Chewing the Fat with Jeff Fisher - Ep. 43 | Traveling During Thanksgiving Week | Guest: Scott Adams

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

Traveling During Thanksgiving Week | Guest: Scott Adams Now in paperback, and updated with a new afterword, Adams’ NYTBestseller takes an unflinching look at the strategies Donald Trump used to prompt mass delusion among both Democrats and Republicans. WIN BIGLY Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter By: Scott Adams In the summer of 2015, Scott Adams was in the middle of an unplanned career pivot from “guy who created the Dilbert comic” to a maverick political pundit. A week after Nate Silver put Trump’s odds at 2% in his FiveThirtyEight.com blog, Adams predicted on his own blog that Trump had a 98% chance of winning the presidency based on his persuasion skills. Now Adams explains how he knew so early that Trump wasn’t simply a lucky clown, taking readers inside one of the most important perceptual shifts in the history of humankind. In the paperback edition of his New York Times Bestseller, WIN BIGLY: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter (Portfolio, October 30, 2018), Adams draws upon his background in hypnosis, persuasion and business to reveal the method in Trump's supposed madness, painting him as a “Master Persuader” who intentionally flipped the political narrative on its head. With the addition of a “one-year-later” afterword, Adams deconstructs the tactics Trump used to persuade his way to the White House, including: • Linguistic Kill Shots – Learn how Trump branded his opponents with persuasive nicknames that wouldn’t wash off. We all remember Low Energy Jeb, Lyin’ Ted, and Crooked Hillary. Find out why those names worked so well. • Setting the table – it is easier to persuade someone who already believes you are persuasive. By publishing the bestseller, Art of the Deal in 1987, Trump positioned himself as a stellar negotiator, and as a result, Americans expected he would be persuasive. • Visual Persuasion – Sight is our dominant sense. Find out how Trump consistently used weapons-grade visual persuasion (For example, “the wall”) while his opponents tried to sell invisible concepts.   Making it clear that he did not agree with the policies of either candidate, Adams uses Trump’s historic presidential run to reveal truths about how humans are influenced, and how readers can copy those skills – for better or for worse. (We hope you use your new powers for good.) SCOTT ADAMS is the creator of Dilbert, one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He has been a full-time cartoonist since 1995, after 16 years working in the technology realm at a major bank and later a phone company. His many bestsellers include The Dilbert Principle, Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook, and How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big. He is co-founder of WhenHub. He lives outside of San Francisco. For more on Adams, visit www.blog.dilbert.com, and be sure to follow him on Twitter, @ScottAdamsSays. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Chewing the Fat on Demand. Welcome to Chewing the Fat with yours truly, Jeff Fisher. Thank you so much for coming along for the ride today. You know, we're smack dab in the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday wannabe. We're getting close to Thanksgiving. People have already started to travel. It's like the – Thanksgiving is always the busiest travel weekend of ever. That's a quote.

Busiest travel weekend of ever. Now, they claim that this year that Americans will fly between November 16th and the 27th, exceeding 28.5 million who flew in 2017, so it's going to be busier than 2017. Now, they're claiming Thanksgiving Day, obviously, is the slowest day, and then Sunday will be the busiest. I don't know if you ever flown on Thanksgiving weekend, but it is a pain. I've been stuck in,

I can tell you a great story of a time I was stuck in Charlotte, North Carolina. And we landed and this, ah, you can't make it. Here's a hotel. We'll give you a food thing. We had to stay at the Howard Johnsons. Yes, they were still open then. And I remember there were two police officers sitting in the restaurant as I was eating, and I went up to them and said, hey, how you doing, officers?

I was wondering in this area if there's a place to go. You know, I'm here for the night. I got to catch a flight in the morning, flying into Detroit in the morning. Is there a place where, you know, a bar or somebody can go to to drink? At that time, I was still partying. And single. And the one police officer goes, well, there's one bar around the corner we get called to all the time. but there's another one I went,

that's good. You get called to that one all the time? That's the one I'm going to. Thank you. Both of them were like, oh boy. Okay, see you later. And there's, I'm not even going to go into any more of that story, but just know that Thanksgiving weekend is a nightmare to travel.

And you're lucky if you make it there on time, which obviously some people are smart and leave early. And don't leave on, I don't know, Thanksgiving Eve and hope to arrive Thanksgiving Eve evening and be able to spend the day with whoever you want to spend the day with on Thanksgiving because that's not going to happen. You're going to be stuck in Atlanta. You're going to be stuck in Charlotte.

You're going to be stuck at DFW because the connecting flight, don't forget in today's world, with a snowstorm shuts down one airport, domino effect. They're all shut down. Oh, no. Oh, we'll connect. No, we can't do that. We can't get you another flight.

All right, that's the way. We're just shutting them down. Okay. Okay. So since it's, you know, travel weekend, I thought maybe I'd do a, you know, like a two of the fat Merv Griffin theme show. Now, those of you that don't know, I know you're thinking, Merv, who? Merv Griffin. He's an old TV star.

He did, he created all these game shows. He was Big Vegas. He owned, I forget, I think he owned one or two Vegas hotels at one time. He ran, owned all these TV shows. And he used to do a little, the Merv. Griffin show where he would have guests come in. It was just a daytime show. But he would do his Merv Griffin theme weeks where it was the same thing all week long.

He'd have a special guest. You know, like Sly Stone would be there all week. And every day Sly would roll out his, you know, another wheel of wardrobe. Whatever. And so this is just kind of my Merv Griffin theme travel show. And I feel like this story. I see this story this morning. And I thought, oh, it's so nice.

And then I feel like every holiday, this same story makes the rounds. So I don't think it's real. So a woman standing in line at an airport witnessed a heartbreaking moment, but no one expected what to happen next. A gentleman was checking in for his flight when the agent asked how old his daughter was. He said she had recently turned two. The agent then asked if she had a ticket. The man confused because he was under the impression she could ride for free. When he booked the ticket, she was one.

That was in January. The man overwhelmed with emotion as he couldn't afford the high cost of the second ticket for his young daughter. He stepped aside, tried to make a few phone calls, hugging his daughter, grabbing his head. You could tell he was heartbroken. Suddenly, a stranger approached, the emotional father. After talking with her for a while, she went to the ticket counter and pointed at the young girl and said, I want to buy her ticket. Now, the agent who, again, I want to say is okay that the airline did this, but she's just doing her job.

She realized, um, you know, uh, you know you're going to have to pay a, uh, a last minute ticket on the flight is really expensive. $749.

Uh, you'd think maybe the agent would say maybe we could help you out a little bit. She sees the dad and the kid, but no. No. The agent said, you are aware that the flight's going to be $749. Unphased.

The woman pulled out her credit card and paid full price. The agent kept talking about her goosebumps while the man hugged the woman and asked for her name to repair. The woman just kept saying, don't worry about it. She wanted to help the man and his daughter no matter what the cost. Please share this story because people like this need to be recognized. Yeah, that's what I think. You know what? This story gets run every holiday.

Same story. Guaranteed, I'm going to do some research. I'm telling you, on Friday's show, the day after Thanksgiving, I'm going to find all the stories that have run over the years. I bet you this is the same story that's running at least four or five years in a row. Now, it might be a mother and a baby. All you do is change the parent and the child, right? This is a dad and his daughter.

A mom and a baby that just turned two. A mom who was trying to get home and realize that this airline in particular didn't let kids fly for, free. She had to buy the extra ticket. Same thing. I'm telling you. I'm telling you it's run before. And, okay, so I feel good. Good for the lady for spending the 749. I'm looking at the guy going, man, sucks to be you. Let's tell your daughter, this the way life is, all right? Get over it. Just teasing. Stop it. Of course, you'd buy the guy a ticket. Right? And tell the airline agent said 750 bucks. Man, I'll tell you what I'll do.

If you could talk to the agent down to maybe three, I'll pay for it for you, but that's it. The 749, the kid's not going. Neither are you. It's just the way it goes. So anyway, travel is the theme, and I'll let you know on the story about the people helping out the parents and the kid. Yes, I'll even do a little research on Thanksgiving. There's a little bit of downtime between desserts.

You know, Thanksgiving used to be, nah, I don't even get into Thanksgiving. Just know that it's a great day, and you're going to enjoy the turkey and the stuffing and the dressing and the green bean casseroles and the mashed potatoes and the gravy and the rolls and whatever else you've got. So, and we're going to talk, I saw a story the other day that talked about side dishes,

what parts of the country. You can tell what people, part of the country, people are from by the side dishes on the Thanksgiving story. We've got to do that. Because it was fascinating to me to see what other parts of the country, you know, are there strong side dishes on Thanksgiving? It's so different. So, so weird.

So here's a story about travel that you either love or you hate. A man requested a window seat, but he ended up sitting next to a blank wall on the plane. And he was all wound up about it. And so when the flight attendant came around, he was complaining and said, I want to be moved to a window seat. I would like a window seat. Well, so does everyone else doche. So calm down.

But the flight attendant left without arguing with the guy and ran back and taped a drawing of a window on the wall. next to the guy. And it's got little clouds and blue water on it. It's kind of funny. Now, if I'm that guy, I guess I laugh. You know, ha, ha, you're funny. And it's, you know, people, of course, it's gone crazy on social media. And, you know, people love the idea of the flight attendant drawing the picture and taping it up on the wall and say, you want to window seat.

Here's your window. and it's kind of funny. On the other hand, if you're flying, do you, you know, do you think it's funny? You really want a window seat and the flight attendant is going to tape a picture on the wall. If you were to do something just the opposite of that to the flight attendant, would the flight attendant think it was funny? I'm trying to think of what it would be because flight attendants have very little humor in today's world. Very little humor.

of the paraplegic athlete forced to urinate in a bottle on a seven-hour flight? The paraplegic athlete was criticized airplane flying Dubai, humiliating him after he was forced to urinate in a bottle on an intercontinental flight. He flew to Finland to represent Australia in the World Para ice hockey champions. Good for him. The 52-year-old boarded a flight to Helsinki from Dubai. Approximately three hours into the flight, he inquired about a wheelchair as he needed to use the toilet.

Now they know, and people should know, that they don't put wheelchairs on the flight. Those go underneath. You take the wheelchair up to the plane and then you get in, or they wheel you in. But the wheelchair goes off. So there's no wheelchair. And they said we don't carry one on board. They told me I just had to hold it for the entire flight. No.

He even said, I'd like to see someone else who's had a big cup of coffee after three hours. No. To his amazement, the flight attendants provided him with an empty plastic bottle so he could urinate while seated. But then, on top of that, to make it worse, they gave him a blanket to cover himself, but they wanted to charge him for the blanket. That's when I think it is as embarrassing as it is. you just urinate on the seat, right? Then they've got to take care of it. I know that's not a good way to think of it.

It's not a thing to do. But you just, you just urinate on the seat and say, oops, sorry, we're done. Now, the staff member contacted the team in Dubai and told him that the chair had not made it on the plane as there was no room for it in the hold. It's not a bag. I can understand bags being left behind.

It's a wheelchair. So not only did they not bring it on board for him and have him where he was able to use it on the plane, which, you know, okay, yes or no. But then they left it behind at the airport. It doesn't even travel along with it. I mean, the guy is traveling with. with the

world para ice hockey championship team do you think maybe maybe they all had wheelchairs do you think maybe just a little and Christian you're dying to say something so go ahead

that was Christian Bustler giving his expert advice on sled hockey on the chewing the fat paraplegic plane cover Furious plane passenger, as we move on to our theme, our travel theme day. Furious plane passenger sets fire to his own luggage after being told his flight was canceled.

If you're setting your own luggage on fire because they tell you your flight is canceled, that's just dumb. That's just dumb. If you think that'll show them, I'll teach them a lesson. I'll burn my own luggage. That doesn't work that way. Really doesn't work that way. Now, he was delayed a couple of times, and he got really angry, and I can understand the frustration.

But why would you set your own luggage on fire? Maybe you, I don't know, grab somebody else's luggage. Set theirs on fire. Maybe you grab, I don't know. You see the pilot walking by with this little pull bag. Oh, then you're going to be. prison. You might probably go to prison

by setting a luggage on fire too. Now they opted to forgive and forget the incident. That does not happen. Now this, let's see. No airline can risk

having. It's the PIA, the Civilization authorities. PIA, which is the Pakistan International Airline, PIA, has opted to forgive and forget the incident. Pakistan is like, the guy said his, the guy set his own luggage on fire.

Just let him go. Don't worry about it. Sorry, sir. All flights are canceled for the rest of your life. Get out of the airport. Thank you. Yeah, in America, you're not, we're not letting that go.

I'm sorry. That is not happening in America. You got lucky to be on Pakistan for that. Yeah, you're done. TSA's got, it's over. Have a nice day. No, that's, uh, security. We've got, uh, the man that said his luggage on fire.

He's walking down, uh, he's on Airside B, Airside B, black shirt, two luggage. Perhaps we escort him out of the airlines. I mean, they're on him. No way he gets back in. No way. Now, you know that airlines, uh, pay. That's what they do. They pay to be at airports.

They make deals with the airports. It's a separate entity. They all try to, you know, wheel and deal the best deals. That's why you have hubs. American Airlines here in Dallas. Southwest is at love because they can't. They made a deal.

They can fly into DFW now because their old deal just expired. But there for a while, they couldn't even fly into DFW because they make deals with airports. So in Paris, Ryanair goes to take off. They're at Air. side. They're going to take off.

And so there's 149 passengers boarding the plane. Getting on. We've got everybody on board, ready to go. And the plane is still at the gate. Just kind of hanging out, getting ready to back out. We're ready to go. We're looking down at the tarmac. We're looking at the guys with the lights.

Ready to back up. Let's go. Let's get out of here. Ah, eh. Ooh. No, no, no, no. The police pulled up. The airport police, by the way, pulled up.

We're shutting it down and we're taking the plane. You haven't been paying your rent here at Paris Airport. No, you guys, we're not flying out of here anymore. We're taking it down. That is, how bad would you be on that plane? Wow. Now, of course, the airline, we didn't publicly comment on the seizure. No.

But we're sorry. We paid the bill And just pay the bill You know they're going to pay the bill They have to, right? There's no way They paid the bill And the airport went

Okay, here's your plane. Thank you. But you're screwed. Right? You're looking for another way To get to wherever you want to go And you're not waiting around for it. Hey, dear, hashtag Ryan Air, pay the bill.

Right? I want to go to a Rome. They confiscated the plane. And they didn't even, I mean, they could have done it before. Right? The airline could have done it. Just canceled the flight. You know, this flight is not leaving today.

You're canceled. Get another flight. Boom. And so not made a big deal about it. But they made sure that it was full. People were all on board on the. tarmac getting ready to go nope we're taking the plane everybody off here's your luggage we'll get that to you in the next couple hours when we take stuff off the plane but this plane is going nowhere

until ryan air pairs pays their 525 000 euros which is about six hundred and ten thousand dollars to the airport man i would be so angry so angry Another way people travel is on cruise ships. Why you ask? I don't know. You see some of the newer cruise ships they have. I mean, they are cities. I mean, they're just monstrous.

You see them come in, even some of the newer ones. I mean, they, when I was living in Florida, you know, they have the cruise ships come in in Miami on the southeast coast. and across the way in Cape Canaveral, but they wanted to have them come into Tampa Bay. But the original Skyway Bridge that went across from Pinellas County to Braid and I'm not sure if that's Sarasota County or not. I don't remember. I apologize for not knowing the county.

Wouldn't let those big ones in. They let the workerships, you know, the container haulerships in, but it wouldn't let the cruise ships in because the cruise ships are, you know, mountain sizes. So that's why they built the new Skyway Bridge so high. So they would allow those cruise ships in. And there are some monsters coming in, man. When you're up there on that bridge or out there watching those cruise ships come in

or you go down to the docks and watch them load up. I mean, they're loading a pallets of food and drink. It's fascinating. Well, now, and now how much, I mean, I know that they do their best to keep everyone save. I know they do the best that they don't, you know, they don't want people to get sick to keep it clean. And we joke around about being, you know, in an enclosed space, you can't get off.

But the thing is a size of a mountain. You know, you could, one day you're down in a one, you could spend your whole time on different parts of that ship and not be the same ship twice, same part twice. So while you can't get off, it's pretty, there's. huge. But how many times? How many times of something bad happened?

And now we've got another 2,700 passengers stranded in Puerto Rico. Ooh. I mean, there's better places. There's better places to be stranded than Puerto Rico. So, Norwegian jade cruise ship

started their voyage out of Miami, a 10-day cruise, taking Barbados, St. Kitt, St. Lucia. But all of a sudden, mechanical problems. And, uh, new, the next seven days of this trip is canceled. We're not going anywhere.

Drop the anchors. Done. Over. Drop the anchor. Come on. I mean, that's better than people are getting sick. Stop eating. to dock or that's better than being just floating out in the middle of nowhere stranded without

being able to remember though i mean we've had ships just floating around out there holy cow no no no no no no all you can eat is now closed i mean that's what they're doing out there you eat drink and gamble right that's what you do and i get the enjoyment i guess and they They have entertainment and you swim and, you know, you have an idea of... See, the thing is, even on these ships, right? I mean, you want to be able to have a room that's not with the unwashed masses down below. You want to be able to have the rooms up top that are the suites. And you're able to have a window and you're able to have a little patio that.

comes out and you open out and look out the ocean and enjoy it. Otherwise, you're down, you know, you're down with the unwashed masses. And you don't want to be that on those ships. If you're down with the unwashed masses in some small room, you maybe have a little porthole to look out. Nobody wants that. Now it has double occupancy, right, capacity of over 2,400 people. So there's 2,700.

So they could actually could have been more. It has got 93,500 gross tonne. I mean, they are pulling, they are putting some serious weight on that bad boy. And that's even without me on there. I can't do it. I can't. I can tell you a story about we used to go out on these gambling.

They had these gambling ships. A long time ago in radio. You know, they want to promote their ship. It was in Tampa Bay. So coming out of treasure. Island, Florida. They have these gambling. And they're not ships, but they're large boats.

But you go out, and they can't gamble until they get out in international waters. So what they do is they get all the people on and they give them all. They can eat a big buffet. They bring in mediocre talent to entertain the people out, out the way out to international waters, and of which I was won. And you get up and you sell a couple of jokes and you ha, ha, ha, ha. And, you know, you're from the radio station and you give them a hello. You pass out a few giveaways and you have a couple of little funny contests.

And then you're in international waters and nobody cares because we want to gamble. Well, you spend the night. You're trapped, right? As a radio guy, you want to get in, do your bit and get out. That's the deal, right? But not then. Not those Friday nights. Friday and Saturday nights, you're out there, you get on the boat.

But you do it because it's good money. It's good money. And it's cash. I mean, obviously you report it to the IRS. That would be stupid not to. But you get in and out. But you go out, you do your thing. Then you just got to wait.

Then you're just wandering around, watching people gamble. You can gamble, but I'm not a big, I don't want to lose what money I'm making. Play a blackjack out in the international waters. So you wander around. You meet people, you say hello. But, I mean, I saw some great, some of the best. Okay, so what happens is people, get on and they eat this huge buffet, they fill up on all this seafood, this huge free buffet.

But they get out there in international waters in that boat. Even just the big boat is still, you're in the water, you're in the ocean. People turn green. People turn white. People turn, yeah, I mean, and they tend to, the food that they ate tends to come out. And I mean, the workers are code green, level three. Code green, level three. And I saw some of the best projectile vomiting ever, ever on these nights.

And it does what happens is then like you walk around outside and then you go back inside to their inside bars. And all the inside bars then, once you've been outside smelling the fresh salt sea air of the Gulf of Mexico, you come back inside and the whole inside still has that whiff of puke. You know what it is? It's not bad. It's not bad. And if you haven't been, if you're coming in just from the street, you don't really notice it because the food's cooking and people are drinking and laughing. But if you, once everybody's outside, there's just a couple people in there and you've been outside and your nostrils are clear. You come back inside to sit down and it just has that, just that whiff. Whiff of, ooh, that's beautiful. But then they dock and they give you your cash money and you walk away and you're going. See you next week.

don't forget that you can get a chewing the fat coffee mug. And it's a tremendous call. I mean, you don't find coffee mugs made this good and look this beautiful anywhere else, but shop.com. Now, you can get t-shirts, and you can get all kinds of stuff from the other shows and the network on shop. Theblaze.com. But really, the making of chewing the fat with Jeff Fisher coffee mug.

is probably one of the finest things developed and sold on the website. Chewing the fat with Jeff Fisher coffee mug at shop.com. Thank you so much for listening to Chewing the Fat. Don't forget to subscribe, rate and review. I know you're busy, but just do it quick. Quick like a rabbit. Just rate and review it. And if you don't even have to think about it, you know what you should do,

is just rate at 20 stars, review it the best podcast ever, and then you're done. That way you don't have to think about it. You don't have to try to, you don't waste a lot of your time. I want you to, I want you to be able to fulfill other duties you have. So you listen to the podcast. You subscribe. You rate it 20 stars. You review it best podcast ever and you're done.

Well, then you can share it. I mean, okay, so you're not 100% done. You can share it with, you know, friends, family. In fact, really, we're coming up on Thanksgiving. I mean, what you really should do is pass a little note under the, the plate of everyone that says, chewing the fat with Jeff Fisher, subscribe, rate 20 stars, review best podcast podcasts ever, share with the first person on your email list.

And then you're done. And that's all you need to do for me. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. So, Scott Adams wanted to stop in. He's got his new, he's got his new book out that was just released in paperback again. And we talked to him when it was released in hard cover. And, you know, so since we talked to him when it was in hardcover, he comes back and wants to talk again because it's in paperback. Okay, Scott, I got it, okay? It's your little funny paper thing happening with Englebert Humberdink.

I mean, Dilbert. That's the same thing. Dilbert, Eglerpard Humberdick. I mean, he could have called it either one. But I love Scott. At Scott Adams says. Scott, you've got the bestseller, Win Bigley, now in paperback. So you're out hawking that again, although you've added some new words to it, the new afterward,

which is always nice to give people something new to look forward to. But, you know, one of the things that I think is my favorite part of Win Bigley is the, you know, you talk about your words linguistic skills. you know, how Trump branded his opponents. Those opponents are still, I mean, that brand is not going away. It affects them to this day, does it not? Yeah, it's something that's going to haunt them forever. I started calling those linguistic kill shots at first because that's what they did.

But then I started calling, later I started calling them forever names because they don't go away. Boy, that is for sure. But you know, there's something even bigger than that that just happened when the president tweeted about the North Korean missile sites that are still fussing around. And I think it was the New York Times, or I think it was the New York Times, who had reported that this was a clear violation in showing that North Korea wasn't really serious about denuclearizing. And the president labeled it of fake news and said, we knew about those. It's just normal business. We don't have a deal yet. And I realized that the power of that phrase, fake news, which the president didn't invent, but he weaponized it and made it a part of daily life.

He sure did. Look at the difference between the Iraq War buildup where reports of weapons of mass destruction were assumed to be accurate. And now the president has so changed our frame of reference that one reference in a tweet to that being fake news takes it. at least half of the public out of that conversation because they say, oh, yeah, that does look like fake news to me. We don't have to go to war with North Korea. Look how powerful that is. I mean, literally could keep us away from nuclear war with two words, and he employed that power today. And that's really, I mean, that's huge.

There's no question about that. And think of that. You know, I was like, you talk about the Iraq war. That brings flooding memories back of Colin Powell in front of the UN with his cartoon drawings, talking about where the bombs were. I was just so frustrating. Anyway, I almost wish we would have had fake news back then, although it needed to happen.

I know. I mean, that's a whole other argument. I got it. But so how is, how is Win Bigley? Where are we at? Are we the world's biggest selling book right now ever? I'm going to call it the most influential book

in the United States right now. And I think actually that's true. It has more to do with the who is reading it and how they're changing it. and how they're changing their behavior and how they see the world differently, than it has to do with a number of sales. Because there's X number of people in the country who decide how everybody else thinks. Yeah.

And everybody else thinks they're making decisions, but they're really just adopting the opinions of their favorite news channels. And they just feel like it was their own decision. But the decision makers, all the major networks follow me now, all of the producers, or much of the administration. of the administration follows me now. And you can see a lot of language and framing and things that I introduced in Win Bigley

are now just part of the common conversation. Well, listen, you became well-known and famous as the creator of Dilbert. That will forever be, you know, a trademark on you. Maybe the front chest tattoo will be Dilbert. but, you know, this, then now you've, you know, you've reinvented again as, you know, Scott Adams with Win Bigley. You're doing, I don't know if you're doing it daily, but certainly very, you know, multiple times a week on your Periscope chats, and which is, you know, obviously people are following and using your words, as you said. And really, that follows, I know that you're attributed as to quoting creativity. is allowing yourself to make mistakes,

but art is knowing which ones to keep. And that's really, I mean, that's huge, right? I mean, you have to know, well, listen, this is going to work, and I believe that it's going to work. So this is the direction we're going. Yeah, I think one of the biggest changes of behavior that could be useful in the world is just understanding that if you disagree on a big topic,

like, well, what should we do on this big national topic? Should we do A or B? If you're asking that question, should we do it? or no, you're already thinking poorly. Because the real question is, is there a way to test it small and then find out if it works or not? Because if you can test it, and a lot of people who are smart to think it at least has some potential, you should not be a yes, no question.

You should be testing small wherever you can on the big issues. So that's a sort of change. I think we're going to see the country moving toward. It's already the most common thing that businesses do. they asked that question, can we test this small, and they would never proceed unless, you know, without at least asking that question first. Yeah, I mean, we have to do that. I mean, I saw that you tweeted a story this morning, which I found fascinating about the portable MRIs. And I don't know if you read the story or you just thought it was fascinating, so you retweeted it. I know that happens to me often as well. I just haven't gotten around to reading it yet, but I retweet it.

But I did read it, and it is fascinating. And, you know, amazingly, before you're able to pick it up at your local Walgreens, they're testing it. Yeah, that's just one sliver of the things that are happening. Right. So the private industry is looking at this big healthcare, you know, behemoth of expenses, and they're saying, well, here's a big expense. I'll bet I could cut that by 90%. So for a while I was working with UCBarr,

Berkeley on some of their startups. And I got to see a lot of stuff before the public sees it. You know, it's things that are just in early stage. And the number of medical breakthroughs that are coming through, for example, the ability to test your blood, you know, with just a small tabletop device and get an instant result is something you could never do before. And with more than, and really just to just to pause where you were at, I don't want you to, I want you to continue, but just to pause where you're at, really,

more than just diabetes. I mean, the tests are, you know, are fascinating. You can learn so much about yourself with that one drop. Yeah. Now, there's an app or at least an add-on device with an app that you can test your, you can do an, is it EKG? Yeah, you can do an EKG just by putting your thumbs on this little device you buy through the mail. So there's more and more of that stuff coming on.

And I'm actually speculating that there's something like a health plan. for people who don't have money is being sort of assembled by a lot of different actors pursuing their own interests. But in the end, you're going to say, well, I think I need to get this kind of a test. Oh, I can get that for 50 bucks. So I think everything's changing. And there's nobody in charge of it, which is why it doesn't get as much attention. That's really, it's really strange.

Now, maybe you and I should just open up a shop in the garage with our, you know, the mini MRIs and the blood tests. and we just bring them over for 20 or 30 bucks a pop. You know, at the minimum, there should be a website that's collecting all this information so that you can see what's coming on board and how that's going to influence things, and how do you get one now? So, you know, we already are concerned, obviously, about great about everyone's health. And, you know, while we're talking about, you know, more and more businesses,

putting the mark of the devil, the beast, you know, just putting a little implant into us. But, you know, that's going to be hard to stop when it's presented as for your safety, for your children's safety. It's going to be tough to stop that. Yeah, I've said quite provocatively, and so far I think zero people agree with me on this point.

That's why I like saying it, is that we see privacy as a feature and something we want. But, you know, we also want a lot of things that are bad for us. No doubt about that. We want to not go to the dentist, et cetera. And I think one of the biggest problems in the world is that people think privacy is essential. And it probably is in certain areas and for certain people and the like.

But if you imagine, for example, I was talking about this this morning on my periscope. Imagine if you could say to people, for this group of people, if you voluntarily, give up your health care privacy, we won't attach your name to your actual data, but you know, there's always a risk that somebody will hack and figure out to do that. If you'll take that risk and we can have all your data and you can have instruments on you and you measure stuff, we will learn so much about the 5% who willingly gave up their privacy, or at least the risk of privacy, that it will help the other, the rest of the people tremendously because we'll know what works, what doesn't, what makes a difference, what doesn't.

And you're doing it for either, you know, for free with, you know, for the health care or for the health care and some sort of, some sort of payment. And you're able to then again still feel better that you're doing something for the greater good. I mean, I may be willing to be that 5%, you know. Yeah, because it's not really giving away your health care privacy. You're just taking a risk that's a little bit bigger. And we've already, look, we've already given it up. Exactly. Exactly.

We already have. Look, I realize that I have the choice to say no to taking a picture with the app that wants all my information on my phone. But really, I just want to take the stupid picture. So if you want to look at what other stuff I'm taking pictures of, go ahead. Well, you may have noticed that any big crime gets solved 100% of the time. Have you noticed that? If the crime is big enough, meaning that we put enough resources on it, Between the fact that we can DNA, everything, we can fingerprint from a quarter of a fingerprint, we've got...

Yeah, we're pretty good at it now. Yeah, we're pretty good at now. We know where everybody's been and what everybody said and all of their friends said. Crime is basically all solvable now. It's just a question of expense. Right. And look, we've, we're, we, and again, you know, we've already given up so much of our privacy, just for, you know, our own personal safety, right? I mean, where we expect it almost in our homes, yet we let the companies in our home now, too.

We've given it up there. It's amazing. Yeah, I've argued that privacy maybe is our biggest problem that we think is our biggest benefit. For example, if you look at the arc of gay rights, the biggest breakthrough in, you know, gays finally getting to marry and do whatever they want it was coming out. So giving up their privacy willingly is what allowed them to be politically affected. And accepted. Yeah.

And I think that that, you know, when you willingly give up your privacy on stuff like, I'll give you another example. Here's one that will cure 5% of your listeners right now from a major problem. Watch this. Okay. I personally have a medical condition called pyreis, which is an inability to urinate in a public. setting if there's anybody around. Okay. Now, simply telling you that, giving up my privacy, as I just did, five percent of your listeners

just said, holy cow, I didn't know there was one other person who had that. I thought I had a mental problem. It's the biggest problem I have in my life, and it is for those people. And simply hearing that it's a thing and it has a name, you can look for it as shy bladder. You'll find that lots of people have it. And just that knowledge, just that knowledge alone, is a number of. enough to half cure everybody who hears us. And at least feel, you know, right, they're not alone.

They're not alone. And they can deal with it, you know, by coming out and by just, you know, treating it like they don't have to hide it. Right. It makes it 50% better on day one. Huge. No question. So if I want to get Winn Bigley, do I need to stop by your house and pick it up or can

I get it someplace else? You can get it wherever they sell fine books. everywhere in the world and in lots of foreign countries at this point. So Scott Adams says we can look forward. You've already, you've done your daily periscope today already. So you're done for the day? You're good. You're putting your feet up?

Well, I was thinking about jumping in with another one. I've got cartoons to write. I've got another book I'm working on. I'm a busy guy. What cartoons are you working on? Well, I'm just working on more Dilber comics. Okay. So are we still syndicated with that? I mean, I know that sounds dumb. Of course, Gilbert is everywhere. But I mean, are you still doing a daily syndication of that? Yeah, it's bigger than it's ever been, thanks to the Internet. Oh, I mean, that's amazing.

The funny thing is that as the number of papers cut in half, my circulation didn't change at all because usually there were two papers in the town. Right. And if one of them went in a business, the other paper said, hey, they had Gilbert. Now we can have it. Right. That's fantastic. I mean, that's great. How long did it take you to get that up and selling so people saw it and felt comfortable with it?

You know, was it, did you have to go out and hawk separate newspapers for three or four years? Or did you, how'd that work for you? So the way syndication works is that the big break. for a cartoonist like me is you get a contract with a syndication company. And then they do all this selling and marketing and distribution so you can just concentrate on making comics and then you split the money. So I got that contract in 1989. That's when it launched.

But it wasn't successful for the first few years. It wasn't even close to successful until I started running my email address in the margins of the comic. and this was back when email was kind of new. And people would write to me and they'd say, you know, we kind of like your comic a little bit, but when he's in the office doing office stuff,

we love those. So I changed the comic because it was such a good feedback. And that's when it got a brand and you could talk about it's like, oh, that's the workplace comic. And it turns out that with comics, if you can't describe it that quickly,

Garfield, it's a cat. You know, Kathy, neurotic single woman. So you need to be able to describe it that clearly to really get an audience. I mean, that's fantastic. Scott, thank you so much. I'll let you go.

And as you said, I know you're a busy man. So Scott Adams says, Win Bigley, if I stop by the house, though, I mean, could I pick up a copy? Oh, yeah, the door's online. Scott, thank you very much, man. I appreciate it. All right, thank you.