CBC Podcasts has announced its fall slate of original podcasts, highlighted by an exploration of Elon Musk’s origins, a deep dive into 1980s phenomenon “Satanic Panic,” and a look back at messy Canadian courtroom dramas.
The lineup also includes two true crime offerings, including Uncover: Dirtbag Climber – a five-part series exploring the unsolved murder of Squamish, BC rock climber and con artist “Jesse James,” while Siksika artist Adrian Stimson hosts Forged, a six-part series into the underworld of art forgery focused on Norval Morrisseau, widely considered the godfather of contemporary Indigenous art.
Read more about the full lineup of fall debuts here:
Uncover: Dirtbag Climber (5 episodes) *Listen to Episode 1*
Dirtbag Climber is a five-part podcast series investigating the unsolved homicide of “Jesse James,” a “dirtbag” rock climber found dead in Squamish, BC. Local reporter Steven Chua tracks a stranger-than-fiction story that criss-crosses North America, unveiling a portrait of an enigmatic con artist — a troubling victim whose life story foreshadowed the darkest digital undercurrents of our time.
See You In Court (12 episodes) *Listen to the trailer* (launches Sept. 16)
Host Falen Johnson (The Secret Life of Canada) is joined each week by a journalist, diving into the messy and memorable courtroom battles that shaped how Canadians live today, one case at a time, uncovering the true stories of convicts, sh*t disturbers, and ordinary folks who decided to challenge the law and ended up changing history.
Love Me (6 episodes) *Listen to the trailer* (launches Oct. 6)
Season 4 of Love Me sees host Lu Olkowski challenges the way we think about belonging, exploring subjects from the nuances of grief to chaotic dating fails.
Understood: The Making of Musk (4 episodes) (launches Oct. 7)
Understood: The Making of Musk explores Elon Musk’s seemingly insatiable drive for dominance, which connects everything from his birthrate obsession (and 14 children) to his fixation with colonizing Mars. Hosted by Jacob Silverman, the four-part series reveals a little known side of the world’s richest man. The podcast is being released in partnership with Bloomsbury, publishers of Silverman’s latest book, Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley, also due for release Oct. 7.
Forged (6 episodes) *Listen to the trailer* (launches Oct. 15)
Known as the “Picasso of the North,” Norval Morrisseau is one of the most celebrated Indigenous artists in the world. But when a rock star gets a tip about the authenticity of his Morrisseau painting, he discovers a sinister underworld with thousands of forged paintings, millions of dollars in profits, multiple fraud rings, and even a suspected murder. Host Adrian Stimson, an artist from the Siksika Nation, travels from Thunder Bay to the Northern Territory of Australia, to reveal what is believed to be the largest art crime fraud in the world. A CBC co-production with ABC Australia.
The Devil You Know, with Sarah Marshall (8 episodes) (launches Oct. 20)
In the 1980s and ’90s, Satanism was credited with brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society on a massive scale – yet these thousands of alleged Satanists were nowhere to be found. Even so, the narrative became embedded in the cultural memory, warping everything it touched – including the lives of innocent people. And it never quite died out. Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About) hosts this eight-part anthology series about Satanic Panic and the people who experienced it in real-time – the believers, the skeptics, the bystanders, and the wrongfully convicted.
Uncover: Allison After NXIVM (6 episodes) *Listen to the trailer* (launches Nov. 10)
You think you know the NXIVM story. The secretive self-help empire. The sex cult headlines. The downfall of its leader, Keith Raniere. But the most famous woman at the center of the story has remained largely silent. In Allison After NXIVM, host Natalie Robehmed unravels the story of Allison Mack – former Smallville actress, high-ranking NXIVM member, and convicted felon. With exclusive access following her release from prison, this series traces her astonishing path from Smallville fame to NXIVM’s inner circle and her effort to rebuild her life in the wreckage.
New weekly episodes include Season 3 of Crime Story, hosted by award-winning journalist Kathleen Goldhar, in addition to CBC’s ongoing podcasts Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, The Dose, Front Burner, Q with Tom Power, and SICKBOY.
