The Northwest Territories has one type of snake – the red-sided garter snake – and it lives around Fort Smith, an area pummelled by wildfires last year.

How are the snakes coping with that? Are they in trouble or are things OK?

Johanna Stewart is a master's student in environment science whose job is to spend two years out there among the snakes, tracking them and learning what's actually going on.

We interviewed Johanna three times over the course of this year to figure out how that research works, what Johanna is looking for, and what we know so far. Plus you'll meet Big Bertha, a snake with a past.

Lee Selleck was a journalist in Yellowknife when, after a bitter and months-long strike, nine people were killed in an explosion at Giant Mine in 1992.

He and Francis Thompson wrote a book about Giant, Dying for Gold, five years later. Now, the pair are releasing an updated version. Lee tells us what the updated book covers, how it felt to be a part of the recent CBC podcast series about Giant, and whether he and the city have ever really moved on from what happened on September 18, 32 years ago.

Viking men have spent a millennium getting all the credit. What were the women doing?

We take a break from our usual northern news diet to meet Canadian author Heather Pringle, whose new book – The Northwomen: Untold Stories From the Other Half of the Viking World – uses archaeology, Icelandic sagas and even old cannabis seeds to tell us more about the power some Viking women held.

Spoiler alert: contains sorcery.

A review of how the NWT managed its firefighters and fought 2023's fires – the worst season on record – has landed.

Ollie gives you a guide to what the review says and asks the environment minister and senior officials how they'll use it to make changes.

When Shirley Coumont picked up a hitch-hiker in Enterprise, it turned out to be a German adventurer (and tennis coach) who's seen more of the Earth than virtually anyone else.

Now he's seen the inside of Cabin Radio, too. Sascha Grabow and Shirley stopped in for a chat before the next leg of his neverending journey begins.

When a wildfire hit a lonely highway, Dylan Jones and Scott Yuill were two of the only people who could help.

They told Ollie how they spent one night this month driving through burning debris, smashing down fences and calming terrified truckers to get everyone to safety when a fire engulfed the road.

A year after her city was evacuated because of oncoming wildfires, Mayor of Yellowknife Rebecca Alty joins Ollie to look back at those three weeks.

How did she see her job at the time? How did she cope? What lessons have the mayor and the city learned from last year's experience and the reviews that have followed?

A Nasa jet that just landed in Yellowknife is near the end of a decade-long mission to understand the changing northern landscape.

The project has the cute acronym ABoVE – which we'll explain – and Chip Miller is one of the scientists leading it. After 2023's disastrous fires, ABoVE is uniquely positioned to tell us what wildfires (and other factors like changing permafrost) are doing to the land, and maybe that can help us adapt.

Bonus: if you see this in time, there's an open house at the Nasa jet on Thursday, August 15. Find more details on the Cabin Radio events calendar.

On August 12, 2023, Fort Smith was told to evacuate because of oncoming wildfires.

Everyone fled to Hay River – only for Hay River to be evacuated the following day. A weeks-long odyssey followed, with thousands of evacuees spread across Alberta.

Back in Smith, town councillor Dana Fergusson began providing regular video updates that became one of the main sources of information for the 3,000 or so people that call Fort Smith home.

She joined us exactly one year later to look back at the fires, the evacuation and what has happened since.

Marie Wilson, a Yellowknife resident and former CBC North broadcaster and director, was the lone non-Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation commissioner.

Now, she has published a book about her central role in the TRC's years documenting the experiences of thousands of people in Canada's residential schools.

That book is North of Nowhere: Song of a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner – you can order it from Yellowknife Books.

Marie joined Ollie to talk about the book, her experience on the commission, and Canada's response over almost a decade since the commission's final report.