Real Coffee with Scott Adams — Episode 3028 CWSA 11/24/25

Date: November 24, 2025
Host: Scott Adams

Episode Overview

Scott Adams uses his trademark humor and “persuasion filter” to analyze current news, focusing on the interplay between technology, government, politics, and media narratives. This episode covers a range of topics, including educational technology's impact, financial scandals, crime recidivism, political theater, health care proposals, advances in battery technology, war fatigue in Ukraine, and media manipulation. Adams weaves these stories together, highlighting patterns of human behavior, the power of narrative, and the dangers of unexamined motives.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Educational Technology and Student Performance

• Topic: A new theory suggests laptops are harming students’ academic performance.
• Insight: Adams jokes about the predictability of these findings, noting, "If children are allowed to watch television, their brains will rotate. [...] If they have laptops... that's very predictive that they will do poorly in school because apparently they spend a lot of time just messing around on the laptop and not as much time learning." (04:20)
• Learning Tip: Highlights the superiority of handwritten notes for retention. Adams relates personal experience: "I used to try to activate as many different senses and parts of the brain as I could when I studied... Sometimes I’d draw a picture of the thing, sometimes I’d write it by hand, sometimes more than once." (06:10)

2. Unwatched Money and Financial Corruption

• Chicago Teachers Union Audit Scandal:

  • The union hadn't been audited in five years, leading Adams to conclude: "If you’re not auditing your large pile of money, you’re embezzling it every time." (10:22)
  • Memorable joke: "What happened to our unwatched pile of money? Have I ever taught you anything about unwatched piles of money? If there’s an unwatched pile of money and you wait long enough... Yeah, it's exactly what you think." (11:45)

• Democratic Party and $93 Billion “Laundered”:

  • Allegation that $93 billion was quickly disbursed/“laundered” by Democrats post-2016 election.
  • Adams wonders humorously about how you “steal $69 billion”: "How do you even steal $69 billion? That would take a lot of work." (15:00)

3. Crime, Repeat Offenders, and Policy Logic

• New York City & Oakland Crime:
  • 327 people responsible for a third of all shoplifting arrests in NYC, and 400 people behind the majority of homicides in Oakland.
  • Adams on criminal motivation: "I was thinking of becoming a criminal early in my career... Am I going to be one of those lazy criminals, or one of these industrious serial criminals?" (17:45)
• Three Strikes Law Critique:
  • He mocks the argument against locking up repeat offenders: “The only way you could explain how locking up the repeat offenders doesn’t work is if the people who were not planning to do more crimes decide, ‘Whoa, they locked up the repeat offenders, I'll have to increase my crime per person to compensate.’” (19:30)
  • Concludes: "There isn't really any possible way that locking up the people doing the crimes ends up with the same amount of crime." (20:05)

4. Campbell Soup VP Scandal

• VP caught disparaging products and discussing bioengineered meat.
• Notable quote: "We have shit for poor people." and "I don't want to eat a piece of chicken that came from a 3D printer." (22:40)
• Adams humorously suggests this honesty is valuable: "I'd like to offer that guy a job. I would love to have an executive who was that honest." (23:40)
• He predicts this will become a Dilbert strip.

5. Trump’s Health Care Price Cuts Proposal

• New plan may halt Obamacare premium spikes, include health savings accounts, end premium hikes, and target so-called “ghost beneficiaries.”
• Adams is confused by some of the proposal’s claims: "Does anybody understand what that means? Because I don’t." (26:25)
• Wonders if this is a step towards single-payer, and promises to follow up once he understands more.

6. Battery Technology and the “Year of the Battery”

• Chinese breakthrough claims new car battery with 620-mile range; production ramping up.
• Adams predicts: "2026 is going to be the year of the battery... If you were to double our current capacity, it would just change everything. Suddenly robots are not just practical, they're cheap. Electric cars would be everywhere." (30:50)
• Notes Tesla usually stays quiet on advancements—predicts a major battery announcement in 2026.

7. Obvious Science & Bureaucratic Redundancy

• Cambridge Diet + Exercise Study:
  • "If you do two smart things that definitely work... you’re going to get a better result than if you did one thing. No, really, really. I’m not making that up. That’s… science." (36:05)
• Democrats Making Needless Videos:
  • Critique of six Democratic lawmakers’ video warning military not to follow illegal orders.
  • Adams calls it “the one thing that everyone already knows without being told by a special video made by Democrats.” (38:02)
  • He jokes: "Why did I even join the military if I'm not allowed to do illegal things?" (41:10)

8. Political Trap Setting & Trump’s Strongest Path

• The “Seditious Six” and Trump’s Response:
  • Adams explains how Trump always takes “the strongest path” in persuasion and rhetoric:
    "If there’s one thing to be said that’s the strongest thing, even if it’s the wrong thing, you know Trump’s going to say it." (45:10)
  • Wonders if Democrats intentionally baited Trump into extremist rhetoric for their own narrative.
• Responsibility for Escalating Rhetoric:
  • Adams admits: "Trump worsened it. He didn’t create it. But… as a supporter of the president, I will own [that my side] worsened it." (61:05)
  • "We don’t want to be killing anybody for their political opinions… the country would be harmed by it." (63:10)

9. Weaponizing Political Labels

• Zoran Mamdani Calls Trump a Fascist, Yet Will Work with Him:
  • Adams points out the absurdity: "If you can work with them, it can’t be that bad, can it? It just makes the word look ridiculous." (66:35)
  • Claims the word “fascist” is losing meaning as a weaponized label.

10. Global Energy, Climate Conferences, and Useless Summits

• US Pipeline Expansion:
  • "If you wondered how’s the US doing in the energy business? The answer is really good, really good." (69:05)
• Amazon Climate Summit:
  • Mocks the summit’s achievement: "They agreed to, quote, voluntarily accelerate their climate actions. No specific goals, no endpoints, and no definition of accelerate. So that was useful, wasn’t it?" (70:18)

11. Factional Splits in Trump's Support

• Rand Paul Warns of Risks:
  • Key quote: "Once there’s an invasion of Venezuela or if they decide to reup the subsidies and the gifts to Ukraine, then I think you’ll see a splintering…“ (73:00)
  • Adams notes Trump’s handling of foreign aid cleverly forces allies to pay more.

12. Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.)

• Elimination of Department of Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.):
  • Adams suggests this is a sign the cost-cutting mindset has been internalized:
    "Once you’ve created that culture, which apparently Trump has done, then DOGE just becomes how you think about everything." (76:30)

13. Ukraine Peace Possibilities & Narrative Fatigue

• Signs of Peace Negotiations:
  • Adams feels “peace is in the air” due to “narrative fatigue” and pragmatic stalemate.
  • "Even the words that Marco Rubio chose, the way that Zelensky is sort of sliding into a new position, the way the Europeans are on the hook for the entire bill, it sort of all those things..." (82:15)
• Pattern Recognition:
  • "Sometimes you can feel things or smell them before you can see them and touch them…"
  • Predicts this is moving toward a “three act movie” where Trump gets a Nobel Peace Prize. (88:40)

14. Media Manipulation & Allegations of Corruption

• Tucker Carlson’s Accusations:
  • Carlson alleges the Wall Street Journal is protecting Ukrainian corruption to sabotage Trump’s peace plan, and hints at intelligence agency involvement.
  • Adams cautions: “That’s a big allegation. That’s a big one.” (96:50)

15. WEF Skepticism from Both RFK Jr. & Elon Musk

• RFK: "It's a billionaires boys club that's arranging for the world to shift wealth up, upward..."
• Adams says he agrees—doesn't see the WEF as powerful or important. (99:30)

16. October 7th (Israel): Military vs. Government Accountability

• IDF Firings Post-Oct 7th Attack:
  • Adams doubts conspiracy that Netanyahu orchestrated the security lapse, noting the scale of military firings and likelihood of whistleblowers otherwise:
    "Dozens of people at the officer level... would they all take the fall for October 7th?... Just doesn’t make sense." (105:10)

17. Other Notable Stories

• Thomas Crooks (Assassination Attempt):
  • Reports of hidden social media presence, questions the long delay in unearthing evidence.
• Media Narratives and Fog of War:
  • Adams warns not to take early or official stories at face value in conflict areas ("The fog of war lasts apparently a year or more"). (109:55)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Laptops and Learning:
  "If children are allowed to watch television, their brains will rotate... However, here’s the good news. If they have laptops... that’s very predictive that they will do poorly in school." (04:20)

• On Financial Audits:
  "If you’re not auditing your large pile of money, you’re embezzling it every time. It’s not just sitting there doing what you wanted it to do. Somebody’s embezzling it." (10:22)

• On Political Labeling:
  “If you can work with [a fascist], it can’t be that bad, can it? It just makes the word look ridiculous.” (66:35)

• On Useless Political Gestures:
  "What would be more useless than creating a video to remind people in the military not to do the thing that every one of them already knows not to do?" (38:02)

• On Bureaucratic Obsolescence:
  "Once you’ve created that culture... DOGE just becomes how you think about everything." (76:30)

• On Narrative Fatigue:
  "Sometimes you just have to have a new narrative. And in this case the narrative is the story and the story is the reality." (90:30)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–03:50: Simultaneous Sip & show open, humor about taking notes
• 04:20: Critique of technology in schools
• 10:22: Chicago Teachers Union audit scandal and the logic of unwatched money
• 15:00: Allegations of Democratic financial mismanagement after 2016
• 17:45: Repeat offenders in crime stats
• 22:40: Campbell Soup VP’s candid comments
• 26:25: Trump’s healthcare proposal confusion
• 30:50: The “Year of the Battery” prediction
• 36:05: Obvious science: diet + exercise
• 38:02: Democrats’ "illegal orders" video critique
• 45:10: Trump’s strongest path pattern in persuasion
• 61:05: Ownership of rhetorical escalation and calls for moderation
• 66:35: On the word “fascist” becoming meaningless
• 69:05: U.S. energy pipeline expansion
• 70:18: Climate summit effectiveness satire
• 73:00: Rand Paul’s warning of coalition splits
• 76:30: DOGE’s elimination as success, not failure
• 82:15: Ukraine/Russia: feels like peace is coming
• 88:40: “Three act movie” — predicts Nobel Peace Prize for Trump
• 96:50: Tucker Carlson’s media corruption accusations
• 99:30: RFK Jr. and Elon Musk dismiss WEF as a boys’ club
• 105:10: IDF takes responsibility for Oct 7, Netanyahu conspiracy doubts
• 109:55: Fog of war and media unreliability

Conclusion

Scott Adams applies humor, pattern-recognition, and a playful suspicion of power structures to dissect the week’s big news, poking fun at bureaucratic redundancy, political theater, corporate hypocrisy, and the cyclical nature of narratives in media and government. The episode is a cross-section of current events analyzed through Adams’ unique “persuasion” lens, offering both pointed criticism and moments of self-reflective humility.