All kinds of music require volume. It has to be listened to loud. But how loud and for how long? Here’s a quick guide.

• If you listen to music for long periods of time, 85 dB is about the maximum. You can listen for up to eight hours with no damage to your hearing.
• But turn things up to 88 dB, and the tolerance drops to around four hours.
• At 91 dB, two hours, max. If you’re at 94 dB, you’d better stop after an hour. Beyond that, things can get dangerous.
• If sound pressure levels are at 100 dB, you may suffer hearing damage in as little as 15 minutes.
• And if things are at 110 dB or beyond, damage starts within a few minutes. If you’re near the speakers, problems start within seconds.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

If you have a stereo set-up at home, you’ll know that there’s a special input for your turntable labelled “phono.”  You can’t just plug it into, say, an auxiliary input. If you can use an aux input for everything else, why not your turntable?

Because in order to play back vinyl correctly, it has to go through something called a “phono stage.” Vinyl has limitations when it comes to storing very low frequencies and very high ones. To counteract that, records are pressed with the bass turned down and the treble turned up per something called the RIAA equalization curve. Upon playback, the phono stage reverses that curve, boosting the bass by a specific amount and reducing the treble, thereby achieving the tonal balance of the original recording.

The RIAA curve may help explain why it feels better to listen to vinyl than a digital recording.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

A vinyl record features a continuous groove that begins on the outer edge and spirals in toward the label. How long is that groove? It depends on how much music is on the side of a record, but a general length is somewhere around 500 metres.

How wide is that groove? Anywhere from 40 to 80 microns, which can also be expressed as 4 one-hundredths to 8 one-hundredths of a millimetre. That’s about the width of a human hair.

There are a couple of oddball exceptions to this. For example, in 1973, Monty Python released an album called Matching Tie and Handkerchief. One side of the record secretly had two spiral grooves side by side. Depending on when you dropped the needle, it caught one groove or the other, resulting in completely different audio. Imagine trying to figure out why that side of your record was different when you went to play it.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

I know this has happened to you. There’s something in the news. An odd fact grabs your attention. A friend mentions something. It’s strange, upsetting. It might even make you mad. It’s one of those things that can’t be just a random act of the universe. It has to be the result of organized, malevolent forces working to destabilize, conquer, and destroy. Lee Harvey Oswald couldn’t have acted alone in the JFK assassination. 9/11 had to be an inside job. Those aren’t trails of condensed water vapour behind airplanes in the sky—they’re chemtrails. The Earth is flat. The Moon landing never happened. There are UFOs and aliens stored at Area 51. All of these beliefs stem from wanting to make sense of senseless things. We feel powerless when something bad happens, so finding a “reason” might help us regain control and a feeling of safety. Or maybe, by connecting all the dots, we reveal a truth that no one else sees, making us feel unique and superior. And if we find others who believe the same thing, we’re no longer alone with our fears. Conspiracy theories have always been out there as we attempt to understand “why,” to restore order, and to reclaim clarity. The more complex the world becomes, and the more people can connect online, the more conspiracies appear. Wake up, sheeple. Can’t you see what’s really going on? This is Episode 68 of Uncharted: Crime and Mayhem in the Music Industry. We’re about to embark on a journey through music’s greatest conspiracies. And let me tell you something: have I got some wild stories to tell you. In addition to the  podcasts, you can hear Uncharted on these Corus radio stations (all times local):

• • Toronto: AM 640 (4-5am)

• • London: 980 CFPL (4-5am)

• • Vancouver: 730 CKNW (1-2am)

• • Edmonton: 630 CHED (1-2am)

• • Calgary: QR77 (770 AM) (1-2am)

• • Winnipeg: 680 CJOB (1-2am)

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Last time, I talked about how the weight of a vinyl doesn’t necessarily impact the quality of how it sounds. Okay, so what about rotational speed?

Some people swear that 45 RPM records sound better than those that rotate at 33 1/3. This is true if you’re talking about 12-inch records. Because the record spins faster, the stylus travels through more grooves per second. This means that the wiggles the stylus makes are more spread out, meaning that they’re easier to track.

Think of it in terms of the resolution of an audio file. Something that is encoded at 320 kilobytes per second will sound better than the same song located at 128. This explains why bands like Radiohead have released albums as two slabs of 45 RPM vinyl instead of just one that spins at 33 1/3.

More next time.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The finance minister will not say why his department is refusing to release the total amount the federal government plans to spend on defence annually, but promises more details are coming.

“There will be more details, obviously, as we go forward,” Finance Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne said. “I think we have provided, you know, the direction of that (in Budget 2025), and as programs and as acquisitions are coming forward, we’ll provide more detail on this.”

Champagne provided no timeline as to when that information will be shared.

His comments come days after Global News reported the finance minister’s office has been refusing to provide proof to back up Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent claim that Canada will substantially accelerate its defence spending to meet NATO commitments.

“Our fiscal framework has already provisioned to achieve four per cent of GDP in total defence spending by the end of this decade, ahead of NATO’s timetable,” Carney told the CANSEC defence conference in Ottawa in May, a claim he later repeated at a press conference in June.

After those comments, Global News asked Champagne’s office for any data from Budget 2025 or the Spring Economic Statement to support the prime minister’s statements, but the office refused to do so saying they were “not in a position to scoop forthcoming announcements.”

Global News first asked the Prime Minister’s Office, finance minister’s office, and Department of Finance officials after the Spring Economic Statement was tabled in April to provide details on future defence spending plans, but none were given.

A Global News analysis of the Spring Economic Statement estimates Canada will need to spend a total of $163 billion on an annual basis to meet Carney’s commitment of four per cent of GDP by 2030 – an additional $34.9 billion annually on core defence spending compared to the 2025 budget.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has also asked the Department of Defence for additional details about defence spending, including on NATO targets, but has yet to receive a response.

The finance minister confirmed that he has seen those requests from the PBO, but did not commit to giving any information, saying Budget 2025 already provides a “fair amount of detail.”

“We’ve always been very transparent with Canadians,” Champagne said. “I would say very transparent from the get-go to say what is the objective, where Canada’s gonna be contributing, what kind of system the Armed Forces are gonna be needing to protect and defend Canada, and how we’re gonna be financing that.”

The PBO estimated in February that increasing core defence spending from two per cent of GDP to 3.5 per cent would require approximately $33.5 billion per year in additional cash expenditures over the next 10 years. The report said the additional spending will increase the budgetary deficit by $63 billion by the 2035-36 fiscal year.

Champagne says the details of how the federal government will pay for this new level of defence spending will be a part of the budget consultations which kicked off in Ottawa on Monday.

“Obviously when we’re going to present Budget 2026 … we’ll be looking at measures to make the Canadian economy strong and make sure that, you know, the systems and the procurement we’re doing meet the NATO requirement, but at the same time that the Canadian economy can finance these investments.”

Defence spending will be in the spotlight as Carney travels to Ankara, Turkey, on Monday for the annual NATO leaders’ conference before heading to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Five major Ontario school boards that have been under the direct supervision of the Ford government for a year or more have posted budget deficits despite the education minister blaming trustees for their financial turmoil.

In June 2025, Minister Paul Calandra announced he would appoint supervisors to the Toronto public, Toronto Catholic, Ottawa-Carleton and Dufferin-Peel school boards.

Those supervisors were sent in to replace trustees, who the education minister said had overseen a series of poor decisions.

“There are decisions that have been made in each of these boards, where they have chosen to avoid accountability,” Calandra said on June 27, 2025. “They’ve chosen not to bring their budgets into balance. Each board has a different challenge.”

But after a year under the management of government-appointed supervisors, all four boards have announced they are, once again, in the red.

The largest deficit of the four boards was the Toronto Catholic District School Board, where a $39.5 million hole was only $100,000 better than the 2025-26 deficit overseen by trustees.

In Toronto Catholic, the budget deficit was $15 million — a drop from the $74.5 million staff initially projected. Ottawa-Carleton came in with a “carefully planned transitional” deficit of $3.5 million.

Out at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board, the deficit was reported at $36.4 million — with the supervisor claiming $3.4 million in savings.

Ontario NDP MPP Chandra Pasma said the fact that none of the four boards taken over last year had balanced their budgets disproved the government’s claim that trustees had mismanaged them.

“It just shows how the minister’s narrative about why he imposed supervisors has always been false,” she said. “The supervisors have not eliminated the deficits even though many of them have made pretty significant cuts that will harm our kids.”

A spokesperson for Calandra’s office defended the supervisors, saying they were making progress.

“Since supervisors were appointed, nearly $150 million in savings has been identified through responsible financial decisions that do not impact student learning in classrooms,” they said, referring to the total of eight boards that are now under the control of Queen’s Park.

“Those savings ensure more education funding is focused back on student achievement and not decisions like international trips to buy artwork or attending sports games with public education dollars.”

The Thames Valley District School Board, which has been under the control of a supervisor for more than a year, posted a deficit of over $22 million.

“This was always doomed to fail,” Chandra said. “This was never about properly managing our schools.”

Since becoming education minister after the 2025 election, Calandra has focused on school board governance, linking elected trustees to issues of dysfunction, wasteful spending and poor overall financial management.

The Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District School Board, which spent $145,000 on a trip to Italy and an art purchase, was the poster child of the government’s frustration.

The board, however, was never taken under the direct control of Queen’s Park, which did force trustees to repay the costs of their trip. Brant Haldimand Norfolk posted a balanced budget this year.

The other high-profile example of mispending for the government was Thames Valley, which put almost $40,000 toward a trip to the Toronto Blue Jays Hotel.

There are currently eight boards in Ontario under the control of a supervisor, including both major boards in Toronto and both major boards in Peel Region.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Six people from Kitchener, Ont., are facing several drug trafficking charges following a joint investigation by York Regional Police and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

Dubbed “Project Golden Frog,” police investigated the trafficking of cocaine in York Region and other parts of the Greater Toronto Area. A total of 260 kg of cocaine with an approximate street value of $20 million was seized.

It was prompted when the CBSA intercepted and examined a shipment from Panama in May 2026 that contained a large amount of what was believed to be cocaine. The agency contacted York police, which took on the investigation.

Through the probe, police linked the shipment to a suspect with ties to Kitchener.

Three people were taken into custody on June 11, with a search warrant executed at a home and storage locker in the Ontario city. Police seized what they called proceeds of a crime, which included $2.5 million in cash.

Additional search warrants were then executed at a home, a business and a storage locker in Kitchener on June 17. Two more suspects were taken into custody, and a quantity of a substance believed to be cocaine, as well as currency were seized by police.

The final suspect was taken into custody on June 23 and charged.

The ages of the suspects range from 22 to 48.

All six suspects face charges of possession for the purpose of trafficking, with a charge of possession of proceeds of crime over $5,000 laid against five of the six.

Three of the six suspects were also charged with unlawfully importing a Schedule I substance and conspiracy to commit an indictable offence.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The AI “actor” known as Tilly Norwood will be used in a new feature film entitled Misaligned, its first lead role as a digitally generated persona.

Particle6, the AI production studio that built Norwood, is developing and producing the film, the company told Global News in an email statement. The company is led by comedian and writer Eline Van der Velden.

The film will be a comedy-drama and “hybrid production with traditional film and TV professionals — such as directors, writers and editors — working alongside AI specialists, with AI training and mentorship built into the production itself, Van der Velden said.

“Our work this year has proven something we suspected all along,”  she continued, “AI can support premium narrative filmmaking, but only with substantial amounts of human craft, skill, judgement and time. That’s not a limitation of the technology. That’s the point.”

“The filmmakers who thrive in the next decade will be the ones who bring decades of storytelling instinct to these new tools, and Misaligned is where we put that to work at feature scale,” she continued.

Real-life actors and other film industry players sounded the alarm about Norwood’s inception last year after public discourse emerged about the possibility that Norwood would sign with a talent agency, which prompted a response from the Screen Actors Guild.

“To be clear, ‘Tilly Norwood’ is not an actor, it’s a character generated by a computer program that was trained on the work of countless professional performers — without permission or compensation,” it said.

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“It has no life experience to draw from, no emotion and, from what we’ve seen, audiences aren’t interested in watching computer-generated content untethered from the human experience,” the statement concluded.

Emily Blunt spoke about Norwood during an episode of the Variety Awards Circuit Podcast, referring to the idea of an AI actor as “terrifying.”

“Does it disappoint me? I don’t know how to quite answer it, other than to say how terrifying this is,” Blunt said.

When Blunt was shown a photo of Norwood, she said, “No, are you serious? That’s an AI? Good Lord, we’re screwed. That is really, really scary. Come on, agencies, don’t do that. Please stop. Please stop taking away our human connection.”

Misaligned is described by Particle6 as a “coming-of-age story infused with existential AI chaos” that follows Tilly, an AI being with no real body, no childhood, and no lived experience of its own, whose existence is brought into question by a seductive rogue bot from the dark web.

“The film will absolutely be funny, chaotic and self-aware — very Tilly,” van der Velden added. “But underneath it, there’s something deeper about identity, performance, and our very human fears around AI. And yes, art will most definitely be imitating life.”

The movie marks the production studio’s first step into the feature film space, having previously focused on branded content.

— with files from Global News’ Katie Scott

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The World Cup brought excitement and celebrations to the city of Toronto for the past four weeks, but new data shows it may not have delivered the economic goal some were hoping for.

A total of $380 million was spent by the municipality, province and federal government to host six matches during its stint in Toronto, the city says. It was also projected that more than 300,000 international travellers would visit the city.

For some businesses like Cafe Diplomatico in Little Italy, it’s been about both the atmosphere and the income.

“We’ve seen, obviously, an influx of business, the games have been very busy, selling a lot of beer,” said co-owner Rocco Mastrangelo.

He told Global News it’s difficult to gauge how much of an increase he’s seen, as he said the restaurant is known as the place to watch soccer even when the World Cup isn’t in town.

With the games being hosted in North American time zones, he said the benefit is they are able to host games at times that otherwise might be a void for business.

“It’s hard to tell of an increase in sales, but definitely we’ve seen where we have a void to fill, like on a… today at 3 p.m. on a Monday afternoon it definitely fills the void and we’re going to maximize our revenue,” Mastrangelo said.

Though he added outside of those voids the World Cup has helped fill, it’s “pretty much the same” as other big soccer tournaments like Copa America or the Euro Cup.

Data on credit card spending, provided by payment processing company Moneris, showed spending in the city saw a modest boost from June 12 to 26, though not at the same level as the 2024 Taylor Swift Eras Tour.

Total spending increased by 18 per cent in the first two weeks for hotels compared to last year, but restaurants and bars saw just a three per cent increase. Sales at big box and grocery stores went up four and six per cent respectively, while spending on apparel declined by five per cent.

Purchases made by foreign-issued credit cards were much higher, with those visiting from outside of Canada spending up to 34 per cent at restaurants and bars, and 19 per cent on groceries. The only category that saw a lower amount was a seven per cent increase at hotels.

“That shows the tourists are here, they’re going out, they’re dining out, they’re going out for drinks whether it’s before or after the game, they’re excited to celebrate,” said Emily Abrahams, Moneris’ external communications manager.

By comparison, the Eras tour brought a 12 per cent boost to restaurants and 49 per cent increase on apparel. The average spending across all categories was 45 per cent.

“It was a huge cultural phenomenon and that was something that echoed, reverberated across the world,” Abrahams said. “It’s really hard to make any kind of comparison to the Taylor Swift event because it was just lightning in a bottle.”

A study prepared for FIFA by Deloitte Canada found hosting the World Cup could contribute $940 million in positive economic output in the Greater Toronto Area, including $520 million to the GDP of the GTA.

Those in the city’s tourism industry, like Destination Toronto, said the benefits of the tournament could last long after the World Cup is over. The organization conducted a survey of international visitors at Toronto Stadium, where the World Cup games were held, and Fan Fest and found nine in 10 said they would return to Toronto in the next two years.

“It’s that combination of those return visitors and inspiring other people to come and visit,” said Kelly Jackson, vice-president of Destination Toronto destination development.

—With files from Global News’ Nicole Di Donato and The Canadian Press

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.