>> you can watch this and other programs online booktv.org. >> an evening. welcome to an evening how many of you are at one of our events for the first time. welcome. glad to hear. we have your e-mail address.

in touch once or twice a week. hopefully you'll 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 first-time novelist talking with us. that takes place at the santa monica public library and it is free.

there's 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 o'reilly 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. he's the author of several bestsellers. he's 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 free-form. 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 he's 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 you're working in corporations and then go into cartooning and in some ways there's hypnotism. >> all give you the password version. at the age of six i saw my first peanuts cartoon book.

i couldn't 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 didn't look nearly as good. around the age of 11 you become rational. is a well there's a one charles scholz, i don't 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 can't promote you, don't 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 hadn't 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 didn't know that much, i hadn't 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 didn't 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. i'm trying to mirror society. in the 90s the boss had all the power, firing people, just scrambling to keep your job. if you're 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 don't 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 can't 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 doesn't matter what you say, you can't apologize or explain it away. >> host: if people remember, it wasn't 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 o'donnell.

is base had a strong feeling about rosie o'donnell and here's 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 wasn't an answer. it wasn't even an answer to the question but you almost didn't care because it was so entertaining, your energy just moved here. if you're 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 don't know. never got back to the question, it didn't matter. it is visual, provocative but before that, the second confirmation was the low-energy, 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 low-energy job and that was so engineered but that was deep technique that would be invisible to the audience or people who haven't had the training.

let's 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.

low-energy job, can't 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, he's 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 can't 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 low-energy and realized it was comparison to high-energy 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, doesn't matter if any of it is true. you would be drawn to that nickname and it would be reinforced. >> host: when you say it doesn't 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 presidential race you will get 50/15 oh matter what. that is the part where facts don't matter. facts don't matter toward decisions, the matter to the outcomes but if people were really looking at facts and using logic we would more have 80-20, 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 couldn't 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 didn't 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 people's 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 wouldn't 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 wouldn't 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 -- i'm not going to, don't 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 don't believe me. above the cognitive scientist the master persuaders bringing

a full package to personality and risk-taking, 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 don't know his past, when he was a kid, his pastor was norman vincent teal, he had a close connection to the most motivational best-selling 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 he's 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 can't look away. watch how many persuaders have something going on -- i don't 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 doesn't 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 didn't, hillary clinton's 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, won't 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

award-winning 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 didn't 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 don't think so and his associates confirmed that he was. keep in mind i picked that up from one word because that word was so well-chosen and i recognized it from his writing. i had a copy of his book and i caught it. but i think people who had the same training i had could have also recognized that so it wasn't magic. it was the result of training. some of the things i bought in bernie, with or without, the sort of raw authentic

passionate, does that fall into how does that fall into persuasion? >> working against him he didn't have a good physical, the visual wasn't good. a little crazier or more orange. the biggest secret was promising people free money for nothing and you don't have to be the best persuader in the world. >> going to get young people out and get some energy. he had a good advisor. >> host: it seems trump's most successful moves are executive orders and choosing a supreme court justice neither of which

call for much persuasion. who is he persuading these days besides is based. >> you didn't get to do those things until he persuading enough people to become president. >> but who is he persuading now, how's it working for him now? >> now it is a different bag of persuasion. he has to keep persuading his base, even republican senators who hate him and can't stop talking about what a bad person he is, but are you going to vote for the things he wants, we are going to vote for them so he has the entire republican side. >> because of the base, as i they are passionate and they are scared. >> if we go by point by point level is he persuading isis? compare obama's approach which was we are going to leave and x

days which just persuades isis to stay around, we just wait them out, trump came in and said bed persuasion, we are here forever and won't going to just chase you, we are going to destroy when we are seeing the first surrenders, the fight to the death, we don't know if that is a trend yet but it is what we are seeing at isis is largely wiped out. part of the persuasion was the way he treated the military. you know how to do this, i don't, figure it out and i expect that the more row of the military and the fight over there is persuasion. isis is a successful persuasion, the economy, he has talked up. obama is responsible for 75% of the good times. i give him a solid grade. he was a master persuader, the

right person in the right time. 2009 when things were going to hell you don't want the orange haired guy, you want the lawyer who says it is going to be okay, i looked into it, he gets credit for the strong days but clearly there is a trump bump in the economy that has everything to do with his persuasion so now you have isis and the economy, those are directly and pretty demonstrably true, persuasion is a part of that. now he is in china. china loves them. he is a rock star over there. he clearly is persuading and it works both ways, she is persuading him, they have a lovely dance just in the time this alliance is crucial, a feeling it for the first time, alive in a month, that is never been the case before.

that does make a difference. so i would say for the first time a chance something could happen in north korea, china's persuasion moving in the right direction with the economy so that is looking good. what other topics you got? >> host: you could have health care or tax cuts. >> guest: healthcare, he stood back and let congress take the lead, he didn't persuade, not really, put any effort into it. didn't care what it was, bring something to my desk. where is my bill? republicans, i am the guy who signs it. i can do my part. they brought something to sign

and didn't. the only way to get the health care bill is the way he played it which is let the republicans go first, fail hard, try again, fail hard, realize they have no hope, scare the pants off the left because they watch what republicans have in mind, then what does he do? when they fail and these guys are scared he says maybe i should talk to the democrats. if you say to your self if he hasn't gotten healthcare done in the time you hoped it would be done, sure enough but is there a deadline? he is letting obamacare fail, that is part of the persuasion, taking it to the end. the 19 by sabotaging it. >> guest: making things worse until there is desperation and people are ready to say the only way this works is if you meet in the middle and you have never been able to do that. of the 19 are you suggesting,

can't predict how long this will play out. if it looked like healthcare was the most important issue in democrats won this week it used to be an anchor which is now an asset, if it plays out in 2018, and a good republican midterm, in some sense two ways to win, i have a feeling, his brand survives. >> he comes out ahead. the surprise would be if democrats had dubbed as the republicans lost the majority in one of the places. you have a better chance of negotiating something in the middle. the worst case is the

republican majority shoving down the throats of the left and the rest of the country. no one can be comfortable with. >> host: let me get back to the foundation of this. humans think they are rational and understand their reality. they are wrong on both counts and it is my sense they understand the reality, foundation for everything else. >> guest: the common view is upside down. humans are rational creatures, use reason, 10% of the time we get a little crazy, it turns

around and we are irrational 90% of the time and don't know it because we are rationalizing after-the-fact. 10%, the ridiculous things like balancing the checkbook or searching for the best place online is rational. until you understand the word irrational nothing would make sense. >> host: can't believe it will work. >> guest: before there was scientific backing for it. the hypnotist says act like it is true, there are books like persuasion and tons of science showing humans don't use rational thought and you can see it your self, if half the country is going to go the way they go no matter who runs how much facts and logic, if you go

to the grocery store and people with five religions shopping next to you, these are completely different realities. they can all procreate. it turns out the evolution never cared if you actually understood reality. it cared if you could make more of your self and that was a very low bar. >> host: if you read something of a cognitive scientist a revolutionary psychologist that differs from what i think, trust them. are there any in particular that you recommend? if something else in this realm besides "win bigly: persuasion in a world where facts don't matter"? >> guest: if you google persuasion, and a whole bunch

of persuasion. >> host: a couple things we may have mentioned or not, falling from the fact, one of the key things, confirmation bias. an example. >> guest: a human tendency to think all evidence supports your preconceived notion. we are watching the russia stuff. there is hillary stuff and trump stuff depending on which side you are on, all the stuff on the other side is definitely true and all the stuff about your candidate, that is crazy. has nothing to do with the facts, we really don't have access to the facts but -- >> host: lest anyone think this is happening at politics in

high school and we don't. >> once you realize this is the exception, talk about that in cognitive dissonance, the operating system for the human mind, these are not the flaws in the operating system. this is normal. cognitive dissonance. and the trump experience, refers to the fact that if something violates your sense of what is true about your self, instantly rewrite the movie in your head to reinterpret it, sometimes ridiculously so until it is something other people look at and say you lost it, you are

now crazy. the person who is in it thinks it is perfectly rational and looks crazy on the outside. if that sounds like a terrible thing to happen to other people you are missing the point. >> host: an example not in the campaign. >> guest: a cigarette smoker, why don't you quit smoking? people don't like to think of themselves as having the willpower or as not being aware of the science that is going to kill you so you get crazy answers like i knew somebody who smoked three packs a day and 15 barbecues and live to 110. so what? what does that have to do with

you? got it. >> host: you mentioned visual persuasion. if you can say something which makes something appearance someone's mind, and a visual piece of persuasion is worth 1000 words. >> guest: if you rank different types of persuasion, fear is the top. if you don't take care of fear you can't do anything else. the visual persuasion is powerful, and visual creatures, the visual part of your mind just overrules the other parts. imagine if candidate trump did not have this visual persuasion describing border security, he might have said we have border security and use a variety of names, depends on the terrain. he said we are building a wall.

we all see a wall and as soon as he says that we are all presenting the wall. >> host: big beautiful wall. >> guest: more technique, i'm going to make mexico pay for it. that narrow band of wrongness. that is wrong, that can't be right, but maybe. it is wrong but maybe. so you obsess on it and while you are thinking about the question. >> host: who is going to pay for the wall. >> guest: arguing about who pays for you have somewhat accepted there is going to be some kind of wall. how are we paying for it? you see him use that technique a lot, making you think past the sale to the technique. >> host: in the book at the top these things are laid out like this. the campaign, get excited or

whatever you want. how you can use these techniques. >> guest: try to make it useful in your own life. >> host: you site since of humor as one of his talents and yet i have heard a number of people say i don't think i have ever seen him laugh. what is going on? >> guest: i heard someone say that and immediately send links of him laughing but it is rare. >> host: consider how much we see him on screen. >> guest: nobody has that fine a sense of humor and also doesn't laugh, very unusual. >> host: the sense of humor is things like the rosie o'donnell line, came quicker. >> guest: one thing we understand about a sense of humor, i have a little advantage because i grew up in upstate new york and there is a

regional sense of humor, the things new yorkers say and do would be appalling to californians. having seen both worlds, my favorite example was the john mccain joke, i prefer people who don't get caught. all due respect, people in the military and veterans, a well-known joke, simply reminding the common joke, what makes that funny for people who laugh, you don't laugh in front of other people. what makes it funny is the wrongness of it. they are not laughing at john mccain or veterans, they are laughing at how completely the wrong was to say you knew it was wrong when he said it, that is why it was funny.

i don't count that on the persuasion front. it was based on a blind spot because new york is funnier. >> host: one thing i find interesting, he talks about at the very up front, this is my politics and another interesting one is the other one, my shoulders. i found that very interesting. let me ask about those filters. >> guest: when you learn persuasion, this is one of the stronger effects. as soon as you join the team you vote for the team and start confirmation bias, making you think everything is brilliant. i try to keep myself aligned

from an identifiable team to try to -- objectivity. i'm not blind to the fact that i'm a human being, and at least try to be objective. >> host: doesn't seem to me voting is on your team, when it came down to it, that day, you made a choice but -- >> guest: you don't want your choice to do poorly. you made your decision ahead of time. >> host: you are saying the act of voting is not it. kind of routing -- >> guest: very few made up their minds. this happened long before that, you are reinforcing, months and

months. >> host: everyone. >> guest: if nobody else voted i would vote. the value of your vote would go way up. interesting specific, trump won 49-29 among those who didn't like either candidate. that is a huge victory. what does that have to do with persuasion? >> guest: the first president whose popularity when they did the polls, whose approval may forever stay in the toilet while people's assumption about how he is doing in the job could float much higher, a huge -- you see in consumer confidence, wall street's

confidence, the stock market, there are people who are judging the biggest issues as quite confident but when you look at the approval, they think of something he said that was unkind or over the line, i can't approve of that. i like my 401(k). that is a separate question. >> host: couldn't his incompetence, i put it in quotes, couldn't that be what buffers us from the effects of what we don't approve of? if he doesn't get anything done in the stock market might as well do what it does because he is not as relevant as if he were micromanaging. >> guest: this is the fascinating thing. if i have a conversation, a very anti-trump or, they can say what has he done? i will make a list, a minute and a half later a person who just saw the list, hasn't got anything done, a perfect

example what i call two movies on one screen. we literally are seeing a different movie in the same theater. i predicted over a year ago the way this year would play out, start on inauguration day with we elected hitler, march in the streets, terrible but after a few months of no hitler stuff, just being a normal president, all right, he didn't roundup anybody and put them in concentration camps, doesn't look like anything like that is going to happen but he is totally incompetent. there is chaos but after the summer and we start to see some accomplishments, isis, the economy, movement with north korea, healthcare is problematic but people think that is congress, reminds me -- >> host: he dealt with it.

>> all the news organizations will put together their list of what happened and it is going to be a long list. you are not going to like it because it will be republican stuff and if you are not when you don't like that stuff but it is going to be a long list and that will be interesting. people say got a lot done, was effective but don't like the things he is doing or the regulations he cut but he did cut a lot of them. >> host: the appointments he made of people who wanted to do away with the agencies they are running, will make up a long list. >> guest: interesting how many executive orders he signed. i don't see a lot of analysis

of all the damage. they are not all good on paper some of them look like really bad ideas, to get rid of this regulation or this protection. on the surface they don't look like good ideas but the counter point. and executive order only starts the ball rolling. that is something about the flourish when you hold it up. they think it is done and all that does is it begins to move some levers, are you ready to go to questions? i will let ted take it from here. >> time for questions, rules around here, questions generally start with w or h, typically short, no such thing as a two part question and

terrence mcnally tonight. >> question on godzilla. and, did it stop because and it could you comment on that? >> toward the end, the best persuaders going head to head, that is what happened. >> i predicted more of a landslide and a win by trump, i was surprised it was as close as it was, and this is a whole

new game. i am a woman. elect me because i was a woman. that would have been annihilation. >> next question on your right. >> if we are 90% irrational, 90% irrational, what is your irrational thinking? >> guest: i don't understand. >> being irrational, what are you being irrational about? >> guest: what things in general my irrational about? the beauty is the only person who can't tell is the person -- if i could recognize my own irrationality i would say i better cut this out. let's use some facts. we are all potentially in our little bubble and you can't

tell. >> what do you think trump's chances are in 2020? >> i'm not convinced he would run in 2020 if he has a good four years. things are lining upset if he gets a little motion on north korea that looks a little better or something that looks like healthcare and the economy stays dry and isis stays beaten he will be unbeatable but he also knows how to go out on top so given his age which is a real concern, it will only get worse, he is hitting the age range where it is hard to believe there is not a problem. your best supporter is going to say was that clever or something else? his best play to preserve the trump brand and his presidency

might be one term but he is also competitive as hell so if there is something undone that he thinks he could do he might say give me four more years and i will try to get this other thing done. may be a 50% chance he will run no matter how his four years go. >> thanks for coming down. what is your technique looking for confirmation bias in the news? >> guest: the first thing i do when i see something that is a head scratcher. the networks are pretty good at getting facts right, the basic facts. what they are terrible at is a nonbiased interpretation. the amount of time they spend on one thing versus another, the type of guests they had on, they bury the fact with

opinion, and several both sides, if you go from fox news to cnn you are changing universes. msnbc even more so. i tried to stick to the facts and see both sides of the confirmation bias. if i see two completely believable interpretations but completely different i tend not to believe the one. it is easy to the come up with a story that fits these facts. >> thanks for coming out. any predictions outside the political arena? >> guest: yeah. this is my prediction that is least likely to come through but i will put it out there anyway. i don't have shame like regular people. the football kneelers, by the end of the year, the full

season, the teams who knelt, had more people kneeling will underperform meaning they won't be the spread. doesn't mean they will win but i think that is enough of a distraction, mental distraction, can't do two important things at the same time you are bringing this. the kneeling would take you out of football mode and put you in another mode and people are looking at you and there is the hatred from your own fans, the home-court advantage is sacrificed if your fans are saying i used to like football but i hate that ass hole. they will be angry and something about the physical act of getting on one the that might activate the spectrum.

the part of your brain that is submissive. the king is not the one who kneels. the winner is not the one who kneels. i understand an act of defiance. the specific context is kneeling is an act -- they won, strong. by the 12th week you are just kneeling and your body and brain are pretty connected. research says if you force yourself to smile you are having this chemistry in your brain to activate it the same way it works in reverse. >> host: i am jumping in, there is one that i wanted to ask, something about you lacking

shame. we said the same thing about trump. reason he can be so wrong is it doesn't matter. seems to me he is both thin-skinned and thick skins. he is both hyper sensitive and bold. what is that about? >> guest: here is the thing. can you imagine that he didn't know how he would be treated when he ran for president? he made the choice -- >> host: start with the whole rapist thing. >> guest: everything indicates he knew what he was getting into and was okay with it. the thing you call thin-skinned is anytime somebody attacks him, that is how you interpret -- >> host: blows things out of proportion, acts like --

>> guest: within the context of the campaign, but people he attacks are the professionals. he's not going after a citizen who said something on social media but professional journalists, writers, politicians, and others who were professional by association, professional in that context, doing a political public thing for political people. the technique here, i had a coworker who became the model for the alice character in my strip who i first saw this technique. if somebody did something she wanted that was a favor or something she would go to their boss and say you've got the best employee, you should promote this person because they were doing what she wanted but if somebody didn't do what she wanted she would go to the

boss and say you got to get rid of this idiot, this is horrible, the worst thing, get rid of him. this giant difference, the contrast, everything about persuasion is contrast and everybody knew making her happy, she would give you flowers, literally, she would praise you, get you promoted literally, she got people promoted for doing what she wanted and had amazing control at the same level as her fears because of that. when somebody does something trump likes, for example when i was on cnn, he liked what i said and was watching from air force one and the message came through, i got the word that he liked it and also the word that he liked it, was watching it.

and so he compliments and helps people who help him and goes hard every time, every time, doesn't matter if you are republican, doesn't matter but have to be a professional. if you see him going after someone who said something on social media, then you go to work. that wouldn't be technique. as long as he keeps that line, okay. >> host: time for more questions. >> my question is how will trump persuade the voter? >> that is a good question. let me give you a related story so you can fill in the blanks. remember when he said that awful thing about the judge, don't think i will get a fair trial because he is mexican.

.. racist, can't be a fair judge because he is mexican. that wasn't what was going on. if you talk to your neighbor and say, tell me about yourself? there's a good chance your neighbor will say, we're italian, but it means they're all born in america, just have italian heritage. the way people talk about them is exactly the way trump talked about the judge. i was at dinner not long ago where a young man was describing himself and said he was mexican. three generations born in this country and he was 20% mexican, but he said, i'm mexican. the pay people talk about themselves help was using the shorthand, the common language, but it was big mistake. however, by bringing up the potential bias, which is common in the legal context, very uncommon in the political context and belong to every bay but in the legal context, which was more important to him at the moment, bias is very important.

so you point it out, and then what happened when judge curial had to rule on when the trial would be held, it could have been before the election, which would have been a disaster, and that is normally when it would have been there's there's no reason to publish i out. instead the judge gave him a little extra consideration, and he put it after the election, and it might have well been the difference between winning and losing the election. now, did the judge have to do that? he didn't. was he treating him like every other person in the legal system? i don't think so i. think he gave him extra consideration there. would he have done that if the president had not called out to the entire world this judge might be biased? he took away his option. in the context of the legal case, it was brilliant. in the condition texas of the

way he word it and the political situation, just looked like a damn racist. but if you ask somebody like alvin dershowitz who was on the oj trial, among other things, is bias a legitimate thing to bring up in a legal context? he would say, yes, that's my job. that what i do. bring up bias all the time on every level. nothing off the table. certainly if your entire family heritage is in a group that you imagine there might be some people who would not be happy with a judge at the next thanksgiving, if he has ruled in favor of trump, that's legitimate. the legal context. it's legitimate in almost every other context and we would like it that way. don't want it -- so the point is, bob mule -- mueller? look fog theirs trump says in public to moneyas mueller, to make him give the president a little extra consideration because he doesn't want to play

into the trap that the president is setting, which i'm not sure you're being fair here. has to try a little harder to look extra fair. >> one could even say that happened with comey. >> yeah. >> not the firing but the coming out on october 28th with the, we're looking at new e-mails. >> you can exactly say this, yes, comey probably was persuaded to flip the opposite direction. >> to go above and beyond what he had to do. >> because he was extra good to clinton at first and then went the other way. probably true. >> our final question for the evening. >> your opening question when you came out and asked if this was going to be a loss style audience -- a hostile audience, was that a persuasive technique? [laughter] >> no, i was hoping it was going to be.

the hostile audience just has lots of energy, and i have no shame, so it would have been actually kind of fun. was hoping for anything short of violence to happen here today. but you have all been extra nice so far. >> a funny thing, when you're back stage you can hear things in the audience ex-heard it as murmuring and you used a word that was much more rumbling. you were already putting them na that role. >> yeah. >> thanks, terrence, thanks, scott, thank you all for coming. [applause] >> scott has a lingering issue with his hands so is unable to sign books but happy to sign -- happy to take a photograph.

if you drove, please go gently and perhaps we'll see you at an upcoming event. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] >> booktv is on twitter and facebook and we want to hear from you. >> hello, everyone. good afternoon. i'm susan at on behalf of of our owners and our entire staff unelectable commute to politics and prose. before we get started a few housekeeping items. this is