Got to be birds flying higher

Kim Jong-nam should be the ruler of North Korea. Instead, he was the victim of the 21st century’s most bizarre assassination plot. A deep look inside a decades-long saga broiling with deceit, palace gossip, and political backstabbing—shedding light on the machinations of the most secretive nation on the planet.

Kim Jong-nam's 2017 dwelled in the headlines for awhile and I had completely forgotten about the event until this podcast came across my feed. Part history lesson, part biography, the podcast untangles how two non-Korean women were manipulated to carry out the assassination under the guise of a TV prank. Totally fascinating!

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-big-brother-north-koreas-92974561/

I didn't enjoy this podcast at all. I listened to first season and couldn't determine if what I listening to was fact or ficiton. The breathy announcer and the moody music seemed out of place. I didn't bother with season 2.


Season 1: The brutal slaying of BETTY ANN SULLIVAN shocked the small town of Jefferson Township, New Jersey. The violence of that evening shocked the nation for the perpetrator... was her own son, a boy of fourteen who would take his own life only hours later. What the investigation revealed left a community in tatters, unwilling to believe the evil that had befallen them.

Season 2: In 1974 after experiencing financial hardship, Michael Taylor joined a local church in the rolling hills of Northern England.

After falling in love with a young, beautiful preacher, Michael’s personality began to change. The mild-mannered family man became abusive and unhinged. His new church believed he was possessed by no fewer than 48 demons and would require an exorcism to save his soul and protect his family from evil. But the supposed remedy would come at a very steep price...

Do you love cultural mysteries??? Most of us probably do, but we just take for granted that we don't know. Host Willa Paskin deep dives into the origins of things, habits, cultural norms and media to deliver fun stories and interesting trivia.

Why has slow dancing fallen out of popularity?

How come men's razors have so many blades?

How did Alberta become a rat-free paradise? (well, mostly, technically)

Why is the world of ice cream trucks so weird?

You have to listen to find out!

Decoder Ring is a podcast about cracking cultural mysteries. Every month, host Willa Paskin takes on a cultural question, object, idea, or habit and speaks with experts, historians, and obsessives to try to figure out where it comes from, what it means, and why it matters.

Decoder Ring on Slate

Tomorrow, September 30th, is Canada's National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as well as Orange Shirt Day. Canada's past treatment of Indigenous people has, quite frankly, been absolutely terrible and atrocious. The day honours children who never returned home from residential schools as well as survivors, their families and communities.

We can all educate ourselves and learn about Indigenous culture where we live and throughout Canada. CBC has a list of seven podcasts you can listen to and expand your knowledge.

CBC also has two very grim podcast series which come with a content warning--both contain distressing details of child abuse, sexual abuse and mentally distressing details. However, it's important to learn about the past which was hidden away for so long and continues to impact communities and individuals today.

Kuper Island

An 8-part series that tells the stories of four students: three who survived and one who didn’t. They attended one of Canada’s most notorious residential schools – where unsolved deaths, abuse, and lies haunt the community and the survivors to this day. Hosted by Duncan McCue.

Finding Cleo

This series should really be required listening for Canadians. I remember ads encouraging people to adopt Indigenous children when I was growing up :S Two of my first cousins are Métis and the thought that they could have been in a similar situation is very distressing.

Where is Cleo?

It's a mystery her family has been trying to unravel for decades after the young Cree girl was apprehended by child welfare workers in Saskatchewan in the 1970's. Her siblings say she was stolen, and then raped and murdered while trying to hitchhike back home, her body left at the side of the road somewhere in the United States.

They have no idea where she is, whether her name was changed, or if anyone has been charged in her murder.

CBC's long-running radio show Ideas launched in 1965, and is currently hosted by Nahlah Ayed. Sometimes they feature shows from the BBC, Australia's ABC and the topics tend to be mostly high-brow such as interviews with noteworthy people, environmental and cultural topics as well as Massey lectures.

I don't listen to every episode, but I do listen to most. I always loved long-form stories or journalism, but I often don't have time to read as much as I used to, so knowing I can get the same type of in-depth topics in audio format is great!

CW: Child abuse and death

As I've mentioned, I'm picky about true crime podcasts, but Broken Harts is a thoughtful look into undetected child abuse and American adoption laws. It's also a look at how people manipulate the exterior image of a happy family on social media while hiding the reality. It's a tough listen.

Markis, Hannah, Devonte, Abigail, Jeremiah, and Sierra Hart—six beautiful black children, ranging in age from 12 to 19—were all adopted by Sarah and Jennifer Hart, both white. On Jen’s Facebook page, it looked as if they were the perfect blended family, even earning the nickname “Hart Tribe” from friends. Then, on March 26, 2018, the family’s GMC Yukon was found belly-up on the rocks below California’s Highway 1. The news of the murder-suicide shocked their friends and made national headlines, leaving many wondering what possibly led to the fatal crash. Could these lives have been saved? Broken Harts, a new podcast from Glamour and HowStuffWorks, investigates this question with more than 30 never-before-heard interviews. Cohosts and Glamour editors Justine Harman and Elisabeth Egan and reporter Lauren Smiley follow the family’s journey from South Dakota through Minnesota, Oregon, and Washington, and finally to that 100-foot cliff in California.

So, I'll preface every true crime podcast by saying that I'm very picky about the true crime podcasts I listen too. I really dislike the exploitative, sensational, or unnecessarily gruesome shows. I prefer the ones that focus on marginalized cases or ones that are very thoughtful.

CBC's Someone Knows Something was one of the first podcasts I really got into. Hosted by David Ridgen, I really enjoyed his voice as well as his thoughtfulness about approaching cold cases. There are seven seasons and the first season captivated me because it explored using cadaver dogs to find a decades old scent:

In 1972, five-year-old Adrien McNaughton vanished while on a family fishing trip in Eastern Ontario. Despite an intensive search and investigation, no sign of Adrien was found, no clue as to where he might be. The case has hung over the area like a dark mass ever since, especially in the small town of Arnprior, where the McNaughton family lived.

In season one of the podcast Someone Knows Something, host David Ridgen, who grew up in Arnprior, goes back to investigate. Ridgen, a independent filmmaker with a proven record of solving cold cases, asks the questions that have been waiting for answers for over 40 years. He speaks to family, friends and other members of the community, discovering new leads and evidence, trying to put the ghosts of the past to rest.

All the cases are unsolved--with the hope that someone knows something and will come forward.

I'm going to start blogging about podcasts I listen to, mostly for my own reference.

I started fretting about how little in the way of reading I've done in the past few years. Free time and a Muffin-free zone were often difficult to come by.

I used to think podcasts were just a guy (sometimes two guys) yakking on the Internet, but I discovered that was not so, especially after I started listening to CBC podcasts. Many of them are well-produced and the equivalent of reading a non-fiction book. I realized it was really about the way I was interacting with the material that counted and my anxiety over not reading subsided.