👋 Stay honest today — just like Dave Jakins, who proved his innocence after being accused of using a steel chestnut to beat his opponent in England’s World Conker Championships, an annual competition where participants attempt to smash each other’s chestnuts.
🎧 On the pod:A startup claims it can bring animals back from extinction, but should it actually do that?
NEWS FLASH
🐭 Oh boy, here we go again: Disney is back to searching for a successor to CEO Bob Iger, with all four of Iger’s direct reports in the mix. Former Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman will lead the process and target an early 2026 coronation, and, well, it couldn’t go worse than last time — Iger’s last successor, Bob Chapek, held the job for less than three years before Iger returned. Sadly, Monsters, Inc. CEO James P. Sullivan appears to already be out of the running for the gig.
🍗 This wasn’t on our bingo card: Chick-fil-A — the third-biggest US restaurant chain by sales — is launching an app next month that will host original shows, podcasts, games, ebooks, and recipes. The Play app, geared toward families with children ages 12 and under, catapults the fried chicken brand into the media world in an attempt to drive sales. It will debut with a scripted podcast about a shipwrecked family, for some reason.
🛒 Store of the future: Sam’s Club CEO Chris Nicholas believes the store’s future lies in its Grapevine, Texas, location, where a robot cleans the aisles while taking an inventory, and checkout lanes have been traded for apps that let customers purchase items sans lines — though human employees are on hand to help. This new model will emerge at ~30 new locations over the next five years, and possibly parent company Walmart, which uses Sam’s Club to test innovations.
MORE NEWS TO KNOW
Bad news for the troop: The Girl Scouts of the USA voted to raise membership fees by 160% over the next two years. The 112-year-old group will raise dues from $25 to $45 in 2026 and $65 in 2027 for its ~2m members.
Your move, Pringles: Doritos shared its first-ever ad filmed in space, showing Polaris Dawn crew members munching out of a space-safe Doritos Cool Ranch canister before completing the first commercial spacewalk.
Cooper Hefner, son of late Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, has offered $100m to acquire Playboy Enterprise’s IP and assets from public parent company PLBY Group, saying he wants to “reinvigorate” the brand and safeguard its legacy.
TOOLBOX
“Oh, no — not more helpful resources,” said no one ever.
🤖 Put the machines to work for you: Two ways you can use AI to create a marketing plan.
🦈 Pick up some insights from “Shark Tank”:How a startup grew their temporary workspace business.
🔥 Some workplace hot takes: Listen in on spicy conversations about bosses lacking empathy, cynicism’s impact on leadership, and salary transparency.
THE BIG IDEA
Turkey innovators have created a bird for lazy cooks with limited skill
Imagine if Apple sold an iPhone that was so complex, you had to call tech support just to avoid being killed by it.
That’s more or less the model used by billion-dollar frozen turkey producer Butterball, which launched its Turkey Talk-Line in 1981 to help people safely cook their Thanksgiving birds.
Butterball says 10k+ panicking cooks call the hotline every Thanksgiving.
The most common questions include: “How do I thaw a turkey?” and “What are giblets?” (They’re edible intestines and organs, yum!)
The US turkey industry produces 5B+ pounds of meat every year, so it makes sense that there’s a big demand for help.
BTW, if you haven’t started thawing your turkey by Thanksgiving, it might be too late.
But now, in what may be the first turkey innovation since children started tracing their hands and drawing a beak on the thumb, Butterball has introduced a turkey that can go straight from the freezer to the oven — the perfect dinner for someone who doesn’t know how to cook and doesn’t want to learn how.
The new turkey…
… uses a “specially-formulated brine,” per Butterball, that requires no thawing and involves no giblets.
There’s a catch, beyond potentially putting its own hotline out of business: Butterball states it would pose a “food safety risk” to make stuffing inside the new bird.
Back to the iPhone metaphor, that’s like inventing a device that’s easier to use but doesn’t get emails — it does the job, but is it worth it?
What we’ve learned: There’s still room for innovation in the multibillion-dollar turkey sector, so maybe next up is some kind of AI turkey that can tell you how it wants to be cooked?
Every employee’s nightmare: working hard and seeing nothing in return. Anyone can run into a dry spell, especially salespeople, and this six-step framework could save the day.
You want Google Docs hacks. Right? Our Google Docs master guide can speed up your workflow, with 25 hotkey commands, advanced features, and tons of little time-saving shortcuts.
DATA POINT
Having trouble finding your white car in the parking lot? It’s not your memory’s fault — today’s cars are blending together as colors get less popular and gray scale tones reign supreme, perBusiness Insider.
Today, less than 20% of vehicles are a color other than black, white, silver, or gray, whereas 32% of cars were red in 1991.
It’s not just a fashion choice — minimizing the amount of color is a way for automakers to cut costs on assembly lines.
If you want a bright color, be ready to pay up: 44% of Lamborghinis come in a color, compared to just 12% of Chevys.
AROUND THE WEB
📅 On this day: In 1934, FBI agents killed notorious bank robber Pretty Boy Floyd in an Ohio cornfield after he’d spent four years on the lam.
