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True Crime

Brainwashed

by CBC

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Latest episodes

  • Brainwashed Introduces: The Most Wanted Olympian

    October 15, 2026 · 38 min

    How did a small town Canadian boy allegedly become a narco kingpin? Ryan Wedding was once a promising young athlete, a snowboarder who went all the way to the Olympics. Now captured after a decade on the run, he’s accused of running a…

  • Bonus: Front Burner | Canadian CIA MK-Ultra victims still fight for justice

    October 11, 2023 · 28 min

    Front Burner is your essential daily news podcast that takes you deep into the stories shaping Canada and the world. In this episode you’ll hear Daemon Fairless speaking with Lisa Ellenwood. Lisa was a writer and producer on Brainwashed…

  • Bonus: BRAINWASHED / MADNESS

    October 28, 2020 · 24 min

    Host Michelle Shephard speaks to Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson from the podcast Endless Thread about their series, Madness. Like Brainwashed, Madness focusses on the CIA-funded mind control experiments led by Dr. Ewen Cameron. The…

  • Episode 6: NEVER TOO LATE TO SAY SORRY

    October 20, 2020 · 34 min

    MKULTRA has entered popular culture, becoming the butt of jokes, television plot points, and the darling of internet conspiracy theorists. At the very least, the secrecy that still surrounds MKULTRA, or the CIA’s post-9/11 programs, sows…

  • Episode 5: WE TORTURED SOME FOLKS

    October 13, 2020 · 40 min

    MKULTRA was supposed to have ended in the 1960s. The torturous experiments didn’t work. So why did these techniques evolve and continue to be used by American trainers throughout Latin America, and then get revived once again in the era…

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  • Episode 4: SUING THE CIA

    October 6, 2020 · 31 min

    After discovering that they were the unwitting victims of human experiments, nine of Dr. Cameron’s victims band together to take on a Herculean task – to make the CIA pay. How do you sue one of the most powerful intelligence agencies in…

  • Episode 3: EXPOSING MKULTRA

    September 30, 2020 · 30 min

    Communist brainwashing, mind control experiments, a government cover up... MKULTRA sounds like the stuff of conspiracy theories or science fiction. But it was real. John Marks, author of The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, and Stephen…

  • Episode 2: PSYCHIC DRIVING

    September 23, 2020 · 34 min

    Dr. Ewen Cameron, an internally renowned psychiatrist, was once the director of the World, American and Canadian Psychiatric Associations. So how did he come to develop his controversial treatments? And what was the real purpose behind his…

  • Episode 1: RAVENSCRAG

    September 23, 2020 · 23 min

    The Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal was an innovative new hospital where patients sought cutting-edge psychiatric care. But instead of being helped, many were subjected to shockingly brutal experiments: massive doses of LSD or other…

  • Trailer: Brainwashed

    September 2, 2020 · 3 min

    Brainwashed is an investigative series into the CIA’s covert experiments in mind control – from the Cold War and MKULTRA to the so-called War on Terror. Listen to the voices of the survivors and their families, the conscientious objectors…

Full episode archive on Apple Podcasts →

About the show

Brainwashed investigates the CIA’s covert mind control experiments – from the Cold War and MKULTRA to the so-called War on Terror. It’s the story of how a renowned psychiatrist used his unwitting patients as human guinea pigs at a Montreal hospital, and the ripple effects on survivors, their families, and thousands of other people around the world. It also examines the cultural impact — how the CIA brought LSD to America and inadvertently created counterculture influencers such as author Ken Kesey and poet Allen Ginsberg. It’s an exploration of what happens in times of fear, when the military and medicine collide. And what happens when the survivors fight back. For the best in true crime from CBC, ad-free, visit apple.co/cbctruecrime.