SHIFTHEADS: Stories You Did Not Need. Avoiding Them Was the Right Decision

Nobody Planned This Wednesday Holiday. Now Nobody's Working

Canada Day landed on a Wednesday and somehow half the country took the whole week off. Shane and Ryan are both at their desks, mildly annoyed, and very much in the mood to talk about summer grievances. The conversation starts with how far in advance you actually need to plan a long weekend, moves into the sounds of summer in a small town and downtown Calgary, and lands firmly on pedal pubs. Ryan has thoughts. Strong ones. Shane isn't sure pedal pubs are the problem so much as context, but agrees the mid-intersection group sing-along version of Mr. Brightside is a legitimate public menace. Also: Christmas in July starts now, summer is the right time to test your Christmas lights, and we are officially one week past halfway to Christmas. You're welcome. Topics: Canada Day long weekend, vacation planning, pedal pubs Calgary, summer noise, Christmas in July Originally aired on 2026-07-03

NEW - You Almost Always Turn Left. Here's Why!

Human movement bias is more consistent than almost anyone expects, and Samantha Yammine is here to explain why the research is harder to dismiss than it looks. Studies in Spain and Japan, with children, adults, individuals, and crowds, all point to the same result: people veer left, and they can't explain why. Handedness doesn't account for it. Driving conventions don't account for it. Walls and social norms don't account for it. The researchers ruled them out systematically, and the bias remained. What's left is something that appears to be intrinsic, without yet having an explanation. The finding has real implications for how cities and venues move people, and a genuinely strange implication for anyone who's ever stood up from a chair and turned the wrong way. Topics: left-turn bias, crowd movement, human behaviour research, urban planning, cognitive bias GUEST: Samantha Yammine | http://samanthayammine.com [http://samanthayammine.com] | @‌science.sam Originally aired on 2026-07-03

SHIFTHEADS: Stories You Did Not Need. Avoiding Them Was the Right Decision

It's Canada Day weekend, give or take, and Shane and Ryan have three stories that will improve nothing about your life and yet somehow feel essential. First: the banana car. Twenty-three feet long, Ford F-150 engine, open top, eighty-five miles an hour, and a dedicated app so you always know where it's headed next. Second: Contemporary Calgary is currently housing a thousand-pound butter cowboy, kept from melting by fans running twenty-four hours a day inside a Monopoly exhibit that runs five months. Third: Florida paddleboarders pulled off a dramatic water rescue for what they were confident was a dog. It was a coyote. Everyone survived. Good job, Florida. Also in the mix: the definitive Batmobile ranking and a brief detour into Homer Simpson's car design philosophy. Topics: weird news Canada, banana car, butter cowboy Calgary, Florida coyote rescue, useless stories Originally aired on 2026-07-03

NEW - Horror With Headphones and Minions in Hollywood

Steve Stebbing, film and entertainment critic, splits this week into two rounds. First, Canadian titles built for a long weekend at home. Then, what's actually worth the theatre seat right now. Three Canadian Films Worth Your Canada Day Undertone is the one Steve keeps coming back to: a Canadian horror film built on sound, picked up and finished by A24, following a paranormal podcast whose hosts start working through nine anonymous tapes until things start happening at home. Headphones required. Mile and Kicks is a Montreal coming-of-age story set during the Arcade Fire era, starring Barbie Ferreira as a music critic leaving Toronto for her first big shot. Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie is Matt Johnson making one of the funniest Canadian films in recent memory, using old web series footage to build something that somehow brushes up against Back to the Future copyright territory. What's in Theatres Now The Invite keeps its biggest reveals off the trailer, which Steve argues should become standard practice. Olivia Wilde directs Seth Rogen opposite Edward Norton and Penelope Cruz in a dinner party that dismantles itself. Enola Holmes 3 delivers exactly what the first two promised. Millie Bobby Brown is charming, Henry Cavill is reliable, and Philip Barantini, who directed Adolescence, makes a sharp pivot into action. Minions and Monsters exists. Trey Parker voices a small Cthulhu. That's the pitch. Topics: Canadian films 2026, Undertone A24 horror, Mile and Kicks film, Minions Monsters Trey Parker, Enola Holmes 3 GUEST: Steve Stebbing | http://stevestebbing.ca [http://stevestebbing.ca]   Originally aired on 2026-07-03

Shiftheads - How Do You Measure What AI Actually Does?

AI evaluation in business sounds straightforward until you try to do it. Mohit Rajhans says most companies are realizing the math doesn't work the way they thought it would. Mohit runs http://ThinkStart.ca [http://thinkstart.ca] and tracks where technology meets business reality. This conversation starts with a simple problem: there's no gas pump ticker on AI. No visible meter telling you what you're spending as you use it, what it's producing, or whether the output justifies the cost. Two employees, same salary, same AI spend, wildly different results, and no clear reason why. The conversation moves into what that means for workers trying to prove their value in a moment when their job is being quietly reevaluated, and lands on a story about an intern who built something impressive, shared client data with a public model to do it, and nearly got fired for the thing she thought would save her. Doing more with AI isn't the same as doing the right things with it. Topics: AI evaluation, AI ROI, measuring AI productivity, AI and jobs Canada, AI tools at work GUEST: Mohit Rajhans | http://thinkstart.ca [http://thinkstart.ca] Originally aired on 2026-07-03