I’m playing around with the format this month because my Spotify embeds weren’t working. But I actually quite like the YouTube links – not everyone has Spotify, plus video works much better for web. Let me know if you like it!
Here are the podcasts I binged in October
Uncover: Kuper Island
In Uncover: Kuper Island, Duncan McCue investigates abuse allegations from survivors of Kuper Island Indian Residential School in British Columbia. Last year, long after the school was demolished, unmarked graves were discovered with ground-penetrating radar. McCue talks to those still haunted by their experiences and we hear about the horrific conditions that let to the deaths of up to 6,000 indigenous children in residential schools across Canada. I actually think Uncover: Kuper Island is the best series CBC Podcasts have put out since Hunting Warhead. It’s another difficult listen but is still one of my favourite podcasts from this year.
Missed Fortune
Who doesn’t love a treasure hunt? In Missed Fortune, we follow Darrell Seyler as he searches for Forrest Fenn’s treasure – a chest containing over $1 million of precious gems and gold. Fenn, a controversial antiquities dealer, hid the treasure in the Rocky Mountains and published a poem containing clues about the treasure’s location. Host Peter Frick-Wright follows Seyler on the hunt as his increasing obsession leads to him getting banned from Yellowstone, losing his job and sleeping in his car.
Witnessed: Mystic Mother
Witnessed: Mystic Mother introduces us to Tracy Elise, founder of the Phoenix Goddess Temple. Is Tracy’s whole-body healing with sensual touch protected by religious freedom, or is the temple a brothel? We hear from goddesses who worked in the temple, some of whom are still grappling with this question. This podcast is lighter in tone than my previous two picks, but still tackles important topics like who is criminalised for sex work and police profiling of trans women with ‘walking while trans’ laws.
Katrina Wesencraft 