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Oh, a recruiter has contacted me. Alicia wants to recruit me to work with Accenture. Am I still open to work? No, I'm not available to work for you, but thanks for asking. Let me make sure that we've got everything we want working here, then we'll have some fun. Yep, we got a good cat picture. We got a show with live streaming. Oh, my goodness, it's such, such a good day. I hope you're having a great day. You ready for this? All the lazy podcasters are sleeping in and watching me. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of human civilization. It's called Coffee with Scott Adamson. You've never had a better time. But if you'd like to take a chance on elevating your experience up to levels that nobody can even understand with their tiny, shiny human brains, all you need for that would be a copper mug or a glass, a tank of Chelsea canteen, jugger flask, vessel of any kind, fill it with your favorite liquid. I like coffee. And join me now for the unparalleled pleasure. The dopamine thing makes everything better. It's called the simultaneous sip, and it happens. That's right. Now. Extraordinary. Oh, the lengths we go through for the perfect sip. But it works every time. So I'll give you an update, probably. I'll. I'll give the same update a few times till everybody hears it. I'm no longer personally drawing the Dilber comic strip because both my hands are blown out. Now, my right hand is a focal dystonian. My left hand is a semi paralyzed with whatever cancer problem I'm having at the moment. Maybe it gets better. Probably not. I don't know. We'll see. But as of yesterday, Dilbert is being drawn by. It's all. It's still written by me, so it's 100%. 100 written by me. But my art director will be doing all of the drawings that are just finishing the art. She is capable of doing it all, and now she is. And yes, I did give her a raise. I know. I know you're wondering. All right, turns out that according to medicine, I guess that's some kind of publication, coffee consumption lowers your risk of rotator cuff injury. So if you're drinking coffee, you have less chance of a rotator cuff injury. Now, is all of their medical advice just for Jeffrey Toobin or just this one? All right, I'll just leave that there for you. You can complete the complete. The joke. What the. What the. Oh, my God. There's. There's something on my desk. What is this? Oh, my God. Oh, it's the Dilber calendar for 2026. The best thing you could ever have on your desk. That's right. It's available now. You could go to Amazon and buy it right now. It's got comics on the front, it's got comics on the back, it's got comics on the box. How many more comics do you need, people? That's right. Only on Amazon America. It's got to be the US Version of Amazon. Get it? Now, they are approximately, and I swear I'm not making this up, they're approximately one third sold out in November. So if you know anything about calendars, if your calendar is one third sold out at the first half of November, there will be some question whether there'll be enough of them by mid December. So I would go fast if I were you. Well, I love when Trump talks about his windmills and about climate change being a hoax. Do you remember how dumb we thought? No. How dumb the Democrats believed Trump was because he thought that climate change was a hoax. That one thing besides the fine people hoax, but that one thing was really the most damaging thing outside of the, you know, the other hoaxes, I guess. But now when he says almost doesn't make news, I mean, he's the president, so they still report it. But wouldn't that be a big deal if some other president said that climate change was a hoax? But now he just says it and people just go, all right, next question. I guess it's folks, according to you. All right, so he, Trump has successfully, and I can't even imagine he got to this point, but it's pretty impressive. He's gotten to the point where he beat down the public and he wore people out until he can simply say it's a hoax. Maybe they push back a little bit to get some clarification. But now that's our. That's our reality. Our reality is our president thinks it's a hoax and he's got some evidence to back his opinion. Did you ever think we'd get to this point? You know, because I was on the sort of. On the hoax page the whole time, although I don't think I used that word early on. Definitely use it now. Do you remember. I don't know how old some of you are, but do you remember when we used to use science to figure out what was true and what wasn't true? Is anybody old enough to remember that? If we didn't know if, you know, let's say climate change was a Problem or not a problem. Just to pick one example, what we would do is we would rely on science because the one thing we knew for sure is if you're trying to figure out what's real and what's not real, science is really the only way to go. Am I right? And then somewhere, somewhere during one of the Trump terms, you could pick which one you like. Science became so discredited that the thought of using science to figure out what's true seems a little dumb now. Doesn't. Doesn't just seem like sometimes it doesn't work now. It actually seems dumb because if you were to just do the math of how often science is. Is operating in the pursuit of taking your money and screwing you and giving somebody else power, that's way more than the number of times science tells you the truth, isn't it? Am I wrong about that? I mean, it's subjective, of course. My subjective impression is that science is in 2025. Science is usually used to mislead, to market, to sell, to get elected, to scare somebody. But how often is it used to find out reality now and then. But it's not really the right tool, is it? It's not even the right tool for figuring out reality. Well, it should be, but the way we use it, we abuse it. So there's a clip of Eric Swalwell demanding that Cash Patel promise that he won't be investigating the answer. About 60 people in Congress that Cash might want to investigate. He said, well, so Swalwell says in this hearing, will you recuse yourself from investigating the 60 individuals, including myself, that you identified as government gangsters and Cash Patel says, no. I'm starting to really like the. The Kash Patel. Fast answers. Will you do this? At least 60 people. No. Moving on now. Does it seem weird to you that all of these people got caught with mortgage fraud? Allegedly. So allegedly. Letitia James, Adam Schiff, and now Eric Swalwell. What are the odds they would all be involved in a similar kind of mortgage fraud? Is there some kind of class you take when you become a Democrat? You're like, okay, I'm registering as a Democrat. All right, here's your. Here's your documentation that will teach you how to, you know, cheat on your taxes, maybe your insurance, but definitely on your mortgages. Definitely on the mortgages. So Eric Swalwell, he said, doing great. He's my representative, in case you wondered. So he's just doing great. So there's a. Allegedly a new Epstein bombshell they're calling it is, are the Epstein bombshells ever. Bombshells. It doesn't feel like it, does it? I feel like every day or two there's an Epstein bombshell that will tell us what we already knew. All right, what's this one? Well, apparently Ghislaine Maxwell's lawyer is accusing Representative Jamie Raskin, who, you know as one of the, quote, designated liars. So he's one of the ones that I always say, if they have a really big lie to tell and not a normal sized one, they have a really big one to tell. They bring out the designated liars. Swell. Well, Schiff apparently Leticia, James and Raskin, but apparently he was involved in some kind of, you know, leaked emails. I talked about this yesterday and the article I read about it says big names are now officially in the crosshairs. Do you believe that? Do you believe we've finally got to the point where the big names are in trouble and any minute now they're going to be named and handcuffed and taken off to jail? None of that's going to happen, is it? I don't expect anything to happen. I mean, that's what we're used to. We've been trained to expect nothing. So I expect nothing. I'd like to be surprised.
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As you know, the folks on the right, the political right, the Maga and Maha and people like that, they've got a little bit of a. I don't know what to call it. Drama. It's more like other people are creating the drama. But I'm talking about Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massey and Tucker Carlson, etc, and I bring it up because Matt Gates had an interesting post today. Matt Gates said, I love Trump, mtg, Massey, Tucker, and even. And even those I feel are too accommodating to the worst decisions made by Israel's government. Now, this is Matt Gates. He says, I won't be baited into attacking friends and leaders in our movement because some people disagree on some things. Not only do I completely agree with Matt Gaetz on his philosophy, which is, you can't tell me. You can't tell me who to like. You can't tell Me who to talk to. You can't tell me what to think when I talk to him. That's not on the table. That is just not on the table. You know, you do you, I do me, but no, you don't tell me who to like. That's. That's not one of the options. And I'm going to add Matt Gates to my list. So I would have said the same about MTG and Trump and Massey and Tucker, but I'll throw Matt Gates on there. You don't get to tell me if I can talk to Matt Gates. Right. That's not up to you. That's just up to me. All right, so I was watching. I don't know his first name, but one of the Kennedy cousins, Schlossberg, is running for some office and part of his running for office is he's throwing his. Is it his cousin or his uncle, whatever RFK Jr is to him. Throwing RFK Jr under the bus for what Schlossberg, I think, would consider some non scientific opinions. Non scientific. So I saw Libby Evans was, I think, the host for this or was she writing about it for Post Millennial? Anyway, this is what Schlossberg said. Quote, trump represents a threat unlike any other, unquote. And that that necessitates, quote, new and creative ways of fighting back. Oh, no. Is he another one of these fighting back people? I don't have any policies, but if I say the word fight often enough, you might go away with the impression that I'm a fighter. So we're going to fight. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. Did anybody, anybody change their opinion based on how many times I use the word fight? Not enough. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. Now anything. How many times do I have to say fight before you change your opinion of my opinion? Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. I think, I think that's enough. Yeah. Anyway, here's. When asked if Trump. Because of course you have to ask that question, Schlossberg said that there are historical analogs. Historical analogues, in other words. Yeah, he's saying that Trump is a fascist. Now, similar to my earlier conversation where I said that when Trump talks about windmills and climate change being a hoax, it sounded crazy when he first said it, you know, a decade ago. And now it doesn't. Now it sounds. Yeah, it just sounds like that's an opinion and probably a correct one in my opinion. But fascist seems like it's also age down. Does anybody have that feeling yet? Well, it used to be that if I saw a Democrat calling Trump a fascist. I would say to myself, oh, here's something I might want to address. Maybe, maybe I need to point out all the ways in which he's not a fascist. Maybe I need to dig into the definition of a fascist, make sure this fits. But now when I hear some new politician called Trump a fascist, do you know my first impressionist, oh, he's a idiot. And that's it. I don't think I need to defend Trump. I don't think I need to introduce a new definition. I don't think I need to, you know, host a debate. I don't think I need to send a post. I just look at him and go, oh, you poor bastard, you poor bastard. You're a idiot. Now, does anybody have that same feeling where you've gone from I must argue against this to why would you even argue that? Who would even argue that? It's so stupid. It's literally just stupid. There's no other thing to say about it. What? What's the second thing you're going to say about it? Well, stupid. No, that was the first thing you said. What would be the second thing you would say about it? Stupid. How about stupid? There's nothing else to say. It's just stupid. All right, Schlossberg, good luck. Anyway, now, and this is just mind blowing, this is another story, but Adam Schiff was on some event where he was talking. And this is Adam Schiff. If you're following politics enough to know who Adam Schiff even is, this will blow your mind. I'm not making this up. I don't think it's AI pretty sure. But this is a real thing that happened recently. So Schiff said in public, he said this. We have to get past the, quote, ruinous idea of making presidents unsuccessful because of politics. What? And quote, stop viewing each other as our enemy. Wait a minute. That is Adam Schiff, the guy who's trying to ruin a presidency. What? And the only way he could say this in public is because he's confident that people don't know what he said 10 minutes ago or yesterday or 1 minute ago or ever or ever. The only way he can say that in public is because he knows that nobody is going to look it up. Nobody's going to compare it to what he did. But of course, you know, if you're watching X and you have, if you follow any accounts on the right, you know there's going to be a compilation clip of him doing whatever it is he says you shouldn't do. Now, I haven't seen it yet, but you know it's coming because the the right is really good at that. Now Western Lensman, who is a really good account for you to follow, had a number of good stories today, so I would just recommend them. It's two words, Western Lensman, just a good follow as about as many followers as I have. So it's grown organically because it does a good job whoever runs it. Scott Galloway. You know Scott Galloway, You've seen him. Famous author, entrepreneur. I sometimes refer to myself as the poor man's Scott Galloway. Literally the poor man's because he's done really well financially. But he was on Bill Maher's show. He had some alarming stats. 45% of men from the ages of 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person. 45% of men. I've never asked a woman out in person. Maybe that's not as bad as it sounds. Is that as bad as it sounds? Because if you're asking them out not in person, but they say yes, don't you end up in the same place? If you say, hey, read my text, you know, let's go to the movies tonight, it's kind of the same. Now I get that someone who learns how to approach somebody is going to be better off in life than someone who's afraid of approaching someone. I get that. But is it that much of a difference? To me it just seems like younger people have you different tools. So the tools they use are online because that's the tools they have. I don't know how big a problem that is, but it certainly we're losing the ability to approach people. And that might have a. Well, even that might make no difference in the long run because the whole process of selling is going to fall to AI, won't it? So if your AI is doing all this selling for let's say non dating reasons, do you even need to learn that skill? It might be a useless skill. It's so unpredictable. What's going to happen in two to five years. So unpredictable. And also Scott Galloway says 63% of men under the age of 30 are not even pursuing a relationship. Wait, what? Nearly two thirds of men under the age of 30 are not even trying. Not even trying. Well, here I would add some context again. In my day, you know, when I was a youngster, everybody sort of assumed that their, their path would involve, you know, some romantic family kind of a thing. So we were all kind of oriented toward making that happen. But suppose it's 20, 25 and all you need to do is have access or contact with a lot of people, and sooner or later, you'll like one, they'll like you back, you'll be in good shape. So when you say pursuing a relationship, my old guy question is this. If there's anybody young enough to answer the question, do young people pursue or do they just exist? This is a serious question, by the way. I don't know the answer. Do young people pursue relationships as much as they used to, or do they just say, no, I'm. I'm going to do this thing? I'll probably be some people. Some of the people I meet might turn into something. But is that pursuing a relationship if you're just putting yourself in a situation? I don't know. I feel like just the way we do things is different. So comparing it to the old days might not be as valid as it used to be. I would point out, however, that my books will solve most of these problems. Those of you who have read my books in the comments, can you confirm for me so that the other people can see it? Confirm for me that if you had read my books, Reframe your brain or Win bigly or how to Win at Almost Everything and Still how to Fail. Almost Everything and Still Win big. If you, if you read any of those three books, would you not be socially more adept and more successful? You would. Yeah, they're written for that purpose. They're designed. They're actually designed to fill the gap that Scott Galloway is talking about, which is you can fill any gap. Not a specific gap, but any gap. You can learn how to learn how to talk to somebody, learn how to get past embarrassment, learn how to enter a room and own it. Those are pretty valuable skills. So if you think there's no way to learn it because there's something about the world that changed. Not really. There's just three books you could read. Reframe your brain, Win Bigly and How to Fill Almost Everything is still Win big. They will fix you. All right, so this leads me to my most fun story of the day. How many of you know who billionaire venture capitalist Bill Ackerman is? Does that name ring the bell? So I wouldn't. I wouldn't call him a conservative or Republican, but he certainly went from deep Democrat to H. Maybe I should rethink this whole thing. I. I think I'd call him an independent, but I don't want to. You know, I don't want to be the one who labels him. So apparently he had. He had a suggestion for how to meet a young woman. And this is based on his dating experience. All right, now here's what you need to know about bill ackman. If grok is not lying to me, he's 6 foot 3, he has perfect hair, and he has almost model, like, male good looks, Went to harvard, is a billionaire, and he's going to teach you. He's going to teach you how to pick up women. And here's. Here's what he teaches you because he thinks it's about the line that you use. So not entirely that, you know, it's also the having the guts to go up to somebody. That would be at least half of it. But he says. Use this question. He says, I would ask, quote, may I meet you before engaging further. I almost never got to know. All right, let's get back to the real world. How many of you live in the real world? Anybody? Most of you. Most of you live in the actual reality. In your experience, how many handsome, 6 foot 3 billionaires with perfect hair get turned down when they introduce themselves at a public place? Has that ever happened in the history of. In the history of male and female interaction? Has that ever happened? So I don't know if bill ackman is not aware of his own, you know, his own situation, because sometimes we're not aware of ourselves, right? You know, where it's easier to see somebody else Than it is to see yourself. But that's kind of funny. Now, I would go further and say that may I meet you? Might be one of the worst pickup lines I've ever heard. And indeed, the reason I saw it at all Is that there was some young man who had read this advice, and he tried. He tried it out at a bar. Now, he didn't tell us what he looks like, But I'm just gonna guess. Probably not. Six foot three with perfect hair and a billion dollars and handsome. Probably not. Probably not. Anyway, he not only got turned down when he used that line, he got mocked mercilessly. And the. And the women that were with the one he targeted for his approach, they all just, like, laughed until they cried at him While standing right in front of him. Now you see the problem. All right, let me tell you what's wrong with this line. May I meet you will work for every 6 foot 3 billionaire with good hair. It'll work for all of them. Why? Because a woman doesn't care what you say. If you have all that other stuff working for you. And, you know, plus, he's an interested guy. I mean, he has A whole package, Right? So it shouldn't be any surprise that no matter what he says, it works. But here's what's wrong with what he says. He's asking for permission. How many of you ladies got the ick when you heard that he asked for permission to meet you? It's not permission to go to your house. It's not permission to, I don't know, hug you. It's not permission to rifle through your purse. It's permission to simply say who you are and ask who the other person is. That is so ick. Am I wrong? Ladies, back me up. Back me up now. But. So while I say it's ick and weak, wouldn't it be a lot stronger to just say, hi, I'm Bill Ackman? How would that not work? Hi, my name's Bill? That would work every time. That would work 100% of the time anyway. So my advice is just go introduce yourself. If you're that handsome, it'll all work out. All right? May I meet you robot surgeons? We talked about that. We don't need to talk about robot surgeons anymore. Dershowitz is fun to check in with every now and then when there's a legal story. And this Epstein thing just never goes away. And Dershowitz was Epstein's lawyer at one point in the saga. And Epstein points out that one of the reasons potentially doesn't know for sure because he doesn't read minds. But one of the reasons that Trump might not want the Epstein files released is how easily they're misinterpreted. And, of course, we've all said that, right? That's exactly what I've said. You know, maybe it's because he doesn't want them misinterpreted, but what Epstein. I'm sorry, what Dershowitz adds that I was less capable of doing is some examples. If you had some specific examples where you know that a true thing got misinterpreted as a false thing, well, that would be a pretty strong argument for not releasing the files. And apparently there are two examples. One of them is that the. At least the news, the mainstream news and the pundits, they refer to Epstein as a conflict. Convicted, quote, a convicted p word. I'm not even going to use the word. You know what I'm talking about. But Dershowitz points out he's never been convicted of that. There's no conviction on that charge. So was he convicted of something bad? Yes. But was it that? It was not now. I'm not going to make the mistake that some people made to act like one of these crimes is the one that's not as bad as the other one, because as soon as you do that, all the stupid trolls go, you're saying that this one's okay? You're, you're excusing these crimes. No, I'm not. No, no, I'm not. You know, you can have that conversation. I'm not even in the conversation. I, I refuse to even use the words, like, in the same paragraph. I'm so out of that conversation. And the reason is because I don't want to be misinterpreted. Do you remember when Megyn Kelly said something about the specifics of the charges? And I'm not going to repeat it because I can't even repeat what Megyn Kelly said, which I believe was technically, legally accurate, because I would get misinterpreted too, just like she did. So you just can't, you can't really get near the topic without being misinterpreted because everybody's waiting to bounce. And then there's also the other example of the Virginia Godfrey. She's the one who tragically passed away recently, and apparently she had said she never met Trump, and yet the rumors are that she spent hours with him. Now, how do you do a story about a woman who said she never met him and not mention that right now here, I think Dershowitz is assuming that the truth is a never better, because I think Dershowitz makes the same claim that he didn't. I don't know if he said he didn't meet her, but, but Dershowitz says, you know, nothing happened, but he had been accused as well. So we have several examples of people who were accused of things in that domain, but as far as we know, no proof that they did anything. So would that be enough of a reason, if you're Trump, would that be enough of a reason to keep those files from being released? That's a tough one, because I think most of you would say, I don't care about your stupid argument, Scott. In this particular situation, you just have to release everything. Well, what about this? Nope. Release everything. But what about the. No, you just have to release everything. And maybe that's the only way we get past it. But I will tell you, if we release everything, there's something like a hundred percent chance it will destroy lives of men who may not have done the worst thing that they're accused of doing. You know, you could argue, why were you even involved? You know, why did you even Know these people. Separate argument, but yeah, no secrets. Lol. Anyway, just so you know, there is a strong argument for not releasing them, even if there's nothing critical of Trump in them. There's a new book by author Barry Levine about Epstein. He was talking to Smart Ghanish today on cnn. I like Smart Ganish. And he was talking about what was it that Epstein MEANT In a 2011 email that we now have access to. And in that email, I guess Epstein said, the dog that hasn't barked is Trump. Now how in the world are we supposed to know what that means? The dog that hasn't barked is Trump. Really? How many different things could that mean? Like if you made a list of what it might mean, how long would the list be? Pretty long, right? Pretty wrong. Pretty long. Anyway, so the author, Barry Levine says he suspects that Epstein was saying he was 75 there in believing that Trump might have been the whistleblower. So his assumption is that it was something about Trump being the one who blew the whistle, so to speak, on Epstein's bad behavior. So we don't have confirmation of that, but. So this would suggest that Epstein and Trump really were not, at least at the time of these emails, were more like mortal enemies than friends, wouldn't you say? Because you'd have to be sort of a mortal enemy or just a criminal, I guess. You know, if you just assume Trump wanted to stay on the right side of the law and he cared about the. The victims, then you would say he was just doing what a. What an adult should do in that situation. I don't know. We'll never know. And then there's the story about, I guess Epstein was stealing some, some of the women that were working at the Mar A Lago spa. He was trying to, I don't know if he was. What would you call it? Grooming them. And then there was a story about they were both fighting over the same piece of real estate near Mar a Lago. So now we've got the. Was he the whistleblower? Maybe yes, maybe no. And we've got the he was stealing staff. That would have been bad. And then we have the real estate thing, which might have been the worst of all the things in terms of how angry they were at each other because there would be bigger money involved. So are we getting closer to understand what happened? It doesn't feel like it, does it? If you looked at what you knew, I don't know, a year ago or something, and then compare it to what you know now with all these revelations, has Anything changed? Is there anything about your opinion of this whole situation that's now different? I don't know. I feel like maybe if you. A few blanks got filled in, but not really important ones. I don't know. We'll never know. Meanwhile, here's one of these evergreen stories that just will never go away. Apparently, the British government is being accused of withholding data that might link Covid jabs to excess deaths. And that allegedly the reason that the government would do that is it would lead. It would lead to distress or danger or anger. Distress or anger. The Telegraph is reporting on this. What do you think? Disclose TVs also writing about this on X now. Is that new? Would you consider that news? Or were you already for so long, many months or years already on the page of. Oh, yeah, you know, there's some data that shows maybe it was more bad than good. The trouble is, as I often say, there's no data you can trust on the pandemic. Let me say that again. There's no data you can trust. There's lots of data, but there's no data you can trust on the pandemic. You can't trust that it was safe, can't trust it was unsafe, can't trust it was safe for some people. Can't trust that it was unsafe for some people. There's actually nothing you can trust when it comes to the data about the pandemic. So I see a story like that and I go, yeah, there'll be 50 more of those. I don't know. It's true. Meanwhile, as you know, Trump is suing the BBC for maybe up to a billion dollars for. For editing one of his interviews. And I saw, I think it was on. I think it was on Fox, the list of the people he successfully sued so far. So YouTube, he got 26 million. Trump did meta 25 million. I don't know when he sued X, but he got 10 million. That had to be. Was that before Elon took over? I don't remember that. Actually, CBS he got for 16 million. And Disney 69, is that real? Do you really get 69 million from Disney 69? My goodness. And you know, I have mixed feelings about this. Mixed feelings. On one hand, I don't really want my government suing my media. You know what I mean? That's sort of a little bit icky. You don't want that. On the other hand, don't you want to live in a world where the media is afraid of going after somebody unless they really have the goods? They can't just make up. Wouldn't you like to live in a world where they can't just make up because that's the current world they just make up. So I do think that this is a valuable pushback. You know, if you want, if you could live in a perfect world, nobody would sue anybody for anything because nobody would tell a lie. But if they're gonna lie, I would rather live in the world where there's a consequence to that it so that they don't come after me with their lie. So I do feel that Trump is, in a way. Well, not even in a way, in a very direct sense, he's protecting his base. Now, is that the only reason he's doing it? I doubt it. I mean, like everything else, there's always five reasons for doing anything. One of those reasons is free money. Maybe he's just doing it because he gets some money, but that's okay. Our system allows that. It might not be the only reason. I'd like to think that it's part of him creating some kind of a pushback structure that would benefit him, but it will also benefit the rest of us. Because if BBC went after me, well, I'll give you this example. If the BBC somehow falsely edited an interview with me, would I be able to use this story, the fact that Trump sued them and I'm going to project forward that I settle, Would that help me? Would I be better off if Trump had successfully sued them for doing the same crime editing something without permission? Probably it would help. So I think that's good. Well, down in Mexico, apparently the Gen Z part of the population has been surrounded and trying to occupy their government building there. They are not too happy with their current government Shine bomb President Shinebaum. And so they've created a multi day protest in Mexico City. And as you know, I don't have to explain this to you. The, the way that you conquer a major country such as Mexico is you get some people and you sort of wander around in one of the buildings. What? Two of the buildings? No, no, no, you don't need to do it in two buildings. What are you crazy? Like, why would you even do that? No, you can conquer the whole country by simply wandering around in one government building. Again, not to. You don't need two buildings. That would be crazy. Just one. You need one building wandering around, boom, the whole country falls. Right. That's what the Democrats taught me. They taught me that that's an insurrection. I think that's the word they use, an insurrection. And it's Just. You can do it just by wandering around. Now, this has nothing to do with. With the many, many color revolutions that our own intelligence people have foisted upon other countries, such as Mexico. So even though it looks in every way like America is behind it, why would you think that? Just because it looks exactly like it. Yeah, looks exactly like it. Maybe we're behind it. So that's happening. And some, some say that the point of the protests is not just general unhappiness with the government, but a specific unhappiness that the government is actually run by the cartels. Do you think that's something that the locals can fix? Well, they could if they got rid of the government, which I believe you do. By wandering around in an empty building on the weekend. Well, they're trying. And a lot of people think the president is in league with the cartels. So that's, that's really the main part of it. They don't want to be run and owned by the cartels. According to Wall Street Apes. Big account on. Actually, you should follow Wall Street Apes. There's a senator from Mexico who was recently on Fox News and talking about how Mexico is basically a cartel narco country. So the claim was that the president of Mexico basically just works for the cartels. That's. The claim was funded by the cartels. Is not just the president of the country. Oh, it's not just the president, but there's an entire group of Mexican politicians. They're collectly referred to as their narco politicians. And that Mexico is a narco state. And that if you imagine it's anything but that, nothing makes sense. But if you imagine it's a narco state and that the cartels are in charge and they just put a front person up that happens to be a very pleasant woman. That. That's probably. It's a cartel situation. All right. And then the Mexican president has apparently asked for some military intervention. Right. So we'll, we'll see. The part we don't know, and maybe we'll never know, is what does Trump know about the president of Mexico? What does the president of Mexico know about what Trump knows about her? Is it a salvageable situation where somehow you can remove the cartel influence and keep the person that doesn't seem like it would work. So is Trump trying to get rid of the president? A color revolution? That's what you'd call back? Or is he trying to, you know, nurse the situation forward and, you know, find any kind of advantage that might move us forward? I don't Know exactly what we're trying to do or even what's possible down there anyway. We'll see down where I live. California, the one county over, Santa Clara, they just had a special election and they raised their own taxes to 9.75%. That, that's a, that's only sales tax, right? Yeah, that's sales tax. How, how would you like a sales tax of 9.75 on top of estate tax? What is the California state tax right now the highest? Is it 12, 11, 12. What's the highest California state tax? Put it in the comments. And then the federal would be something like 37, 37, 47, 57. Two thirds of what I earn goes directly to Gavin Newsom for his hair gel. So how happy am I about that? Well, right after we're done here, I'm gonna have to get a second job to try to pay for all that hair gel. Do you remember when Trump first talked about tariffs, that even smart people couldn't decide if they were a good idea or a bad idea? Do you remember that? And I think I alone, I only remembered me. Probably other people did the same thing. But I remember saying, we're not going to ever know if this worked. That's just not how anything works. The, the way economics works is you usually don't even know if the thing worked. You just, you might know the outcome, but you don't know is it because of that or what's going to happen anyway. So here's the most surprising study. John Carney and Breitbart News is writing about this. Someone did a big analysis they call a sweeping new analysis to find out if the, in the history of tariffs, you know, the 150 year history of tariffs in the United States, if they have created, have they created inflation or decreased it, what would you say before I tell you the answer? Historically, have tariffs increased inflation or decreased it? Now, that's the easy question, right? Simple question. If, if you raise the cost of something, which is what a tariff does, it raises the cost of something, how does it not create inflation? Right? There's only one, only one way it can go. If you do a thing that absolutely bias design increases the cost of everybody involved, which is what a tariff does. Not everybody. Just depends who decides to absorb it. But how could it be anything except inflationary? I thought the question was how badly it would be inflationary, didn't you? Maybe you didn't think of it that way. I never thought in terms of is it inflationary or not. I always thought, well, it might not be that inflationary. And if we get other benefits, the benefits might outweigh the, you know, inflationary part. But it turns out, according to John Carney, Brightbar News, that this, there was a big study that showed actually it reduces, it reduces inflation if you look at the whole 150 years. So he's not looking at just what Trump did. They're looking at the history of, of that. Do you believe that? And that the entire time, allegedly, even the smartest economists and smartest analysts were getting this wrong and that there's actually a. There's a reason. So it's not random. There's actually a reason why it reduces inflation. I'm not sure I understood the reason, honestly. But I'll tell you what the article says. So this is on John, John Carney. If, if he doesn't explain it well enough for you to understand, then that's on you and John, not on me at all. But John is writing that the researchers approach was ingenious. Rather than trying to parse recent decades of limited tariff variation, they exploited massive swings in tariff policy across centuries, using these shifts as a natural experiment to understand cause and effect. Are you sold? Did that sell you? Well, I'm gonna say it didn't really sell me on that, but I kind of sort of almost a little bit understand the point of it. That if you look at the big picture, you get a different answer than if you look at any micro part of the picture. That part makes sense. But now, yeah, I'm seeing the comments. You're not buying it at all, are you? I'm not buying this at all. All right, I think I'm with you. I'm not buying the expert opinion here. I do still think that the open question is how much it changes anything. If the, how much it changes anything isn't that much, then that's all you need anyway. You know, I keep telling you, Ukraine is becoming a robot only war. Here's some more evidence of that. So there's an article I just read somewhere that said the ubiquity of precision weapons. I wish I knew who said this. I'm just stealing their good work right now. I apologize, but there's so many precision weapons that if you were to look at the, if you look at the front line from the, the sky, you wouldn't see much of any concentration of forces because as soon as you put anything out there that has size, you know, like a tank or any kind of a vehicle, it just blows up. The, the other side has such good drones now that 100 of everything you put in the war zone blows up, like all of it. So if you were to look at the war zone, it would be kind of empty. Just think about that, that any other war zone in the history of wars, let's Say World War I or two, if you could fly over it and look down at what was happening, you see that both sides are really concentrated, like a whole bunch of people in a. In a trench. And then beyond that, there are a whole bunch of other people. And beyond that, a whole bunch of other people. But it'd be a lot of people. There's not a lot of people now on the front lines is. Is mostly. And it's not even not a lot of people. It's also not assets, because 100% of the assets blow up too. So you can't put a person there and you can't put an asset there. It. It all just blows up. So it's this weird, like, empty zone. And I would remind you, that was my prediction from a long time ago. That's where it's all going, people. Now, I believe there was a refrain that I was going to give you that I skipped right over. But it's exactly the time to give you this reframe from my book, Reframing your Brain. The best book ever written, according to everybody. Everybody says it. Everybody. All right, here's one of my favorites. Did you ever. And you'll notice that some of these reframes hit the same point but from a different direction. There's one giant sacrifice. It's more luck. All right, so this might sound familiar, but I haven't taken it from this approach point. From this. I haven't taken it from the ladies tea before. Now I'm just making that up. All right, have you ever been in a situation where you thought to yourself, no one wants to talk to you because you're boring? Has anybody ever had that thought? I don't think anybody even wants to talk to me. I really don't have anything to say. Nothing to add to the conversation. Well, let me reframe that. Instead of thinking that maybe nobody wants to talk to you because you're boring, you should understand that what makes anybody want to talk to anybody is that they show interest in the person talking. The moment you think that a conversation is about a real high quality exchange of ideas, then you don't know what a conversation is. Sometimes some high quality ideas get exchanged, but that's not what they're for. That's not what the conversation's for. It's about how you make each other feel. That's. That's your goal. Your goal is to make the other person feel good. And the way you do that. And it works every time. Is to show genuine interest in whatever they got going on. People love it when you show interest in them. Do you know why they love it when you show interest in them? It's how I started. And I said no one wants to talk to me because I'm boring. You're not the one person thinking that. Everybody at the party is thinking that. They're all thinking that maybe a little boring or maybe I already said that, or. But you can all solve your problem the same way just by asking more questions about the other person and acting interested. Now, ideally, you're not acting right. You should be able to find a way to be interested in somebody's life. You know, you might have to. You might have to guide them into some subtopic that's better for both of you. But no, you can always find a way to be mutually interested. And that, ladies and gentlemen, brings us to the top of the hour. You know what I haven't done in a long time is take questions. I thought this would be an awesome time to do that. I'll just do one or two and probably more from locals, just because they're as the locals stuff highlighted so it's easier to see. All right, anybody have any questions over at locals? You guys have all asked me all your questions for years. Factories suppress? Well, we don't really know, but surely there. There are suppressed factories in Ukraine. Yep. The Dale Carnegie course is how to make people like you. Exactly. So take the Dale Carnegie course. So our u. S. Factories have been suppressed by the foreign ownership? Maybe. How do you talk to woke libs? I don't try to just avoid it. What's the definition of an npc? Non player character, like in a video game. All right, what else we got here, friends? As Carl the fly's family sought revenge? Well, I don't know. I believe they're building tunnels under my house. Does the universe owe you? Yes, it does. Would tariffs decrease demand? So no inflation, that would be one of many effects. Yes. If it decreased demand, it would decrease inflation. That is correct. But there are lots of other, you know, gives and takes there. It's not the only thing happening. All right. You're the luckiest guy ever. So the universe doesn't owe you. Well, that's okay too. Being the luckiest guy ever. What is the best form of Sergio S was the best form of exercise. Okay, you're just joking with me. We have a running joke that the best form of exercise is swimming, because it's so obvious. Trump's greatest accomplishment. What is Trump's greatest accomplishment? Well, good question. The reason that's such a hard question. What are Trump's greatest accomplishments is he's not done yet. So if the only thing you took was whatever comes out of Baja, and then you said, well, Maha wouldn't happen without mega, then you would, you know, assign some of those benefits. And it could be something as important as, you know, cutting chronic illness in half. If. If Trump's willingness to work with RFK junior Cut childhood chronic illness in half, what would be bigger than that? That'd be hard to beat, but you don't know if it's going to happen. So with Trump, he's got a whole bunch of things brewing that if they happen, such as peace of the Middle east, they'd be the biggest things ever. You know, the. The Abraham Accords growing to extra countries. Don't know if it'll happen, but my God, if it did, what level of accomplishment is that? It's like it doesn't have words. So there are a whole bunch of things Trump has going on that you could very easily individually think that's the most amazing thing. Hey, I got a package. All right. What else you got going on? I'm only doing a little extra because it's Sunday. Some of you are doing your Sunday exercise and Sunday chores, and you said to yourself, oh, is he done early today? Because I just wanted to finish my chores while he's still yakking. So I'm yakking a little bit while you finish up your chores or your exercise, whatever it is. The hemp bill. Yeah. I haven't really looked into the. The trouble is, if I look into the hemp bill in detail, I don't feel like I'd still understand it. That's very much. You'd have to know legislation, and you'd have to know the law, and you'd have to know probably ag to even evaluate whether it was a good idea or a bad idea as it stands. So I feel like I'd be a little out of my depth there. Same as Soylent Green. Yeah. Best simulation. Mint name Government. What is that with my name on it? What health apps does Scott use on his Apple watch? None. So I have the apple. Where is it? Somewhere around here. I have an Apple watch that disappeared. So I. I have looked at the health apps, so I know what they are. But honestly, they don't look that useful. Work ethic. You know what I, you know, I love it, I love it when people give me credit for a good work ethic because that, that's what I would be most proud of, is that it's just that that would be the thing I have the most pride in. Before this, it would have been working full time and getting my MBA at the same time. Very proud of that because of the level of difficulty involved and how much, you know, how much pain you're willing to put up with to get ahead. To me, those are good markers of, you know, who you are and how it's going to go. So, but to finish my point, what you see as my work ethic is because you're filtering my experience through your brain. If you filtered it through my brain, it wouldn't look as impressive. Does anybody know why? In my brain, the working is something I enjoy. When I'm sitting here at four in the morning and some of you are like, oh, I never want to get up at 4 in the morning. I'm drinking coffee, I'm petting my cats, sometimes I'm having a great time at 4 in the morning, but it's work. And then when I go live, I absolutely love the time that I'm talking live, like right now, like the, the rest of my day could be pretty good, might be pretty good, but my. Probably won't be this good that I get to talk to what, how many people? 300,000? Five? So maybe, you know, several thousand people at the same time. And, and I, I can fool myself into thinking that this has some value to the world. You know, I'm not just talking into the void, but rather I'm testing out some ideas and some reframes. And if any of the ideas of the reframes are good, maybe they take on a life of their own. So it's always good to have something brewing in your life that does the following thing. It gives you discipline, which is what my getting up every day does for me, gives me discipline and a variety of other things. I mean, discipline is just one of them. So what you see is a insane work ethic. And what I see is that I've, I've managed to turn my job into my hobby, into my passion. So if you've listened to Scott Galloway and some other people have said the same thing, you, you don't want to start with passion and then work it into a job. You can do it, it's pretty hard. But if you start at, you know, A really good job, and then you can convert that into a passion. Well, now you got something. Now you got something. So you're. You're largely seeing me doing exactly what I want to do, but you're interpreting it as work because it might feel like work to you. To me, it's not work. For example, when I'm organizing my notes of, like, what I'm going to say in a certain topic, that's not work. I'm actually thinking how you receive it, and I'm thinking how I'll say it. And I'm thinking, oh, will this. Will this change how you look at it? I just deeply enjoy that. There's nothing about that that feels like work. Every part of that feels like entertainment to me. As much as using X, you know, when I use X, I'm not thinking work, I'm thinking, oh, this would be fun to say, or somebody would like to hear this, or, you know, this might be viral or something, but none of it feels like work. And the podcast is like. Like that. It's kind of fun. Anyway, I hope that was a decent answer because I get. I might get a little bit too much credit for my work ethic. It is. I do have an impressive work ethic, so I'm going to say that that's true, but maybe not. Maybe not as good as you think it is. It is pretty good, though. When people tell you to take the day off to. I know people tell me to take the day off. It's like, do you not understand? Day off doesn't help me. Day on helps me. Not day off. How would you persuade an artificial super intelligence that humans are worth keeping around? Why would I do that? I'm going to persuade the super intelligence to keep me around as its boss. The rest of you, well, you're going to have to find out your. You're going to have to work out your own scam. Good luck with that. You know, bed early, drink coffee, notified you of a serious issue with your heart. Interesting. Interesting. All right, what did Michael Sally say? MTG is falling off the deep end. Like Tucker, Kansas. She lost a remaining credibility on the View. We don't care what that person says. All right. The Apple watch. Yeah, I need to write some more comics today. Most vended person on the planet you might be. All right, you want an 807 sip? I think you get one. All right, ladies and gentlemen, this will conclude our show for the day. I'm going to talk to the locals people privately just. Just for a minute. The rest of you will.
In this episode, Scott Adams brings his trademark “persuasion filter” to recent headlines, discussing politics, media, culture shifts, and more. He riffs on everything from the evolution of public trust in science, to "evergreen scandals" like Epstein, to changes in dating rituals among young men, to high sales taxes in California, and the evolution of AI and warfare. Adams weaves personal updates, listener Q&A, and sardonic humor throughout, sharpening his points with punchy reframes and memorable quotes.
Scott Adams’s Sunday show is part news analysis, part persuasion seminar, and part personal check-in. With a consistently sardonic and irreverent tone, Adams turns a critical eye toward the mainstream narratives dominating politics, news, and culture, and applies “persuasion filters” to spotlight media manipulation, rhetorical fatigue, and the power of reframing. The result: a blend of skeptical commentary, practical life advice, and wry humor designed to help his audience keep their bearings—and their sense of humor—in a world full of competing (and often misleading) narratives.