In touch once or twice a week. Hopefully youll stay with us. Thank you to our partners who hosted partners in the state. Going to run through some Upcoming Events in the will get into the program. On sunday we have a voices series is a terrific firsttime novelist talking with us. That takes place at the Santa Monica Public Library and it is free. Theres no excuse not to give you a chance to come listen to their work. Monday night, Chris Matthews come store stage. He has a new book out, he will be interviewed by Frank Buckley who is one of the morning host on ktla. On tuesday night tim oreilly is with us. His book titled what is the future wide set of tests. Then, nancy weiner next thursday and a conductor, dan lather, and others. Tina brown is next friday, and jennifer lewis, and we Just Announced her first event for 2018. Tonight were hosting scott adams. A cartoonist from the comic strip at gilbert. Hes the author of several bestsellers. Hes cofounder of. Com and work for 16 years as a technology for major bank and then when he started the column interviewing him tonight is terrance who has been in her stage several times. He helps organizations tell Better Stories in a long time host favorite show of my called freeform. Now he will host a podcast at harvard. Scott adams new book is win big leaf. Persuasion in the world amir to today. Election outcome was predicted by a lot of people differently but not scott adams. He has a lot to share about that. And the world of persuasion. Please welcome terrence and scott. [applause] i want to start by saying that on november 11, 3 days after the election, i wrote of trump and his he spoke to people who wanted to be seen and heard. His facts were wrong, his story was right. Now, i have a Major Political candidate talking to me any such a standard a politician. He is a macho, successful billionaire and tv star. He understands and respects me. And you want to base your whole campaign on running him down telling him hes not good enough to be president. Were of i heard that before . Several minutes into the first debate with hillary i turned to my wife and say were in trouble. From that night forward i knew trump selection was a serious possibility. Scott adams looking at his campaign from a highly informed perspective so much more. He calls trump the most persuasive human being and predicted his win with 90 certain a week after other said he had a 2 chance. His latest book, when bigley, he looks at the strategies trump uses and strategies that you can use anywhere. I want to the bio, but i like listeners to get a feel for the people not just the book and ideas. Tell us about how you see your path. You mean the path to khartoum . While youre working in corporations and then go into cartooning and in some ways theres hypnotism. All give you the password version. At the age of six i saw my first peanuts cartoon book. I couldnt read yet but i said finally a reason to learn to read. I decided to become a famous cartoonist because i saw other jobs, farmer, millman, and i said those didnt look nearly as good. Around the age of 11 you become rational. Is a well theres a one charles scholz, i dont like my odds. So put that on hold and work for a big bank and a number of jobs in a number of things. When my career stalled at those places in enough time went back into the real reason at the bank, my boss come in one day there is an opening for a promotion that i was the obvious person for it. An open, and she said, the Companies Getting a lot of heat because we have node diversity and management. And until further notice we cannot promote you because your white male. They settle how long a second how long did it take us to get to this point . It is not going to be fast. I started looking for a new job inc. I am not going to let this slow me down. I got on the fast track, recognized as an up and come her and my boss called me to his office and said the local newspaper is all over us, they discovered we have no diversity in senior management. We cant promote you, dont know when that is going to change. I know what you are thinking, that was a bad day for me but you would be wrong. It turns out the day you find out that your effort and reward freeze up your schedule. Suddenly, working on side projects, somewhere, and and and and and i got a call from the same cartoonist, came across my letter in the pile. Make sure i hadnt given up. It was the only deck of the letter. And decided to raise my sites, with newspapers all over the world, and created dilbert so that was the beginning of dilbert. Was originally one panel . Guest when i sent it to magazines i sent a panel in. A lot of cartoonists, i was a trained economist, that is one third harder than my idea. Than fast forward, and it was 2015. And orange ball of fury. Got everybody jabbering, i started to know this because i have a background as a dentist. Host when was that . High school, junior high, later . Guest early 20s and i was influenced by my mother who was hypnotized to give birth to my younger sister and my mother reported, and had a painless delivery. One in 5 people could have that effect, most people can, just happens to be one of them. What the superpower is, add it to the other resources. Host being a trained hypnotist people might not make the connection, the way you saw donald trump. On top of hypnosis i studied persuasion and communicating everything, listening to designs, the ultimate work, the dilbert comic is designed with persuasion mechanics. When i saw trump i didnt know that much, i hadnt seen much of him and quickly noticed weapons grade persuasion. The type of thing that was essentially bringing the flamethrower and there were no sticks, like his hands were like this, it looks crazy and provocative, elected with this crazy random provocative behavior and that is perfect and it is so consistent. Host my analysis was on the narrative story thing, i consult organizations, this is a story. Let me talk about dilbert, some people partially because of that, how do you think of it . It has changed over the years. I used to do one a day, on paper with pencil and ink over it with a pen and take it to the post office, which worked until the post office figured out what it was. It is a common problem as soon as i now i do a big computer screen, i got a hand problem because to me to reduce my workload by 70 . The drawings are simple, the words and exchanges are reduced. For writing and drawing. In the early days, i didnt know where it was going or how it would end, almost a trademark approach, it violated and punch line. Turned out to be the beginning of the age of realism in humor. If you look at humor it has changed over the years, can we say masturbation on tv . That is funny. It was violating expectation and what qualifies as humor, it is reality. We watch Reality Tv Shows and politics, watching the news, you watch it like it is almost designed as humor me because it is so often funding and that is what we have seen. Currently i am more likely to write it first and it has evolved over time. You wrote a few. There are no blank spaces here. Host you talked about how the technology has changed. How has the culture in the strip changed as the economy goes up and down and tech goes up and down. The little world that lives inside those panels. Guest it changes with society. Im trying to mirror society. In the 90s the boss had all the power, firing people, just scrambling to keep your job. If youre an engineer like dilbert and his coworkers they have more power so they are more likely to insult the boss to his face because they are hard to replace. Now we switch to win bigly persuasion in a world where facts dont matter. In 2015, comes down the escalator to watch a couple debates or rallies and you see this, how soon, you knew this was something to write about and that might be able . Guest i cant remember exactly what did it but the two big confirmation points, one was the first debate when we got the question about his comments about women, any normal politician dies that day. It doesnt matter what you say, you cant apologize or explain it away. Host if people remember, it wasnt the big grabbing line, just you called them pigs. Guest in 2015. Instead of engaging in a like a normal human being he cuts her off and goes only Rosie Odonnell. Is base had a strong feeling about Rosie Odonnell and heres the first confirmation point. It is visual. That was the first, this is visual. He took all the energy from the question to the answer and the genius was it wasnt an answer. It wasnt even an answer to the question but you almost didnt care because it was so entertaining, your energy just moved here. If youre wondering was that just a what lucky play, i remind you you may not have seen this but there was an interview month later with chris cuomo on cnn and he asked another gotcha questions that was an impossible trip. Imagine how you would answer this, the pope has said some bad things about capitalism. What do you say to the pope. What does he do . Say bad things about capitalism while running for president of the United States . No. Say bad things about the pope when you are running for president . No. There is no way out so what does he say . I tell the pope to worry about isis taking over the vatican. What was the question . I dont know. Never got back to the question, it didnt matter. It is visual, provocative but before that, the second confirmation was the lowenergy, i felt i was out of my mind because i started writing about powers of persuasion based on the first clues but could have been wrong, maybe luck but by the time he got to lowenergy job and that was so engineered but that was deep technique that would be invisible to the audience or people who havent had the training. Lets talk about that. Let me contrast to bad attempts people use about him. One of the ones that somebody on the clinton side came up with was dangerous donald. Problem, his supporters wanted a dangerous candidate, someone who would beat isis, drain the swamp, danger was too easy to flip to a positive. They also, this is my favorite, chito jesus, remember that one, which is hilarious, it mocks him but here is the problem. People like she does and they love their jesus. But those together, i want to buy a bag, both of those have the quality there was something positive. Look at his. Lowenergy job, cant turn that into a positive. The moment you heard it you said that is an unusual thing to say in the context of politics and how often he uses something out of place. That is part of technique. He is consistently operating in this band of wrongness, not so bad that he must be executed, hes not going to get impeached, just not what a president should say. That is the first thing in this technique. It is a little bit wrong so you cant look away. Then he built in a confirmation bias later. In this case contrast, i energy campaign. Before you heard that, this jeb bush guy looks like a calm, collected executive, the perfect person you would want in an emergency. I could see that guy is president. The moment you heard lowenergy and realized it was comparison to highenergy trump you could never see him the same again. It was over. Same with his other nicknames, crooked hillary, once he laid that on her you could guarantee something would come up about the foundation or email server, doesnt matter if any of it is true. You would be drawn to that nickname and it would be reinforced. Host when you say it doesnt matter, you would be drawn, how broadly do you need that . Somewhat inclined toward him for it to work or will it work with everybody . In the context of the president ial race you will get 50 15 oh matter what. That is the part where facts dont matter. Facts dont matter toward decisions, the matter to the outcomes but if people were really looking at facts and using logic we would more have 8020, 20 not paying attention but the others got it right. You are trying to persuade maybe 2 of the public who can be persuaded, people who have not locked down a commitment over 18 months and when you have the best persuader the world may have ever seen, not everyone is buying the concept yet but trust me. Or is he says it is true, it is true. You have 18 months to work on the public, nonstop coverage you are going to get that done and that is what happens. Guest you did not just predict he would win but there was a 98 chance he would win and how early did you do that . I referenced it to nate silver but how early . It was 2015. The same time you said 2 . I am also trained in persuasion if you heard. Why did i pick 98 . Because i did the math . No. It is because nate silver said 2 and you couldnt get that connection out of your head and i tied my reputation to the most respected predictor in the field so it was easy to imagine at the same time. In other words this was new business. Host so you basked in sentences that say 98 when he says two. One of the signals for someone trained in persuasion as they can change fields without practice. You can become president without being a politician. He became a Reality Tv Show star without any practice. Steve jobs didnt go to college and a few other businesses. People who have persuasion tend to be fluent across fields in a way that other people are not. Host as i said as i watched i was both mesmerized, horrified, impressed, with what he was doing including a pending peoples worldviews. Yesterday you thought this was the way the world works, the way you thought politics worked in the way candidates worked so even if he lost his persuasion abilities would be worth a book. It wouldnt sell as well but i also believed marginally smarter campaign in the rust belt might have beaten it. What happens to your prediction of 98 then . I wouldnt be here. I am not stupid. It was the sort of things if i had been wrong i would have been embarrassed for a year and live through it but i have the ability to deal with shame. It is a practiced skill. I could disrobe im not going to, dont worry, like everybody else with a normal sense of embarrassment, it is a learned skill, you can train it. The master, you are choosing the book, in choosing the 98 in going out on a limb you are following the same techniques. Guest i consider myself a commercial grade persuader. I use it in my work and cognitive scientist who if you hear anybody say i got something wrong dont believe me. Above the cognitive scientist the master persuaders bringing a full package to personality and risktaking, something bigger than persuasion skills. Host guest that notion that he has a distortion field around them which is what they said about him, that to you is a description of the master persuader. If you hear anybody has a reality distortion field they have skills. Steve jobs had them. Guest you are thinking about it and blogging about it in writing about it. That you go back and try to figure out how did this happen . How did he become a master persuader . A lot of people dont know his past, when he was a kid, his pastor was Norman Vincent teal, he had a close connection to the most motivational bestselling author who wrote the power of positive thinking and he was the person in america who brought that idea that you could think your way to a better situation, there was something about the way you framed your existence that would make you more effective and you see that in trump. My favorite example the other day, in an interview, he said we had 3 gdp, is great but without the hurricane it would have been 4 . We will have 4 Pretty Simple general president would say we have 3 but hes already talking economy into 4 and who is watching, people who invest. Maybe 4 . I better start investing. That makes it 4 . The economy moves on psychology. There is no research shortage. He had that going. A father who was a successful business person, probably new negotiating, saw it firsthand, he wrote a book on negotiating, the art of persuasion, he knows brand, he knows marketing, has a sense of humor, these are related, he is a great communicator, quick on his feet. He is tall and has something going on up here, you cant look away. Watch how many persuaders have something going on i dont know if it is confidence but the full package of skills on top of his personality and for a long time, reading your book made me stop to think of this because i thought he was a sort of a savant. I watch him play a crowd, where did he get that but you are saying Norman Vincent peel and you are getting to become what he has become he has been working at this. If you write a book about how to negotiate it is important, court to his being. Guest Bernie Sanders has a crowd as big as trump, elicited a similar passion and loyalty, and i think two think he find effective he does deal in narrative, he does the narrative of class and history and all of that, comes across as very authentic and in contrast to most politicians, he is not polished but he doesnt seem to me to be the persuader trump is. What is your what how do you see . Guest host donna brazilhe has a better answer but bernie outperformed compared to what you expected. Did you notice, maybe you didnt, Hillary Clintons persuasion game was until he dropped out. Did you notice that . She got weapons grade over the summer. A real change that happened instantly, went from let me tell you about my boring policy and check my website, wont tell you about it. Then this he will destroy the world with nuclear weapons, fear, the ultimate persuasion, the word dark, as soon as i side and all the pundits got the memo and started using it, the dark chapter of the republican convention, i think i know who is advising her and i think he was advising bernie before. Bernie had the most awardwinning campaign ad, the one with the simon and garfunkel song america, people screaming, i got chills when i watched it it was so good. He had all the game and then suddenly she went from nothing to something and i speculated that one of the greatest persuaders of all time may have joined her team after leaving the sinking bernie ship. I had been calling him godzilla in my blogs. I didnt want to name them. I thought i saw the fingerprints on the work. And i had seen about called persuasion before most people had the person who wrote influence, the most influential book about influence. And that talked about that word dark, you would see things in a different way and i thought i see is fingerprints of finally i said probably and set it to a reporter at one point and he checked, tracked him down and asked for a comment, are you consulting for clinton and his comment was no comment. If you are not consulting do you say no comment . I dont think so and his associates confirmed that he was. Keep in mind i picked that up from one word because that word was so wellchosen and i recognized it