Come by Chance

A TV crew offers 12 ordinary people the chance to take part in the adventure of a lifetime. But there’s a catch. The audience knows everything but the contestants are kept in the dark. As the cameras roll, no questions are allowed. Split Screen: Thrill Seekers is a new 6 part series that exposes how a TV show left contestants struggling to trust what’s actually real. Host Nick van der Kolk (Love + Radio) asks: does reality TV only succeed when it exploits those involved? He talks to the set designers, crew, and the contestants themselves to learn what it took to permanently distort their sense of reality. Welcome to Split Screen, an examination of the utterly captivating, sometimes unsettling world of entertainment and pop culture. From reality TV gone awry, to the cult of celebrity, each season of Split Screen takes listeners on an evocative journey inside the world of showbiz. Ex-contestants, producers, and cultural critics uncover complicated truths behind TV’s carefully curated facades, and question what our entertainment reveals about us. Split Screen: sometimes reality is twisted.

For years, players have been too afraid to talk about it. But now, the truth about a broom that almost destroyed curling is finally coming out. Over the course of six episodes, semi-professional curler and fully professional comedian John Cullen (Blocked Party) is exposing the unbelievable, never-before-told scandal that rocked the sport of curling. Yes, curling.

Who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women’s sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women’s category. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. To understand how we got here, Host Rose Eveleth (they/them) traces the surprising, 100-year history of sex testing.

Real people. Real problems. Real talk. Normally, therapy sessions are totally confidential — but this podcast opens the doors. Hillary McBride and her clients want to help demystify mental health. No actors. No auditions. No artifice. This is what people really sound like when they talk about traumatic births, turbulent divorces, eating disorders and tough childhoods.

Of all the young revolutionaries in Syria during the Arab Spring, Amina is different. An out lesbian in a country where homosexuality is illegal, she bravely documents her life on the blog Gay Girl in Damascus. Her candid posts attract readers from around the world, and soon she has a wide, ardent following. But then a post appears saying Amina has been abducted. Her fans mobilize, desperate to track down and save their fearless heroine. What they find shocks them. Journalist Samira Mohyeddin investigates what actually happened to the infamous Gay Girl in Damascus in this 6-part series. The result is a twisted yarn that spans the globe and challenges our thinking on love, politics and identity in cyberspace. Listeners can access every episode for free weekly on Wednesdays (6 episodes total). If you want early, ad-free access, visit apple.co/cbcstories.

People don’t think Graham Isador is losing his sight. They think he’s an asshole.  Short Sighted is an attempt to explain what vision loss feels like by exploring how it sounds.  Written and hosted by master storyteller Graham Isador, the show’s mini episodes are an intimate and irreverent look at accessibility and its personal impacts.  Get lost in someone else’s life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, to a courageous escape from domestic violence, each season of Personally invites you to explore the human experience in all its complexity, one story — or season — at a time. This is what it sounds like to be human. Hear episodes early and ad-free on CBC Stories Premium on Apple Podcasts. Season 1 | Run, Hide, Repeat: a story of a childhood spent on the run. Season 2 | Welcome to Paradise: a courageous escape from domestic violence.