Every day, in Hamburg, Germany, Annette Venebrügge wakes up to a single word emailed from her friend Tina Oehmsen-Clark in Toronto. And every evening, she sends one back. No sentences, no stories — just one carefully chosen word, and always in German. What started as a simple pandemic project between two art school friends has grown into an archive of over 3,000 words.

In her documentary "One Word," CBC producer Alisa Siegel explores how this linguistic game has transformed a friendship one word at a time. The game is part time capsule, part diary and part art project. Because as Annette says, each word makes her a witness to her friend's existence.

Produced by Alisa Siegel and story edited by Joan Webber / originally aired on The Current. 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit 

In Washington state, a law known as Ricky’s Law, allows authorities to force people with addiction into treatment. The law is named after Ricky Garcia, whose struggles with drugs and alcohol inspired him and his friend Lauren Davis to push for change.

From emergency room visits to suicide attempts, Davis watched as Garcia went through more than 75 emergency visits in just two years. Davis helped spearhead the state's involuntary treatment law and later went on to become a state lawmaker.

But does forcing someone into treatment actually work?

CBC journalist Julia Wong went to Washington state to find out how the law has been working in practice. In her documentary, Ricky's Law, she speaks to doctors and pa tients who've been through this system. It's a timely conversation as provinces in Canada are considering similar laws.

Plus, a look at how New Brunswick ended up making a two-seater sports car in the 1970s called the Bricklin SV-1.

Reported by Julia Wong. Produced by Kory Siegers and Liz Hoath / Originally aired on The Current.

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

They needed certainty. They got chaos. For over a decade, countless people from at least five different countries put their trust in a company offering prenatal paternity tests. It promised clients “99.9% accuracy” — but then routinely, identified the wrong biological fathers.

In the six-part investigative podcast Uncover: Bad Results from CBC News, journalists Rachel Houlihan and Jorge Barrera track down the people whose lives were torn apart by these bad results, and reveal the story behind the company that continues to stand by its testing today.

This week on Storylines, the first episode of Uncover: Bad Results.  

In 2015, a 20-something American named John learns he might be a father. A prenatal paternity test confirms it, and he quickly pivots from college student to family man. But eight months into the baby’s life, a second test reveals John is not the father, shattering his new reality. 

More episodes of Bad Results available at: https://lnk.to/R7TfV6hP 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

On this week’s show, an investigation into land, money and power that has gripped the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan. For decades, a small group of band members has been leasing huge swaths of land owned by the community and personally pocketing millions in rental fees 

When a new band council decided to fix the issue, there was a pushback that included threats and confrontations with farmers. 

In his documentary, Land of Promise, investigative journalist Geoff Leo traces this complex story back to 1992. That’s when federal and provincial governments laid the groundwork for this situation with a land deal they thought would correct an injustice done to First Nations — which lead instead to accusations of injustice amongst band members themselves.

Reported by Geoff Leo, produced by Joan Webber and story edited by Liz Hoath. The documentary originally aired on The Current. 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

This week on Storylines, the story of Vince Carter, the Toronto Raptors legend who transformed basketball in Canada. From the high of “Vinsanity” to the low of his bitter departure from The Raptors, Carter’s career left a permanent mark on Canadian sports fans. 

Carter’s story is told by Adrian Ma, a Toronto journalist and professor. As a kid growing up in Ancaster, Ontario, Adrian spent hours shooting hoops at the local schoolyard imagining he was Carter. Speaking with fans, former players and cultural commentators, Ma revisits the rise of the Toronto Raptors and how Carter inspired a new generation of Canadian basketball fans. 

Reported and produced by Adrian Ma and edited and mixed by Michelle Parise. This documentary originally aired on The Sunday Magazine.

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

For 28 days after her husband’s death, poet Molly Peacock woke up and cried. It was, in her words, a “full moon cycle" of tears.

Then, on the 29th day, the tears subsided. The feelings that followed surprised her, they were of a wider spectrum than she expected — she likened it to a “widow’s crayon box”.

In the documentary What Can a Widow Be?, Molly takes us with her on her journey as a widow. She discovered the cliché of the widow — the perpetual mourner — does not tell the full story. Being a widow, she discovered, is full of emotions she never saw coming, from hysterical yelling to moments of joy sitting in bed alone in the morning. 

As she grieved, she also wrote a collection of poems called, The Widow’s Crayon Box that she read excerpts from in the documentary. 

Produced by Alisa Siegel and edited by Liz Hoath / originally aired on The Current.

The Widow’s Crayon Box by Molly Peacock. Copyright (c) 2024 by Molly Peacock. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

This week on Storylines, the voices of Canadian World War One soldiers, sharing their stories of the front lines. You’ll hear these veterans talk about poison gas attacks, shellfire, the mud, the air war, and even the food.   

The stories come from interviews with World War One veterans done for the CBC program Flanders Fields which first aired on November 11, 1964. 

Also, a story from Montreal about a century-old Catholic church that faced a dilemma over what to do with its bells.

After the bell tower was damaged, the church faced the prospect of losing bells that had rung out for generations during worship services, weddings, and funerals. Instead, the choir director at Sacré-Coeur-de-Jésus found a way to preserve them, ensuring they will continue to resonate with the congregation and community for years to come.

Produced and reported by Simon Nakonechny and originally aired on The Sunday Magazine. 

Hear the Soldiers of WW1 Speak was produced by Craig Desson

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

In 2013, American psychologist James Hardt made a promise to Indigenous kids in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. He said his brainwave training would transform their lives by increasing IQ, curing mental health issues and potentially giving them superpowers like levitation. 

Perhaps the most surprising thing — he convinced the Prince Albert School Board and the research ethics board at the University of Regina — to approve this proposal, allowing him to experiment on these children.   

On this week’s Storylines, investigative journalist Geoff Leo uncovers the disturbing details of what went on during this brainwave training that targeted vulnerable children.

Reported by Geoff Leo and produced by Joan Webber & originally aired on The Current in June 2024. 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

On this week's Storylines, we start on January 6, 2021, when the U.S. Capitol was overrun by rioters

A few blocks away, as the dramatic scenes unfolded, CBC journalist Katie Nicholson was confronted by a group of angry Trump supporters who heckled her and said she should get out of their country. One woman accused her of “spewing BS” and said that she and her crew should run. 

Ever since that day Katie has been thinking about who those people were, and what compelled them to join the crowd marching to the Capitol. Now, with the U.S. in the midst of a volatile election campaign, she also wondered if their thinking has changed

So she decided to track down the women who told her to run. It turns out the woman's name is Tracey Danka and she lives in North Carolina. Tracey invited Katie to her home to talk about what happened that day and the deepening political divide in America.

In Katie’s documentary we learn surprising information about Tracey, including the fact she’s married to a Democrat.

Also, the story of Robert Miniaci, a master of the lost art of projector repair. While most cinemas use digital projectors, museums and film devotees still depend on the analogue ones. That’s where Robert comes in: from his garage in Montreal he repairs projectors that are used around the world. 

Katie Nicholson’s doc was produced by Liz Hoath and originally aired on The Current.  

The documentary on Robert Miniaci was produced by Craig Desson and Julia Pagel and originally aired last April on The Sunday Magazine. 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit

Some twenty five years ago, in a small, nondescript building in downtown Tokyo, children gather to look at a suitcase displayed behind glass. They write poems and draw pictures about the suitcase because of the tragedy it represents. The suitcase came from Auschwitz. 

This suitcase belonged to Hana Brady, who was born in the Czech Republic, and whose life was brutally cut short by the Holocaust. She was first deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1942, and then to Auschwitz in 1944 where she died at the age of 13. 

A Holocaust education center in Tokyo acquired the suitcase with no further information about Hana. So, its director, Fumiko Ishioka, made it her mission to find out more of Hana's story.

Her search brought her to Toronto and George Brady. He is Hana’s older brother, the only member of their immediate family to survive. For him, the reappearance of the suitcase in Japan, 57 years after Hana’s death, was absolutely astonishing.  

Produced by Karen Levine/originally aired in 2001 on The Sunday Edition 

Storylines is part of the CBC Audio Doc Unit