May 19, 2025
SHARE
CANADALAND
#1160 Confessions of a Girls Gone Wild Merch Girl
“ It was hot girls having a blast. There's nothing wrong with that. I thought it was aspirational. I did not yet realize that we were in fact shooting porn and that that was actually happening in the back room of the bus that we were living on.” - Courtney Kocak, former Girls Gone Wild “Merch Girl”
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Julie Shapiro
Executive Producer & Editor
Bruce Thorson
Senior Producer
Tristan Capacchione
Audio Editor & Technical Producer
max collins
Director of Audio

In 2005 Courtney Kocak was a “merch girl” on the Girls Gone Wild tour bus. She doled out the swag, T-shirts, thongs, drinks, to help get the GGW parties started. The GGW party on wheels rolled through places like Red Deer, Banff, Kelowna, and promised small town kids a “wild” time. By the time the tour was over Courtney and the bus crossed back across the border with boxes of release forms and video of marketable footage of young Canadian women flashing their breasts at the camera and having sex with each other. 

Courtney has been processing this experience ever since. Was it fun? Was it coercive? Was it even legal? Was she exploited or was she the exploiter? Or was it all of the above? 

 

Courtney Kocak (Writer and presenter), Julie Shapiro (Executive Producer), Michael Castaneda (Sound Design), Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor & Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), max collins (Director of Audio), Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher)

Fact checking by Julian Abraham

Additional music by Audio Network

 

Sponsors: 

Fizz: Visit https://fizz.ca to learn more about Fizz and its long list of added-value features, and activate a first plan using the referral code CAN25 to get 25$ off & 10GB of free data. 

The Oat Company: Head over to https://oatcompany.com and use code CANADALAND20 for 20% off your order. They ship across Canada so you can enjoy them anywhere.

BetterHelp: Visit https://betterhelp.com/canadaland today to get 10% off your first month.

 

If you value this podcast, support us! You’ll get premium access to all our shows ad free, including early releases and bonus content. You’ll also get our exclusive newsletter, discounts on merch at our store, tickets to our live and virtual events, and more than anything, you’ll be a part of the solution to Canada’s journalism crisis, you’ll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody.

You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music—included with Prime.

More from this series
“The world is now in a state of not even organized chaos. It's genuinely chaotic.” -Bob Rae, Canadian Ambassador to the UN 2020-2025
January 19, 2026
“ What price do you put on Canadian sovereignty? What price do you put on the ability to have an economy that isn't wholly beholden to the United States?” -Adam Pankratz
January 12, 2026
2025 was a year of change, tumult, and chaos. What are you hoping for in 2026?
January 8, 2026
I am so deeply bored of the little brother, little cousin, whatever vibe I find it so unuseful. -Matina Stevis-Gridneff
January 5, 2026
 I originally wanted to do a story about human manure. Composting poo. -Leora Shertzer
December 29, 2025
This week, we speak to the people who manipulate and control your emotions. “Manipulate. It sounds like we’re doing something evil…” -Darren Fung
December 22, 2025
 Somebody had taken a pound of PCP and dumped it into the chowder. We have a pretty strong suspicion who it was, although it was never proven. -James Cameron
December 15, 2025
“ It's not the time to turn your back and say, these are the wrong kind, these are not Canadians, or these are not our kind of people, or these are misinformed people.” -David Cayley
December 8, 2025
all podcasts arrow All Podcasts
CANADALAND