Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift

Space shuttle disasters cluster around the same week every year. You trust the engineers. You trust the technology. The astronauts trust it too. Then 73 seconds after liftoff, smoke trails fork across Florida sky and seven people are gone. The shuttle was supposed to be invulnerable. It wasn't. And now we're sending people back up.

NASA knew about the foam shedding problem before Challenger exploded in 1986. Engineers said don't fl...

Challenger explosion footage plays on the classroom TV. You're sitting crisscross on the library floor with thirty other kids. A teacher was going to space. You watched her die. Then nobody talked about it again. Not that day. Not the next week. Not for years.

NASA almost sent Big Bird to space instead of teacher Christa McAuliffe. The logistics of an eight-foot puppet didn't work out. The cultural moment, beating the Soviets, maki...

Space Shuttle Challenger memories all start the same way: silence. You're in a classroom. The TV cart gets wheeled in. Seven astronauts board the shuttle on screen. Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, smoke trails fork across the sky. The teacher doesn't speak. You don't speak. Nobody knows what just happened.

Reagan made a speech that day. One listener still remembers the look in his eyes. The audio from Kennedy Space Center capt...

Gene edited pork is legal as of this week. You're holding two packages of bacon. Identical price. Identical appearance. One package contains pork with DNA tweaked in a lab using CRISPR. The other doesn't. Health Canada says both are safe, so neither gets labeled. Pick one. You literally cannot tell the difference by taste, smell, or sight. That's not a food safety issue. That's a trust issue.

The industry position: labeling creates...

Alberta separatism debate has a foreign interference problem. Your movement needs legitimacy. Some supporters are meeting with White House officials. Steve Bannon's show is talking about taking over Alberta. Trump's treasury pick is commenting on Alberta referendums. David Eby called it treasonous. Now imagine if Jesse Ventura was meeting with Ottawa about Minnesota joining Canada. That's how Americans would react to this.

Danielle...

Your teacher spent weeks building this up. The Challenger disaster wasn't supposed to happen. A schoolteacher was going to space, and you were going to watch her teach from orbit. You're in class, lunch break, eyes on the TV. The shuttle lifts. The smoke splits into wrong directions. Nobody moves. You're waiting for someone to explain what you're seeing. The TV shuts off, rolls away. The principal says everyone's dead. Say the Lord...

Celebrity Feuds Expose Entertainment's Power Problem
Celebrity feuds reveal who has protection and who doesn't. You're an acclaimed actor. A legendary director calls your Oscar-nominated work "weak sauce" on a public podcast. You can defend yourself and look petty, or you can wait and see if anyone defends you. The gap between those two options measures your industry capital.

Paul Dano chose silence after Tarantino's attack. The...

You delete Instagram to break the doom scrolling habit. Automatic behaviors still control you. You grab your phone, swipe up, and tap the same screen location. Except now it opens your banking app instead. You're staring at your account balance, wondering why. Your brain executed the pattern before you thought about it.

Two out of three things you do are completely automatic. Your brain fires before you become conscious of the thou...

Berlin Wall escapes required impossible choices between safety and freedom. You're standing in East Berlin, 1965. Your family is hiding in a ministry bathroom with an out of order sign on the door. In a few hours, you'll tie a nylon rope to a flagpole, throw it 120 meters over armed guards, and zipline to West Germany. If the guards realize what you're doing, you go to prison. If the rope fails, you fall to your death.

The border g...

Stop doom scrolling attempts usually fail because app restrictions don't address the real problem. You're watching TV. You pick up your phone. Face ID unlocks it. Your thumb hits the same spot on the screen where Instagram used to be. Now it opens your banking app. You stare at it confused. You weren't trying to check Instagram. You don't even remember picking up the phone. Your brain did it automatically, hunting for a dopamine hi...

Why Your Brain Opens Apps Without Permission

Doom scrolling habits reveal something unsettling about your brain. You're standing in line at the coffee shop. Your phone is already out. Instagram is already open. You don't remember deciding to look. Your thumb just moved there, automatic as breathing, and now you're three posts deep into content you don't care about.

Stats Canada also projects population could hit 57 million by 2075...

Return to office mandates are forcing a choice. You're reading the email from HR. Five days a week, starting next month. You've been working from home for three years. Your coworkers are furious. You're relieved.

One co-host would go back tomorrow, in a heartbeat. The isolation is killing him. Screen rot, brain rot, doom scrolling. Less creative, less inspired. Going to coffee shops doesn't help because his team isn't there. The ot...

Recommendation economy power: you nibble at content once and algorithms feed you that forever. You're a hungry fish and they've got the fattest, juiciest worm. Amazon knows this so well they're testing sending you parcels you never ordered, betting their data knows you want it or you're running out. The return rate is no different than items you actually requested. That's how strong the data is getting in terms of having you sing a...

Urban biodiversity sounds like a park issue, not a city problem. Your apartment balcony overlooks a crumbling strip mall. Across the street, an abandoned factory lot is overgrown with weeds. You assume it's an eyesore that needs clearing. What if that vacant space is actually supporting more bird species than the manicured park three blocks away?

Chris Dennison's research in Detroit found that vacant lots—the ones that look l...

Hope as action versus outcome starts with one uncomfortable realization. You're listing everything you hope to accomplish this year. Hope to get the job. Hope to find your wallet. Hope to finish the project. Hope to make a change. Someone stops you and says: hope is a beautiful thing, it's a terrible plan. What's the difference? Outcome hope is crossing your fingers. Action hope is trusting the process will teach you what you need ...

Social media investment scams operate beyond law enforcement reach. You see an Instagram ad with the Wealthsimple logo. The returns look good. You click into what appears to be an official forum. You invest. Hours later, everything disappears. The scammers, the forum, the ad, all gone. You call the RCMP. They tell you the crime happened in another country. No jurisdiction. You call Facebook. They tell you they've raised ad prices f...

Finding good in bad days starts with one brutal truth. You're sitting in traffic for 80 minutes on a route that normally takes 30. The forecast predicted this snow a week ago. Nothing was done. You're losing time you'll never get back, and yet somehow, the drivers around you stay kind. Patience replaces rage. People let each other in. The chaos becomes proof that even waste can reveal something better.

The hosts test whether...

Celebrating small wins starts with one painful truth. You're 40 years old, looking in the mirror after an 11-year relationship ended. You were at your heaviest then. Today, for the first time in your life, you have cheekbones. The breakup was devastating. The weight loss is real. Which one is the good news? Both. That's the point.

A Nova Scotia doctor completed seven hip replacements in one day. Tim Hortons launched Moon Bit...

Posting relationships on social media starts with one uncomfortable question. Your partner never shares photos of you two together. Their feed shows friends, food, travel, everything except you. You're three months in. Six months. A year. You finally ask why. They say they value privacy. You hear: they're hiding you. Who's actually being performative here?

Kirsch argues the person demanding to be posted is the one performing...