Imagine a monster that grows in exact proportion to every meal, so it can never be full. This episode follows the Wendigo from the boreal forests of the Algonquian-speaking peoples, where it personified winter famine and enforced communal cooperation, through its life as a contested psychiatric diagnosis, and into its modern role as a metaphor for colonialism, corporate extraction, and consumption without limit.

We look at Basil Johnston's description of the gaunt, ice-hearted giant, a 1918 story from the Chippewas of Rama First Nation about a boy fattened like livestock, and the backward-dancing satirical ceremony used during famines. Then we examine the documented cases: the 1661 Jesuit Relations, the 1878 Swift Runner tragedy in Alberta, and the 1907 arrest of Cree chief Jack Fiddler, before turning to the academic fight between skeptics ...