1841 - "Scott Adams Redux"

Summary

No Agenda Show Episode 1841 - “Scott Adams Redux”

Date: February 8, 2026
Hosts: Adam Curry & John C. Dvorak
Special Feature: Retrospective Interview with Scott Adams (Dilbert creator)

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Overview

This Super Bowl Sunday episode pays tribute to the late Scott Adams, best known as the creator of Dilbert. Adam and John open with their trademark media deconstruction, a humorous review of Super Bowl prop bets, and reflections on NFL politics, but the core of this episode is an in-depth retrospective interview between John C. Dvorak and Scott Adams, recorded before COVID. The interview explores Adams’ career, philosophy, and personal history, offering a rare look at his perspective and life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Super Bowl 2026: Politics & Prop Bets (00:31–08:08)

• The teams: Seattle Seahawks vs. New England Patriots (“Boston Patriots” slip corrected).
• Framing the game through political and cultural lenses, concluding that both cities’ politics are left-leaning.
• Discussion of the NFL's perceived anti-Trump leanings and influence in decisions like Hall of Fame snubs.
• Humorous take on “rigging” in sports and political symbolism on the field.
• Entertaining tour of Super Bowl prop bets, skewering the politicization of sports and the commercialization of halftime.

Notable Quotes:

• "Why don’t they put a big Marxist flag on the field? ... They should. They might as well." – Adam Curry (05:22)
• “If you go with the basic thesis we run to predict these games, Seattle has to win.” – Adam Curry (05:27)

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2. Remembering Scott Adams & Setting Up the Interview (09:24–15:02)

• Tribute to Scott Adams’ legacy and personal relationship with John.
• Backstory: John describes visiting Adams, his eccentricities, and humorous anecdotes about his personal life (marriages, house with no art, heated marble floors).
• Transition to playing their pre-pandemic interview as an homage.

Notable Quotes:

• “He had his thing about affirmations… and I saw a lot of bongs around the house, and that was about it.” – Adam Curry (13:34)
• “If you’re ever going to build a house... the key to success is heated floors.” – Scott Adams/Adam Curry relay (14:11)

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3. The Retrospective Interview: John C. Dvorak & Scott Adams

Begins at 15:48, segmented by topic:

A. Origins and Dilbert’s Early Days (15:48–24:39)

• Adams describes working as an engineer, introducing Adam to “the Web” in 1993.
• Reveals inspiration for Dilbert: the universality of management incompetence across big corporations (“same management problems, same way people think…”).
• Breakthrough moment: Adams leverages email feedback to shift Dilbert’s focus exclusively to workplace humor, combining art with business instinct.

Notable Quotes:

• “Management problems are universal... that was really the inspiration behind Dilbert.” – Scott Adams (19:35)
• “I applied business techniques to the artistic realm.” – Scott Adams (21:40)

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B. Artistry, Humor, and Skills (23:01–25:36)

• Family influence (mother: landscape artist; father: doodling).
• Development of a unique, “brute force” cartoon style.
• Discusses his “absurdist” and “observational” sense of humor: “I call it cognitive blind spots. I’m looking for places where otherwise smart people are doing something... that doesn’t look smart.” (25:04)

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C. Corporate Departure and Career Pivot (25:49–29:36)

• Story of leaving Pacific Bell—amicable but impersonal, highlighting the absurdities Adams lampoons.
• Colleagues tried to keep him as a sales asset, but management priorities prevailed.
• Reader emails became a rich stream for material post-corporate life.

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D. Technical Tools and Artistic Evolution (30:12–33:49)

• Switched to digital drawing after developing "focal dystonia"—a hand spasm condition from overuse.
• Unusually, digital drawing did not trigger the spasm, and with therapy he partially remediated it.

Notable Quotes:

• “When I drew on the computer... my brain did not recognize it as drawing for whatever reason.” – Scott Adams (33:15)
• “It probably cut my [work] load by over 50%.” – Scott Adams (33:41)

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E. Health, Twitchiness & Vocal Recovery (34:34–41:27)

• Playful discussion on Tourette’s and neatnik tendencies (“Maybe I have it, what are the symptoms? I thought I should be swearing out loud.” – Scott Adams, 34:46).
• Adams describes losing his voice for 3.5 years due to spasmodic dysphonia, eventual experimental nerve surgery, and the long road to recovery.

Memorable Moment:
“The world expert on this specific [hand spasm] condition lived in my town and was in my HMO… I believe I’m the first person who’s ever remediated or solved that problem.” – Scott Adams (33:12)

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F. Politics, Persuasion, & Public Perception (42:02–53:23)

• Adams: “I am not a Republican”; doesn’t vote but is fascinated by politics.
• Explains his analysis of Trump’s “persuasion skills”—emphasizes that analyzing does not equate to being an “apologist.”
• Reveals he is a trained hypnotist and discusses how that frames his perspective on human irrationality.

Notable Quotes:

• “Once you can reprogram [people] so easily, you realize... their rational minds are not really running the show.” – Scott Adams (44:48)

• “History will record [Trump] ... in terms of public speaking, best ever?” – Scott Adams (50:00)

• Personal and professional costs of public political opinion: “Probably 40% of my income evaporated and 75% of my social circle. Yeah, I’m quite an outcast.” (51:05)

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G. Ventures, Startups, and Investments (53:23–79:28)

• Restaurant investing: tales of legal headaches and ill-timed expansion post-9/11.
• Blight Authority: collaborative project aiming to clean up urban blight and create development opportunities.
• Startup: “WenHub” – an ‘expert on demand’ video call app integrating blockchain; Adams is involved in vision, development, and branding.

Notable Quotes:

• “The first restaurant was wildly popular. The second… I signed the lease the day that the Twin Towers were coming down.” – Scott Adams (54:45)
• “[WenHub] ... is like a Tinder for experts.” – Scott Adams (76:38)

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H. Personal Life & Preferences (57:15–75:34)

• Education: Valedictorian, undergraduate in economics, MBA from Berkeley.
• Diet: Pescatarian, occasional vegetarian, has included vegetarian/vegan themes in Dilbert.
• Technology: Lifelong tech tinkerer, prefers Mac and iPhone for UI but credits Google for life-changing information.
• Cars & Dining: Drives a BMW SUV, not a car enthusiast; prefers mid-level Italian restaurants over trendy gourmet spots. Does not drink alcohol.
• TV and Books: Enjoys “The Five” and “Greg Gutfeld Show” on Fox, doesn’t read much fiction, prefers nonfiction and direct experience.

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I. Quick Opinions: Notables & News (58:53–70:16)

• Mike Pence: “Perfect... as the emergency spare, the backup. Subtract everything interesting from Trump, you have Pence.” (59:09)
• Trump: Impressed by his charisma and persuasion, has met in person at the Oval Office.
• Kellyanne Conway: Loyal, talented campaigner.
• Rachel Maddow: “Insanely smart and talented ... can’t deny the talent.” (63:26)
• Silicon Valley billionaires: Finds them generally fascinating, many are Democrats, speculates on factors behind this.
• Favorite TV: “The Five” on Fox; finds it the best mix of news and entertainment.

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J. Closing & Reflections (80:21–81:20)

• Current and future Dilbert projects, including compilations and daily calendars.
• Explanation behind some Dilbert characters, such as Catbert (HR as a cat—“because HR directors don’t care if you live or die, just like playing with you”).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Why don’t they put a big Marxist flag on the field? ... They should. They might as well.” – Adam Curry (05:22)
• “Management problems are universal... that was really the inspiration behind Dilbert.” – Scott Adams (19:35)
• “If you started with Trump and subtracted everything that makes him interesting, you’d have Pence.” – Scott Adams (59:09)
• “Once you can reprogram [people] so easily, you realize... their rational minds are not really running the show.” – Scott Adams (44:48)
• “Probably 40% of my income evaporated and 75% of my social circle.” – Scott Adams (51:05)
• “[WenHub] ... is like a Tinder for experts.” – Scott Adams (76:38)
• “Your HR director doesn’t care if you live or die. Just likes playing with you.” – Scott Adams, on Catbert (80:46)

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Timeline of Important Segments

• 00:31–08:08 — Super Bowl, Prop Bets, NFL Politics
• 09:24–15:02 — Remembering Scott Adams and Setup for Interview
• 15:48–81:20 — Scott Adams Interview (Dilbert origins, business philosophy, health, tech, politics, startup)
• 81:20–85:44 — Post-interview banter: feed ownership, death, residuals, and concluding Super Bowl wishes

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Tone & Style

The episode maintains the playful, irreverent, and intellectually skeptical tone that defines No Agenda. Adam and John poke fun at official narratives (sports, media, even podcasting itself), while the extensive Scott Adams interview mixes dry humor, self-effacement, and candor—hallmarks of both Adams and Dvorak.

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For New Listeners

This episode stands out as a time-capsule tribute to Scott Adams, offering not only a thorough biographical sweep but priceless insights for anyone interested in creativity, media, corporate absurdity, resilience, and the unpredictable intersections of art, business, and politics.

Transcript

[Adam Curry]

Adam Curry, John C. Dvorak.

[John C. Dvorak]

It's Sunday, February 8, 2026. This is your award winning giveaway. Nation media assassination episode 1841. This is no Agenda Almost live broadcasting from Lake Wales, Florida in FEMA region. Number 10 in the morning, everybody.

[Adam Curry]

I'm Adam Curry and from northern Silicon Valley where I am live kind of on tape. I'm John C. Dvorak.

[Scott Adams]

It's Crackpot and Buzzkill in the morning.

[John C. Dvorak]

And it's Super Bowl Sunday, everybody. Super Bowl.

[Adam Curry]

Yes. So that's why. And Adam's at the game.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yes. In Lake Wales, Florida. That's where the game is. Yes. And the most important thing is the prop bets. The prop bets, yes. We have. Do you get the email from. From our guy? We have a guy, his name is. What's our guy's name here? Our guy is Josh. Josh. Do you not get his emails?

[Adam Curry]

I don't know.

[John C. Dvorak]

Maybe he sends me the prop bets.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, I get a prop bet from some guy too. Yeah. I don't know if it's Josh.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah. Well, first of all, who's playing? I forget who's playing. Who's playing. Who's playing the. Who's in the game, John?

[Adam Curry]

Well, Seattle is representing the NFL and you have the Boston Patriots back in it again. But nothing is. The two teams played each other before. Is one of the last Super Bowls that Seattle was in and Seattle, I said it on the show like two months ago. Yeah, that Seattle always gets into the super bowl when there's a new pope.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yes. But do they win?

[Adam Curry]

They've won two out of three.

[John C. Dvorak]

Tough. It's tough. It's tough to know if this is going to be.

[Adam Curry]

Well, the team is a superior team. Seattle team.

[John C. Dvorak]

Did you say the Boston Patriots? Isn't that the New England Patriots?

[Adam Curry]

Did I say Boston Patriots?

[John C. Dvorak]

I think you said.

[Adam Curry]

I hear people originally the Boston Patriots, but they're New England back in 1912.

[John C. Dvorak]

When they were still the boss and.

[Adam Curry]

They were the Boston Patriots.

[John C. Dvorak]

So.

[Adam Curry]

But.

[John C. Dvorak]

But it's the Patriots. But not with their, with their star quarterback. Correct.

[Adam Curry]

Actually they have a star quarterback.

[John C. Dvorak]

Am I wrong? Am I wrong again?

[Adam Curry]

Well, it's like. It's not that you're wrong. What you're trying to say is without Tom Brady.

[John C. Dvorak]

That's what I mean, without Tom Brady.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, of course not. He's been out of the game for a while.

[John C. Dvorak]

So who's the quarterback now for the.

[Adam Curry]

This guy. This guy Drake May, he is second year player. He's a natural. He's really good and he's taken a Team that was just kind of losers and pushed him right into the Super Bowl. After the second year in the league, it might still be a little premature for him to win a Super bowl, but he's there. He got, got, got him there from.

[John C. Dvorak]

A, from a political standpoint, which is how we often look at these types of games. We have Seattle and we have New England.

[Adam Curry]

Right.

[John C. Dvorak]

And New England is new. New England is kind of liberal now, isn't it? New England is not New England.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, they have a, they have a communist mayor. There you go. Multiculty mayor. And, and the worst part is Seattle has a communist mayor who's actually pretty much a Marxist and she's also a woman. So you get two women, you got two Marxists, basically. There's no politics that we can, that at least I can extract from the game.

[John C. Dvorak]

Well, I can only go just because of the name Patriots, you know, because we're Patriots. I, I think I have to put it on the Patriots for this year.

[Adam Curry]

I would actually go the opposite direction. I'll tell you why.

[John C. Dvorak]

Well, please do.

[Adam Curry]

Is because within recent memory, in other words, in the last couple weeks, both Bill Belichick, who had won six Super Bowls, did not get in on the.

[John C. Dvorak]

Not for the hall of Fame. Not. Did not get out.

[Adam Curry]

Not in the hall of Fame. And then shortly thereafter, the owner, Bob Kraft, did not get into the hall of Fame. And everyone's going, oh, well, it's because, you know, they've inflate gate. There's all these scandals.

[John C. Dvorak]

That inflate gate was great. Where they deflated the ball or.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, deflated the ball a little bit. But that, but these were all these two, two minor scandals after six Super Bowls. Actually, he won one. He was involved with eight Super Bowls. He won as assistant, winning all. He has eight rings. I don't think that was it at all. I think that they stiffed them because Robert Kraft's a big Trump supporter and I think Belichick is too. And so they still, they stiff them in the hall of Fame because they like Trump and all these, you know, left wing journalists voted, didn't vote for him. And no one would even suggest that except me. I just did it. And that's the reason against. They're going to do the same thing to the team. If it's rigged, they're out. So.

[John C. Dvorak]

Well, this poses an interesting conundrum here. Do you think that, do you now, I would say that all professional sports are rigged. Do you think it's rigged in favor, in favor of Trump for the Patriots or Against.

[Adam Curry]

No, no. It'd be a rigged no. The NFL is notoriously left. They put symbols on the back of helmets. And my wife once asked me, she goes, what is this? Why does it say be good to end racism on the back of a helmet?

[John C. Dvorak]

I remember that. I forgot all about that.

[Adam Curry]

They're still doing it.

[John C. Dvorak]

They're still doing.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, so the NFL is against Trump.

[John C. Dvorak]

Why don't they put a big Marxist flag on the field? Just, you know, paint it on the.

[Adam Curry]

They should. They might as well. So they're against Trump. So if you go with the basic thesis that we run to predict these games, Seattle has to win.

[John C. Dvorak]

Okay, so here's the prop bets. It goes right along with this. Will there be an ice protest inside or outside Levi stadium? Yes is minus 1000. No is plus 550. Whatever that means.

[Adam Curry]

That means you have to bet.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah, that's tough.

[Adam Curry]

550 to win.

[John C. Dvorak]

I think that means you seem stumped. You seem stumped.

[Adam Curry]

The plus minus thing is always kind of confusing. They do that on purpose.

[John C. Dvorak]

Well, how about. This is easier. Will any player wear anti ice signage?

[Adam Curry]

Oh, absolutely.

[John C. Dvorak]

The plus is 2,000. The no is minus 10,000.

[Adam Curry]

That means they think it's going to happen. That. That would be a bit. Yes. Wow. Wow.

[John C. Dvorak]

Okay. Will Trump criticize Bad Bunny or the halftime show in the pregame interview? I say no. I say he won't do that. He's not going to do that.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, see, that's the problem. Because he might.

[John C. Dvorak]

That's. No is minus 200. Yes is plus 150.

[Adam Curry]

So they're betting yes that he's going to.

[John C. Dvorak]

Okay.

[Adam Curry]

I mean, that's the odds makers deciding.

[John C. Dvorak]

How about this? Will Ice arrest Bad Bunny on stage?

[Adam Curry]

The likelihood is zero.

[John C. Dvorak]

Minus 2000. No, minus 10,000. Will Bad Bunny say ice during the halftime show? I'd say yes. And yes is plus 200. No is minus 300.

[Adam Curry]

So.

[John C. Dvorak]

They have a lot of interesting prop bets. Will Bad Bunny take a knee on stage? Will he give. Let's see. Will he give Puerto Rico a shout out?

[Adam Curry]

If I was Bad Bunny, I'd be looking at these bets and having my family bet heavily.

[John C. Dvorak]

No kidding.

[Adam Curry]

That's the problem with prop bets.

[John C. Dvorak]

Will any player kneel in protest during the national anthem? Is Billy. Are your boys playing Green Day?

[Adam Curry]

I understand. Yes.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yes. Okay, here's a prop it. This is your boy. Will your boy Billy Joe Armstrong call Trump fat while on stage?

[Adam Curry]

That these are great.

[John C. Dvorak]

Green Day, first song performed. American Idiot, Basket Case, Know youw Enemy, Boulevard of Broken Dreams. Or When I come, I'd say American Idiot. They gotta do American Idiot. They hate Trump so much would be American Idiot.

[Adam Curry]

Maybe.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah.

[Adam Curry]

Bets are stupid.

[John C. Dvorak]

Anyway, did you see the. The anthropic ad that everyone's talking about? Oh, Anthropic is doing ad. Have you heard about this?

[Adam Curry]

No.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah, they're doing an ad which is anti advertising because, you know, they did this big statement, oh, anthropic will never do ads. We believe. And you're just paying for that.

[Adam Curry]

And they did an ad to announce this.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah. So this.

[Adam Curry]

That makes sense.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah.

[John C. Dvorak]

There's some K kid, you know, he's talking to some guy and the guy is supposed to represent, you know, chat GPT. And he asks a question and this guy answers in a kind of robotic voice, monotone voice, like. Well, you know, if you use this coupon code, you know, code bonjino. So everyone's up in arms about that. Oh, Anthropic. Anthropic is going to be the first to go out of business if they don't do ads. It's the way I see it, the AI Open AI. Open AI open AI. If they go out of business, that'll create a cascading effect of doom.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, I think so.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah. Anyway, so we will be just. So I say Patriots, you say Seahawks.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah.

[John C. Dvorak]

We'll see who's right on Thursday. Well, we'll. We'll know on Sunday, but we'll talk about it on Thursday.

[Adam Curry]

Right.

[John C. Dvorak]

For today's special, no Agenda show, we are running the interview you did with Scott Adams. Rest in peace. Gotta say, Rip. Rest in peace.

[Adam Curry]

Yes. And I have to say, you know, this is. We're doing this because, well, you're going to be at an event, so you can't do the show. But it's beside the point we have is a good time to get the retrospective from Scott into the show mix, so. Because he, you know, he died unfortunately, recently, and he was a good guy. Liked him. I knew. I've known him for over 30 years. And he. I feel bad about it. And went to his house.

[John C. Dvorak]

How did that. Did you just call him up and say, I want to do a show for no agenda? I can't remember.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, it was something like that. I mean, I knew him and so I got a hold of him. I had his email, which was a screwball email. I think it was aol even really very cool.

[John C. Dvorak]

That's kind of OG to have an AOL email. Email.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. I said. So I sent him a note and saying I would tell him what I Wanted to do. Yeah, sure, come on over. Because I didn't have. I've had. Over the years, I have had lunch with him a number of times. I was, you know, got. Went and visited when he was hanging out with Stacy, who ran a chain of restaurants that he was financing.

[John C. Dvorak]

Oh, that was the big financial fiasco.

[Adam Curry]

Well, it was one. No, he's financed a lot of stuff that was in and out of being a fiasco, but he had plenty of money. And this is the era when he was married to this. The woman, the Basham woman. And she. She wasn't there.

[John C. Dvorak]

Is that the violinist?

[Scott Adams]

The.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. She was supposedly classical. Might be. I don't know that she's in a concert orchestra.

[John C. Dvorak]

She was. She was a stunt pilot, apparently.

[Adam Curry]

Yes. She also liked to fly. She was. She could fly. Yeah. And she was a. Supposedly a concert pianist and a concert violinist. And they had some of her stuff posted and it was. You know what it was.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah.

[Adam Curry]

Scott was enamored with her and her talents. And she's also a baker. She's considered herself a famous baker. And she didn't have a bakery, but she kind of said she did.

[John C. Dvorak]

Oh, Scott, Scott, Scott. We didn't. Did you not say, hey, bro, what.

[Adam Curry]

Do you know at any point of those things? And. And he. And she was basically. I don't know where what. She's. She's still on Instagram, but she was an Instagram girl. She had picture after picture after picture of herself with not pretty much nothing in between except pictures of herself and.

[John C. Dvorak]

Nothing with her and Scott.

[Adam Curry]

As I can recall, there was one picture I saw with her and Scott. There was an event, like a whole bunch of people around.

[John C. Dvorak]

I remember looking it up. He bought her a plane. It was a Cessna.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, it could be.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah, I remember that. I remember looking it up, like. And looking up her license. She's not a stunt pilot, but. Okay, I digress. Doesn't matter. We all do crazy things for women, myself included.

[Adam Curry]

Well, she had. She was an attractive female on the outside. Wow. But I never saw her. I never saw her in person, so I don't know what. What level of. She must have been really pretty. She's photogenic. But I never saw her. And she was somewhat telegenic, but she was photogenic. I don't know what she looked like in person. There's a big difference. And so he was married to her at the time. She wasn't around the house when I was there. And a couple of funny things I noted was, you know, there's no art on any of the walls or anything was barren.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah.

[Adam Curry]

And so then I asked him about that.

[John C. Dvorak]

Did you ask him about it? I don't remember if it's in the interview either. I can't remember.

[Adam Curry]

I don't think it was in the interview. But I asked him about. He says, oh, you know, Christina didn't. She doesn't like art on the walls. And I'm thinking, okay, well, that's. I guess. But then he. After he divorced her, which was shortly thereafter, and there's still never any art on the wall. He didn't like to put stuff up.

[John C. Dvorak]

He just didn't like art on the walls himself.

[Adam Curry]

He had his thing about affirmations. He was one of those. He was very into affirmations. Get up earlier, you know, kind of thing. I don't know what. I never saw any of those. I saw a lot of bongs around the house, and that was about it. Yeah.

[John C. Dvorak]

Back in the. I thought. I was like, scott's my man. He's into. He's into the holy herb. Wonderful. And that's when I was still smoking lots of weed.

[Adam Curry]

And he had one interesting, I thought was a tip for everybody.

[John C. Dvorak]

Here we go.

[Adam Curry]

Because he had built a house from scratch. Big place, too.

[John C. Dvorak]

Ah, I remember this tip.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. This is like a good. Like a tip of the day. It'll be a tip of the day for this.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah.

[John C. Dvorak]

If you're a millionaire, if you're ever.

[Adam Curry]

Going to build a house. He says the key to success is heated floors.

[John C. Dvorak]

Oh, man, I had that in Amsterdam. I had heated marble floors when I still had money. Remember those days?

[Adam Curry]

Oh, yeah. Those days are over.

[John C. Dvorak]

They ended with the gold bar that.

[Adam Curry]

Left my life, which was worth a mill.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah.

[John C. Dvorak]

Heated marble floors.

[Adam Curry]

It is.

[John C. Dvorak]

It is something to behold. It is quite nice.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah.

[John C. Dvorak]

All right, so it's about an hour. I think it's. It's. I listened to it again a couple days ago, and it's. It's kind of odd to hear someone who's dead speaking again. You know, it's just. It's one of those things. But I think it's. I think it honors him by. By playing.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, I think that's the idea.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah. Especially before, because it was all before COVID and this was even. Was this. Was he doing his show? Was Morning coffee with Scott? Was he doing that by then? I don't think so. Was he.

[Adam Curry]

He was doing some scattered stuff. I remember. I don't know if it was morning coffee when he. When he finally got it. He may have been doing. I Don't know. I'd have to look. Look it up. To be honest about. I don't. We didn't discuss that. But once he got into that, he really had a good routine for that show. And it was one of the more interesting analysis shows, even though it was hard to clip.

[John C. Dvorak]

So let's listen to it now. Enjoy this special no Agenda interview, John C. Dvorak with the legendary Scott Adams.

[Adam Curry]

All right, I'm here with Scott Adams. So you've been cartoon. You made your money as a cartoonist.

[Scott Adams]

Correct.

[Adam Curry]

And I met you 25 years ago at Pacific Telephone. You were an engineer and you were. You were actually the first guy who showed me the Internet.

[Scott Adams]

Wow. I didn't realize that. Yeah, we had a little.

[Adam Curry]

Not the Internet, but the Web.

[Scott Adams]

The Web, right. Yeah, yeah. We had a little lab I was working, that was my day job, and we were showing people this thing called the World Wide Web. And it was. It was the most. One of the most informative times of my life.

[Adam Curry]

It was in 93, as I recall.

[Scott Adams]

That sounds right.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Adams]

And Dilbert was out a little. Had been out, but not. Hadn't been out enough that I could quit my day job.

[Adam Curry]

Right. But you were the. Anyway, you showed it to me. You were impressed, but you obviously weren't blown away so much that you went out and bought a bunch of domain names like Smart Money did.

[Scott Adams]

No, it's worse than that. It's worse than that. So we would bring customers in and we'd show them all our cool phone company stuff that wasn't interesting to anybody, and they would just. Their eyes would glaze over. And then at the end, as just sort of a dessert, we'd say, oh, and there's this new thing coming. We called it the World Wide Web. Then now the Internet. And there were exactly two websites you could get to. That's it. The Smithsonian and some other thing. And we would show them that we could see the website at the Smithsonian and look at a couple of still pictures, and people would come out of their chairs and they'd say, can I do that? And we'd say, do what? You know, touch the mouse and make this. They needed to touch it. They stood up, their eyes got big, and they said, how can we get this? And there was no application. And I remember thinking, my goodness, this is going to be huge. It has that X factor where people want it even though it's terrible. Like early cell phones. Everybody wanted a cell phone, but they were terrible. And I cornered our top engineer in the phone company and I said, hey, if I wanted to invest in this coming thing, this World Wide Web Internet thing, what's the one company I should put all my money in? And he looks at me and he goes, cisco. And I go, okay, what are the other companies? And he goes, cisco. He goes, everything's going to be Cisco for the next 15 years or whatever.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, I mean, it was.

[Scott Adams]

And so I did not buy Cisco. And it's the worst financial decision I've ever made.

[Adam Curry]

Huh. Well, I didn't buy Cisco either, but I didn't have some guy telling me to buy. Was pretty obvious in hindsight. You can see what had happened, all the, all the points. You could have gone, wow, I should have done that. It could have done that. It could have done this. It's the worst. I mean, just if you had bought Apple when Steve Jobs first showed up and kept the stock, you'd be loaded, especially about $10,000 when you make a few million dollars. But having kind of been involved in the stock market over the years, the thing is, you can't hold the stock that long. You just won't do it. You'll just say, oh, it's not going to go any higher than this because you can't do it. It's impossible. Unless somebody else buys the stock and puts it into trust. And you don't even know you have it. That it's a very, it's problematic. So anyway, you did leave eventually. How long were you there at Pacific Bell?

[Scott Adams]

Well, eight years there, then before that, eight years at a big bank. And I was doing Dilber for about six of those years that I was still at the phone company. So I was doing two jobs and writing a book at the same time and working day and night.

[Adam Curry]

You were getting your inspiration from the phone company?

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, that plus my memories of the bank. So the big aha was when I moved from a bank to a phone company. And you'd say to yourself, well, they have nothing in common. Two completely different companies. And then you watch that. The same management problems, the same way people think, the same way people treat you. It was just shockingly similar. And that was really the inspiration behind Dilber is the realization that these things were universal. And there were people trapped in jobs all over who probably thought, there's nowhere else that this is happening. This could not be happening anywhere else. It's impossible.

[Adam Curry]

It happens everywhere. That was a genius. Well, you had, I thought we thought the comic strip was genius because it was the only one that actually addressed kind of day to day, workaday office Working issues. Everything else was, you know, was like a, it was cowboy stuff or just stupid animals making punch lines that, you know, cracking up to or trying to crack you up with a one liner.

[Scott Adams]

Now, I don't want to claim genius and inspiration totally because I'll take a little bit. But I also have an mba and one of the main things you learn in business school is listen to the customers, give them what they want. That's the sort of thing that artists don't do. And when Dilber came out and email was coming out at about the same time or getting popular about the same time, people started emailing me because I put my email address between the panels of the strip and they'd say, we, we love your comic. When Dilber's in the office, we don't care for it that much when he's just at home doing generic things. Which is, as you said, what most comic strips were about. It's just about whatever, Dagwood. And so I listened to the customers and completely retooled the strip to make it a workplace strip. So that the reason that Dilber succeeded, and it's very rare that a big comic will break out, is that I applied business techniques to the artistic realm.

[Adam Curry]

Could somebody else do a cartoon and have a breakout? Nowadays in this market where their syndication is different, maybe you'd like one of the last actually succeeded before the door was closed.

[Scott Adams]

Well, you know, there's only one giant cartoon every 10 years or so. You know, that's, it's actually very rare. You know, there's, you can count on one hand the mega cartoons and if somebody were to start out today, I'd probably tell them to start on the Internet and see if they can get an audience and then if they can try to also get syndicated. Because for those who don't know what syndication is, you sign a deal with a company that's a syndication company and then they sell it to all the newspapers so you don't have to do all the selling to the individual newspapers. So yeah, I would start with the Internet first. See if you can get an audience, refine your art, and then try to get syndicated next.

[Adam Curry]

So it is possible, you think?

[Scott Adams]

Totally possible. But you know, the market is shrinking in terms of the physical newspapers. But Dilbert's bigger than it's ever been because as long as there's one big newspaper in every market, you know, it runs in that paper. And of course the Internet market is growing every day, so. So it's growing there no matter what.

[Adam Curry]

Where'd you get your drawing skills.

[Scott Adams]

My mother was a landscape artist, and my father doodled little cartoons that were more like stick figures, but very funny in their own little weird way. So I, I think I had, you know, a little bit of genetic advantage there. But anybody who's seen Dilbert knows I'm not an artist with any kind of a capital A. So it was really brute force. And the, the first original comics that I submitted, if you saw them, you'd say, there's no way this guy is gonna get hired or syndicated. This is. Looks like an inebriated monkey with a crayon. What's. What's going on here? But it was just brute force. I just practiced until I could do it.

[Adam Curry]

What do you. What kind of sense of humor do you think you have?

[Scott Adams]

Well, probably it's a combination of observational plus engineering. In other words, to make something look clever, sometimes you have to look at it as an engineer. As in, what would be the weird way to accomplish this in the cartoon realm? If you've got a character who has got a problem and it's a cartoon, so they, they can kind of do anything. There's no real limits. What is the funny engineering solution? And it might involve, you know, killing somebody, it might involve, you know, aliens. It could involve anything. So. But you have to start, as you said earlier, with something that everybody goes, oh, that's like, I've been there. If you don't get that part right, it's hard to get much else right. That people have to recognize and identify with the situation. Then you can extend it, but you gotta. You gotta get them first.

[Adam Curry]

I have a theory that your humor is absurdist.

[Scott Adams]

Explain absurdist.

[Adam Curry]

You spot the absurdities in the office environment, for example, and most everything, every punchline you deliver is based on something that just. It's beyond the pale so far as pure absurdity is concerned.

[Scott Adams]

I'm going to agree with that. With different words. I call it a cognitive blind spots. So I'm looking for places where otherwise smart people are doing something that the observers would say, that doesn't look smart. I know you went to college. I know you're smart. Why are you doing that? And that explains 75% of management. And the reason for that is that people are paid to manage, but sometimes there's nothing to do or you don't know what to do, and you end up just saying, well, what's the fad?

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, I worked in the government, so I know some of that. From another perspective, still the same. You were fired from Pac Pacific Telephone I'm going to tell you the story that I was told by one of your old associates.

[Scott Adams]

All right.

[Adam Curry]

You remember her?

[Scott Adams]

Anita?

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Adams]

Anita, who was the, the real life model for my character Alice in the comic strip.

[Adam Curry]

Yes. Some bonehead came into the company on some normal kind of a. Well, let's put this guy in because he can. He's going to reorg this and he's going to do that. He's going to straighten things out. And he was naive and he said, I guess he went through one. I've seen this happen in different operations. Somebody goes in there, they start doing a checklist. What does this guy do? Who is this guy? Scott Adams? What does he do? And nobody was there. And I've seen this happen recently in other companies where somebody's actually very important to a company. You were at the time important, the way it was told to me, to the sales people, because the comic strip was popular enough that they would drag you out on sales calls as a lure, which happens with any company that's got any brains. Bring a lure in and, oh, you get to meet Scott Adams. And by the way, you can buy some of these, some of the gear or some services. And this bonehead came in and he just unceremoniously got rid of you in some sort of a cleanup, very much like you see in the movie the Office. And you didn't make a fuss or object or anything. You left. And then they found out about it. They, the people that knew better, they wanted you to come back. And you said, you know, I don't need to come back. I'm going to stay. I'm going to stay gone. And that was the end of it.

[Scott Adams]

That's pretty close. I'll add a little, little context to it. My co workers, once I started getting famous and started to get a little bit of money with Dilbert, it was obvious that I was going to leave and it didn't make sense to keep my day job. But they wanted me to stay like as you. As you said I was good for sales. Customers would come in and they were Dilber fans. And so I helped and they actually made me an offer. Anita, the one that I just mentioned, the real life Alice from the comic strip said, how about this deal? I'll go to our management and I'll say, you don't even have to show up unless you don't want to, except for these sales calls. And otherwise, we'll do your work. You know, we'll do the engineering stuff. That was your main work. And my Co workers said, yeah, we're up for that. We'll do the work. You just come in for the. The times you want to, basically.

[Adam Curry]

And I said, so you're like a fellow without being. Without having the designation right, in a sense.

[Scott Adams]

And so Anita took that to the boss you're talking about and made that deal. And he said, I'm okay with that. And he checked with me and I said, yeah, that's. I'm okay with it too. But here's the thing. I don't want to be a burden. So the day that you need that budget, you're paying me for something else. You just have to ask and I'll leave the same day. And one day he was. He had some other project that he thought was more important, and he called me in and said, you know, this would be a good day. And I said, okay, that's the deal. You just have to ask. I don't need a reason. You just have to ask. And so I left peacefully. And yes, I did get a call from, I believe it was the CEO. CEO or president, I think it was a CEO at the time, who was surprised to find out that I had been asked to leave.

[Adam Curry]

Ah, well, it's. Your version is obviously more accurate than mine, but mine's still good.

[Scott Adams]

Yours is good? Yeah. You were 90% there.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. When it happened, I. Since I knew you at the time, I thought, well, this is going to be interesting because how is he going to. Because I thought that cartoon was derivative from the work experience and you're getting daily material just by going to work, showing up, and I was wondering how you were going to handle that. And you've handled it quite nicely. I don't see any difference, actually.

[Scott Adams]

Well, I was getting literally thousands of emails a day in the beginning with suggestions, and it was a huge burden to respond to. I tried to respond to all of them back in those days, and there was just material coming in and it would always remind me of something I had experienced. So I was always looking for that. If somebody suggested something I'd never heard of, that usually didn't work for me, but if I said, oh, yeah, that happened to me, then it was a cartoon.

[Adam Curry]

Where I don't see a lot of stuff from you is convention life.

[Scott Adams]

You know, why? There, There's. There's a cartooning reason. You don't see Dilbert go to conventions a lot. And the reason is I don't like drawing backgrounds. Okay. To draw the convention stuff in the back. You either have to be.

[Adam Curry]

I don't want to interrupt you. But since you're now doing everything on the computer, can you have like a stock couple of backgrounds you just drop in so you don't have to do any of that work?

[Scott Adams]

Well, people would notice the stock backgrounds. I do do a stock exterior building that I reuse. But yeah, I'd have to draw it in the first place and I'd have to change it every time, you know, but you're right, it's a lot easier now with a computer.

[Adam Curry]

When did you switch?

[Scott Adams]

I switched. Let's see if I can remember the year. It was probably in the 2004 ISH range, give or take a year. And it was because I had a problem with my drawing hand. I had spasms in my pinky when I tried to draw from overuse and it's a weird thing called a focal dystonia. And went to the doctor and said, what's this? What's going on with my pinky? I can't draw anymore. And by pure luck, the world expert, literally the world expert on this specific condition lived in my town and was in my HMO at Kaiser. And you know, my doctor knew him. And next thing I know, I'm talking to the world expert on this problem and I said, what's the cure? And he said, we don't have one. You know, basically changed jobs. So I agreed to be part of, you know, a test group. They were trying different things to see if they could make some progress. But in the meantime I thought, well, I'm done unless I can figure out a solution for drawing. And so I drew left handed for a while, which I can do, but it's slower. I'm slightly ambidextrous, but not terribly ambidextrous. And then I thought, you know, I'll bet there's by now something you can draw on the computer, that maybe my hand would act differently. Yeah, because the weird thing about this hand problem is that it was actually a mental problem that expressed itself in the hand. So the hand was fine. And the reason I knew that is that when I drew with my left hand, my right hand would spasm because my brain would say, hey, you're drawing again. Spasm, spasm, spasm. And the, you know, the expert I mentioned confirmed that it's more of a brain problem than a hand problem. And so when I drew on the computer, even though the drawing looks just like drawing, it's just you're drawing on a screen and you're using a stylus, the, my brain did not recognize it as drawing for Whatever reason, it just didn't trigger that very specific response. And then over time I learned through hand exercises and gradually building up to using my hand with a regular pencil, just very, very quick tests. You know, hold the pencil down for a quarter of a second and release it before the spasm until I could do a second, then two seconds. And I did that for months until I believe I'm the first person who's ever remediated or solved that problem. Focal dystonia, I think I'm in the literature. My doctor told me.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, well, that's good and bad. I guess it did move you over to the computer, which probably eventually sped up your work.

[Scott Adams]

Talk about, you know, lemonade and lemons. It probably cut my work load by at least over 50%.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah.

[Scott Adams]

And that's been just a huge advantage in my life, as you can imagine.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, well, most artists I know personally have all. They all switch over the computers one way or another, except for one, I know that's always been a computer artist. But they've always benefited from the. There's like the two edged sword. They benefited from the productivity because, you know, especially graphics guys could change the backgrounds really quickly. They don't redo everything. But then there became so much computer generated stuff that came out to compete with them. They're all singing the blues and many of them had to quit. So they ended up. It was weird to watch that phenomenon. Do you have Tourette's?

[Scott Adams]

I do not. Why do you ask?

[Adam Curry]

Because you have elements of. Almost identical to Adam Curry, who talks about his Tourette's constantly. We about talked talk about on our show quite a bit.

[Scott Adams]

Well, maybe I do. What, what are the symptoms? I thought I should be swearing out loud for.

[Adam Curry]

No, no, no. That nobody had. I think in my whole life I've run into one person that has that form of Tourette's.

[Scott Adams]

Really?

[Adam Curry]

And he was on an airplane being dragged off. It was terrible. I felt bad for the guy.

[Scott Adams]

Well, you dragged me off an airplane, I could give you some of that too.

[Adam Curry]

No, no, he was cussing before they drug him off. But it's mostly twitches.

[Scott Adams]

Oh, I have lots of twitches.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, that's Tourette's.

[Scott Adams]

Well, it's nice to know. I got that too.

[Adam Curry]

Well, I don't want to. Yeah, well, you've got all these ailments. I hate to bring it up, but the reason I say that is because there's a commonality with all Tourette's, even the most minor of Tourette's sufferers. And I know People that have, you know, they. They have all kinds of twitches. Adam fights it because he has to do. He used to do TV a lot, so he had to. When he was an MTV guy, he had to fight it. But everyone who's ever had even a little bit of Tourette's. Neat freak.

[Scott Adams]

Really? I can't say I'm a neat freak that says.

[Adam Curry]

Adam says the same thing, but he is. Yeah. So are you. I'm here at your house. This is where we're doing this.

[Scott Adams]

You saw me picking up stuff off the. Off the floor when we got here.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah.

[Scott Adams]

True story.

[Adam Curry]

So I wanted to bring it back, just mention, you know, you might want to look into it. You did have some ailment that was disconcerting, that. Where you couldn't talk for a month or something like that.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah. So the voice problem was also a small spasm of the vocal cords. And I lost my voice. For three and a half years, I couldn't speak.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, it was three. It was. It was that long.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah. For three and a half years, I couldn't have a conversation or be understood on the telephone or give a speech or anything. And it turns out the focal dystonia and the voice problem are actually related because they're both brain problems. They're not. They're not the hand and they're not the vocal cords. They're just. That's just where the spasm is. And. But it's well known that they travel in pairs. So if you have one of those problems, it's not unusual that you might have a second one in some other place on your body. But Tourette's never came up.

[Adam Curry]

So maybe you don't have Tourette's, but if I just saw you on the street, didn't know who you were, now.

[Scott Adams]

I think I do. So thanks for that.

[Adam Curry]

Maybe. So what happened? I just don't want to get in.

[Scott Adams]

No way. Hold on, hold on. Now. If I do, I have an excuse to swear at people for no reason at all.

[Adam Curry]

Adam does that, too, but he. Neither you or him have that form of Tourette's that is a very specific.

[Scott Adams]

According to you.

[Adam Curry]

That's a very specific.

[Scott Adams]

Until I start doing it, and then I've got it.

[Adam Curry]

I don't want to dwell on this, but the three years.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, three and a half years. I could make noise, but people couldn't understand it.

[Adam Curry]

What happened? When was the breakthrough? What was that like when you came out of it?

[Scott Adams]

Well, the quick version. A lot of people have heard this story, so let me give you the fast version. So it took a long time to figure out what it was because regular general practitioners have never seen it. You know, it's very rare. It's called a spasmodic dysphonia.

[Adam Curry]

How do you explain it to anybody?

[Scott Adams]

Well, so I'm trying to tell people that I've got this problem, and they hear it. The first things that people think are that you have a mental problem. Because if one of the odd characteristics is that you can talk okay when you're alone.

[Adam Curry]

Wow.

[Scott Adams]

So if you imagine that, imagine telling your doctor, oh, I can talk fine as long as nobody's listening. But if people are listening, it's like this. That's a bad impression of me, trying to talk. So obviously they're going to say, okay, mental. You're getting too, I don't know, worked up because of people or something like that. But I was sure that wasn't it because it didn't feel like that. Right. I didn't feel any different talking to people. And so I rejected Valium and I tried some Botox shots. There was a treatment where they give you a Botox shot through the front of your neck, this needle, that you don't even want to hear about it. It's an ugly process, and you have to do it every month or so. But that didn't work too well for me. And so I set a Google alert for the spasmodic dysphonia once I'd figured out what it was, which I figured out also from Google, because I had the hand problem. So I said, oh, the hand problem is called a focal dystonia. I wonder if there's something called a voice dystonia. So I put in that search, that search keywords, and it popped up with spasmodic dysphonia, because that was close enough. So Google actually diagnosed me and showed me a video of somebody who had exactly the same problem. So now I had a name for it. So I took that name, put it into a Google alert. While I was talking to doctors one after another, getting my head scanned and all kinds of things, and finding, you know, no, nothing, nothing. And one day I get an alert that says there's some doctor in Japan who's got a surgery to fix it, I tracked down the top doctors in Stanford. At first they said, hey, is this real? He said, I don't know if that's real, but we get some exaggerated complaint or exaggerated claims from that particular doctor. Maybe you should talk to this other guy at USC. He's doing something. I talked to him. Dr. Gerald Burke, and he was doing somewhat new experimental surgery in which they would rewire some of the nerves in your neck. They cut them so that for, I don't know, two months or something, you can't speak because your brain is no longer connected to your vocal cords. It's the weirdest thing. You can't. You can try, but just nothing happens. And then the re spliced root kicks in after about eight weeks. I might have the weeks wrong, but something like that. And then you can talk or it doesn't work. Those are the two options.

[Adam Curry]

Great, right?

[Scott Adams]

It's either going to work or it just doesn't work. And then there was a moment almost exactly on the day that they predicted that the nerves could grow back together because they know what rate they grow at that I could talk very weakly. And then.

[Adam Curry]

Did you have the cutting done?

[Scott Adams]

Yes, I had the surgery and took a couple weeks to recover from the surgery. And then I could talk just faintly and just for a little while before being sort of exhausted by it. And then it took a few years to get, you know, full fluency back because you also lose fluency if you don't speak for three and a half years. You actually can't form sentences. You know all the words, but you can't do it effortlessly. So talking is actually difficult for years. And only, I would say, in the last two or three years, maybe I feel like I'm back to top fluency.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, I wouldn't know the difference. I mean, from you 20 years ago or 93, which is, I guess, 20, 25 years ago. You sound the same. Well, that's a. Well, that's an ordeal we won't continue. Do you exercise?

[Scott Adams]

I do, yeah. I'm quite committed to exercise. I'm a lifelong exerciser and I try to do it five times a week and be active on the other two days.

[Adam Curry]

When did you become a Republican?

[Scott Adams]

I am not a Republican.

[Adam Curry]

I'm not either.

[Scott Adams]

So never.

[Adam Curry]

I guess I am a. I went from Democrat to Republican with Reagan to independent. And then I didn't realize a better one than that which is unaffiliated, which is what I am now.

[Scott Adams]

When I was a young man, I thought, I know enough about politics. I'm going to register and I'm going to vote. And I cast my vote proudly for Jimmy Carter. And a few years later, I said to myself, I shouldn't be voting. I'm not adding to this. I'm not adding to the intelligence of the vote. I like that. I can vote. I'm Glad that other people do it. But I'm not adding anything to the intelligence of the outcome, and I don't think that's changed. But I like the topic of politics.

[Adam Curry]

So I talked about it. I voted for Carter, too. Felt bad about it. I was a McGovern supporter, if you can believe that.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah. So I don't vote, and I am not a member of a party.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, you don't vote at all, but you do like to give your opinions, and you seem to be a. I don't know if you want to take this as a descriptor. A Trump apologist.

[Scott Adams]

I hate that phrase.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, well, I'm called one, too, and I don't consider myself to be one.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah. The reason I hate it is it assumes that you would support him no matter what he did, and that you're just sort of always, always on the team. In my case, most of my writing and talking about President Trump started during the campaign. And mostly I talked about his persuasion skills, because that's another area that I have a lot of experience. I'm a trained hypnotist.

[Adam Curry]

When did that happen? When did you become a trained Hypnotist?

[Scott Adams]

My early 20s. I thought, hey, is this some kind of superpower that I could just learn? And so I learned it. I was influenced by my mother, who had been hypnotized by her family doctor in my small town, and my mother gave birth to my little sister and reports that she was awake and took no painkillers and didn't feel pain. Now, that's unusual. Most people would not have that experience, but about 2 in 5 would, or 1 in 5. And it made me think, what is this thing? What is this power that you could. You can do that kind of thing. And so I learned it, and sure enough, it is a superpower like nothing I've ever seen. It changes your entire worldview, and that's the biggest change. It changes how you perceive the world. And. And you stop perceiving people as rational. Once you can reprogram them so easily, you realize that their. Their rational minds are not really running the show, and that's just an illusion.

[Adam Curry]

So you've gotten philosophical about it.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, I guess it's philosophical in the sense that my worldview changed by how easily I could reprogram other people using a set of tools that are pretty well understood, and that I've been studying persuasion in all of its forms, from selling to marketing to design, even anywhere I can find anything on it for 30 years, probably as part of writing, as part of Creating the comic. It's an important element.

[Adam Curry]

So you saw Trump as some sort of. Do you think he is a genius or a savant?

[Scott Adams]

What I saw is that he used the tools of persuasion more effectively than I've ever seen it done. Now, part of the reason he's so effective is that he seems immune to shame. He's willing to say or do anything. And generally, I believe that he's aiming his impulses, at least his public office impulses, at legitimately making the country a better place. In his view of how that looks, he'll cut some corners. He'll do some things people don't like. He'll ignore the facts if it's convenient, but he tends to persuade in the right direction. Meaning that if you're someone who likes the borders to be tight, if you like a strong military and you don't have to, by the way, I'm not telling you you should like those things, but if you do, and lots of people do, he's certainly the right person for that.

[Adam Curry]

You think he's trained like you are, or you think it's just a part of his being a salesman all his life? Because during sales training, if you were ever a salesman, you end up picking up a lot of. A lot of persuasion, persuasing, persuading gimmicks.

[Scott Adams]

Well, keep in mind, he wrote the book or. Or at least he read it. The. The book. The Art of the Deal.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah.

[Scott Adams]

And so if your brand is negotiating, that's really persuasion and. Or a special form of it. So we know that he at least has an interest in it. And that would be enough over the years, if that's where you're. If you're always dealing in that domain, you would pick up a lot of stuff, because the thing with persuasion is it's not hard to learn. You just have to be paying attention to it and absorbing it where you can. But he also had. This is a weird little tidbit. His pastor, when he was a kid, his family pastor for the church they went to, was Norman Vincent Peale.

[Adam Curry]

Funny, I remember that vaguely. Yes.

[Scott Adams]

And Norman Vincent Peale was one of the most famous American authors, and he wrote the Power of Positive Thinking, and probably is the person most responsible for popularizing the idea that the way you're thinking about your situation can have a huge influence on your success. So if you think right, you're going to get better results than if you're thinking wrong. And we just watched Trump think his way into the presidency in a sense. I mean, the optimism, the Positive thinking, the inability to be swayed by any problem. It seemed like he was just completely unaffected, at least in public, by, you know, things that would have killed most people.

[Adam Curry]

Yep.

[Scott Adams]

And so there's that influence. But when you see the technique, you see how often he uses visual imagery, you see how often, when it's available, he'll use fear persuasion. You know, the terrorists are coming to get you, the. You know, there's crime coming across the border, etc. And you see him talking past the sail, which is one of his most common tricks. So if you're talking about how the. The wall will be built and how it will be funded and those things, you're already talking past the decision of, is it going to be a wall? So he does this in a lot of topics. He'll make you engage on the details of the thing before you've decided there will be a thing. And that's a classic persuasion technique. And you don't see other people doing it as consistently as he does. You don't see them use visual stuff. You don't see them pick emotional topics. He knows where the emotion is and he can read a crowd like nobody.

[Adam Curry]

His presentations are. I don't know how many of the speeches you've watched.

[Scott Adams]

A few.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, I probably watched three complete from the early ones, which were. He couldn't carry an hour. He could do about 35 minutes of material and then he would start to repeat himself. Then he. When he got to the hour, he was really on a roll. And his speeches, I think, are phenomenal. He really controls the audience and he gets a lot of people. And as you know, you were a public speaker. The bigger audience is the better audience. The small audience is hard. You can't speak to six people. They're not gonna laugh, they're not gonna do anything. But you get 10,000 people or 20 or 30 in his case, you have. You can have a lot of fun.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, I think history will record that. You know, he's not everybody's cup of tea, so you sort of love him or hate him thing, but in terms of his public speaking, best ever?

[Adam Curry]

Well, it depends on your definition of best ever. Well, best ever, I think most effective.

[Scott Adams]

Yes. Being able to hold the crowd, entertain them, make them want to come back, make them talk about it. Make them. Make people. Make people focus on the topics he wants you to focus on. Control the headlines for a week. It's all there.

[Adam Curry]

He's got some. I only read this once. I don't know the exact name of it, but he has A personality disorder of some sort that makes him only need, like, three to four hours sleep a night.

[Scott Adams]

That's a personality disorder.

[Adam Curry]

Well, apparently it is by today's standards, and a lot of people would say it's an advantage. But he's a very interesting character. I have to agree. And, people, have you found that because you look like you're, and I'll use the term again, Trump apologist, that you've lost any business whatsoever?

[Scott Adams]

Oh, sure. Yeah. Probably 40% of my income evaporated and 75% of my social circle. Yeah, I'm quite an outcast and I don't do public speaking anymore because it's too dangerous. I wouldn't feel comfortable if there was any publicity and you put me in front of a big crowd right now because it only takes one person to say, that guy said something good about the president's persuasion skills. He must die. So I don't think it's safe to be in public when people like you are branding me a Trump apologist.

[Adam Curry]

It's not me. I will say this, that I ran into you wanted. When I first met you did make some assertion that you wanted to become a public speaker because you thought that was just some really cool goal. I ran into you on the road at the same speaking event. I was a speaker and you were a speaker at some event. This was. I don't know if you remember this, but I do, because you were grousing and.

[Scott Adams]

Me grousing? Impossible.

[Adam Curry]

It was unbelievable. And you had run into the same phenomenon that I had run into, which is part of actually what you discussed in the cartoon, more or less, which is the boneheads that put together these events, and then they hire you to be a speaker and then for something, you say something, you do something, and you insulted the CEO somehow by making some offhanded remark.

[Scott Adams]

Did I do that that day?

[Adam Curry]

I think so.

[Scott Adams]

Well, apparently they've never seen Dilbert if they hired me and didn't expect me to insult their CEO indirectly or directly.

[Adam Curry]

I thought it was getting to you to the point where you stopped doing public speaking at that point.

[Scott Adams]

No, I sort of pulled back from it a few times for. Just because I was busy with other stuff. But at the moment, you know, and then I had to stop when I lost my voice for a few years. But at the moment, it's just not safe.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah.

[Scott Adams]

Huh.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. I was wondering if that was going to affect you at all. It affected our podcast by, I think, about 40%. 30 to 40, maybe. In terms of fall off. People just don't want to listen anymore. They're too happy being kind of hypnotized by mania. Can you cook?

[Scott Adams]

I can bluff my way through some things. It's not my favorite thing to do.

[Adam Curry]

What happened to your investments in the restaurants?

[Scott Adams]

Well, the. I can't tell you the real story because there's actually. There are a variety of legal problems that you end up running into if you own a restaurant and you have deep pockets, meaning that unscrupulous people will find reasons to go after you that you've never even heard of. And I mean, literally, you've never even heard of them. And, you know, I'm pretty worldly. You know, I've been involved in lots of businesses. And as I said, I've got an mba, worked at big companies. I know a lot of stuff. I've heard of a lot of stuff. But the problems that I had legally are things I had never heard of. And if I were, and I can't tell you because you make settlements and you agree not to talk about them. Right. But I had to settle a few. And it looked like there was going to be no end to it. Like, literally, there would just be no end to it. The additional ones that could come. And I made a business decision to get out. Now, the first restaurant was wildly popular. We built the second one at the peak of the market. Literally. I signed the lease the day that the twin towers were coming down. It was 9 11.

[Adam Curry]

Timing.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, timing. And when that happened, the economy fell apart. And the place for the second restaurant was in a place that big companies had agreed to move into. It was just going to be a gold mine. It was the greatest location. And they all pulled out. They all pulled out because of the economy.

[Adam Curry]

Well, that was a bad era. I mean, you first had the dot com crash and then you had the Y2K fiasco. And then as things were straightening out, boom, you have the twin towers. It was just a 1, 2, 3 bunch.

[Scott Adams]

So I signed the lease at the literal top of the market. I got the most expensive lease you could ever possibly get at the same time that the economy went to its lowest point in a long time.

[Adam Curry]

You became a vegan?

[Scott Adams]

No, vegetarian. I'm a pescatarian at the moment.

[Adam Curry]

Fish eater?

[Scott Adams]

Yeah. I'll eat a fish if I have to. I don't love it, but it's good for me.

[Adam Curry]

Have you used the vegan character in your cartoon ever?

[Scott Adams]

I feel like I have. I. I know I had a vegetarian character at least once based on me. I don't know if I've had a vegan.

[Adam Curry]

Don't remember opportunity.

[Scott Adams]

I'll work at it.

[Adam Curry]

You did a thing. You were promoting this thing called the Blight Authority.

[Scott Adams]

Yes.

[Adam Curry]

Which is one of your pet projects.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah. So Bill Pulte is the founder and primary mover of this. And blight spelled B, L, I, G, H, T just refers to it generally in this context. Anyway, an urban area where it's all run down and it's just crime and abandoned buildings and stuff. And so what Bill does is he finds funding to go in and just clear it out and just bulldoze it and wreck it and bring it down to dirt so that the crime goes away. But then there's also an opportunity to build something there. And so where I'm helping the most is helping him try to get the word out that there's this opportunity, there's this land available, there can be more of it because there's lots more blight that can be knocked down. And I'm helping him just publicize the possibilities. So the website blightauthority.com has an ideas and forum section where people are suggesting ideas and funding and things that could be done with those areas. And you'll see more about that. We're going to do a lot more talking about that.

[Adam Curry]

Did you get your degree in engineering?

[Scott Adams]

No, but I played an engineer at Pacific Belt because they ran out of engineers. That's true story. They literally had a hiring freeze. They needed engineers for the project. I ended up working on something called ISDN for those people old enough to remember that. Yeah. And my boss just said, well, you're not a. You're not an engineer, but can you connect computers to equipment with cables and figuring out the software? And I was like, well, probably if I have help. So I worked in a technology lab. The most incompetent employee who ever worked in a laboratory. But I had a lot of help, so the smart people I worked with covered for me.

[Adam Curry]

Were you funny at school?

[Scott Adams]

Oh, maybe only in my own opinion. I did doodles of my teachers and my fellow students. There were, of course, whatever is the obscene version of the 12 year old doodle, most of them were obscene in some way or another.

[Adam Curry]

Were you a good student, you think? Did you get high grades? A's, B, C's? Did you go to. What college did you go to?

[Scott Adams]

I was a valedictorian. Oh, so.

[Adam Curry]

But you gave a speech.

[Scott Adams]

I did. And that sounds more impressive than it really is. You have to understand there were only 40 people in my graduating class.

[Adam Curry]

Still one out of 40?

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, one out of 40. Then I went to Hartwick College for my undergraduate degree in economics. And then later, when I was working, I went at night and had my company pay for it, and I got my MBA at Berkeley.

[Adam Curry]

I'm going to. I want to get some opinions from you. I'm going to go down a list and name somebody, and then you're just going to say if you have anything to say about them.

[Scott Adams]

People.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, and maybe a couple of things, too.

[Scott Adams]

Can I slander them? Is that okay?

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, of course, it's fine.

[Scott Adams]

Good.

[Adam Curry]

So, podcast and why.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, why wouldn't I Pence fence an ideal vice president? You know, I've said my book, Win Bigley, I talk about how Pence was an inspired choice because you want a vice president that is solid. You know, he's got the resume, so he looks like he could take over if you need it, but he's the boring version of the number one candidate. And if you stand Pence next to Trump, Trump is like the, you know, the full color multimedia circus. And Pence is like whatever you have left after you take all the interesting things away from Trump. You know, if you started with Trump and subtracted everything that makes him interesting, you'd have Pence.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah.

[Scott Adams]

So he's a perfect choice as the emergency spare, the backup.

[Adam Curry]

You think he could win if he ran for president and Trump wasn't running.

[Scott Adams]

No, no, I don't. But as a. He just. He doesn't have the personality for it, but. Because if you look at what Trump had to do to break through the field, I mean, it was his outrageousness, his willingness to take positions that were further than other people were talking about. Those are all the things that help him grow.

[Adam Curry]

It also helped him get about 1 to 2 billion dollars worth of media attention, which they're still irked about, but they keep continuing this process of giving him media attention.

[Scott Adams]

He found the weakness in the model, which is if it's interesting, they can't not cover it. So he just makes sure he's the most interesting story.

[Adam Curry]

I think they could have covered Bernie more, I mean, because he was kind of interesting. Okay. Another name, Kellyanne Conway.

[Scott Adams]

Well, I don't. I don't know her, by the way. I didn't meet the president. He did invite me in.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, yes, you did.

[Scott Adams]

He did invite me into the Oval Office a few weeks ago.

[Adam Curry]

And what was the point of that?

[Scott Adams]

Why was he, you know, he actually didn't say, except, I guess my book Win Bigley was popular among people at the White House. And I think it was just August and Congress was in recess, and he was just sort of working supporters, you know, he was just solidifying his base, if you will, especially the people who would talk about him and write about him. But I don't know. Kelly. Kellyanne Conway. Except what I watch on television. But I did feel. I remember when Hillary lost and people were so sad that, you know, hey, we could have had a woman president. And I was thinking, well, what about, you know, Kellyanne didn't run for president, but she just, you know, helped the president get elected. Like, why are we ignoring that? So in terms of her skill level, very high. And she's. She's stuck it out with the president. So loyalty level looks very high. So I only know what I see on tv, but I like what I see.

[Adam Curry]

Back to the president meeting. Do you think he read your book? Bigly. Did he? Was there any. Because usually people that they read your book, they have some reference they'll make.

[Scott Adams]

He was familiar with the content enough that. That we could, you know, that I knew that he knew what I was writing about. That's all I know for sure.

[Adam Curry]

Did you have fun? Did you get a free lunch? Did you get lunch?

[Scott Adams]

We didn't have lunch, but it was. It was probably the experience I'll never be able to top in terms of the most interesting.

[Adam Curry]

Take the matchbooks home. They had these matchbooks you could take home.

[Scott Adams]

Oh, yeah, I was just loading my pockets with everything. That wasn't. No, I didn't take anything. I didn't record it on my secret phone in my pocket or anything. Actually, I didn't have a phone with me. And they take your phone away, you know, if you're a visitor, you don't get to bring a phone into the.

[Adam Curry]

Well. They don't want anything. You record competing with what the CIA is recording for all the bugs in the room.

[Scott Adams]

Right. So, yeah, it was just the most interesting thing I have ever done. He's very engaging, very charismatic, and just talking to him for a few minutes was like a life. Life experience.

[Adam Curry]

Huh. Well, it sounds like fun. What do you think? Another one. Another name? Rachel Maddow.

[Scott Adams]

Rachel Maddow is insanely smart and talented and really good at what she does. Now, if you don't like that political bent, then, you know, you want her, you know, off the air and her critics will howl. So I don't agree with her politics or point of view on a lot of things, but she can't deny the talent. The talent is extraordinary.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. She was. She's done the most with anyone over there once that other Oberman left. What about MSNBC in general?

[Scott Adams]

They. They seem to me like the. The version of CNN that went too far. Like. Like whenever you see something on CNN that seems like, well, they're. They're. They're taking that opinion a little too far. Well, you know, that feels a little biased. And then you turn on MSNBC and you go, holy hell, what is this? What fresh hell is this? So they just seem like the exaggerated version of cnn.

[Adam Curry]

Jerry Brown.

[Scott Adams]

I really don't follow local or California politics.

[Adam Curry]

He's been the governor most of your life.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, and I haven't followed it at all.

[Adam Curry]

That's too bad.

[Scott Adams]

So I guess I have. Yeah. I can't form a coherent opinion of him.

[Adam Curry]

Here's a generality. What do you think of Silicon Valley billionaires?

[Scott Adams]

Well, one of the weird aspects of my job, and I think you would say the same, is you end up meeting a lot of billionaires.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah.

[Scott Adams]

I was thinking the other day, how many billionaires do I know personally? It was like 20 billionaires. If I wanted to, I could get a hold of them with an email. And it's hard to meet a billionaire who isn't interesting. That's the first thing. And I don't know if it's because I'm aware they're billionaires or whatever made them a billionaire is what also makes them interesting. But you talk personally and privately to a billionaire, and you walk away thinking, I think I learned something almost every time.

[Adam Curry]

I think you might be right. I never thought of him as being interesting. I think, yeah, they are interesting. Most. Almost every one of them. Many of them are very focused, which is the thing that you see with a couple of these guys. I mean, Bill Gates, for example, is the most focused guy. He's got supposedly a form of autism that makes him that way.

[Scott Adams]

He must have the good one.

[Adam Curry]

Yes, it's considered a good one.

[Scott Adams]

I'll give you one example. Marc Benioff.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. Mark.

[Scott Adams]

Founder of Salesforce. So I did give us. Before I lost my voice, I gave a talk there, and I hung out for maybe half an hour because we were killing time before events started, and I got to chat with him at some depth privately. And I'll tell you, I've never met anybody like him. He's just not like other people. And I'm going to explain that. I mean that in a good way. He seems to be operating on this whole other level of. He uses the word intention and, you know, without Getting too woo woo about it. He seems to have just a superior grasp of how it all works. And when I say how it all works, I mean how it all works. He just seems to be operating on a different level. That's what I took from that. And I saw this interesting exchange. I probably shouldn't talk about it, but since it makes him look good, I will. Anyway, where one of his top lieutenants was talking about a slideshow, he goes, hey, I've got this slideshow we're going to show. He looks at it, Marc Benioff, and he looks at the first page and he goes, you know, put something on the first page here about our philanthropic, you know, that 1% thing where they give away 1% of their profits and try to spend 1% of their time on philanthropic things, charitable things. He says, put that in the first page. And his lieutenant pushes back, is like, well, you know, I've got that. It's, it's, it's in the body of the thing. He goes, no, move it up to the first page. And then the lieutenant pushes back again, and he goes, now move it to the first page. And he pushed on it again. And he just looked at him, he's like, first page. It was like he was so, so clear on what mattered. Right. And representing the company with that first really mattered.

[Adam Curry]

Those kind of guys, which are CEOs, like, and there's a lot of them, and a lot of them aren't billionaires. They still have these characteristics. They're the guys who are really kind of in meta quality control. They're the ones who, you know, I felt this way when they fired John Lasseter from Pixar, who was, who was the creative genius, and he was fired for hugging too much. I mean, it was part of the MeToo movement. And I think that he was the guy who was saying, no, no, no, put it on the front page. That's the same kind of a guy. And they're, I think they're into all office environments, you know, and when they, you lose that guy, whether he's the CEO, usually they are, the company just kind of just falls apart.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah. And, and just to be clear, it wasn't about the quality of the slide deck. He wasn't talking about that. It was, it was, it was as much about training. This, this lieutenant, what's important and how to, how to put it forward.

[Adam Curry]

Okay, another one. Why do you think the Silicon Valley billionaires are all Democrats?

[Scott Adams]

Well, they're not all Democrats, but you got your, you got your people who are willing to tell you about their politics. And you got your people who may be.

[Adam Curry]

Oh, yeah, there are some people there don't like to talk about anything because they know. Because they know the majority are Democrats.

[Scott Adams]

Right.

[Adam Curry]

Which still begs the question, why do you think there's so many Democrats in a place where there's so much wealth? It doesn't. It doesn't. Suppose it's not supposed to add up that way.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, I don't know. I think you'd have to get inside their heads to know that. I don't know what the filtering mechanism is that got us to that point. Good question. I don't know.

[Adam Curry]

What's your favorite TV show? Do you watch much tv?

[Scott Adams]

Favorite TV show. The. Really, the only one I record at this point is the Five on Fox News and also the Greg Gotfeld show, in part because I know Greg, but the Five is probably the best. The best produced show with the best characters and the most consistently entertaining, really, because the model that they built of these engaging characters sort of teasing each other and talking about the news is just the best thing on tv.

[Adam Curry]

Huh. Well, that's a shocker to me.

[Scott Adams]

Didn't see that coming, did you?

[Adam Curry]

No, I sure did not.

[Scott Adams]

I mean, I like my Game of Thrones, but they're not on now, so.

[Adam Curry]

What about books? What do you like to read besides Persuasion?

[John C. Dvorak]

Books?

[Scott Adams]

I hate to say it, but I don't read a lot of books. There have been years I've written more books than I've read. And that's literally true. Part of it is that you can glean the essence of most books pretty quickly, you know, from other sources. But part of it is also that I don't enjoy fiction, so. So pure fiction. And I can now give you the. The real reason for that. So for years, I couldn't tell people the real reason I didn't like fiction.

[Adam Curry]

There's a lot of people that don't like fiction. So let's start with that. That's.

[Scott Adams]

Well, that's good to know, basically. Not alone. If you hear my dog running around in the background there, spare noise.

[Adam Curry]

The.

[Scott Adams]

Things that I can imagine just by closing my eyes. Because I am a professional creative, I believe that every human capability has this big range where most people are average and some people are terrible and some people are great. So in the same way that I'm terrible at music, let's say I have no musical ear whatsoever. My ability to imagine is probably hard to know for sure, but probably extraordinary just based on the volume of new ideas I Create at any moment. And I'm a very visual imagineer. And so I can create my own fiction in my head just by closing my eyes. And it's better and more interesting and more tuned to me than a book. And books are work, and closing my eyes is not. And I get exactly what I want, anytime I want. Now I feel sorry for anybody who can't sort of build an entire story in their head instantly, but I can.

[Adam Curry]

You started with, with the ISDN crowd, but you were kind of a techie, or do you think that you never wore a techie?

[Scott Adams]

I. I was a programmer at a very low level. In other words, I did it professionally. But when.

[Adam Curry]

What were you programming in?

[Scott Adams]

Usually just, well, Basic and doing easy things for the. The deck, you know, the vax, back in the day. So programming in BASIC was just for internal, you know, financial reports and easy stuff. And I built a few utility programs that got used. And I built some video games into my own time, actual, you know, graphic video games. But it took me so long to build one that the entire industry had moved so far in the six months it would take me to build one that it no longer looked like. Like a game anybody would ever buy. So I couldn't. I couldn't keep up with the companies that were doing it. So I was technical that way. But I. I think I'm more. I'm more about the talent stack, which I talk about the. The idea of building lots of different talents and stacking them until you have something that's unique, even if. Even if you're not great at any of those things. So I'm certainly not great or even really good at anything in technology, but I'm pretty comfortable around it. You know, when you came, you saw me working with a bunch of new equipment, put together a new studio set up for myself, and I like that stuff.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. And so you have kept up, but you're. You seem to be a Mac head at the moment.

[Scott Adams]

I've gone back and forth for most of my career. I was a double platform guy because you just always needed the other one. If you're doing a lot of licensing and working with people around the world, you can't have one platform. But at the moment, the Mac pretty much gives me everything I need. So I abandoned Windows.

[Adam Curry]

And you use the iPhone exclusively.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, I like the whole.

[Adam Curry]

Now I want to stop you there because you already credited Google with pretty much saving your life when it came to the research on this dysphonia. And now you end up turning your back on them and going with an iPhone.

[Scott Adams]

Well, Apple does a real good job of making all my devices work together somewhat seamlessly. Google also does, but just a little less user interface love. So that makes a big difference to me.

[Adam Curry]

What kind of car do you drive?

[Scott Adams]

I've got a 2011 X5 BMW and SUV.

[Adam Curry]

Ah. And that's it. You don't have a second car? Little.

[Scott Adams]

Why do I need two cars?

[Adam Curry]

Just me get bored.

[Scott Adams]

Yeah, I don't like cars. I'm not a car guy.

[Adam Curry]

Oh. So if you go out to dinner, what kind of, what level of restaurant do you go to? Do you go to a high end place, low end place, hamburger place? What do you like? If I'm gourmet, you collect wine?

[Scott Adams]

I don't drink at all. And when I did, I didn't drink wine. I'm not an alcoholic. I know you're, you're thinking that, you're all thinking that right now, aren't you? Did he stop because he's an alcoholic? No, I developed, I developed a, some kind of weird reaction to it and then I just stopped and realized, hey, I don't need this. I feel better if I just never have a drink. I'm just healthier.

[Adam Curry]

It would save money if you went to high end restaurants, I can tell you that.

[Scott Adams]

So the answer to your question is my girlfriend Christina and I have tried a bunch of, you know, top restaurants just for the experience of it and they weren't really that good. I gotta say they weren't better than a mid level restaurant. I don't know why people go to these top Michelin star restaurants. I won't name names.

[Adam Curry]

Why not?

[Scott Adams]

They were, they were not impressive. But I will tell you that the French Laundry was impressive. That just knocked my socks off. Yeah, other than that. No, I, I like a good, a good Italian tablecloth restaurant and I'm happy.

[Adam Curry]

So I went through a whole couple sheets here and I hate to do this, but I'm going to do it anyway because I had this theory about interviewing that was working on was mainly to preclude what I'm going to ask next, which is what should I have asked you that I didn't ask?

[Scott Adams]

Well, you haven't asked me about my startup which.

[Adam Curry]

Well, let's do that.

[Scott Adams]

So the startup, the name of the company is wenhub. Wenhub. All one word. And the app we're focusing on right now is called Interface by wenhub. And if you could imagine, it's like a Tinder for experts, meaning that it's people who are online and available right now for a video call. And it can be any topic. So anybody can sign up for an expert. Anybody can use it to make a connection.

[Adam Curry]

It's a dating app.

[Scott Adams]

No, it's not a dating app.

[John C. Dvorak]

Oh.

[Adam Curry]

It's for experts.

[Scott Adams]

It's for anybody who wants to charge for their time on a video call. So it could be a consultant, it could be an expert on some technology, but it could also be a psychologist. It could be your, you know, just somebody who's visiting your grandmother, who's. Who needs some medical care, and maybe the kids want to call in and the professional just takes the call and says, yeah, I'm checking on your grandmother. She's taking her pills. It could be any kind of medical, financial, any realm. It could be just somebody who wants to spend time with somebody while they're eating because they're lonely. You know, somebody might just say, I just need somebody to talk to. And anybody can set their price. And the experts will be determined by, you know, ratings just like any other. Any other service. You'll get a star rating from the people who use you. And we think it could change everything from education to healthcare to, you know, could help people with PTSD if they have somebody to talk to, could reduce suicide, because you've got somebody to talk to. It could be quite transformative.

[Adam Curry]

Who's we?

[Scott Adams]

We is the.

[Adam Curry]

The team whose idea was this to begin with? Are you just a money guy?

[Scott Adams]

So I'm more than the money guy. And it's the third product that the same team has developed, so we've done our pivoting. This specific idea was Nick Gagliani, who's our CTO and co founder, and he initially had the idea and we refined it from there. But I get pretty involved in the look and the feel and the business end of it.

[Adam Curry]

When this began, I think we're about.

[Scott Adams]

Three years into it. The new product is only just this out. Yeah, it's been in stores. The original version was crypto only. In other words, you had to pay in our own crypto was an ICO still as an ico, by the way. And now we're on an exchange or two, and we're. We can take credit cards now.

[Adam Curry]

What's the crypto called?

[Scott Adams]

It's the Wen W H EE N and LA token. The exchange. You can. You can buy that now.

[Adam Curry]

Are you a fan of crypto?

[Scott Adams]

I. Fan is probably too strong a word. I think the blockchain is probably here to stay or whatever it evolves to. But I'm no blockchain expert, and I think it has its use. We'll see the battle between government control and people who want to be free of government control. We'll see who wins. It'll be interesting.

[Adam Curry]

The government always wins.

[Scott Adams]

It feels like that's how it's going to go.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. I don't see any other alternative because otherwise you have chaos. Not that I'm rooting for the government anyway. I think that'll do it. I think we've got everything covered. Unless you got something else you want to throw in there because it's free. Well, free air. Timing. We promoted a book bigly. And you got any new books you're working on? Like a cartoon book? Maybe something. A new Dilbert compilation?

[Scott Adams]

So there's always a new Dilbert compilation. The latest one is cubicles that make you envy the dead reprints. And the Dilbert calendar will be coming out in a few months and there's always something I got to buy.

[Adam Curry]

What's the Dogbert character's little devil? Where'd that come from?

[Scott Adams]

The Dogbert's.

[Adam Curry]

You have a devil character. Oh, well, that looks like Dogbert.

[Scott Adams]

Oh, you're thinking of cat Bert in the comic. Catbird is the director of human resources, and I made that character a cat because your human resources director doesn't care if you live or die. Just likes playing with you.

[Adam Curry]

Okay, well, on that note, we'll end. I want to thank you for letting us. Letting me interview you.

[Scott Adams]

Well, thanks for coming all the way out here and it was fun.

[Adam Curry]

Yes.

[Scott Adams]

Great catching up.

[Adam Curry]

We'll talk again.

[John C. Dvorak]

Well, you'll never hear an interview like that again with Scott Adams. That was good. You should do more of these interviews.

[Adam Curry]

You know, I'm gonna. When I'm doing from now on. I've decided because of the change in the podcast or sphere. The podcast.

[John C. Dvorak]

What do you call it?

[Adam Curry]

The Potter sphere. Landscape.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yes.

[Adam Curry]

I'm gonna do them all at two hours because I was doing. That was mixed with another interview. I mean, when we first aired it.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah.

[Adam Curry]

Why.

[John C. Dvorak]

Why didn't you do two hours?

[Adam Curry]

Well, you know, we were doing. Because for some dumb reason I decided that I was going to do hour interviews and we're going to put two of them together. And now I'm not going to do that anymore. And I haven't done an interview for what, five years since COVID I really.

[John C. Dvorak]

More than that. It's been seven.

[Adam Curry]

Well, that was.

[John C. Dvorak]

That was 2018, so it's been eight.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, maybe that was the last one. I'm not sure.

[John C. Dvorak]

Eight years.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah. You know, it's just that our show is so good at doing the interview stuff is.

[John C. Dvorak]

It's so good.

[Adam Curry]

We don't need to do that kind of padded stuff. But it was good to have the scotch stuff in the can. Yes. As a tribute in the one hand. And then also to re. Listen to some of his earlier thoughts.

[John C. Dvorak]

Before COVID You know, what's kind of wild is that I'm not quite sure who's doing it, but they still have his feed and they're publishing things. And I think, did I see an AI Scott Adams like that might not have been on his feed, but I think his friends, friends of Scott are doing sporadic shows that show up on his RSS feed. Yeah, and it's the same with Charlie Kirk. You know, I think when, when the show's over, the feed should just end. I. I mean it's like if we die, do we want to give it to Darren and Larry? Do we want to give them the.

[Adam Curry]

Feed, keep their show and they can, you know, say that they're the inheritors, but you wouldn't change it. Now, Darren and Larry doing no agenda. I don't think so.

[John C. Dvorak]

But who gets the feed? The feed is apparen valuable because people are using these feeds because they got all these people subscribed. There's value in that. Our exit strategy is we sell the feed post mortem.

[Adam Curry]

Well, the one thing you can do I'm looking at the way the way magazines operate is that when you end a magazine folds and they have all the subscribers.

[John C. Dvorak]

You sell the list. You sell the subscription list.

[Adam Curry]

No, you don't see. Well, yes. Yeah, but you sell it with the brand. Yeah, exactly. You sell. You sell the list to another magazine and. And then people are. Can opt out of that and get their money back. Maybe if they want it. But generally speaking, you find some way to drag it out until the subscribers just all, you know, stop, stop, stop renewing.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah. Well, we also have our, our newsletter list. That's another one. It's money in the bank, man. Mimi and. And Tina can fight over that. It's great.

[Adam Curry]

Now we had to some sort of agreement, but yes, there would be. There'd be residuals that drag on. I mean we. Residuals the residuals dragging on. I mean people are gonna, you know, it's just the way it is. So I don't know what, what maybe they're trying to. I know Scott didn't have the value for value system set up.

[John C. Dvorak]

No, he didn't have any monetization set up.

[Adam Curry]

Yes. I don't know what the point of it is. I mean, he still has his cartoons, which are still valuable and they still get redistributed. He's got a thousand books that he did of cartoons and his writings.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah.

[Adam Curry]

And that still brings an income whether he's dead or alive.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yeah.

[Adam Curry]

And so.

[John C. Dvorak]

Well, how about this? How about we live for another four years? Let's make that.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, we can do. We can manage.

[John C. Dvorak]

We can manage another four years.

[Adam Curry]

And wanted to make sure that that was our tribute to Scott Adams. And I hope you enjoyed it.

[John C. Dvorak]

Yes, that was good. And more interviews like that in the future for these special shows and a reminder that we still need your support. Noagendadonations.com this Thursday is your first opportunity, opportunity to send your Valentine's love through a no agenda donation. Of course, we'll do another one on Sunday because Saturday is going to be Valentine's Day. So I'm sure you will mention something like that in the newsletter.

[Adam Curry]

I hope so.

[John C. Dvorak]

All right, we'll be back in the saddle on Thursday for your no agenda show. Lots of stuff to deconstruct as always and have yourselves a great Super Bowl Sunday. Go Patriots is what I'd say.

[Adam Curry]

Yeah, well, I, I'd say go Seahawks, but I don't care that much.

[John C. Dvorak]

Coming to you from Lake Wales, Florida, which is a weird place in Florida, it is FEMA region number 10 in the morning, everybody.

[Adam Curry]

I'm Adam Curry and from northern Silicon Valley, where I remain even though I'm on tape, I'm John C. Dvorak.

[John C. Dvorak]

We'll see y' all on Thursday. Remember those Valentine's signs, Love donations. No agenda donations dot com. Until then, Adios, mofos. Who we Hooey and such.