affirmations. Affirmations

992
00:49:39,840 --> 00:49:42,320
Speaker 1: are a practice that's birthed by the New Thought movement,

993
00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:45,319
Speaker 1: which in self itself evolved from books like Think and

994
00:49:45,360 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: Grow Rich and The Science of Getting Rich in the

995
00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:50,160
Speaker 1: early nineteen hundreds. Yeah, and they're part of a batch

996
00:49:50,200 --> 00:49:54,600
Speaker 1: of techniques broadly called neuro linguistic programming by some practitioners.

997
00:49:54,960 --> 00:49:58,520
Speaker 1: The basic idea, and I'm flattening a little bit here,

998
00:49:58,520 --> 00:50:00,719
Speaker 1: but the basic idea behind an affirm is that if

999
00:50:00,760 --> 00:50:03,640
Speaker 1: you regularly repeat what you are going, what you want

1000
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:05,520
Speaker 1: to do, what you want to have happen in your life,

1001
00:50:05,560 --> 00:50:08,080
Speaker 1: some sort of goal or dream, And if you're extremely

1002
00:50:08,120 --> 00:50:12,839
Speaker 1: specific and extremely consistent about the repute the about like

1003
00:50:12,920 --> 00:50:16,160
Speaker 1: repeating it, then that will in some way influence the

1004
00:50:16,200 --> 00:50:19,680
Speaker 1: future and allow you to achieve that goal. Versions and

1005
00:50:19,800 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: like this is like the secret, so sacret. Yeah. The

1006
00:50:25,239 --> 00:50:28,120
Speaker 1: early kind of basic idea is there's nothing inherently like

1007
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,520
Speaker 1: if you are if your goal is to write a novel,

1008
00:50:31,560 --> 00:50:34,160
Speaker 1: and every single morning you wake up and write down

1009
00:50:34,200 --> 00:50:35,919
Speaker 1: on a piece of paper i am going to write

1010
00:50:35,920 --> 00:50:37,960
Speaker 1: a novel, and you focus on it, you know, for

1011
00:50:38,239 --> 00:50:41,120
Speaker 1: a minute or two while you're having your coffee, and

1012
00:50:41,160 --> 00:50:43,839
Speaker 1: that helps you to sit down every day and work

1013
00:50:43,880 --> 00:50:46,640
Speaker 1: on that novel. Well, that's great, right, that's a perfectly

1014
00:50:46,680 --> 00:50:49,320
Speaker 1: reasonable thing to do, you know. Or if your affirmation

1015
00:50:49,440 --> 00:50:52,160
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna you know, get you know this good

1016
00:50:52,320 --> 00:50:54,959
Speaker 1: at lifting weights, or I'm gonna get this good at drawing,

1017
00:50:55,040 --> 00:50:56,439
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna learn how to I don't know, fix

1018
00:50:56,520 --> 00:51:00,000
Speaker 1: engines or whatever, perfectly reasonable. The problem is when people

1019
00:51:00,120 --> 00:51:03,120
Speaker 1: start to treat them like the secret does like their magic, like,

1020
00:51:03,239 --> 00:51:05,680
Speaker 1: rather than it just being like, well, focusing your mind

1021
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:08,400
Speaker 1: on a task can help you accomplish that task. It's

1022
00:51:08,719 --> 00:51:12,920
Speaker 1: by telling, by writing down and in this very specific way,

1023
00:51:13,320 --> 00:51:15,440
Speaker 1: this thing that I want to have happened. I am

1024
00:51:15,520 --> 00:51:19,120
Speaker 1: altering the universe right in order to like give myself

1025
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:21,960
Speaker 1: a thing. That's There's a lot this problematic. There's a

1026
00:51:21,960 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 1: lot that's problematic about the secret, especially when you like

1027
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:27,960
Speaker 1: talk to the way people who are into this kind

1028
00:51:28,000 --> 00:51:31,319
Speaker 1: of stuff sometimes talk about illness right where they're like, oh,

1029
00:51:31,400 --> 00:51:34,839
Speaker 1: you can overcome you know, your hereditary illness or your

1030
00:51:34,920 --> 00:51:38,480
Speaker 1: your your chronic illness or whatever via these techniques where

1031
00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:41,120
Speaker 1: it's like, well, no, no amount of writing affirmations is

1032
00:51:41,160 --> 00:51:45,640
Speaker 1: going to stop you from being paralyzed, right, That's just

1033
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:48,440
Speaker 1: not how it works. Science with a label.

1034
00:51:48,520 --> 00:51:48,960
Speaker 2: What the hell?

1035
00:51:49,160 --> 00:51:51,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I'm not shitting like I know, I know

1036
00:51:51,880 --> 00:51:53,640
Speaker 1: people who are like, yeah, I do this and it's

1037
00:51:53,680 --> 00:51:55,560
Speaker 1: just a thing that helps me focus my mind. That's whatever.

1038
00:51:55,600 --> 00:51:59,759
Speaker 1: That's fine. But Scott takes it in very much like

1039
00:51:59,800 --> 00:52:02,600
Speaker 1: the secrety direction, where like, I have figured out some

1040
00:52:02,640 --> 00:52:08,160
Speaker 1: sort of secret way to break the code of the universe. Yeah,

1041
00:52:08,200 --> 00:52:10,520
Speaker 1: And it's you can see the appeal for a guy

1042
00:52:10,600 --> 00:52:14,239
Speaker 1: who's whose brain has developed this way because affirmations give

1043
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:17,520
Speaker 1: him something that the philosophies he had adhered to earlier

1044
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:19,959
Speaker 1: in his life had always lacked, which is a way

1045
00:52:20,040 --> 00:52:23,839
Speaker 1: of predicting the future and also a way of explaining how,

1046
00:52:23,880 --> 00:52:26,919
Speaker 1: in his eyes he was consistently the special boy who

1047
00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:28,640
Speaker 1: succeeded at long odds.

1048
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:30,880
Speaker 2: Which is always goes back to he's the main character.

1049
00:52:31,440 --> 00:52:35,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think there's something that's like understandable here

1050
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:38,120
Speaker 1: as both you know, you and I are both people

1051
00:52:38,480 --> 00:52:42,080
Speaker 1: who get to do what we love for a living,

1052
00:52:43,200 --> 00:52:45,960
Speaker 1: and that's that's that is a tremendous privilege and the

1053
00:52:46,040 --> 00:52:48,840
Speaker 1: result in addition to the result of hard work always

1054
00:52:48,840 --> 00:52:51,160
Speaker 1: the result of great fortune, because there's always people who

1055
00:52:51,160 --> 00:52:53,520
Speaker 1: are skilled and talented who never make it.

1056
00:52:53,840 --> 00:52:56,400
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Yeah, absolutely.

1057
00:52:56,160 --> 00:52:59,520
Speaker 1: And if you recognize that as as a creative person,

1058
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:01,880
Speaker 1: there's a fear in there, right because it means that,

1059
00:53:01,960 --> 00:53:04,040
Speaker 1: among other things, it means that it could stop working

1060
00:53:04,080 --> 00:53:05,000
Speaker 1: for you at any point.

1061
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:08,719
Speaker 2: Right, That is very understandable anxiety. I think a lot

1062
00:53:08,760 --> 00:53:12,360
Speaker 2: of creative hackens, Yeah, because you it is things change,

1063
00:53:12,440 --> 00:53:15,920
Speaker 2: audience changed, might you know, Yeah, what worked for me

1064
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:18,720
Speaker 2: twenty years ago won't work now. I have to constantly

1065
00:53:18,760 --> 00:53:20,720
Speaker 2: rework and yeah, pushing.

1066
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:24,960
Speaker 1: And most I think most reasonable people in our position,

1067
00:53:25,320 --> 00:53:27,399
Speaker 1: Like you know, there's a variety of things to look

1068
00:53:27,440 --> 00:53:29,960
Speaker 1: at it, including well I support a basic income and

1069
00:53:30,000 --> 00:53:33,080
Speaker 1: stuff like that, uh, universal health care and shit, so

1070
00:53:33,160 --> 00:53:36,400
Speaker 1: that these fears are at least, you know, less involved with.

1071
00:53:36,480 --> 00:53:38,400
Speaker 1: Like maybe I will wind up like dying on the

1072
00:53:38,440 --> 00:53:43,120
Speaker 1: street if my ability to write shit goes away. Scott,

1073
00:53:43,160 --> 00:53:46,280
Speaker 1: I think takes pivots to like, I need to find

1074
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:51,160
Speaker 1: an explanation for how I'm succeed I've succeeded because I've

1075
00:53:51,200 --> 00:53:54,399
Speaker 1: hacked reality because then it's something that I can keep

1076
00:53:54,480 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 1: doing and it won't ever fall apart on me. Right, Yeah,

1077
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,799
Speaker 1: Like that's I think, what why he winds up kind

1078
00:54:00,840 --> 00:54:03,279
Speaker 1: of falling for this stuff? But again, I've gotten ahead

1079
00:54:03,320 --> 00:54:07,000
Speaker 1: of myself. But you know who's ahead of everything and everyone?

1080
00:54:08,760 --> 00:54:11,040
Speaker 2: I would assume, Well, I can't make the joke your

1081
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:14,000
Speaker 2: knowledge the child Clington Island jokes they wore, are you No?

1082
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:18,239
Speaker 1: No, no, not not after the FBI busted them. U No, yeah, no,

1083
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:19,719
Speaker 1: we'll get in trouble again.

1084
00:54:19,920 --> 00:54:24,960
Speaker 2: Okay, sorry. I assume it is the Fine Conveyors of

1085
00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:27,960
Speaker 2: Products and Services sponsored this program.

1086
00:54:28,920 --> 00:54:32,920
Speaker 1: Yep, that's that's wompst we we have on now, so

1087
00:54:33,000 --> 00:54:42,279
Speaker 1: here we go. Oh we are b a K.

1088
00:54:43,320 --> 00:54:45,600
Speaker 2: The best product service I have ever been doing.

1089
00:54:45,719 --> 00:54:49,600
Speaker 1: I know I I for one, my nipples are hard

1090
00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:54,040
Speaker 1: as diamonds right now. So for years Scott put away

1091
00:54:54,080 --> 00:54:57,279
Speaker 1: his artistic ambitions and focused on his career. He got

1092
00:54:57,320 --> 00:55:00,120
Speaker 1: an NBA at u C Berkeley while he's still working

1093
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:03,160
Speaker 1: for this bank, even though an evening like and it's

1094
00:55:03,200 --> 00:55:05,280
Speaker 1: through like his bank actually pays for him to start

1095
00:55:05,280 --> 00:55:09,480
Speaker 1: the programs would actually do that for you. Yeah, stuff

1096
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:12,840
Speaker 1: like that happened. He claims he did really well. And

1097
00:55:12,920 --> 00:55:15,480
Speaker 1: he claims that, but he also claims that, like, I

1098
00:55:15,560 --> 00:55:18,640
Speaker 1: thought that starting this program would give me more opportunities

1099
00:55:18,640 --> 00:55:21,360
Speaker 1: for getting promoted, but alas this was not to be.

1100
00:55:21,600 --> 00:55:23,399
Speaker 1: And here's what he writes. In two thousand and eight,

1101
00:55:24,760 --> 00:55:27,960
Speaker 1: the media had recently discovered that my employer had virtually

1102
00:55:28,000 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 1: no diversity in management. When an assistant vice principal president

1103
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:34,040
Speaker 1: position opened up and I was an obvious candidate for

1104
00:55:34,080 --> 00:55:36,680
Speaker 1: the spot, my boss called me into her office. I

1105
00:55:36,719 --> 00:55:39,440
Speaker 1: was the most qualified candidate for the position, she explained,

1106
00:55:39,440 --> 00:55:41,680
Speaker 1: but because of pressure to be more diverse, there was

1107
00:55:41,760 --> 00:55:44,560
Speaker 1: no hope for another generic white male to get promoted

1108
00:55:44,560 --> 00:55:45,399
Speaker 1: anytime soon.

1109
00:55:45,719 --> 00:55:49,800
Speaker 2: Oh my fucking god, I was Yeah.

1110
00:55:48,920 --> 00:55:52,239
Speaker 1: It's so this is where we obviously, at this point

1111
00:55:52,280 --> 00:55:55,680
Speaker 1: in Scott's actual life, he's not saying shit like this, right,

1112
00:55:56,000 --> 00:55:57,680
Speaker 1: but this is from two thousand and eight when he

1113
00:55:57,719 --> 00:56:00,080
Speaker 1: makes this claim. But this is where we start to

1114
00:56:00,120 --> 00:56:03,799
Speaker 1: see like the kind of resentments that are going to

1115
00:56:03,800 --> 00:56:09,640
Speaker 1: build in him exploding into a racist tirade come from.

1116
00:56:09,840 --> 00:56:12,920
Speaker 1: And it's interesting. This is the first time Scott would

1117
00:56:12,920 --> 00:56:15,640
Speaker 1: claim to have been harmed by a diversity program, but

1118
00:56:15,719 --> 00:56:17,760
Speaker 1: he's going to claim this happens a bunch more times

1119
00:56:17,840 --> 00:56:21,080
Speaker 1: in his life. In fact, from here on, every setback

1120
00:56:21,120 --> 00:56:23,480
Speaker 1: in his career, including the failure of the dv of

1121
00:56:23,480 --> 00:56:26,840
Speaker 1: the Dilbert TV Show, is eventually blamed on the farious

1122
00:56:26,840 --> 00:56:29,839
Speaker 1: individuals wanting to hire non white people instead of him.

1123
00:56:30,239 --> 00:56:35,280
Speaker 1: And so it's worth Y's diversity. Yeah, here's a DEI

1124
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:39,399
Speaker 1: program that team. It's worth digging because he keeps doing this.

1125
00:56:39,760 --> 00:56:42,160
Speaker 1: It's worth digging into, Like how credible the claim is

1126
00:56:42,200 --> 00:56:44,560
Speaker 1: that Scott didn't get a promotion because he was a

1127
00:56:44,640 --> 00:56:47,560
Speaker 1: generic white man. So the bank he's employed by at

1128
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:50,200
Speaker 1: this point it was called Crocker National Bank, and it

1129
00:56:50,200 --> 00:56:53,000
Speaker 1: was a pretty big institution back in its heyday. In fact,

1130
00:56:53,040 --> 00:56:55,239
Speaker 1: it was one of the big four banks behind the

1131
00:56:55,280 --> 00:56:59,160
Speaker 1: construction of the first transcontinental railroad in North America. But

1132
00:56:59,239 --> 00:57:01,960
Speaker 1: during the time got worked there, it had been outgrown

1133
00:57:02,040 --> 00:57:04,520
Speaker 1: by a number of more prominent banks. For a time,

1134
00:57:04,560 --> 00:57:06,520
Speaker 1: it managed to do okay because it had you know,

1135
00:57:06,560 --> 00:57:09,480
Speaker 1: it was famous for its really good customer service. But

1136
00:57:09,560 --> 00:57:12,360
Speaker 1: this starts to fall apart in the early nineteen eighties,

1137
00:57:12,360 --> 00:57:14,200
Speaker 1: along with a lot of stuff. Right, we talk about

1138
00:57:14,239 --> 00:57:16,640
Speaker 1: this in our Jack Welch episodes. But the eighties is,

1139
00:57:16,920 --> 00:57:20,720
Speaker 1: andition to being the Reagan era, a real transitory period

1140
00:57:20,800 --> 00:57:22,520
Speaker 1: for a lot of aspects of the US economy. A

1141
00:57:22,560 --> 00:57:24,760
Speaker 1: lot of companies that had been huge in the early

1142
00:57:24,840 --> 00:57:26,080
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds fall apart.

1143
00:57:26,120 --> 00:57:26,320
Speaker 3: Then.

1144
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:29,720
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I'm old enough to remember, like just how

1145
00:57:29,880 --> 00:57:33,160
Speaker 2: stressful that was to all adults around me.

1146
00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:36,760
Speaker 1: Yeah. And in nineteen eighty one, two years before Scott

1147
00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:39,840
Speaker 1: starts his NBA, Crocker had been purchased by the British

1148
00:57:39,840 --> 00:57:43,520
Speaker 1: Midland Bank. This was not a great sign, and its

1149
00:57:43,560 --> 00:57:46,800
Speaker 1: health as an institution declined throughout the mid nineteen eighties.

1150
00:57:47,360 --> 00:57:50,680
Speaker 1: Scott claims that he was denied of promotion because of

1151
00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:55,160
Speaker 1: diversity in nineteen eighty six. That year is also the

1152
00:57:55,240 --> 00:57:59,840
Speaker 1: year that Crocker Bank collapsed. And it's interesting he acknowledges

1153
00:57:59,880 --> 00:58:01,680
Speaker 1: it in his book that like a few months after

1154
00:58:01,720 --> 00:58:03,400
Speaker 1: he quit because he quits because he doesn't get a

1155
00:58:03,440 --> 00:58:06,280
Speaker 1: promotion and moves to another company. A few months later,

1156
00:58:06,400 --> 00:58:08,160
Speaker 1: every person in his old group at the bank had

1157
00:58:08,200 --> 00:58:11,480
Speaker 1: been downsized. And the way he frames this right after

1158
00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:14,440
Speaker 1: saying that, like he'd been denied a promotion for diversity reasons,

1159
00:58:14,880 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 1: it kind of makes it look that like the firing

1160
00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:19,400
Speaker 1: of his coworkers was related that, like they did some

1161
00:58:19,560 --> 00:58:23,200
Speaker 1: purge for diversity purposes. The reality is that Crocker Bank

1162
00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:25,960
Speaker 1: fell apart, like it collapses the year that he leaves.

1163
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:28,120
Speaker 1: He does not lose out on a promotion because of

1164
00:58:28,120 --> 00:58:31,000
Speaker 1: black people. He loses out on a promotion because the

1165
00:58:31,080 --> 00:58:32,240
Speaker 1: business falls apart.

1166
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:34,360
Speaker 2: But isn't that how it usually goes? Is like, how

1167
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:37,520
Speaker 2: can I retroactively make this The thought, yes, yes, the.

1168
00:58:37,600 --> 00:58:41,360
Speaker 1: Other and that is that is exactly the way it

1169
00:58:41,560 --> 00:58:44,440
Speaker 1: that this is like that it actually happens right Like

1170
00:58:44,720 --> 00:58:46,800
Speaker 1: the reality at the time is that the bank just

1171
00:58:46,840 --> 00:58:50,800
Speaker 1: falls apart. He doesn't get a promotion, because like his job.

1172
00:58:50,600 --> 00:58:51,240
Speaker 2: It would mean nothing.

1173
00:58:51,240 --> 00:58:53,880
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have a job a month anyway, buddy, Yeah,

1174
00:58:53,960 --> 00:58:56,040
Speaker 1: and and but and and then later he kind of

1175
00:58:56,080 --> 00:58:59,360
Speaker 1: retroactively decides to blame it on diversity. He moves to

1176
00:58:59,440 --> 00:59:03,200
Speaker 1: Pacific Bell, where he finishes his MBA, and again he

1177
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:05,720
Speaker 1: hopes that because he's got this NBA, he's going to

1178
00:59:05,720 --> 00:59:09,120
Speaker 1: get promoted rapidly at Pacific Bell. And it's interesting because

1179
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:11,240
Speaker 1: when he talks about this, he frames it in a

1180
00:59:11,360 --> 00:59:14,240
Speaker 1: self deprecating way, saying he did his best to act

1181
00:59:14,360 --> 00:59:17,640
Speaker 1: like he deserved a better job, and that this act

1182
00:59:17,760 --> 00:59:19,720
Speaker 1: was convincing enough that he gets put on a short

1183
00:59:19,720 --> 00:59:22,960
Speaker 1: list for promotion. But then this happens. One day, my

1184
00:59:23,000 --> 00:59:24,880
Speaker 1: boss called me into his office and informed me that

1185
00:59:24,920 --> 00:59:27,320
Speaker 1: while I was indeed management material, the company had been

1186
00:59:27,360 --> 00:59:29,560
Speaker 1: getting a lot of bad press lately about their lack

1187
00:59:29,600 --> 00:59:30,800
Speaker 1: of diversity and management.

1188
00:59:30,800 --> 00:59:32,560
Speaker 2: It's the exact same story.

1189
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:38,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the exact same story, fucking true, Like this

1190
00:59:38,800 --> 00:59:40,920
Speaker 1: happened in that book he writes A two thousand and eight.

1191
00:59:41,000 --> 00:59:43,360
Speaker 1: These two stories are like a paragraph away from each other,

1192
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:47,480
Speaker 1: Like it's there's no subtlety that Scott is capable of.

1193
00:59:47,480 --> 00:59:50,520
Speaker 2: Here if his boss has told him that, like, he

1194
00:59:50,600 --> 00:59:52,200
Speaker 2: should be smart to say, oh, you're just making him

1195
00:59:52,200 --> 00:59:54,880
Speaker 2: a fucking excuse, and you're trying to blame someone else.

1196
00:59:54,920 --> 00:59:57,320
Speaker 2: It's it's like the hole back in the eighties. Hey,

1197
00:59:57,360 --> 01:00:00,600
Speaker 2: you know Mexico and Japan are taking her job. No,

1198
01:00:00,640 --> 01:00:03,880
Speaker 2: they're not taking our jobs. They're taking jobs are offered

1199
01:00:03,880 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 2: to them. It's just corporations are sending your jobs away.

1200
01:00:06,400 --> 01:00:11,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, it took your job. Yeah, but it's interesting. So

1201
01:00:11,320 --> 01:00:15,240
Speaker 1: Scott has this habit of like being fake self deprecating,

1202
01:00:15,320 --> 01:00:18,400
Speaker 1: like self deprecating but not really meaning it, and it

1203
01:00:18,480 --> 01:00:20,840
Speaker 1: kind of undercuts his point here because he's like, oh,

1204
01:00:20,920 --> 01:00:23,760
Speaker 1: I hoped I thought I'd tricked him into thinking I

1205
01:00:23,840 --> 01:00:26,720
Speaker 1: was the best person for this promotion. You know, they

1206
01:00:26,720 --> 01:00:28,920
Speaker 1: didn't know I was really just an idiot. And but

1207
01:00:28,960 --> 01:00:31,120
Speaker 1: then also I didn't get the job because of diversity.

1208
01:00:31,120 --> 01:00:33,400
Speaker 1: He's like, well, maybe you just weren't qualified for the job, Scott,

1209
01:00:33,680 --> 01:00:34,480
Speaker 1: did you ever think of that?

1210
01:00:35,120 --> 01:00:37,920
Speaker 2: Yeah?

1211
01:00:38,000 --> 01:00:41,080
Speaker 1: At any rate, his response to not getting this promotion

1212
01:00:41,240 --> 01:00:44,440
Speaker 1: that he apparently felt he deserved was to decide to

1213
01:00:44,480 --> 01:00:49,040
Speaker 1: stop putting in work at his job beyond the bare minimum. Now, this,

1214
01:00:49,240 --> 01:00:51,640
Speaker 1: he says, wound up being key to his future success

1215
01:00:51,720 --> 01:00:53,880
Speaker 1: because now that he's got all this free time, he

1216
01:00:54,000 --> 01:00:57,600
Speaker 1: starts drawing comics again, and he decides to start publishing them.

1217
01:00:58,280 --> 01:00:59,920
Speaker 1: He has no idea how to do this, so he's

1218
01:01:00,040 --> 01:01:03,600
Speaker 1: starts writing affirmations again. Now I don't think the affirmations

1219
01:01:03,640 --> 01:01:06,040
Speaker 1: do much here, but what does do something is that

1220
01:01:06,080 --> 01:01:09,560
Speaker 1: Scott also takes a practical step towards making his cartoon

1221
01:01:09,640 --> 01:01:12,440
Speaker 1: dreams of reality. He's watching TV one day and he

1222
01:01:12,480 --> 01:01:15,120
Speaker 1: comes across a show on a local channel by a

1223
01:01:15,160 --> 01:01:18,680
Speaker 1: cartoonist named Jack Cassidy that's like about how to draw

1224
01:01:18,760 --> 01:01:22,840
Speaker 1: cartoons and like how the industry works. Scott sees this

1225
01:01:22,920 --> 01:01:26,080
Speaker 1: kind of by chance. He finds Jack's mailing address and

1226
01:01:26,120 --> 01:01:27,840
Speaker 1: he writes him a letter being like, Hey, I want

1227
01:01:27,880 --> 01:01:30,040
Speaker 1: to be a cartoonist. How do I start? And he

1228
01:01:30,200 --> 01:01:33,880
Speaker 1: encloses some of his comics. And I looked into Jack

1229
01:01:33,920 --> 01:01:36,520
Speaker 1: Cassidy for this because he's key to Scott's career and

1230
01:01:36,520 --> 01:01:39,520
Speaker 1: he's actually a pretty interesting guy. He's still alive, or

1231
01:01:39,520 --> 01:01:41,800
Speaker 1: at least according to the Internet, he has been teaching

1232
01:01:41,840 --> 01:01:46,840
Speaker 1: cartooning and publishing cartoons for decades and decades at this point,

1233
01:01:47,000 --> 01:01:50,080
Speaker 1: and prior to being a cartoonist and a cartoon instructor.

1234
01:01:50,360 --> 01:01:54,240
Speaker 1: He spent twenty three years in Army Special Forces, which

1235
01:01:54,280 --> 01:01:57,360
Speaker 1: is I think not the most common cartoonist background.

1236
01:01:57,520 --> 01:02:01,400
Speaker 2: That is not that is shit. I mean there's a

1237
01:02:01,440 --> 01:02:03,439
Speaker 2: lot of cartoonists who have been the military, and there's

1238
01:02:03,440 --> 01:02:05,760
Speaker 2: a lot of military cartoonists. That's a good thing.

1239
01:02:05,880 --> 01:02:09,080
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, twenty three years in special forces is

1240
01:02:09,200 --> 01:02:12,800
Speaker 1: a pretty unique background for a cartoon instructor. Guy anyway,

1241
01:02:12,840 --> 01:02:15,840
Speaker 1: interesting dude, and he also he's like a really nice

1242
01:02:15,920 --> 01:02:19,120
Speaker 1: person because Scott sends him this letter kind of sight unseen,

1243
01:02:19,680 --> 01:02:23,800
Speaker 1: and he responds. Casty responds with like this very detailed

1244
01:02:23,880 --> 01:02:26,400
Speaker 1: letter being like, here are books that you should buy

1245
01:02:26,440 --> 01:02:28,320
Speaker 1: that talk about how the industry works and how to

1246
01:02:28,360 --> 01:02:31,840
Speaker 1: submit cartoons and to submit packages to different syndicates, a

1247
01:02:32,000 --> 01:02:34,240
Speaker 1: very like the best advice you could basically get.

1248
01:02:35,440 --> 01:02:38,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot of cartoons I've met, unfortunately, yeah, will

1249
01:02:38,960 --> 01:02:39,680
Speaker 2: not do that.

1250
01:02:40,280 --> 01:02:44,920
Speaker 1: Yeah. You get the feeling that Jack legitimately loves the

1251
01:02:45,000 --> 01:02:48,200
Speaker 1: field and wants there to be more people making cartoons.

1252
01:02:48,560 --> 01:02:49,160
Speaker 2: I like that.

1253
01:02:49,240 --> 01:02:51,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, great, great, yeah, great guy, as far as I

1254
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:56,280
Speaker 1: can for the person. Now, that's yeah, that is the

1255
01:02:56,320 --> 01:02:59,000
Speaker 1: downside of encouraging people as some of them might be

1256
01:02:59,120 --> 01:03:03,320
Speaker 1: Scott Adams. But Scott takes his advice. He puts together

1257
01:03:03,480 --> 01:03:06,120
Speaker 1: like a packet of cartoons and he submits them for

1258
01:03:06,160 --> 01:03:10,040
Speaker 1: publication at various places, and he gets rejected. Nobody takes

1259
01:03:10,040 --> 01:03:12,600
Speaker 1: his first packet, and again this convinces him to give

1260
01:03:12,680 --> 01:03:14,120
Speaker 1: up and stop drawing for a while.

1261
01:03:14,440 --> 01:03:15,160
Speaker 2: That's just so.

1262
01:03:16,720 --> 01:03:17,680
Speaker 1: Very normal story.

1263
01:03:17,840 --> 01:03:19,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of people understand that.

1264
01:03:20,000 --> 01:03:24,600
Speaker 2: Like syndicates, even now, as newspapers are receiving get thousands

1265
01:03:24,680 --> 01:03:28,880
Speaker 2: upon thousands upon thousands of submissions, and I can't take

1266
01:03:28,960 --> 01:03:29,840
Speaker 2: more than a handful.

1267
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:33,400
Speaker 1: No, And what's interesting to me here is that Jack

1268
01:03:33,480 --> 01:03:38,560
Speaker 1: Cassidy understands this, and so a year after Scott mails

1269
01:03:38,640 --> 01:03:41,400
Speaker 1: him and he sends back this response out of the blue,

1270
01:03:41,440 --> 01:03:45,760
Speaker 1: without being prompted. Jackson Scott another letter and he's like, hey, Scott,

1271
01:03:45,840 --> 01:03:47,840
Speaker 1: I was just thinking about you the other day. I

1272
01:03:47,880 --> 01:03:49,800
Speaker 1: wanted to tell you again. You know, I thought you

1273
01:03:49,920 --> 01:03:52,160
Speaker 1: were talented, and I thought your packet was really good.

1274
01:03:52,160 --> 01:03:54,360
Speaker 1: And I hope that you're still trying to get published.

1275
01:03:55,920 --> 01:03:59,680
Speaker 1: We die, Yes, such a nice thing, decent thing to do.

1276
01:04:00,120 --> 01:04:01,720
Speaker 2: He is having the best life.

1277
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:04,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, he seems to still be active and stuff.

1278
01:04:04,440 --> 01:04:07,520
Speaker 1: He's written a bunch of like books on cartooning. Awesome,

1279
01:04:07,840 --> 01:04:10,800
Speaker 1: a really nice thing to do, and it encourages Scott

1280
01:04:10,840 --> 01:04:14,560
Speaker 1: to give it another shot. Yeah yeah, I mean, look,

1281
01:04:14,640 --> 01:04:18,560
Speaker 1: we can't. This is again the downside of encouraging people.

1282
01:04:18,880 --> 01:04:20,959
Speaker 1: It's like, if you're a if you're a really good

1283
01:04:21,040 --> 01:04:25,520
Speaker 1: math teacher, you're going to encourage a lot of kids

1284
01:04:25,560 --> 01:04:28,720
Speaker 1: who might otherwise have not liked math to maybe understand

1285
01:04:28,760 --> 01:04:31,160
Speaker 1: the world on a deeper level. And that's lovely. You

1286
01:04:31,280 --> 01:04:34,600
Speaker 1: might also be responsible for the next Adam Baum. Like

1287
01:04:35,240 --> 01:04:42,560
Speaker 1: you can't know, you can't know. You encourage people's speaking. Yeah, exactly.

1288
01:04:44,880 --> 01:04:49,520
Speaker 1: Yeah tragic. So h Scott takes his advice. He submits

1289
01:04:49,560 --> 01:04:53,080
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff and yeah. Quote. During this period,

1290
01:04:53,120 --> 01:04:55,560
Speaker 1: I was drawing pre Dilbert and pre Dogbert comics on

1291
01:04:55,600 --> 01:04:58,400
Speaker 1: the whiteboard in my cubicle, complete with witty captions about

1292
01:04:58,400 --> 01:05:02,080
Speaker 1: workplace happenings. Cartoon naturally draw attention, and soon my coworkers

1293
01:05:02,080 --> 01:05:04,760
Speaker 1: were asking the names of my two regular characters. I

1294
01:05:04,760 --> 01:05:06,600
Speaker 1: didn't have names for them, so I held a name

1295
01:05:06,680 --> 01:05:09,600
Speaker 1: the Nerd Contest on my whiteboard. My coworkers would trickle

1296
01:05:09,640 --> 01:05:11,720
Speaker 1: in during the day and write their ideas for names.

1297
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:14,720
Speaker 1: The suggestions were traditional nerd sounding names. None of them

1298
01:05:14,720 --> 01:05:17,240
Speaker 1: stood out until one day my ex boss, Mike Goodwin

1299
01:05:17,320 --> 01:05:20,400
Speaker 1: walked in, picked up a dry erase marker and wrote, Dilbert.

1300
01:05:20,920 --> 01:05:22,680
Speaker 1: This was one of those moments where you feel as

1301
01:05:22,680 --> 01:05:25,440
Speaker 1: if you can see the future. I ended the contest immediately.

1302
01:05:25,480 --> 01:05:27,760
Speaker 1: It felt as though I was learning the character's name,

1303
01:05:27,840 --> 01:05:30,560
Speaker 1: not naming him. The name Dilbert fit him so perfectly.

1304
01:05:30,600 --> 01:05:32,560
Speaker 1: I literally got a chill.

1305
01:05:32,600 --> 01:05:36,960
Speaker 2: How glory was that fucking office that the Scott's chemical on.

1306
01:05:37,240 --> 01:05:41,000
Speaker 1: It does seem like a waking nightmare to have that job, even.

1307
01:05:40,800 --> 01:05:44,640
Speaker 2: Like the boss is like, shit, I hate me here too, Yeah, Gilbert.

1308
01:05:44,160 --> 01:05:47,120
Speaker 1: Dilbert Now In a Q and A on Reddit some

1309
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:50,000
Speaker 1: years later, Scott would elaborate that the boss who suggested

1310
01:05:50,040 --> 01:05:52,560
Speaker 1: Dilbert as a name had learned the name from a

1311
01:05:52,600 --> 01:05:56,040
Speaker 1: World War II era comic published by the Navy. Dilbert

1312
01:05:56,080 --> 01:05:58,959
Speaker 1: was like the the example bad pilot where they would

1313
01:05:58,960 --> 01:06:00,919
Speaker 1: be like, don't do what dil it does. Look he's

1314
01:06:00,920 --> 01:06:03,760
Speaker 1: done this bad thing and it caused this problem, and

1315
01:06:03,840 --> 01:06:06,200
Speaker 1: it's actually this is still a thing. There exists to

1316
01:06:06,240 --> 01:06:10,400
Speaker 1: this day a Navy pilot training device called the Dilbert Dunker,

1317
01:06:11,200 --> 01:06:14,680
Speaker 1: which is used. Yeah, it's this weird contraption that they

1318
01:06:14,760 --> 01:06:17,640
Speaker 1: used to train jet pilots and helicopter pilots in escaping

1319
01:06:17,680 --> 01:06:20,800
Speaker 1: a submerged craft in the space saying, don't be this

1320
01:06:20,880 --> 01:06:24,320
Speaker 1: shitty employee. Yeah, yeah, don't you can work. Yeah, it's

1321
01:06:24,400 --> 01:06:25,920
Speaker 1: kind of it's kind of yeah, don't don't. I think

1322
01:06:25,920 --> 01:06:27,880
Speaker 1: it's more of a safety thing for the Navy, where

1323
01:06:27,880 --> 01:06:30,840
Speaker 1: it's like, don't do this stuff that will get you

1324
01:06:30,960 --> 01:06:33,520
Speaker 1: killed because look at you know, and Dilbert's the example.

1325
01:06:33,800 --> 01:06:36,040
Speaker 1: I'm sure his boss just had the name in his

1326
01:06:36,120 --> 01:06:38,360
Speaker 1: head from his time in you know, the Navy or

1327
01:06:38,400 --> 01:06:42,200
Speaker 1: something like that. But whatever, you know. The important thing

1328
01:06:42,240 --> 01:06:44,880
Speaker 1: about this is that the Navy had an opportunity to

1329
01:06:44,960 --> 01:06:47,800
Speaker 1: sue Scott Adams and save us all from Dilbert forever,

1330
01:06:48,080 --> 01:06:50,840
Speaker 1: and they failed at their duty to protect this country.

1331
01:06:50,920 --> 01:06:53,160
Speaker 2: Why we need to defund there. No, no, not.

1332
01:06:55,120 --> 01:06:57,160
Speaker 1: People, No, no, no, it's fine.

1333
01:06:57,160 --> 01:07:00,840
Speaker 2: They're just it's just a nameeetheart And they've been like

1334
01:07:01,600 --> 01:07:04,240
Speaker 2: they get tao by the Navy. Don't mean sho.

1335
01:07:05,960 --> 01:07:08,400
Speaker 1: Now I'm I'm I'm going after him for this. This

1336
01:07:08,480 --> 01:07:11,320
Speaker 1: is this is the worst Navy failure since Pearl Harbor.

1337
01:07:11,720 --> 01:07:17,120
Speaker 2: Oh my fucking gun. Okay, let's look back away from you.

1338
01:07:17,120 --> 01:07:18,000
Speaker 2: You take all of that.

1339
01:07:18,160 --> 01:07:23,680
Speaker 1: Fuck No, no, no, it's it's fine. Bring it. Bring

1340
01:07:23,680 --> 01:07:26,760
Speaker 1: it on, navy. I'm on land. You can't do ship.

1341
01:07:29,080 --> 01:07:33,480
Speaker 2: He's just like dragging a rowboat down the highway.

1342
01:07:33,840 --> 01:07:37,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, sitting in sitting in their aircraft carrier off the

1343
01:07:37,440 --> 01:07:41,920
Speaker 1: course coast of Oregon, just screaming, you're not allowed on

1344
01:07:41,960 --> 01:07:44,800
Speaker 1: the dirt, motherfucker. Anyway, whatever Scott Adams back to him.

1345
01:07:45,160 --> 01:07:48,960
Speaker 1: So Scott's initial comics they're fine, Like I don't know,

1346
01:07:49,000 --> 01:07:53,200
Speaker 1: they're like they're not uh great or anything. Early Dilbert

1347
01:07:53,320 --> 01:07:55,760
Speaker 1: is not based around office humor, like the character is

1348
01:07:55,800 --> 01:07:58,520
Speaker 1: an engineer. But that's kind of like what it is.

1349
01:07:58,560 --> 01:08:00,880
Speaker 1: What's interesting to me is that like his art, his

1350
01:08:00,960 --> 01:08:04,320
Speaker 1: early art is definitely like a downgrade from the stuff

1351
01:08:04,320 --> 01:08:06,560
Speaker 1: he was drawing as a kid, because it's also a

1352
01:08:06,560 --> 01:08:09,920
Speaker 1: lot rougher than it's gonna be really though, it's it's

1353
01:08:09,960 --> 01:08:13,400
Speaker 1: it's fine, except for his his letterings dog shit, which

1354
01:08:13,440 --> 01:08:14,960
Speaker 1: is kind of one of the feedbacks he gets from

1355
01:08:15,000 --> 01:08:18,040
Speaker 1: the syndicate Sophi'll show you one of his early comics here.

1356
01:08:18,200 --> 01:08:20,320
Speaker 1: What's interesting to me, is that like in this packet,

1357
01:08:20,360 --> 01:08:23,479
Speaker 1: because he provides in that book some of his first packet.

1358
01:08:23,880 --> 01:08:26,800
Speaker 1: There's some like a couple of political strips and they're

1359
01:08:26,840 --> 01:08:29,200
Speaker 1: not conservative, Like the one that we're looking at here

1360
01:08:29,280 --> 01:08:31,880
Speaker 1: is kind of an anti Reagan one making fun of

1361
01:08:31,960 --> 01:08:36,880
Speaker 1: like the Star Wars missile defense system, like which is

1362
01:08:36,880 --> 01:08:39,519
Speaker 1: his Yeah, it's terrible letters.

1363
01:08:39,600 --> 01:08:42,240
Speaker 2: That's weekly newspaper comic lettering.

1364
01:08:43,040 --> 01:08:49,559
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, look, everybody goes through a period here either.

1365
01:08:49,600 --> 01:08:51,720
Speaker 2: I can't say too much, but Jesus.

1366
01:08:51,560 --> 01:08:53,639
Speaker 1: It is compelling to me that like, yeah, oh, early

1367
01:08:53,680 --> 01:08:55,880
Speaker 1: on he's making fun of like Reagan and the waste

1368
01:08:55,920 --> 01:08:58,400
Speaker 1: of the Star Wars system. That's interesting. That's that's going

1369
01:08:58,840 --> 01:09:02,120
Speaker 1: kind of part there's a there's a surprise reveal coming

1370
01:09:02,200 --> 01:09:05,599
Speaker 1: up here, and it's it's that Scott has uh has

1371
01:09:05,600 --> 01:09:09,360
Speaker 1: suffered some like kind of sudden shifts in his personality

1372
01:09:09,439 --> 01:09:13,800
Speaker 1: that this is evidence of. So Scott's pretty bad at

1373
01:09:13,880 --> 01:09:17,160
Speaker 1: naming his characters. To start, his first pick for Dogbrit's

1374
01:09:17,200 --> 01:09:23,720
Speaker 1: name is dill Dog. He changes this before submitting his passions.

1375
01:09:24,240 --> 01:09:26,839
Speaker 1: That is, if you're if the name of your character

1376
01:09:27,000 --> 01:09:29,680
Speaker 1: is just dildo with an extra letter stuck on it,

1377
01:09:29,720 --> 01:09:36,160
Speaker 1: that is probably not. I couldn't agree more ry save

1378
01:09:36,320 --> 01:09:38,000
Speaker 1: Dill Dog, Jill Dog is.

1379
01:09:37,920 --> 01:09:40,840
Speaker 2: Going and something positive because will.

1380
01:09:42,000 --> 01:09:44,040
Speaker 1: He can't stop you. He can't stop you.

1381
01:09:45,040 --> 01:09:48,439
Speaker 2: Oh no heirst media can stop me from a love.

1382
01:09:49,120 --> 01:09:52,599
Speaker 1: Oh no, no no, yeah, I meant for for for something. Yeah,

1383
01:09:53,000 --> 01:09:53,960
Speaker 1: he has no right.

1384
01:09:54,160 --> 01:09:58,720
Speaker 2: God damn it. So, oh my Jesus Christ, how did that?

1385
01:09:59,840 --> 01:10:04,559
Speaker 1: Very very funny, very funny? Like what the fuck that is?

1386
01:10:04,600 --> 01:10:07,960
Speaker 1: That part's unclear with a with old Scott, But but

1387
01:10:08,240 --> 01:10:10,120
Speaker 1: we'll talk. He's going to there's gonna be some weird

1388
01:10:10,200 --> 01:10:11,840
Speaker 1: like in cell adjacent stuff.

1389
01:10:11,840 --> 01:10:14,440
Speaker 2: Although he gets married a few times remotely.

1390
01:10:14,880 --> 01:10:19,400
Speaker 1: So by nineteen eighty eight, he's gotten his his package

1391
01:10:19,520 --> 01:10:23,559
Speaker 1: polished enough. That's I didn't mean it that way. That's

1392
01:10:23,600 --> 01:10:28,800
Speaker 1: that's that's to send off Gilbert Comics to a syndicate. Now, shockingly,

1393
01:10:29,320 --> 01:10:32,200
Speaker 1: this isn't again. You just talked about how many submissions

1394
01:10:32,240 --> 01:10:35,960
Speaker 1: these people get. One of these syndicates responds, He gets

1395
01:10:35,960 --> 01:10:39,240
Speaker 1: a bunch of rejections, and then somebody responds saying they're interested,

1396
01:10:39,720 --> 01:10:42,360
Speaker 1: and it's Scott. When he sees the syndicate that said

1397
01:10:42,400 --> 01:10:44,840
Speaker 1: yes to him, has no idea who they are, and

1398
01:10:44,880 --> 01:10:47,120
Speaker 1: like when he gets on the phone with the representative

1399
01:10:47,200 --> 01:10:50,400
Speaker 1: is like, yeah, who are you guys? Now, I'm telling

1400
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:55,200
Speaker 1: you this basic research due Well, this is particularly galling

1401
01:10:55,240 --> 01:10:58,559
Speaker 1: because the syndicate who responds that he has never heard

1402
01:10:58,560 --> 01:11:00,240
Speaker 1: of is United Media.

1403
01:11:00,360 --> 01:11:05,559
Speaker 4: There was they published Peanuts, Like yeah, like I knew

1404
01:11:05,640 --> 01:11:08,880
Speaker 4: who United Media was as a kid in the mid nineties,

1405
01:11:09,000 --> 01:11:12,600
Speaker 4: just because like I'd read a bunch of books by cartoonists.

1406
01:11:11,840 --> 01:11:14,519
Speaker 2: Like everyone Features at the point, I think they were.

1407
01:11:14,479 --> 01:11:17,040
Speaker 1: United Features by that point. It's it's the one that

1408
01:11:17,120 --> 01:11:20,320
Speaker 1: does Peanuts and they did Garfield as well, and Garfield. Yeah,

1409
01:11:20,320 --> 01:11:25,400
Speaker 1: they're massive. So this is like definitely the luckiest break

1410
01:11:25,600 --> 01:11:27,679
Speaker 1: this man has ever had in his entire life.

1411
01:11:28,000 --> 01:11:31,240
Speaker 2: Literally, he got the top of at the time, the

1412
01:11:31,600 --> 01:11:35,480
Speaker 2: number one break. Who the fuck are you? Assholes?

1413
01:11:35,640 --> 01:11:37,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I will say to his credit when he

1414
01:11:37,720 --> 01:11:39,719
Speaker 1: gets signed on, he does send a thank you letter

1415
01:11:39,760 --> 01:11:40,639
Speaker 1: to Jack Cassidy.

1416
01:11:42,000 --> 01:11:48,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is the first thing that it sounds

1417
01:11:49,000 --> 01:11:50,639
Speaker 2: like he saw about the person so far.

1418
01:11:50,840 --> 01:11:54,320
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things. I it's it's

1419
01:11:54,439 --> 01:11:57,240
Speaker 1: unfortunate for us all that Scott wound up having the

1420
01:11:57,320 --> 01:12:00,280
Speaker 1: career that he had. I do hope Jack cass City

1421
01:12:00,320 --> 01:12:02,080
Speaker 1: feels good about what he did. Because that was a

1422
01:12:02,160 --> 01:12:03,680
Speaker 1: legitimately very nice thing to do.

1423
01:12:04,240 --> 01:12:07,640
Speaker 2: Again, like, yeah, I agree with him. I like the

1424
01:12:07,680 --> 01:12:11,680
Speaker 2: idea of more cartoonists. Yeah, but there's that you cannot hear,

1425
01:12:11,840 --> 01:12:12,639
Speaker 2: ah won't.

1426
01:12:13,200 --> 01:12:15,280
Speaker 1: But what if they become Scott.

1427
01:12:15,000 --> 01:12:20,720
Speaker 2: Adams, gmc eines or alcaf those three are always with

1428
01:12:20,840 --> 01:12:22,640
Speaker 2: bullets in the chamber waiting to go off.

1429
01:12:22,720 --> 01:12:27,960
Speaker 1: That's that's right, Yeah, tragic, So here we go. He

1430
01:12:28,040 --> 01:12:32,000
Speaker 1: gets signed, Dilbert starts out. By nineteen ninety, it's in

1431
01:12:32,080 --> 01:12:34,840
Speaker 1: fifty papers. By nineteen ninety one, it hits one hundred.

1432
01:12:35,280 --> 01:12:38,000
Speaker 1: That sounds like a lot today because there are like

1433
01:12:38,040 --> 01:12:41,519
Speaker 1: maybe thirty newspapers left in the country and most of

1434
01:12:41,520 --> 01:12:46,719
Speaker 1: them are just SEO aggregators. But back in nineteen ninety, yeah,

1435
01:12:46,760 --> 01:12:50,320
Speaker 1: that's not like the big comic strips like Fucking Calvin

1436
01:12:50,360 --> 01:12:53,240
Speaker 1: and hobbsit chit are in like two thousand papers, right,

1437
01:12:54,320 --> 01:12:56,720
Speaker 1: and it's one of those things. Fifty to one hundred newspapers.

1438
01:12:57,040 --> 01:12:59,720
Speaker 1: You might make like a couple of grand a year

1439
01:13:00,040 --> 01:13:02,040
Speaker 1: doing that. You're not gonna make all that much money, right,

1440
01:13:02,160 --> 01:13:04,200
Speaker 1: It's like it's not a bad, like little side income.

1441
01:13:04,479 --> 01:13:06,519
Speaker 1: But it is not enough for Scott to quit his

1442
01:13:06,520 --> 01:13:07,439
Speaker 1: his day job right.

1443
01:13:07,360 --> 01:13:09,680
Speaker 2: At that point, like it's it's only gotten worse. I'm

1444
01:13:09,720 --> 01:13:14,600
Speaker 2: sad to say. As the newspapers, it's generally most cartoonists

1445
01:13:14,640 --> 01:13:18,439
Speaker 2: I have met, unless they're like doing commics like Blondie

1446
01:13:18,520 --> 01:13:21,439
Speaker 2: or something really cute like legacy comics. I've been around

1447
01:13:21,439 --> 01:13:25,360
Speaker 2: for a long time. Are Garfield your house? You have

1448
01:13:25,439 --> 01:13:27,760
Speaker 2: a second job or this is your second job, but

1449
01:13:27,920 --> 01:13:29,360
Speaker 2: this is a main job you do.

1450
01:13:30,040 --> 01:13:33,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's that's the situation that Scott's in. And

1451
01:13:33,520 --> 01:13:36,280
Speaker 1: this is a thing like I'm sure most cartoonists who

1452
01:13:36,280 --> 01:13:40,519
Speaker 1: succeed have this period where he's he's doing five comics

1453
01:13:40,520 --> 01:13:42,559
Speaker 1: a week, which is a I mean, anyone who's ever

1454
01:13:42,720 --> 01:13:44,880
Speaker 1: done that grind, I'm sure as you'll say, that's a

1455
01:13:45,000 --> 01:13:47,080
Speaker 1: hell of a gig like that, that is work.

1456
01:13:48,240 --> 01:13:50,120
Speaker 2: He's doing five or six? Was he doing the Mondays

1457
01:13:50,120 --> 01:13:50,679
Speaker 2: for Saturday?

1458
01:13:51,040 --> 01:13:53,240
Speaker 1: I think he's doing just Monday through Saturday, but it

1459
01:13:53,280 --> 01:13:53,880
Speaker 1: might actually be.

1460
01:13:55,960 --> 01:13:56,360
Speaker 2: Sunday.

1461
01:13:57,080 --> 01:14:00,799
Speaker 1: And then he's also he's doing in addition to doing Dilbert,

1462
01:14:00,840 --> 01:14:03,680
Speaker 1: he's also working like a full time gig. Yeah, that

1463
01:14:05,160 --> 01:14:09,960
Speaker 1: is he is hard, running himself pretty ragged, and he's

1464
01:14:10,040 --> 01:14:13,280
Speaker 1: kind of he's getting frustrated because three four years go

1465
01:14:13,360 --> 01:14:16,280
Speaker 1: by and Dilbert's not really a big deal and he's

1466
01:14:16,320 --> 01:14:18,600
Speaker 1: not making that much money out it's kind of exhausting,

1467
01:14:18,640 --> 01:14:20,720
Speaker 1: and he's starting to worry that, like, is this something

1468
01:14:20,800 --> 01:14:22,680
Speaker 1: that's never going to turn into anything more than a

1469
01:14:22,720 --> 01:14:25,559
Speaker 1: side gig for me? And so it's during this period

1470
01:14:25,640 --> 01:14:27,880
Speaker 1: that he makes a decision that's going to probably wind

1471
01:14:27,960 --> 01:14:31,040
Speaker 1: up being the actual smartest thing he ever did, which

1472
01:14:31,120 --> 01:14:34,080
Speaker 1: is Scott, being kind of a nerd, has gotten interested

1473
01:14:34,120 --> 01:14:37,800
Speaker 1: in the Internet before most people, and so, in like

1474
01:14:38,320 --> 01:14:40,800
Speaker 1: I think it's something like nineteen ninety two or ninety three,

1475
01:14:41,120 --> 01:14:45,920
Speaker 1: he starts sticking his AOL address on his cartoons and

1476
01:14:46,040 --> 01:14:49,280
Speaker 1: this lets his readers email him with ideas for the

1477
01:14:49,320 --> 01:14:51,920
Speaker 1: strip and requests for more of the stuff that they like,

1478
01:14:52,360 --> 01:14:55,160
Speaker 1: and he notices all of the people reaching out to me,

1479
01:14:55,600 --> 01:14:58,240
Speaker 1: like the comic strips I do that are like office humor.

1480
01:14:58,680 --> 01:15:02,280
Speaker 1: Maybe I should refocus the comic around just sort of

1481
01:15:02,280 --> 01:15:06,080
Speaker 1: office jokes, and so he does. In nineteen ninety four,

1482
01:15:06,120 --> 01:15:08,920
Speaker 1: he publishes his first book of cartoons, and it sells

1483
01:15:08,920 --> 01:15:11,680
Speaker 1: well enough that Dilbert's now in four hundred newspapers, and

1484
01:15:11,720 --> 01:15:13,840
Speaker 1: the comic starts to hit critical mass right as a

1485
01:15:13,880 --> 01:15:17,280
Speaker 1: few other things happen that Scott had nothing to do with.

1486
01:15:17,800 --> 01:15:20,400
Speaker 1: One of them is that the early nineties are a

1487
01:15:20,439 --> 01:15:22,960
Speaker 1: period in which everyone else on Wall Street is following

1488
01:15:22,960 --> 01:15:26,400
Speaker 1: in Jack Welch's footsteps. They're firing huge chunks of their

1489
01:15:26,439 --> 01:15:29,439
Speaker 1: workforce to pump up the stock price. Layoffs are this

1490
01:15:29,600 --> 01:15:33,920
Speaker 1: massive thing, and also the dot com boom is just

1491
01:15:34,200 --> 01:15:37,720
Speaker 1: starting to kick off, right, Yeah, And this leads to

1492
01:15:37,800 --> 01:15:40,280
Speaker 1: in addition to making a lot of money for some people,

1493
01:15:40,520 --> 01:15:42,760
Speaker 1: it leads to a bunch of the dumbest ideas for

1494
01:15:42,840 --> 01:15:45,400
Speaker 1: companies that have ever existed, right, a lot of real

1495
01:15:45,600 --> 01:15:47,559
Speaker 1: stupid businesses starting the mid now.

1496
01:15:47,600 --> 01:15:51,000
Speaker 2: We are definitely a lot of I was becoming an

1497
01:15:50,920 --> 01:15:53,519
Speaker 2: adult at this point in time. Yeah, getting on the web.

1498
01:15:53,560 --> 01:15:55,920
Speaker 2: It's like, why the fuck do you need that? Who

1499
01:15:55,960 --> 01:15:57,120
Speaker 2: is the market?

1500
01:15:57,640 --> 01:16:00,599
Speaker 1: And so, because while all this is happening, he's getting

1501
01:16:00,640 --> 01:16:03,519
Speaker 1: feedback from workers who like his comics and are dealing

1502
01:16:03,560 --> 01:16:06,200
Speaker 1: with these irritations in their jobs, and they're like, hey,

1503
01:16:06,280 --> 01:16:08,759
Speaker 1: you should do a comic about you know, the layoffs

1504
01:16:08,760 --> 01:16:10,120
Speaker 1: that just hit this coming. You should do a comic

1505
01:16:10,120 --> 01:16:13,280
Speaker 1: about this really dumb you know tech idea, Right, And

1506
01:16:13,360 --> 01:16:15,519
Speaker 1: so he starts doing all this stuff, and it causes

1507
01:16:15,600 --> 01:16:17,880
Speaker 1: him to kind of go a very early equivalent of

1508
01:16:18,040 --> 01:16:25,240
Speaker 1: viral with a lot of workers. Right, yeah, I mean no, yeah, exactly.

1509
01:16:25,080 --> 01:16:27,920
Speaker 2: It just was and blonding. Yeah, Dagwood has office, but

1510
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:31,519
Speaker 2: we don't really even know what kind of office Dagwood works,

1511
01:16:31,680 --> 01:16:32,200
Speaker 2: and we just.

1512
01:16:32,360 --> 01:16:37,679
Speaker 1: I assume some sort of sandwich related job. So early

1513
01:16:37,720 --> 01:16:41,280
Speaker 1: Dilbert cartoons mock incompetent managers and all that kind of stuff.

1514
01:16:41,760 --> 01:16:45,080
Speaker 1: Scott notes, quote Dilbert became shorthand for bad management, oppressed

1515
01:16:45,120 --> 01:16:48,400
Speaker 1: cubicle workers in high tech life. Readers imbued Dilbert with

1516
01:16:48,439 --> 01:16:51,160
Speaker 1: their own meaning beyond anything I had intended for it.

1517
01:16:51,439 --> 01:16:53,000
Speaker 1: And this is kind of why a lot of people

1518
01:16:53,040 --> 01:16:56,480
Speaker 1: early on think that Dilbert is kind of anti capitalist

1519
01:16:56,560 --> 01:16:59,960
Speaker 1: or at least anti corporate. Is as Scott notes, it's

1520
01:17:00,120 --> 01:17:03,320
Speaker 1: them putting reading into the comics something he had never meant,

1521
01:17:03,360 --> 01:17:06,440
Speaker 1: because he just is sort of tapping into the frustrations

1522
01:17:06,479 --> 01:17:08,680
Speaker 1: people have, but he doesn't he's not doing he's not

1523
01:17:08,800 --> 01:17:11,800
Speaker 1: motivated to do that. His readers tell him he should

1524
01:17:11,880 --> 01:17:13,800
Speaker 1: do that, and he's smart enough to be like, oh,

1525
01:17:13,840 --> 01:17:16,800
Speaker 1: maybe I should like feed this sort of hunger within

1526
01:17:16,840 --> 01:17:20,120
Speaker 1: my audience, But it's not actually based on something that

1527
01:17:20,160 --> 01:17:23,559
Speaker 1: he super strongly believes, because again Gilbert initially had not

1528
01:17:23,640 --> 01:17:26,280
Speaker 1: been about that at all. That is kind of a

1529
01:17:26,280 --> 01:17:28,320
Speaker 1: crucial thing to recognize, and I think it's sort of

1530
01:17:28,680 --> 01:17:30,880
Speaker 1: it's part of why some people wind up being kind

1531
01:17:30,920 --> 01:17:33,280
Speaker 1: of confused by why Scott goes the way that he does.

1532
01:17:34,120 --> 01:17:37,559
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety five, Scott gets his biggest break because

1533
01:17:37,600 --> 01:17:40,920
Speaker 1: the saddest day of my entire childhood happens and Bill

1534
01:17:40,960 --> 01:17:45,080
Speaker 1: Watterson announces that Calvin and Hobbes is coming to an end. Man,

1535
01:17:45,240 --> 01:17:47,960
Speaker 1: that is the most I remember crying as a little kid.

1536
01:17:48,080 --> 01:17:51,080
Speaker 2: I think five of the year. Also that Gary Larson

1537
01:17:51,560 --> 01:17:53,519
Speaker 2: said for the second time he was doing the Far

1538
01:17:53,640 --> 01:17:54,680
Speaker 2: Side walked away, Like.

1539
01:17:54,880 --> 01:17:57,639
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's right. The day the comics died

1540
01:17:58,439 --> 01:18:00,800
Speaker 1: a rough time for lovers and.

1541
01:18:00,880 --> 01:18:04,360
Speaker 2: Then it was not a fun I know. I think

1542
01:18:04,400 --> 01:18:07,000
Speaker 2: that was also the year This is probably more for

1543
01:18:07,040 --> 01:18:10,720
Speaker 2: me than anyone else, like Floyd Norman stopped doing the

1544
01:18:10,760 --> 01:18:13,720
Speaker 2: Mickey Mouse comic. Yeah, that was not a funny year.

1545
01:18:13,840 --> 01:18:16,439
Speaker 1: No, It's one of those things, you know, that's a

1546
01:18:16,439 --> 01:18:18,640
Speaker 1: lot to take it once as a kid who likes comics.

1547
01:18:19,000 --> 01:18:21,559
Speaker 1: The older I've gotten, the more grateful I am that

1548
01:18:21,640 --> 01:18:24,320
Speaker 1: Waterson did what he did because it was kind of

1549
01:18:24,360 --> 01:18:27,360
Speaker 1: a lesson, especially as as things have gone the way

1550
01:18:27,400 --> 01:18:30,439
Speaker 1: they've gone with a lot of the entertainment industry and

1551
01:18:30,760 --> 01:18:34,400
Speaker 1: the creative industry. I think the most valuable lesson a

1552
01:18:34,439 --> 01:18:38,200
Speaker 1: man in his unparalleled position could have given kids, which

1553
01:18:38,240 --> 01:18:41,080
Speaker 1: is like sometimes it's okay to say enough.

1554
01:18:41,479 --> 01:18:45,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is I think a very important lesson

1555
01:18:45,160 --> 01:18:47,799
Speaker 2: and on it. Let's be real. Yeah, he and Syndicate

1556
01:18:47,880 --> 01:18:50,120
Speaker 2: were at each's throat at that point in time. No. Yeah,

1557
01:18:50,200 --> 01:18:53,800
Speaker 2: if he had kept doing the comic like he was

1558
01:18:53,800 --> 01:18:56,240
Speaker 2: taking more and more breaks, they were doing more and

1559
01:18:56,280 --> 01:18:58,200
Speaker 2: more reruns at that point in time too, it would

1560
01:18:58,240 --> 01:18:59,200
Speaker 2: just only gotten worse.

1561
01:18:59,640 --> 01:19:04,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I anyway, but at the time, this

1562
01:19:04,760 --> 01:19:08,720
Speaker 1: works out incredibly well for Scott because without you know,

1563
01:19:08,960 --> 01:19:12,839
Speaker 1: we just talked about how many cancelations there were. Dilbert suddenly,

1564
01:19:12,920 --> 01:19:15,280
Speaker 1: like a lot of comic like a lot of newspapers

1565
01:19:15,280 --> 01:19:18,040
Speaker 1: are like, well, we've got all these holes suddenly in

1566
01:19:18,120 --> 01:19:22,000
Speaker 1: our lineup. Oh and this Dilbert comic just published a

1567
01:19:22,040 --> 01:19:25,639
Speaker 1: book and its circulation doubled. Maybe we'll pick it up too, right,

1568
01:19:25,960 --> 01:19:28,479
Speaker 1: So suddenly hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of papers start

1569
01:19:28,800 --> 01:19:31,639
Speaker 1: adopt like bringing in Dilbert because they don't have anything

1570
01:19:31,680 --> 01:19:35,760
Speaker 1: else now. Scott claims in his two thousand and eight

1571
01:19:35,800 --> 01:19:37,920
Speaker 1: book that this led to a surge of purchases for

1572
01:19:38,000 --> 01:19:41,240
Speaker 1: the strip, which allowed him to quit his day job. Quote.

1573
01:19:41,439 --> 01:19:43,640
Speaker 1: People often ask if I quit or was fired. It

1574
01:19:43,680 --> 01:19:45,720
Speaker 1: was a little of both. In the final few years

1575
01:19:45,720 --> 01:19:47,400
Speaker 1: of my day job, Dilbert had turned me into a

1576
01:19:47,439 --> 01:19:50,960
Speaker 1: minor celebrity among technology workers. My coworkers found my fame

1577
01:19:51,040 --> 01:19:53,519
Speaker 1: useful in attracting customers to the lab to see Pacific

1578
01:19:53,560 --> 01:19:56,720
Speaker 1: Bell's latest offerings. By then, Dilbert was consuming too much

1579
01:19:56,760 --> 01:19:58,360
Speaker 1: of my time for me to be effective at my

1580
01:19:58,439 --> 01:20:00,439
Speaker 1: day job. It was clear I would soon need to

1581
01:20:00,520 --> 01:20:03,360
Speaker 1: quit or be fired. That's when my coworker, Anita Freeman,

1582
01:20:03,400 --> 01:20:05,840
Speaker 1: who was the prototype for the Alice character, suggested a

1583
01:20:05,920 --> 01:20:09,120
Speaker 1: deal with our bosses consents. She and my other coworkers

1584
01:20:09,120 --> 01:20:11,160
Speaker 1: in the lab offered to pick up my slack anytime

1585
01:20:11,160 --> 01:20:13,759
Speaker 1: I needed to leave work for Dilbert reasons. In return,

1586
01:20:13,840 --> 01:20:16,439
Speaker 1: I agreed to schmooze customers who were Dilbert fans. As

1587
01:20:16,479 --> 01:20:19,160
Speaker 1: part of that understanding, I told my boss anytime the

1588
01:20:19,280 --> 01:20:21,559
Speaker 1: arrangement didn't work for him and he needed the budget

1589
01:20:21,600 --> 01:20:23,559
Speaker 1: for a better purpose. I would be happy to leave,

1590
01:20:23,640 --> 01:20:26,240
Speaker 1: and eventually he took me up on the offer. Now,

1591
01:20:26,400 --> 01:20:28,799
Speaker 1: if that's true, that's again an example of how lucky

1592
01:20:28,840 --> 01:20:31,160
Speaker 1: Scott has been with the people in his life. Yeah,

1593
01:20:31,280 --> 01:20:35,080
Speaker 1: contributed massively to all success. Would like, yeah, hey, dude,

1594
01:20:35,120 --> 01:20:38,120
Speaker 1: I think because other job is more important to you. Yeah,

1595
01:20:38,240 --> 01:20:39,880
Speaker 1: I have worked too, but I'll do your work.

1596
01:20:39,920 --> 01:20:44,000
Speaker 2: What the fuck? Wow, that's either the kindest coworker or

1597
01:20:44,120 --> 01:20:45,479
Speaker 2: a big crock of shit.

1598
01:20:46,040 --> 01:20:48,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of the two. And it's it's again,

1599
01:20:48,840 --> 01:20:51,120
Speaker 1: it's so interesting to me that he becomes so obsessed

1600
01:20:51,160 --> 01:20:54,519
Speaker 1: with like the secret like universe hacks that allowed him

1601
01:20:54,520 --> 01:20:56,680
Speaker 1: to succeed, when it's like, no, you succeeded because a

1602
01:20:56,680 --> 01:20:59,760
Speaker 1: lot of really nice people gave you, which is, by

1603
01:20:59,760 --> 01:21:03,240
Speaker 1: the way, why anyone succeeds in a creative profession.

1604
01:21:03,479 --> 01:21:06,160
Speaker 2: You know, of us have had at least one person says,

1605
01:21:06,439 --> 01:21:08,000
Speaker 2: you know what, I think you should. We should take

1606
01:21:08,000 --> 01:21:10,200
Speaker 2: a chance on you. Yeah, let me share your link,

1607
01:21:10,400 --> 01:21:11,680
Speaker 2: let me do this, let me do this.

1608
01:21:12,040 --> 01:21:16,479
Speaker 1: Absolutely huge part of success and a creator. I mean, honestly,

1609
01:21:16,720 --> 01:21:19,000
Speaker 1: just for me, I would never have had a writing

1610
01:21:19,080 --> 01:21:21,839
Speaker 1: career if it hadn't have been for like this adult

1611
01:21:21,880 --> 01:21:23,800
Speaker 1: who was a friend of mine in World of Warcraft,

1612
01:21:23,840 --> 01:21:26,400
Speaker 1: who like, I sent a piece of fiction i'd written,

1613
01:21:26,400 --> 01:21:28,439
Speaker 1: and she was like, you know, because every other adult

1614
01:21:28,479 --> 01:21:30,479
Speaker 1: in my life was like, yeah, don't rely on writing

1615
01:21:30,520 --> 01:21:32,519
Speaker 1: as a career, and she was like, oh, you should

1616
01:21:32,520 --> 01:21:35,240
Speaker 1: do this for a living. And you know, sometimes that's

1617
01:21:35,280 --> 01:21:37,680
Speaker 1: all it fucking takes, but it's always the result not

1618
01:21:37,760 --> 01:21:40,000
Speaker 1: just of hard work, but of like getting fucking lucky.

1619
01:21:40,240 --> 01:21:43,760
Speaker 1: Scott clearly got lucky, although I do suspect this specific

1620
01:21:43,840 --> 01:21:47,040
Speaker 1: story is a lie and kind of a baffling one,

1621
01:21:47,080 --> 01:21:50,479
Speaker 1: because the evidence suggests Scott was in fact laid off

1622
01:21:50,479 --> 01:21:52,760
Speaker 1: for cost cutting reasons, per an interview he gave to

1623
01:21:52,760 --> 01:21:56,400
Speaker 1: the Sacramento Bee in nineteen ninety five. I don't get

1624
01:21:56,439 --> 01:21:58,720
Speaker 1: why he would kind of make up this more elaborate

1625
01:21:58,760 --> 01:22:01,160
Speaker 1: story like they were mass lefs at pack Bell and

1626
01:22:01,200 --> 01:22:03,840
Speaker 1: he got, you know, canned by them, and the story

1627
01:22:03,880 --> 01:22:07,080
Speaker 1: of getting canned in layoffs as the deliberate guy is

1628
01:22:07,080 --> 01:22:09,840
Speaker 1: actually kind of more compelling to me than like this

1629
01:22:09,920 --> 01:22:12,840
Speaker 1: weird arrangement. But I don't know, maybe parts of it

1630
01:22:12,880 --> 01:22:13,280
Speaker 1: are true.

1631
01:22:13,720 --> 01:22:15,880
Speaker 2: It's unclear to make him the special boy.

1632
01:22:16,320 --> 01:22:20,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, as opposed to like, yeah, it's special.

1633
01:22:20,160 --> 01:22:22,479
Speaker 2: Boy Scott, and everyone knows that special boy Scott is

1634
01:22:22,479 --> 01:22:25,920
Speaker 2: supposed to save us, yeah, from diversity, so therefore we

1635
01:22:26,000 --> 01:22:27,920
Speaker 2: must all make sacrifices for him.

1636
01:22:28,360 --> 01:22:32,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's he's He's definitely Again, it's kind of more

1637
01:22:32,400 --> 01:22:37,599
Speaker 1: main character syndrome type stuff at this point in Scott's career. Again,

1638
01:22:37,680 --> 01:22:40,040
Speaker 1: if you thought it all about his probable politics, you'd

1639
01:22:40,080 --> 01:22:42,560
Speaker 1: probably suspect maybe he was kind of a vaguely progressive

1640
01:22:42,600 --> 01:22:44,840
Speaker 1: guy because of how critically is of aspects of how

1641
01:22:44,880 --> 01:22:47,920
Speaker 1: businesses work. But Adams makes it clear again he never

1642
01:22:47,960 --> 01:22:50,800
Speaker 1: meant it as anything but like shallow humor kind of

1643
01:22:50,800 --> 01:22:52,800
Speaker 1: often brought to him by his readers, and he was

1644
01:22:52,840 --> 01:22:56,120
Speaker 1: surprised that people read more into his work, and this

1645
01:22:56,240 --> 01:22:59,720
Speaker 1: attracted some early criticism for Scott. In nineteen ninety seven

1646
01:23:00,120 --> 01:23:03,200
Speaker 1: named Norman Solomon, who's a journalist and a media critic,

1647
01:23:03,400 --> 01:23:06,800
Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Trouble with Dilbert. Solomon's kind

1648
01:23:06,800 --> 01:23:09,280
Speaker 1: of an interesting dude. He got surveilled by the FBI

1649
01:23:09,360 --> 01:23:12,679
Speaker 1: when he was fourteen for protesting to desegregate an apartment

1650
01:23:12,720 --> 01:23:17,519
Speaker 1: complex in Maryland, which is pretty cool. In nine, Yeah,

1651
01:23:17,560 --> 01:23:19,680
Speaker 1: in ninety nine, he won an Orwell Award for a

1652
01:23:19,720 --> 01:23:22,799
Speaker 1: collection of columns on deceptive media, and then in ninety

1653
01:23:22,840 --> 01:23:25,280
Speaker 1: seven he writes this book. I mean, that's a couple usually,

1654
01:23:25,360 --> 01:23:27,280
Speaker 1: but in ninety seven he writes this book about Dilbert.

1655
01:23:27,560 --> 01:23:29,880
Speaker 1: And by this point, by ninety seven, Dilbert is like

1656
01:23:29,920 --> 01:23:32,240
Speaker 1: one of the biggest comic strips on the planet. Scott

1657
01:23:32,280 --> 01:23:35,519
Speaker 1: Adams is a new, very new millionaire at this point,

1658
01:23:35,720 --> 01:23:38,840
Speaker 1: and because the strips are so popular, not only is

1659
01:23:38,880 --> 01:23:41,439
Speaker 1: he in a bunch of newspapers, but businesses. All these

1660
01:23:41,479 --> 01:23:44,200
Speaker 1: corporations that he had been like mocking and making fun

1661
01:23:44,240 --> 01:23:47,240
Speaker 1: of have adopted Dilbert. Like people are paying to use

1662
01:23:47,280 --> 01:23:50,800
Speaker 1: Dilbert as an advertisement for their company, right, which is

1663
01:23:51,200 --> 01:23:53,559
Speaker 1: kind of weird if you think about sort of some

1664
01:23:53,600 --> 01:23:56,479
Speaker 1: of the messages that were in the early Delbert comics.

1665
01:23:56,760 --> 01:24:00,679
Speaker 1: And Solomon's book criticizes Adams for using Dilbert to improve

1666
01:24:00,760 --> 01:24:03,400
Speaker 1: the bottom line of the corporations he purported to mock,

1667
01:24:03,479 --> 01:24:06,720
Speaker 1: write and quote, Dilbert Masquerades is the ultimate response to

1668
01:24:06,760 --> 01:24:09,599
Speaker 1: our predicament in a corporatized workplace in world. But it's

1669
01:24:09,640 --> 01:24:12,479
Speaker 1: a counterfeit kind of rebellion. It marks the supposed outer

1670
01:24:12,560 --> 01:24:15,400
Speaker 1: boundary of opposition to corporate machinery. But in fact, what

1671
01:24:15,479 --> 01:24:17,639
Speaker 1: Dilbert teaches through example is that the best we can

1672
01:24:17,680 --> 01:24:20,360
Speaker 1: hope for is a cynical aside and an acid quip.

1673
01:24:21,560 --> 01:24:23,000
Speaker 2: I know he's not wrong.

1674
01:24:23,320 --> 01:24:25,479
Speaker 1: I don't think he's wrong. I will say, you know,

1675
01:24:25,560 --> 01:24:27,800
Speaker 1: I think Solomon's probably a pretty cool dude based on

1676
01:24:27,840 --> 01:24:30,639
Speaker 1: his background. This is a silly choice. I think writing

1677
01:24:30,680 --> 01:24:33,240
Speaker 1: an entire book of why Dilbert's not really like a

1678
01:24:33,320 --> 01:24:38,040
Speaker 1: leftist master that's a little silly. Yeah.

1679
01:24:38,439 --> 01:24:42,479
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure thought was procressive, but I don't

1680
01:24:42,479 --> 01:24:46,480
Speaker 2: think anyone thought he was going to be the left. Yeah.

1681
01:24:46,560 --> 01:24:49,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody thought Dilbert was there to bring down capitalism.

1682
01:24:50,479 --> 01:24:52,400
Speaker 1: It's a little like a horrible.

1683
01:24:57,000 --> 01:24:57,160
Speaker 2: Man.

1684
01:24:57,200 --> 01:25:02,400
Speaker 1: I didn't really expect that from from Hagar. It's it's funny,

1685
01:25:03,040 --> 01:25:06,519
Speaker 1: but anyway, I think most people, especially most people who

1686
01:25:06,600 --> 01:25:10,040
Speaker 1: are now multi millionaires because of their doodles, would be like, oh,

1687
01:25:10,120 --> 01:25:12,519
Speaker 1: you know, a guy had a criticist, what whatever. I'm

1688
01:25:12,560 --> 01:25:15,320
Speaker 1: still like rich and successful. This is not has no

1689
01:25:15,439 --> 01:25:18,880
Speaker 1: impact on me. Scott in this kind of is the

1690
01:25:18,920 --> 01:25:21,679
Speaker 1: first show of the kind of dude he is. Cannot

1691
01:25:21,760 --> 01:25:24,960
Speaker 1: get over this. He responds in an interview with the

1692
01:25:25,040 --> 01:25:27,639
Speaker 1: La Times, dilvert is just a way to make people

1693
01:25:27,720 --> 01:25:30,160
Speaker 1: laugh so they will transfer their money to me. I'm

1694
01:25:30,160 --> 01:25:32,479
Speaker 1: in the business of writing funny little things that Phillips

1695
01:25:32,479 --> 01:25:34,439
Speaker 1: space in the newspaper, and when I get away with it,

1696
01:25:34,560 --> 01:25:37,519
Speaker 1: writing funny little books that people will buy. And again,

1697
01:25:37,840 --> 01:25:40,680
Speaker 1: like that response in and of itself is okay, but

1698
01:25:40,720 --> 01:25:44,559
Speaker 1: Scott can't let it go. He keeps writing about Norman's

1699
01:25:44,600 --> 01:25:47,880
Speaker 1: criticism of him, and eventually he publishes a whole book

1700
01:25:48,000 --> 01:25:50,720
Speaker 1: the next year called The Joy of Work that has

1701
01:25:50,760 --> 01:25:53,160
Speaker 1: this super long Remember as a kid, I read this

1702
01:25:53,200 --> 01:25:55,680
Speaker 1: book is like a ten year old, and you know

1703
01:25:55,720 --> 01:25:58,640
Speaker 1: it's a bunch of like funny jokes about like offices,

1704
01:25:59,000 --> 01:26:02,320
Speaker 1: and then there's this long diatribe about Norman Solomon and

1705
01:26:02,360 --> 01:26:05,519
Speaker 1: how dishonest and evil he is and like how fucked up,

1706
01:26:05,640 --> 01:26:08,679
Speaker 1: Like Scott's mocking him for like how badly his book sold.

1707
01:26:09,000 --> 01:26:14,400
Speaker 1: It was the guy who who Michael Crichton.

1708
01:26:15,880 --> 01:26:19,080
Speaker 2: Made one critics into a choldlustern a book.

1709
01:26:19,040 --> 01:26:22,719
Speaker 1: Yeah with a and he's he lengthily describes how small

1710
01:26:22,760 --> 01:26:26,960
Speaker 1: the man's penises. Yeah, okay, yeah, what like what very

1711
01:26:27,360 --> 01:26:28,040
Speaker 1: why do this?

1712
01:26:28,439 --> 01:26:28,599
Speaker 4: Why?

1713
01:26:28,600 --> 01:26:31,280
Speaker 2: I write an entire chapter by time YEA about you.

1714
01:26:31,760 --> 01:26:34,439
Speaker 1: It's it's interesting because they are both like right wing

1715
01:26:34,520 --> 01:26:38,200
Speaker 1: guys who were very convinced of their own brilliance to

1716
01:26:38,560 --> 01:26:41,919
Speaker 1: such an extent that they like rejected very basically accurate

1717
01:26:41,960 --> 01:26:46,879
Speaker 1: like factual things like climate change. And it is interesting

1718
01:26:46,880 --> 01:26:48,360
Speaker 1: to me that, like you've got these two right wing

1719
01:26:48,400 --> 01:26:53,120
Speaker 1: guys who get successful beyond their wildest dreams.

1720
01:26:52,400 --> 01:26:56,400
Speaker 2: All still such a nerds can't stop masturbating over and you.

1721
01:26:56,439 --> 01:26:59,920
Speaker 1: They but they still any criticism makes them lose their mind.

1722
01:27:00,120 --> 01:27:01,639
Speaker 1: And it's like, I don't know, Like for like Michael

1723
01:27:01,680 --> 01:27:03,800
Speaker 1: Cran's like, man, you wrote Jurassic Park, why do you

1724
01:27:03,800 --> 01:27:06,320
Speaker 1: give a ship that somebody gave a book a bad review?

1725
01:27:06,720 --> 01:27:10,160
Speaker 1: Like you're literally Michael Crichton, like that's fine.

1726
01:27:11,160 --> 01:27:14,320
Speaker 2: Tears on these one hundred dollars bills that stuff my

1727
01:27:14,400 --> 01:27:15,320
Speaker 2: pillow at night.

1728
01:27:15,439 --> 01:27:18,200
Speaker 1: Like I can fucking log onto Twitter at any point

1729
01:27:18,280 --> 01:27:21,520
Speaker 1: and find people saying that like I'm a fucking CIA

1730
01:27:21,560 --> 01:27:24,280
Speaker 1: agent and like a piece of shit, My podcast terrible,

1731
01:27:24,280 --> 01:27:26,439
Speaker 1: And it's like I don't know whatever, man, Like you know,

1732
01:27:26,760 --> 01:27:29,880
Speaker 1: like to quote from a ska musician, I love no

1733
01:27:29,920 --> 01:27:32,320
Speaker 1: matter what you do, it's going to piss people off.

1734
01:27:33,360 --> 01:27:39,480
Speaker 2: Everyone loves me. Yeah, yeah, I do not have neo conservatives,

1735
01:27:39,520 --> 01:27:42,519
Speaker 2: and I'll write people in my emails, yeah, wishing death

1736
01:27:42,560 --> 01:27:45,120
Speaker 2: on my child at all because I draw a pop by. Nope,

1737
01:27:45,160 --> 01:27:45,920
Speaker 2: it never has.

1738
01:27:46,439 --> 01:27:51,120
Speaker 1: You definitely have left wing creatives who kind of can't

1739
01:27:51,160 --> 01:27:54,840
Speaker 1: get over criticism too. So I'm not saying yeah, yeah, yeah,

1740
01:27:54,920 --> 01:27:58,120
Speaker 1: top my head, but it does seem to be I

1741
01:27:58,160 --> 01:28:00,800
Speaker 1: think it for whatever reason, it happens to a lot

1742
01:28:00,800 --> 01:28:03,479
Speaker 1: of these right wing guys who have a lot less

1743
01:28:03,560 --> 01:28:06,280
Speaker 1: overall criticism to deal with, Like Scott is not being

1744
01:28:06,280 --> 01:28:09,719
Speaker 1: deluged in hate mail. One kind of weird dude writes

1745
01:28:09,760 --> 01:28:13,240
Speaker 1: a book about Dilbert that doesn't sell very well, and

1746
01:28:13,400 --> 01:28:16,240
Speaker 1: he he never gets over it, like he is obsessed

1747
01:28:16,280 --> 01:28:17,479
Speaker 1: with this years later.

1748
01:28:17,520 --> 01:28:20,439
Speaker 2: Still is it because the time he wasn't special boy Scott?

1749
01:28:21,360 --> 01:28:24,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's also it's like the first time

1750
01:28:24,360 --> 01:28:27,800
Speaker 1: that he had to analyze if like he was what

1751
01:28:27,920 --> 01:28:30,120
Speaker 1: he was doing or someone had someone was trying to

1752
01:28:30,120 --> 01:28:33,639
Speaker 1: like critically analyze his work, and like when you critically

1753
01:28:33,680 --> 01:28:37,840
Speaker 1: analyze somebody's work, you will notice like flaws in it

1754
01:28:37,920 --> 01:28:40,439
Speaker 1: and stuff like I've read I've read critical analysis of

1755
01:28:40,479 --> 01:28:42,160
Speaker 1: my work that and had to be like Oh you

1756
01:28:42,200 --> 01:28:44,880
Speaker 1: know what, I may I may actually alter some things

1757
01:28:44,880 --> 01:28:47,400
Speaker 1: about what I've done because or what I'm doing in

1758
01:28:47,439 --> 01:28:49,840
Speaker 1: the future, because I think this person has a point,

1759
01:28:50,040 --> 01:28:51,479
Speaker 1: you know, you.

1760
01:28:51,680 --> 01:28:55,599
Speaker 2: Like, everyone can improve and all criticism is hatred.

1761
01:28:56,120 --> 01:28:59,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that for Scott, the fact that

1762
01:29:00,040 --> 01:29:02,519
Speaker 1: criticism exists is again it puts him back in this

1763
01:29:02,600 --> 01:29:06,960
Speaker 1: comfortable place of wondering, maybe what I'm doing won't always work,

1764
01:29:07,120 --> 01:29:10,400
Speaker 1: maybe I won't always be beloved and famous for my

1765
01:29:10,520 --> 01:29:14,120
Speaker 1: creative stuff, and he can't handle that fear. I do

1766
01:29:14,200 --> 01:29:16,360
Speaker 1: think it all comes down to that for him. Yea

1767
01:29:17,720 --> 01:29:20,720
Speaker 1: and yeah, and that's what this episode comes down to.

1768
01:29:20,880 --> 01:29:24,479
Speaker 1: This has been part one of the Scott Adams series, Randy.

1769
01:29:24,520 --> 01:29:27,479
Speaker 1: This wound up being more than I had accepts. I

1770
01:29:27,479 --> 01:29:29,559
Speaker 1: talk too much and I'm probably no, no, no, no, no, no

1771
01:29:29,680 --> 01:29:33,480
Speaker 1: thank you, No, I'm oh, Randy, you got any pluggables

1772
01:29:33,479 --> 01:29:33,840
Speaker 1: to plug?

1773
01:29:34,320 --> 01:29:37,360
Speaker 2: Yes? I draw an online comic called Something Positive. That's

1774
01:29:37,360 --> 01:29:40,320
Speaker 2: Something Positive dot Net. It'st It started off as a

1775
01:29:40,320 --> 01:29:44,479
Speaker 2: bunch of dick jokes. Now it's aging in anxiety and

1776
01:29:44,560 --> 01:29:49,800
Speaker 2: dick jokes. And I also draw the Sunday Popeicomic at

1777
01:29:49,800 --> 01:29:55,120
Speaker 2: comics Kingdom dot com. Slash Popeye. Also on Tuesdays and Thursdays,

1778
01:29:55,120 --> 01:29:58,040
Speaker 2: there's a future called all of Them Popeye. All the

1779
01:29:58,080 --> 01:30:01,160
Speaker 2: Tuesday strips are drawn by Shania I'm in amazing cartoonist

1780
01:30:01,160 --> 01:30:04,160
Speaker 2: who also work on Spider Ham and I do the

1781
01:30:04,240 --> 01:30:09,000
Speaker 2: Thursday strips that focus on Popeye and his family. And

1782
01:30:09,040 --> 01:30:11,080
Speaker 2: I guess if you want to scream at me online,

1783
01:30:11,240 --> 01:30:14,519
Speaker 2: go to the Twitter account to schuber c h O

1784
01:30:14,520 --> 01:30:17,519
Speaker 2: O C h O B A R and uh, just

1785
01:30:17,600 --> 01:30:19,879
Speaker 2: tell me how much you wish I would die, because

1786
01:30:20,200 --> 01:30:20,559
Speaker 2: why not?

1787
01:30:21,960 --> 01:30:26,120
Speaker 1: Yeah? And I think what you should do is instead again,

1788
01:30:26,520 --> 01:30:29,599
Speaker 1: either use your own drawing skills, or if you want

1789
01:30:29,600 --> 01:30:32,840
Speaker 1: to stick it to those those fat cat artists, use

1790
01:30:32,880 --> 01:30:38,280
Speaker 1: an AI generator and create some some unsettling Delbert pornography

1791
01:30:38,439 --> 01:30:40,200
Speaker 1: to share with our friend Scott.

1792
01:30:40,479 --> 01:30:42,760
Speaker 2: I think this weekend just for you, I'm going to

1793
01:30:42,880 --> 01:30:45,800
Speaker 2: draw Dilbert and cragg Art just for you.

1794
01:30:46,080 --> 01:30:47,200
Speaker 1: Yes, thank you.

1795
01:30:47,560 --> 01:30:50,160
Speaker 2: I thank you right now because I draw on my

1796
01:30:50,560 --> 01:30:54,280
Speaker 2: computer and I'm doing this. But I will definitely just

1797
01:30:54,280 --> 01:30:56,439
Speaker 2: for you. I will not not for Sophie, so has

1798
01:30:56,479 --> 01:30:57,600
Speaker 2: done nothing to deserve this.

1799
01:30:57,920 --> 01:30:58,320
Speaker 3: Thank you.

1800
01:30:58,479 --> 01:31:00,760
Speaker 1: If you can I do. My only request is that

1801
01:31:00,800 --> 01:31:05,040
Speaker 1: if you're doing Dilbert alien impregnation, fetish art. I think

1802
01:31:05,080 --> 01:31:07,960
Speaker 1: the right alien is wharf Oh.

1803
01:31:07,880 --> 01:31:11,160
Speaker 2: God, yeah, you know what Michael Dorn would tap that.

1804
01:31:11,479 --> 01:31:16,800
Speaker 1: Michael Dorn would tap Sure, I mean, who wouldn't.

1805
01:31:15,320 --> 01:31:17,639
Speaker 2: Michael Dorn can do what he wants. I mean, yeah, exactly,

1806
01:31:17,880 --> 01:31:18,960
Speaker 2: men's voice alone.

1807
01:31:19,200 --> 01:31:21,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, gorgeous, Gilbert. Gilbert's a lucky man.

1808
01:31:22,040 --> 01:31:26,240
Speaker 3: As what I'm saying, Well, that was a pretty cool episode, Robert.

1809
01:31:26,320 --> 01:31:31,320
Speaker 3: But do you know what's cooler? No, it would be

1810
01:31:31,439 --> 01:31:36,120
Speaker 3: our Cooler Zone Media, our premium ad free channel, now

1811
01:31:36,160 --> 01:31:39,480
Speaker 3: available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

1812
01:31:40,600 --> 01:31:44,519
Speaker 1: Wow, Sophie, that sounds like something that allows you to

1813
01:31:44,560 --> 01:31:47,479
Speaker 1: pay money and no longer hear ads. Is that basically

1814
01:31:47,560 --> 01:31:48,400
Speaker 1: what we're doing here?

1815
01:31:48,560 --> 01:31:52,479
Speaker 3: That is the gist of it. We will also have

1816
01:31:52,680 --> 01:31:56,320
Speaker 3: exclusive Q and a's with you Robert Evans and me,

1817
01:31:56,600 --> 01:32:03,120
Speaker 3: Sophie Lichterman on this very podcast, and also lots of

1818
01:32:03,120 --> 01:32:07,240
Speaker 3: other things add free, our entire our entire catalog of

1819
01:32:07,240 --> 01:32:12,480
Speaker 3: cool Zone Media shows and ongoing new episodes. Add free.

1820
01:32:12,880 --> 01:32:15,360
Speaker 1: Stop bitching about the gold ads. You don't have to

1821
01:32:15,400 --> 01:32:18,920
Speaker 1: listen to them anymore, hey us, However many dollars it

1822
01:32:19,040 --> 01:32:21,599
Speaker 1: takes I don't know, so more ads?

1823
01:32:21,720 --> 01:32:25,040
Speaker 3: So open, so open your Apple Podcasts app search for

1824
01:32:25,320 --> 01:32:30,680
Speaker 3: cooler Zone Media and subscribe today.

1825
01:32:30,680 --> 01:32:31,360
Speaker 2: I'm going to.

1826
01:32:31,920 --> 01:32:40,000
Speaker 3: Thanks Randy, I hate myself Goodbye. Behind the Bastards is

1827
01:32:40,000 --> 01:32:42,760
Speaker 3: a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool

1828
01:32:42,840 --> 01:32:47,080
Speaker 3: Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check

1829
01:32:47,160 --> 01:32:50,120
Speaker 3: us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

1830
01:32:50,160 --> 01:32:51,200
Speaker 3: you get your podcasts.