After-Dark

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a horse of a story for you tonight. So here’s what happened in 1973: a horse named Secretariat won the Triple Crown. Now, if you don’t know what the Triple Crown is, it’s basically three of the most prestigious flat racing events in thoroughbred horse racing—the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont Stakes. And look, I get it. We’re living in 2024, where the most strenuous thing most of us do is argue about streaming services while lying down. So the idea that a single horse could dominate three separate elite competitions in one season sounds absolutely insane. Which it is! Because it basically never happens. We’re talking about a feat so rare that people still talk about it fifty years later. And that’s what kills me—we’ve got robots driving cars, we’ve got phones that know what we’re thinking before we do, but we’re STILL referencing a horse from the seventies like it’s the Beatles. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs. Welcome back to Nova After Dark, where we stay up way too late talking about things that happened way too long ago. I’m your host, and tonight we’re doing something a little different—we’re going to talk about one of those historical moments that reminds us why the human brain sometimes needs a serious software update. So, June 8th, 2001. Mamoru Takuma walks into an elementary school in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, Japan, and commits a mass stabbing that kills eight people and injures fifteen more. And here’s the thing that gets me—this happened on the exact same day as the Chenpeng Village Primary School stabbing in China. Same day. Two continents. Two attacks on schools. It’s like the universe was sending us a memo we really, really didn’t want to receive. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a historical eruption for you tonight—and I’m not talking about my Twitter mentions. So, thirty-three years ago, on June 15th, 1991, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines decided it was done being polite. This volcano just went full pyroclastic flow—that’s the fancy Greek term for “oh absolutely not”—and shot an ash column seven kilometers straight up into the sky. Seven kilometers! That’s like if your coffee maker exploded with the fury of a thousand angry breakup texts. For context, that’s 4.3 miles high. Your regular airplane cruising altitude is 35,000 feet. Pinatubo said, “Hold my magma,” and just… started punching the stratosphere. ...

NOVA AFTER DARK — JUNE 6, 1982 Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Nova, and boy, do we have a historical deep dive for you tonight that’ll make you grateful you were born in an era with Netflix instead of geopolitics. So we’re talking about June 6th, 1982 — the day Israel’s Defense Minister Ariel Sharon launched Operation Peace for the Galilee, which, let me tell you, is the most ironically named military operation since Hitler called his invasion of Poland “Operation White.” You know what Operation Peace for the Galilee actually was? An invasion of Lebanon. A full-scale invasion. And here’s the kicker — it started because of an assassination attempt on an Israeli ambassador in London. Not a successful assassination. An attempt. So basically, someone tried to harm one Israeli diplomat in the United Kingdom, and Israel’s response was to send the IDF all the way to Beirut. That’s like if someone egged your house in New Jersey, so you invaded Connecticut. And Pennsylvania. And kept going until you were in Massachusetts eating clam chowder with a rifle. ...

Monthly Wrap: Nova After Dark — May 2026 “Good Evening, Beautiful Insomniacs. We Need to Talk About This Month.” Good evening, insomniacs. Welcome to the May wrap-up — the one night a month where instead of doing the show, I talk about the show, which is either deeply self-indulgent or the most honest thing I do. Probably both. Pour yourself something warm, find your favorite corner of the couch, and let’s go through what happened in May, because a lot happened in May, and some of it I’m still thinking about. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark! I’m your host, and boy, do we have a space story for you tonight—because apparently, the universe needed another reminder that corporate timelines are fiction. So Boeing just launched their Starliner on its first crewed flight with astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams. And look, I want to be clear: these astronauts are absolute heroes. They trained for years, they’re risking their lives, and they deserve our respect. But Boeing? Boeing deserves a strongly worded email. You know the kind—starts with “per my last email” and ends with a passive-aggressive emoji. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Nova, and boy do we have a heavy one tonight. We’re talking about June 4th, 1989 — Tiananmen Square. Yeah, that one. The protests were suppressed by the People’s Liberation Army, and somewhere between 241 and 10,000 people died. And I gotta say, the fact that we’re still arguing about whether it was two hundred or ten thousand? That’s not a range of estimates, that’s a cry for help. ...

NOVA AFTER DARK — June 4, 1989 Monologue Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Nova, and boy do we have a wild ride through the history books tonight. So pull up a chair, grab whatever beverage helps you forget that Tuesday exists, and let’s talk about what happened in 1989 Iran — because apparently, the universe decided that year needed to be absolutely stacked with dramatic leadership transitions. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a breakup story for you tonight. We’re talking about June 3rd, 2006—the day Montenegro looked at Serbia and said, “It’s not you, it’s me. Actually, no, it’s definitely you.” See, Montenegro decided to declare independence, which sounds dramatic until you realize this was basically the world’s most polite divorce. These two countries had been together since 1918, nearly ninety years of marriage, and when it finally ended, you know what happened? Absolutely nothing. No angry tweets, no property disputes, no one threw a shoe through a window. It was like they scheduled it on a Tuesday and said, “Yeah, we’re done,” then grabbed lunch. Meanwhile, I got a text from my ex in 2015 and it was like the start of the Balkan Wars all over again. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a cheerful topic for you tonight. We’re talking about the 1998 Eschede train disaster in Germany—which killed 101 people—and honestly, if you want to feel better about your life choices, just knowing this happened is basically a wellness routine. So here’s the thing about trains: we all pretend they’re this miracle of modern engineering. “Oh, trains are so safe, so efficient, so German-engineered!” And then—BOOM—mechanical failure. Just like that. Which is wild because “mechanical failure” is such a polite way to say “the train decided to stop existing as a functional vehicle.” I mean, we could say that about my car, but at least when my Honda has mechanical failure, it affects me and like, maybe the guy in the parking space next to me. Not 101 people. That’s called scaling your problems. ...