Front Burner

Prime Minister Mark Carney is at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this week, as the situation with Greenland continues to escalate.  Carney’s Davos trip is coming on the heels of a visit to China and Qatar where the Prime Minister made deals with both countries. Last year, he called China the biggest threat to Canada’s security, but now he talks about a “new world order” and say...

Anti-ICE protests continued throughout Minnesota over the weekend, as they have for nearly two weeks now. Since the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, ICE agents have been getting in confrontations with the people they are targeting, and the citizens attempting to observe and document ICE’s actions.   The city and state are on a razor’s edge — trying to observe and protest while not givin...

A mass protest movement has gripped Iran and is shaking the foundations of that country’s ruling regime. Thousands of protesters have been detained and rights groups say more than 2,500 people are dead, including one Canadian citizen. With Iranian officials signalling plans for “quick” executions, U.S. President Donald Trump issued threats of his own, hinting at military intervention. Will the U.S...

Potential American military intervention in Iran amid ongoing protests and violence. The shooting death of a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis at the hands of an ICE agent. A criminal investigation into the chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve. Astead Herndon is a podcast host and editorial coordinator with Vox. He breaks down another seismic week in American politics.  Our colleagues in CBC's W...

Mark Carney arrives in Beijing today to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. It’s the first time in nearly a decade for a Canadian Prime Minister to do so, and the stakes are high. Carney has to balance his handling of two problematic superpowers during these talks. On the one hand, he wants to double non-U.S. exports abroad in the next decade and China is the second largest market in the world...

The seizure of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro by military force. Promises to "take back" the Panama Canal. Massive tariffs on Brazil. Threats to take action against cartels in Mexico. Donald Trump's foreign policy in Latin America in recent months has been chaotic, even contradictory at times. But it all seems to be part of what Trump has referred to as the "Donroe Doctrine": a reinvention of...

Right now, the future of Greenland hangs in the balance.  And with it, an entire system of military and political alliances that has underpinned the global order since the end of the Second World War. So when U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he’s going to meet with Danish leaders to talk about Greenland this week, that’s what diplomats, historians and politicians the world over say is...

Whether you think it’s world-changing or over-hyped, it’s undeniable that artificial intelligence has transformed the tech industry. But as tech companies chase the dream of building a human-like intelligence and revolutionizing everything from doctor’s visits to movie-making, the industry continues to face big questions around things like the mental health of users, copyright infringement, reliab...

In 1999 Hugo Chavez was elected President of Venezuela, beginning a years-long ‘Bolivarian Revolution,’ following multiple coup attempts, and time in prison. Chavez would go on to govern the country as President until his death in 2013 — passing sweeping anti-poverty programs, nationalizing oil and industry, and opposing US hegemony in the region.   Just before his death, Chavez hand selected...

Today, Gerry Butts – former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau and current adviser to Prime Minister Carney – is on the show. Butts is also the vice chairman of the global political risk firm, the Eurasia group, which releases a “Top Risks” list every year. We’ll drill down on a few of them, including their number one risk, the “U.S. political revolution”. The report makes the case that, outsid...

In the wake of the U.S. arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, there has been a flurry of concern about what that country’s oil could mean for the Canadian economy. Is American access to the world’s largest proven oil reserves a major threat to Canada? Have we lost leverage with the U.S. as we move forward in trade negotiations?  Over the last few days, Trump has threatened Cuba, Gree...

After months of rhetoric, military presence and strikes, U.S. forces have launched an attack on the Venezuelan capital Caracas. They seized the country's president, Nicolás Maduro, and flew him to New York to face narco-terrorism charges. U.S. officials say Maduro heads up a cartel responsible for flooding the United States with drugs, but critics — and Maduro himself — say the charges are just a...

In the fourth and final episode of Understood: The Making of Musk, host Jacob Silverman launches into Musk’s ultimate quest, his desire to colonize Mars, and how he went from wanting to save earth to wanting to escape it.  You’ll hear the origin story of SpaceX. And hear from an astrophysicist who says Musk’s plan is completely delusional.  You can find Understood wherever you get your p...

What does Musk, father of 14, expect from his quote, “legion” of children? In episode 3 of Understood: The Making of Musk, host, Jacob Silverman unravels Musk’s quest for genetic optimization, including alleged embryo screening, and his pronatalist views. And we hear from his estranged daughter, Vivian. You can find Understood wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/FBxMoM3

Where did Elon Musk’s epic ambitions begin? In search of clues, the latest season of Understood: The Making of Musk returns to his sheltered youth in apartheid South Africa, a world engineered for white supremacy.  In this second episode, host Jacob Silverman explores whether Musk’s authoritarian streak traces back to his Canadian grandfather. Before Joshua Haldeman brought his family to Sout...

Today we’re joined by lawyer and author Bryan Stevenson for a conversation about the historical Mother Emanuel AME church, and what it means to tell the story of American history through a single institution.  Then Canadian journalist Paul Wells stops by for a look at the rise of The New York Times, and the lessons for news media writ large.  And finally, Bookends host Mattea Roach chats...

Some of our favourite guests of the year return to talk about books that helped meaningfully explain 2025.  We talk about the evergreen appeal of Plato as well as Jewish identity with former Yale fascism scholar Jason Stanley.  The déjà vu of trade wars and Canadian nationalism are tackled by journalist and author Stephen Maher. His pick is a book that details the last election of Sir Jo...

In the 1980s and 90s, Satan and his followers were accused of brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society on a massive scale — yet these thousands of alleged Satanists were nowhere to be found. Even so, the narrative became embedded in our cultural memory, warping everything it touched — including the lives of innocent people… And it never quite died out. In...

Forged is a six-part series from CBC in Canada and ABC Australia. Host Adrian Stimson, an artist from the Siksika Nation, travels from Thunder Bay to the Northern Territory of Australia, to reveal what's believed to be the largest art crime fraud in the world. In this first episode, rock star Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies is doing rock star things — like buying paintings. And what better pai...

Today we're bringing you a 2025 Front Burner wrap up, answering audience questions and bringing you behind the scenes of the making of some of our most popular episodes of 2025. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit:  https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In 2025 news of the biggest, most sensational sports scandals was broken not by ESPN or Sports Illustrated, but by a podcaster named Pablo Torre on his show Pablo Torre Finds Out. It was Pablo who investigated Kawhi Leonard’s alleged multi-million dollar under the table no show deal. And it was Pablo who uncovered potential collusion involving NFL player salaries. Pablo Torre is with us today to t...

Corruption is a word that’s come up throughout this year in relation to U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term. There have been allegations of personal enrichment, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, through his family’s crypto and real estate ventures. There are also accusations of quid pro quo deals with foreign leaders and convicted criminals seeking pardons. Is this a bug i...

The Australian prime minister and police have said that the suspected gunmen in the Bondi Beach mass shooting at a Hanukkah event were motivated by Islamic State ideology. Australian counterterrorism officials allege the father and son received military training in southern Philippines.  While it's been more than six years since the fall of the caliphate, experts like Lucas Webber say there’s...

On the first day of his second term as U.S. president, Donald Trump signed an executive order effectively gutting USAID — the United States Agency for International Development. It's an arm of the government that, in 2024, was operating in more than 130 countries worldwide, providing food, medicine and other life-saving support. At the time, advocates said the cuts would result in preventable deat...

It’s been almost a year since Alberta Premier Danielle Smith met with U.S. president-elect Donald Trump. He was on the brink of a trade war. Since then, a lot has happened, from a renewed push for a separatist referendum, to election recall campaigns, to a shift in the relationship between the province and Ottawa. We are joined by two CBC colleagues. Kathleen Petty is the host of the West of Centr...