Episodes

It is definitely hurricane season, so what better time than now to sit down for a conversation with one of the world's leading storm chasers, Jaclyn Whittal. You probably know Whittal as the long-time co-host of Storm Chasers, where you’ll regularly find her reporting from Oklahoma's Tornado Alley, at the leading edge of some of the biggest hurricanes on record, or facing down fires in the interior of B.C. As a Fellow of the RCGS, Whittal also spends time working in the Arctic and running acros...

Julian Brave NoiseCat’s award-winning new film Sugarcane follows a very personal investigation into abuse and missing children at St. Joseph’s Mission Residential School that sparks a reckoning on the nearby Sugarcane Reserve

“This might be why people go down rivers!”  We're back in the Arctic for the last of our 2024 Summer Canoe Series. This time, it's with Dave Greene, who, along with paddling partner Chris Giard, led an RCGS-flagged Akilineq Canoe Expedition from Yellowknife, N.W.T., to Baker Lake, NU, in 2023. During this time, they covered 1400 kilometres, including Canada's newest national park, Thaidene Nëné. A good chunk of their trip also involved paddling upstream (see episode title). Greene has some in...

Musician Sam Polley’s first canoe trip was with his dad, Blue Rodeo’s Jim Cuddy, his mom and siblings. He doesn’t remember much about it, but he clearly got hooked. All these years later, he’s still an avid canoe tripper with a love of the lakes and rivers in northern Ontario. Sam is best known for his rockabilly band Sam Polley and The Old Tomorrows and playing with The Jim Cuddy Band, fronted by his father. When Sam isn’t touring or in the studio or writing songs, he likes to feed his muse by ...

With a passion for learning and a love for teaching, the Indigenous northerner talks about her experience guiding canoe trips and paddling through lands that her family has known for generations

The canoeing legend discusses his Canada-wide paddling adventures, connection with First Nations communities and a record-breaking feat

"Shackleton died on that ship. And he's the only one who died on that ship. Of all his expeditions under his direct command, nobody else died except him, on his own ship. And that's the ship that we found. And it tells that story about his leadership." - David Mearns, world-renowned shipwreck hunter and search director for the RCGS Shackleton-Quest Expedition. Welcome to the second part of our series on the RCGS Shackleton-Quest Expedition. Today, we're delving into the intriguing details of t...

"That's it!" exclaimed John Geiger as he caught the first glimpse of Quest, the last ship of legendary polar explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. Now resting 390 metres below the surface off the coast of Labrador, Quest was Shackleton’s last ship and the vessel he died on. Geiger, CEO of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, is our guest on this episode of Explore, in which he tells the riveting story of the epic hunt for Quest and Shackleton's legacy. On June 9, in the rolling seas off Labrador...

The actor, playwright and author discusses her upcoming play about the young women who kept Ontario's farms running during the Second World War

Bestselling author Bill Arnott discusses his work as a writer tracing the voyages of Vikings around the world

The executive director and curator talk about canoes, kayaks and a stunning new location for The Canadian Canoe Museum in Peterborough, Ont.

"Canada's claim to the Arctic derives from the Franklin expedition and the search that evolved out of it." We’ve touched on the Franklin expedition in several other Explore podcast episodes, so we're excited to be taking the first proper deep dive into the story now with Ken McGoogan, an author who has been passionately writing about this topic for decades. We also discuss Ken’s latest book, Searching for Franklin: New Answers to the Great Arctic Mystery, which examines Franklin’s legacy from a...

Journey through the Arctic and beyond in this captivating and enlightening conversation with one of Canada’s greatest modern-day explorers

"I took one step further and we were looking into the eyes of four lionesses and two cubs. The fourth lioness with the cubs exited down the ravine like a shot. The other three lionesses jumped up at us. We ran backwards, yelling at the top of our lungs. The lions came up after us. Their teeth were pulled back in a grimace. The noise was beyond belief." I'm thrilled to have one of Canada's leading naturalists, Brian Keating, join us today. As you can tell from that quote, Brian has had some amaz...

I am thrilled to have Laval St. Germain as our guest for this episode of Explore. An avid adventurer, Laval has rowed solo across the North Atlantic Ocean and is the only Canadian to have summited Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. He has also climbed the tallest peaks on all seven continents, including Antarctica and many more of the world's most remote and challenging mountains — not to mention that he is also a commercial pilot, flying in the Canadian Arctic and was one of our RCGS Po...

Over the past two years, Canadian Geographic has been running “Passing the Mic,” a podcast training program in remote Nunavut communities. This week, we are pleased to showcase the third episode of this year’s series, which features stories produced by the students at the Netsilik School in Taloyoak, Nunavut. The aim of this program is to give Inuit youth the tools to share their stories with the world in their own voices, using their words. I think you’ll agree that these stories provide a won...

In this episode, we're back in Taloyoak, Nunavut, mainland Canada’s most northerly community, to talk with Joyce Ashevak, Martha Neeveacheak and Roger Oleekatalik. They are three of the students who took part in Canadian Geographic’s Passing the Mic program, which aims to give Inuit youth the tools to share their own stories with the world. Joyce and Martha are both throat singers, a unique and incredibly powerful Inuit vocal art form. And Roger is one of the leading young hunters in this commun...

We are thrilled to be taking you back to Taloyoak, Nunavut, the northernmost community in mainland Canada. In this exciting episode, we sit down with Lenny Panigayak, Taloyoak’s mayor and viral TikTok star (@aqigiaq), who shares moments from his life and Inuit culture with his tens of thousands of followers. The Explore Podcast team met Mayor Lenny when we went to Taloyoak to spend a week teaching podcasting to the amazing students at the Netsilik School in a program called “Passing the Mic,” w...

The pack-ice 'round us cracks and groans; The old St. Roch, she creaks and moans. - Stan Rogers In 1940, the wooden-hulled St. Roch became the second ship to successfully sail the Northwest Passage and the first to do it from west to east, captained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Henry Larsen. Our guest on this episode, Ken Burton, recreated that voyage 60 years later on another RCMP ship, the St. Roch II. A new RCGS Fellow, veteran sailor and polar explorer, Burton shares the incredi...

For this holiday episode of Explore, we’re dipping into our Royal Canadian Geographical Society files for the reading of a story written by RCGS founding President and Arctic explorer Charles Camsell, recalling a memorable Christmas he had on the trail to the Klondike in the late 19th century. In the early 1900s, travelling by canoe and horseback, Charles Camsell mapped hundreds of thousands of square kilometres of Canada’s north for the Geological Survey of Canada. Born at Fort Liard in the N...

The award-winning Canadian filmmaker, photographer, author and multimedia artist discusses her epic six-year journey across the world's longest hiking trail

Today’s guest is Jimmy Ullikatalik, the manager of the Taloyoak Hunters and Trappers Association and project manager for the Aviqtuuq Inuit Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA), a proposed 90,000 square kilometres of marine, terrestrial and fresh-water ecosystems in Nunavut. Jimmy also represented Nunavut at COP26, the UN Climate Change conference in Glasgow. In October, I was lucky enough to make my second trip to Nunavut, to the hamlet of Taloyoak. It is the most northerly community in mainlan...

Best-selling author Karen Pinchin is our guest on this episode of Explore. Her new book, Kings of their Own Ocean, is the phenomenal tale of an incredible fish, the bluefin tuna, which has gone from being the cornerstone of the Roman Empire to the much sought-after catch brought to near extinction in the past century in our own boom-bust, globalized economy. Ultimately, this is a heartening wildlife story, filled with an incredible cast of characters, a globetrotting look into the history of blu...

The scholar, filmmaker, author and explorer discusses his documentary work, experience in the polar regions, climate change and more