Ed Hardy Is Back. So Is Everything Else from 2003

2003 nostalgia is running at full speed, and not just the fun parts. Every high school kid outside a Starbucks is wearing Ed Hardy. Limp Bizkit is huge with teenagers who weren't alive for it. Disposable cameras are showing up at weddings. The aesthetic is back, right down to the tight branding and…

NEW - Gas Was 80 Cents. Toronto Houses Were $293,000. That Was Twenty Three Years Ago Tonight

Throwback Thursday 2003 hits on the actual date: March 19th, when America announced the Iraq invasion. Gas was 80 cents a litre. A Toronto house cost $293,000. Two presidential audio clips play back to back tonight, and the one from 2003 is the one that wins the room. SARS was weeks from placing T…

The Carbon Tax Went Away. Your Grocery Bill Didn't Hear About It

Canadian food prices are about to move again, and the shift started long before anything reached a shelf. The industrial carbon tax rises to $110 on April 1st. It covers fertilizers, refrigeration, food processing, and the full cold chain. The retail portion went to zero. The industrial portion did…

SHIFTHEADS: The Iran Story Everyone Is Missing (It's Not About Oil)

Diesel prices in Canada are up 11 cents by Saturday morning alone. Six cents Friday, five Saturday, four to five more Sunday. April 15 adds another ten cents for the gasoline switchover. Iran tensions add ten to fifteen on top of that. Dan McTeague says we are back to 2022 levels and the clock is a…

NEW - Fish Where the Fish Are: Poilievre, Rogan, and the Case for Canada

MAID Alberta restrictions are moving while the federal government is still working out what to do. Alberta is blocking mental illness as a qualifying condition and shifting the onus so doctors cannot be the ones to raise it. Two governments, one issue, no alignment yet. The question Rob Breakenrid…

Shiftheads - Twenty Three Years Later and the Pattern Is Running Again

Iraq War lessons from 2003 are back on the table tonight, and the conversation does not land softly. This week marks the anniversary of the invasion. Listeners are texting in to say George W. Bush looks reasonable by comparison to what is happening now. That is where the bar sits. The 2003 coaliti…

ICYMI - Inside Copy: Someone Is Watching Every NHL Player's Instagram Follows. All 700 of Them

NHL player social media is now a 24-hour surveillance operation and the results are exactly what you would expect. NHL Follow Tracker monitors over 700 players' personal Instagram accounts daily, logging every follow and unfollow. Olin Zellweger unfollowed Austin Matthews, Clayton Keller, and Jack …

NEW - WAR in 2003: Twenty Years On and the Streets Are Quiet

Anti-war apathy is the thing historians notice first. In 2003 the marches started before the bombs did. Main streets shut down. Embassies closed. This anniversary lands with a conflict being called potentially more dangerous, and almost no one in the street. The Oscars came and went this year with…

Project Hail Mary: The Rotisserie Chicken That Stole the Movie

867-5309 became a cancer helpline. Richard Crouse has the story, and it changes the way you hear that song. Tommy Heath turned that number into a free line connecting anyone touched by cancer to trained professionals, because it's already ringing in everyone's memory. Entertainment Stories Nobody …

80 Percent of People Believe This (Including You, Probably)

Conspiracy theories, according to research, are believed by about 80 percent of people. Not the fringe. Not the outliers. Most people. The interesting part is what looking at the actual list does to the word conspiracy. Planned obsolescence showed up on the list. So did the idea that women's cloth…