In this talk, Adam Whalen discusses how to simplify Laravel code by rethinking object-oriented programming patterns. He argues that methods should be viewed as affordances (things you can do with an object) rather than abilities (things an object can do to other things). Through practical examples from a course platform codebase, he demonstrates how this mindset leads to cleaner code by eliminating unnecessary service/manager classes, properly placing methods on the objects they operate on, and knowing when to use simple functions instead of classes.