In this episode:

• Anthropic asks job applicants not to use AI, which is rich coming from an AI company.
• Scott and Alison unpack why scaling interviews strips the human part out of hiring.
• A study finds students using AI chatbots more often may be learning less, not more.
• AI layoffs are not delivering the financial magic CEOs keep pretending they will.
• Kevin O’Leary takes aim at work-life balance, and the episode politely suggests he may need a hug.
• The old “work harder and you’ll be rewarded” deal gets roasted for quietly removing the reward part.

Listen if you care about AI hypocrisy, broken hiring, work-life balance, fake productivity gains, and billionaires confusing burnout with ambition

Articles:

AI Hiring

AI Students

AI Layoffs

Work Life Balance with Kevin O'Leary

00:00 - Intro

03:00 - AI Hiring

09:04 - AI Students

13:22 - AI Layoffs

15:54 - Work-Life Balance

24:01 - Closing

In this episode:

• The Pope gets hung up on by customer service.
• Ask Jeeves officially exits the internet.
• Google turns search into a zero-click AI answer machine.
• Iceland proves the four-day workweek is not a fantasy.
• Chipotle says the fix for smaller portions is “just ask for more.”
• Scott somehow makes this about Subway, lettuce, and sliced ketchup.

Listen if you care about customer service rage, the death of old-school internet curiosity, Google eating the web, four-day workweeks, corporate nonsense, burrito bowl economics, and whether the Pope also hates his phone company.

00:00 - Intro: AI Wayne in the Cloud
01:37 - The Pope Gets Hung Up On by Customer Service
06:48 - Farewell Ask Jeeves and the Internet We Lost
09:42 - Google’s AI Search and the Zero-Click Era
15:38 - Iceland’s Four-Day Workweek Is Actually Working
20:00 - Chipotle Says “Just Ask for More”
22:53 - Free Toppings, Subway, and Shrinkflation Logic
24:36 - Closing: Four Episodes Deep and No Filter Left

Pope Leo

Farwell Jeeves

Google Killed Search

Iceland - 4 day work week

Chipotle CEO - Ask for more food

In this episode:

• Why “chance of rain” may be destroying everyone’s trust in weather forecasts
• The deeply upsetting existence of sliced ketchup, also known as k-chup
• The reminder that every mic is a hot mic, especially when you’re narrating your own crime
• An AI coding tool allegedly deleted a company’s production database in nine seconds
• Ontario government staff reportedly using unsecured AI tools with sensitive public information
• Alison’s AI villain origin story: real human writing being flagged as AI because apparently commas are suspicious now

Listen if you care about AI disasters, workplace stupidity, government data privacy, sliced ketchup, hot mics, and the ongoing war against pretending every terrible tech idea is innovation.

00:00 Intro: Almost Dying for the Bit
01:22 The Weather Forecast Has Been Lying to Us
04:11 Sliced Ketchup Is Real, Unfortunately
09:11 Fired Tech Workers, Deleted Databases, and One Very Hot Mic
15:12 AI Deletes a Production Database in Nine Seconds
19:45 The Problem Isn’t AI. It’s People.
22:11 Ontario Government Staff Using Unsecured AI Tools
25:02 Alison’s AI Writing Villain Origin Story
26:29 Outro

Article:

Ketchup Slices

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

In this episode:

• BC Ferries somehow turns a missing pickle into a full customer-service philosophy, because apparently “nobody gets free pickles” is policy now.
• Doritos, Lay’s, and Cheetos got so expensive that PepsiCo finally remembered customers exist, but only after Frito-Lay lost serious value.
• Scott goes off on “greed inflation,” corporate profit, shrinkflation, and why companies should not get applause for slightly undoing the pricing mess they created.
• Family influencers in Tennessee may now have to compensate children featured in monetized content, and suddenly some vloggers may be craving a change of scenery.
• Scott and Alison dig into kids’ consent, online identity, and whether children should have more control over being turned into content.
• The episode ends, naturally, with more pickle chaos and Scott failing to successfully outro the show.

Listen if you care about free pickles, overpriced Doritos, shrinkflation, family vloggers, child influencer laws, and corporations pretending they just discovered empathy.

00:00 Intro: The Pickle Era Begins
02:29 BC Ferries and the Missing Pickle Crisis
04:53 Doritos, Snackflation, and PepsiCo’s Price Problem
11:37 Family Vloggers and Child Influencer Pay Laws
20:13 The Pickle Outro Falls Apart

Articles:

Pickles https://globalnews.ca/news/11774058/pickles-bc-ferries-white-spot-viral/

Overpriced Doritos https://fortune.com/2026/04/07/pepsico-frito-lay-chips-food-and-drink-inflation-consumer-products-doritos-cheetos-tostitos/

Family Influencer laws https://www.wsmv.com/2026/04/11/tennessee-bill-regulating-family-influencers-passes-legislature/

https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/california/child-influencer-earnings-new-laws/3663211/

In this episode:

• Why Gen Z is going to the movies more than everyone expected, and why phones in theaters should maybe be legally actionable.
• How streaming-only movies and albums can just disappear forever because apparently permanence was too convenient.
• A $500,000 tropical company retreat somehow became E. coli, dead tarantulas, Navy SEAL drills, fire ants, and a falling porcupine.
• A CEO says craving work-life balance is a red flag, because billion-dollar executive advice remains undefeated in being wildly out of touch.
• Why return-to-office arguments keep pretending to be about culture when they usually end at “because I said so.”

Listen if you care about movie theaters, missing media, corporate retreats from hell, CEOs with too much confidence, work-life balance, remote work, and workplace culture getting a little too culty.

00:00 Intro: Eyes on the Prize, Probably
02:10 Gen Z Is Saving Movie Theaters?
05:00 Phones, Second Screens, and Movie Theater Jail
06:48 Streaming, Missing Media, and Movies That Vanish
09:42 The $500K Corporate Retreat From Hell
17:46 Work-Life Balance Is Apparently a Red Flag
22:30 Remote Work, Return-to-Office, and Executive Control
27:21 Wrap-Up

Article Links:

Gen Z & movies https://variety.com/2026/film/box-office/gen-z-driving-box-office-1236703551/

Corporate Retreat from Hell https://www.inc.com/leila-sheridan/plex-tech-company-retreat-nightmare/91327481

Work-life balance https://fortune.com/2026/04/22/work-life-balance-bupa-fortune-500-ceo-barack-obama-work-weekend/