Before there were movies like "Smoke Signals" or "Atanarjuat", there was a century of celluloid stereotypes. Throughout its history Hollywood has made over 4,000 movies about Native Americans, most of which relied on a mess of cliches. "Isinamowin - The Whiteman's Indian" takes a closer look at these and other stereotypes of Native Americans off the silver screen.

Listen to Part One of "Isinamowin, The Whiteman's Indian"

In 1998 actor-comedienne Franny Sheridan brought her one-woman show, "The Waltonsteins", to Ottawa. The show tells the story about Franny's family, who lived in Ottawa as good church-going Catholics. But as children would later discover, they were actually Jewish. And for the much of their life they had to supress their judaism in fear of another holocaust.

When Franny first wrote "The Waltonsteins" and revealed family's true identity, some of her family members were terrified that it may cause them harm, but in the end her Ottawa performance brought together her brothers and sisters for the first time in years.

"The Waltonsteins" was produced by Lynda Shorten. It first aired on This Morning, the Sunday Edition on December 7th of 1997 and it won a Gabriel Award in 1998.

(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)

Have you ever wondered why word "small" doesn't exist on the Starbucks' menu? Well, size matters in the world of advertising -- and language matters even more.

In the second half of  the show it is "The Language of Persuasion". Terry O'Reilly explains how marketing and advertising have permeated almost every aspect of our lives and had a venti effect on the way we communicate.

But the show begins far from the advertising billboards and screens of a busy metropolis. Julie Berry is a poet and retired elementary school teacher from St.Thomas, Ontario. As a teacher, she was always excited to take her Grade Six students on a special hike.

As you can hear in her documentary, before that hike, many of the children have never seen tadpoles, toads or rare flowers. But Julie's walks weren't solely a lesson in nature; they were also a lesson in the power of poetry.

Listen to "The Poetry Of The Woods" and "The Age of Persuasion"  

Leonard Cohen performs during his concert in Warsaw, Poland, Oct. 10, 2010. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

On April 16, 2009 CBC radio show Q celebrated its second anniversary and to mark the occasion it featured an interview with one of the most ageless artists there is: singer-songwriter, poet and novelist Leonard Cohen.

At the time that show aired, Cohen was 74 and in the middle of a marathon tour which had begun in the spring of 2008, and lasted until the end of 2010. It was his first tour in fifteen years.  Fans across the world rushed to the venues to pay homage to a man with wit, charisma, septuagenarian sex appeal -- and whose musical repertoire spans more than four decades.

This special anniversary edition of Q called "Leonard Cohen in Three Acts" won the Gold Medal at the New York Festivals in a category for Best Regularly Scheduled Talk Program.

Listen to And The Winner Is... episode that aired on April 26, 2013

 

Positron emission tomography image of a human brain - image by BlatantNews

For parents, the realization that their child may be autistic often comes slowly. A worry, a pang, a sinking feeling when trying to play with the new baby, who seems uninterested, even unreachable.

What could be going on?If the answer is autism, it is just the beginning of the questions.

First seen as a medical oddity, the story of autism is both fascinating and troubling. It was described, and named, in the heyday of psychoanalysis. Brilliant, charismatic doctors concluded the disorder was caused by nurture - not nature. In short, it was the parents' fault. They were branded with the label: "refrigerator mothers."

This week on And The Winner Is... we present IDEAS award-winning program on autism. Bernice Landry explores how our understanding of autism has taken an about-face in recent years.

An army of activist parents, and scientists on the cutting edge of genetics research, are together attempting to make up for lost time.

The program is called "The Dark End of the Spectrum."

Listen to Part One which aired  April 12, 2013

Listen to Part Two which aired  April 19, 2013

Our feature this week covers a little subject called The Universe,
what we know about it and all the stuff we have yet to discover. Which
is most of the stuff. For example, when and how it began, and what it's
made of.

Read More »

Up until ten years ago, September eleventh was just another date. But over the past decade, of course, it's taken on a whole world of meaning. September 11th is used as a kind of shorthand for everything from religious violence to a massive failure of global security. And the space where the World Trade Centre stood until that day has widely become known as Sacred Ground.

In 2010, the CBC Radio program Tapestry decided to explore the idea of Sacred Ground, in a two part series. The series first aired in December of 2010 and a year later, it was recognized with a Wilbur Award.

Listen to And The Winner Is...episode that aired on Mar 22, 2013


Listen to And The Winner Is...episode that aired on Mar 29, 2013

Listen to part two of this extraordinary series about man's quest for flight.

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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."

Read More »

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.