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Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio.

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Speaker 1: This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest,

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Speaker 1: and what can I say about Scott Adams, the creator

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Speaker 1: of Dilbert. We had a we don't even begin. We

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Speaker 1: had a wide ranging conversation about everything from persuasion and

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Speaker 1: communication skills to cartooning and writing books. Uh. He and

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Speaker 1: I have been on the opposite side of the Trump phenomena,

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Speaker 1: and I have to say we actually had a very

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Speaker 1: fascinating and civil conversation about what makes Trump so unique

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Speaker 1: and different than everybody else, how he's disrupting politics, how

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Speaker 1: he has one big lee coincidentally, the name of of

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Speaker 1: the most recent book Scott wrote. Uh. And Scott admits

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Speaker 1: to being to the left of Bernie Sanders, which I

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Speaker 1: think would surprise a lot of the people who criticize

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Speaker 1: is him on Twitter and elsewhere. We had a fascinating

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Speaker 1: conversation be shorn state till the very ends. To listen

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Speaker 1: to that, because really it's quite intriguing, and if I

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Speaker 1: had another hour, I probably could have um continued the

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Speaker 1: conversation for that much longer. So with no further ado,

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Speaker 1: my conversation with Scott Adams. My extra special guest this

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Speaker 1: week is Scott Adams. He is best known as the

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Speaker 1: creator of the comic strip Dilbert, which appears in over

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Speaker 1: two thousand newspapers worldwide in sixty five countries and twenty

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Speaker 1: five languages. He is the author of numerous books, including Dilbert,

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Speaker 1: Future and The Joy of Work. His most recent books

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Speaker 1: are How to Fail At Everything and Still Succeed and

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Speaker 1: When Bigley. He received the National Cartoonist Society Ruben Award

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Speaker 1: and the Newspaper Comic Strip Award in Scott Adams, Welcome

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Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Thanks for having me. You seem to come

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Speaker 1: out of a fairly typical corporate background. You worked in

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Speaker 1: banking and technology. How did that road lead to the

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Speaker 1: creation of Dilberg. Well, the corporate thing didn't work out

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Speaker 1: for me. So I worked for eight and a half

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Speaker 1: years at a big bank in San Francisco and eight

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Speaker 1: and a half years at We're about eight years at

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Speaker 1: the local phone company. But both of those careers ended

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Speaker 1: for the same reason. Uh. In both cases, my boss

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Speaker 1: called me into my office and said, Uh, it turns

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Speaker 1: out the media just discovered that we have no diversity

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Speaker 1: in management and and in each case, my boss said,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you plainly, you can't be promoted

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Speaker 1: here really, yeah, until things balance ound a little bit. Now,

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Speaker 1: when I tell this story, people always say, stop being

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Speaker 1: a victim and stop complaining. I'm not doing that. I'm

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Speaker 1: telling you what happened. So how did each of those

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Speaker 1: events lead you to exploring cartooning? You you have been

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Speaker 1: drawing since what you're levin something like that. Yeah. When

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Speaker 1: I was a little kid, like lots of little kids,

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Speaker 1: I thought, hey, I think I'll grow up to be

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Speaker 1: a cartoonist. That's one of the most commonly little kid

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Speaker 1: you know dreams. You know, basketball player and cartoonists, the race,

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Speaker 1: race car driver, yes, astronaut. And I thought I wanted

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Speaker 1: to be Charles Schultz when I grew up. But by

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Speaker 1: the time I reached probably age eleven twelve, I started

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Speaker 1: to be able to reason, you know that, and suddenly

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Speaker 1: the fantastical world of children started to fall away. You know,

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Speaker 1: Santa Claus wasn't real, etcetera. But I started to think,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, I want to be Charles Schiltz, the

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Speaker 1: most famous cartoonist in the world. But they're around six

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Speaker 1: billion people in the world, maybe back then and it

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Speaker 1: was only one of him, and I thought, I'm not

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Speaker 1: liking my odds. Maybe I should try to be a

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Speaker 1: lawyer or a businessman or something. So I gave up

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Speaker 1: an old cartooning thing and went to you know, traditional

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Speaker 1: economics degree, business world. Kind of a lie. But when

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Speaker 1: it didn't work out, I started to say, what can

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Speaker 1: I do? There? Would not have a boss because because

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Speaker 1: I noticed that the common element was having a boss,

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Speaker 1: because my my success or lack of it in the

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Speaker 1: corporate world didn't have anything to do with my ability

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Speaker 1: or how hard I worked. It was entirely up to

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Speaker 1: what a boss decided for the bosses and the company's

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Speaker 1: own reasons. And I thought, well, I'd like to be

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Speaker 1: free of that. So I I've tried a number of

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Speaker 1: things over the years. Cartooning was the one that worked.

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Speaker 1: And what I did was I tried to do things

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Speaker 1: which would have a low risk. You know, I wouldn't

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Speaker 1: die if it didn't work out, and I wouldn't be

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Speaker 1: bankrupt if it didn't work out. I would just be

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Speaker 1: tired or embarrassed. You know, those were the worst case scenarios.

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Speaker 1: I saw the world as sort of a slot machine

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Speaker 1: that you didn't have to put money into, meaning that

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Speaker 1: I could just sit there and pull until I got

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Speaker 1: a jackpot, and I could win every time if I

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Speaker 1: was willing to sit there long enough and pull. So

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Speaker 1: cartooning was one of those polls. It wasn't the only one.

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Speaker 1: There were lots of them. I wrote about it and

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Speaker 1: had it failed almost everything and still wouldn't big and uh,

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Speaker 1: it just happened to be the one that worked. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk about cartooning a little bit. Becaus in the beginning,

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Speaker 1: you got a lot of rejection. You pulled the lever.

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Speaker 1: You actually were debating, Hey, maybe I'm I've pulled long

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Speaker 1: enough on cartooning and it's not working. But an inspirational

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Speaker 1: letter from a fan kept you going. Tell my misstating that,

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Speaker 1: am I overstating You're you're you're close, You're in the

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Speaker 1: same zip code. Okay, let me tell you this story.

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Speaker 1: One day I came home and I was flipping through

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Speaker 1: the channels on TV, and there was a show on

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Speaker 1: how to become a cartoonist of all things. I've never

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Speaker 1: seen it before, but I missed most of the show,

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Speaker 1: and so I wrote down from the closing credits the

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Speaker 1: name of the host and figured out how to send

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Speaker 1: him a snail mail letter, and I said, hey, I

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Speaker 1: missed your show, but can you give me some tips

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Speaker 1: how to become a cartoonist. And a few weeks later

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Speaker 1: I got a two page handwritten letter from the host

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Speaker 1: of the show, Jack Cassidy is his name, and he

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Speaker 1: gave me some advice about what books to buy, what

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Speaker 1: materials to use, and then he gave me this advice.

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Speaker 1: He said, it's a really competitive industry and you're gonna

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Speaker 1: get rejected a lot, but don't give up. A year

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Speaker 1: goes by and one day I walk out into my

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Speaker 1: mailbox and there's a letter from the same cartoonist, Jack Cassidy,

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Speaker 1: who had given me the original advice, and he said

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Speaker 1: he was cleaning his office and he came across my

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Speaker 1: samples and the letter I'd sent him in the bottom

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Speaker 1: of some pile, and he said he was just writing

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Speaker 1: to make sure that I hadn't given up. And I thought,

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Speaker 1: maybe you see something I don't see. So I decided

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Speaker 1: to get out my materials and try again. And by

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Speaker 1: then I had this idea for a character called Dilbert,

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Speaker 1: who was roughly based on my work experience, and uh,

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Speaker 1: sent it out to the major syndicates. Most of them

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Speaker 1: rejected me. Once I thought I had all the rejections, Um,

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Speaker 1: I put my materials back in the closet again. And

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Speaker 1: then the phone rings a few weeks later, and it

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Speaker 1: was Man who said she, uh, she worked for a

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Speaker 1: company I never heard of, some company called United Media,

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Speaker 1: and they said they saw my samples. I didn't know how,

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Speaker 1: and it wanted to offer me a contract to be

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Speaker 1: a syndicated cartoonist, the biggest break you could possibly have

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Speaker 1: in cartooning. But I've never heard of this company. And

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Speaker 1: so I said, um, I haven't heard of your company,

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Speaker 1: this United Media company. I didn't send my samples to

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Speaker 1: anybody with that name. So I'd feel more comfortable if

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Speaker 1: you had some references, you know, is there somebody you've

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Speaker 1: worked with before, a cartoonist who has been published in

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Speaker 1: any way, you know, on a on a pamphlet or

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Speaker 1: a greeting card, anything like that. And there was this

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Speaker 1: long pause and then she said, yeah, we handled Peanuts

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Speaker 1: and Garfield and a robot Man and Nancy. And when

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Speaker 1: she got to about the twelfth name on the list,

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Speaker 1: I realized my negotiating position have been compromised, and I

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Speaker 1: got myself a lawyer and got a contract and and

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Speaker 1: that's the rest. That's hilarious. UM. So let's talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit about about that process of syndication. How does

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Speaker 1: that work? What is the economics of syndication? What rights

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Speaker 1: do you give up? What rights do you retain? Well,

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Speaker 1: first of all, uh, the old syndicate was bought by

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Speaker 1: the new syndicate, So it's the universal you click, Uh,

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Speaker 1: is the syndicate now. And the way that works syndication uh,

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Speaker 1: and it works for cartoonists and columnists is that once

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Speaker 1: you do your contract with the syndication company, they do

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Speaker 1: the marketing and the selling and the distribution, so that

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Speaker 1: you can just concentrate on the creating. And depending on

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Speaker 1: your your leverage, you might you might make a deal

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Speaker 1: where you split the revenue fifty fifty, but they're picking

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Speaker 1: up a lot of expenses. Um. And then as you

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Speaker 1: get more successful, you might be able to negotiate a

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Speaker 1: better mix than that that That seems pretty reasonable. Um.

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Speaker 1: So you're working in corporate America for a big bank

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Speaker 1: and a telco company. I've always thought Dilbert character was

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Speaker 1: the man in the middle. He's got an incompetent boy

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Speaker 1: boss above him. He's got lazy co workers adjacent to him.

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Speaker 1: He's got aggressive salespeople who always promised the world and

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Speaker 1: expect him to deliver um and then annoying um mentors

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Speaker 1: and interns beneath him. What was the motivation for the experience,

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Speaker 1: because some people have said, well, Scott Adams is obviously Dilbert,

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Speaker 1: but you've kind of pushed back on that. Well, all

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Speaker 1: of the characters are either some part of my own personality,

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Speaker 1: usually not the full personality, because the cartoon characters work

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Speaker 1: better if they have some distinguishing characteristic that's usually a

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Speaker 1: flaw right, not fully fleshed out, but they are this

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Speaker 1: key characteristic. So if you're looking to develop your own cartoon,

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Speaker 1: what you want to look for is can you describe

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Speaker 1: the character in a word or two? Garfield's a cat,

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Speaker 1: you know, Dilbert is a nerd, you know, he's depending

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Speaker 1: on what word you want to use, he's a he's

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Speaker 1: an office worker. You know, Alice is angry while he

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Speaker 1: is lazy. Dog Bird is scheming. So if you can't

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Speaker 1: the Albonians, the Albonians are just the every other country,

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Speaker 1: you know. I learned that trick that if you use

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Speaker 1: any other country that's a real country, there's just nothing

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Speaker 1: you can do humor wise, it's gonna come back. So

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Speaker 1: I had to develop an imaginary country just to have

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Speaker 1: somebody who's in another country doing foolish things. And and

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Speaker 1: the fact that it's underwater. What what's the significance of

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Speaker 1: that it's under mud? Sudden? The Albonians are always in

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Speaker 1: waste deep mud. But that's never explained. Um. All right,

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Speaker 1: so let's talk a little bit about how the strip

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Speaker 1: has evolved over the years. You've gotten some pushback from

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Speaker 1: other cartoonists, uh, including some people who I have to

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Speaker 1: admit to being perplexed by this claim that you're basically

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Speaker 1: excusing bad corporate behavior. I don't it that way. How

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Speaker 1: do you how do you see? Do you? First of all,

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Speaker 1: do you respond to other cartoonists slagging your work? And

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Speaker 1: what do you think of the sort of um, I

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Speaker 1: don't know, push back to the charming simplicity of the

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Speaker 1: message of somebody stuck in the middle of a corporate

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Speaker 1: drone type of workplace. Well, first of all, the the

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Speaker 1: hierarchy in cartooning especially is that the people were very

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Speaker 1: successful tend not to criticize other cartoonists. There's always punched

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Speaker 1: up that's legit, and the people who are lower in

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Speaker 1: the rank are pretty sure that everybody above them got

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Speaker 1: there by luck or or the public doesn't understand how

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Speaker 1: bad it is and they can't understand why it's successful.

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Speaker 1: So the people who are not yet successful are just

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Speaker 1: brutal right. The people who are peers or or above

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Speaker 1: me and success cartooning are almost never that way. It's

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Speaker 1: the rarest thing in the world. You also want to

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Speaker 1: interrupt right here and say you have frequently just discussed

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Speaker 1: the role of luck in everybody's life. Luck is so important.

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Speaker 1: If this person didn't follow up, Cassidy didn't follow up

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Speaker 1: with that email, that letter, pre email, who knows what

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Speaker 1: might have might have happened. Yeah, luck is. Luck is

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Speaker 1: always the big variable. But I think the mistake is

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Speaker 1: thinking that you can't control luck. Now, you can't control actual,

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Speaker 1: you know, random events, but you can certainly put yourself

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Speaker 1: in places where more luck can happen. For the phrase

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Speaker 1: luck is what preparation meets opportunities, there's that, Plus there's

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Speaker 1: amount of energy. If you put more energy into the universe,

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Speaker 1: if you if you try to start ten companies, you know,

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Speaker 1: one after another. The odds of one of them working

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Speaker 1: out by luck is pretty good. If you try one

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Speaker 1: thing once and then you give up, your odds of

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Speaker 1: finding luck are very low. So you can do a

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Speaker 1: lot to go where the luck is. It's the reason

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Speaker 1: I moved from upstate New York to San Francisco because

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Speaker 1: there was just more happening, more opportunity, more chances for luck,

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Speaker 1: and much better weather, much better weather, to say the least.

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Speaker 1: Have have you ever considered dramatically shifting the way Dilbert's

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Speaker 1: life has progressed. You've introduced new characters, you've introduced new

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Speaker 1: plot lines, but he seems to be pretty consistently Dilbert

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Speaker 1: all the way through. Well, actually, um, I did make

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Speaker 1: one big change early in the strip. The first several years,

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Speaker 1: it wasn't really about the workplace. He was a guy

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Speaker 1: who had a job, but it was about things he

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Speaker 1: did with his dog and things he did at home.

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Speaker 1: And it was just about the time that email was

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Speaker 1: just becoming a thing. And I had email early because

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Speaker 1: I it was something we did at work, so I

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Speaker 1: got it before most of the public and the few

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Speaker 1: people who got on email didn't have anybody to email,

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Speaker 1: so they didn't have anybody to send a message to.

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Speaker 1: But I started publishing my email and the comic strip,

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Speaker 1: and then people all over the country would say, hey,

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Speaker 1: I got somebody to write to. I'm going to tell

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Speaker 1: you what I like about your strip and what I

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Speaker 1: don't like, and insistently they said, we love it when

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Speaker 1: he's at work doing workplace stuff. Oh, I don't like

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Speaker 1: it as much when he's at home. So because my

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Speaker 1: background is an m b A And an economics degree

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Speaker 1: and not art, I did not have any artistic integrity

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Speaker 1: to lose because I didn't start with any And I said,

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Speaker 1: what's the point of making art that the audience doesn't

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Speaker 1: want to see? So I gave the audience what they

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Speaker 1: wanted more workplace and that that's when it all took off.

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Speaker 1: Do you do you ever get specific ideas from people

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Speaker 1: who shoot you an email and saying hey, this happened

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Speaker 1: at my job. Yeah. Most of what I write is

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Speaker 1: based on other people's suggestions, So I used to get

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Speaker 1: get those suggestions by email. Before that it was from

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Speaker 1: my own experience. And today, every every week or two

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Speaker 1: I'll just send down a tweet and say, hey, what's

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Speaker 1: bothering you about your job, and I'll get hundreds of responses,

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Speaker 1: and usually that writes my my week of Dilbert right there,

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Speaker 1: that that that's absolutely astonishing. So I have to ring up.

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Speaker 1: Very early in the cycle, before the Republican nomination in

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Speaker 1: was wrapped up, you had identified Trump as having a

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Speaker 1: different approach to messaging, that he was basically steamrolling not

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Speaker 1: only the rest of the nominees of Republicans, and you

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Speaker 1: said he would win the Republican nomination, but you also

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Speaker 1: said he's likely to win the whole shebang at a

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Speaker 1: at a point in history where that was just a

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Speaker 1: wild forecast, and it turned out you were correct. So

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Speaker 1: tell us what did you see in that so many

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Speaker 1: other people completely missed just by chance. I have a

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Speaker 1: weird combination of skills and experience that gave me a

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Speaker 1: different filter on the situation. One as I grew up

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Speaker 1: in New York, upstate, but it's close enough to get

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Speaker 1: sort of the New York sensibility. So that helped me

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Speaker 1: understand when Trump was serious and when he was kidding,

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Speaker 1: which seems to be a huge problem with people. Literally

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Speaker 1: can't tell when he's just sort of kidding or he's

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Speaker 1: using hyperbole to get a point. The famous line is

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Speaker 1: take him seriously, but not literally. Right. Uh. The other

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Speaker 1: thing I have going for me is a business background,

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Speaker 1: and so I could understand, for example, when he uses

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Speaker 1: hyperbole to tell you the economy is doing better than

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Speaker 1: it's ever been, it's going to be the greatest thing.

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Speaker 1: He understands that the economy is a psychology engine. We

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Speaker 1: don't have a shortage of materials, we don't have a

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Speaker 1: resource problem, we have a psychology problem. And he was

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Speaker 1: looking to fix it directly. Now, I also have a

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Speaker 1: background as a trained hypnotist, so I could recognize. And

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Speaker 1: I've also been studying the ways of persuasion in general

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Speaker 1: for decades. So when I was watching the President work

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Speaker 1: on the campaign trail, I was saying, the techniques of

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Speaker 1: persuasion used at the highest level I've ever seen in public,

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Speaker 1: and and to me, it looked like he was bringing

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Speaker 1: a flamethrower to a stick fight. And and I thought

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Speaker 1: it was actually an easy prediction. You know, It's funny.

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Speaker 1: New Yorkers kind of know him as a goofball businessman,

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Speaker 1: want to be. He's not a huge Developer's not this,

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Speaker 1: He's not that. But He's been an incredibly successful person

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Speaker 1: at managing and manipulating the media, and I think a

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Speaker 1: lot of people completely missed that skill set. There are

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Speaker 1: few better than Donald Trump at dominating the news cycle,

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Speaker 1: even when he says something that's not true and everybody

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Speaker 1: rushes to correct him. The next day, all we're talking

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Speaker 1: about is is still Donald Trump? Yeah? And you saw

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Speaker 1: that right from the start at the first Republican debate

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Speaker 1: when he was asked the very first question, Megan Kelly

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Speaker 1: s m is incredibly toxic, damaging, career ending, campaign ending

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Speaker 1: question for anyone or anyone else about his bad statements

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Speaker 1: about women. And instead of apologizing like somebody might do,

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Speaker 1: or or avoiding the question in the normal way that

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Speaker 1: people do it, he's he He interrupts her with only

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Speaker 1: Rosie O'Donnell. Now, first of all, completely not true, but

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Speaker 1: didn't matter. It didn't because he took all of the

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Speaker 1: energy out of the question, which was lethal, and he

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Speaker 1: moved it to his answer, which was so much fun

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Speaker 1: and so provocative and so enjoyed by his bass especially

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Speaker 1: because they have the feeling about Rosie o'donald that I said,

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Speaker 1: oh my goodness, he just sucked all of the energy

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Speaker 1: out of the problem and put it into something that

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Speaker 1: people can't stop talking about while forgetting the question. And

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Speaker 1: I literally stood up and walked towards the television like

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Speaker 1: my I had a tingle on my arms, and I thought,

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Speaker 1: I think I just saw the future. How to win

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Speaker 1: Bigley by dominating the news cycle and sucking all the

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Speaker 1: oxygen out of the room. Now that the the actual

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Speaker 1: subtitle of the book is UH Persuasion in a World

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Speaker 1: where Facts Don't Matter. When I first wrote that and

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Speaker 1: when I first started saying facts don't matter back into fifteen,

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Speaker 1: people just rejected that. Just ridiculous. Now you see those words,

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Speaker 1: those exact words, the facts don't matter, and they're talking

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Speaker 1: about in terms of our opinions, not the real world.

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Speaker 1: And the real world if you walk in front of

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Speaker 1: a bossity hit you, that matters, physics matters, facts don't.

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Speaker 1: But your decision about what to do that day might

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Speaker 1: it might not be driven by facts. It's about your emotion,

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Speaker 1: how you feel everything else. So now I would say

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Speaker 1: that that's common way of thinking that and I predicted

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Speaker 1: in as well, and this isn't win big Ley, that

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Speaker 1: Trump would do more than win the presidency. I said

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Speaker 1: he would tear the fabric of reality apart and that

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Speaker 1: we would see see ourselves and how we fit into

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Speaker 1: the universe completely differently because of the experience. And you're

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Speaker 1: watching the fact checkers say, um, he got seven thousand

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Speaker 1: things wrong in the past twenty four hours. Why is

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Speaker 1: nobody acting differently because of this? Well, because the facts

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Speaker 1: don't matter, you know, as long as he's persuading us

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Speaker 1: in a direction that people feel comfortable going better. Economy

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Speaker 1: beat ices, you know, have good news in North Korea,

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Speaker 1: people are okay with it. I want to talk about

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Speaker 1: the book How to fail Out At Almost Everything and

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Speaker 1: Still When Big, because there are some really fascinating ideas

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Speaker 1: in that book, one of which is, don't have goals,

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Speaker 1: have a system. I I was intrigued by that. Explain

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Speaker 1: the thought process there. Yeah, So the distinction there is

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Speaker 1: a goal is you've you've got a very specific idea

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Speaker 1: what you want, but a system is something you do

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Speaker 1: every day that gets you to a better place, but

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Speaker 1: you don't know exactly how it's going to turn out.

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Speaker 1: So an example would be if you go to college

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Speaker 1: and get a degree, you might not know exactly where

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Speaker 1: that's going to lead, but there's a virtually a guarantee

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Speaker 1: that you'll have more options to do whatever you want.

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Speaker 1: And in the book you use the example, don't set

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Speaker 1: a goal of losing twenty pounds, set a goal of

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Speaker 1: eating more healthy well or even more specifically well. Uh,

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Speaker 1: using the top pick of diet, I say, make it

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Speaker 1: a lifelong practice to increase what you know about nutrition,

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Speaker 1: to understand that this is better than that you know.

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Speaker 1: To to understand, for example, that if you have a

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Speaker 1: choice between a plain white potato and pasta, that the

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Speaker 1: pasta has a better glyciamic index. So if you if

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Speaker 1: you like them the same, if the pasta, you're going

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Speaker 1: to be better off. That's just one example, but you

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Speaker 1: could learn almost forever about nutrition so that you always

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Speaker 1: have an option of the healthier versus the less healthy choice.

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Speaker 1: I tell people to make it a habit to practice

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Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to get the best flavor

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Speaker 1: and the things that are good for them. Let's talk

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Speaker 1: about the combination of mediocre skills, which I'm also amused by.

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Speaker 1: How do a series of mediocre skills add up to

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Speaker 1: something that's very successful. Yeah, this is the idea of

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Speaker 1: the talent stack. So a talent stack is where instead

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Speaker 1: of becoming uh, the one best person in the world,

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Speaker 1: that is of a skill which only works for a

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Speaker 1: few people. So if your Tiger Woods learned to golf

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Speaker 1: and you know, just ride that horse as hard as

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Speaker 1: you can. But for most of us, we don't have

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Speaker 1: a Tiger Woods level skill at anything. But what we

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Speaker 1: do have is the ability to put together a stack

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Speaker 1: of talents in which we're pretty good, maybe top of

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Speaker 1: compared to the rest of the world, just because the

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Speaker 1: rest of the world isn't practicing those skills in the

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Speaker 1: first place, and if you combine them right, you get

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Speaker 1: a very powerful package. For example, UM, as a cartoonist,

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Speaker 1: it's no secret that I'm not very good at drawing,

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Speaker 1: and you would think that's pretty important to being a cartoonist.

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Speaker 1: You should be a pretty good artist, but I'm not.

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Speaker 1: I can, however, draw better than most people. Likewise, I'm

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Speaker 1: not the best writer in the world, but I can

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Speaker 1: write better than most people. I'm not the funniest guy

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Speaker 1: in the room, but I'm funnier than most people. I

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Speaker 1: don't know the most about business, but I know a lot,

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Speaker 1: so it gives me a topic to write about. So

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Speaker 1: I probably have a dozen or so modest skills which

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Speaker 1: happened to sum up to something that's commercially extraordinary. So

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Speaker 1: let's talk about your process. I love to write in

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Speaker 1: the morning. I feel like it's a fresh reboot. You

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Speaker 1: shake the a sketch screen empty and you begin clean.

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Speaker 1: You also like to write in the mornings, but for

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Speaker 1: a different reason. Explain why you enjoy the mornings. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's part of my system as well. There are

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Speaker 1: some things you can do in certain energy states that

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Speaker 1: you can't do in others. So in the morning, my

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Speaker 1: brain is at its very best. So between four and

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Speaker 1: ten in the morning, I'm absolutely the most creative, most productive,

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Speaker 1: best concentration. By noon, I'm a little burned out and

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Speaker 1: it's a perfect time to go to the gym because

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Speaker 1: I don't want to think too hard, but my body

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Speaker 1: is in perfect shape. And then by evening I'm ready

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Speaker 1: to do, you know, more fun stuff. So I try

428
00:23:59,200 --> 00:24:03,040
Speaker 1: to match my energy state to the task, which is

429
00:24:03,080 --> 00:24:05,000
Speaker 1: something you can only do if you don't have a boss.

430
00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:07,200
Speaker 1: Most of the time, if your boss is saying, yeah,

431
00:24:07,240 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 1: you know, I want you to be here in the

432
00:24:08,800 --> 00:24:11,520
Speaker 1: meeting from eight to ten, you don't get to say

433
00:24:11,600 --> 00:24:13,720
Speaker 1: you know, boss, that was the only time I was

434
00:24:13,720 --> 00:24:15,760
Speaker 1: going to do something useful and you just took it

435
00:24:15,840 --> 00:24:19,280
Speaker 1: from me. So that's a big, big incentive to find

436
00:24:19,320 --> 00:24:22,359
Speaker 1: a way that to control your own schedule because, and

437
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:26,040
Speaker 1: I often say this, happiness is not caused by whether

438
00:24:26,080 --> 00:24:29,560
Speaker 1: you can get the stuff you want. Happiness is caused

439
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:33,959
Speaker 1: as even more by getting the stuff when you want it.

440
00:24:33,960 --> 00:24:36,680
Speaker 1: It's not what you have because we live in a

441
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:39,159
Speaker 1: world where you can often get you know, what you need,

442
00:24:39,400 --> 00:24:41,479
Speaker 1: but you can't often get it when you need it.

443
00:24:41,840 --> 00:24:44,679
Speaker 1: You can't often sleep when you're tired, eat when you're hungry,

444
00:24:44,800 --> 00:24:47,920
Speaker 1: exercise when you have the energy, and right when your

445
00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:50,480
Speaker 1: brain is is the best. So to the extent that

446
00:24:50,520 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 1: you can develop a system so that your energy is

447
00:24:53,320 --> 00:24:56,320
Speaker 1: always right for the task, your way ahead. So let's

448
00:24:56,359 --> 00:24:59,879
Speaker 1: talk a little about the happiness ratio. I love that

449
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:04,040
Speaker 1: concept of having a certain so you and I will

450
00:25:04,080 --> 00:25:09,080
Speaker 1: disagree about certain things. The ability to self focus your

451
00:25:09,200 --> 00:25:16,399
Speaker 1: thoughts on happy ideas and create a sort of self

452
00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:22,280
Speaker 1: awareness of positivity. Am I overstating that is an important aspect. Yeah,

453
00:25:22,320 --> 00:25:25,679
Speaker 1: you can. You can manage your own brain like you

454
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:29,320
Speaker 1: can manage shelf space. So if you don't manage your brain.

455
00:25:29,400 --> 00:25:31,520
Speaker 1: It's going to think about whatever it thinks about, and

456
00:25:31,600 --> 00:25:34,800
Speaker 1: for most of us, that will drift off to negative thoughts.

457
00:25:34,840 --> 00:25:37,440
Speaker 1: There's something that happened in the past, there's something bad

458
00:25:37,480 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 1: that might happen tomorrow. But if you tell yourself, well,

459
00:25:41,280 --> 00:25:43,160
Speaker 1: let me think about what could you go right? Let

460
00:25:43,160 --> 00:25:45,680
Speaker 1: me think about what I appreciate, Let me think about

461
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:48,120
Speaker 1: who I'm in love with, let me think about that.

462
00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:50,800
Speaker 1: You can you can just use up the shelf space

463
00:25:51,160 --> 00:25:54,320
Speaker 1: and the more happy thoughts to negative thoughts gives you

464
00:25:54,359 --> 00:25:58,320
Speaker 1: a better racial and that affects your whole outlook. Right, So,

465
00:25:58,320 --> 00:26:00,600
Speaker 1: so assuming that the things you think are just the

466
00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:04,399
Speaker 1: things you think is sort of a losing strategy. A

467
00:26:04,480 --> 00:26:07,199
Speaker 1: better system is to manage what you're thinking because you

468
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 1: can make yourself think about other topics for sure. You

469
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:12,760
Speaker 1: have that control. And if you do that, your body

470
00:26:12,800 --> 00:26:15,800
Speaker 1: will respond, your health will respond, your you know, every

471
00:26:15,840 --> 00:26:19,359
Speaker 1: part of your your immune system will be stronger because

472
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:22,480
Speaker 1: we know that negativity works against all that stuff. So

473
00:26:22,560 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: let me push. I'm with you on this. You and

474
00:26:24,720 --> 00:26:28,119
Speaker 1: I are completely sympatico on the happy thought ratio. There

475
00:26:28,160 --> 00:26:30,800
Speaker 1: are other ways to phrase that, but we're in the

476
00:26:30,880 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 1: same camp there. I have to push back a little

477
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:36,960
Speaker 1: bit on the daily affirmations, which look to me like

478
00:26:37,119 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: survivorship bias, meaning well, the ones that don't work out

479
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:44,119
Speaker 1: we don't really focus on. But hey, I used to

480
00:26:44,160 --> 00:26:48,880
Speaker 1: say affirmations about Dilbert, and Dilbert worked out. Therefore, so

481
00:26:48,920 --> 00:26:52,760
Speaker 1: how do you separate the daily affirmations that work from

482
00:26:52,760 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 1: the ones that don't? Or am I just being, you know,

483
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:58,359
Speaker 1: a stick in the mud. It might not matter which

484
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:01,120
Speaker 1: is which is the interesting I'm not sure if I'll

485
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:03,480
Speaker 1: be able to expand on it completely. But what we're

486
00:27:03,480 --> 00:27:06,679
Speaker 1: talking about is the practice of writing down what you

487
00:27:06,720 --> 00:27:10,639
Speaker 1: want uh every day, so you might say I Scott

488
00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:14,320
Speaker 1: Adams will be a famous cartoonist. Now that works against

489
00:27:14,359 --> 00:27:16,960
Speaker 1: the system's way of of working, because it's better to

490
00:27:16,960 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 1: have a system that could get you lots of different outcomes.

491
00:27:20,119 --> 00:27:22,399
Speaker 1: So if you're doing an affirmation, it's probably better to

492
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:25,200
Speaker 1: say I'll be wealthy than to say I'll be rich

493
00:27:25,240 --> 00:27:27,600
Speaker 1: in a specific way, because you want to leave open

494
00:27:27,640 --> 00:27:31,240
Speaker 1: the options. Now, the idea here is that there's there's

495
00:27:31,280 --> 00:27:35,080
Speaker 1: something about focusing that gives you a better result, and

496
00:27:35,119 --> 00:27:37,720
Speaker 1: the repeating it or the writing it down every day

497
00:27:37,760 --> 00:27:42,840
Speaker 1: for consistency, according to Bob and so, yeah, it's just

498
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:46,040
Speaker 1: just the process of doing that sort of reprograms you

499
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:50,560
Speaker 1: into a better collector of information, meaning that you can

500
00:27:50,600 --> 00:27:53,800
Speaker 1: tune your brain to notice things you wouldn't notice. You know, how,

501
00:27:53,840 --> 00:27:58,080
Speaker 1: you're in a crowd sometimes you'll hear people say background noise,

502
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:01,680
Speaker 1: Scott Well and like you can pick your name out

503
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:04,840
Speaker 1: of a crowd without trying. So whatever you tune your

504
00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:08,280
Speaker 1: brain to, you notice things that are useful. So part

505
00:28:08,280 --> 00:28:11,840
Speaker 1: of what might be good about affirmations is that by

506
00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:14,680
Speaker 1: concentrating on it is sort of allows you to see

507
00:28:14,680 --> 00:28:18,320
Speaker 1: the world. It expands your your perception. And by the way,

508
00:28:18,320 --> 00:28:21,600
Speaker 1: there's a science behind that, the availability bias. You go

509
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:23,639
Speaker 1: out and get a jeep and suddenly you see jeeps

510
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:27,280
Speaker 1: everywhere because you're familiar with it. Yeah, but beyond that,

511
00:28:27,320 --> 00:28:29,920
Speaker 1: there's also been studies to show that if you approach

512
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:32,920
Speaker 1: the world as an optimist and you you just sort

513
00:28:32,920 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 1: of keep optimistic thoughts in your head, that you actually

514
00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:41,520
Speaker 1: increase your perception. And this can be shown that um,

515
00:28:41,560 --> 00:28:44,160
Speaker 1: you'll you'll notice things that other people wouldn't notice. Let

516
00:28:44,160 --> 00:28:45,960
Speaker 1: me give an example. So part of the test was

517
00:28:47,160 --> 00:28:50,040
Speaker 1: this was Wiseman was the guy who did this test.

518
00:28:50,320 --> 00:28:54,680
Speaker 1: Dr Wiseman, and he showed people uh the same copy

519
00:28:54,720 --> 00:28:58,040
Speaker 1: of a newspaper, but they were divided into two groups.

520
00:28:58,120 --> 00:29:04,000
Speaker 1: One group consider themselves lucky and another group considered themselves unlucky.

521
00:29:04,120 --> 00:29:07,920
Speaker 1: Self evaluated, self evaluate. Of course, there's no such thing

522
00:29:07,920 --> 00:29:10,920
Speaker 1: as actual luck. Not in either those groups could perform

523
00:29:11,040 --> 00:29:14,800
Speaker 1: better on randomized test. But he said, count up the

524
00:29:14,880 --> 00:29:18,520
Speaker 1: number of photographs in these newspapers. And the people who

525
00:29:18,560 --> 00:29:22,920
Speaker 1: were unlucky or considered themselves unlucky, counted the number, and

526
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:24,880
Speaker 1: on average they got the right number. Let's say it

527
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:29,440
Speaker 1: was forty two. The people who considered themselves lucky also

528
00:29:29,520 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 1: got the right number on average, but they were done

529
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:36,080
Speaker 1: in seconds, whereas the other people took minutes. What was

530
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: the difference in each of the newspapers that both groups

531
00:29:39,200 --> 00:29:43,000
Speaker 1: saw on page two in big words and said, stop

532
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:46,560
Speaker 1: counting the photographs. There are forty two of them. Now,

533
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:50,240
Speaker 1: if you expect to be lucky, you're looking for luck

534
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,640
Speaker 1: because you expect it. So the people were looking for luck.

535
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:57,400
Speaker 1: It just had a broader perceptual plane, and they noticed

536
00:29:57,480 --> 00:30:00,480
Speaker 1: that sentence the rather the other said, well, my task

537
00:30:00,600 --> 00:30:05,040
Speaker 1: is to look at photographs. Where are the photographs? One? Two, three? Hi,

538
00:30:05,160 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 1: shure him board what a boring day looks like? Another

539
00:30:07,480 --> 00:30:11,000
Speaker 1: bad day for me? So your your outcome can actually

540
00:30:11,040 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 1: change what you recognize as opportunities. That's fascinating. Can you

541
00:30:15,280 --> 00:30:17,000
Speaker 1: stick around a little bit. I have a ton more questions.

542
00:30:18,080 --> 00:30:21,680
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert.

543
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:25,360
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this conversation, well, be sure to come

544
00:30:25,360 --> 00:30:28,360
Speaker 1: back and listen to the podcast Astras, where we keep

545
00:30:28,400 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 1: the tape rolling and continue to discuss all sorts of things,

546
00:30:32,840 --> 00:30:37,440
Speaker 1: ranging from cartooning to how to win bigly in political battles.

547
00:30:37,920 --> 00:30:41,960
Speaker 1: We love your comments, feedback and suggestions right to us

548
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 1: at m IB podcast at Bloomberg dot net. You can

549
00:30:45,720 --> 00:30:51,360
Speaker 1: find that at iTunes, Overcast, SoundCloud, Bloomberg dot com, wherever

550
00:30:51,760 --> 00:30:55,040
Speaker 1: your finer podcasts are sold. Check out my daily column

551
00:30:55,080 --> 00:30:58,320
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. You can follow me

552
00:30:58,360 --> 00:31:02,000
Speaker 1: on Twitter at Ridolts. I'm Barry Retults. You're listening to

553
00:31:02,080 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast, Scott.

554
00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:14,520
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for doing this. I've been looking

555
00:31:14,600 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 1: forward to having this conversation for a while. I have

556
00:31:18,360 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 1: so many questions. I have to start by saying, how

557
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:26,680
Speaker 1: annoyed I am. I have most of your books, and

558
00:31:27,280 --> 00:31:33,560
Speaker 1: including various Dilbert collections, but um, the early Dilbert Scott

559
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:37,560
Speaker 1: Adams corporate books as opposed to Dilbert collections, and we

560
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:41,320
Speaker 1: moved about three years ago and we're mostly impact. And

561
00:31:41,400 --> 00:31:44,040
Speaker 1: I went through a bunch of boxes of books in

562
00:31:44,080 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: the basement and over the weekend and I could not

563
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:49,640
Speaker 1: find anything that's making me well, that's why I write more.

564
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:51,840
Speaker 1: There you go. So I just count on you to

565
00:31:51,880 --> 00:31:55,160
Speaker 1: lose the old ones. And you, speaking of writing more,

566
00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:58,920
Speaker 1: you have win bigley out this month in paperback. Is

567
00:31:58,960 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 1: that is that right? That's right for those people who

568
00:32:01,960 --> 00:32:05,240
Speaker 1: wanted to wait for the cheaper version. So let's talk

569
00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:09,880
Speaker 1: a little bit about uh politics. And by the way,

570
00:32:09,920 --> 00:32:13,080
Speaker 1: your email is still public, so for angry people, don't

571
00:32:13,080 --> 00:32:16,800
Speaker 1: email me. You cannot email Scott um about whatever. But

572
00:32:17,880 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 1: you got a ton of pushback on a lot of

573
00:32:20,320 --> 00:32:25,760
Speaker 1: things that you wrote about Trump, even though many of

574
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:29,280
Speaker 1: those things have come to pass and that your forecasts

575
00:32:29,280 --> 00:32:32,680
Speaker 1: and expectations have proven out. How do you how do

576
00:32:32,760 --> 00:32:38,000
Speaker 1: you deal with that sort of um pushback? Is it

577
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:40,920
Speaker 1: just that people can't see what they don't want to see,

578
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:44,040
Speaker 1: or yeah I would. I should say first of all

579
00:32:44,080 --> 00:32:46,920
Speaker 1: that I'm not a Republican. I'm not a conservative. I

580
00:32:46,960 --> 00:32:49,600
Speaker 1: consider myself left of Bernie. So when I was talking

581
00:32:49,600 --> 00:32:52,640
Speaker 1: about Trump. When I was talking about Trump, I was

582
00:32:52,680 --> 00:32:55,560
Speaker 1: talking about his technique, and I think there are some

583
00:32:55,760 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: unique things he brings, such as the way he can

584
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 1: he can talk an economy up uh, and the way

585
00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:04,920
Speaker 1: he could talk to North Korea, for example. So I

586
00:33:04,960 --> 00:33:07,840
Speaker 1: was really trying to find the positive, and I trusted

587
00:33:07,880 --> 00:33:10,200
Speaker 1: the rest of the media to find the negative. You know,

588
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:12,719
Speaker 1: that's their job. They do a really good job of it.

589
00:33:13,320 --> 00:33:16,160
Speaker 1: Some would say too good a job at it um.

590
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,160
Speaker 1: And having been in the public for a long time

591
00:33:19,280 --> 00:33:23,960
Speaker 1: with Dilbert, I'm used to withering criticism on a daily basis,

592
00:33:23,960 --> 00:33:26,040
Speaker 1: and you do kind of get used to it. Thick

593
00:33:26,080 --> 00:33:30,480
Speaker 1: skin develops after you're coming up on is it twenty

594
00:33:30,480 --> 00:33:33,840
Speaker 1: five years? Is that right? Thirty years of Dilbert Um?

595
00:33:33,880 --> 00:33:36,880
Speaker 1: But what what is different when I talk about politics

596
00:33:36,920 --> 00:33:39,160
Speaker 1: is that recently, just in the last year or so,

597
00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:44,640
Speaker 1: I've discontinued appearing in public for actually security reasons. Come

598
00:33:44,680 --> 00:33:48,720
Speaker 1: on that. Yeah, that's true, it's literally, in my opinion,

599
00:33:49,080 --> 00:33:51,640
Speaker 1: dangerous for me to be in a big crowd these days,

600
00:33:51,840 --> 00:33:53,760
Speaker 1: because you don't know. It only takes one not in

601
00:33:53,760 --> 00:33:57,360
Speaker 1: the crowd to ruin your day, as we've seen recently

602
00:33:57,520 --> 00:34:01,000
Speaker 1: what's taking place in Pittsburgh and what's taken place with

603
00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:04,480
Speaker 1: mail bombs and god knows what else. Um, but let

604
00:34:04,520 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 1: me let me, let me kind of put a frame

605
00:34:06,920 --> 00:34:09,920
Speaker 1: on that. Here's here's my observation of why the world

606
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:13,600
Speaker 1: looks crazier. And it all came. It all started when

607
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:17,399
Speaker 1: the technology allowed us to measure for the first time

608
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:21,400
Speaker 1: exactly how the news was being received by the audience.

609
00:34:21,800 --> 00:34:23,719
Speaker 1: So as soon as you could tell that this headline

610
00:34:23,760 --> 00:34:26,200
Speaker 1: got you more clicks than that line, this approach got

611
00:34:26,239 --> 00:34:31,000
Speaker 1: you more than the others, the fiduciary responsibility of management

612
00:34:31,200 --> 00:34:33,520
Speaker 1: of people in the media and the press was to

613
00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:36,360
Speaker 1: follow the clicks. You've got to go where the profit

614
00:34:36,440 --> 00:34:39,520
Speaker 1: is because you're a public company in most cases, and

615
00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:44,200
Speaker 1: the shareholders require that the BuzzFeed model. So yeah there,

616
00:34:44,239 --> 00:34:47,399
Speaker 1: and you can't really avoid that and still stay in business.

617
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:51,080
Speaker 1: So once you got that, you you had a press which,

618
00:34:51,600 --> 00:34:54,680
Speaker 1: through no fault of their own, no bad intentions, just

619
00:34:54,800 --> 00:34:58,759
Speaker 1: following the clicks had to go where the the emotional

620
00:34:58,840 --> 00:35:01,600
Speaker 1: centers of the brain were most stimulated, because that's what

621
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:04,920
Speaker 1: makes people click, makes them act. And so the news

622
00:35:04,960 --> 00:35:08,840
Speaker 1: went from even attempting to give an unbiased view of

623
00:35:08,880 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 1: the world to not really trying to do that at all,

624
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:15,040
Speaker 1: um but rather trying to give a view that they know,

625
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:19,400
Speaker 1: their their their base, whoever's watching them already will interact

626
00:35:19,440 --> 00:35:22,839
Speaker 1: with will like. So once you get in that situation,

627
00:35:23,440 --> 00:35:27,960
Speaker 1: it has to get worse because the business model won't change.

628
00:35:28,280 --> 00:35:30,920
Speaker 1: You know that there's nothing that's going to replace the

629
00:35:31,000 --> 00:35:32,640
Speaker 1: model where you make a lot of money by getting

630
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:36,600
Speaker 1: people to click. So any calls for people to be

631
00:35:36,680 --> 00:35:41,040
Speaker 1: more civil are missing a basic understanding of how the

632
00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:44,960
Speaker 1: world works. People are not going to be nicer because

633
00:35:45,000 --> 00:35:48,480
Speaker 1: they know they ought to. They they are, Their opinions

634
00:35:48,480 --> 00:35:51,360
Speaker 1: are coming from what they read, what other people say,

635
00:35:51,520 --> 00:35:54,480
Speaker 1: how they feel about stuff, and the business model is

636
00:35:54,680 --> 00:35:58,920
Speaker 1: now designed to keep them permanently in fight or flight mode.

637
00:35:59,600 --> 00:36:02,759
Speaker 1: You know, I literally have a column. We're recording this

638
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: the day. The column should be out in about fifteen minutes.

639
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:10,600
Speaker 1: How to have a financial debate without mailing pipe bombs

640
00:36:11,280 --> 00:36:17,000
Speaker 1: to each other? Because if you believe the founding fathers

641
00:36:17,040 --> 00:36:21,520
Speaker 1: and if you believe um the marketplace of ideas, we

642
00:36:21,560 --> 00:36:24,879
Speaker 1: should be able to debate these things, not with our

643
00:36:25,000 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 1: Danny Konaman system one emotional fight or flight response, more

644
00:36:29,120 --> 00:36:32,640
Speaker 1: coolly and and actually have a debate about the merits

645
00:36:32,640 --> 00:36:35,520
Speaker 1: of these issues. But it sounds like, at least in

646
00:36:35,600 --> 00:36:39,200
Speaker 1: the public political sphere, we don't get past that immediate

647
00:36:39,239 --> 00:36:43,920
Speaker 1: response very often, do we. Yeah, we've developed two separate worlds.

648
00:36:44,160 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 1: I call it two movies on one screen. So the

649
00:36:47,960 --> 00:36:51,680
Speaker 1: people on opposite sides believe they're looking at the facts

650
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:56,200
Speaker 1: and making a perfectly objective opinion based on what they

651
00:36:56,239 --> 00:36:59,600
Speaker 1: see as the facts. Trouble is, the other side thinks

652
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,440
Speaker 1: exact actually the same thing, and they're looking at for

653
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:05,400
Speaker 1: the most part, the same facts. There are some differences

654
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: about the different silos. You know, we'll have a little

655
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:12,239
Speaker 1: bit of different information. For example, one silo does not

656
00:37:12,400 --> 00:37:15,839
Speaker 1: like George Soros, the other silo doesn't talk about it,

657
00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:18,319
Speaker 1: So those things are different. But for the most part

658
00:37:18,360 --> 00:37:22,080
Speaker 1: we're looking at the same information and having completely different conclusions.

659
00:37:22,160 --> 00:37:27,760
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that, because there's a couple issues

660
00:37:27,800 --> 00:37:29,759
Speaker 1: here and I want to unpack them. But you raise

661
00:37:29,880 --> 00:37:33,280
Speaker 1: like a really interesting question to me. So, first of all,

662
00:37:33,840 --> 00:37:37,280
Speaker 1: I'm in New York, pretty middle of the road guy

663
00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:41,839
Speaker 1: working in finance, Jewish background. I have never felt oppressed

664
00:37:42,400 --> 00:37:46,479
Speaker 1: or discriminated against, but clearly within the little bubble that's

665
00:37:46,560 --> 00:37:51,480
Speaker 1: my world, Um, I'm not discriminated against. And even go

666
00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:55,320
Speaker 1: back fifth ye or a hundred years, the reason firms

667
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:57,760
Speaker 1: like Goldman Sachs came about, or some of the bigger

668
00:37:58,000 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 1: freed Frank or Kholer or some of the big your

669
00:38:00,200 --> 00:38:03,840
Speaker 1: law farms came about was because Jews couldn't get hired

670
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:08,000
Speaker 1: at the waspy farms and so they created their own.

671
00:38:08,400 --> 00:38:11,239
Speaker 1: So I was fortunate to be born into part of

672
00:38:11,239 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 1: the world where I don't really experience discrimination, although I

673
00:38:17,120 --> 00:38:20,600
Speaker 1: certainly see it online and to me when I when

674
00:38:20,600 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: I see the way George Soros name is used, it

675
00:38:25,000 --> 00:38:28,120
Speaker 1: always seems to be a totem for a dog whistle

676
00:38:28,239 --> 00:38:31,400
Speaker 1: for the anti Semites, for people you can name a

677
00:38:31,520 --> 00:38:35,280
Speaker 1: million different financiers it used to be the Trilateral Commission,

678
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,320
Speaker 1: or go down the list of all the crazy different

679
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:42,520
Speaker 1: people who were pulling the levers of power behind the scenes.

680
00:38:43,040 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 1: How do you respond when people say, hey, George Soros's

681
00:38:46,640 --> 00:38:52,960
Speaker 1: dog whistle uh to anti Semites. He's a billionaire, he's Jewish. Therefore,

682
00:38:53,040 --> 00:38:56,080
Speaker 1: wink wink, nudge, nudge, we're gonna let people know exactly

683
00:38:56,120 --> 00:38:58,400
Speaker 1: what we're saying. Well, let me tell you the experiment

684
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:03,000
Speaker 1: I've been running on Twitter recently. Um, I couldn't understand

685
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:07,560
Speaker 1: what all the complaints about sorrows were about. And I thought, well,

686
00:39:07,560 --> 00:39:09,920
Speaker 1: that's just because I've not exposed myself to it. If

687
00:39:09,960 --> 00:39:11,680
Speaker 1: I if I read the right link, if I read

688
00:39:11,719 --> 00:39:14,640
Speaker 1: the right stuff, I would maybe have an opinion. So

689
00:39:14,719 --> 00:39:17,880
Speaker 1: I asked people, can you tell me in summary what

690
00:39:18,000 --> 00:39:21,640
Speaker 1: the problem is? And people couldn't do it, not even close.

691
00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:23,600
Speaker 1: But they would say, oh, but if you look at

692
00:39:23,600 --> 00:39:27,240
Speaker 1: this link, look at this interview, watched this video. Most

693
00:39:27,280 --> 00:39:30,319
Speaker 1: of the video links were too an edited video he

694
00:39:30,360 --> 00:39:34,120
Speaker 1: did for sixty minutes in which it's taken out of

695
00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 1: context to make it look like he really enjoyed the Holocaust. Yeah,

696
00:39:38,600 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 1: I'm exaggerating a little bit that that's essentially how it's

697
00:39:41,000 --> 00:39:44,480
Speaker 1: being portrayed, or that he was a Nazi collaborator. If

698
00:39:44,480 --> 00:39:47,680
Speaker 1: you see the whole clip without the editing, it doesn't

699
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:50,319
Speaker 1: look like that. So part of it is that people

700
00:39:50,360 --> 00:39:53,040
Speaker 1: are looking at the wrong video, and they threw no

701
00:39:53,120 --> 00:39:56,160
Speaker 1: fault of their own. They believe it's it's the full story.

702
00:39:56,360 --> 00:40:00,200
Speaker 1: So it starts with that, just uh, some editing hub.

703
00:40:00,880 --> 00:40:02,879
Speaker 1: But then you go, okay, but what's he doing now?

704
00:40:04,000 --> 00:40:05,560
Speaker 1: I get why you don't like what he did when

705
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:07,880
Speaker 1: he was fourteen, even if you have the wrong information,

706
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:11,200
Speaker 1: but what you complain now? And people will send me

707
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:15,840
Speaker 1: these long, rambling articles in which there's mind reading written

708
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:18,439
Speaker 1: into the article. In other words, the author will say,

709
00:40:18,880 --> 00:40:22,440
Speaker 1: and then George Soros wants to destroy the fill in

710
00:40:22,480 --> 00:40:25,400
Speaker 1: the blank, you know, destroy our republic, destroy Israel. He

711
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,359
Speaker 1: wants to destroy something. And I'm thinking to myself, I'll

712
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:31,240
Speaker 1: bet he never said that. I'll bet there's no quote

713
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:34,320
Speaker 1: of him saying I want to destroy you know, whatever

714
00:40:34,480 --> 00:40:38,680
Speaker 1: they love. But everybody is sure they've seen it, They've

715
00:40:38,719 --> 00:40:42,279
Speaker 1: seen enough information, uh that they have that opinion. So

716
00:40:42,320 --> 00:40:44,799
Speaker 1: then I asked a simple question, Okay, you don't like

717
00:40:44,880 --> 00:40:49,320
Speaker 1: well organizations he's funding, because those organizations are doing things

718
00:40:49,440 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 1: which you you think are destructive to the United States,

719
00:40:52,640 --> 00:40:55,560
Speaker 1: to Israel or whatever you're complaining about. And I say,

720
00:40:55,600 --> 00:40:59,000
Speaker 1: can you tell me the percentage of the budget of

721
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:01,480
Speaker 1: those people he's fun day and then give me an

722
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:03,839
Speaker 1: idea what bad things they're doing, so I know if

723
00:41:03,880 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 1: he's like the big reason that some bad stuff is happening.

724
00:41:07,600 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 1: Nobody has that list, or at least nobody I can

725
00:41:10,080 --> 00:41:13,799
Speaker 1: find it can forward it to me in a consumable form.

726
00:41:13,840 --> 00:41:18,440
Speaker 1: I'll get endless a word salad descriptions about the bad

727
00:41:18,480 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: things he's funding to destroy the world, But nobody seems

728
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:25,480
Speaker 1: to be able to actually describe it in any coherent way.

729
00:41:25,520 --> 00:41:29,440
Speaker 1: So I can't even form an opinion about whether he's

730
00:41:29,480 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 1: something I should be opposed to or in favor of.

731
00:41:32,680 --> 00:41:35,760
Speaker 1: I literally can't even form an opinion. So what I'm

732
00:41:35,800 --> 00:41:40,360
Speaker 1: observing is a mass hysteria kind of reaction. And and

733
00:41:40,440 --> 00:41:42,759
Speaker 1: part of the way that you can tell it's um

734
00:41:43,680 --> 00:41:46,360
Speaker 1: it's not based on the fact is that it's limited

735
00:41:46,360 --> 00:41:49,160
Speaker 1: to one silo right the people on the left. It's

736
00:41:49,200 --> 00:41:51,799
Speaker 1: invisible to him, it's just not even a question. But

737
00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 1: it's so far along to the people like Ken McCarthy

738
00:41:55,200 --> 00:41:59,120
Speaker 1: is the guy teed up to replace Paul Ryan. He

739
00:41:59,200 --> 00:42:04,319
Speaker 1: tweeted something about Soros funding the caravan coming from Guatemality,

740
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:07,920
Speaker 1: United States. When it reaches that level, it makes you

741
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:11,440
Speaker 1: stop and say, what's going on here? And to me,

742
00:42:11,560 --> 00:42:15,520
Speaker 1: the common thread through all of at least on the right,

743
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:19,440
Speaker 1: I find the left and the right are it's not identical,

744
00:42:19,560 --> 00:42:23,480
Speaker 1: and the crazy is different in different ways. And I'm

745
00:42:23,760 --> 00:42:28,000
Speaker 1: very anti anti PC culture. The left tends to embrace

746
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:31,520
Speaker 1: that the right has something unique which the left doesn't.

747
00:42:32,120 --> 00:42:36,640
Speaker 1: Fox News is a very different animal than CNN or MSNBC.

748
00:42:37,160 --> 00:42:41,400
Speaker 1: I'm happy to say every media outlet has a bias,

749
00:42:41,840 --> 00:42:44,040
Speaker 1: there's no I don't think anybody could disagree with that.

750
00:42:44,600 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 1: But Fox News behaves like it's a wholly owned subsidiary

751
00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 1: and that's a quantitative difference from everything else. Agree or disagree, Well,

752
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:56,919
Speaker 1: let me put it in this frame. It's my observation

753
00:42:57,280 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 1: that the side this out of power is craziest while

754
00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:04,360
Speaker 1: they're out of power. So, while Obama was in power,

755
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 1: Fox News was talking about birtherism, Donald Trump was talking

756
00:43:09,560 --> 00:43:15,319
Speaker 1: about uranium one, etcetera. UM and GA email server go

757
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:18,640
Speaker 1: down the whole list. So so you know, nobody's innocent

758
00:43:18,840 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 1: of pushing stories that you know don't pass all the

759
00:43:22,200 --> 00:43:26,360
Speaker 1: fact checking. But at the moment, because Trump is in office,

760
00:43:26,520 --> 00:43:29,920
Speaker 1: it seems obvious to be that Fox has the advantage

761
00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:32,520
Speaker 1: that they can talk about real things like, oh, the

762
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:36,280
Speaker 1: economy is doing well and North Korea and it's going well, etcetera.

763
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,279
Speaker 1: So why why don't they They did a lot of

764
00:43:39,320 --> 00:43:42,719
Speaker 1: time on other I'm always back and forth the two

765
00:43:42,719 --> 00:43:44,879
Speaker 1: of them. So I'm giving nobody a pass here. I'm

766
00:43:44,880 --> 00:43:49,080
Speaker 1: just saying that, in a relative craziness scale, the one

767
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:52,560
Speaker 1: whose ount of power will act crazier while they're out

768
00:43:52,600 --> 00:43:55,600
Speaker 1: of power until they get back in power. Because Fox

769
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:58,000
Speaker 1: News can talk about real things that are good things,

770
00:43:58,200 --> 00:44:01,359
Speaker 1: and they've got a factual basis for that. If you're

771
00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:05,520
Speaker 1: anti Trump, say cy An n MSNBC, you talk about

772
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: things like, well, I think if we saw his tax returns,

773
00:44:09,200 --> 00:44:12,479
Speaker 1: there'd be a problem. Or I think when Muller is done,

774
00:44:12,480 --> 00:44:15,239
Speaker 1: we'll find something we don't know that we don't like

775
00:44:15,560 --> 00:44:19,080
Speaker 1: about Russia and Trump. Or I think he's going to

776
00:44:19,200 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 1: say something in the future that will blow up the world.

777
00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:25,320
Speaker 1: Or I think this violence that happened is because something

778
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:27,640
Speaker 1: he said, although we should probably talked about, you know,

779
00:44:27,920 --> 00:44:31,520
Speaker 1: those sorts of things separately, um because I think it

780
00:44:31,600 --> 00:44:34,719
Speaker 1: deserves its own topic. So I think that you see

781
00:44:34,719 --> 00:44:39,879
Speaker 1: a lot of mind reading imaginary Trump derangement syndrome on

782
00:44:39,920 --> 00:44:42,920
Speaker 1: the left because he's in power and he's changing their

783
00:44:42,960 --> 00:44:46,880
Speaker 1: world in the way they don't like. If if Trump, uh,

784
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:50,320
Speaker 1: you know, left office and you know, just saying Nancy

785
00:44:50,360 --> 00:44:53,600
Speaker 1: Pelosi took over the presidency in a few years, it

786
00:44:53,640 --> 00:44:56,640
Speaker 1: would just reverse and Fox News making up stuff and

787
00:44:56,719 --> 00:44:59,560
Speaker 1: seeing then it would be reporting more facts. We clearly

788
00:44:59,680 --> 00:45:04,080
Speaker 1: saw Obama derangement syndrome, and before that, we clearly saw

789
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 1: a Bush arrangement syndrome. There's there's no doubt. I'm fond

790
00:45:08,239 --> 00:45:12,280
Speaker 1: of pointing out that the death so called deficit hawks,

791
00:45:12,320 --> 00:45:17,040
Speaker 1: the people who concerned about deficit spending, is directly a

792
00:45:17,080 --> 00:45:20,080
Speaker 1: function of who's in power. Of course, so when George

793
00:45:20,080 --> 00:45:23,880
Speaker 1: Bush is in in the office, the Democrats are saying,

794
00:45:23,920 --> 00:45:25,520
Speaker 1: what do you mean you want a big tax cut

795
00:45:25,600 --> 00:45:27,920
Speaker 1: that's not funded and a war of choice that's going

796
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:31,040
Speaker 1: to cause brillions of dollars. Then the Democrats come into

797
00:45:31,080 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: the office and we have to rescue the banks, and

798
00:45:32,960 --> 00:45:35,319
Speaker 1: we need a stimulus and we need this, and now

799
00:45:35,360 --> 00:45:37,920
Speaker 1: the Republicans are talking about it, and then that reverses.

800
00:45:38,120 --> 00:45:40,439
Speaker 1: Now Trump is in office and we have a big

801
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 1: tax cut, and the deficit has gone up it's always

802
00:45:43,160 --> 00:45:46,160
Speaker 1: a function of who's out of power. But the question

803
00:45:46,160 --> 00:45:50,600
Speaker 1: that I raise is is there a qualitative difference to

804
00:45:50,840 --> 00:45:55,560
Speaker 1: that derangement syndrome UM between each side or are you

805
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:59,160
Speaker 1: suggesting it's just strictly who's ever out of power is

806
00:45:59,200 --> 00:46:02,520
Speaker 1: angry and they say and do things that are are crazy.

807
00:46:02,680 --> 00:46:06,920
Speaker 1: The two biggest variables are who's in an antipower and

808
00:46:06,960 --> 00:46:09,840
Speaker 1: then the personality of the person in the office. Is

809
00:46:09,840 --> 00:46:12,400
Speaker 1: there is there something about them that's special. Trump is

810
00:46:12,440 --> 00:46:17,800
Speaker 1: special in you know, lots of ways. So he tweaks

811
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:23,200
Speaker 1: people's feelings harder than anybody's ever tweaked feeling UM. So

812
00:46:23,280 --> 00:46:26,680
Speaker 1: you should expect that every everything that's a normal bias

813
00:46:26,719 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 1: becomes a super bias in this situation. And that's what

814
00:46:29,560 --> 00:46:32,560
Speaker 1: we see. So we're recording this about a week before

815
00:46:32,560 --> 00:46:36,120
Speaker 1: the mid terms. What do you think happens any thoughts?

816
00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:39,280
Speaker 1: You're not a political analyst, but you have some insight

817
00:46:39,880 --> 00:46:44,560
Speaker 1: into how both sides communicate. Sometimes they're more effective, sometimes

818
00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:47,200
Speaker 1: they're less effective. What what do you think is the

819
00:46:47,239 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 1: outcome here? So I think it's tough for people in

820
00:46:50,040 --> 00:46:52,920
Speaker 1: my position to call individual races because it probably has

821
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:55,200
Speaker 1: more to do with the matchups, and no, I mean

822
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:57,600
Speaker 1: generally who takes the House, who takes the Senate, what

823
00:46:57,680 --> 00:47:01,480
Speaker 1: happens in the governorships. So in general, you need to

824
00:47:01,520 --> 00:47:03,399
Speaker 1: know a lot of the details to make a good

825
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:08,160
Speaker 1: overall prediction. So I'll stick with what I feel comfortable with. Uh,

826
00:47:08,200 --> 00:47:12,239
Speaker 1: it looks like Republicans are heading for an historic turnout,

827
00:47:12,760 --> 00:47:15,920
Speaker 1: like a jaw dropping amount of turnout, and I think

828
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: they're holding their keeping their powder dry. I think Republicans have,

829
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:24,719
Speaker 1: as a characteristic, if I can generalize, they like to

830
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:27,640
Speaker 1: act more than they like to talk. And so I

831
00:47:27,680 --> 00:47:30,560
Speaker 1: think you're gonna be surprised the way people were surprised

832
00:47:30,560 --> 00:47:34,000
Speaker 1: about the election in twent sixteen the Republicans turn out.

833
00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:36,200
Speaker 1: And then the other prediction is that it's going to

834
00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:42,759
Speaker 1: be closer than people imagined a year ago. I think

835
00:47:42,800 --> 00:47:46,480
Speaker 1: it could. Uh, this will be the most extreme. I'm

836
00:47:46,520 --> 00:47:48,080
Speaker 1: not sure I want to call this a prediction, but

837
00:47:48,440 --> 00:47:51,600
Speaker 1: if things go the way that the world has been

838
00:47:51,600 --> 00:47:53,960
Speaker 1: going for the last couple of years, it almost seems

839
00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:57,760
Speaker 1: like whatever is the best movie plot is what happens

840
00:47:58,440 --> 00:48:01,360
Speaker 1: that would that would result in almost a deadlock in

841
00:48:01,400 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 1: the house, meaning would be so close that there's something

842
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:07,600
Speaker 1: about it, one of the one of the somebody who

843
00:48:07,640 --> 00:48:10,520
Speaker 1: got elected. Maybe there's some doubt about the vote. I

844
00:48:10,560 --> 00:48:13,359
Speaker 1: think we're not going to get a clean outcome. It's

845
00:48:13,400 --> 00:48:16,360
Speaker 1: possible that Will will have something that's so close to

846
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:19,680
Speaker 1: even that there will be enough things in doubt that

847
00:48:19,760 --> 00:48:22,440
Speaker 1: we wonder who we even won. I will I will

848
00:48:23,360 --> 00:48:27,799
Speaker 1: concur by saying if under normal circumstances in a mid

849
00:48:27,920 --> 00:48:31,400
Speaker 1: term election, the party out of power usually gain seats

850
00:48:31,440 --> 00:48:34,840
Speaker 1: both in the House and at the state assembly level.

851
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:39,840
Speaker 1: But if anybody can steal defeat from the Joseph victory,

852
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:43,080
Speaker 1: the Democrats know how to do that. That said, by

853
00:48:43,080 --> 00:48:46,840
Speaker 1: the time this broadcast, the results are probably in, and

854
00:48:47,200 --> 00:48:50,319
Speaker 1: I'm guessing the Democrats take the House. I have no

855
00:48:50,400 --> 00:48:54,000
Speaker 1: idea what happens in the Senate, but like like you said,

856
00:48:54,200 --> 00:48:56,480
Speaker 1: this is very tough to do. Neither of us are

857
00:48:56,480 --> 00:48:59,719
Speaker 1: political analysts, and we don't really know, um what the

858
00:48:59,760 --> 00:49:02,600
Speaker 1: out come is. But I'm I'm intrigued by your perspective

859
00:49:03,160 --> 00:49:08,360
Speaker 1: of the communication that takes place and how people are influenced. UM.

860
00:49:08,560 --> 00:49:11,840
Speaker 1: I would imagine the Democrats should be more motivated to

861
00:49:11,880 --> 00:49:15,160
Speaker 1: come out and vote only because the Republicans got what

862
00:49:15,200 --> 00:49:17,840
Speaker 1: they want they got their task cut, they got Kavanaugh,

863
00:49:18,680 --> 00:49:22,919
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be as motivated. But who can tell your

864
00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:26,359
Speaker 1: your your position is he is a great motivator, and

865
00:49:26,400 --> 00:49:29,960
Speaker 1: therefore they're going to come out and vote. Well. There's

866
00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:33,400
Speaker 1: also there a number of other influences. One is that

867
00:49:33,440 --> 00:49:36,920
Speaker 1: people are more motivated by a fear of loss than

868
00:49:36,960 --> 00:49:40,080
Speaker 1: they are motivated by, hey, I might guess something. The

869
00:49:40,160 --> 00:49:43,279
Speaker 1: Democrats are trying to guess something, and the Republicans are

870
00:49:43,320 --> 00:49:47,160
Speaker 1: trying to prevent losing what they've already gotten. Those are

871
00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:49,960
Speaker 1: different motivations, and usually the person who's trying to prevent

872
00:49:50,000 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: a loss is going to get off the couch before

873
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:54,439
Speaker 1: the person who was like, well, if I vote something

874
00:49:54,440 --> 00:49:59,120
Speaker 1: good might happen. That's a lesser motivation, classic risk aversion, right,

875
00:49:59,640 --> 00:50:03,680
Speaker 1: And so there's that UM, but I also think the

876
00:50:04,200 --> 00:50:10,080
Speaker 1: Democrats might be more transparent about how much UM. Let's

877
00:50:10,080 --> 00:50:12,400
Speaker 1: see how much energy they have on their side. You

878
00:50:12,440 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 1: can see them dancing in the streets, you can see

879
00:50:14,760 --> 00:50:18,080
Speaker 1: them talking, you can see them registering people that apparently

880
00:50:18,120 --> 00:50:23,399
Speaker 1: record rates. But the Republicans are sleepers and and this

881
00:50:23,480 --> 00:50:27,760
Speaker 1: is weird, but I think you might see a repeat

882
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:32,400
Speaker 1: of six just because Republicans enjoyed it so much the

883
00:50:32,440 --> 00:50:35,240
Speaker 1: first time. In other words, they saw the model where

884
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:37,279
Speaker 1: while we didn't talk about it, but we showed up

885
00:50:37,320 --> 00:50:40,560
Speaker 1: and voted, you saw what happens. Well, the argument is they,

886
00:50:40,640 --> 00:50:44,000
Speaker 1: but they if you look at total votes cast, Trump

887
00:50:44,040 --> 00:50:46,720
Speaker 1: got less votes than Hillary did in the presidential election

888
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:50,560
Speaker 1: and the GOP got less votes than the Democrats did

889
00:50:50,920 --> 00:50:54,560
Speaker 1: in Congress. However, they got the right votes in the

890
00:50:54,680 --> 00:50:58,040
Speaker 1: right states for the electoral college and for the individual

891
00:50:58,200 --> 00:51:02,120
Speaker 1: congress people. Yeah, that that obviously makes a huge difference,

892
00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,959
Speaker 1: and you can't discount that. But there's there's a big

893
00:51:05,120 --> 00:51:09,160
Speaker 1: energy issue too, and uh that might be the energy

894
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:12,080
Speaker 1: might be the difference between that one or two percent

895
00:51:12,160 --> 00:51:14,520
Speaker 1: in either direction. And that's really all that's in play.

896
00:51:14,800 --> 00:51:17,759
Speaker 1: People that people have largely made up their minds, but

897
00:51:18,160 --> 00:51:22,760
Speaker 1: they there there may be one who were going to vote,

898
00:51:22,920 --> 00:51:26,359
Speaker 1: but it's raining, or you know, they don't have a babysitter,

899
00:51:26,480 --> 00:51:29,160
Speaker 1: and how hard are you going to try? So you

900
00:51:29,200 --> 00:51:32,520
Speaker 1: think you think the Republicans are more motivated than the

901
00:51:32,600 --> 00:51:37,319
Speaker 1: Democrats realize. I think it's a big sleeper and and

902
00:51:37,719 --> 00:51:40,600
Speaker 1: they're going to break some records that that is quite fascinating.

903
00:51:40,760 --> 00:51:43,960
Speaker 1: You mentioned something earlier. By the way, I love that

904
00:51:44,040 --> 00:51:46,400
Speaker 1: you and I disagree about a lot of things and

905
00:51:46,440 --> 00:51:49,640
Speaker 1: can actually engage in a civil debate, where online it

906
00:51:49,680 --> 00:51:53,080
Speaker 1: seems so few people can do that. Well, if people

907
00:51:53,160 --> 00:51:57,200
Speaker 1: were polite online like they are in person, online would

908
00:51:57,200 --> 00:52:00,920
Speaker 1: be fine too. Well. That that's the the um the

909
00:52:01,040 --> 00:52:06,840
Speaker 1: automobile pedestrian disagreement, when people yell stuff from the safety

910
00:52:07,000 --> 00:52:10,680
Speaker 1: of their stealing glass enclosure that you would never say

911
00:52:10,920 --> 00:52:14,480
Speaker 1: walking down the street, and online seems to be that

912
00:52:14,680 --> 00:52:18,720
Speaker 1: indulgence of id seems to be encouraged when you're online

913
00:52:18,760 --> 00:52:23,480
Speaker 1: people people forget that you're not dealing with the robot,

914
00:52:23,480 --> 00:52:25,200
Speaker 1: You're dealing with a human being on the other side.

915
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:27,520
Speaker 1: It's very easy to lose sight of that when you're

916
00:52:27,560 --> 00:52:32,240
Speaker 1: just punching something into a little Twitter square and hitting tweet. Yeah. Probably,

917
00:52:32,400 --> 00:52:35,399
Speaker 1: you know, twenty times a day at minimum, somebody will

918
00:52:35,440 --> 00:52:37,880
Speaker 1: come onto my Twitter feed and say some version of

919
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 1: your cartoons are terrible. You're an idiot, And that's all

920
00:52:42,200 --> 00:52:44,920
Speaker 1: they'll say. There's nothing else, And I think to myself,

921
00:52:45,520 --> 00:52:48,359
Speaker 1: what exactly was your motivation there? It had to just

922
00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:50,720
Speaker 1: feel good, So I think they just get a little

923
00:52:50,840 --> 00:52:54,480
Speaker 1: charge and being able to hurt somebody they don't know

924
00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:58,320
Speaker 1: that they've got a problem with that. That's doesn't seem

925
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:00,680
Speaker 1: like it's a positive or healthy way to deal with

926
00:53:00,719 --> 00:53:04,600
Speaker 1: a disagreement. I don't do New Year's resolutions, but I

927
00:53:04,680 --> 00:53:07,360
Speaker 1: made a resolution this year to try and be nicer

928
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,360
Speaker 1: on Twitter. And you would be shocked at how often

929
00:53:10,440 --> 00:53:14,239
Speaker 1: somebody says something that is you know, there's a legitimate

930
00:53:14,280 --> 00:53:17,200
Speaker 1: point there, but it's lost in the obnoxiousness and the anger.

931
00:53:17,600 --> 00:53:20,839
Speaker 1: And when you just respond with a factual statement about well,

932
00:53:20,880 --> 00:53:22,840
Speaker 1: here's the data source I used and this was the

933
00:53:22,880 --> 00:53:27,680
Speaker 1: basis of that, the person will then turn around and say, oh,

934
00:53:27,719 --> 00:53:29,760
Speaker 1: thanks for that. By the way, I love Masson's in business.

935
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: Keep doing what you're doing. I'm like, wait a second,

936
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:36,080
Speaker 1: you were just a total jerk. And I learned that

937
00:53:36,120 --> 00:53:39,000
Speaker 1: a long time ago, and it's easy to get caught

938
00:53:39,080 --> 00:53:42,360
Speaker 1: up in the emotion and forget these are real people

939
00:53:42,400 --> 00:53:46,000
Speaker 1: you're dealing with. Yeah, I might have different people following

940
00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:48,719
Speaker 1: me because I've never it's pretty rare that I can

941
00:53:48,800 --> 00:53:51,680
Speaker 1: send them better information and have them say, oh, yeah,

942
00:53:51,719 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 1: you changed my mind. Usually it's uh, you know, your

943
00:53:55,040 --> 00:53:58,000
Speaker 1: link is crazy and you're crazy, and they don't say

944
00:53:58,000 --> 00:54:00,560
Speaker 1: they've changed their mind. They said, oh I like the

945
00:54:00,640 --> 00:54:05,880
Speaker 1: radio show, like they still haven't walked back whatever whatever

946
00:54:06,040 --> 00:54:08,120
Speaker 1: data point. You know. I love when people tell me, well,

947
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:11,200
Speaker 1: you didn't inflation, and just that I can't inflation, and

948
00:54:11,320 --> 00:54:13,160
Speaker 1: just height, it's just the guy's height, what are you

949
00:54:13,200 --> 00:54:16,600
Speaker 1: talking about? So so that's sort of you know, you

950
00:54:16,640 --> 00:54:20,000
Speaker 1: get sort of stuff. I do get the Uh it's

951
00:54:20,040 --> 00:54:22,799
Speaker 1: not that uncommon to get somebody who will insult me

952
00:54:23,040 --> 00:54:26,560
Speaker 1: while complimenting me, you know, and you'll say, yeah, I

953
00:54:26,600 --> 00:54:30,160
Speaker 1: love your show, you're crazy about this. Uh yeah, So

954
00:54:30,760 --> 00:54:33,279
Speaker 1: I don't know if I should block them because they've

955
00:54:33,280 --> 00:54:37,360
Speaker 1: got these weird, uh insulting ways to be my friend.

956
00:54:37,480 --> 00:54:40,200
Speaker 1: And are you familiar with the soft block? We were

957
00:54:40,239 --> 00:54:42,400
Speaker 1: just discussing this in the office the other day. The

958
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:47,120
Speaker 1: mute soft block is if somebody's following you, I shouldn't Well,

959
00:54:47,360 --> 00:54:49,560
Speaker 1: normally I would say I wouldn't reveal this because this

960
00:54:49,640 --> 00:54:52,319
Speaker 1: is a secret trick. But the old joke is if

961
00:54:52,360 --> 00:54:54,480
Speaker 1: you want to hide something, bury it in the back

962
00:54:54,520 --> 00:54:58,000
Speaker 1: of a podcast, nobody'll hear it. Um. So someone's following

963
00:54:58,040 --> 00:55:00,600
Speaker 1: you and you don't want to block them, but you're

964
00:55:00,600 --> 00:55:04,200
Speaker 1: tired of their crap, So you block and then immediately

965
00:55:04,320 --> 00:55:08,480
Speaker 1: unblocked them, and what that does is it makes them

966
00:55:08,600 --> 00:55:12,279
Speaker 1: unfollow you, and then you mute them, and so now

967
00:55:12,320 --> 00:55:15,400
Speaker 1: you don't see their stuff. They're no longer getting your stuff,

968
00:55:15,400 --> 00:55:18,839
Speaker 1: but they don't know they've been unfollowed, and everybody's life

969
00:55:18,880 --> 00:55:21,800
Speaker 1: just goes on their separate paths with let's just agree

970
00:55:21,840 --> 00:55:24,759
Speaker 1: to divorce and move forward. It's the Twitter case of

971
00:55:24,800 --> 00:55:28,200
Speaker 1: an amicable divorce. You've changed my life. So I have

972
00:55:28,280 --> 00:55:32,080
Speaker 1: to give credit to um my partner Josh Brown, who

973
00:55:32,120 --> 00:55:34,799
Speaker 1: claims to have invented this in two thousand and ten.

974
00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:39,600
Speaker 1: I discovered it independently five years later. I'm like, this

975
00:55:39,680 --> 00:55:44,440
Speaker 1: is a very effective technique too, because once you block somebody,

976
00:55:44,880 --> 00:55:47,840
Speaker 1: then it's like, ah, that idiot's got atoms blocked riddles,

977
00:55:47,920 --> 00:55:51,200
Speaker 1: she's a jerky blocked me. So instead block, but you

978
00:55:51,239 --> 00:55:52,920
Speaker 1: have to do it immediately so they can't see it.

979
00:55:52,920 --> 00:55:56,000
Speaker 1: It's blocked, unblocked, and then mute and we all just

980
00:55:56,120 --> 00:55:58,880
Speaker 1: move along with our lives. That's brilliant. I've been calling

981
00:55:58,880 --> 00:56:02,839
Speaker 1: people Nazis and them locking him. That's funny. So so

982
00:56:02,920 --> 00:56:06,760
Speaker 1: let's talk about Nazis for a second. Or actually, more specifically,

983
00:56:06,800 --> 00:56:11,480
Speaker 1: you said the situation with Pittsburgh and some of the

984
00:56:11,520 --> 00:56:15,440
Speaker 1: more incendiary rhet rhetoric is different than some of the

985
00:56:15,440 --> 00:56:18,680
Speaker 1: other stuff, Um, what were you thinking along? Yeah, just

986
00:56:18,719 --> 00:56:22,640
Speaker 1: in the sense it requires a little more expansive context.

987
00:56:23,080 --> 00:56:24,879
Speaker 1: The first thing I'd say is that if you're looking

988
00:56:24,920 --> 00:56:27,920
Speaker 1: at the president's rhetoric and saying how is that affecting people?

989
00:56:28,320 --> 00:56:31,279
Speaker 1: There are different filters to view that. If you're looking

990
00:56:31,320 --> 00:56:35,359
Speaker 1: at it a legal filter or a social filter. Even

991
00:56:35,440 --> 00:56:38,319
Speaker 1: his enemies agree that you can't blame the talker for

992
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:40,480
Speaker 1: the person who did the bad act. Hey, you're the

993
00:56:40,520 --> 00:56:44,080
Speaker 1: guy with the gun. You know, crazy is crazy. But

994
00:56:44,320 --> 00:56:47,040
Speaker 1: if you've viewed it through a science lens and you've

995
00:56:47,040 --> 00:56:49,879
Speaker 1: got millions of people listening to a message, are some

996
00:56:49,920 --> 00:56:52,440
Speaker 1: of them going to be influenced in ways that are

997
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:56,480
Speaker 1: unproductive and dangerous? In the answer is yes, just about

998
00:56:56,480 --> 00:57:00,400
Speaker 1: every time. Now, President Trump is surely the type of

999
00:57:00,480 --> 00:57:04,319
Speaker 1: personality that could trigger people on the fringes, but I

1000
00:57:04,320 --> 00:57:09,120
Speaker 1: would say most presidents probably are. Probably most presidents have

1001
00:57:09,239 --> 00:57:13,399
Speaker 1: triggered people for their own reasons, uh to do things. Now,

1002
00:57:13,480 --> 00:57:16,880
Speaker 1: if you're looking at somebody who has triggered too, in

1003
00:57:16,880 --> 00:57:21,040
Speaker 1: the case of the synagogue shooting to attack people who

1004
00:57:21,120 --> 00:57:24,520
Speaker 1: the president clearly favors. I mean, he's been good to Israel,

1005
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:27,800
Speaker 1: his family is Jewish, his daughter married someone who is

1006
00:57:27,880 --> 00:57:30,880
Speaker 1: Jewish and converted to Judy, his advisors. You know, you

1007
00:57:30,920 --> 00:57:35,920
Speaker 1: can go round down and the shooter actively disliked Trump,

1008
00:57:36,400 --> 00:57:38,640
Speaker 1: but he's still being Trump is still being blamed for

1009
00:57:38,720 --> 00:57:42,480
Speaker 1: raising the temperature. And what about what about the mail bomber?

1010
00:57:42,480 --> 00:57:46,720
Speaker 1: How do you define that guy? Just um? Mental illness.

1011
00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:49,320
Speaker 1: You know, it's always the problem to to say that

1012
00:57:49,360 --> 00:57:52,400
Speaker 1: we should change all of our behavior because there are

1013
00:57:52,440 --> 00:57:54,959
Speaker 1: some mentally deranged people who are going to take it wrong.

1014
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:59,040
Speaker 1: So well, all presidents say things that might affect some

1015
00:57:59,120 --> 00:58:02,640
Speaker 1: of the people the extreme fringe. Trump seems to be

1016
00:58:02,760 --> 00:58:07,080
Speaker 1: much more incendiary than Obama or Bush or Clinton. I

1017
00:58:07,120 --> 00:58:09,920
Speaker 1: think that's right, and I don't think that we should

1018
00:58:09,920 --> 00:58:13,080
Speaker 1: ignore that, and then the president should do whatever he

1019
00:58:13,160 --> 00:58:18,000
Speaker 1: needs to do with that. Um, but let's also size it.

1020
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:21,760
Speaker 1: I did a Twitter poll, which of course is deeply unscientific,

1021
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:24,800
Speaker 1: but I asked, what do you think causes people to

1022
00:58:24,960 --> 00:58:30,320
Speaker 1: act more violently the president's rhetoric or fake news, video

1023
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:34,080
Speaker 1: games or music. And what you find is that the

1024
00:58:34,120 --> 00:58:36,960
Speaker 1: president is in is in the same range, at least

1025
00:58:37,000 --> 00:58:40,720
Speaker 1: in people's opinions with music and video games, which I

1026
00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:44,200
Speaker 1: also believe do trigger people. If you're looking at a

1027
00:58:44,320 --> 00:58:47,320
Speaker 1: huge population and you know, if a hundred million people

1028
00:58:47,360 --> 00:58:50,920
Speaker 1: are playing a video game where somebody gets shot, somebody's

1029
00:58:50,920 --> 00:58:53,840
Speaker 1: gonna shoose somebody. It's just the question is is the

1030
00:58:53,920 --> 00:58:56,840
Speaker 1: video game or you take a hundred million people and

1031
00:58:57,040 --> 00:58:59,680
Speaker 1: statistically there's going to be one crazy it's in that

1032
00:59:00,120 --> 00:59:02,960
Speaker 1: it's the price of free speech. But you want to

1033
00:59:03,000 --> 00:59:07,040
Speaker 1: size it. Fake news can kill millions. I mean, fake

1034
00:59:07,120 --> 00:59:10,520
Speaker 1: news is a serious So how do you define fake news?

1035
00:59:10,520 --> 00:59:13,040
Speaker 1: And two ways? And now the reason I'm going to

1036
00:59:13,080 --> 00:59:16,919
Speaker 1: tee up this question very specifically, there's an inherent bias

1037
00:59:16,960 --> 00:59:19,480
Speaker 1: in all media operations, from the New York Times to

1038
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:23,240
Speaker 1: the Wall Street Journal, um and people entities on the

1039
00:59:23,320 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 1: far extreme. What what is your definition of fake news?

1040
00:59:28,320 --> 00:59:31,760
Speaker 1: So for me, fake news would be inaccurate news that

1041
00:59:32,000 --> 00:59:34,160
Speaker 1: especially the kind of that they should have known or

1042
00:59:34,160 --> 00:59:37,400
Speaker 1: should have corrected. But that's kind of rare. There isn't

1043
00:59:37,480 --> 00:59:41,160
Speaker 1: that much of the like. Seriously, fake news the other

1044
00:59:41,240 --> 00:59:45,000
Speaker 1: kind is worse because it's changing how we're thinking about things.

1045
00:59:45,520 --> 00:59:51,160
Speaker 1: So if if you talk uh consistently about let's say Russia,

1046
00:59:51,520 --> 00:59:54,960
Speaker 1: it will rise in people's minds in importance. That may

1047
00:59:55,000 --> 00:59:59,200
Speaker 1: be good, but it may be bad. So the media

1048
00:59:59,520 --> 01:00:02,720
Speaker 1: is change raaging the importance and the priority and how

1049
01:00:02,760 --> 01:00:06,440
Speaker 1: we how we rank things, the focus of perception. By

1050
01:00:06,480 --> 01:00:08,040
Speaker 1: the way, I meant to tell you, I know you're

1051
01:00:08,040 --> 01:00:12,080
Speaker 1: a big fan of Bob Geldini, who wrote Influence and Persuasion.

1052
01:00:12,600 --> 01:00:15,080
Speaker 1: It was fun reading his stuff and then reading your

1053
01:00:15,080 --> 01:00:20,080
Speaker 1: stuff because clearly he has influenced you. Yes, he's influenced

1054
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:22,160
Speaker 1: me a great deal, which makes sense. He wrote a

1055
01:00:22,160 --> 01:00:26,920
Speaker 1: book called Influence. Um, uh yeah, he's probably one of

1056
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:31,960
Speaker 1: my biggest influences. And uh, you know we've we've we've

1057
01:00:32,000 --> 01:00:37,040
Speaker 1: have brief connection on Twitter exchange some professional compliments. So

1058
01:00:37,720 --> 01:00:43,760
Speaker 1: the concept of re prioritizing and focusing comes from um

1059
01:00:43,800 --> 01:00:47,360
Speaker 1: influence comes from his book. You're saying what the media

1060
01:00:47,480 --> 01:00:52,040
Speaker 1: does fake news not so much false statements of fact,

1061
01:00:52,560 --> 01:00:57,120
Speaker 1: but changing or re prioritizing the subjects were discussing, right,

1062
01:00:57,160 --> 01:00:59,760
Speaker 1: And then there's a hybrid, which is the worst case

1063
01:00:59,840 --> 01:01:03,160
Speaker 1: in my opinion, this is the worst fake news maybe

1064
01:01:03,200 --> 01:01:07,080
Speaker 1: we'll ever see short of actually starting a war. And

1065
01:01:07,120 --> 01:01:10,240
Speaker 1: that was what I called the Charlottesville hoax. Now the way,

1066
01:01:10,240 --> 01:01:12,600
Speaker 1: this is what and it goes like this. When the

1067
01:01:12,640 --> 01:01:15,600
Speaker 1: President said they were fine people on both sides, the

1068
01:01:15,720 --> 01:01:19,240
Speaker 1: frame that should have been reported was both sides of

1069
01:01:19,280 --> 01:01:22,680
Speaker 1: the statue question. People want statues, people want them to

1070
01:01:22,720 --> 01:01:25,360
Speaker 1: come down. There are fine people on both sides of that,

1071
01:01:25,440 --> 01:01:28,680
Speaker 1: even if you disagree with their position. But because the

1072
01:01:28,720 --> 01:01:33,000
Speaker 1: news had framed it as Antifa against the white supremacist,

1073
01:01:33,480 --> 01:01:37,720
Speaker 1: they reported it as both sides being white supremacist and Antifa.

1074
01:01:37,760 --> 01:01:40,360
Speaker 1: And then they said, well, the president is calling the

1075
01:01:40,360 --> 01:01:44,840
Speaker 1: white supremacist find people, so now I have to go back. Yeah, now,

1076
01:01:44,920 --> 01:01:48,440
Speaker 1: let me finish. Finish now. In order to believe that,

1077
01:01:48,480 --> 01:01:50,640
Speaker 1: you would have to believe that he called the Antifa

1078
01:01:50,680 --> 01:01:54,240
Speaker 1: demonstrators find people. Also because he said on both sides,

1079
01:01:54,600 --> 01:01:57,520
Speaker 1: that didn't happen. Second of all, there is no world

1080
01:01:57,680 --> 01:02:00,440
Speaker 1: in which the President of the United States got in

1081
01:02:00,480 --> 01:02:03,000
Speaker 1: front of the public and decided to side with the

1082
01:02:03,000 --> 01:02:06,840
Speaker 1: white supremacists by calling them find people. In no world

1083
01:02:07,080 --> 01:02:10,160
Speaker 1: was that possible or did it happen. Indeed, when they

1084
01:02:10,200 --> 01:02:13,720
Speaker 1: asked him for clarification, he condemned the white supremacist. He

1085
01:02:13,880 --> 01:02:17,480
Speaker 1: clearly was not supporting them, and anybody who could have

1086
01:02:17,520 --> 01:02:20,400
Speaker 1: seen this subjectively should have known that. But you can

1087
01:02:20,440 --> 01:02:23,120
Speaker 1: turn on CNN almost any day of the week and

1088
01:02:23,160 --> 01:02:24,960
Speaker 1: there will be a pundit who will say, well, he

1089
01:02:25,000 --> 01:02:28,120
Speaker 1: called the white supremacists find people, and nobody calls him

1090
01:02:28,160 --> 01:02:32,200
Speaker 1: on it. Nobody says, wait, wait, that was ambiguous. Obviously

1091
01:02:32,200 --> 01:02:35,040
Speaker 1: he wasn't saying white supremacists or find people, because those

1092
01:02:35,040 --> 01:02:39,080
Speaker 1: white supremacists, for God's sakes, they were marching against it

1093
01:02:39,200 --> 01:02:42,520
Speaker 1: was an anti Semitic demonstration. You know, his daughter's Jewish,

1094
01:02:42,600 --> 01:02:45,680
Speaker 1: his you know his his family is Jewish, He's pro Israel.

1095
01:02:45,840 --> 01:02:49,200
Speaker 1: Israel loves him very very much so, by the way,

1096
01:02:49,320 --> 01:02:52,200
Speaker 1: right more than any president amongst the Orthodox Jews. I

1097
01:02:52,240 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 1: think his approval rating is like in the United States,

1098
01:02:55,960 --> 01:02:58,240
Speaker 1: very very so. To think that he got in front

1099
01:02:58,240 --> 01:03:00,280
Speaker 1: of the public and made a choice to say, yeah,

1100
01:03:00,360 --> 01:03:02,280
Speaker 1: I think this will work out well for me. I'll

1101
01:03:02,840 --> 01:03:07,000
Speaker 1: throw in with the white supremacist. That absolutely did not happen,

1102
01:03:07,400 --> 01:03:11,320
Speaker 1: but is reported as fact by c AN, n MSNBC,

1103
01:03:11,840 --> 01:03:15,760
Speaker 1: And I would say that that one event crystallized all

1104
01:03:15,800 --> 01:03:19,320
Speaker 1: the things that people worried about the president and put

1105
01:03:19,320 --> 01:03:22,920
Speaker 1: it into fact. So he and so and so that event,

1106
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:25,520
Speaker 1: more than anything else, is ripping the fabric of the

1107
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:31,800
Speaker 1: country apart. And it's despicable and it's bordering on intentional.

1108
01:03:32,080 --> 01:03:34,080
Speaker 1: So I have to now go back and rewatch that

1109
01:03:34,240 --> 01:03:36,360
Speaker 1: video because I didn't see it live. I just saw

1110
01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:39,960
Speaker 1: the clips. However, now if you if you see the video,

1111
01:03:40,280 --> 01:03:41,920
Speaker 1: that won't clear it up. You have to wait for

1112
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:45,000
Speaker 1: him to him to explain what he meant that he

1113
01:03:45,040 --> 01:03:48,040
Speaker 1: was disavowing them, and then you have to understand that

1114
01:03:48,120 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: the context was always two sides of the statue debate.

1115
01:03:51,440 --> 01:03:53,560
Speaker 1: That's what the whole event was about. I'll watch the

1116
01:03:53,560 --> 01:03:56,480
Speaker 1: whole thing. Part of the problem is that we bring

1117
01:03:57,280 --> 01:03:59,439
Speaker 1: past statements to what we do. So the whole birth

1118
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:03,200
Speaker 1: or contra vercy very much looks like it's a racist

1119
01:04:03,200 --> 01:04:05,280
Speaker 1: trope and he was key in that. Wait a minute,

1120
01:04:06,040 --> 01:04:09,439
Speaker 1: why do I agree that people are perceiving it that way?

1121
01:04:09,960 --> 01:04:13,880
Speaker 1: But are you saying that the facts support that as

1122
01:04:13,880 --> 01:04:18,720
Speaker 1: being a racist attack. The first African American president clearly

1123
01:04:18,760 --> 01:04:21,800
Speaker 1: born in Hawaii, Clearly tons of evidence that that's where

1124
01:04:21,840 --> 01:04:25,480
Speaker 1: he's from. Somehow he's a Muslim where somehow he's a

1125
01:04:25,520 --> 01:04:31,040
Speaker 1: non US citizen. Well, the I don't think the president

1126
01:04:31,120 --> 01:04:34,320
Speaker 1: was bringing up the Muslim part. I believe the president

1127
01:04:34,440 --> 01:04:38,400
Speaker 1: was using a common attack that he uses for everybody.

1128
01:04:38,480 --> 01:04:40,880
Speaker 1: He said, Ted cruising in the United States. He said,

1129
01:04:40,920 --> 01:04:44,280
Speaker 1: Ted Cruz was a Canadian. Well, he was born in Canada,

1130
01:04:44,360 --> 01:04:47,400
Speaker 1: but to American parents and your duels. So you see

1131
01:04:47,440 --> 01:04:52,360
Speaker 1: that the president uses every available attack against every opponent

1132
01:04:52,600 --> 01:04:55,360
Speaker 1: without exception. If he can say it, if he can

1133
01:04:55,360 --> 01:04:57,480
Speaker 1: throw it against the wall, and he thinks that will

1134
01:04:57,600 --> 01:05:00,959
Speaker 1: influence three voters, He's gonna throw wrote that against the wall,

1135
01:05:01,000 --> 01:05:03,320
Speaker 1: he said. He said that Ted Cruz's father might have

1136
01:05:03,360 --> 01:05:06,200
Speaker 1: been involved in killing Kennedy. Now you don't believe he

1137
01:05:06,280 --> 01:05:10,800
Speaker 1: believed that, right, nobody believes. So let me throw another

1138
01:05:10,800 --> 01:05:13,840
Speaker 1: one at you, which I think is fascinating. Jon Stewart

1139
01:05:13,880 --> 01:05:17,400
Speaker 1: of The Daily Show there was an episode where he

1140
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:20,040
Speaker 1: attacks Trump. I think it was for how he cut pizza,

1141
01:05:20,240 --> 01:05:25,880
Speaker 1: something idiotic, and Trump tweets John Leebowitz, also known as

1142
01:05:25,960 --> 01:05:29,560
Speaker 1: Jon Stewart. Now I interpreted that as, Hey, everybody in

1143
01:05:29,640 --> 01:05:34,280
Speaker 1: Hollywood and everybody on TV changes their name. You're bringing

1144
01:05:34,360 --> 01:05:37,600
Speaker 1: up a very Jewish name that sounds like a dog

1145
01:05:37,640 --> 01:05:40,480
Speaker 1: whistle to the anti Semites. Tell me why that's wrong.

1146
01:05:41,040 --> 01:05:43,400
Speaker 1: It sounds to me like he was calling him a phony.

1147
01:05:43,600 --> 01:05:45,600
Speaker 1: In other words, he wasn't he wasn't true to his

1148
01:05:45,640 --> 01:05:49,320
Speaker 1: own heritage like everybody else in show business. Right. But

1149
01:05:49,880 --> 01:05:52,680
Speaker 1: the fact that don't get caught up in the logic

1150
01:05:52,720 --> 01:05:55,040
Speaker 1: of the fact of it. It was something he could

1151
01:05:55,080 --> 01:05:58,520
Speaker 1: say to make him dealing. And he just throws everything.

1152
01:05:58,640 --> 01:06:01,480
Speaker 1: He opens the cannon fodder and that's it. Whatever you

1153
01:06:01,520 --> 01:06:04,160
Speaker 1: can throw, he throws. Yeah, if you if you see

1154
01:06:04,240 --> 01:06:07,880
Speaker 1: him going easy on opponents who happened to be white males,

1155
01:06:08,200 --> 01:06:10,480
Speaker 1: let me know, because I haven't noticed that. He well,

1156
01:06:10,640 --> 01:06:13,840
Speaker 1: low energy Jeb and lion ted and what do you

1157
01:06:13,920 --> 01:06:17,880
Speaker 1: call Rubio tiny Marco or something like that. He but

1158
01:06:18,000 --> 01:06:21,120
Speaker 1: it seems like it's not religious or racial. It seems

1159
01:06:21,160 --> 01:06:24,200
Speaker 1: that cry and chuck. I mean, you know, if if

1160
01:06:24,240 --> 01:06:27,680
Speaker 1: you are someone who insults everybody with every tool that

1161
01:06:27,720 --> 01:06:30,600
Speaker 1: you have at your disposal all the time, if you're

1162
01:06:30,600 --> 01:06:33,600
Speaker 1: picking out that one example and say, well, he's this

1163
01:06:33,640 --> 01:06:36,960
Speaker 1: one's black, so it must be racist. That is not

1164
01:06:37,080 --> 01:06:40,640
Speaker 1: based in fact just machine guns everybody in that Your

1165
01:06:40,720 --> 01:06:43,440
Speaker 1: bias is showing through in that. So I have my

1166
01:06:43,560 --> 01:06:45,600
Speaker 1: favorite questions. I asked all my guests, but I have

1167
01:06:45,760 --> 01:06:48,200
Speaker 1: one more question. I have to get to you because

1168
01:06:48,280 --> 01:06:54,160
Speaker 1: people are I see why you are um annoyed by

1169
01:06:54,200 --> 01:06:57,720
Speaker 1: the tweet streams that come at you. You said earlier

1170
01:06:57,760 --> 01:07:01,400
Speaker 1: you're to the left of Bernie. Correct, How do you

1171
01:07:01,440 --> 01:07:03,800
Speaker 1: define left right? That you're to the left of Bernie

1172
01:07:03,840 --> 01:07:07,160
Speaker 1: sand Bernie Sanders right, Bernie? All right, So let me

1173
01:07:07,200 --> 01:07:11,560
Speaker 1: give you some examples on abortion. Conservatives would like the limited,

1174
01:07:12,160 --> 01:07:15,280
Speaker 1: Liberals like, you know, more of it with certain conditions.

1175
01:07:15,640 --> 01:07:18,480
Speaker 1: I'm left to that, which is I say that men

1176
01:07:18,640 --> 01:07:23,080
Speaker 1: and me in particular should abstain from the decision and

1177
01:07:23,160 --> 01:07:26,040
Speaker 1: just support women. And the reason is that women bear

1178
01:07:26,120 --> 01:07:31,320
Speaker 1: the greatest responsibility for childbirth and child rearing, and as

1179
01:07:31,360 --> 01:07:34,840
Speaker 1: a general standard, the people who take on the biggest responsibility,

1180
01:07:35,040 --> 01:07:38,360
Speaker 1: especially for something so important, should have the greatest say,

1181
01:07:38,600 --> 01:07:41,720
Speaker 1: that's a pretty progressive perspective. And and my and to

1182
01:07:41,880 --> 01:07:46,320
Speaker 1: think that men should have somehow an equal say in

1183
01:07:46,440 --> 01:07:48,920
Speaker 1: what women do with their bodies as a law is

1184
01:07:49,080 --> 01:07:51,160
Speaker 1: ridiculous because first of all, it assumes that men are

1185
01:07:51,200 --> 01:07:54,160
Speaker 1: adding something to the to the quality of the decision.

1186
01:07:54,560 --> 01:07:57,560
Speaker 1: Nothing like that's happening. We're not adding to the quality

1187
01:07:57,600 --> 01:08:00,720
Speaker 1: of the decision. But what society needs is a decision,

1188
01:08:00,720 --> 01:08:03,080
Speaker 1: because it's life and death because it's one of our

1189
01:08:03,080 --> 01:08:06,120
Speaker 1: biggest issues. You need it. You need an outcome that's

1190
01:08:06,200 --> 01:08:09,919
Speaker 1: credible so that even the people who don't like it say, yeah,

1191
01:08:09,960 --> 01:08:12,320
Speaker 1: but the way you got there, that's a good. At

1192
01:08:12,400 --> 01:08:14,840
Speaker 1: least at least it's credible, even though I don't like it.

1193
01:08:15,280 --> 01:08:18,240
Speaker 1: Give us another example, because I'm fascinated by this, let's

1194
01:08:18,280 --> 01:08:23,879
Speaker 1: take um reparations. Conservatives don't like it. Even most liberals

1195
01:08:24,040 --> 01:08:26,240
Speaker 1: would not be in favor because they feel like, I

1196
01:08:26,280 --> 01:08:29,160
Speaker 1: don't want to pay for something it wasn't my fault. UM.

1197
01:08:29,920 --> 01:08:32,960
Speaker 1: I say, we should at least consider solve one of

1198
01:08:33,000 --> 01:08:37,160
Speaker 1: our biggest social problems to have a one percent tax

1199
01:08:37,200 --> 01:08:40,120
Speaker 1: on just i'm sorry, attacks on just the top one percent,

1200
01:08:40,439 --> 01:08:43,280
Speaker 1: so that would include people like me, and it would

1201
01:08:43,320 --> 01:08:46,479
Speaker 1: be a twenty five year let's say, one generation tax

1202
01:08:46,800 --> 01:08:52,000
Speaker 1: only to make college and trade training free for African

1203
01:08:52,000 --> 01:08:55,200
Speaker 1: Americans for one generation, so that we could say, look,

1204
01:08:55,680 --> 01:08:58,760
Speaker 1: we recognize there was something bad, we can do something

1205
01:08:58,800 --> 01:09:01,360
Speaker 1: about it. Now. Well, here's what's ushle. The top one

1206
01:09:01,360 --> 01:09:04,840
Speaker 1: percent also have nothing. Most of them have nothing to

1207
01:09:04,840 --> 01:09:08,680
Speaker 1: do with slavery. Their their ancestors weren't involved at all.

1208
01:09:08,920 --> 01:09:11,120
Speaker 1: But what's different is the top one percent, if they

1209
01:09:11,160 --> 01:09:14,880
Speaker 1: can make a big difference in what's in the let's say,

1210
01:09:14,880 --> 01:09:18,519
Speaker 1: the most disadvantaged part of society. If you can flip

1211
01:09:18,560 --> 01:09:22,280
Speaker 1: somebody from being unemployed to employed, that is a huge

1212
01:09:22,400 --> 01:09:25,200
Speaker 1: boost to the economy. And who benefits from that the

1213
01:09:25,240 --> 01:09:28,759
Speaker 1: top one percent. We we live in in a society

1214
01:09:28,800 --> 01:09:31,120
Speaker 1: where the top one percent gets most of the game.

1215
01:09:31,520 --> 01:09:33,320
Speaker 1: Give us one more example, and then I'll go jump

1216
01:09:33,400 --> 01:09:37,960
Speaker 1: to my favorite questions. Oh Scott Scott socialist. Yeah, let's

1217
01:09:38,000 --> 01:09:43,040
Speaker 1: take healthcare. Healthcare. The conservatives say, let the market work

1218
01:09:43,040 --> 01:09:46,160
Speaker 1: it out more or less. Liberals say, let the government,

1219
01:09:46,439 --> 01:09:50,760
Speaker 1: you know handle. I say the government should be more involved,

1220
01:09:51,720 --> 01:09:55,960
Speaker 1: which is that we should be creating a portfolio, meaning

1221
01:09:56,040 --> 01:10:00,439
Speaker 1: just a conceptual portfolio of startups that could lower the

1222
01:10:00,520 --> 01:10:04,320
Speaker 1: cost of healthcare in the future. So if the president said, look,

1223
01:10:04,520 --> 01:10:06,960
Speaker 1: I'm going to give you a running list of companies that,

1224
01:10:07,120 --> 01:10:10,040
Speaker 1: if they did well, your healthcare costs would go down.

1225
01:10:10,840 --> 01:10:13,679
Speaker 1: So the government, I think, could be more involved than

1226
01:10:13,760 --> 01:10:17,200
Speaker 1: just being single pair. They could be directly involved in

1227
01:10:17,400 --> 01:10:21,839
Speaker 1: boosting that part of the uh the startup um world

1228
01:10:22,120 --> 01:10:25,680
Speaker 1: that will directly help things. Scott Adam Jewelry fascinating and

1229
01:10:25,840 --> 01:10:29,880
Speaker 1: complex individual and and I've enjoyed our conversation. Let's jump

1230
01:10:29,880 --> 01:10:32,120
Speaker 1: to our speed round. I'll try and get through as

1231
01:10:32,160 --> 01:10:35,640
Speaker 1: many of these questions as quickly as possible. Tell us

1232
01:10:35,720 --> 01:10:40,519
Speaker 1: the most important thing we don't know about you? Wow,

1233
01:10:40,600 --> 01:10:42,760
Speaker 1: I live such a public life that has a very

1234
01:10:42,800 --> 01:10:47,000
Speaker 1: small category things you don't know about me. I'm learning

1235
01:10:47,000 --> 01:10:49,720
Speaker 1: to play the drums because I think it will be

1236
01:10:49,760 --> 01:10:52,960
Speaker 1: good for my brain as I reached my older years.

1237
01:10:53,200 --> 01:10:56,599
Speaker 1: Um with you, it's just adding to that that talent stack. Um.

1238
01:10:56,640 --> 01:10:59,320
Speaker 1: Who are some of your early mentors. Obviously this Cassidy

1239
01:10:59,439 --> 01:11:04,719
Speaker 1: gentleman Jack Casty, as I mentioned before, my college roommate

1240
01:11:05,439 --> 01:11:09,720
Speaker 1: Mike Chorley. Weirdly, I got into college without knowing much

1241
01:11:09,760 --> 01:11:12,720
Speaker 1: about the world, and he sort of taught me what

1242
01:11:12,760 --> 01:11:16,120
Speaker 1: it was like to be a functioning person. Uh. And

1243
01:11:16,160 --> 01:11:19,320
Speaker 1: then my first editor, Sarah Gillespie, who's the one who

1244
01:11:19,439 --> 01:11:22,840
Speaker 1: called me and offered me the first contract. Any specific

1245
01:11:22,880 --> 01:11:28,160
Speaker 1: cartoonists that influenced the way you approached Dilbert, Yeah, um,

1246
01:11:29,000 --> 01:11:32,479
Speaker 1: you mentioned Charles Sergio Arigonis, who does who did the

1247
01:11:32,520 --> 01:11:36,679
Speaker 1: little characters in the margins of Mad Magazine? They were fantastic. Yeah,

1248
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:40,200
Speaker 1: Gary Larson, of course I stole his technique of drawing

1249
01:11:40,280 --> 01:11:47,080
Speaker 1: characters that don't have next uh, and probably those are

1250
01:11:47,080 --> 01:11:50,280
Speaker 1: the big ones. Yeah, I would say Schultz and Gary Larson. Uh.

1251
01:11:50,439 --> 01:11:53,640
Speaker 1: Favorite books we mentioned Bob Sheldini. What are some of

1252
01:11:53,680 --> 01:11:57,200
Speaker 1: your favorite books, be they fiction on fiction, cartoonists, related,

1253
01:11:57,320 --> 01:12:01,200
Speaker 1: or other. Oh Man Impossible to Ignore is good, teaches

1254
01:12:01,240 --> 01:12:05,519
Speaker 1: you how to uh do memorable presentations and slide shows

1255
01:12:05,560 --> 01:12:13,439
Speaker 1: and stuff by Dr Carmen Simon. Um. I'm reading Sapiens now.

1256
01:12:13,640 --> 01:12:15,800
Speaker 1: I like it so far, so I'm pretty sure I'm

1257
01:12:15,800 --> 01:12:18,160
Speaker 1: gonna like the rest of you will find the second book,

1258
01:12:18,160 --> 01:12:21,720
Speaker 1: Homo dais to be very very dark. Um, where this

1259
01:12:21,760 --> 01:12:25,800
Speaker 1: one isn't very dark. Well, okay, I'm just maybe I'll

1260
01:12:25,800 --> 01:12:28,960
Speaker 1: stay away from that one. Um. And then, as we

1261
01:12:29,000 --> 01:12:32,880
Speaker 1: mentioned Childini's book Influence and then his follow up book,

1262
01:12:33,120 --> 01:12:37,640
Speaker 1: his newer one, pre Suasion, those I would consider absolute

1263
01:12:37,920 --> 01:12:40,800
Speaker 1: fundamental reading for anybody in the business world. If you

1264
01:12:40,840 --> 01:12:44,960
Speaker 1: haven't read those books, you're you're disadvantaged this period. And

1265
01:12:45,040 --> 01:12:47,599
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that about many books. And then then

1266
01:12:47,680 --> 01:12:49,880
Speaker 1: my books Win Bigley and how to Win It almost

1267
01:12:49,880 --> 01:12:54,200
Speaker 1: Everything and still win big would be I consider fundamental

1268
01:12:54,280 --> 01:12:57,439
Speaker 1: reading on persuasion. But what are you excited about right now?

1269
01:12:59,439 --> 01:13:02,880
Speaker 1: Right now working with Bill Palty on something called the

1270
01:13:03,000 --> 01:13:07,200
Speaker 1: UM the blight authority blight meaning b L I g

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01:13:07,439 --> 01:13:11,479
Speaker 1: h T, the rundown inner cities areas. Why he's he's

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01:13:11,479 --> 01:13:14,800
Speaker 1: doing with his nonprofit is helping cities clear out big

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01:13:14,800 --> 01:13:18,320
Speaker 1: contiguous areas. Uh. And then I'm helping him try to

1274
01:13:18,360 --> 01:13:22,160
Speaker 1: figure out, you know, can we attract some ideas because

1275
01:13:22,240 --> 01:13:25,040
Speaker 1: ideas are the bigger problem than money. Nobody knows what

1276
01:13:25,120 --> 01:13:27,240
Speaker 1: to do, so we're trying to come up with some

1277
01:13:27,320 --> 01:13:31,519
Speaker 1: ideas to help the inner cities and productively use that space.

1278
01:13:31,880 --> 01:13:33,960
Speaker 1: Tell us about a time you failed and what you

1279
01:13:34,040 --> 01:13:38,840
Speaker 1: learned from the experience. Wow. Um, you mentioned the restaurant

1280
01:13:39,040 --> 01:13:41,840
Speaker 1: in How to Fail at Everything and Still Win. Yeah,

1281
01:13:41,960 --> 01:13:45,000
Speaker 1: I thought that was interesting. So almost everything I've failed

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01:13:45,000 --> 01:13:48,360
Speaker 1: at UM was something I chose that would teach me

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01:13:48,439 --> 01:13:52,439
Speaker 1: something along the way. So, Uh, the first time I

1284
01:13:52,479 --> 01:13:55,599
Speaker 1: gave a corporate speech when I was paid way too

1285
01:13:55,640 --> 01:13:58,880
Speaker 1: much to give a speech, when Dilbert was just taking off,

1286
01:13:58,960 --> 01:14:01,800
Speaker 1: and you know, the speaking requests come in and I

1287
01:14:01,840 --> 01:14:03,960
Speaker 1: didn't know how to be a public speaker, but I

1288
01:14:04,040 --> 01:14:08,479
Speaker 1: took the deal. I did really really poorly. And then

1289
01:14:08,520 --> 01:14:11,240
Speaker 1: they paid me, and I thought, wait a minute, I

1290
01:14:11,280 --> 01:14:13,720
Speaker 1: did really, really poorly, in my opinion, and then they

1291
01:14:13,760 --> 01:14:16,160
Speaker 1: paid me. So I thought, well, maybe I should do

1292
01:14:16,200 --> 01:14:17,920
Speaker 1: more of this, and maybe I could get good at it,

1293
01:14:18,040 --> 01:14:21,839
Speaker 1: and eventually I was one of the top corporate speakers

1294
01:14:21,840 --> 01:14:26,720
Speaker 1: in America. What do you do for fun? Well, my

1295
01:14:26,960 --> 01:14:30,400
Speaker 1: girlfriend Christina and I spend a lot of time together,

1296
01:14:30,680 --> 01:14:34,160
Speaker 1: and um, mostly it's whatever couples do you know, go

1297
01:14:34,200 --> 01:14:38,320
Speaker 1: out to dinner? Travel sounds like fun. Uh. Someone comes

1298
01:14:38,360 --> 01:14:41,559
Speaker 1: to you a millennial, recent college grad and they're interested

1299
01:14:41,560 --> 01:14:44,360
Speaker 1: in becoming a cartoonist. What sort of advice would you

1300
01:14:44,360 --> 01:14:46,960
Speaker 1: give them? Well, I would tell them, first of all,

1301
01:14:47,040 --> 01:14:49,880
Speaker 1: develop their talent stack, so I would tell them to

1302
01:14:49,920 --> 01:14:53,240
Speaker 1: concentrate on writing even more than the art. I would

1303
01:14:53,240 --> 01:14:55,960
Speaker 1: tell them to create online and see if they can

1304
01:14:55,960 --> 01:14:58,760
Speaker 1: build an audience. I would tell them to change their

1305
01:14:58,880 --> 01:15:01,280
Speaker 1: art based on what the audience is telling them is

1306
01:15:01,320 --> 01:15:04,480
Speaker 1: working or not. I would tell them to know exactly

1307
01:15:04,520 --> 01:15:07,679
Speaker 1: who they're targeting their art at, too, and not try

1308
01:15:07,720 --> 01:15:11,080
Speaker 1: to be a generic Oh everybody will love this, because

1309
01:15:11,080 --> 01:15:13,599
Speaker 1: that's kind of rare these days. But rather to say,

1310
01:15:13,720 --> 01:15:16,360
Speaker 1: as I did, this is a comic for the workplace.

1311
01:15:16,520 --> 01:15:18,479
Speaker 1: This is a comic for pet owners, This is a

1312
01:15:18,520 --> 01:15:22,519
Speaker 1: comic for single people. Whatever it is, it makes perfect sense.

1313
01:15:23,200 --> 01:15:25,680
Speaker 1: Final question, what do you know about the world of

1314
01:15:25,760 --> 01:15:29,200
Speaker 1: cartoonists today? You wish you knew thirty years ago when

1315
01:15:29,200 --> 01:15:33,760
Speaker 1: you were first starting Tilbert, I did not know that.

1316
01:15:33,840 --> 01:15:37,000
Speaker 1: The main thing you have to get right is that

1317
01:15:37,040 --> 01:15:40,040
Speaker 1: the reader looks at your comic and says, oh, that

1318
01:15:40,160 --> 01:15:43,599
Speaker 1: happened to me too. If you don't get that part right,

1319
01:15:44,160 --> 01:15:46,479
Speaker 1: you don't have anything. Now. There was a day when

1320
01:15:46,520 --> 01:15:48,960
Speaker 1: that wasn't true. The old style of humor was or

1321
01:15:49,439 --> 01:15:53,400
Speaker 1: more absurdist and more generic. But in today's world people

1322
01:15:53,439 --> 01:15:56,720
Speaker 1: just have to say, oh, that's me, or they don't care. Fascinating.

1323
01:15:57,200 --> 01:16:00,759
Speaker 1: We have been speaking with Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert.

1324
01:16:00,880 --> 01:16:03,760
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this conversation, be sure and look Up

1325
01:16:03,760 --> 01:16:06,400
Speaker 1: an Inch or Down an Inch on Apple iTunes and

1326
01:16:06,439 --> 01:16:09,280
Speaker 1: you could see any of the approximately two hundred and

1327
01:16:09,320 --> 01:16:13,639
Speaker 1: fifty such conversations we've had previously. We love your comments,

1328
01:16:13,640 --> 01:16:17,240
Speaker 1: feedback and suggestions right to us at m IB podcast

1329
01:16:17,280 --> 01:16:20,280
Speaker 1: at Bloomberg dot net. You can check out my daily

1330
01:16:20,360 --> 01:16:23,439
Speaker 1: column at Bloomberg dot com slash Opinion. You could follow

1331
01:16:23,439 --> 01:16:26,320
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Rioults. I would be remiss if

1332
01:16:26,320 --> 01:16:28,760
Speaker 1: I did not thank the crack staff that helps put

1333
01:16:28,840 --> 01:16:32,960
Speaker 1: this together each week. Medina Parwanna is my producer. Adica

1334
01:16:33,200 --> 01:16:36,439
Speaker 1: Valbron is our project manager. Taylor Riggs is our booker.

1335
01:16:36,479 --> 01:16:40,400
Speaker 1: Michael Batnick is our head of research. I'm Barry Riholts.

1336
01:16:40,600 --> 01:16:44,040
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.