Norway's soccer team lost to England, then went viral days later for something that had nothing to do with the match: a stuffed drunk raccoon somebody actually brought home from the trip. It raises the real question. Postcards, magnets, shot glasses, t-shirts, what actually earns its spot in your suitcase?

Cramped toes and fumbled words turned out to be the first sign of dehydration nobody caught in time this week, as a heat wave pushed the feels-like temperature past forty in Windsor and Montreal while Kelowna and Victoria stayed suspiciously perfect, as always.

A ticket to Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey in 70 millimetre on the biggest screen in Western Canada is the kind of good news worth waiting on, and a house renovation finally down to its last room proves some good news takes years to arrive.

Topics: Good News Tuesday, dehydration symptoms, Norway drunk raccoon, travel souvenirs, heat wave Canada

Originally aired on 2026-07-14

Every invasive weed trick you've tried has probably failed, and Andy Barrar has the reason bindweed and mint keep winning. From there he turns to the AI chip now deciding which laptop is worth buying and a satellite company testing sunlight on demand after dark.

Gardening DIY: Why Bindweed Always Wins

Andy tracks the root system that makes bindweed and mint nearly impossible to remove and the layering method that finally starves them out. He also names the plants, including tomatoes and seedlings, that a garden hose can quietly wreck.

The Chip That Decides Your Next Laptop

Handy Andy Baryer connects a whole-home mesh network to the dead wifi zone in your house and explains why the chip inside a laptop now matters more than the logo on the lid. He ends with a satellite startup planning to beam sunlight down after dark.

Topics: invasive weeds, garden watering mistakes, mesh wifi network, AI laptop chips, satellite sunlight technology

GUEST: Andy Barrar | handyandymedia.com | @handyandymedia

Originally aired on 2026-07-14

The Gordie Howe Bridge is set to open July 27th, more than a decade after the deal was signed, and Mike Kakuk explains exactly what changes the day trucks and cars start crossing. Half of all truck traffic is expected to shift immediately, routed around West Windsor via a parkway built specifically to bypass the neighbourhood that has absorbed decades of idling trucks and diesel fumes.

Mike traces the standoff behind the delay to the family that owns the Ambassador Bridge, who spent over twenty years buying up West Windsor properties and leaving them vacant while resisting a second crossing. He also details how rising Ambassador Bridge tolls had already pushed some truckers to detour through Sarnia instead.

For everyday commuters, especially the nurses and healthcare workers who cross daily for jobs in Detroit hospitals, Mike lays out how three separate crossings, the tunnel, the Ambassador Bridge, and now the Gordie Howe, will each serve a different purpose going forward.

Topics: Gordie Howe Bridge, Mike Kakuk, Windsor Detroit border, Ambassador Bridge tolls, cross-border commuters

GUEST: Mike Kakuk | http://am800cklw.com

Originally aired on 2026-07-14

Competitors in power slapping get hit hard enough to lose consciousness, and a Kitchener woman just became the sport's first women's flyweight champion. From there, a goat that helped fight a Colorado wildfire gets its own merchandise line, and Regina picks up a new Elvis impersonator.

The champion's own words after her win, that she's still in shock, land differently once you hear how the sport actually works. The wildfire story follows Goldie the goat and where the proceeds from the new merchandise go. Regina's impersonator scene keeps growing, and this is the latest name to know.

Also on deck: the best souvenirs to bring home from a trip, according to callers, from bar t-shirts to city-branded mugs to spices.

Topics: power slapping champion, Colorado wildfire goat, Regina Elvis impersonator, good news stories, travel souvenirs

Originally aired on 2026-07-14

Duane D.O. Gibson's great uncle, Isaac Phills, was the first Black Canadian to receive the Order of Canada. Decades later, Duane received the same honour himself, and still cannot find out who nominated him, a mystery he says fits the whole point: it was never about recognition in the first place.

Duane raced Amazing Race Canada as Maestro Fresh Wes's teammate, walking a tightrope two hundred feet above a waterfall in the process, and explains the concept he calls flow state, the same mental space he used to set a Guinness World Record freestyling for eight hours and forty five minutes straight.

He breaks down the compounding math behind getting just 1% better every day, and the specific four-step morning routine, meditation, movement, reading, journaling, that he says makes that possible even on the days it feels impossible.

Topics: Amazing Race Canada, Duane D.O. Gibson, flow state, Order of Canada, Maestro Fresh Wes

GUEST: Duane D.O. Gibson | http://iamdogibson.com

Originally aired on 2026-07-14

Before a single grade eight student in Ontario touches a lathe, they're putting on a VR headset and learning a machine shop that isn't real yet. Kris Abel walks through the first school in the country to try it, plus a zoo with no live animals and a soccer match played entirely by humanoid robots.

VR Before the Real Machines

Kris Abel explains how Fletcher Creek Senior Public School built a virtual machine shop so students learn safety habits, like putting on glasses before a machine starts, without any real risk. He also shares what growing up in his father's machine shop taught him about spotting a dangerous workspace.

Robots That Actually Play the Game

From there, Kris Abel describes a traveling zoo made entirely of animatronic animals, funded by cookie sales instead of ticket prices, and a humanoid robot soccer match in South Korea that turned out far more entertaining than expected.

Topics: VR shop class, animatronic zoo, humanoid robot soccer, machine shop safety, tech news

GUEST: Kris Abel | krisabel.com | @realkrisabel

Originally aired on 2026-07-14

Canada financed the Gordie Howe Bridge, and under the new deal with the US, half the profits now go to an American development fund. Journalist Matt Gurney breaks down why that sounds worse than it is: Canada still recovers every dollar of construction costs before profit sharing even starts.

Gurney's real argument is bigger than the bridge itself. He calls the deal proof that American credibility, built over eighty years, is being traded away for a few million dollars a year, and that watching it happen in real time changes how every country negotiates with the US going forward.

The conversation moves to the newly proposed Canada Act in Congress, a senator publicly asking Canada to stop excluding his state's products, and whether the ongoing ban on American alcohol still makes sense as a bargaining chip or has become a liability of its own.

Topics: Gordie Howe Bridge deal, Matt Gurney, US credibility, Canada Act, USMCA

GUEST: Matt Gurney | http://readtheline.ca | @‌matt gurney

Originally aired on 2026-07-14

Bob Addison got laid off from radio in 2015 and canceled a family trip to Oregon the same day, certain everything was falling apart. A decade later, watching two Vancouver stations and two in Calgary go dark last week, that's the story he keeps coming back to for the colleagues who just lost their jobs: losing the gig is not losing the life.

Bob and Shane land on a real theory for where AM radio actually ends up, a single national emergency network repeating FM content by day and standing ready the moment something goes wrong, and argue about whether Vancouver and Calgary even register next to Ontario and Quebec's population numbers.

Along the way, Bob describes standing underneath a retired space shuttle that rides piggyback on a 747, a scale that only hits once you're actually there looking up at it.

Topics: AM radio layoffs, Bob Addison, Vancouver radio, Calgary radio, space shuttle exhibit

GUEST: Bob Addison | @‌riobobbo

Originally aired on 2026-07-14