Cold cases, careful calls, unfinished answers.
The Next Call follows unresolved disappearances and murders through interviews, records, and careful return visits to the people closest to each case. Its recent feed also carries CBC true-crime introductions, but the home register remains patient, restrained, and case-driven.
PRESS PLAY
The Next Call is an investigative true-crime series shaped by unanswered cases and the people who keep returning to them. Its best episodes do not hurry toward revelation. They sit with family members, witnesses, decisions, and the small recorded moments that make a timeline feel human. A conversation about Jaclyn Ferland-Smith begins with the awkwardness of entering a room, the need for translation, and the uneasy geography of Costa Rica. A revisit to Melanie Ethier’s case turns on old statements, alleged confessions, scratches, assaults, and the question of what someone may have revealed without fully meaning to. The Terrie Dauphinais update places Ken Dauphiney on courthouse steps in Saskatoon, where a separate trial brings the older investigation back into view. The Nadia Atwi episode centers on alarm after seeing Nadia shortly before she went missing. The Christine Herron introduction returns to a teenager in Hanover, Ontario, and to a response that her family remembers as dismissive from the start. The Angel Karlik material moves north to Whitehorse and the Yukon, where a young woman’s disappearance and death still weigh on family and community. The show is built for patient attention. It relies on interviews, field tape, recorded calls, and direct questions rather than dramatic flourish. It is not soft, but it is restrained. It can be blunt about suspects, errors, violence, and grief, yet it avoids turning suffering into a hook. Recent feed episodes also introduce companion CBC projects, including The Devil You Know, Uncover: Calls From a Killer, and Someone Knows Something. Those introductions bring in subjects such as the Satanic Panic and Clifford Olson’s calls, but they read as adjacent programming rather than the core identity of The Next Call. The show’s own pulse is colder, quieter, and more intimate. It is interested in what remains unresolved after the official story has hardened. It asks who was believed, who was ignored, and who still has something to say. The result is true-crime reporting for listeners who can sit with ambiguity and detail. It treats the next call as both a reporting method and a moral obligation.
Made for: For true-crime listeners who prefer patient reporting, family testimony, and procedural detail over sensational pacing. It especially suits people drawn to cold cases and unresolved disappearances.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its restrained field-reporting texture: interviews, ambient moments, courthouse encounters, and careful distinctions between evidence, memory, suspicion, and rumor. It keeps the human record close while still pursuing investigative movement.
From David Ridgen, the creator of Someone Knows Something, comes the investigative podcast The Next Call. Ridgen works with victims’ family members, police and eye-witnesses to find answers. From investigators to potential suspects, the investigation unfolds with The Next Call. For the best in true crime from CBC, ad-free, visit apple.co/cbctruecrime.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
David Ridgen makes cold-case uncertainty legible by testing memories, timelines, and court evidence through careful, persistent questioning.
The Next Call follows unresolved cases by staying close to the people whose memories and records may shift an investigation. David Ridgen's questioning is patient and exacting.
A changing timeline gets David Ridgen's patience; you get the uneasy space around every answer.
Press play if you want
Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A careful missing-person case built on place, testimony, and restraint.
The episode begins in Costa Rica and follows David Ridgen as he tries to reconstruct the disappearance of a Canadian woman through interviews, translation, and local accounts of what people heard, saw, or know.
A careful look at how the Satanic Panic settled into cultural memory.
The episode treats the Satanic Panic as a lived historical episode, not a curiosity. Sarah Marshall lays out the 1980s and 90s accusations of brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society, then keeps the focus on the people caught inside it.
A restrained entry into a case that never really went quiet.
Arlene Bynum gives the story its center. Her long, secret phone calls with Clifford Olson, the serial killer who murdered 11 children in the 1980s and may have killed more, open a grim stretch of Canadian true crime, and the episode is strongest when it stays close to her memory…
A careful revisit that sticks to the facts and leaves the uncertainty intact.
The Next Call revisits Melanie Ethier's disappearance through David's interview for Rabia and Ellen Solve the Case, and it keeps the story grounded in what can actually be shown.
A slow, exact true-crime account that treats grief and uncertainty as facts worth staying with.
Christine Herron, a book-loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario, is given a careful, unhurried treatment here. The episode begins with the ordinary fact of a girl leaving for school in spring 1993, then moves toward the later confession that changes the case, while staying close…
A careful, evidence-led episode that lets a difficult case unfold on its own terms.
This episode stays with the careful work of a case that turns on a four and a half year old girl's statement, shifting timelines, and what police thought they had after a sting.
A careful missing-persons episode that values restraint over spectacle.
The episode stays close to the people most directly tied to Melanie Ethier's disappearance, with Jocelyn Martell's first-hand account carrying much of the weight and Dennis LeVay still surrounded by unsettled questions. That narrow focus works.
NHPR's Jason Moon investigates the Bear Brook barrel murders and a New Hampshire wrongful-conviction case.
Payne Lindsey's season-long investigation into two disappearances from Nome, Alaska.
CBC's true crime feed tracing Cleo's case into cold cases across its investigative podcast network.
Journalists chase a decades-long trail through a coronial inquest and Rick Bloom's dozens of aliases.
A New York Times reporter reinvestigates Laramie's unsolved 1985 murder of Shelley Wiley.
Costa Rica looks beautiful, then feels uneasy.
Rumours moved fast through Kentucky.
A collect call cuts in.
David returns to the feed with an interview.
David Ridgen opens by describing Christine Herron, a 15-year-old book-loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario, who vanished after leaving for school in spring 1993.
This episode updates the case of Terrie Dauphinais, focusing on Ken Dauphiney's trial for sexual assault and his connection to her murder, as part of a true crime podcast series.
This episode introduces the eighth season of the true crime podcast Someone Knows Something, focusing on the investigation into the 2007 disappearance and death of 19-year-old Angel Karlik in the Yukon.
The episode investigates the disappearance of Nadia, focusing on her last known visit and weight loss before she went missing.
The episode investigates the disappearance of Nadia, a woman from the Edmonton Lebanese community, with insights from an advocate and details about her divorce.
This episode introduces the case of Nadia Atwi, a missing person since 2017, through an interview with her mother Salwa Atwi, exploring the family's perspective and the challenges of an unsolved disappearance.
David Ridgen investigates the disappearance of 32-year-old Nadia Atwi, whose vehicle was found abandoned with her hijab and cell phone inside.
This episode examines the discovery of Terrie Dauphinais's body in April 2002 through witness Julie Wood's account of seeing the victim's stepsister Heather Martin in distress.
A four-and-a-half-year-old girl is close to the center of the case.
This episode explores the murder case of Terrie Dauphinais in Calgary in 2002, featuring an interview with her mother Sue Martin about the courtroom proceedings and emotional impact.
David Ridgen investigates the 2002 murder of Terry, a Métis woman, focusing on a single suspect and a child witness.
This episode investigates the disappearance of Melanie Ethier through an interview with Jason Chartrand, who was included in Dennis LeVay's alibi and shares insights about his childhood friendship with Melanie.
Jocelyn Martell speaks publicly here for the first time.
David Ridgen investigates the 1996 disappearance of Melanie Ethier by interviewing a witness who heard screams the night she vanished.
David Ridgen investigates the disappearance of Melanie Ethier, making calls to family and friends to uncover new leads.
David Ridgen investigates the 1996 disappearance of 15-year-old Melanie in New Liskard, working with her mother Celine.
David Ridgen investigates the 1996 disappearance of Melanie Ethier, working with her family and police to find answers.