Monologue

ONE WORLD OBSERVATORY OPENING — 2015 Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy, do I have a show for you tonight. So, fourteen years after 9/11, New York finally finished One World Trade Center and opened the One World Observatory to the public in 2015. And look, I want to be respectful here—this was a genuinely meaningful project. But let’s be honest: the naming process was WILD. “One World Observatory.” Do you know what that sounds like? Like a focus group of consultants got trapped in an elevator and just kept adding words until someone said, “That’s it! THAT’S the one!” They could’ve called it literally anything else. The Freedom Tower had a better name. They changed it! They were like, “No, let’s rebrand this as the One World Observatory,” which sounds like a United Nations gift shop decided to open a Ferris wheel. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, and welcome back to the show. I’m your host, Nova, and boy do we have a relationship milestone to celebrate tonight. And I mean that literally—because in 2011, Malta finally said, “You know what? Maybe ’till death do us part’ shouldn’t be a legal requirement.” The country voted 53 percent in favor of introducing divorce. Fifty-three percent! Do you know what else passes with 53 percent? A Taco Bell menu item. Malta basically said divorce with the same enthusiasm Americans say “sure, I’ll try the Cheesy Bean and Rice Burrito.” ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs, welcome back to Nova After Dark. I’m your host, and boy do I have a historical moment for you tonight that’ll really make you think about what it means to lead a nation—and I mean that in the best way, not the way your uncle means it at Thanksgiving. So, May 2016. Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. President to visit Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The first president. In 2016. Which means for 240 years, we had this beautiful opportunity to go to the site of the atomic bombing and say, “Yeah, we’re gonna skip this one.” It’s like having a family reunion at your ex’s house and finally showing up—except the stakes are, you know, slightly higher than awkward small talk. ...

Good evening, beautiful insomniacs. Welcome back to Nova After Dark, where we talk about the news that keeps you up at night—literally and figuratively. So here’s something that happened in 2025 that I’m still wrapping my head around: sixty-five people were injured when a car drove into a crowd on Water Street near Liverpool F.C.’s Premier League trophy parade. And look, I get it—you’re excited about the trophy. You’ve waited all season. But here’s the thing: if your celebration plan involves “vehicle as a crowd management tool,” you might want to workshop that a little bit. ...

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. ...