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Nov. 6, 2019 - Real Coffe - Scott Adams
52:53
Episode 716 Scott Adams: Early Coffee to Explain Everything in the World to You, Prepare Beverage!
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Bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum bum Hey everybody!
Yes, this is not my normal time.
If you're signing on now looking for me, you're probably thinking, hey Mark, you're probably thinking you're at the wrong time.
And that is correct, because I am on book tour for LoserThink, which is now available.
Everywhere that books are sold.
In some places that books are not even sold.
But before we get to that, let us enjoy a little thing I call the simultaneous sip.
You don't need much to participate.
No, you don't. A cup, a mug, chalice, stein, canteen, anything like that.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee. And join me now.
For the simultaneous sip, the dopamine hit of the day, the thing that makes everything better.
Go.
Ah.
So you want to hear the funniest thing about my book?
And there's somebody...
I know there's at least one person watching this who had the same situation.
You know who you are.
All right, so here's my book.
And here's the subtitle.
I'm going to show you something that somebody pointed out to me today that is kind of funny.
So the subtitle is How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America.
All right? And then somebody pointed out on the title page on the inside, it's got the title wrong, or the subtitle wrong, it says, How Untrained Brains Are Ruining the World.
So yesterday I was on Fox and Friends and one of the questions was about the president's tweeting and I was talking about his typos.
And I said that his typos really just connect people to him because they know that it's an unfiltered message.
So they feel there was no middle person washing down the message.
I don't quite get that same benefit with the book.
But I will tell you that I laughed when I saw it, because it doesn't make any difference.
It doesn't change anything. But I will tell you that the next time we print this, we'll probably fix that.
I don't know exactly when in the process that opportunity comes up.
Now, whose fault is it?
Mine, because I approve everything.
I look at everything before it goes out.
And one thing you don't think to check It's a subtitle.
Because if you see it right in one place, you just figure, well, it looks kind of the same.
And because it's the last word, it's world instead of America, the brain doesn't always read to the end of a sentence.
So if you had asked me to look at those two sentences and say, are they the same...
If I'm in a hurry and I'm looking at a lot of other stuff to see if it's right, I'd probably say, yeah, they look about the same.
Yeah, maybe world is better.
And I think there was probably some conversation about changing it to world for books that are sold outside this country.
So I think that conversation probably happened.
Anyway... I have never seen this kind of reaction to a book.
And I've published something like 45 books, if you count all the Dilbert reprint books.
So I think this is my 14th original book that's not a Dilbert book.
And I've never seen this response before.
Now, one of the things that I... What I told you about in a prior book is that when you're trying to decide if a product is good or people like it, you should always look for bodily action.
If somebody reads your book and when they're done they say, yeah, that was a good book.
I enjoyed it. Thanks for asking.
There's nothing there. Because people tend to be nice if you ask them.
But if somebody actually does something, they're moved to act because they read a book, then there's something special going on.
There's an X factor sort of thing that the smartest people in the world will tell you that they can figure out why.
People are reacting the way they're reacting, but nobody really knows.
Sometimes it's just mysterious.
But if you've noticed on my Twitter feed, people are posting unboxing photos and videos.
I've never seen that before.
At least not in the extent it's happening.
So I've literally just never seen this much response to a book.
And the early readers are delighted.
Some people are saying it's my best book.
And it might be. That's possible.
We'll let the market decide.
Hey, Bill. So I wanted to add a little value.
If you've been watching the news, you know that there's a Ukrainian phone call situation and it's starting to get complicated.
And because I'm a great simplifier, I thought I would take this big, complicated Ukrainian phone call situation and I would sort of summarize it for you.
And so here's the summary.
There's a guy who may or may not be a diplomat who said a thing, but he corrected it later, because he didn't say the thing, but we're not sure exactly what he meant.
But there was another guy who contradicts the guy who said the thing, and then there's some people who agree, but then there are other people who disagree.
Some of them are mad at the president, some are not.
There you go. I watched the opening of Tucker yesterday, Tucker Carlson, and he dismissed the whole story in a very similar way, which is, it's complicated, nobody cares.
And he just skipped the whole thing.
Because there's no way you can make an entertaining show based on A bunch of people you've never heard of disagreeing about a bunch of stuff that doesn't seem important in the first place.
So I'm going to give you a reality penetrating tip.
So you're looking at this situation and you're saying to yourself, is the president going down because of this?
Here's a good rule of thumb.
If the TV lawyers...
Can't even agree, looking at the same information, because all these stories, people basically have access to the same data.
So looking at the same thing.
If you see TV lawyers, and lots of them say, I don't even see a crime.
But other lawyers, who are equally qualified, are saying, oh yeah, this is totally a crime.
Here's the statute, here's what happened.
Total crime. And then other lawyers, also in public, also highly qualified, are looking at exactly the same stuff, and they're saying, I don't even know what you're talking about.
There's no crime here at all.
Even if everything that is reported to have happened, the worst case, let's say you took the word of all the people who were saying the most damaging, bombshell-y things, if all of it were true, there are still lawyers who say, uh... But where's the crime?
Now, the trap is to say to yourself which one is right.
Is one side right?
Is one side wrong?
That's kind of a trap because people tend to be advocates, right?
So people are a little shading their opinion toward their side in many cases.
One exception might be Dershowitz's.
Alan Dershowitz might be, I've said this a billion times, he seems to be the one TV lawyer, if I can reduce his gigantic career to just what we're watching at the moment.
He seems to be the only one who's even capable.
of taking one side or the other based on where the facts lead.
It's kinda rare.
So he doesn't seem to think there's a crime, or at least that's what somebody said.
I haven't seen him say it live, so I'll make that a tentative conclusion.
But here's the thing. Here's the rule.
Nobody goes to jail when lawyers can't even agree if a crime has been committed.
I don't think you'll ever see a situation In which the fact that a crime had been committed or not is so ambiguous and open to interpretation that even the person who committed it couldn't have known it was a crime.
Which is different from saying, is it impeachable?
Because that's a different standard.
And different from saying, was it a good idea?
Those are all different standards.
But for those people who are saying, but the president's going down because it's obvious the facts have shown there's crime, I would say the odds of that leading to anything like prosecution are close to zero.
As long as there are legitimate lawyers who can say, I'm looking at the same stuff you are, and I can't even tell it's a crime.
Now remember, this is different, and this may be confusing you, but this is different from people who are, say, in a jury, or potential jurists, who would say, well, I'm looking at the argument from the defense and the argument from the prosecution, and I've decided that based on the facts...
That this person's guilty.
In those cases, when it gets to a jury, I believe in most cases, both the lawyer for the prosecution and the defense would agree that a potential crime is on the table.
And one says, no, those facts are not true, and the other says the facts are true.
But they're not really disagreeing On the basic idea of if the person did these facts that are alleged, would it be a crime?
Both defense and prosecution would probably agree, and I would imagine in most cases, that there's a crime if the person did those things.
But if you're arguing about whether a crime even exists, Nobody's going to jail.
That's my take on it.
Alright, enough about that. Let's talk about Emma Watson, who came up with a humorous new name for being single.
She calls it self-partnering.
Now, often I would make a joke when there's such a good setup.
I would be exactly the kind of person who might say, ha ha ha.
Sorry. I might say, Let's say something humorous about that.
But it's such a good setup that I'm just going to leave it to you.
It's all yours. You can take that one.
All right. Remember when we first saw the bombshell that there was an ABC News host, I guess, who said on a hot mic that ABC had the story or she had the story of Epstein and ABC management wouldn't publish it?
Do you remember what I said would be their response?
Nailed it. So I said the response from ABC would be that the reporting did not meet their standard of confirmed, usually they like two sources for something that would be so volatile.
And it looks like this one is actually, this one's a little more gray than I think most people are taking it.
Because the news organizations do have a standard, especially for something that's, you know, so volatile and controversial and, you know, somebody could go to jail for it.
They like to have two sources.
And I think, I believe it's been confirmed that they, at least for much of it, they didn't have two sources.
So their explanation of why they dropped it, plus the fact that they've allowed full reporting on it, And apparently there's no specific order to stop the investigation.
They just thought it never reached the level where they could publish it.
Now, do you believe that?
People are saying in the comments already, lame excuse.
Didn't they have plenty?
I don't know. I don't know.
I think that it's possible they didn't have enough.
But we do live in a world in which it seems that the news is often based on far less.
But it's not always a sexual abuse allegation.
So, since Epstein was not running for president, I think they were treating him like a citizen, not a politician.
And maybe they needed two sources.
Now, I'm not forgiving ABC. If anybody wants to keep their opinion that they did have enough information and they just killed it for whatever personal or monetary reasons, that's a reasonable...
I think that would be a reasonable speculation.
But I'm just pointing out that their explanation...
It was exactly what I imagined it would be, because it's pretty good if you're going to defend yourself.
It's a pretty good defense.
I don't think we'll ever know exactly what they were thinking.
And I've written a book that suggests we should not imagine we know what is in other people's minds.
And there's certainly some of that happening right now.
All right. The cartels who murdered the Mormon families...
This story, you kind of wish it were cleaner, but because the families that got murdered were part of a larger group that decades ago left the United States so they could practice polygamy, and there's rumors that some of them still do.
That's somehow seeping into the story as if that somehow matters to the fact that they were murdered and their children were burned in car seats.
It just doesn't seem relevant to the story.
I mean, it's interesting.
It's very interesting.
But tying it to the story is just so wrong that it's like colossally wrong.
Anyway, you're seeing that done.
But the question is, did the cartel make a mistaken identity?
Did the cartel think they were killing a rival gang?
Apparently, this cult has had so much trouble with the cartels that they had security against them and threats already, and there was a history.
So given that there was a history of this group battling with the cartel, for I think water resources was part of it, I really doubt the mistaken identity explanation.
I think it's still possible.
I don't think it can be ruled out.
But if I had to place a bet, I'd say 75% to 80% likely that they knew exactly what they were doing and they did it anyway.
Now, we haven't heard from the President of Mexico, I don't believe.
I don't think I've seen any kind of a statement from the President of Mexico responding to President Trump's offer of military help.
And I've heard people say, on Twitter mostly, people saying, hey, you can't bomb away a problem like that.
The cartels will still exist, etc.
And To which I say, it didn't work for ISIS. And then other people are saying, well, they're probably going to gather children around them so that we're afraid to bomb them.
And I was pointing out that one of the special features of the mop-up and the killing of ISIS is that we didn't have any press.
When you don't have any press to report what's happening, You can bomb the first house, and maybe there's some children killed, and nobody's happy about that.
But it is war.
In war, there are going to be innocent people killed.
But what happens if they bring their human shields around them, and they get bombed anyway?
The next time, do they need to bring the human shields?
Because once you've demonstrated you're going to bomb them anyway, and nobody's going to know the difference?
It just doesn't help you.
There's no point in doing it a second time if you can't get your message out.
Low energy.
All right, let's get rid of this troll.
All right.
Buck. So, it seems to be the secret to this sort of war with terrorists, and I think the cartel are terrorists at this point.
The secret seems to be to not let the press watch what you have to do.
Again, I'm not suggesting it's a good idea that children die in collateral situations.
Nobody likes that, but sometimes there are adult decisions that are very unpleasant.
All right. So apparently Senator Warren has added some details to her plan that would cost $52 trillion over the next decade, including $20 trillion in new spending with an array of taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
And I'm thinking to myself, have they just totally given up?
Have the Democrats just literally given up?
Because that doesn't even seem like a good try, does it?
Somebody says longest suicide note in history.
I don't see how that's trying.
And so I guess Joe Biden went after Warren in a speech.
Didn't name her by name, but people are talking about The impracticality of some of the plans.
It feels like she's just self-destructing with that stuff.
It just seems so unelectable it's hard to believe.
All right. Here's a new framing for the wall between the US and Mexico.
And I've said this before, but because of the events in the news, it's worth re-upping.
If you're building a wall between the great people in the United States and the awesome citizens of Mexico, that's hard to defend.
Because if you live in any of the states where you have lots of contact with people who came up through Mexico, legally or illegally, one of the things that almost everybody would agree on is, hey, good people.
Mexican people, people coming from south of the border, just the regular citizens are excellent people, excellent character, hard workers, just want to be Americans.
And while I think countries have to have borders and border control and you have to, citizens have to decide who comes in and who doesn't, we don't have that situation.
But independent of, you know, the things you have to do to protect your borders, it's just a fact that The Mexicans and people from Central America are more often than not just grey people.
And so when you think about building a wall between your grey people and their grey people, it just doesn't seem as compelling as it should be to get to where people want to get it, which is a solid border security.
But realistically speaking, the cartels own the border region.
So it's not really a wall between the United States and Mexico.
It's a wall between the United States and the cartels, who are clearly terrorists.
Do you want a wall between you and the cartel?
Which is the better sale?
Hey, I'd like to build a wall between you and Jose.
By the way, Jose is awesome.
If Jose were on this side of the wall, he'd be your best worker.
But let's build a wall and keep Jose away from us.
Well, what kind of argument is that?
We like Jose. Jose is awesome.
Jose, come on over here. We like you.
All right, come over legally, but we like you.
But if you say build a wall between the United States and the cartel that just machine gunned, well, I don't know if it was machine gunned, but they just shot up a Mormon family and burned the children in their car seats, do you want that wall?
Yeah, I think we want that wall.
Let's get that wall. All right.
Here's a... Completely different thought.
I'm just going to be all over the place today.
Have you ever had a compliment that changed your life?
Has that ever happened to you?
Have you ever had a compliment that just stayed in your mind for decades?
Every now and then, a simple compliment will just change somebody's life completely.
And I was searching through my...
My memory of compliments.
Now, when you're a public figure and you produce products for the public, you get complimented and insulted at a very high volume.
So the number of compliments I've received in my career is a zillion times what ordinary people do because they're not in the public eye.
But also the criticisms are way more I was thinking through my past, I was thinking, you know, there are some compliments that just stay with me forever, but most of them don't.
Most of them I appreciate at the time, but they don't have any lasting quality.
And I saw in your comments, so many of you said that yes, there were compliments that changed your life.
I was thinking of a few of them in my case.
And I'm not even sure this is a compliment.
I'll tell you the one story.
When I first got an offer to be a syndicated cartoonist, I had been told by another syndication that had rejected me at the time that maybe I could be the writer, but I could work with somebody who knew how to draw.
So one of the cartoon syndicates said basically, you're not really an artist.
Maybe you should find somebody else to do the drawing for you.
Now imagine that as you're trying to get your career started as a cartoonist and one of the top three people in the planet who gets to decide who is going to be a cartoonist They're the ones who make the deals with cartoonists and then sell them to the newspapers.
One of the three of them told me it wasn't a question of whether I was a good enough cartoonist to be in newspapers, but that I wasn't even a cartoonist.
So that's the kind of connection I got.
But later I got a phone call from the woman who was an editor for United Media at the time, and that company got absorbed by my current syndication company, or at least the Dilber product did.
And so she offered me a contract to be a cartoonist soon after.
I'd gotten this other advice that maybe I should find somebody to do the drawing for me.
And when she offered it, I said, well, you know, long story short, I said yes.
But then I said, do you think I should get a real artist to draw it for me and try to work as a team?
And this was Sarah Gillespie is her name.
And she said, no, your drawing's fine, just the way it is.
And it was sort of this Wizard of Oz scarecrow moment.
You know the Wizard of Oz story?
The Wizard of Oz simply tells people that they're brave and then they act that way.
Tells them that they're smart and then they act smart.
That's what happened. She simply told me I was qualified.
And almost immediately, the quality of my drawing improved 500%.
From the moment she told me I was qualified, I became qualified.
She actually turned me from unqualified to qualified by telling me I was.
Think about that. Think about the power of that.
Completely made my career.
It's the reason you're here.
It's the reason I get to write books.
It was one sentence in my life that changed the entire trajectory of my life.
And I was thinking about, most of you know, I got to visit the president in the Oval Office last year.
And we had a little chat about a variety of things.
I don't talk about the details.
None of it was state secrets or anything.
It was a private conversation.
And there was one point in which he paid me a compliment.
And I'm not even going to tell you what it is, because that's not the point.
But I think I'll always remember that compliment because of who said it and where I was when it happened.
So I think of that one all the time, and I realize it's having a bigger effect on me, like it's going to last the ages.
And so I would remind all of you that giving a compliment is absolutely free.
It doesn't cost you anything.
You can give a compliment And you've lost nothing.
In fact, you've gained something.
Because when you compliment people, they like you better.
But here's the big part.
Sometimes when you compliment people, just in the ordinary course of your life, you're not trying to change the world.
You're just giving an honest compliment.
If you give an honest compliment to somebody, sometimes they change the world.
And the compliment could be a big part of that.
So don't be stingy with compliments.
Part of one of my systems for a good life is that when I feel a compliment, I try to release it.
Because sometimes you'll have a positive thought in your head about somebody, but you just keep it there.
It's all wasted. If you keep those good thoughts in your head, it's just wasted.
So if you have a compliment and it's sincere, I'm not a big fan of the insincere compliments, but if it's sincere, let it go.
It could change the world.
It could change the world.
All right. A friend of mine, who is a big anti-Trumper, sent me an article from a British publication, and in it, a Brit was explaining why the British dislike President Trump.
Now, I don't know that anybody needs to explain it, because he has a polarizing personality, and the details don't matter too much.
We know that some people like him a lot, and we know that some people don't.
But it was the weirdest explanation.
And here is the biggest part of the explanation for why the Brits don't like Trump.
This is going to make you shake your head, because you will not have seen this coming.
His biggest objection that the British don't like Trump is that Trump doesn't have a sense of humor.
and that the Brits sort of require that as, let's say, a national personality, that they have a good preference for witty people who have a sense of humor, such as Obama.
Right?
Now, this article I read one day after, I think I was saying that President Trump is the funniest president of all time And that he uses his humor consistently all the time to great effect.
He uses it in his tweets, he uses it in his rallies especially.
He doesn't use it as much when he's doing a press conference or talking to the press.
That's a little more serious.
But I've never seen a president with a better sense of humor.
Reagan was pretty funny.
So, isn't that just like a jaw-dropping head shaker?
That the problem...
Now, this is just one author interpreting what he thinks other people are thinking.
But the amazingness that anybody could observe this president and think he doesn't have a sense of humor...
It's just mind boggling.
It's mind boggling.
So that's a perfect example of two movies on one screen.
We're watching exactly the same president.
And I'm defining him as the best stand-up comedian of our time, who's not Chappelle, I guess.
You know, I think Bill Burr and Chappelle are funnier.
But he's one, you know, if you look at his reach and how often he does it and how big his crowds are, you can make an argument he's the funniest stand-up comedian in the world right now.
So that was interesting to me.
Yesterday, a thing happened that I can't explain, and maybe some of you can.
So when you launch a book, one of the things you do, of course, is you're watching the bestseller ranks, and the easiest one to check is Amazon.
So from the moment I started doing publicity for the book, I'm in New York right now doing the publicity tour, from the moment I started, I would start watching the rank.
Now, I would normally expect one of my books to On the day it comes out, or at least the week it comes out, to fairly quickly get into the top 100, which is pretty good.
If you get into the top 100, you're a solidly profitable book.
And then if you're in the top 100, sometimes you can dip down into the 20s or something for a little while, and that would be a real good showing.
Here's the interesting part.
Sometime yesterday, Amazon froze my rank at, I think, 318.
And for the entire day yesterday, the rank never changed.
It was dialed in at 318.
Now my first thought was, oh my god, we ran out of books.
You know, maybe they sold their supply.
And then they just froze it until they could resupply and then things would start moving again.
But my publisher confirmed that they had provided them so many books that there wasn't really a chance that they'd sold them all in a day.
There wasn't much chance of that.
So, I'm left to speculate why the rank would not have moved for a full day.
Now, if you've never looked at book rankings, most of you probably don't pay attention to that.
They normally change at least every hour, and often, more often.
So, all of the books are sort of moving all the time.
It would be unusual for you to check a book rank and then come back the next day and it's the same rank, unless it's in the top 10.
If it's in the top 10, it might stay at the same rank for a while.
But if you're number 318, the difference between 317 and 319 is so slim that there isn't the slightest chance That it actually was at the same ranking all day long.
So there's no chance it could have happened naturally.
So what do you think it was?
I have a speculation.
Here's my speculation.
I believe that the Amazon...
Let's say the algorithms...
Are looking for suspicious behavior.
And they should. So if Amazon has done a good job of designing their system, it should be checking for any activity in the system that's unusual.
Because if it finds something unusual, it could be that somebody's gaming the system to try to improve their author rank or the book's rank.
So I think what happened, I'm not positive of this, But based on the extraordinary sort of response I'm seeing to the book, even before people read it, people were excited about it and should be.
It might be my best book.
I think it's possible that Amazon flagged it just automatically without human intervention as selling so many books that it couldn't have been normal behavior.
In other words, they have a sense of how many books I sell, because many of my books have been on Amazon.
So if it suddenly was selling far more than what would be normal for me as an author, I would think if it were a well-designed system...
Certainly a bank would do this.
I have banking experience, and I know that a bank would freeze anything temporarily that looked like it was out of place until humans looked into it.
So I think what might have happened is we sold so many books that they froze it to see what was going on.
And then this morning it was unfrozen.
And it immediately dropped into 100-something.
I think it was around 200 when I looked at it, which is typical for this part of the process.
So that's my best guess.
But it's sad that we're in a time where I know some of you immediately went to Jeff Bezos and said, hmm, might be political.
But it's not even a political book.
You know, I talk about some political topics, but I talk about the left and the right.
It's not really taking sides.
Now, I got most of the reviews on Amazon are excellent, but one of them, which of course is not a verified buyer, so one of them who is not a verified buyer, surprise! In other words, he didn't buy his book from Amazon, but he was leaving a bad comment on Amazon.
He appeared to not have read the book because his criticism of it said Scott claims A, but in fact the book doesn't do that.
So his main complaint about the book is based on something he says I've claimed that isn't anywhere in the book.
So... That's the kind of review I'm getting, and of course that's purely personal or political.
Somebody's just trying to reduce my influence by the bad review.
So that's the sort of thing authors have to deal with.
Thank you, Carol, who just ordered my book.
Yeah, the way it works now is somebody saying in the comment that if you say anything positive about anything that Trump does, you're a crazy Kool-Aid-drinking cultist fanatic.
So I guess that's most of us.
Somebody says, I stopped buying books that are above 4.5 stars.
That's actually an interesting comment.
Yeah, if your book is not important enough to attract bad actors...
You probably don't even need to read it.
So if there's anything that's like five stars across the board, it only means that people don't care about it.
Because if people cared, the bad actors and the trolls would come in and start leaving bad reviews.
I've never thought about that rule, but maybe it's a good one.
Yeah, you know, I don't follow the local politics.
Somebody's asking about Virginia, the Virginia election.
And I can't get interested in other states.
Yeah, somebody's saying, is it Emre?
How do you pronounce your name?
Emre? If Origin of Species was published today, somebody would say, too complicated, too long.
Somebody says, I relish giving a book called Loser Think to all my friends for Christmas.
Well, you know, that's a good point.
So books are often gift items.
And how much are you going to enjoy giving a book called Loser Think To people in your family and acting like it's a, and acting like, you know, keep a completely straight face and say, here's some literature I think you'd enjoy.
Here's your gift. It's sort of an insult at the same time.
That's sort of a perfect gift for a family member.
It's a perfect gift for a sibling.
Your sibling can't tell if it's an insult or a nice gift.
that's sort of ideal this is what I've needed to break through Angela says So good luck. Somebody says, I don't love the title as much as Win Bigly.
It's hard to top Win Bigly.
That was a pretty good title too.
But I think Loser Think is already catching on because you see people using it on Twitter already.
So people ask me why on my books I do funny, what do you call these, the blurbs?
So normally when you write a book you get other famous people to say good things about your book and then you put it on your book.
But once you become an author, you learn how that process works, and then you sort of lose faith in it.
So the reason I don't ask other people to put blurbs in my book is partly practical because if you do, every one of them will ask you to put a blurb on their next book.
And then suddenly all you're doing is writing blurbs for other people because you asked them and they can ask you.
So I've got that going on.
But also, it tends to be an insider kind of thing.
People ask the author that they know, and then the author that you know isn't going to give you a bad blurb.
So the blurbs are persuasive, but I found them a little bit sketchier than I wanted to be associated with, because I know I can get people to say good things about the book without reading it.
I know I can do that because it would be easy.
I just go to people I know, say, hey, would you like to put a blurb on my book?
Oh, you won. It'd be easy.
So I just don't do that.
I opt out of that process.
When does Greg Gottfeld tape his show?
Well, the Greg Gottfeld show tapes on Friday afternoons.
So I'll be part of that.
I talked to him yesterday for his digital piece, Greg Gutfeld and One Smart Person.
So we did that yesterday.
I think it'll probably be live in a day or so.
Will I go in the Five?
I don't know that the Five takes guests.
The answer is no. But I don't know that the Five ever takes guests, with the exception of other employees of Fox News, who sometimes will join if they have a book or something.
But I don't think they take guests.
So that's not really the right venue.
I'm trying...
I think I'm scheduled for Dana Perino's show tomorrow, but I always hesitate to say in advance for any news-related shows because they change so often.
So, you know, just yesterday I had two major media hits that just got rescheduled sort of at the last minute, and that's ordinary.
So I tend not to make a big deal too far in advance because I can't guarantee that there won't be big news that bumps me off.
All right. Wow, somebody has a collection of my books all the way back to How to Shave a Whale.
It's actually called Shave the Whales, but I'm impressed that you have that book.
ABC. I don't have any ABC hits.
I've got a CBS radio this morning.
Joe Rogan. That's up to Joe Rogan.
I'm not scheduled for the show.
And I don't know that I fall into the category...
That would be a repeat guest.
I think Joe Rogan brings on repeat guests when they're either more famous or they're comedians or people he knows.
But I'm not sure I'm the ideal person to have on twice.
I'm not sure what his policy is on that, but I think some people would say, we already saw that one.
We saw the one with Scott Adams.
We don't need to see another.
So it could be, first of all, I don't know if he's even aware that I have a book or that I'd be available.
He's got stuff to do.
He's a busy guy. So I do not presume that he would be interested to have me on the show.
It may not be that kind of show that has repeat guests of the type that just have a new book out.
He's had Michael Mellis on three times.
Well, I think what I'm saying is that there are guests who are repeats, but it probably has more to do with his connection to them.
All right. Somebody says they have my God's Debris book.
Pete, you just joined.
All right, I have to say again, because Pete Westfold, I don't know if I'm pronouncing your name right, Westfold, is on.
Pete, look at this.
Here's my new book. You're going to appreciate this.
Here's the title, subtitle, How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America.
Except, on the title page...
The subtitle is different.
It says, How Untrained Brains Are Ruining the World Instead of America.
So, Pete, that's just for you.
You know why. Because you had a similar problem with the typo in your book title recently.
So, I was saving that for you.
All right. No, Pete is not my editor.
He's an author who has his own book, which had a similar but different kind of title issue.
Wow, Alexei, thanks for ordering all those books.
I appreciate that. Dr.
Drew I talked to yesterday on his radio show, and I think I'm scheduled for Adam Carolla when I do an L.A. I'll have to confirm that.
But I think Adam Carolla is on the list.
Somebody says, my title page is not wrong.
It says America. Are you serious?
Do you have a physical hardcover book that says America instead of world?
If you do, you need to send me a picture of that.
Because that would be really interesting.
It would make this one a collector's item.
So maybe that's true.
Are your expenses paid?
Well, so the publishers pay a certain amount for the book tour, but if they happen to have an author...
Who has become accustomed to, let's say, a higher level of travel, then I'm paying my own way for the hotel because it's a high-end hotel.
But the publisher does typically pay for the travel and they pay for the hotel and a stipend for the meals.
I just prefer to travel in a little higher style than they're willing to pay.
Nick Gillespie should interview you.
I always love talking to Nick.
Maybe that could happen.
The Kindle version says America in both places.
As does the audiobook.
The audiobook had that typo as well, and I corrected that when I was doing the audio recording, but I never caught this one.
And by the way... I'll say again, the not catching it on the subtitle page is my error, because they do show it to me.
They show it to me and they say, is this right?
And I say, yes, it's right.
So, you know, I missed it.
How many copies of Win Bigly did I end up selling?
Well, that's always confidential information, but it sold very well.
What about the Tim Ferriss podcast?
I would love to do a Tim Ferriss podcast.
I did one in 2016 or so, and Tim's always a great interview.
But again, I don't know that his podcast really makes sense to have repeat personalities on it, so that would be up to him.
Who would you most like to be on with that you haven't?
Oh, I love that question.
Who would be the best person that I haven't been on with?
Rush Limbaugh. So we did send the book to Rush Limbaugh.
Now, I know Rush is a controversial figure.
People on the left hate him.
People on the right, more often than not, think he's awesome.
But I'll tell you, he's one of the most talented people in the whole entertainment business by far.
He can fill up time with interesting content like nobody else, really.
Given that he's free-forming it most of the time, I don't think there's – has there ever been anybody as good as him at being coherent and interesting for that many hours, basically just working off notes.
It's remarkable.
Yeah, he's not the only one who can do that, but maybe the best.
Maybe the best. He's also funny and insightful.
So he's read my work a few times on his show, blog posts and stuff.
So I know he's aware of me, but I've not been on that show.
And I think he would be interesting.
Howard Stern. You know, honestly, I don't think I'd want to do the Howard Stern show.
Sorry. I think I would probably turn that one down.
You know, I'm a fan.
I like Howard Stern.
I like...
I mean, he's, again, super talented for the thing that he does.
But, you know, his show requires, in order to be interesting, creating, let's say, creating stories that are the odd and embarrassing ones.
So it wouldn't be hard for that to go wrong.
Ben Shapiro I will be talking to.
Candace Owens. I need to follow up on Candace Owens because I have been invited to be on that show but not scheduled.
And I'm going to make a note because I need to follow up on that.
Thank you for reminding me.
How about Morning Joe?
I haven't They have not...
I think they've been approached because I was on Morning Joe before.
Interestingly, when I did my last book tour, so I was on Morning Joe on a day that Joe was not on the show.
So I don't know how many days Morning Joe runs without Joe on the show, but I hit the one.
So I haven't actually been there when Joe is there.
Um... Alright.
I think...
I haven't heard back from Tulsi Gabbard's campaign, so I don't know if we can schedule that or not.
Alright. That's enough for now.
Yes, I think I'm doing...
I'm scheduled already for Dave Rubin.
That will be a good one.
Always is. Dave's always amazing.
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