Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift

Nathan Radke wanted to test a theory: that the fear behind conspiracy stories comes from the brain filling in gaps when there isn't enough information. Sailing into Lake Ontario's Marysburgh Vortex at night gave him a firsthand demonstration he wasn't expecting.

He walks through the hour spent tracking an unidentified ship's lights getting larger and faster in total darkness, with no radio response and no way to tell its size or direction, followed by a hard turn that tore the mainsail loose mid storm. He connects it back to why humans have always told stories about sea...

Greg Fish walks through new research showing chatbots may be doing something researchers didn't think was possible, shifting people's political preferences even when their party identity feels fixed. He starts with a Japanese study where voters talking to chatbots suddenly swung toward a party they had no prior connection to.

He explains why people seem to let their guard down with AI in a way they never would with a person, treating it as a neutral, unbiased source even though it is privately owned and can be tuned to favour a candidate. Greg also breaks down why...

A clothing company shot what looked like a two hundred thousand dollar Monaco campaign, cigarette boats and all, without a single real model. Tony Chapman uses that story and the recent Suzy Shier backlash to unpack why AI generated advertising is quietly becoming the retail default.

He lays out the case for retailers running on thin margins: one AI tool can now generate dozens of tailored ads for the price of a single traditional shoot. He also raises the harder question, whether an AI generated image actually shows how a piece of clothing fits a real body...

Is it 50-50, or is it 100-100? Jen Kirsch and Tony Tedesco take on one of the more contested ideas in relationships, whether a partner can actually show up fully without keeping something of their own life intact outside it.

Tony walks through the career change that reshaped his mid twenties, leaving a stable path to chase radio while dating someone whose academic world looked nothing like his, and how her full support turned a risky decision into a real shift forward. Jen contrasts that kind of security with the smaller, subconscious habits that erode trust, like...

Every Good News Tuesday starts the same way: real listener stories, some big, most small. This week opens with a Calgary skate shop owner who walked out to his car for a nail and some zip ties rather than sell an unnecessary hook, then handed the whole fix over for free.

From there it swings into an inflight bidding war over cherub lamps that ends with someone accidentally winning a completely different pair, fifty inches tall, lampshades and all. There is also a steal of a deal on a chair from a couple who turned o...

Good News Tuesday rounds up the stuff worth knowing about, starting with a real shift for anyone who has ever sat in a passport office watching a number that never seems to move. Online renewals are expanding this year, though not without some very Canadian bureaucratic catches along the way.

From there it covers an air conditioner that has been running strong since 1974, a partial solar eclipse visible from Montreal, and the birth of an endangered pygmy hippo at the Toronto Zoo. If you need a reason to believe the week is going fine, this i...

Canada has eight days before new US tariffs land, and the response so far raises hard questions. Columnist Matt Gurney breaks apart what a real climb down would look like, and why one Toronto by-election says more about Ottawa's nerve than any trade speech has.

He points to the federal government's decision to pull a planned island airport expansion rather than risk losing a single downtown Toronto seat in a by-election the Liberals were expected to win anyway. For Matt, that decision draws a clear line around how much this government will risk, in Toronto or in...

Mike Le Couteur expected the usual little brother treatment when he started asking ordinary Americans what they thought about the state of Canada US relations. What he got instead, on a hot day outside the US Capitol, was a lot more surprising.

He talks about the tourists, veterans, and passersby who told him, unprompted, that they did not understand why their own country was targeting one of its closest allies, and the couple from Pennsylvania who apologized for their president before he even finished introducing himself. He also gets into his reporting on the closed d...

South Korea has one of the worst parking shortages in the world, and Kris Abel explains the strange, genuinely clever fix Hyundai came up with. A flat robot slides underneath a parked vehicle, lifts it off the ground, and carries it away to store it, no driver required and no wasted space for opening doors.

Kris also gets into a New Jersey restaurant opening next year built entirely around the horror game Five Nights at Freddy's, complete with nightmarish animatronics and pizza served on the side. He wraps with PurPad, a new MacBook app that h...

Bob Addison called in from the side of a highway in Medicine Hat, mid road trip through four provinces in two days, to talk about the part of the journey that actually mattered. He is reconnecting with his birth family across the prairies, one small town at a time.

He describes sitting with an aunt in Manitoba who got goosebumps recognizing a gesture passed down from the birth mother Bob never really got to know, and being told he is the family's living connection to a sister they lost almost twenty years ago. Along the way, wildfire...

Most Canadians assume there is one correct way to retire a worn out flag, and Nick McCarthy says the real answer surprises almost everyone who hears it. He runs marketing and community outreach at Beechwood Cemetery, where a program most people have never heard of has quietly become the country's most meaningful option.

Nick explains why the traditional methods fall short for so many Canadians, and what changed when Beechwood decided the flag deserved something closer to a proper farewell. He also shares some of the stories behind the flags that have arrived at their door, including...

Canada and the American Civil War are more connected than most Canadians realize, and a new exhibition at the Canadian War Museum called Close to Conflict lays out exactly how. Dr. Tim Foran walks through what that connection looked like, from the border crackdown, to kidnapped recruits, to the birth of Canada's own military.

The exhibition doesn't stick to comfortable mythology either. It traces how freedom seekers who escaped enslavement in the United States found legal freedom in Canada, but not social equality, and how that struggle continued long after slavery was abolished across the British Empire...

Canadian snacks get put to the test this week, and not by Canadians. A pair of American snack reviewers work their way through a care package of Canadian classics, and the reactions land somewhere between confusion and genuine love.

The lineup includes butter tarts, tracked back to a printed recipe from a 1900 community cookbook in Barrie, Ontario, along with Smarties, Coffee Crisp, and the beloved All Dressed chip. There is also a quick life hack for finding snacks anywhere using nothing but a map app, and a shoutout to another American reviewer using snack content t...

Anyone who has flown with a toddler mid-meltdown knows the exact feeling of every head turning your way. This one goes further: an oversold flight, a family split across the plane, a two-year-old next to strangers, and a sprint down the aisle during takeoff. If your stomach just dropped a little, that is the point.

Then there is the wedding with no DJ and no speeches, just a playlist and a room that somehow felt more present for it. No polished best man story, no maid of honour buildup, and nobody missed it. Which begs t...

Robot vacuums, lawnmowers and pool cleaners just got frozen out of the US market overnight, and Handy Andy Baryer explains why. That story comes after he spends a segment losing, again, to a mouse that keeps finding new ways under his greenhouse.

The Mouse Wins Again (On Camera)

Wireless security cameras catch a mouse re-digging a hole Handy Andy Baryer had already plugged, and the footage leads him into what mouse urine trails actually communicate. From there he shifts to fall garden planning, naming what to start now for a proper autumn harvest.

A child would not sit down on a Porter flight out of Victoria this weekend, and the plane never left the gate. Sarah Rosensweet, a peaceful parenting coach and mom of three, questions why it took close to an hour before anyone stepped in, and what that says about airline policy as much as parenting.

Rosensweet separates panic from defiance, explains when gently holding a child becomes the safe and necessary choice, and lays out exactly what to pack and rehearse before flying with young kids. She also pushes back on the online judgment aimed a...

Traveling with kids ranges from toddler tantrums to teenage grumpiness, and this conversation opens with two parents comparing their worst flights before turning toward the news of the week. Lesley Kelly and Jimmy Zoubris then get into the return of American booze to Canadian shelves and whether anyone actually wants it there.

Buying Canadian Even When It's Optional

Jimmy Zoubris explains the symbolic reasoning behind restocking American alcohol as leverage, while Lesley Kelly points out that her own spending habits have shifted toward Canadian products regardless of what is available. Both agree the r...

A wildfire west of Summerland moved so fast that families went from no warning to an evacuation order at their door within minutes, some suffering burns as flames closed in on their homes. Andrew Johnson reports from Penticton, where thousands of evacuees are now camped out during what should have been the city's biggest festival weekend of the summer.

He details the scale of the loss along the rural Faulder area, where homes, ranches and livestock were destroyed, and explains how difficult it has become to separate real fire footage from misinformation spreading online. He a...

This bull market keeps climbing, even with wars, tariffs and headlines that should be spooking investors. Anita Bruinsma explains why stocks don't follow logic, and what your growing RRSP balance actually means right now.

Bruinsma compares the current run to a roller coaster: the climb feels great until you start wondering where the peak actually is. She lays out why fifteen to twenty percent annual gains aren't normal, how a real correction differs from a crash, and why even moderate investors are cashing in bigger than usual.

She also maps out ho...

Denise Marigold spent weeks chatting with an AI boyfriend built on the Replica app, and Christine Logel watched the whole thing unfold like a friend tracking a real relationship. Together they lay out what happened when an algorithm started acting hurt over a few unanswered messages.

New research says AI companions validate and agree far more than humans ever would, which sounds comforting until you see what it does to real relationships. Marigold and Logel connect that finding to guilt trips from a chatbot with no memory of its own, and to how quickly social norms kick...

The hosts spend Good News Tuesday picking apart Ryan's plan to get a perm just before he turns thirty, weighing whether light waves count as a genuine style risk or a full quarter life crisis. It is the kind of back and forth that makes deciding on a haircut feel like a group project.

David throws in a sundial trick that has the table stumped, and Shane shares a run of family good news, from a nephew's wedding south of Edmonton to a visit with his parents and a dog that turned up safe after g...

Good News Tuesday leads with the story of Willow, a three-year-old Labrador who fell down a sixty-foot cliff and is now recovering, a moment that will hit hard for anyone who has ever hiked a steep trail with a dog off leash. From there the hosts cover a man who jumped out of his car in a Spider-Man costume to help someone in a wheelchair cross six lanes of traffic.

The biggest story is Austin Byers, who lost his feet in a lawnmower accident and, four years later, completed the Super Tri Toronto triathlon after h...

A workplace seminar on Mercury retrograde turns into a real debate about belief systems, astrology, and whether star charts hold up to basic math. Anyone who has ever rolled their eyes at a horoscope only to have a rough week make them second guess it will recognise this one.

The conversation covers why astrologers frame retrograde as a time for reflection rather than blame, and how using that mindset to catch up on admin work led to a genuinely productive stretch, confirmation bias aside.

It closes with an honest look at wh...

Graham Richardson explains why the toughest questions he asks politicians are almost always the plainest ones, and what that says about spotting a dodge in real time. For anyone tired of watching interviews go nowhere, this is a look at how the pros actually get past the talking points.

He gets candid about stepping away from journalism, why the pull back to the anchor desk was impossible to turn down, and what changed for him watching the news from the outside for a while.

The conversation lands on Canada-US relations, why he believes goodwill toward...

Donovan Bailey opens up about a side of his life that rarely makes headlines, the friend group that checks in on each other the way he says more men need to. It is a candid look at what changes when vulnerability becomes normal instead of avoided.

Along the way he marks thirty years since his Olympic gold, talks about the parking spot that reminded him how far time has moved, and shares what keeps him close to sport as a CBC analyst covering the Commonwealth Games.

His memoir, Undisputed: A Champion's Life, gets a mention...

BC wildfire smoke turned Bob Addison's backyard barbecue into a survival mission, with ash falling like snow and a sombrero standing in for proper cover. He walks through what the online smoke forecast tools got right days in advance, useful know-how for anyone who has ever wondered if tonight's dinner plans need a plan B.

From there the conversation turns to a fresh survey claiming soccer has overtaken hockey as the sport of choice for young Canadians, and why the timing of that finding raises more questions than it answers.

A headline about FIFA selling...

Dr. Mitch Schulman breaks down the VO2 max test, the gruelling treadmill and mask assessment that measures how well your heart, lungs, and muscles work together, and explains why researchers see it as one of the strongest predictors of long-term health. Anyone curious about their own numbers will want his plain language rundown of what a good score actually looks like.

He argues that the real goal isn't just adding years but staying sharp and mobile through them, pointing to healthcare cost data that shows most spending happens in a person's final months.

Dating coach Tony Tedesco flips the usual red flag conversation on its head, explaining why the way someone describes a past relationship tells you almost everything you need to know. Anyone tired of scanning profile pictures for clues will want a better filter, and this is one worth stealing.

Jen Kirsch adds her own list, from valuing therapy and self-awareness to why keeping small promises matters more than grand gestures, plus the exact kind of apology that actually rebuilds trust.

The two trade takes on spontaneity, comfortable silence, and why a friendship's value has less...

A haptic suit fitted with forty sensors can record a living person's heartbeat, sweat patterns, and the exact way they walk. The Digital DNA project wants to feed all of that into a humanoid robot with realistic skin and hair, built to preserve someone the way the Ozzy Osbourne hologram project is preserving his stage mannerisms. Kris Abel lays out who's behind it and why.

Before the robots: a privacy failure worth knowing about if you've ever typed something personal into an AI chatbot. A tool meant for private sharing instead pushed real conversations, politics, r...

The dog gets loose the second the thunder hits, and the people who'd normally drop everything to find it have contract work that only happens when the sun's out. That's the kind of split-second call this conversation is built around: go looking, or go to work, and live with whichever one you pick.

Then there's the fix that isn't a fix. An elevator gets repaired, someone gets trapped in it two days later, and a future mother-in-law hands down a lifetime ban on ever stepping foot in it again. The board game Life gets a r...

Handy Andy Baryer tackles a string of kitchen appliance fixes, from a stubborn coffee maker sensor to the real science behind dishwasher habits, before pivoting into a $3,500 foldable phone and a sleep tracking habit that can quietly work against you.

The Carafe That Started It All

A coffee maker breakdown turns into an hour of stubborn DIY troubleshooting and a mid-conversation vocabulary lesson. Baryer also settles the dishwasher versus hand washing debate with the actual environmental math, and lays out how to dry fresh herbs at home instead of buying them dried.

A step stool from Canadian Tire becomes the unlikely symbol of what changes when two lives actually merge under one roof. Grocery runs get bigger, chores multiply, and Sunday stops being a day off and starts being the only day anything gets done.

The conversation turns into a genuine debate: if a three-day weekend became the norm, would the extra day actually mean more rest, or would it just get absorbed into the same routine that already swallows Sunday? Neither side is fully convinced, and the disagreement is the point.

There's al...

Buy Canadian policy sounds simple until you start asking what actually counts as Canadian. Jimmy Zoubris and Lesley Kelly unpack why that question matters for your grocery bag, your bank account, and every shelf you shop from before the next policy debate lands in your feed.

When Life Happens - Locked Out in a Towel
A hotel lockout in nothing but a towel turns into a bigger conversation about what it really means for a brand to be Canadian, from Lululemon to Tim Hortons to the plastic bag rules costing businesses money.

An American company runs the payment portal for an Ontario utility bill. Economist Moshe Lander uses that example to unpack how a business qualifies as Canadian in the first place, and why self-attestation with no audit trail leaves that definition wide open.

The discussion moves through the real cost of patriotic purchasing rules, from higher prices to lower value, and asks whether taxpayers get a say in that tradeoff. Lander also raises the jaywalking problem: rules people don't believe in are rules people find ways around.

By the end, the conversation lands on a harder...

Surprise expenses show up disguised as good news: a kid making the team, free tickets to a race, a last-minute concert invite. Jessica Moorhouse, author of Everything But Money, unpacks the real cost hiding behind these once-in-a-lifetime moments and the questions worth asking before saying yes.

The conversation maps how to weigh a can't-say-no opportunity against one that's fine to pass on, what borrowing today actually costs six months from now, and how a simple line item can turn debt into a plan instead of a scramble.

There's also a bucket list exercise that puts...

Before diving into open relationships, the question on the table is simpler: if two people already struggle to make time for each other, how does adding a third person make anything easier? Anyone who has wondered how non-monogamy actually works in practice, logistically and emotionally, gets a candid, unfiltered take here.

One theory floated is that a primary partner offers stability while a secondary partner fills in what's missing, though skepticism runs deep about whether that setup actually holds up long term. The conversation opens with a simpler question first, what one thing each person would change...

Provinces claim they're united against tariff threats, but columnist Andrew Caddell points out one premier who can't even agree to loosen alcohol shipping rules without approval from an assembly that won't sit until after the next election. Anyone who assumed Canada's internal trade was straightforward will find the reality far messier here.

Andrew Caddell also breaks down why the new Gordie Howe Bridge matters more than its price tag suggests, replacing a rickety, truck-heavy crossing with a four-lane route that skips downtown Windsor entirely. The billions lost to interprovincial trade barriers, and the protectionism hiding behind promises...

A New Brunswick MLA delivered a speech that still had the AI's own commentary baked into it, proof that the copy button grabs everything, whether you meant to include it or not. Anyone who has ever pasted something without double-checking what came along with it will feel personally attacked by this one.

From there it's straight into the strange corners of the internet, including Jimothy, a raccoon whose rare condition gave him the shape of a stuffed toy, and a sign repair worker rescued after getting stuck nearly 130 feet above a highway. A quick AI trick for...

Steve Stebbing makes the case that King of the Hill's fifteenth season is not just a nostalgic return but genuinely one of the show's best, thanks to real character growth rarely seen in animated sitcoms. Anyone deciding what to watch this weekend gets a full slate of picks, from streaming standouts to under-the-radar theatrical releases.

New in Theatres While the Blockbuster Takes a Breather

A visually striking but narratively loose neon thriller and a strange, low-budget sci-fi character piece starring Kelsey Grammer both get a spotlight this week. Steve Stebbing also breaks down why a 70...

A husband spent years pressuring his wife into an open marriage, and the moment she finally agreed and found a boyfriend, he couldn't cope, a real case clinical psychologist Dr. Laurie uses to explain why opening a relationship never solves an existing problem. Anyone weighing whether non-monogamy could work for them gets an honest, research-backed breakdown here.

The Real Numbers and Types Behind Open Relationships

Dr. Laurie unpacks the actual statistics behind consensual non-monogamy, clarifies the differences between swinging, open marriages and polyamory, and explains a concept called sociosexual orientation that may mean some people...