How to make a local True Crime podcast with intention.
Vol. 40 - Yusuf Zine talks TVO Today's Unascertained, asking Ontario prisons “when does it end?”
Hihi!! Happy Pod the North Tuesday!
In this issue:
Must read: From You, Not About You
Unascertained is asking Ontario prisons “when does it end?”
Canadian Indie: Jumpers Jump
True North Podcast Feature: Still Here Still Healing
There are currently 28 long-term drinking water advisories in effect in 26 First Nations communities across Canada.
Must read: From You, Not About You.
One of my favourite newsletters is The Creativity Business from
, a former CBC-er and Co-Owner of branded podcast studio, Pacific Content. The Creativity Business — the strategy firm and it’s corresponding newsletter — is focused on helping creatives build better businesses.The recent TCB issue about delivering content from you rather than about you really hit home when I thought about it in a podcasting context, and I wanted to share some thoughts and recommend adding it to your reading list this week!
I think the only people who can really make great podcast content about themselves are reality TV stars…
Yes, I’ve been viciously following all of the Vanderpump Rules drama unravel across each of the cast members corresponding podcasts.
Otherwise, like Steve explains in the newsletter, content that comes from your values (whether its in marketing, blogs, media and more) is what keeps people coming back for more.
When it comes to podcasting, I there’s a bit of a balance to tread between content that’s from you and about you. After all, we know that host-read ads are so valuable because listeners love their hosts as people — so sure, there’s a certain level of wanting to know about a favourite host that is sure to peek a listeners interest.
But once interest in a host is peeked, that’s when I believe a podcast needs to double down on its values, and treat learning about its hosts as little morsels of delectable crumbs rather than then whole damn pie. Otherwise, your shows risks getting thrown in the compost all together.
Compare it to pretty much every recipe you find on the internet.
I know I’m not alone in being that person who scrolls past the entire life story of a cook deperate to find just a damn a list of ingredients. Think about the difference between who you absorb that content versus your grandmothers cookbook — page after page of exactly what you came for: recipes. But with handwritten notes scribbled on dog-earred pages like “Dad prefers golden raisins,” and “I like to use shortening instead of canola oil”.
We can’t all be reality stars, and most of our lives aren’t interesting enough to make a whole podcasts worth of weekly episodes about it, but that doesn’t mean learning about you isn’t valueable either. You just have to me smart, and humble about it.
Stick to the values and deliverables that your show promises, and then who you are will seal the deal.
Give the piece a read and let me know what you think!
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Thoughts from the ecosystem:
Unascertained is asking Ontario prisons “when does it end?”
Incase you hadn’t noticed, TVO Today has been making a pretty notable dent in Canadian podcasting. But other than the release of In Our Heads last year, I really hadn’t really noticed until I heard from them at the end of 2023.
Upon closer inspection, the podcasts coming out of TVOs podcasting department is truly impressive. One of those projects is a show called Unascertained, from Yusuf Zine and Kevin Young; two former theatre kids and filmmakers who make up Innerspeak, and who suddenly found themselves in the throws podcasting, and a deeply troubling and hyper-local story.
Yusuf spent his early years in the arts, but ended up doing a masters degree in social justice. His final masters thesis project? A documentary about a group of Rohinya refugee youth that shifted everything he thought about storytelling. “It was the first time I learned how to marry these two passions of mine; social justice and the arts,” Yusuf told me when we chatted. “I realized there really isn't a big difference between storytelling as an actor and storytelling as a documentarian, or a podcaster, or a writer. That's where it started.”
Unascertained is a True Crime, investigative podcast about the untimely death of Soleiman Faqiri, a young man struggling with mental health, who died at the hands of Ontario’s correctional facility system.
It was that documentary that Yusuf and Kevin made back in university that captured the attention of the Faqiri family, and lead to both the guys and the Faqiri family ultimately finding footing and a meaningful place to tell Soleiman’s story in podcasting.
“Our original idea was to do this as a documentary because we had never done a podcast before,” Yusuf explained to me. “When Yusuf Faqiri, the brother of Soleiman Faqiri, approached us with this story he had seen our documentary and so he also approached us thinking [we could] make a film out of this. Then COVID happened and everything shut down.”
I talked to Yusuf about working on this local story and all of its moving parts, what it was like to have participation and advocacy from the Faqiri family, and going up against Ontario’s correctional and prison system.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
KL: I'm curious about how you and Kevin ended up working with TVO, and what made the both of you decide to get into podcasting, especially since you've been doing visual storytelling for so long.
YZ: We didn't have the means to really make a documentary in the middle of COVID. So we met with this incredible journalist and producer, Michelle Shephard, who is an award winning producer, writer, podcaster, filmmaker. I pitched her the idea and [...] she was the first to say, “this is a podcast”.
She was so right because it allowed us to take on a more investigative form of storytelling. There were so many unanswered questions that we realized this is more of an investigative story, and the best place to do that is in a podcast.
We knocked on a bunch of doors; we pitched to CBC, we pitched to some independent podcast production houses. Finally, everyone turned us down and TVO was kind of our last resort. And luckily they took a meeting with us and they said yes.
KL: What's so interesting to me about the show is that it's so local to us Ontarians. Covering a story that's so close to home, maybe it feels like there are more stakes around it?
YZ: TVO's mandate is stories told in Ontario and what's interesting is that this case is very much an Ontario story. I think that's what makes it more compelling; Soleiman’s story is so harrowing and so disturbing, you would think that it's happening somewhere else.
I think people have a perception that Canada's prisons are not as bad as America's prisons, but there's really not much difference to the prisons that are 30 minutes away from where I live, or an hour away. Lindsay Jail is not that far away. If you're living in central Toronto and there are so many stories like Soleiman's there.
It was important for us to remind listeners that this is Ontario. We're not just talking about Canada. If you're listening to this in the GTA, this is happening close by and that's why it matters more.
KL: Being that this was your first podcast, it must have been a big project to dive into!
YZ: This wasn't necessarily what I would describe as like, “sexy true crime”. It's not a cold case of a serial killer or a murderer. This is very much rooted in systemic issues.
Listening to things like Serial and just to the format of how an investigation is done, there was a storytelling element but it also the practical element of how do we uncover new information. Sarah Koenig is amazing at that.
Getting Michelle Shephard on board was a big win because I listened to her season of Uncover, where she had investigated the Sharmini murder and she's done White Hot Hate, Brainwashed – I loved her reporting and all her work. So the thought of getting her on board to work with us, it put me at ease because I knew she knew what she was doing.
KL: What I really loved about Unascertained was your your relationship with Soleiman’s brother, also named Yusuf. He just had such a kind way of speaking to you – you could just tell how much love he had for what you were doing with the podcast. Tell me about the relationship that you had with the Faqiris.
YZ: I mean Yusuf is amazing. I was so lucky that he approached us with this story and frankly trusted us to tell it.
One thing I know about doing this kind of work is gaining trust with families who have gone through trauma or vulnerable populations takes time and it's not easy to do. It is constant work to maintain that trust.
The only reason this case has gotten so much notoriety is because of their relentless activism. It's very hard for a family to have lost a loved one, and most families want to just move on – they want to grieve, and they want to process it. And often it doesn't result in justice.
But Yusuf Faqiri's relentless activism and pushing back against the government and approaching journalists – what's interesting about him is that he's also a grieving brother. God forbid if I was in that circumstance, I don't think I'd have the stamina and energy that that he has to be able to be a PR machine and also be an activist, but also be funny and quick witted.
If Soleiman was the heart of this series, Yusuf Faqiri was the soul.
KL: Was there anything that you learned or took on from his characteristics as just a super strong advocate, a powerhouse. Is there anything that you ended up adopting in creating the story and maybe your approach to investigating it?
YZ: I'm definitely a changed man after this series. Again, [Yusuf] knows what he wants, he will not stop until he gets it. I've told him this before, I'd say you would make a great investigator because if you believe something to be true and someone has the answer [and] they're not giving it to you, you need that bone in you to just keep pushing for it, and keep pressing for it.
Maybe it's a Canadian thing where you just don't want to bug people – Yusuf doesn't care about that, he just cares about getting the truth and doing what's right.
If you don't respond to him after a few days, he will find you or he will send you a voice note. Sometimes I’d reach out to him and I say, “we're having trouble getting ahold of this person” and he'll just say, “give me a sec” and he'll make a bunch of phone calls and he'll come back to you and be like, “here's their number. They're expecting you to give them a call”. He just works magic.
KL: Despite the story and the context of the story you're telling, it sounds sounds like Yusuf was a dream to work with.
It sounds like he was such an advocate for this podcast, which I feel like can be really tricky to find when I've talked to other true crime podcasters and investigators and reporters. Sometimes a family doesn't really want to share too much, or they don't trust reporters. It must have been nice to find somebody on the same wavelength as you.
YZ: The series we're working on right now is the polar opposite. The family that is the center of our series has decided they don't want to speak to the press because they've just been burned by the press and journalists for so many years.
To go from unascertained where people were so willing to speak to us to this series where nobody really wants to speak to us, it's very difficult.
Something I struggle with too with this kind of work on the flip side of what you said is getting too close to a family. I've encountered that sometimes where blur the relationship between storyteller and friend. When you're going over to the family's house and you're having dinner with them and they're telling you all these very vulnerable things, and they forget that you're a producer.
It's a great way to gain trust, but also you have to tow that line carefully to not mislead people because once the project's done, then you leave and they feel like, “I thought we were friends” and it's tough.
KL: Talking about families that aren’t as open to you covering their story; how do you then approach writing their story?
I think some folks might get stuck thinking a story is so important to tell that they almost create a parasocial relationship with the family, even if they haven't actually ever met them before.
How do you navigate between “I'm an advocate for your story” and entering a sensational route?
YZ: It's something we're still figuring out to be honest. I don't want to ever pressure someone to do an interview because I understand the stakes for them versus us are very different. They've had journalists knocking on the doors saying “tell us your story,” and the journalist goes off and makes a piece about it and then they move on and nothing really gets done.
My philosophy of doing this kind of work is not just puff piece journalism. I don't really even consider myself a journalist – I do journalism work but I didn't go to school for journalism.
I really want to pick a story apart, understand it completely, make it digestible for audiences and hopefully have some good come out of it. With Unascertained we were able to help the case get reopened.
It's a balancing act to make sure it's not sensationalized, but there is this glaring missing piece, which is the family and we're doing our best to explain why the family doesn't want to be involved while still hoping they change their mind.
At the end of the day, you can't force them. You just have to respect their wish and do your job to report on it honestly, and hope that maybe they listen and maybe they change their mind. We experienced that with Unascertained – people said no to us at first and then they heard the podcast, and then they came back and said, “we'll speak to you”.
KL: This is my favorite question when I talk about True Crime: tell me about what it was like working with law enforcement and the correctional facility system. How did you get what you needed from them, if at all?
YZ: I don't think we got anything from it. They turned us down left, right and center. I remember going to the Durham Police Station and they wouldn't even let me in the front doors. I had to speak to them through a microphone, and they were like, “you gotta send an email,” and they never got back to me.
We had to be very careful specifically talking about the Kawartha Lakes Police because from the get go, we heard that the guards at the Lindsay Jail and the Kawartha Lakes Police go to the same bars and they're on the same hockey teams and they went to the same schools. Obviously you hear that and you think, “hmm, that sounds like a conflict of interest” when not only the police are investigating these guards, but there are police stationed at the jail so when an incident happens, they're there. We have to be very careful not to allude to anything we couldn't prove, but we could have other people say it, and there were people who did.
For example, John Thibeault, who was an eyewitness to the incident, he's from that community and he knows those guards and those police officers and he'd be like, “yeah I went to the this bar and I'd see so-and-so hanging out.” We let that speak for itself, but in terms of why the police wouldn't speak to us, I mean they I don't even think it was just us. They were so tight lipped about this even to the family.
For years, the family would ask the police, “what did you learn in this year and a half, two year investigation? And all they got back when the investigation ended was, “we found no grounds to lay criminal charges.” Just a one, two sentence email, you know?
If they're being that tight lipped with the family, they're not going to give journalists anything.
We had to license an interview that one of the officers from Kawartha Lakes Police did with CBC with Matt Galloway, but we had to license that because they wouldn't speak to us directly.
We filed FOIs and ATIPs with the police multiple times. It was denied. Then we appealed it. We filed FOIs multiple times, they denied it, we appealed it, they denied it. I don't want to say that they didn't want to talk to us because they knew they had sort of messed up with this one. In my opinion, I'm gonna be very careful legally here, I think they could have handled this case better.
We finally spoke to the lead investigator of the Kawartha Lakes Police in one of our bonus episodes – again, an example of him saying “no” originally and then coming back around – he stands by his decision to not lay charges the first time around, which is baffling, but a police station can't admit that they're wrong. We went into this assuming they were not going to be very cooperative, and that's how it happened.
KL: So low expectations and you won't be disappointed.
YZ: Yeah. Then you just have to be creative.
We got someone named Tam Bui, he's a private investigator now but he used to be a detective for the Toronto Police. By interviewing him – he has no connection to the case, but he has a lot of expertise – we can bring him the police files and say, “okay, can you analyze this with your expertise and give us a sense of how these officers came to this conclusion?” So you have to get creative sometimes.
KL: Tell me about the reaction to the podcast and what you were anticipating coming out of it when you first finished the series, before all those bonus episodes came out.
YZ: You never know what to anticipate or how people are going to react to something like this.
I was so in the thick of it for so long and I just needed to put it out there. I think we handled it pretty balanced, we obviously can't be super “down with the prisons”, “down with the police”. I always try to put my personal opinion in there and then it usually gets reined in and I think for a good reason.
The approach of the series is just to put the evidence out there and it's for the audience to form their own opinions from their own judgments and go from there. We got a ton of emails from people who are just concerned citizens, who heard it and were appalled at what they had heard but also from correctional officers from Inmates – former inmates who heard the podcast who wanted to contribute more.
One of those was Stephen Benko, who sent me a message as the podcast was airing, and he said that there was more to the story that we had missed. That was a really interesting episode. He became a very interesting character because he brought to light something that we hadn't really been looking at, which is the administration of the jail and their role in Soleimans's death.
I thought correctional officers weren't going to respond well to this. I mean, this is very much a podcast about how correctional officers and their actions led to the death of an inmate. But interestingly, they reached out and said, “yeah, this is what happens”, you know they're not thrilled about this stuff either. They recognize that they are understaffed and underfunded, and undertrained mainly. They're just not prepared to do this kind of work and people die in their care – and it's not an excuse that they're not trained, but they recognize that what happened was wrong. So it was kind of fulfilling to know that all different types of people were responding to the series in a different way.
KL: The end of the show ultimately concluded that there's been a verdict of homicide. The Ontario government put out a bunch of recommendations for correctional officers and the system to fix themselves basically, but you ended off that episode on a note that you were feeling particularly jaded and weren't super confident that anything was actually going to change. What is it that's leaving you feeling this way?
YZ: I don't want to make it seem like I've been doing this for years and I'm jaded and stuff like that because the truth is I've only been investigating correctional facilities or really just this case and other similar cases for maybe four years now.
But when you look at some of the other cases and inquests that happened just in the last 10 years; you look at Ashley Smith and her inquest. If you look at the recommendations that came out of those deaths and those inquests, they were almost identical to the ones that came out for Soleiman's inquest; the main one being a ban on solitary confinement for peoples with mental health.
It's the simplest thing you can do after something like this happens, and for over 10 years that recommendation has come and been essentially ignored. So it's hard to think this is going to be the one to change things.
It's homicide. This is the government admitting that homicide was committed in their own care, but it's happened before. And they have not done better, so it's hard to remain hopeful.
As we were doing this podcast, we'd get alerts, ‘so-and-so has been killed in a prison’. And you'd look at the circumstances, this almost identical to Soleiman. And it's like, “when does it end?”
KL: I liked that the note that the whole podcast ends on is that this is omething that the Ontario government needs to be figuring out, but this is also something that we as a society need to figure out what our role is when it comes to advocating for these folks and making sure this doesn't happen again.
As a self proclaimed SJW, I loved that ending because I think it was actionable, and that was an interesting distinction from a lot of true crime podcasts out there.
What are your thoughts on just ethical storytelling and the role of true crime podcasts these days? Do they have a bigger role to play in society, or can they just exist for entertainment?
YZ: It's a balancing act because I know I'm not purely an activist, and I actually don't even think it would be super useful if your main thrust of a podcast was just activism. I think there is a level of entertainment to what we do, and it's weird to talk about.
When you're creating a podcast, you talk about people as characters, but you do have to think of it like that because you want people to figure things out for themselves and people like to feel like they're smart.
What I like to do is like, “come along with me on this journey, on this investigation, and let's figure this out together”, as opposed to, “I'm going to tell you what's wrong with our system and why everything sucks and how you can fix it.”
I think the approach of “let's figure this out together” allows the onus to be put on the listener, and that's why we ended the way we did. The responsibility is on all of us.
A professor once told me that once you become a witness to violence or genocide, you now become complicit in it – or rather, you become involved in it – and you now have a responsibility to do something, whether it's tell someone about it, whether it's do something about it. You can't unsee violence or oppression.
I do think there is an onus and a responsibility if you're going to take on a True Crime story, particularly if it has ongoing real world impact. Like I said, this wasn't a cold case of a serial killer where everyone died 30 years ago. This is happening right now, and we tried to make that point clear that there are people in jail right now who are going through the same things that Soleiman went through and in many ways worse.
We recognize that it's a podcast, people listen to it in the gym and in their car and we pick music in a way that makes things more interesting and enticing – like it is entertainment – but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.
You can't have ethical storytelling that isn't manipulative. We try to present the facts and write it in a way that's interesting, but we don't lie, we don't move things around. The music is there to enhance the tone of what we're talking about.
I think you have to really care about the story first. If you care about the ratings or anything else other than the story, it's easy to get lost in sensationalism. I care about this and that's what propels the series first, everything else is just to enhance that interest that I have, and wanting you to be as interested as I am in this. That's where the entertainment element comes in, so it's a balancing act.
I've never been to jail and I'm not going to commit a crime, so I'm probably not going to go to jail. And it's like, Soleiman Faqiri was not a criminal. He did not commit a crime. He was somebody with a mental health illness that fell through the cracks of our system. And if you yourself have a mental health issue, there is no telling that you may not find yourself in the throes of law enforcement and instead of being sent to a hospital, you may be diverted to a criminal correctional facility.
This does affect everyone because mental health affects everyone. If you know somebody with bipolar or with schizophrenia, it's a scary thought that they could also end up like Soleiman.
It's not easy for people to tell these kinds of stories, so there is a responsibility as a storyteller to make sure that you're creating space for it, that you're doing it accurately and authentically. Again, as a listener, I think there's a responsibility too.
What Yusuf is loving:
Check out this Canadian Indie: Jumpers Jump
Carlos Juico and Gavin Ruta discuss topics on pop culture, streetwear, personal adventures, and life as young entrepreneurs finding success.
True North Podcast Feature: Still Here Still Healing
Stories from residential school survivors
A podcast that brings awareness to the history and lasting impacts of residential schools as well as the ongoing impacts of colonization. Listen to stories from residential school survivors and learn from discussions with Indigenous youth about topics such as culture, language, identity, and community.
What’s going on in Canada’s podcast ecosystem:
New Releases:
Feb 14, 2024 - A new season of Playing With Marbles from Brain Canada and Vocal Fry Studios has launched. The six-episode series is all about youth mental health, and features six mental health conditions and six people with lived experience — from depression to OCD.
Feb 22, 2024 - CBC has launched its new slate of podcasts. The slate includes a new season of The Secret Life of Canada (out now), and new shows Who Killed Avril Lavigne (a new show about the mysterious stories surrounding Canadian rock star Avril Lavigne, out March 6), and The Pornhub Empire: Understood (a show pulling back the curtain on the Montreal-based startup that revolutionized sex on the internet, out March 11).
Feb 26, 2024 - Canadaland has launched a significant new slate of podcasts. The eight new launches include new seasons of Commons: Work, Canadalandback and The Backbench, and new shows Pretendians (exposing jaw-dropping stories of Indigenous identity fraud, out May 14), A Field Guide to Gay Animals (a show about how the natural world is queer as fuck, out June 13), Commons Presents: Inside Kabul (a harrowing story of two young women coming of age at the end of their world, out July 17), The Worst Podcast (Canadaland’s first celebrity interview podcast, out September 4), and The Copernic Affair (following a decades-long international story about the pursuit of justice, wild reversals of fortune, and lives torn apart, out late 2024)
Feb 27, 2024 - Crime Beat from Curiouscast dropped its sixth season, which follows crime reporter Nancy Hixt who unpacks some of her more impactful cases.
You should know…
Calling all pro podcasters! CoHost, the podcast analytics and audience insights platform created by Quill podcast agency, has launched a pro podcaster research survey! If you're a pro podcaster, participate in the survey and you'll be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card! The winner will be contacted after the survey has closed on March 15th. Participate here.
Radio Connects has launched data around time spent listening to podcasts in Canada. Podcasts get 14% of audio listening, and even more for young adults. Check out the report. [HT: Podnews]
The fall Podcast Download report is out from Signal Hill Insights and Cumulus Podcast Network
Pary Bell is the new CEO of The Podcast Exchange, the organization partly responsible for The Canadian Podcast Listening Report.
The Ambies have announced this year’s nominations, with several Canadian podcasts and studios up for wins, with Let's Make A Rom-Com up against some notable headliners for Best Comedy, The Decibel up for Best News, and Expectant up for Best Fiction Scriptwriting.
The top 5 podcasts in Canada in January 2024 were Dateline NBC, SmartLess, Crime Junkie, Front Burner, and Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend, according to the Triton Canada Podcast Ranker.
Canadian History Ehx’s Craig Baird was recently on the Sound Off Podcast, discussing the most interesting parts of Canadian history, the failings of the Canadian education system, and more!
Transistor has officially released an AI transcription tool, which features audio-text transcription, automatic speaker detection, and more. Learn more about it!
For your pod:
- breaks down what elements of a podcasters story should podcasters actually share with potential collaborators and sponsors, and why?
The International Women’s Podcast Awards are now open to entries — The entry window is open until March 28, with plenty of unique categories to check out the categories here.
Hiring Your Podcast Team — The Wavve Audio blog unpacks how big a podcast team can be, and the roles within them here.
Just Joe (wearing a toque)…
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Kattie
@Podkatt (Twitter, Spotify, and Goodpods) | @ PodtheNorth (Bluesky)
