According to my Twitter feed, yesterday was #InternationalPodcastDay. I would have written and posted this earlier but after last week, I needed to mentally decompress and sink myself into my couch where I proceeded to eat my feelings in Trader Joe’s Soft-Baked Snickerdoodles, drink wine from a can, and scream into the void that is social media with the rest of the masses. My apologies, dear readers. We’re all just trying to get by these days. Even though it’s a day late, to me this is still a topic worth visiting and hopefully for you, worth reading.
Chances are you’ve downloaded and listened to at least one podcast in your life since the early 2000’s. Whether you’re into politics, sports, true-crime, science, pop culture, history or health, there is virtually something for everyone. In fact, the medium has become so popular that Hollywood has turned to podcasts to source IP for film and television development (Bravo series Dirty John starring Connie Britton and Eric Bana based on the LA Times podcast of the same name is slated to premiere late fall on the network).
While I could easily wax poetic about cult favorites like Pod Save America (Crooked Media), My Favorite Murder (Midroll), This American Life (NPR), Radiolab (WNYC), and the series that sparked heightened attention to this format, Serial (NPR), I wanted to shed some light on our friends from the North and talk about how CBC Podcast in particular is really killing it – especially when it comes to sharp investigative journalism. Here are three of my favorite series for you to check out on iTunes, Stitcher, or directly online at CBC Podcasts
1) Uncover: Escaping NXIVM
The latest and greatest from CBC Podcast, Uncover: Escaping NXIVM involves a Hollywood actress, the heiresses to the Seagram’s fortune, the self-proclaimed smartest man in the World, sex trafficking, racketeering, extortion, money laundering, a cult masquerading as a self-improvement group, a hidden secret group within the cult, and branding initials with a cauterizing pen into the flesh of female members.
Hosted by radio producer Josh Bloch, the podcast is a fascinating and detailed look at what it was like to spend twelve years inside of NXIVM – a “multi-level marketing company offering personal and professional development,” from Josh’s childhood friend and former member, Sarah Edmondson.
Escaping NXIVM recounts how Edmonson discovered the group, the psychology behind why she felt compelled to join, the manipulation of members belief systems by leader and “Vanguard” Keith Rainere, and questions whether or not she feels a responsibility in profiting off of recruiting members. Additional interviews from others who broke from NXIVM including Raniere’s former girlfriend as well as his attorney help put the pieces together for outsiders to this world inhabited by seemingly very intelligent and educated people.
Keep an eye out for a potential fictionalized TV series in the works on NXIVM and secret group DOS from Annapurna Television who optioned the rights to reporter Barry Meier’s 2017 New York Times exposé “Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded.”
2) Someone Knows Something
Filmmaker David Ridgen spent most of his life creating impactful documentaries. Whether his subjects are Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, a group of people seeking spiritual enlightenment by digging, then being buried in their own graves, or the potential trial for the case of three Mississippi Burning victims, his work has received critical exclaim. But it would be his later works which focused on cold cases that would continue to follow Ridgen and act as the catalyst for Someone Know Something.
While each season focuses on a different cold case, my recommendation is to start with Season 2, the disappearance of Sheryl Sheppard. Sheppard, a Hamilton, Ontario native mysteriously vanished from the home she shared with her mother, Odette, just two days into 1998. She had been proposed to on New Year’s Eve during a live televised special by her boyfriend Mike Lavoie with whom she often had a turbulent relationship.
Someone Knows Something meticulously deconstructs Lavoie and Sheppard’s relationship through a series of interviews with friends, family members and former co-workers while taking a deep dive into Sheppard’s mysterious past – much of which we come to find even Odette was in the dark about.
The most interesting part of Someone Knows Something? As it airs over the course of several weeks, tips come in which often lead Ridgen to discover more clues into finding out what happened to Sheryl.
3) Missing and Murdered – Who Killed Alberta Williams?
In 1989, a 24-year-old Indigenous woman named Alberta Williams was found dead on the side of the remote road known in British Columbia as the Highway of Tears. Reporter Connie Walker investigates a tip she receives out of the blue from a former detective who has been haunted by her unsolved murder – and he says he knows who did it. Through a series of twists and turns that eventually lead to Walker and team confronting the prime suspect, the mystery of Who Killed Alberta Williams? unravels with the family members she left behind seeking justice.
Though two seasons of this podcast have been released (Finding Cleo is S2 and focuses on another cold case), I would advise you start with Who Killed Alberta Williams? for additional context as both cases center around an alarming trend in Canada’s First Nations – “Indigenous women are disproportionately victims of terrible violence,” Walker, an Indigenous woman herself says. “We are three times more likely to go missing and four times more likely to be murdered.” This is a case that will have you clamoring for each new episode based on Walker’s meticulously crafted narrative that has deeply and personally affected her. It will also have you wondering how you’ve likely never heard about the staggering number of cases in which Canada has failed its 1.2 million Indigenous people – forcing them to assimilate through the residential school system, ultimately leading to abuse and neglect.
Missing and Murdered – Who Killed Alberta Williams? is as much a cold-case you’ll want solved as it is an important history lesson.
MARISSA MONTICOLO 