Explore every episode of the podcast Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift

Good News Tuesday is built on a simple idea: when you can't find the good, sometimes hearing it from someone else is enough to turn you around. This one brings the next NASA moon crew, a child in Nanaimo doing something remarkable at three in the morning, a stolen car with a very large dog in the back, and a string of transformative philanthropic gifts to Canadian healthcare and universities.

When people say the country is struggling and generosity is gone, the Weston family's forty-one million dollar gift to Sunnybrook and Simon Fraser University's record forty million dollar donation from the Stevens family suggest otherwise. The good is there. It usually is.

A listener named Kevin from Winnipeg figured that out once. This is the segment that convinced him.

Topics: Good News Tuesday, Artemis III, Canadian philanthropy, community stories, good news Canada

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

Good News Tuesday opens with a genuine relationship milestone: assembling four pieces of IKEA furniture in a single afternoon and coming out the other side still engaged. The research backs up why that counts. Psychologists have found that picture-only instructions force constant compromise, trigger questions of trust and competence, and surface exactly how differently two people approach a problem under pressure. One therapist called a particular shelf the divorce maker. Seventeen percent of adults report arguing during furniture assembly.

The conversation pulls in Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney doing the same thing for GQ, a grandfather's engraved Chrysler screwdriver that survived thirty years on the line and apparently outlasted the company's gift-giving culture, and the observation that once IKEA furniture is built, you never take it apart again. Ever.

Good news is where you find it. Sometimes it's a TV stand and a time-lapse video of everything going wrong.

Topics: IKEA furniture assembly, relationship psychology, Good News Tuesday, couples and stress, good news Canada

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

Vancouver police Sergeant Craig Reynolds was forty-eight when he died. Bob Addison was at the funeral, and one moment at the very end, a single line from the MC, stopped him cold. This is a Good News Tuesday that earns the name the hard way: through loss, through eight hundred people in a church, and through a life that clearly mattered to everyone it touched.

Then the conversation shifts to something lighter. World Cup fever is hitting Vancouver, and Addison is already planning to soak it in, tickets or not. The city's got the ball, the buzz, and the visitors who flew halfway around the world just to be somewhere it's happening.

Plus: the keepie-uppie guy who walked from the CN Tower to Niagara Falls on two rebuilt knees and somehow made it look like a good idea.

Topics: Vancouver police funeral, Craig Reynolds, Good News Tuesday, FIFA World Cup Vancouver, community and grief

GUEST: Bob Addison | @‌riobobbo

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

Couples and food decisions have a numbers problem: research cited by relationship writer Jen Kirsch puts decision paralysis over dinner at about half of all Canadian couples, and Tony Tedesco says the question underneath the question is almost always about who is carrying the load. Date night gets into the mechanics of why this keeps happening and what to do about it.

The friction builds quietly. One partner checks out of the decision, the other picks up the slack, and eventually the resentment has nothing to do with whether it's tacos or pasta. Kirsch and Tedesco both name what makes the difference: someone stepping up, saying they've got it, and meaning it.

Dinner turns out to be one of the few moments in a shared day when two people actually come together, and what happens in that window sets the tone for everything else.

Topics: what's for dinner relationships, couple decision fatigue, mealtime conflict, cooking together, relationship dynamics

GUEST: Jen Kirsch | @‌jen_kirsch | Tony Tedesco | @‌TedescTony

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

Tech journalist Kris Abel joins Good News Tuesday with three stories that land differently depending on how optimistic you are about the future. Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference revealed a new Siri built on Google's Gemini technology, with longer conversations, better task planning, and customisable voice and pacing. Apple Intelligence is also reaching back to support iPhones as old as the iPhone 11. Whether any of it lives up to the announcement is, as Abel puts it, something to believe when you see it.

Meanwhile, Chinese robotics company Unitree is having a remarkable week. Eight of their humanoid robots performed as a dance troupe on America's Got Talent, another appeared in news coverage outside a Knicks playoff game, and a third scaled a volcano in Ecuador. The company is now preparing a Mount Everest attempt.

Waze and Google are throwing FIFA World Cup scores and player stats onto your screen while you're stopped at a light. Good News Tuesday has officially gone full robot.

Topics: Apple Intelligence, Siri AI, Unitree humanoid robots, Waze FIFA World Cup, Google Gemini

GUEST: Kris Abel | krisabel.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

Cognitive bias researcher and author Davis Carbo joins to unpack one of the most unsettling findings in psychology: changing a single word in how an event is described can make people remember things that never happened. The Loftus and Palmer car crash study from the seventies proved it, and the implications reach into every conversation, news story, and relationship in your life.

Carbo walks through how the brain handles thirty-five thousand decisions a day, why ninety-five percent of them happen on autopilot, and what that means for the moments you think you are choosing freely. From Jaws emptying beaches to a fake doctor's waiting room where strangers teach each other to stand up for no reason, the patterns are everywhere once you know how to see them.

The question isn't whether bias is shaping your decisions. It's whether you want to know how.

Topics: cognitive bias, misinformation effect, decision making, heuristics, memory distortion

GUEST: Davis Carbo | @‌daviscarbo

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

Aaron Rand, host at CJAD Montreal, joins to break down the political moment Quebec finds itself in heading toward an October election. The Parti Québécois, whose signature issue is separation, is pushing a referendum that almost nobody in Quebec wants, and their latest move is asking Ottawa for forty billion dollars to opt out of the planned high speed rail corridor connecting Quebec City to Toronto.

Support for separation in Quebec is at its lowest point in thirty years. The high speed rail debate is real, the expropriation concerns are legitimate, and Canada's reputation for scenic trains that arrive whenever they feel like it is apparently well earned.

The conversation opens on lotto tickets, jackpot fantasies, and what it actually means to go straight to the airport with no bags and no plan. Aaron Rand has had the answer ready for years.

Topics: Quebec election, Parti Québécois, high speed rail Canada, Quebec separation, FIFA World Cup Montreal

GUEST: Aaron Rand | cjad800.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

Alberta separatists have a long memory for grievances and a short one for results. Matt Gurney, editor at Read the Line, brings a new piece arguing that Alberta conservatives have been one of the most effective political forces in Canadian history, and that the case for separatism ignores twenty years of real, documented wins.

Then the conversation turns to something harder to measure: what happens when the information we consume rewires what we believe is true? Gurney makes the case that outrage isn't a feature of the modern world, it's a choice, and most of us are making it without realising it.

If you've ever wondered whether the country is actually broken or whether you've just been told it is, this one lands.

Topics: Alberta separatism, Canadian conservatism, Read the Line, political history, social media and perception

GUEST: Matt Gurney | http://readtheline.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

AI in Canadian prisons is no longer hypothetical. Correctional Service Canada has handed $123,000 to Accenture to pilot the use of artificial intelligence in writing criminal profile reports, the foundational documents that shape how inmates are managed, what programs they access, and how parole decisions get made. Technology analyst Carmi Levy breaks down what that actually means and why the experts raising red flags deserve to be heard.

The problem isn't that AI is being used. It's that the oversight required to catch its errors costs more time and resources than skipping the AI entirely. Levy draws a line from hallucinating courtroom case citations to correctional reports, and the logic is hard to argue with.

If the answer is only as good as the question, someone needs to ask a better one before this goes any further.

Topics: AI in Canadian prisons, Correctional Service Canada, criminal profile reports, AI hallucination, Accenture pilot

GUEST: Carmi Levy

Originally aired on 2026-06-09

Canadian consumer choices rarely get challenged from the inside, and that is exactly the problem. This conversation starts with recycling bags in Merrickville and ends up somewhere much bigger: why do Canadians keep accepting the options they are handed instead of asking for better ones?

From the cars that keep getting larger while European streets fill with variety, to recycling pickup that changes completely depending on which province you happen to live in, to dental hygiene access that works entirely differently depending on where your benefits apply, the gaps are real and the questions are not being asked loudly enough.

Ryan O'Donnell also shares what happened when he finally made it to a tropical beach for the first time, and why the airport on the way there was a completely different story.

Topics: Canadian consumer choices, car selection Canada, recycling Canada, dental care provinces, asking better questions

Originally aired on 2026-06-08

Home maintenance tips don't get more overlooked than this one: draining your hot water tank once or twice a year could add years to its life, and almost nobody does it. Andy Baryer from HandyAndyMedia.com learned this the hard way when his tank failed a year past its six-year warranty, and his plumber confirmed the mineral buildup was the cause.

Baryer also makes the case for holding onto your silica gel packs. The little moisture-absorbing pouches that come in shoe boxes turn out to be genuinely useful in toolboxes, storage containers, and seasonal closet switchovers, and they cost nothing to keep.

Then the conversation shifts to Apple's worldwide developer conference, where the company announced a new AI-powered Siri built on Google's Gemini model. Baryer calls it a good move. Ryan has been using Siri exclusively for timers and has opinions about that.

Topics: hot water tank maintenance, silica gel uses, Apple Siri update, Gemini AI Apple, home maintenance tips

GUEST: Andy Baryer | handyandymedia.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-08

First time travel to a tropical destination has a way of dismantling opinions held for years, and Ryan O'Donnell arrived in Cabo San Lucas with a full set of them. He wanted experiences, not a beach chair. He wanted castles and roller coasters and history, not chips and a pool. He was wrong, and he knows it.

The conversation lands on what actually shifted: tasting salt water for the first time, falling asleep at ten-thirty every night without trying, lying on a beach under a full moon listening to the Pacific. Ryan plays the recording he made from the shore. It sounds like bliss.

There is also the airport, where a foot long at Subway ran thirty dollars Canadian and the hat he bought at the resort for thirty dollars was going for sixty-five at the departure gate.

Topics: first time Mexico travel, all-inclusive resort Canada, Cabo San Lucas, travel perspective, beach vacation

Originally aired on 2026-06-08

Canadian car market selection has never really been a choice, and automotive journalist Lorraine Sommerfeld from http://driving.ca lays out exactly why: Canada represents roughly ten percent of the US market, which means whatever America wants, Canada gets. The conversation starts with Monaco yacht videos and ends somewhere much closer to home.

Sommerfeld traces how the SUV takeover happened, names Ford's original Explorer as the moment the switch flipped, and connects the size obsession to something beyond utility. Meanwhile, there is genuine talk of Canada adopting European vehicle standards, which would open up a class of cars most Canadians have never had access to but would likely prefer.

The question underneath all of it is whether Canadians will keep accepting the market they are handed or start demanding the one that actually fits how they live.

Topics: Canadian car market, European car standards, SUV culture, vehicle selection Canada, auto market

GUEST: Lorraine Sommerfeld | http://driving.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-08

Canadian content streaming funding has been a fight Canadian broadcasters have been losing for years, and the Monday panel digs into exactly what just happened: the CRTC ordered foreign streaming services to contribute to the Canada Media Fund, the government backed off citing trade irritants, and Spotify sent out a price increase notice for 15%. The same number. Same week.

Jimmy Zoubris and Andrew Caddell join the conversation to work through what the rollback means, who actually ends up paying, and whether the CRTC moves fast enough to matter in any of this. The panel also pulls on a harder question underneath the funding debate: when was the last time anyone actually sought out a Canadian show on purpose?

The answer lands somewhere between Schitt's Creek, Son of a Critch, and a Sunday night Quebec talk show that has been the top-rated program in the province for five years running.

Topics: Canadian content streaming, CRTC levy rollback, Spotify price increase, CanCon funding, streaming services Canada

Originally aired on 2026-06-08

Divorce and child expenses are supposed to be settled in the separation agreement, but financial planner Anita Bruinsma says that document only takes you so far. What it cannot anticipate is the horseback riding hobby, the $300 hockey stick, or the braces one parent books before the other has signed off. http://ClarityOnYourMoney.com contributor Bruinsma maps out where the money friction actually lives after a divorce is finalised.

The bigger costs fall under an extraordinary expense framework that requires both parents to agree ahead of time, but Bruinsma is clear that agreement is the hardest part. The smaller costs, the ones nobody formally tracks, tend to accumulate unevenly and build resentment just as effectively as the large ones.

Her practical fix is straightforward: document everything, use the available tools to take the emotion out of it, and sort it like adults before the kids end up in the middle.

Topics: co-parenting money, child costs divorce, separation agreement expenses, divorce financial planning, extraordinary expenses Canada

GUEST: Anita Bruinsma | http://clarityonyourmoney.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-08

If you've ever wondered what you'd actually find if you stopped running from yourself, a darkness retreat is the most direct answer available. No light. No sound. No scroll. No signal that you're doing it right. Just you, and whatever you've been carrying without knowing it.

Scott Berman has guided over seven hundred people through exactly that at Sky Cave Retreats in southern Oregon. The nervous system flags it as a threat. The habits surface anyway. What people find on the other side of that is what this conversation is about.

If you've ever caught yourself reaching for your phone and not known why, this one is worth your time.

Topics: darkness retreat, sensory deprivation, nervous system, self-discovery, Sky Cave Retreats

GUEST: Scott Berman | http://skycaveretreats.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-08

The middleman is gone. The manager who mentored the new hire, the salesperson with the Rolodex, the person who connected the question to the right answer. That role has been cut from business, from retail, and now from the conversation about AI.

The problem is not that AI gives wrong answers. The problem is that the answer is only as good as the question, and nobody is teaching people how to ask. At work, managers are telling staff to figure it out. At home, parents are expected to guide kids through tools the parents have never been trained on. The government is spending heavily on AI adoption with no policing infrastructure and no teaching layer behind it.

Shadow AI is already happening in workplaces. People using it when they are not supposed to, because the gap exists and humans fill gaps. That is what happens when oversight is absent and nobody is minding the answer.

Topics: AI middleman, AI workplace, shadow AI, Canada AI spending, AI parenting

Originally aired on 2026-06-05

Trump has faced legal setbacks on tariffs. Forced labour as a justification for new trade measures has never appeared before in Canada-US negotiations. Andrew Caddell says it is a backdoor: a way to keep pressure on Canada and limit trade with China while bypassing the courts that have blocked previous moves.

The CUSMA review is approaching and Canada's strategy is to protect as much of the agreement as possible to contain the damage. Caddell notes that during the 1988 free trade debate he warned that an American administration could change the rules overnight. It turned out not to be Congress that did it.

Canada's deficit also doubled last year according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. Military spending and infrastructure commitments will add more. The question is whether this government will actually spend what it has budgeted, or repeat the pattern of the last decade.

Topics: Canada US trade, Trump forced labour tariffs, CUSMA, Canada deficit, Canadian sovereignty

GUEST: Andrew Caddell

Originally aired on 2026-06-05

AI can draft a resume. It can help translate one career into the language of another. What it cannot do, according to career development leader Candy Ho, is connect the dots of a life and help someone talk about themselves effectively in a room with another human being.

The more overlooked problem is on the employer side. A rejected candidate who impressed the hiring team represents an open door most companies never walk through. Candy Ho says internal career centres within organizations are an emerging answer, and CERIC has recently published research on exactly that.

The hidden job market is still real. Candy Ho's last three clients did not apply online. They conducted information interviews, showed up at networking events, updated their LinkedIn profiles, and were top of mind when positions opened. The long game is still the game.

Topics: AI career coaching, hidden job market, career development, employer candidate relations, networking

GUEST: Candy Ho

Originally aired on 2026-06-05

Six things are competing for your weekend. Three in theatres. Three on streaming. Steve Stebbing has seen all of them and has a clear order of priority.

The Wayans Brothers, He-Man, and a Paul Rudd Music Drama Walk Into a Theatre

Scary Movie 6 marks the first time the Wayans brothers have touched the franchise since part two. Masters of the Universe arrives with the weight of an eighties toy aisle behind it and a director who knows how to fill a screen. Power Ballad puts Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas in a room to write music, then pulls them apart. Three films, three very different cases for your Friday night.

Javier Bardem Takes On a Role Robert De Niro Already Owned

Cape Fear lands on Apple TV Plus with Bardem stepping into Max Cady, a character that has now belonged to Robert Mitchum and Robert De Niro. Netflix has Office Romance with Brett Goldstein and Jennifer Lopez. Mindy Kaling's latest arrives on Disney Plus. Steve Stebbing has a verdict on all three and a reason behind every position.

Topics: what to watch weekend, Scary Movie 6, Masters of the Universe, Cape Fear Apple TV Plus, streaming June 2026

GUEST: Steve Stebbing | stevestebbing.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-05

Social media does not show relationship conflicts, insecurity, ordinary bodies, or real intimacy. It shows curated vacations, idealized bodies, and romantic gestures. Dr. Laurie Betito calls it the comparison trap: measuring your actual relationship against someone else's highly edited reality, then wondering why yours falls short.

The Highlight Reel Affecting Your Expectations

Social media shapes beliefs about relationships, attractiveness, masculinity, and femininity without announcing itself. Dr. Betito asks the question most people never think to ask: are you choosing who you want to be, or unconsciously following a script set by everything you consume?

What Healthy Actually Looks Like

The more useful question is not what a real man or real woman should be. It is what qualities allow a person to thrive: integrity, emotional intelligence, accountability, the ability to ask for help, and the ability to connect. Dr. Betito says in thirty-five years of practice, the tide is shifting. More men are asking for help than ever before.

Topics: relationship expectations, social media comparison, masculinity femininity, gender identity, healthy relationships

GUEST: Laurie Betito | drlaurie.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-05

The clip economy is not just about shorter videos. It is about a generation forming opinions, making arguments, and consuming news from content that has been stripped of everything that makes it accurate.

Mohit Rajhans calls it the clip economy: a media environment where a four-minute subway hot take and a 45-minute expert interview compete for the same attention and carry the same perceived weight. The problem is not that short content exists. The problem is that people can no longer distinguish between being informed and having watched a highlight.

The fix, according to Rajhans, is not regulating the algorithm. It is parents understanding better than the kids do. And that’s inconvenient.

Topics: clip economy, attention spans, short form content, media literacy, parenting social media

GUEST: Mohit Rajhans | http://thinkstart.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-05

Canada's national AI strategy is optimistic, overdue, and built on a premise Vass Bednar says is materially incorrect: that low public trust in AI is a literacy problem that more access will fix.

Bednar argues trust is low because the product came to market too early, makes promises it cannot keep, and operates without the kind of regulation that makes people trust an airplane without needing a physics degree. Meanwhile, Starbucks and Pizza Pizza have already pulled back algorithmic management of their supply chains because of errors. Canadian firms are reporting the productivity gains were not delivered.

The strategy also foreshadows something significant: Prime Minister Carney named surveillance pricing from the podium, an acknowledgement that algorithmic systems are being used to charge individuals different prices based on data collected about them. That conversation is just beginning.

Topics: Canada AI strategy, AI public trust, surveillance pricing, data centers Canada, AI sovereignty

GUEST: Vass Bednar | http://cigionline.org/people/vasiliki-vass-bednar

RUNDOWN: Originally aired on 2026-06-05

The Price is Right changed hosts in 2007 for the first time in over thirty years, and a man from Grand Prairie, Alberta made it memorable for Canadians before the year was out.

Patrice Massa missed his showcase bid by one dollar. The Throwback Thursday conversation digs into what that means, what he walked away with, and why that margin still gets talked about.

The hour opens with a game show sounds challenge that reveals exactly how thin the line is between recognizing a show and actually knowing it. Bumper Stumpers, Gladiators, Beast Games, and Wheel of Fortune all make an appearance. Some land. Some do not. The gap is bigger than expected.

Topics: Price is Right 2007, Bob Barker, Drew Carey host switch, Patrice Massa, game show sounds challenge

Originally aired on 2026-06-04

Protein added to chips. Protein added to milk that already has protein. A Costco chocolate milk that flies off the shelves. The marketing is working, but the nutrition math is messier than the labels suggest.

Alyssa B from http://Nourished.ca cuts through the noise with a number: one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight is the target for an active woman focused on muscle and bone health. That's a lot. It's also why the industry keeps adding protein to everything, and why most people chasing that target are accidentally dropping their fibre intake to near zero.

She also changed her own diet after a bone density scan showed real decline, got retested, and the numbers improved. The goal is not more protein. The goal is the right protein, from the right sources, in the right balance.

Topics: protein needs, food marketing nutrition, bone density, plant-based protein, healthy aging women

GUEST: Alyssa B | http://nourished.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-03

Canadian baby formula prices are up 70% in five years. There are still shortages. And the only plant producing baby formula in Canada ships most of what it makes to China and the United States.

That plant cost $380 million to build. Canadian taxpayers confirmed at least $48 million of that. The company that owns it is Chinese. A heavily redacted 200-page document, pried loose through the Freedom of Information Act, confirmed the exports and raised new questions about how supply-managed Canadian milk ended up in a foreign-owned export operation.

With CUSMA talks approaching and the US already accusing Canada of routing dairy through customs loopholes, the dairy file has become one of the messiest corners of Canada-US trade relations.

Topics: baby formula Canada, supply management loopholes, Canada-China dairy, CUSMA review, dairy trade

GUEST: Sylvain Charlebois | @‌foodprofessor

Originally aired on 2026-06-04

In 2007, Stephen Harper was leading a conservative minority government, George W. Bush was in his second term, and Afghanistan was dominating the news. Politicians were speaking about Arctic sovereignty without calling each other names. Nothing was done about it then either.

The average Canadian home cost $300,000. Weekly groceries ran $140 to $170. Gas was a dollar to a dollar ten a litre, which felt steep. June 2007 is when the smartphone launched and rewired everything that followed.

At the movies, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End led the summer. Knocked Up and Shrek the Third rounded out the season. Nineteen years later, the prices are unrecognisable and the Arctic conversation is still unresolved.

Topics: Canada 2007, Stephen Harper, Afghanistan, smartphone launch, Canadian home prices 2007

Originally aired on 2026-06-04

Alberta's Premier put a number on separation this week: $170 billion in federal debt as Alberta's opening share, before accounting for everything the federal government currently handles. Rob Breakenridge says a new poll shows more Canadians now view Alberta leaving as more damaging to the economy than Quebec leaving. The math is starting to land.

On AI, Canada's ambitions are running ahead of its policy. Governments are playing catch-up with technology that has moved years ahead of any committee study, and corporations that were racing toward AI are already pulling back on costs. A Conference Board report projecting half a million disrupted jobs sits awkwardly beside ministerial optimism.

On trade, Trump is cycling through new legal justifications for tariffs after court setbacks, with forced labour now the rationale. Canada is watching CUSMA closely and hoping to minimize the damage.

Topics: Alberta separation, Canada AI jobs, CUSMA tariffs 2026, Trump trade, Canadian economy

GUEST: Rob Breakenridge | robbreakenridge.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-04

The Price is Right is the definition of game show in most people's heads, and according to BuzzerBlog's Cory Anotado, that didn't happen by accident.

Hidden inside Cliffhangers, one of the show's most dramatic pricing games, is a trick Bob Barker built in specifically for loyal viewers. The first item runs around $25, the second around $35, the third around $45. Know those numbers and that mountain climber stays on the mountain. The show has never announced this. It's a reward for paying attention.

Cory also covers the Drew Carey transition, the host auditions nobody remembers, and BuzzerBlog's 24-hour Game Show Marathon raising funds for Child's Play, which supports pediatric hospitals in Canada with therapeutic games and no-fear MRI kits for kids.

Topics: Price is Right history, Cliffhangers secret, BuzzerBlog, Drew Carey, Child's Play charity

GUEST: Cory Anotado | http://buzzerblog.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-04

Bob Dylan is 85 and just announced more tour dates. The Beach Boys are out with Mike Love at 85. Paul Simon is 84, Randy Bachman is 82, Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton are both 80. They are all on the road this summer, and concert ticket prices for all of them keep climbing.

Music journalist Eric Alper says the cynical read is that they need the money. The more interesting answer is psychological. For artists who have spent fifty or sixty years performing, stopping is not a logistical decision. It is an identity crisis. There is also a concept called terror management: the idea that humans build systems to buffer the anxiety of mortality, and for these artists, the stage is that buffer.

Then there is the question of what comes next. Eric Alper just saw the ABBA Voyage hologram show in the UK and thinks the concert as we know it may be unrecognizable in five to ten years. Universal announced a deal last week allowing fans to remix and duet with official releases using AI. This may be the last generation that listens to something created entirely by human beings.

Topics: classic rock tours 2026, aging musicians, terror management psychology, ABBA Voyage AI, Universal Music AI deal

GUEST: Eric Alper | thatericalper.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-04

Internet memes turned 2007 into year zero — and the evidence starts with a cat, a cheeseburger, and intentionally terrible spelling.

Ed Conroy connects the cultural nostalgia of Bob Barker's final Price Is Right era to the moment the internet stopped being a place you explored and became a place four corporations manage. Something Awful, Catterday, Grumpy Cat — the lineage is weirder and more deliberate than most people realize.

The word meme is a shortening of a Greek word meaning "that which is imitated." A researcher in the 1970s decided it was too long and cut it. From the very beginning, the meme concept was itself a meme. Ed Conroy maps what 2007 actually was — not just a transition on daytime TV, but a hinge point in how culture travels.

Topics: internet memes, early internet history, Price Is Right 2007, meme culture, retro nostalgia

GUEST: Ed Conroy | http://retrontario.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-04

Canadian films are landing at the box office, and the question nobody expected to be asking is whether this country is ready to actually celebrate the people who made them.

The Knight Who Should Be Luther
King Charles tapped Idris Elba on the shoulders with a ceremonial sword this week, making him Sir Idris — recognized for his work as an actor, activist, and musician. Richard Crouse argues the knighthood is deserved, the Bond conversation is done, and the real move is more Luther films. He also has photographic evidence of his wife discovering Elba was standing directly behind her at the Toronto International Film Festival.

The Youngest Director to Hit Number One
While Scary Movie Six markets itself as a movie that cancels cancel culture, two low-budget horror films rewrote the box office rulebook. Backrooms and Obsession together prove that Gen Z will seek out strange, cheap, original films — the kind Hollywood stopped making a decade ago. Richard Crouse maps what that shift actually means.

Topics: Idris Elba knighthood, Luther franchise, Scary Movie Six, Backrooms horror, Canadian film

GUEST: Richard Crouse | http://richardcrouse.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-04

The optimization industry needs one thing before it can sell you anything: your belief that you are not enough. Tony Tedesco has decided not to provide it.

Tony talks through what actually earns his attention in a feed built to amplify inadequacy, and it is not the cabbage diet or the step counter. It is people telling the truth about what they are going through. The scroll-past is instant for anything that leads with a problem you did not know you had.

The concern is not for people like Tony, who have access to real nutritionists, psychologists, and fitness professionals through his work. It is for everyone else spending real money on programs sold by people with no particular expertise in anything except making the sale.

Topics: optimization culture, social media algorithms, wellness marketing, self-improvement pressure, authenticity

Originally aired on 2026-06-03

Canada economy recession talk is landing at the same moment a beloved discount chain is rising from the ashes of Hudson's Bay. The hosts are not sure that is a coincidence.

Zellers, Loyalty Points, and the Nostalgia Economy

A Quebec retail group has acquired the Zellers name, logo, and Zeddy the bear, and plans to go national. The hosts dig into what the revival actually signals about where Canadian consumers are right now, and whether optimum points, Canadian tire money, and aeroplan rewards are doing more for the economy than anyone wants to admit.

Trump, Forced Labor, and the Technical Recession Nobody Wants to Name

Sixty countries are now accused of forced labor violations under a tariff authority American courts have already struck down once. The hosts trace the Uyghur supply chain connection, weigh whether Canada's recession is technical in name only, and land on one uncomfortable agreement: Trump may have done Canadian defence spending a favour nobody asked for.

Topics: Canada economy recession, Trump tariffs forced labor, Zellers relaunch, technical recession Canada, loyalty points

GUEST: Jamie Ellerton | conaptus.com

GUEST: Lindsay Broadhead | broadheadcomms.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-03

Zellers relaunch Canada has two new Ontario locations and a plan to go national slowly. Bruce Winder has questions about whether slowly is fast enough.

Bruce traces the structural challenges facing the new Zellers: limited buying power at three locations, a retail landscape where every major competitor has already absorbed the categories Zellers is re-entering, and mall landlords so eager to fill Bay and Nordstrom vacancies that the rent deals available now may not last. The window is real. So is the pressure to use it.

The conversation lands on private label as the lever that could make the economics work. Without it, Zellers is selling branded product at margins that make it hard to survive. With it, the brand has a price point and an identity that none of its competitors can copy.

Topics: Zellers relaunch Canada, retail nostalgia, mall real estate vacancy, discount retail strategy, private label

GUEST: Bruce Winder | brucewinder.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-03

Oil inventories are at historic lows. Demand is strong. The price keeps dropping. Dan McTeague says the futures market is being driven by headlines, not reality, and the pain at the pump is far from over.

Dan breaks down why a litre of diesel costs forty cents more in Ontario than Alberta, why the weak loonie adds roughly forty cents a litre regardless of where crude is trading, and why provincial tax relief is
largely being cancelled out by HST windfalls governments are quietly collecting on higher prices.

The deeper problem is supply. Dan puts the net loss at fifteen to sixteen million barrels a day, with emergency reserves already eighty percent drawn down. Even if the Strait of Hormuz opened tomorrow, he says, prices would not return to pre-crisis levels for several months at minimum.

Topics: gas prices Canada, oil supply crisis, Canadian dollar fuel costs, fuel tax relief, Strait of Hormuz

GUEST: Dan McTeague | http://affordableenergy.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-03

Skinwalker Ranch is one of the most surveilled properties on earth. Dr. Lee Kuhnle wants to know why the footage never quite delivers.

Lee walks through decades of ownership, research, and television production, including the defence-funded program that quietly paid for cryptid hunting while telling Congress it was doing something else. He also names the independent analysts who went to the ranch, saw genuinely
strange things, and came home with explanations involving Starlink satellites and camera apertures.

None of that makes the ranch boring. Orbs through hillsides, GPS mapping drones underground, fence posts burned overnight. Lee's framework for thinking through what counts as real evidence makes the unexplained parts sharper, not smaller.

Topics: Skinwalker Ranch, paranormal evidence, UFO investigation, government defence contracts, disconfirmation

GUEST: Dr. Lee Kuhnle | http://amazon.ca/Uncover-Up-Think-Clearly-Conspiracies/dp/1770418873

Originally aired on 2026-06-03

Black hole TON 618 looks beautiful in the viral image. Greg Fish wants to talk about what it would actually do to the clouds, the oceans, and everything in between.

Greg breaks down why a black hole produces more light than the sun, how an accretion disc accelerates matter to near light speed before obliterating it, and why the idyllic image circulating online has no relationship to the physics involved. The Photoshop is the point, he argues. Attention drives the share. Reality drives the unsubscribe.

The useful part of the conversation is what space radiation events that fall short of extinction actually look like. Satellite disruption, ozone damage, infrastructure failure. Greg draws a direct line from understanding TON 618 to knowing how to build systems that survive the space weather events that are already happening.

Topics: black hole TON 618, viral space images debunked, supernova radiation Earth, space weather infrastructure, accretion disc explained

GUEST: Greg Fish | cyberpunksurvivalguide.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-03

Optimization culture sold itself as a tool. Tony Chapman says it became a weapon, and the target is your sense of worth.

Tony draws a direct line from fear-based marketing to the anxiety that now runs through everyday decisions about steps, macros, posting schedules, and productivity. The promise is always the same: follow the playbook and you'll get there. The problem is the playbook was never written for you.

Mistakes, detours, and inefficiency aren't failure. Tony points to Richard Branson's upside-down office poster and a spontaneous week through Spain as evidence that the most optimal outcomes often arrive through the least optimized routes.

Topics: optimization culture, fear-based marketing, social media pressure, self-improvement, mental health

GUEST: Tony Chapman | http://chatterthatmatters.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-03

Children laughter and play turn out to be building something permanent. The Saturday morning forts, the trunk full of random props that turned into a pirate ship, the Roadrunner that never got caught. None of it was wasted time.

Tony has an Oscar the Grouch tattoo and a theory about reply-all emails. He still calls it the tickle trunk. Shane shares he once moved the actual tickle trunk on a college shoot with Ernie Coombs and never forgot it.

Good news lands first. A daughter is visiting. A little old philosopher filled a theatre in Ottawa for two hours and sounded exactly like his podcasts. Then the texts started coming in.

Topics: children laughter brain development, Mr. Dressup tickle trunk, Saturday morning cartoons Canada, Sesame Street, kids play resilience

Originally aired on 2026-06-02

Six-year-olds who could not tell time. A baseline test confirming it. Then two sessions with performance visual artists teaching through play and joy. Every child could tell the time. Every child moved up an attainment bracket. Dr. Jacqueline Harding ran that experiment, and the result is not a curiosity. It is a blueprint.

When children laugh, cortisol drops. Defences lower. The brain enters the relaxed, curious state where information actually sticks. Harding calls it the happiness laboratory — and the neuroscience behind it explains why people remember stories told with warmth far longer than any list of facts delivered under pressure. It also explains why a fear-based approach to education is failing teachers and children at the same time.

Harding consults on some of the most-watched children's television in the world, including Peter Rabbit and Teletubbies. Her test for whether a show is working is simple: watch the child after it ends. Frantic and cranky means the pace was wrong. Calm and still talking about it means something landed. For every parent and grandparent trying to figure out what to put in front of a child, that is where to start.

Topics: laughter and learning children, play-based learning outcomes, child brain development, children's TV consultant, fear-based education

GUEST: Dr. Jacqueline Harding | http://drjacquelineharding.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-02

Good news Tuesday Canada brings Krista Richard out of Moncton, New Brunswick, where her Bikes and Trikes for Everyone program has put wheels under thousands of kids over 14 years. She collects them, fixes them, and sends them out the door. That is the whole program.

The phones and texts fill in the rest. Arthur was fancy. Teletubbies was a hard no. Someone watched Mr. Dressup through their teens when they were homesick and it still worked. A daughter got her physics project running tonight. The good news is small and enormous all at once.

In New York City, a Turkish restaurant owner has been letting homeless people sleep inside for eight years. Pope Leo plays tennis. The good news is not hard to find once you start looking.

Topics: good news Tuesday Canada, Krista Richard Bikes and Trikes Moncton, childhood TV nostalgia, Pope Leo Augustinian, listener texts radio

Originally aired on 2026-06-02

Ottawa nostalgia and urban development collide when the place that held your childhood firsts starts coming down by machine. Stefan Keyes grew up in Ottawa's West End, close enough to walk to Westgate Shopping Centre. He watched his first movie there. He got his first passport photo there. He has not been inside in years and he is going to miss it anyway.

There is a difference between a place you visit and a place that holds something for you. Stefan Keyes names it precisely: the physical manifestation of memory. When it goes, the instant recall goes with it.

The new Ottawa is bigger, shinier, and genuinely exciting. It is also missing something that the reclining seats and the VIP section cannot replace.

Topics: Westgate Shopping Centre Ottawa, nostalgia urban development, childhood memories Ottawa West End, human connection, Stefan Keyes CTV CFRA

GUEST: Stefan Keyes | cfra.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-02

Three robots walked into the show tonight - all of them fun.

One is in a university cafeteria doing something 2.5 million times that humans have never quite managed to do consistently. One is in a litter box, quietly learning things. And one was built in someone's garage from plans posted online, for a reason that sounds absurd until Kris Abel explains exactly who it was built for.

That last one is the one you'll still be thinking about.

Topics: robot burger grill, Litter Robot 5 Canada, weird tech Canada, Gastronomist Tech Burlington, horse simulation controller

GUEST: Kris Abel | krisabel.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-02

A Canadian peacekeeper deploys to Croatia in 1993 to separate armies that want nothing to do with peace. He comes home carrying wounds nobody can see. Decades later, a daughter he never knew existed makes her way across the country to find him.

The Peace Thieves is Brent Van Staalduinen's sixth novel, built around a question the title refuses to let go of: who is stealing the peace, and can it ever truly be kept?

An anti-war novel that openly celebrates the people sent into harm's way, and asks what a country owes them when they return.

Topics: Canadian peacekeeping novel, military fiction Canada, PTSD veterans fiction, Croatia 1993, father-daughter estrangement

GUEST: Brent Van Staalduinen | http://brentvans.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-02

Canada is technically in a recession and the prime minister won't say the word. Matt Gurney thinks the more important conversation is the one hiding underneath it.

For years, the answer to flat economic productivity was simple: put more people in the country. More people at Tim Hortons, more people at Canadian Tire, more dollars tallied in GDP. It worked as a number. It did not work as an economy. Canadian productivity per working hour has been declining relative to the United States for decades, and the gap keeps widening. Now the population is actually dipping, the tariff pressure is real, and the mask is off.

Gurney's read on Mark Carney: he knows what the big picture problems are and he's trying to put the country on a different economic track without touching the social policies that keep his party together. Whether you can draw a clean line between economic and social issues is another question. And it's been more than a year. The steering wheel might be broken, or the ship just takes this long to turn. Either way, Canadians aren't asking for a Hail Mary. They want a yard.

Topics: Canada recession 2025, Canadian productivity decline, GDP population growth, Mark Carney economic policy, immigration and GDP Canada

GUEST: Matt Gurney | http://readtheline.ca

Originally aired on 2026-06-02

Bob Addison went back to read the label on a six-foot Canada Day flag at Costco. Made in Canada, imported fabric, pole and bracket from China. Fifty dollars. The irony runs deeper when you consider Canada probably sold them the coal that fired the furnace that made the pole.

That observation opens into something the algorithm has been quietly building for a while. Nostalgia for the sixties, seventies, and eighties is everywhere on social media — Vancouver street footage from sixty years ago, old hockey cards on T-shirts, Jim Morrison at YVR, top-ten song intro lists that disappear the evening. Bob Addison graduated in the late seventies into Supertramp, Genesis, and an inevitable Doors phase. Shane Hewitt graduated into Much Dance 93. Both agree the brain keeps those years in a different place than everything else — warmer, more specific, harder to shake.

The question nobody can quite answer is whether it's nostalgia or just the part of memory that stress never got to.

Topics: Canada Day flag made in China, buying Canadian, sixties nostalgia social media, high school music memories, Much Dance 93

GUEST: Bob Addison | @‌riobobbo

Originally aired on 2026-06-02

Counterfeit sports jerseys are everywhere, and the reasons people buy them are more complicated than the law makes room for.

The conversation draws a hard line between two kinds of fakes. A counterfeit Rolex or a fake designer bag is about passing yourself off as something you're not. A fake jersey is about wanting to wear your team's colours without taking out a mortgage. One is vanity. The other is fandom priced out of reach by the people who profit most from it.

That doesn't make it legal. Counterfeit goods take money out of the pocket of whoever owns the intellectual property, billionaire or not. And the operations behind large-scale counterfeit rings are not guys selling t-shirts out of a parking lot. But when a ball cap at a Formula One event costs two hundred and ten dollars and an official jersey runs three hundred, the question of who created this problem in the first place is worth asking.

Topics: counterfeit sports jerseys, fake NHL jerseys Canada, sports merchandise pricing, counterfeit goods Canada, fan culture

Originally aired on 2026-06-01

From wildflower yards to self-cleaning robot vacuums, this week's DIY conversation goes places you won't expect.

The neighbours want a perfect lawn. The bees want you to stop.

Chaos gardening is the TikTok trend where you scatter wildflower seeds and let mother nature take over — no mowing, no maintenance, full pollinator habitat. Andy Baryer makes the case that lawns are vanity projects and gardens are the smarter call: better for the environment, better for the budget, and better than cayenne pepper and coffee grounds in a losing war against squirrels.

A robot that stops mid-job to clean itself. And then keeps going.

Andy just got back from a Dyson event in Toronto where engineers from the UK lab walked him through a robot vacuum that mops, self-cleans at its base station, and lifts its roller automatically when it hits carpet. That same engineering mindset led Dyson to vertical strawberry farming in the UK, where they've built one of the country's largest strawberry operations using LED lighting, water recycling, and a growing season that doesn't depend on weather.

Topics: chaos gardening, Dyson robot vacuum Canada, vertical farming technology, garden pests squirrels, DIY home tips

GUEST: Andy Baryer | handyandymedia.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-01

A new study on stress and memory just landed — and it reframes what's actually happening in your brain when you blank at the worst possible time.

The research shows that acute stress doesn't just make recall harder. It limits how the brain forms associations between new memories as they're being built. Dr. Samantha Yammine uses a sharp example: if a friend tells you they'll be wearing a bright red jacket and later you spot that jacket outside the library, your unstressed brain connects the dots. Under stress, that link doesn't form the same way. The hippocampus keeps things separate instead of integrating them.

That separation might be protective — stress could be shielding existing memories from being edited or overwritten. But it also explains why anxiety makes the same scenario feel brand new every time, which is exactly why cognitive reappraisal sits at the core of anxiety therapy: you have to consciously remind yourself that last time, it was fine.

Topics: stress and memory, acute stress brain effects, hippocampus memory formation, anxiety therapy cognition, memory reliability

GUEST: Dr. Samantha Yammine | http://samanthayammine.com

Originally aired on 2026-06-01