How an investigative podcast helped get justice for an Ontario family, plus new podcasts for January

This week, we're sharing some of our top picks for January. 

In 2016, Soleiman Faqiri was killed by guards at the Central East Correctional Centre in Lindsay, Ontario. He was shackled, beaten, pepper sprayed, covered with a spit hood and left face-down on the floor in his cell. He was found dead soon after. 

After years of inconclusive investigations, a coroner's inquest finally reached a homicide verdict last month—but the same conclusion was reached more than two years earlier, by the TVO podcast Unascertained. Host Yusuf Zine joins us to discuss the inquest that confirmed what Soleiman's family has been insisting for seven years. 

Plus, Weight For It host Ronald Young Jr. shares insights on life as a plus-sized person. The show unpacks the nuanced thoughts of bigger folks, and of anyone who worries about their weight. We hear about his personal experiences and how he approaches conversations about body image that most of us tend to avoid.

Finally: Large construction projects have a way of igniting cynicism in almost everybody. At least, that's what podcaster Ian Coss noticed growing up through "The Big Dig," Boston's decades-long $15-billion infrastructure megaproject. Coss joins us to discuss his podcast, The Big Dig, and help us understand the dramatic narrative behind America's most expensive highway project. 

Unascertained: On December 15, 2016, Soleiman Faqiri was found dead in his cell after an altercation with a group of correctional officers. Unascertained pieces together the timeline of Soleiman's death and what really happened when guards entered the room. It's a story of a family's loss, mental health failures in the prison system, and a search for justice. In December 2023, a coroner's inquest reached the same conclusion as the podcast: Soleiman was killed by the guards. 

Weight For It: Weight For It unpacks the nuanced thoughts of fat folks, and of all folks who think about their weight all the time. Through narrative storytelling and some memoir, host Ronald Young Jr. hopes to have the conversations that we tend to avoid when it comes to our bodies.

The Big Dig: No one project embodies cynicism quite like what Bostonians call 'The Big Dig.' Infamous for its ever-increasing price tag, this massive highway tunneling effort was once ridiculed as the Big Mess, the Big Hole, the Big Pig, the Big Lie. Decades later, the story looks more complicated. So how did the narrative around this project go so horribly wrong? 

Have any new releases caught your attention?

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