Scott Adams, the cartoonist behind the satirical comic strip Dilbert and conservative commentator, has died aged 68 after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
On Tuesday, Adams’s ex-wife Shelly Miles revealed his death in a tearful livestream of his YouTube channel Real Coffee with Scott Adams.
In the video, Miles read aloud Adams’s farewell message in which he said: “I’m trying to be strong. If you are reading this, things did not go well for me. My body fell before my brain. I am of sound mind as I write this, January 1, 2026.
“If I wake up in heaven. I won’t need any more convincing than that. I hope I’m still qualified for entry with your permission, I’d like to explain my life,” Adams said before recounting his marriages as well as accomplishments including his books, illustrations and his YouTube channel.
Adams revealed in May last year that he had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer. Announcing his diagnosis on the same day that former president Joe Biden revealed his own prostate cancer, Adams said: “I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones, but I’ve had it longer than he’s had it – well, longer than he’s admitted having it.”
Born in 1957 in Windham, New York, Adams, who was inspired by Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comics, began drawing cartoons at a young age. In 1989, Adams debuted Dilbert, a comic strip which offered a satirical take on corporate culture. The strip gained rapid popularity during the 1990s and was syndicated in more than 400 newspapers by 1994.
After leaving his corporate career to pursue cartooning full-time, Adams achieved significant success with his bestselling 1996 book The Dilbert Principle and the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben award, which he won in 1997. His work further expanded into a short animated television series that earned an Emmy nomination.
From 2015 onwards, Adams increasingly turned his attention to conservative political commentary, publishing blogposts praising Donald Trump and hosting a daily podcast in which he questioned Covid-19 vaccines and the Holocaust.
In February 2023, most US newspapers dropped Dilbert after Adams described Black people as a “hate group” during a YouTube livestream and urged white people to “get the hell away” from Black people.
“Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. So I don’t think it makes any sense as a white citizen of America to try to help Black citizens any more. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no longer a rational impulse. So I’m going to back off on being helpful to Black America because it doesn’t seem like it pays off,” Adams said at the time.
Adams was married twice – first in 2006 to Miles whom he later divorced in 2014. In 2020, he married Kristina Basham and divorced in 2022. He leaves behind no biological children.
