Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here, too, and this is Stuff You Should Know.

The man, this is a bummer edition yeah the zero laughs edition because we're

talking about the highway of tears and there's no other way around it this is just a devastating

topic yeah we should tell people i mean the highway of tears is fairly famous.

It's kind of been in the news and in pop culture, I guess, for a while.

I guess at least since the 90s, but really in the early 2000s, I think is really when it picked up.

Regardless, it is a stretch of desolate highway that runs from, in British

Columbia, up in Canada, from the port city of Prince Rupert all the way into the interior to

Prince George. And it's, I think, 720 kilometers, almost 450 miles, and it's known as Highway 16 officially.

But the stretches of this highway are so desolate, so remote, and so sparsely populated,

that it has become a haven for murderers who pick people up, mostly women, mostly indigenous women,

on this road and either make them disappear forever or murder them.

And it's endemic in this area so much so that it's caught national attention.

It's just how poorly this group of women are being treated and their families as well.

Yeah, it's, you know, as you'll see, it's, and you know, there are many reasons for this, but it's a heavily hitched

hiked road, and that can be very dangerous. And so a lot of times these are hitchhikers, people just trying to get from one place to

another.

And like you said, they are, you know, either sexually assaulted or murdered or both.

And these are the people that, you know, like they found bodies.

There are, you know, dozens and dozens more

than these dozens who have survived attacks and rapes along that stretch of highway. So, you know,

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