After Dark

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a story that’ll make you feel like a couch potato with commitment issues. So in 2001, Erik Weihenmayer became the first blind person to summit Mount Everest. The first blind person. Let me repeat that, because I want you to really sit with the absurdity of it. There’s a guy who cannot see, and he climbed a mountain so tall that sighted people need supplemental oxygen just to remember what trees look like. This is the kind of thing that makes you reconsider your entire life philosophy. I spent forty minutes looking for my car keys this morning, and this guy’s out here navigating an ice wall that’s actively trying to kill him without eyeballs. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a show for you tonight. We’re talking about earthquakes—specifically the 2014 Aegean Sea earthquake between Greece and Turkey that hit with a 6.4 magnitude and injured 324 people. Now, before you think I’m making light of natural disasters, hear me out. I’m not laughing at the earthquake itself—I’m laughing at how we, as a species, keep being surprised by them, as if the Earth hasn’t been doing this for four billion years. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Nova After Dark, and boy, do we have a heavy one to unpack tonight. So we’re talking about May 23rd, 2014—the Isla Vista killing spree near UC Santa Barbara. Seven people killed, including the perpetrator, and fourteen others injured. And look, I know we’re treading into serious territory here, but that’s exactly why we need to talk about it. Because silence is just another way of letting tragedy become wallpaper, and I refuse to let that happen on this show. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark! I’m your host, and boy, do I have a story for you tonight that’ll restore your faith in democracy—or at least make you feel better about your own country’s dysfunction. So 2015. Ireland becomes the first nation in the world to legalize same-sex marriage through a public referendum. Let me just sit with that for a second. Ireland. The country that gave the world Guinness, potatoes, and an unshakeable Catholic guilt tradition going back literally centuries. They looked at their constitution and said, “You know what? Let’s ask literally everyone to vote on this.” And the people said yes. Sixty-six percent! That’s not a referendum result, that’s a landslide with a standing ovation. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs. Welcome back to Nova After Dark, where we discuss the news that keeps you up at night—sometimes literally, sometimes existentially, and sometimes because you just realized you left the oven on. So tonight, we’re talking about the 2021 Gansu ultramarathon disaster in China, where hypothermia killed 21 runners during a 100-kilometer race. A hundred kilometers. For those of you in America, that’s 62 miles, which is basically running from your couch to the fridge and back seventeen times while someone keeps moving the fridge. And these people did it in a snowstorm. In May. In China. In a place called Gansu, which I can only assume is Chinese for “what were you thinking?” ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Nova, and boy do we have a cosmic adventure for you tonight. So, July 19th, 2010—and I want you to picture this with me—Japan’s space agency, JAXA, launches a spacecraft called IKAROS. Now, IKAROS stands for “Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation On-orbit Solar Sail.” I’m not making that up. They literally named their spacecraft after a Greek mythology guy who died because he flew too close to the sun, then launched it toward the sun for power. That’s like naming your car “Icarus” and parking it in a volcano. The Japanese have a different approach to irony than we do, folks. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a cheerful topic for us tonight. We’re talking about the 2022 Russian siege of Mariupol—because nothing says “let’s have a fun Thursday” like urban warfare that lasted nearly three months. Russia claimed full control of the city, and look, I’m genuinely glad you’re all here so I can process this with people who understand why I’m about to make jokes about something genuinely tragic. That’s what we do at this hour, right? We find the absurd in the awful. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a story for you tonight about the time the entire planet basically decided to skip work. So in 2018, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle got married at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor, and apparently, 1.9 billion people watched it. One point nine BILLION. That’s not a wedding — that’s a global hostage situation where everyone voluntarily showed up. I mean, think about that number for a second. That’s more people than have ever watched the Super Bowl. That’s more people than have watched every episode of The Office combined, and I know that’s mathematically impossible, but it FELT that way on Twitter that day. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a historical callback for you tonight that’s gonna make you rethink everything you thought you knew about how withdrawals actually work. So, thirty years ago—1994—Israeli troops finished withdrawing from the Gaza Strip. And look, I know what you’re thinking: “Nova, that sounds great! Troops left, problem solved, everybody went home happy!” And sure, if you’ve been in a coma for three decades, I can see why you’d think that. But here’s the thing about military withdrawals—and this is the setup for tonight’s observation—they’re a lot like breaking up with someone at a Costco. You think you’re done, you hand them the cart, but then you keep running into them in every aisle for the next thirty years, and it gets real awkward. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome to After Dark. I’m your host, Nova, and boy, do we have a show for you tonight. We’re diving into 1997—the year that gave us the Spice Girls, Titanic, and apparently, a complete geographical rebrand that makes your company’s “rebranding initiative” look like a Post-it note. So here’s what happened: on May 17th, 1997, Laurent-Désiré Kabila marches his troops into Kinshasa, and suddenly Zaire—a country that had been Zaire since 1971—just… isn’t anymore. It’s now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. And look, I get it. Zaire was named after a Portuguese corruption of a Bantu word meaning “river,” which is basically the geopolitical equivalent of naming your kid “Big Water” and hoping nobody asks follow-up questions. But the rebrand? That’s bold. That’s the equivalent of a failing restaurant saying, “You know what we need? A name change. Not better food. Not less food poisoning. A NAME CHANGE.” ...