NEW - The Last Space Shuttle Flew the Same Year Vancouver Burned

NASA closed out thirty years of space shuttle missions the same year Vancouver's streets filled with flipped cars after a Stanley Cup Game 7 loss. 2011 packed in more than it gets credit for, and laying it side by side makes that obvious fast. Stephen Harper won a federal majority that spring. Jac…

NEW - Flying for Free Isn't Dead. It Just Got Harder

Four years of saving points. One redemption. And the taxes and fees still took a $900 bite out of a flight that was supposed to be free. That's the moment most people quietly give up on the whole idea. Patrick Sojka never did. He's built a specific combination of cards and programs that gets a fli…

Shiftheads - The Bridge Deal Where Nobody Gets Paid Until Debt Clears

A $6 billion bridge, a private partner, and a new rule that changes the usual math entirely: no profit until the debt gets repaid first. Tim Powers breaks down why this Gordie Howe Bridge deal reads differently than the profit-first agreements Canadians are used to seeing. Powers walks through the…

ICYMI - A Human Tripod Once Caught a Falling Satellite

Normally a spacewalk sends out two people. One time in NASA history, it sent out three, because a massive satellite wasn't cooperating and somebody suggested becoming a human tripod instead. Robert Pearlman still has the footage in his head, and he's not the only one who does. He was also one of t…

The Year Bitcoin Hit a Dollar and Investors bought Pizza

Bitcoin crossed a dollar in 2011 and almost nobody blinked. Ed Conroy revisits the year that felt completely ordinary at the time and turns out to have been quietly loaded with the moments that changed everything after it. Conroy traces why 2012, not 2011, is the year most people point to as the s…

Richard Crouse: 60ft Puppets and a Self Cast AI Wanna-Be

A dart hitting the stage was enough to end a Metallica show outright, no warning, no encore. Richard Crouse has the story behind one of only four times the band ever walked off mid-set, plus the AI movie trend nobody seems to actually want, including a studio founder who cast himself as a Greek kin…

Video Games Lost Their Discs. This Box Could Fix It

A community movie library is showing up in neighbourhoods that already trade paperbacks, and it solves a problem video game owners know too well now that discs are disappearing from the box. The idea started with the tiny free libraries people build for books, then jumped to DVDs in Portland, Oreg…

NEW - What It Takes for Canadians to Actually Pay Attention

Canadian attention fatigue is the throughline tonight, tested first by rising gas prices tied to a collapsing ceasefire, then flipped on its head by a city that could not stop celebrating soccer. Gas Prices Are Climbing Again A shaky ceasefire falls apart and gas prices climb again, so the segmen…

SHIFTHEADS: How Long You Actually Have After a Tick Bite

A tick bite symptom is easy to miss, and this segment lays out anaplasmosis, the tick-borne illness now showing up alongside Lyme disease and pushing stomach trouble into the list of warning signs. Dr. Mitch Shulman walks through what actually happens after a tick attaches, why most of these infec…

NEW - What Video Games Get Right That Hollywood Doesn't

Video game remakes just did something Hollywood remakes have not managed in years, and the numbers make the case on their own. A pirate game older than most Netflix subscriptions outsold a brand new Disney movie. The comparison is Assassin Creed Black Flag Recync against the live action Moana rema…