Scott Adams is often introduced as “the creator of Dilbert.” Indeed he is, however he has done so much more. His latest creation is the best-selling book, LoserThink: How Untrained Brains are Ruining America. Like his other books, it focuses on persuasion, success and strategies about success.

Join us for a great, cordial, in-depth discussion on elements in the book as well as his daily Periscope, his dynamic twitter and his other books too.

Scott offers that anyone who owns the book has his permission to take a photo of one of the pages and send it to someone who is having a disagreement. It carries more weight and is not a personal attack, he explains. I have been following Scott Adams for some time, and have also read most of his books.

We talk about not only his newest book, but previous books such as the non-fiction How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life, as well as the fiction God’s Debris. Having read both of those and having also written both fiction and non-fiction I was particularly interested in the genesis of both. Writing fiction is decidedly much different than writing non-fiction. The same goes for marketing them.

Just some of the things we talk about:

Scott hosts a daily Periscope in which he talks about the day’s news and interacts with his audience. Each is started with having a sip from whatever beverage you have—he likes coffee. The action is tongue-in-cheek and demonstrates elements of both hypnosis and persuasion (he gives us insider info on this in the podcast). It has really caught on as an a group activity, and has resulted in him recently meeting a number of sippers who introduced themselves as such. I’ll admit that I participate as well. It’s fun, and having him sort through the news with a very scientific method of discovery is fascinating. I liken it to a college professor conducting a class. I mean that in a good way.

If you want to break out of a mental prison you may have placed yourself into it’s a great listen. If you follow politics but wish someone would just clearly sift through it, you’ll want to listen to the podcast and then follow Scott.

I’m grateful for the time he spent with me, and it was wonderful to has such in-depth discussions on so many interesting topics.

What he said at the end, in closing, made me smile. No this is not a “listen till the end” trick.

Find him on the web at:

scottadamssays.com and dilbert.com

Twitter: scottadamssays

You’re listening to the Mark Bradford Alchemy for Life podcast. An awesome chat with Scott Adams.

Mark Bradford: I am here with Scott Adams. Hi, Scott.

Scott Adams: Hi.

Mark Bradford: So I want to welcome you to the show. And as I usually do, I ask people what they do, and as we know that’s not who they are. So please answer in whatever order you’d like to.

Scott Adams: Well, I’m the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, but I also write books about persuasion and success and strategies for success. And my latest one, Loserthink, is about how to think more productively.

Mark Bradford: That’s awesome. And I noticed that a lot of times when you are giving interviews on shows and things—and also you have tremendous stamina for the rounds that you’ve been making for Loserthink. I applaud you for that. I know it takes quite a bit of energy to do that.

Scott Adams: And it’s actually the hardest part about the book writing process. But go ahead.

Mark Bradford: Right, it’s going making the rounds. And it’s interesting when I hear you introduced as the creator of Dilbert. Though that is very true and you have a long history of doing that, I think you’ve also made such tremendous progress with the other things that you do. You have a daily Periscope, you have articles, and you have the books. I mean there’s a number of books that you’ve come out with recently and they’re all really, really interesting books.

Scott Adams: Thanks. Uh, I wonder if I will be remembered by my books that have nothing to do with Dilbert or by Dilbert. It’s one of those questions I asked myself: in 100 years, will anybody remember any of it? And if they did remember any of it, would it be one of the books or something about Dilbert? I’m not sure.

Mark Bradford: Well, I guess my answer to that is a question to you: What do you think George Carlin would be remembered for? As a comedian or as more of a philosopher? Because I would apply that to you actually. I think you’re going to be remembered for more than just a comic. Your talks on persuasion and cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias… all that stuff is I think something that really will have a lot of impact.

Scott Adams: You know, the Carlin example is interesting. I would throw Dave Chappelle in there as someone who’s a comedian/philosopher. And it’s probably not an accident that people who deal with humor sort of drift into or overlap with philosophy because humor is about simplification, and good philosophical writing is simplification too. So there’s a lot of overlap in those things.

Mark Bradford: And speaking of simplification, I would say that’s probably your core skill. It’s probably the thing that you do best, is to take and distill something. And I say that humbly as someone who’s always tried to do that same thing. I found that as one of my two core skills was I like to take complex things and sort of distill it. So I recognize that in you quite a bit.

Scott Adams: Yeah, I do it for a living, so one does get better at it. The whole cartooning thing is about condensing things to their simplest form. And then I take that over to my other writing as well. So I would agree. I have a number of talents based on hard work—in other words, I taught myself how to draw just by doing a lot of it, taught myself how to write by doing a lot of it—but the one thing that I’m not sure I learned, I probably got some tips in my childhood, but the ability to simplify might be my one natural talent, I would say.

Mark Bradford: I would say that comes across as something that’s innate. And you talked about a lot of talents which of course you call the Talent Stack, which I read about in one of your other books. And I think that is such a powerful thing. If you’d like, why don’t you describe what that is?

Scott Adams: Yeah, I wrote about that in my book How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, which has become somewhat huge. Even on the backlist, it’s still selling like crazy. It’s probably the most influential thing I’ll ever do. And I introduced the idea that systems are better than goals, and also the Talent Stack idea which is a subset of a system.

The idea is that it’s difficult to be the best in the world at anything. We can’t be Tiger Woods. And you probably know by the time you’re six years old if you have that kind of talent. So for the rest of us, we have to try to be special within the constraints of not being amazing at anything in particular.

And so the best way to do that, that’s really accessible to everybody, is that you just layer talents on top of each other that work well together. So for example, if you learn to do public speaking, that layers well with almost any other skill. So you’re far more likely to get promoted to management if you can do public speaking plus what the other people in your job are doing.

If you take cartooning for example: I’m not a great artist to say the least. I’m barely an artist. I don’t even call myself an artist. And I can write well, but not as great as the best writers. And I’ve got some business experience which allows me to do the business of Dilbert as well as have a canvas to work for the humor. So I’ve got this weird combination of skills. I’m also a trained hypnotist and learning about how the mind works does help me decode people and show the silliness and irrationality of it all. But none of them are world-class skills. It’s just that they work really well together to make me rare. There aren’t many people who have my combination of skills, but there are plenty of people who are far better at any individual skill.

Mark Bradford: And when the skills are disparate and separate, they seem to combine and become more powerful versus two skills that are very similar.

Scott Adams: Well, I think that falls under the category of “it depends” because you might need those two similar skills as a base before you add the other skills. But I understand the point. Every situation is different. You have to look at what you naturally have, which is a good place to start. So you might say to yourself, “My one natural thing is I can outwork other people,” or “My one natural thing is I’m creative,” or “I’m a good writer.” Then say, “What would combine well with those things?” And that’s a good place to start.

Mark Bradford: Interesting. And I found that a lot of the people that I was migrating to—people in my personal life and even people that I was fascinated to watch—I found out that I would call them “dual brained” because they have this good combination of like, logistics and creativity at the same time. And it seemed like when that was combined it really made for something really interesting.

Scott Adams: Yeah, and that’s a pretty rare combination. Usually you don’t get the—I hate to say left brain right brain stuff because I don’t think that’s technically what’s happening in your brain, but it’s a common reference. So yeah, I’ve got enough of the creative stuff and enough of the analytical stuff. I was an economics major, I’ve got an MBA, and I worked in finance and in technology before I was a cartoonist. So I’m kind of rare that I have both sides. In fact, my SATs when I was a kid, my verbal and math were identical scores. So I think that’s kind of rare.

Mark Bradford: And I think that I must have a sense for that because I feel that I have been identified as that over and over again. And then I found the people that I was attracted to seem to be the same way.

The thing I want to ask you about also—and feel free to switch gears to the book—but I think your books talk so much about the things that you normally talk about. And I think, whether this is just in your nature or your brilliance when it comes to marketing, but you know people talk about how internet marketing is sort of backwards. Where you don’t say “Here I made this thing go buy it.” Instead it’s “Let me share with you all the stuff that you’re going to get out of this.” And you have a Periscope every day and you’re very visible on Twitter as well. So you have quite a bit of stuff that you share that if people read your books they’ll go, “Well yeah, he talked about that. That’s that thing he was mentioning.”

Scott Adams: Yeah, and a lot of that is A/B testing. So I’ll throw out an idea on Periscope or on Twitter and I’ll see if I get a lot of retweets or a lot of comments. And the stuff that gets the most reaction is what I’m likely to put in a book next time. So it’s not so much that I’m giving it away after I’ve written the book; it’s a process of finding out what should be in the book. And then by the time I’ve written a book, it just becomes part of my personality. So if somebody asked me a question, it’s pretty likely I’m going to say something I may have written in some book one day.

Mark Bradford: Right. And I think choosing just this conversation as opposed to a conversation with someone who wrote a book and they just keep going back and saying “Well in this chapter and this chapter…” as opposed to just kind of a flow of information, which is actually really cool.

Scott Adams: Well good, I’m glad that’s working.

Mark Bradford: You talked about your being a trained hypnotist and also persuasion comes up a lot too in what you talk about.

Scott Adams: Yeah, persuasion is another one of those skills like public speaking that combines well with just about everything. In fact, I don’t know if you could come up with any kind of a job where you wouldn’t be better off if you knew the skills of persuasion. Because at the very least it would help protect you against other people persuading you, or at least you’d be able to identify it when it’s happening.

But there’s really no situation I can even remotely think of where being more influential on your co-workers, your customers, your boss, whoever’s around, when that’s not a good thing. And not just not a good thing, but it’s a great thing. You know, if you’re persuasive, you’re going to get that promotion, all things being equal, because leaders need to be persuasive.

It’s pretty much a universal thing that people maybe think they can do because our common sense—which is really just a myth—leads us to believe that we can think well and that we can figure stuff out without learning how to think. But sometimes those are learned skills. And I think the pendulum has swung the other way now and that it’s now a job. You know, like Instagram influencers. So that’s literally a job now, to influence and persuade people.

Mark Bradford: Yeah.

Scott Adams: You know, the thing that social media did in the example of the influencers is maybe the minor example. But what it did is weaponized talent. So if you were influential or you had something to say or you were just smart and you could communicate well, all you need is social media. Social media will discover you at a low level and promote you with retweets and whatnot and growing followers.

So suddenly people like me, who ordinarily would have no sway in any kind of a political conversation, I can have one. Because I bring persuasion skills and because I talk about the topic of politics, it’s a real potent combination. And then the number of people on social media promote me and make my voice more prominent just by scale. And suddenly I feel like I’m having an effect on stuff. And almost anybody can do that now.

So the world has turned upside down from the original design of the Republic where the citizens just essentially elect representatives to ride off on their horses and go make some laws… to the government is really, I would say at this point especially in the Trump Administration, responsive to social media. It would be hard to think of any situation where our leaders could get away with doing something that social media overwhelmingly hated.

Mark Bradford: I think you’re right. The microscope or the looking glass is out there now. Speaking of the president, you’re quite vocal on that and you also are definitely immersed in politics. That shows up in your books and it also shows up in your Periscope that you do every day.

Scott Adams: Yeah, my interest in politics is much less the policy stuff because I confess that I’m not smart enough to know what a good trade agreement looks like. I don’t know exactly what to do with climate change, etc. So my “beat” if you will is the persuasion angle. The way people think about it, the psychology of it. How’s that make you feel? How’s that make you act? So that stuff I find fascinating because it’s more about humans. The political stuff is just an interesting environment to study that stuff.

Mark Bradford: Right, it’s sort of a universal communication regardless of the job or status of the individual.

Scott Adams: Yeah, it only matters to me that other people find it important. And that’s enough for me. Because if they’re acting like it’s important, then I study them. I don’t study the policy so much.

Mark Bradford: And you do, and you talk about that in the Periscope. And it’s really interesting to watch because… I’m going to say something, but I mean this in a very positive way, because there’s a negative way to take this. But you come across as a college professor sometimes. In that you sort of disseminate something and then you ask a question and you say, “Does that make sense to you? Is that the way that that would affect you?” So you really have a certain very neutral level of the way that you explain information. And you don’t see that a lot because the news, as we all say, you know there’s a tremendous amount of influence going on in the news.

Scott Adams: Well when you call it a “neutral way” of explaining, I would say it’s a persuasive way. So getting people to change their own minds is always more effective than “Damn it, listen to my argument! Change your mind! What’s wrong with you? Are you just stupid? Can’t you see my facts and reason?” That doesn’t work. People just stiffen their resistance. But if you put it in the form of a question, people can actually answer the questions and change their mind right in front of you if you do it right.

But I think what you’re observing—my technique of asking people what they thought of stuff—has a lot to do with Periscope. For anybody who doesn’t know, it’s a streaming service owned by Twitter. The comments are streaming across the screen live while I’m doing it. Which gives me the sensation that I’m actually talking to people. I can see the people responding in real time so I treat it more like it’s a conversation.

You ever go to dinner and there’s six of you at dinner but one of the people is really, really interesting? And so the other five are just like, “How about we just sort of listen to you cuz you’re the only one who’s got anything interesting to say today?” So I try to be the interesting person at the dinner table, but everybody else is at the dinner table too, so I try to recognize them often.

Mark Bradford: Well, but and just to split hairs, sometimes the “interesting person” is just the one who keeps talking. And I think in your case you actually, even though it’s your Periscope, I do think you give credit where credit’s due when someone comes up with something.

Scott Adams: I try to. I don’t think I’m as good at doing that as I would like to be for my personal standards. And some of it’s just sometimes you get lazy and you forget who said what. But I definitely try to do that. It’s bad form and bad strategy to try to sell someone else’s idea as your own, so I try to avoid it.

Mark Bradford: And you also give credit where credit’s due regardless of which side of the argument the person is on. So you actually are able to separate if someone does something funny, even though you typically don’t agree with what they say, you’ll still call them out for the positive thing. Which is unheard of. People don’t do that typically, especially on Twitter.

Scott Adams: Yeah, it’s kind of rare. Every once in a while you’ll see some pundit say “That was an evil thing that person did, but they did it really well.” So I try to teach people about persuasion, and to do that there are examples on the team they like and the team they don’t like. And I try to use them both. The other benefit that gives me is it’s a technique for remaining unbiased. If you can force yourself to say something good about both teams, whatever that is, it helps you sort of not get locked into one team and “everything your team does is brilliant and everything the other team does is garbage.” So I use that as a mental habit. Similarly, whenever I have something bad to say, I try to add at least one positive thought when I’m done to kind of cancel it out. So that’s just a life technique.

Mark Bradford: I think that’s excellent. I think what you’re also touching on is the whole concept of the mental prism, right? People being in a bubble.

Scott Adams: Yeah, there are a variety of ways people can get locked in their bubble but it’s all about not having a productive filter on life. And you may notice that I’m wording this very carefully. I’m not saying that one is right and the other bubble is wrong. Because that’s Loserthink: to think that you got the right bubble. Oh how lucky you are, everybody else is in their own little bubble but wow what a coincidence that you’re not in one. So I try to avoid that because we’re all in a bubble. It’s just a different bubble. Some of us have developed through lots of hard work and practice the ability to peek inside other bubbles. But you can’t really get in there. At best you can see what’s happening in there from the outside. But that’s my view of the world. Everybody’s in a bubble and some of us know it and most of us don’t. And that’s what the cover itself shows: people floating around in their own bubbles.

Mark Bradford: And you talk about that in Loserthink. And I don’t know if we’ve defined it yet or not, but if you’d like, what is the concept of Loserthink?

Scott Adams: So Loserthink is a word I invented to try to capture the idea that there are people who might be smart within their domain, but if they haven’t been exposed to the way people think in other domains, they may think that their common sense is enough. But in fact, learning to think productively is a learned skill.

Let me give you an example. I mentioned that I have a background in economics. Now if you study economics, you’re actually taught better decision-making. You’re taught what a sunk cost means, you’re taught how to look at money (the value of money over time), and you’re taught to compare things that are relevant comparisons.

Now if you take somebody who’s let’s say the opposite, let’s say they’re in the Arts. They’re not taught to compare things. And worse, if you’re in the creative world, you think everything is connected and it may not be. So where the engineer would say “Well here’s this gear and here’s this gear and they’re just different and I’ll treat them differently,” the writer is used to a world where if you’re reading a book and a character picks up an expensive watch and fondles it, you’re safe to think that that will be important later. Because a writer put it there. But in the real world we’re filled with coincidence that doesn’t mean anything. And you really need to separate things to analyze them properly. So it’s a completely opposite skill. And Loserthink fills in those gaps without making you learn everything about economics or psychology. It’s just sort of the high-level thinking techniques.

Mark Bradford: And you make a great statement on that too. You say that Loserthink is mockery but you’re not mocking the person, you’re mocking the method.

Scott Adams: Yeah, so the Loserthink is the technique. And I’m quick to point out that I make every mistake that’s in my book that I tell you you shouldn’t make. But I like to think I’m decreasing it over time. And part of it is just being exposed to the idea that there are better ways to think.

One of the techniques in Loserthink I talk about is it’s very common for us to assume we know what other people are thinking and then to take that assumption and criticize them for it. For example: “Oh, I know the real reason you did that is to get power.” Even if the thing is good. I remind people that we can’t even tell what our spouse or girlfriends or boyfriends are thinking half the time. So what are the odds that we know what a politician that we’ve never met is thinking? I caution people to take some humility on how accurate they can be thinking about the inner thoughts of strangers. It’s better to look at their actions because you can judge those more objectively.

Mark Bradford: Right, and I think the humility is a huge part of it. And I think that’s something that you display a lot. In the book you even talk about how you give people permission to take a picture of a page to then show it to someone because it takes a lot of the ego out of it.

Scott Adams: Yeah, there is something about being an author who has a published book that gives you credibility. And I let people borrow that credibility by taking the picture of the book as you said and tweeting it. Because there are many cases where because I’m a professional communicator I can just say things more clearly than people can on their own.

Mark Bradford: I do like that you also talk about two things. You talk about—and you show this on Twitter—that this is another example of mind reading, in which someone says something that almost sounds right but then when you read it again you think, “Well yeah, they don’t know that. How could they know what that person’s actual intentions are?” But they just assume all of that.

Scott Adams: Yeah, the mind reading illusion is probably the most common bad thinking technique. Now it’s usually done by partisans. And I take what I call the “Dr. Laura approach.” Years ago I heard her say something that just changed how I see the world permanently. She said that you’re essentially—I’m paraphrasing—you’re not your thoughts. That’s not who you are. You are your actions.

So it doesn’t matter if you have bad thoughts if you’re doing good things in the world. You’re not the bad thoughts, you’re the good things. And you can actually use your actions to reprogram who you are and how you feel. So I use my limited executive control in my brain over my body to put my body in situations that help me think better.

Mark Bradford: That’s one of those phrases in life that you learn and you think, “Wow that’s going to stay with me.”

Scott Adams: Here’s another one that I’m reminded of. A lot of people want a lot of things. They want to succeed. But I point out that the difference between the people who get rich and the people who don’t is that the people who get rich don’t want something; they decide to get it. And there’s a big difference between deciding to get something and wanting it. The people who want it are going to look at the price and they’re going to say “I want it but I don’t really want it at that price.” Whereas the person who simply says “I now decide this is a decision. I’m going to go do this thing,” and then they’re presented with the price and it’s enormous… that person says “Doesn’t matter. It’s a decision. I’m going to pay that price.” So yeah, once you realize that your wishes are useless but your decisions are important, that fits very nicely with “You’re not your thoughts, you’re your actions.” You got to make a decision to act.

Mark Bradford: That’s outstanding. You could hide a discussion of that in a book called Your Wishes Are Useless.

Scott Adams: That’s not a bad idea. I might do that.

Mark Bradford: There actually are a number of statements in your book that jump out at me as “Wow, you should call your next book that.” And you do “pull quotes” in your book which I love in non-fiction. They’re these really great ways to phrase something and they’re sort of one foot in a little bit of humor and one foot in reality.

Mark Bradford: I wanted to ask you if you don’t mind me taking a 90 degree turn. You wrote a book called God’s Debris and it was actually the first thing I’d read from you. It was pretty much the first ebook I’d ever read and I think I read it in a day because it was such a fascinating thought experiment.

Scott Adams: Yeah, so what made God’s Debris different from anything I’ve done, but probably different from any book as far as I know, is that as I mentioned I’m a trained hypnotist. And I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to write a book where I used as much of my hypnosis technique as possible?

I thought, what if I take it to the next level where I’m really trying to create an experience for the reader? And the experience I try to create is that you’ve encountered a conversation between two people and one of them is the smartest person in the world who inexplicably knows everything about how reality works and explains it.

Now of course since I don’t know how reality works, that would be a big ask for an author. I use a trick to make the reader feel as if I do. And the trick is that people imagine the simplest explanation for things is right. It’s known as Occam’s Razor. And I talk about in my book that it’s just an illusion. But in the context of persuasion, it is persuasive. People think simple arguments are likely to be more accurate. So I had my “smartest person in the world” character explain things in the simplest terms I could think of.

I realized one day when I was taking a shower, I realized that I had all these random thoughts about reality that if you simplify them all they fit together like a puzzle. It was this moment I had while I was in the shower literally. And years and years of random thoughts all suddenly came together and formed a whole. The book actually wrote itself while I was standing in my shower. It was almost like if I were a believer I would call it a Divine experience.

I use my hypnosis technique and predictably, because hypnosis has a different effect on every person, some number of people say it’s the best book they’ve ever read in their life because they just have a kind of a tingling eye-opening experience. And then other people get angry because they can feel the persuasion but they don’t want to be persuaded in that way. So it’s a very polarizing book.

Mark Bradford: It’s very light in the way that it’s written. You don’t seem like you’re bullying someone into saying “Well that’s how we think.” Instead you’re sort of challenging and saying “Well here’s the idea, what do you think?”

Scott Adams: Yeah, that’s the technique. And I’ll reveal a little bit of the technique. One of the two characters, the one who is not the smartest person in the universe, plays the role of “pacing” in hypnosis. Pacing means matching somebody. You could match their breathing, their body language. It softens them up for ideas that maybe they don’t agree with. So I have the character saying the things that I know the reader is going to say as they think them. So as the smartest person in the world says something, and I realize that anybody who hears that for the first time is going to say “Yeah, but…” I have my character say that “Yeah, but.” And then the reader says “Oh yeah, that’s just what I was going to ask.” And that’s one of the ways you ease them into the scene. They become part of the scenery.

Mark Bradford: If the reality is questioned in the same way that they would question it, then they think that the author is also thinking in those terms.

Scott Adams: Yeah, it binds them to me as an author but also to the character and to the book.

Mark Bradford: Being accused of being “dual brained” and having written both fiction and non-fiction, people ask “Well how do you do both?” And I think well I think everyone can do both, it depends on what you focus on. When I saw that you wrote that and I saw that your books are also kind of a combination of the humor but also some very serious things… I’m just fascinated by that whole process and how people sort of switch from A to B.

Scott Adams: You’re certainly right that writing fiction and non-fiction are really, really different. I think my brain is maybe more optimized to non-fiction. It took me some work to figure out how to write fiction because I don’t read it, so I didn’t know what it was supposed to look like.

Mark Bradford: I’m in the same boat. I wrote four non-fictions and then I said “I’m done.” And then that lasted two weeks and then I wrote a fiction. And it was such a different experience because one is a way of structuring thoughts… and with the fiction it was just such a different ethereal thing that seems to come out of nowhere.

Scott Adams: Yeah, I would say with non-fiction, persuasion is the primary thing I’m thinking about when I’m writing it because I want people to be persuaded. When I’m writing fiction, I’m writing to a feeling. So I want you to experience something. I want you to get goosebumps, I want your heart to race, I want you to be curious. So it’s all about evoking feelings versus persuasion.

Mark Bradford: Wow, that’s… yes, I wholeheartedly agree with that.

Mark Bradford: Your Periscope is also on YouTube, correct? And they are typically in the morning and you do something called the “Simultaneous Sip” in which everyone gets to drink their coffee or whatever beverage they have at the time.

Scott Adams: Yeah, that’s also a hypnosis trick but everybody who’s watching the Periscope is in on it. And I did a little public event yesterday and people were coming up to me telling me how much they enjoyed the Simultaneous Sip. They’d say, “At first I didn’t think I was going to do a sip at the same time you were sipping your coffee but then I just found myself doing it and then I found I liked it more.”

That of course is completely intentional on my part. The technique is as follows: if you can get somebody to do something that has a reward, they’re more likely to do more of it. And coffee tastes good and it’s sort of a reward. And when I tell them everybody’s doing it around the world at the same time, they feel connected to something. And then from there it’s just repetition and simplicity. I keep repeating it and telling people it’s going to make their dopamine surge and it’s the best part of the day.

Even though people see that language as just sort of empty introductory stuff, it’s all designed so when I tell them they will enjoy it, it will stoke their dopamine, it will make the rest of the day better… the first time you hear it, it doesn’t have much effect. But most of my followers are there every day. And so if you hear that every day, that beverage is going to start tasting better. And for some people they will imagine that if they miss it their day doesn’t go as well. It’s a pretty powerful technique but it’s fully disclosed. I’m not fooling anybody.

Mark Bradford: And it does incorporate something else that I think I read a tweet that you said a long time ago: that if you can connect something to an additional sense—so in other words, if you’re connecting people watching you with the taste of something pleasant—something can have an even bigger impact.

Scott Adams: Yeah that’s a really good point. If you can make somebody imagine that they can see something, that’s more persuasive. If you can make them smell it, hear it, or have any kind of memory of a sense… if you get more senses involved people get more engaged. And if they’re more engaged with the content they’re more likely to be persuaded or to like it.

Mark Bradford: I definitely think it’s a Nifty idea. And I will admit to you though once one of the sips was soup. So I know I’m good on that.

Scott Adams: Yeah, you’re all set.

Mark Bradford: May I ask you, you’ve made a statement that you feel that the president is one of the most persuasive people that you’ve ever witnessed. And I had read that you had also said that it sort of affected your income. Did you want to respond to that?

Scott Adams: Yeah, when I write and talk about the president I’m usually talking more about technique and persuasion. But because I say good things about him, it kind of automatically puts me on that “team” whether I thought I belonged there or not. So I’ve sort of embraced that.

But he is the most persuasive person that I’ve ever seen in person or on TV. Part of it is he has a higher risk profile than the average person. If he took away his risk profile I’d say somebody like Tony Robbins would be the most persuasive person in the world. But Tony sort of plays it down the middle. Whereas Trump doesn’t mind causing trouble. There’s no rule he won’t break, there’s no boundary he won’t push. And the net effect of that is that literally everything he does is interesting. He can’t be uninteresting.

Mark Bradford: And I do think it’s absolutely fascinating seeing you sort of not so much critique but you sort of review his tweets and say “This is an example of this.”

Scott Adams: Yeah. And I just realized I didn’t answer your question about the impact on my finances. So my income dropped by about a third as soon as people started identifying me with talking about Trump’s Talent Stack. And obviously I lost most of my friends who lean the other direction. They just couldn’t stand being in the room with anybody who could say anything good about that “monster.”

So it’s a weird amped up world where people are far more excited than they should be about topics. And part of that is the business model of the press has driven toward more provocative stuff. Years ago the news would have been presented to you completely down the middle. But today almost every story is couched in terms of “Us versus Them,” winners and losers. Everything’s dangerous now.

Mark Bradford: You mention that in the book as well.

Scott Adams: Yeah, so the moment we were able to measure with precision what people were clicking on and who they were and why they were clicking, everything was broken from that point on. Because as soon as you knew what people clicked on, you had to provide more of it. And it turns out that boring news with no bias doesn’t really get that many clicks. People want the fight, they want the drama, they want the show.

Mark Bradford: It’s amazing. I think that the way that movies are created is so different than let’s say the 80s. With my kids, I’d show them an 80s movie and they’d say “Why are these so good?” I’d say this is because this is the way the movies used to be; they weren’t afraid to say certain things.

Scott Adams: Yeah, for a while I was hooked on old Hitchcock movies and I realized that the reason I liked them so much is that they didn’t have any filler. But now in the world of giant movies… we’ve just sort of devolved into it’s all car chases. Long form storytelling has sort of gotten out of hand. Our attention span is just getting shorter and shorter because social media and all the quick hits are so entertaining. A good tweet can entertain me as much as a half an hour of a sitcom on television.

Mark Bradford: And that’s also today… I find myself watching these and I think something is wrong with me, is that I actually enjoy some reaction videos sometimes. And I think all I’m doing is watching a person react to a screen.

Scott Adams: Yeah, the little GIFs of people being shocked and falling over and stuff, they always work for me. And I think it’s a human nature thing because faces are all that really matters to us.

I’ve sometimes hypothesized that the reason that some companies such as Facebook and Twitter and Instagram succeed is because they emphasize faces. I think we’re so drawn naturally to human faces that FaceTime was literally a whole bunch of faces. And Instagram was “Let’s get rid of all the external stuff and we’ll just show you a bunch of faces and bodies.” And Twitter has the same quality; if you include a photo with your tweet, especially if there’s a human in that photo, you’re going to get way more engagement.

Mark Bradford: And I found out a lot of that stuff too when I actually built a dating site from scratch. I looked at all the dating sites and they were all essentially the same: they showed you a small picture of a person’s face. And regardless of what the profile said, it was whether you like that face or not.

Scott Adams: Here’s a little experiment for you. If you look at any kind of a website that has tiny, tiny little thumbnails… they’re so small and still, you can tell who’s attractive. So with only 20% as much information as you should need to determine if a person looks attractive or not, you can tell every time from just that little tiny smudge. That’s how tuned in we are to faces.

Mark Bradford: We have evolved to literally go into a room and survey that room in a matter of seconds and decide whether you think any of those people are attracted to you or not. And that takes a tremendous amount of processing.

Scott Adams: Yeah, I can tell you from my own experience that all of my major relationships were sort of love at first sight types where there was something about just looking into a person’s face where I’d say “Okay here’s my future.” I can tell in the first 10 seconds.

Mark Bradford: I would concur with that.

Scott Adams: There’s something I learned about recently called the Golden Ratio. And apparently there’s some formula of ratio of distances that is universally considered attractive. And software can actually pick those people out. I have not tested it on myself; I don’t want to know that I’m a trapezoid or something.

Mark Bradford: So I think I fit in the parallelogram and so that’s why I have a face for radio which is why we’re just talking.

Scott Adams: Yeah, it’s perfect for us.

Mark Bradford: Is there anything else that you would like to shout out about the book or your Periscope before we go?

Scott Adams: Well anybody who’s looking for any of my content, a good place to start is either Dilbert.com if you like the comics, or “ScottAdamsSays” (all one word) on Twitter or Periscope. Those are good places to find me. And you can also just Google me and you’ll find me on YouTube.

Mark Bradford: And if people do follow you on Twitter they certainly get their money’s worth.

Scott Adams: Yeah, not everybody uses it the same way of course, but I use Twitter like it’s my own private TV channel. And so when I tweet I’m trying to tweet something that other people will enjoy. And that’s gotten me 360,000 followers so far so it seems to be working.

Mark Bradford: I’ve noticed that 99% of people who use Periscope use it backwards which is they’ll turn it on and then they’ll just sit there reading the comments on the screen. So they’re letting the audience entertain them.

Scott Adams: I try to make sure they don’t have to wait.

Mark Bradford: Well, so that we have no more pauses, I’m going to thank you so much for spending an hour with me. I think this was just absolutely fantastic. I really enjoyed the chat and I really enjoyed you going over the things in the book. And I will say to people that they absolutely need to go out and grab Loserthink and take a look at your other books. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big is a really fantastic one as well.

Scott Adams: Well thank you for saying that. And I would also like to add that you’re really good at this. Your questions are unusually insightful so I was able to enjoy this where sometimes it’s work, but this time it wasn’t. So thank you for that.

Mark Bradford: Oh, you’re very welcome. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much and have a great Thanksgiving.

Scott Adams: Thanks so much for having me.

Editor’s Note: Scott Adams passed on January 13th, 2026. He will be sorely missed and I am so grateful have been able to chat with him. His parting comment is something I’ll always remember and serves to motivate me to continue to be “really good at this.”