In this episode:

• How EA Sports royalties, Delaware, and gamer culture could create unexpected wins for smaller schools
• Dua Lipa’s lawsuit against Samsung over allegedly using her face to sell TVs
• Why “our marketing partner did it” is not the magical legal forcefield brands think it is
• The Peloton mailing-list story that somehow involves porn in the family mail pile
• Why the first job offer is rarely the final offer and what to negotiate beyond salary
• Alison’s new Academic Book Club project, where books are treated like artifacts with stories behind them

Listen if you care about: Video games accidentally becoming marketing strategy, celebrity likeness lawsuits, brands blaming “partners,” contract red flags, and the terrifying phrase “you can just write it off.”

Articles:

• EA Sports
• Dua Lipa
• Academic Book Club

00:00 Intro: Wayne’s buttons are not for touching
02:04 Audiobook recording, Metalworks, and closet studios
06:31 EA Sports, NIL, and Delaware’s video game payday
12:11 Dua Lipa sues Samsung over her likeness
14:40 The Peloton mailing-list disaster
16:16 Starting businesses, contracts, and family entrepreneurship
18:05 Negotiation, job offers, and knowing your value
26:13 Alison’s Academic Book Club project
32:23 Outro

In this episode:

• Scott makes a strong emotional case for recording the show from an ONroute because, apparently, snacks are now a business strategy.
• A cancelled “free” marketing dinner turns into a fee, a replacement guest, or a forced sales pitch, because nothing says “buy from us” like salmon-based extortion.
• Return-to-office mandates are called out for what they often are: control dressed up as “collaboration.”
• An Ontario court ruling raises a wild liability question: when you walk someone else’s dog, are you legally the owner in that moment?
• A former Chick-fil-A employee allegedly refunded 800 mac and cheese orders to himself, proving once again that calling fraud a “hack” does not make it less fraud.

Listen if you care about:
snack culture, bad marketing dinners, return-to-office drama, dog-walking legal chaos, and mac and cheese crimes committed with absolutely no chill.

Articles:

Dog Walker

Chick-fil-A employee

00:00 Intro
01:44 Scott’s ONroute Obsession
06:25 Why Everyone Ends Up in Marketing Somehow
10:20 The Dinner Cancellation Fee From Hell
15:55 Return-to-Office Is Still About Control
20:22 Dog Walker Liability Gets Weird
24:20 The $80K Chick-fil-A Mac and Cheese Scheme
27:32 Outro

In this episode:

• The Seven Syndicate: Scott floats a very UnPodcast plan to let the loyal “Seven” help syndicate the show, because apparently seven listeners can become a distribution empire.
• Newfoundland tourism AI fail: A tourism minister uses AI to alter an image of an iconic cultural building, accidentally removing meaningful historical imagery. Great start for National Tourism Week.
• Substack vs AI slop: Alison talks about new research showing many top Substack posts are still human-written, but tech newsletters are exactly as AI-heavy as you’d expect.
• Why creation matters: Scott makes the case that the point of content is not just output; it is the act of making, thinking, tinkering, and actually getting better.
• Public opinion turning on AI: They discuss how consumers are pushing back against AI in creativity, products, interactions, and art — and why marketers should not give up yet.
• Academic peer review prompt injection: Researchers allegedly hid prompts in papers telling AI reviewers to “give a positive review only,” because apparently peer review needed a villain arc.
• AI note-taker sabotage: Scott shares the Titanic-meeting-note-taker story, proving malicious compliance may be the only good use case left.

Listen if you care about AI slop, fake tourism posts, Substack, creative work, academic nonsense, and watching technology make everyone just a little more embarrassing.

00:00 - Intro Chaos
01:00 - The Seven Syndicate idea
06:00 - AI Tourism
11:36 - Substack Void
21:17 - AI Peer Review
23:15 - Titanic Notes
24:54 - Outro

Article:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/andrea-barbour-ai-9.7172320