(AP Photo/Sebastian Scheiner)
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"Rozhinkes mit Mandlin," or "Raisins with Almonds," was first broadcast on the CBC in 1980, on Identities, a program about Canadian immigrants and culture.

"Raisins with Almonds," is an incredible audio montage that serves as a portrait of Jewish-American culture. It was produced and narrated by Rita Jacobs Willens, and includes the voices of Zero Mostel, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner, the sound of Arthur Rubinstein on piano, and the complete song "Rozhinkes mit Mandlin," which gave this documentary its name.

This series is the winner of a Gabriel Award, sponsored by the Catholic Academy for Communications Arts Professionals. And it's also the winner of a Major Armstrong Award. That award is no longer given out, but -- in its day -- among the most prestigious awards in radio. It was named for Major Edwin Armstrong, the inventor of FM, or static-less radio.

Major Armstrong was a brilliant engineer, and, inspired by inventors like Marconi, he set out to change the sound of radio. So much so, that communications technology created by Edwin Armstrong during the First World War is still used by most modern radios, television receivers and even some cellphones today.

 

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As a boy in pre-war Austria, Georg Tintner played the piano, sang with the Vienna Boys Choir, and composed his own music. By the time World War Two broke out, he was also a conductor. But Georg Tintner was a conductor with Jewish roots. And so, after the Anschluss in 1938, he was fired.

By 1942, Mr. Tintner made his way to New Zealand, and for the better part of the next forty-five years of his life, he served as a conductor across New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

But in 1987, he moved to Halifax, where he would leave his mark as the conductor of Symphony Nova Scotia. He died in Halifax on October 2, 1999.

This week on "And the Winner Is..." we present a documentary celebration of Georg Tintner. You can hear clips of Mr. Tintner himself, and of his music. And also of people around the world who appreciated the man and his music.

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A Canadian Forces CF-18 sits in its hangar at the air base in Inuvik, Northwest Territories THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tom Hanson

On December 17, 1903, in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright launched their first successful piloted flying machine. That was more than one hundred years ago. Since then, airplanes have unquestionably made the world a smaller place.

Planes have made travelling easier and faster. We use them to transport cargo, to spray crops, to douse forest fires and to transport medical supplies and organs. But we also use planes for a more sinister purpose.

Since the First World War, airplanes have been used in combat. First in reconnaissance missions, then as fighters and bombers.

By World War II, the plane became a key soldier in battle. The force of the German Luftwaffe, paratroopers dropping from the sky on D-Day, the attack on Pearl Harbor and dropping the first two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - all made possible by the dream achieved by the Wright Brothers in a cold, wet field in North Carolina.

This week on ATWI we present the second and final episode of Flying, a documentary first aired on IDEAS in December 1989. It was produced by Marilyn Powell and is the winner of a Major Armstrong Award.

Listen to And The Winner Is...episode that aired on May 1, 2012

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Orville Wright is at the controls of the Flyer as his brother, Wilbur, stands nearby during the plane's first flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., Dec. 17, 1903. (AP Photo/John T. Daniels)

According to Bill Gates, the Chairman of Microsoft, "the Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together."

Since the Wright Brothers' first successful piloted flight on December 17, 1903, the world has indeed become smaller, with more of our experiences shared as global experiences.

Flying enables us to move people and products more efficiently. We use airplanes and helicopters in combat and to monitor security from above. Through flight we can visit to remote places, quickly transfer organs for transplant, not to mention the mundane things like providing traffic reports. Flight has changed our world, and flying has long been the dream of man.

For centuries man has been inspired by birds and butterflies, dreaming of taking flight. But why? What is it about flying that enraptures us? Today on the program we present Part One of Marilyn Powell's award-winning series about flying. It was first broadcast on IDEAS in December 1989, and was awarded a Major Armstrong Award.

 

Listen to And The Winner Is...episode that aired on April 24, 2012 

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The Second World War. Nowdays you find it in places like the British Imperial War Museum in London. Safely organized and labelled behind glass cases and in video displays. But a war may be less clearly organized in the human heart; in memory, in choices made, in consequences, and in generations that come after. In every war the first casualty is the truth.

This week on And The Winner Is... we present 'Songs My Mother Taught Me' by Chris Brookes - a 'documentary novel' about British women who married foreign soldiers during World War II. 'Songs My Mother Taught Me' first aired on Ideas withe Paul Kenedy in 1999 and it won a Gold Medal at at the International Radio Festival of New York.

John Le Carre at his home in London (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Fifty years ago, in his very first novel, John le Carré introduced a quietly complex character, a British spy named George Smiley. He reappeared in the series -"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "The Honourable Schoolboy" and "Smiley's People". The BBC made him the central character of several mini-series starring Alec Guinness. In fact, it's hard to say the name George Smiley without picturing Guinness's impassive, intelligent face.

But John le Carré's breakthrough book was his third novel, published in 1963, "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold". Le Carré had watched the building of the Berlin Wall two years earlier, and his anger and fear fuelled his powerful story. It too was adapted for the screen - this time starring Richard Burton as the British agent who is double-crossed by his own people.

Both the novel and the movie became iconic symbols of the Cold War and of a tough and disillusioned image of the world of espionage.

But the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall didn't signify the end of le Carré's inspiration. He switched focus and wrote about conflict and corruption in countries around the world, from Panama to Kenya. And since 9/11, the changing face of the enemy and of terrorism have become his subjects.

John le Carré was born David Cornwell in Dorset, England in 1931. His father was a conman, convicted of fraud, and his mother left the family when David was five. He was sent to a public - which means private-school in England, and then in Berne, Switzerland. After his military service, which he spent in Austria, he studied modern languages at Oxford. It was during those years that he began his own career as a spy, though for decades he never revealed that his work involved espionage, especially when he was at the British Foreign Service in West Germany in the late 50s and early 60s.

Listen to And The Winner...episode that aired on April 3, 2012 (John le Carre Part One)

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Listen to And The Winner...episode that aired on April 10, 2012 (John le Carre Part Two)

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It's been a long while now since "tweet" was a sound a bird made, and a new friend was just someone with whom you'd recently spent some good times.

Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, You Tube - the reigning monarchs of social media - have changed our language and the way we relate to each other. They're revolutionizing how we make revolutions, and they're revolutionizing the news business. It used to be that the tools of the journalistic trade were held by trained, paid professionals whose stories wouldn't air unless they were approved by editors, even lawyers. But an army of so-called citizen journalists is on the march. They can report whatever they want, and it's up to you to determine if its true or not. The whole idea of news - how we deliver it and how we consume it - is being re-invented.

This week on And The Winner Is... we bring you Ira Basen with a the second installment of "News 2.0: The future of news in an age of social media."

Listen to And The Winner Is... that aired on March 27, 2012

AP Photo by Jacquelyn Martin

He's best known as lead guitarist, and a founding member, of both The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. And although he still tours as a musician, and is always working on new licks, Randy Bachman has a full-time gig as the host of the CBC Radio program Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap -- which airs on weekend evenings.

Randy is well-known for his masterful story-telling and his voluminous musical knowledge, but also for his love for guitars. At one point he owned about three-hundred-and-seventy-five of them, including some very rare models. But in 2008, he sold his collection to the guitar-maker Gretsch, for display in the company's museum in Savannah, Ga. And he is still searchin for his Holy Grail: a late-1950s orange Gretsch guitar -- the Chet Atkins model that was stolen from him in 1976, from a Toronto hotel room.

Randy Bachman

As a musician and producer, Randy Bachman has won more than a hundred-and-twenty Gold and Platinum music awards. But when asked which one is his most prized, he responds "The one I haven't got yet." His sparkling personality and sense of humor earned him a Silver World Medal at the New York Festivals in 2009.





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Hindu devotees bathe in the River Ganges (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

This week on And The Winner Is... we are presenting two documentaries, both about people from India.

Born into a cultured family in the ancient Indian kingdom of Travancore, she read all of the novels of Charles Dickens before she turned ten. Ten was also the age she was forced to leave school to get married. At 15 she was a mother. And for most of her adult life, Sethu Ramaswamy was in the shadows, trying to find her place in the light.

Then, at age 80, her memoir, Autobiography of an Unknown Indian Woman, was published, to great fanfare and acclaim all over India. "Finally, an icon," wrote one reviewer. "A woman comes of age," read another.

This is the surprising third act in a drama full of surprises, the story of a child-bride whose husband was both her true love and the biggest obstacle to her freedom, a story of a grown woman who set out one day for a life she always wanted.

Producer Sarmishta Subramanian is a grand-daughter of Sethu Ramaswamy and she brings us her amazing story. Her documentary is called "A Woman of No Consequence" and it won a Gracie Award in 2009.

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The story-teller in our second feature was also born in India. Surjit Sachdev grew up in a conservative family, and he was expected to follow the footsteps of his totalitarian father. So he became, just like his dad, an engineer. But the family tradition ended when Surjit's son Kapel was born with a severe mental disability. Through the years, Surjit's frustrations increased. He became too strict with Kapel and then one day, a major confrontation with Kapel forced Surjit to examine his competence as a father.

"A Fragile Son" was produced by Surjit Sachdev and Carma Jolly. In 2007 it won a Silver Medal in a cathegory for a Best Documentary at Third Coast Festival.

 

Listen to And The Winner Is... episode that aired on March 6, 2012

As day jobs go ... this one is pretty tough stuff. Wendy Leaver is a Toronto cop. Her beat is sexual assault crimes. What she sees and hears is not for the faint of heart. And she's up against it every single day. The offenders she meets are the kind of guys who inspire the saying: "jail? they should be shot."

When Detective Leaver isn't at work ... when the precious down-time kicks in ... you might expect her to zone out - to find the quickest way of escape from the ugly world she sees as a police officer.

But you won't find her under the covers with a bottle of Jack Daniels. You'll find her working as a volunteer - with sex offenders. Showing compassion and caring to the kind of guys she's arresting during the day. 

"The Least Of These" is the winner of Canadian Association of Journalism Awards. It's written and presented by CBC Radio's Maureen Brosnahan.

Listen to And The Winner Is... episode that aired on February 28, 2012