The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The End of The Night Sky? -- Say It Ain't So!

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

It's a Wednesday End Bits Special with a lead item that should have you talking. Could night become day with new technology to harness the light power of the stars and reflect them back to Earth? Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Bansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. It's Wednesday, and it's an N-Bit special Wednesday, and we've got some stories for you that you may just find pretty interesting. That's all coming right up. Hello there, Wednesday, N-bit special day. Yeah, we've got some stories for you. You know, they fall under the sort of news you can use category,

but news you also may find interesting. News you may end up talking about it, dinner table tonight. All of that. Coming up in just a couple of moments. A couple of reminders first. The question of the week, you've only got until 6 p.m.

Eastern time tonight to get your answers in. It is about the Iran War. And where you sort of see Canada on this, what should Canada's position be on the Iran War? So you get your answers in to the Mansbridge podcast. at gmail.com. Before 6 p.m. Eastern time tonight,

75 words or fewer, remember to include your full name and your location. Where you're writing from, the community, the city, the town, wherever it may be, in the country. Let us know. So that's that. News of the day,

the Liberals keep inching towards their majority government. Another crossover late last night. Finally mentioned by the liberals themselves early this morning. There's an NDP member crossing the floor this time after three conservatives. So that's four in four months. Crossovers. Now, does that give them their majority? Well, no.

not yet. It gives them 170 seats. There are three by-elections out there coming up. Two of them seem to be a lock for the liberals. One of them, not so much. And that's the one in Quebec. You know, if those go the liberals' way, that's certainly in numbers going to give them their majority. But it's awfully tight.

It's very close. Now, having said that, Nobody, especially the conservatives, don't want an election right now. As you heard Pierre Pollyev just last week on this program, say he doesn't think there should be an election now, and so they're not going to push for one. And probably wisely, given where their position is in the polls these days. But still, it's yet another crossover in a parliament that's seen four of them in a year.

That's quite something. We'll see where this all ends up. Of course, that may be quite something, but so are the times we're living in. Just think about how things have changed in a year and a half. We know what the situation is inside Parliament. We know what the situation is with the United States, especially with their president. And now we're facing a war where the implications are enormous.

So these are times in which we live. that are very different from the world we lived in not that long ago. And that's in a way what NBits Wednesdays are all about, is giving us something else to think about other than the daily pressures that we confront. So we've got some interesting stories here for you today. I'm going to start off with this one. It's from the Washington Post.

Here's the headline. Good Night Stars. We are on the cusp of turning darkness into day. Now, I don't know about you and what you think about the night sky and how often you look at it, whether it's, you know, just nights of a new moon or a full moon or nights in the summer when you may have the opportunity to lie on a dock somewhere, on a lake looking up at the sky and see the full display of stars.

I've been always a kind of night sky person. I love looking at the northern lights. You know, my latter teenage days and early 20s days were in Churchill, Manitoba. And you had a great view of the Aurora Borealis in those days when I lived there. And some nights were spectacular. They were so spectacular that Churchill had a rocket. range run by the National Research Council. They fired Black Brand rockets into the night sky, and one of the reasons they did that

was to try and understand more about the Northern Lights. And that was always a big deal when rockets went up. I remember being out there on one of my first television assignments in Churchill, and I was filming a Black Brand rocket taking off. the rocket range. It was a middle of winter and it was cold. It was Churchill cold. It was like minus 30 or whatever the temperature scale was in those days.

It was really cold. It was so cold. How cold was it? It was so cold that the camera froze up on the countdown. You know, this was back in the days of film. This was around, I don't know. 1969, 1970,

somewhere in there. And, you know, we're on the countdown, 10, 9, 8. And then suddenly you could hear in the camera the film crunching to a stop.

Because it froze. We never got the lift off. So there was a little bit of, a little bit of work to get that item done. Anyway, it was a big deal. the northern lights and living in Churchill. And it was a big deal and still is in Scotland. Because when I, as some of you know, I spent about four months a year in Scotland.

And the home we have there is in the northern end of Scotland. It's way up north, way up in the highlands. Right on the North Sea. And you have spectacular views of the North. northern lights. I'm going to stand out there in the middle of the night, just gazing at the sky. Spectacular displays, more so than I ever saw in Churchill. Quite something. Anyway, so those are kind of the things that you're used to about the night sky. Well, this article in the Washington Post suggests those days may be done.

Let me read a little bit about it. It's by Dana Milbank, it's the piece. in the beginning the Bible tells us God divided the light from the darkness and God called the light day and the darkness he called night and so it's been ever since until now

here in the 21st century we humans are on the cusp of turning night into day and bidding good night to the stars that have guided us home for thousands of years now I know you're going Come on. What are you talking about?

Well, read on. Two little noted applications under review by the Federal Communications Commission, that's the United States, would if fully implemented, if, fundamentally remake the night sky. But the FCC, the satellite regulator, appears to have fast-tracked approval without much of a pause to weigh the benefits of these proposals

against the harms they could cause to life on the planet. Now listen closely. This is going to blow your mind. A startup called Reflect Orbital proposes to use large mirrored satellites to redirect sunlight to Earth at night, with plans to bathe solar farms, industrial sites, and even entire cities in light that could, if desired, reached the intensity of daylight.

At the same time, Elon Musk's SpaceX wants to launch as many as a million satellites to serve as orbiting data centers 70 times the number of satellites now in orbit. We could have a million points of light streaking across our skies at night. Now, there was a public comments period for all these proposals.

that's already closed. To be sure, there's a lot of hype in these proposals. Elon Musk is known to make wild forecasts, and SpaceX has launched not quite a quarter of the Starlink satellites for which it originally sought approval. Reflect Orbital expects to launch its first satellite next month, but its grand vision is largely aspirational, as its young founder Ben Noak told me.

Now, there's also a lot of promise in these proposals. Moving data centers into space could advance AI capacities without devouring land, water, and energy on Earth, while reflecting sunlight could boost our clean energy supply and help with everything from food production to search and rescue. But at what cost? scientists warn about metal pollution in the atmosphere depleting the ultraviolet radiation blocking ozone layer, as well as diminished ability to detect near-earth asteroids, debris, and collisions.

Above all, they expect a massive increase in light pollution. Even before anybody contemplated a million satellite mega constellation and satellites that intentionally brighten the earth at night, a 2021 study found that the sky glow effect from orbiting bodies had increased light pollution by 10% and that's on top of terrestrial light pollution which has been increasing up to 10% per year since 2011 whoa okay this is a much longer article and i'm sure that you're going to want to read it if you're interested in this i mean i find this fascinating a little bit scary.

I mean, really, do we really want to not have night anymore? No, surely it'll never get to that. But those are like real proposals. They've been out there and up for public debate, and have you heard any talk about it? Or maybe you have. I haven't until I saw this article. You may want to read more about it,

and you can find it by going to the Washington Post. They have kind of a climate environment suction on their website, and I'm sure you're going to find it there. The title, if you missed it earlier, is Good Night Stars. We are on the cusp of turning darkness into day. You know, I said it was mind-blowing. It is mind-blowing. You imagine getting up at 2 in the morning and it's bright?

and there are all these mirrors high up in the sky that are reflecting light, reflecting the sun down into our time zones. As we say, so often on this podcast, we're living in a different world. That's a new world out there. Okay, next story. This one we found on MSN.com. And when I say we, I'm talking about my friend, my co-author, in many of the books that bear our names, Mark Bulguch.

And Mark suffers away on the bridge by looking up stuff. And looking up stuff for NBits Wednesdays is one of the things he likes to do. And he finds stuff, like I'm telling you, he finds stuff. So this one was in, it's on MSN.com, but it originally came out of the Wall Street Journal. Here's the headline. And this is kind of interesting, given our current situation with our friends south of the border. Because some of us say, who'd want to live there in all this stuff that they're going through? Well, guess what the headline is here?

Americans are leaving the U.S. in record numbers. I'll read a little bit. Not a lot. I'll read a little bit. You'll get the idea. Last year, the United States experienced something that hasn't definitely occurred, or sorry, definitively occurred, since the Great Depression. More people moved out than moved in. In its 250th year, is America, land of immigration, becoming a country of emigration. The Trump administration has hailed the exodus, negative net migration, as the fulfillment of its promise to ramp up deportations and restrict new visas.

Beneath the stormy optics of that immigration crackdown, however, lies a less notice reversal. America's own citizens. So these aren't illegal immigrants. These are legal citizens. America's own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe. Since the Eisenhower administration, the U.S. hasn't collected comprehensive stats on the number of citizens leaving. Yet data on residence permits, foreign home purchases, student enrollments, and other metrics for more than 50 countries,

show that Americans are voting with their feet to an unprecedented degree. A million-strong diaspora is studying, telecommuting, and retiring overseas. The new American dream, for some of its citizens, is no longer live in the cobblestone streets, excuse me, is no longer living in the neighborhoods in the United States, but instead in the cobblestone streets of, say, Lisbon. So many Americans are snapping up apartments that the newest arrivals complain

they mostly hear their own language, not Portuguese. One of every 15 residents in Dublin's trendy Grand Canal dock. That's an area in Dublin, was born in the U.S. According to realtors, higher than the percentage of Americans born in Ireland during the 19th century influx, following the potato famine. In Bali, Colombia, and Thailand, the strains of housing American remote workers

paid in dollars of inspired locals to mount protests against a wave of gentrification. More than 100,000 young students are enrolled abroad for a more affordable university degree. In nursing homes, mushrooming across inside Mexico, elderly Americans are turning up for low-cost care. On a conference call last month hosted by ex-Patsy, a relocation company, almost 400 Americans signed up to learn how to move to wait for it.

Albania. The former Stalemus State offers a special visa allowing U.S. citizens to live and work there with no tax on foreign income for a year. No questions asked. No tax. Would that get you to move to Albania? Anyway, this article has lots of stories about situations like that, but it also has lots of stats and charts and this and that and the other thing.

So if you want to find it, you could either go to MSN.com punching that headline about Americans are leaving the U.S. in record numbers or go to the Wall Street Journal where it originated. Now, as I say in my newsletter each weekend, good journalism costs money. And therefore, in some of these references I give you, there are paywalls. Okay.

In some cases, there are no paywalls. In other cases, there are paywalls. And sometimes they offer a freebie. You know, you get seven days free. You have to remember to cancel. Or you are going to get hit for it. And others will offer a kind of a one-time. you know, free article.

So there's ways of navigating the paywall at times. But at the end of the day, and I think you need to remember this, good journalism costs money. And we all want good journalism. Back in the day when I used to be a journalist, I was for 50 years, journalism means a lot more than just sitting behind a microphone talking into a podcast.

Podcasts are fun, but they're not journalism per se. Journalism means you're actively working on getting information. I haven't been out on a story in 10 years almost, but I read lots. I share some of what I read with you, and that's other people's journalism. And lucky to have access to it. And in many cases, like these NBid Wednesdays, they're kind of a tease for you to learn more, understand more. Go to the original article.

Go to other articles that are on the same subject. Let's squeeze in another one. This is kind of related, actually. But we'll squeeze it in before we take our break. This comes out of NPR in the state, so it's NPR. on national public radio. Here's the headline. As I said, it's kind of related to the last one

about Americans leaving the U.S. But this is for a specific reason. Hundreds of American nurses are choosing Canada over the U.S. under Trump. That's the headline. So once again, let me read a little bit. Last month, Justin and Amy Miller

packed their vehicles with three kids, two dogs, a pet-bearded dragon, and whatever belongings they could fit, then drove 2,000 miles from Wisconsin to British Columbia to leave President Trump's American. So what was that all about? Well, they're nurses. And Trump, some names,

nurses say is why we're leaving. There are so many like-minded people out there, said Justin, who now works elbow to elbow with Americans in Canada. You aren't trapped. You don't have to stay. Health care workers are welcomed with open arms around the world. The Millers are part of a new surge of American nurses, doctors, and other health care workers moving to Canada, and specifically to British Columbia, where more than a thousand U.S. trained nurses have been approved to work since last April. A thousand. Many nurses have felt the draw of Canada's progressive politics, friendly reputation, and universal health care system, which stands in contrast to what they see as

authoritarian policies under Trump, along with deep cuts to funding for public health, insurance, and medical research. Additionally, some nurses were incensed last year when the Trump administration said it would reclassify nursing as a non-professional degree, which would impose strict federal limits on the loans nursing students could receive. Canada is poised to capitalize.

Two of its most populous provinces, Ontario and British Columbia, have streamlined the licensing process for American nurses. since Trump returned to the White House. British Columbia also launched a $5 million advertising campaign last year to recruit nurses from California, Oregon, and Washington State. There you go. They talk about how long it took to find jobs.

You know, these two that they're focused on in the article, Justin was offered a job within weeks. Amy found one within three months. There you go. All righty, as I said, we're going to take a quick break, our normal is kind of halfway break. On this Wednesday, an N-Bid special. Hope you're enjoying these pieces. We've got a couple more to go.

And we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge for this Wednesday. It's an N-Bit special day. You're listening on Sirius XM Channel 167 Canada Talks or on your favorite podcast platform. And the favorite podcast platform for the bridge appears to be because it seems like almost 90% of the downloads happen on Apple. Number two is Spotify. But it's available, the bridge is available on almost any platform you try.

And I know some of you prefer the little known platforms or the little used platforms to the big ones. We're happy no matter where you download us from. And downloads have been really on the increase for us this past year. We've doubled it in daily downloads in a year. No matter the day of the week, the bridge is very popular. We have more than 20,000 downloads a day. And, you know, what does that mean? I'm not quite sure exactly what it means.

but it's a lot. You know, in those early days of the bridge, five, six years ago, we were lucky to get a thousand downloads in a day. Most podcasts don't get anywhere near that. So we're pretty happy. As a Canadian podcast with that number, in fact, we sit again this week at the top of the

political podcast in Canada rankings on Apple. Number one. No matter what the day it is, right? These Wednesday programs have, you know, as you know, my contract calls for four podcasts a week. So Wednesday was always going to a repeat day. And occasionally we will run a repeat on Wednesday. But this year we've basically been doing things like this. It's a way of kind of taking the day off and just reading some interesting stuff.

as opposed to one of our great panels or our Monday specials, which are amazing with Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School. She has quite a dedicated audience. And, of course, Fridays with Chantelle and Bruce. Good Talk is also very popular. But as I said, they all do extremely well. We're coming up probably within the next two weeks on 20 million downloads for the bridge since we started.

It's kind of somewhere in there like five or six years ago. So we're pretty proud of that number. And we thank you for making it happen. Okay, let's get a couple more of these in before we sign off for today and get ready for tomorrow's your turn with your answers to that question about the position, should take on the war in Iran. You've gone until 6 p.m. tonight to get your answers in.

We have a lot already, but if you want to add something, do it. Okay, this, I guess this is our kind of AI feature for today. There's a couple of them, really. The headline here is the United States spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for LAPS, laptops and tablets. The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents. You know, some of you warned everybody of this. Take those books out of their hands and replace them with laptops.

There's going to be a price to pay. Well, that apparently is the price. This article is in Fortune magazine. And let me read a little bit. It's a long article. I'm not going to read it. all, but I will read a couple of paragraphs so you get the flavor of it. In 2002, Maine, the state of Maine,

became the first state to implement a statewide laptop program to some grade levels. Then Governor Angus King, he says Senator now, I believe, saw the program as a way to put the Internet at the fingertips of more children, who would be able to immerse themselves in information. Seemed like a good cause. By that fall, the Maine Learning Technology Initiative had distributed 17,000 Apple laptops to seventh graders across 243 middle schools.

By 2016, those numbers had multiplied to 66,000 laptops and tablets distributed to Maine students. King's initial efforts have been mirrored across the country. In 2024, the U.S. spent more than $30 billion putting laptops and tablets in schools. But more than a quarter century

and numerous and evolving models of technology later, psychologists and learning experts see a different outcome than the one king intended. Rather than empowering the generation... What am I doing here?

Okay. I'm missing a line. So I'll skip a line. Earlier this year, in written testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, science and transportation. Euro-scientist Jared Cooney-Horvath said that Gen Z is less cognitively capable than previous generations despite its unprecedented access to technology. He said Gen Z is the first generation in modern history

to score lower on its standardized tests than the previous. one. While skills measured by these tests like literacy and numeracy, numeracy aren't always indicative of intelligence, they are a reflection of cognitive capability, which Horvath said has been on the decline over the last decade or so. Now, as I said, there's a lot more in this article, and I know some of you, parents especially, are probably going to want to read it. but it's compiled with all the studies that have been done over the last 20 years, really, on this subject.

And it's something worthy of consideration and discussion. Nobody's saying, okay, that's it, pull the laptops and the tablets out. But I think they are saying maybe there's a mix here. maybe we don't want to lose what we have lost in this past generation and there may be better ways to mix the two ideas. Anyway, it's in Fortune magazine. The headline was the U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets. The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents.

I think you put any construction of that into a search box at Fortune, and you'll probably, the item will pop up once again. Could be a paywall there. All right. Okay. This is kind of crazy. And, you know, this is another kind of side product of AI. I mean, we try to do something on AI.

every week. It's often in the Wednesday in-Bit specials. It's always in, there's something, some kind of a piece each week in my newsletter, which if you don't get it, maybe you might want to consider it. It comes out Saturday mornings. It's in your inbox at 7 a.m.

There's no cost. It's a freebie. You can subscribe, and there's, again, no charge, you can subscribe by going to National Newswatch.com slash newsletter. You have to give your email address. That's it, that's all. No credit cards, no nothing.

There is no charge. But if you do that, you'll get the email each Saturday morning at 7 a.m. Eastern time. So it's kind of like your Saturday morning coffee. And all it is is anywhere from five to eight articles that I've seen during the week that I found interesting. They could be from anywhere. They could be about anything. There's usually a focus on politics at the beginning.

But then it goes into more general kind of news you can use stuff. And the news that you can find interesting stuff. And that's it with a few of my comments at times about the various articles. But anyway, the point of me going through that promotion was to say that, you know, we try to deal with one AI story at least each week. This one comes out of popular science, and it's kind of a fun. Well, some might find it fun. Here's the headline. Man accidentally gains control of 7,000 robot,

vacuums. Now he just wanted to steer his DGI-Romo with a gaming controller, and then this happened. So again, let me read a little bit of it. Not a lot, but a little. A software engineer's earnest effort to steer his new DJI robot vacuum with a video game controller, inadvertently granted him a sneak peek into thousands of people's homes. While building his own remote control app, Sammy Azutifal, reportedly used an AI coding assistant to help reverse engineer how the robot communicated with DJI's remote cloud servers. Don't want to lose you here, but I think you'd follow that.

but he soon discovered that the same credentials that allowed him to see and control his own device also provided access to live camera feeds, microphone audio, maps, and status data from nearly 7,000 other vacuums across 24 countries. He's got this vacuum cleaner army going for him around the world. the back-end security bug effectively exposed an army of internet-connected robots that in the wrong hands could have turned into surveillance tools all without their owners ever knowing. Luckily, Azutifal chose not to exploit that. Instead, he shared his findings with The Verge,

which quickly contacted DJI to report the flaw. While DJI tells popular science, the issue has been resolved, the dramatic episode underscores warnings from cybersecurity experts who have long warned that internet-connected robots and other smart home devices present attractive targets for hackers. As more households adopt more home robots, including newer, more interactive humanoid models, we talked about that before,

similar vulnerabilities could become harder to detect. AI-powered coding tools, which make it easier for people with less technical knowledge to exploit software flaws, potentially risk amplifying those worries even further. The article goes on. That's just the start. So I'd look it up

It's a popular science Is where you go P-O-P-S-C-I dot-com And it's about Man accidentally gains control of 7,000 robot vacuums Can you imagine you're sitting there fooling around with your stuff And then suddenly you've got access

To 7,000 homes around the world who are using robot powered vacuum cleaners. You know, I'm tempted to get one of those things and sort of, you know, go around their house, clean your, do all the vacuuming. Without needing to push it, you can sit on the couch and watch it. I'm tempted, but I haven't fallen prey to that.

And they've been out for a while. But now there's a whole new reason to get it. him. You watch all these other people watching their vacuum cleaners. All right. That's going to do it for today. For this Wednesday, this NBit special. Hope you've enjoyed it.

Got some things to think about. That's for sure, based on some of these stories. A reminder that tomorrow is your turn. And the focus is on Canada's role. What should it be, if at all, on the war in Iran? Send your answers in on that question before 6 p.m. Eastern time tonight. You know where to send it to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Keep it under 75 words.

Include your name in the location you're running from. Love to see what you have to say on that. Also tomorrow, the random ranter will be here. I don't know what he's talking about tomorrow, but he always talks about something that seems to garner your interest because all I ever hear about the random renter from you are letters praising him, saying that's exactly how I feel. Or some will say, I disagree totally with him,

but he made me think about it, and I'm glad he did. That's the purpose. That's often the purpose of everything we do here on the bridge. So it's nice to hear from you. letting us know what you like, what you don't like. All right, that's going to do it for today. We'll be back tomorrow, and that's in less than 24 hours.

Thanks so much for listening today. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Bye for now.