Front Burner

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 John A. Macdonald and first electio...

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 the new 8-part series, The Devil...

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 painting for an iconic Canadian roc...

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 talk about the year in sports ...

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 in Trump’s administration, or a f...

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 been a troubling rise in Islami...

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 deaths from starvation, malnutrition...

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 Centre podcast and Jason Markusoff is...

Today, an in-depth look at puberty blockers and their use on minors with gender dysphoria. These drugs have come under an enormous amount of scrutiny in recent years, with some questioning their benefits, safety and long-term impact.

After banning the use of puberty blockers for gender treatment of people under 18, a new clinical trial in the U.K. aims to get to the bottom of those concerns.

Azeen Ghorayshi is a science and g...

First, the latest on the massacre at Bondi Beach in Australia. The mass shooting targeted the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah.

We speak with Sean Tarek Goodwin, a reporter with ABC News, who was one of the first to arrive on the scene.

Second, a surprise defection on Parliament Hill.

Late last week, just hours after Parliament wrapped for the year, the Liberals welcomed another floor crosser into the party. W...

‘Make America Great Again' has been Donald Trump’s brand for a decade, riding the movement’s anti-elitist wave into the presidency and remaking the Republican Party. But cracks are now showing in the coalition, raising questions about Trump’s commitment to MAGA goals. One of his staunchest allies has become his loudest critic: Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently announced she would resign her seat next year. ...

Every U.S. president releases a national security strategy document about a year into their term, but few have made as big a splash as Donald Trump's, earlier this month.

The document formally spells out much of what we've come to expect from Trump's approach to foreign policy in his second term: political relationships are transactional, and American interests take priority above all else. The document also takes particular aim...

It's estimated that as many as 10 per cent of adults in Canada use a GLP-1 type drug like Ozempic. The prescription medicine is used for type 2 diabetes management and increasingly prescribed off-label for weight loss. And this month, for the first time, the World Health Organization has conditionally recommended GLP-1 drugs for the long-term treatment of obesity.

But while these drugs have been called a game-changing tool to ma...

Two of the biggest media companies in the world are going to war over Warner Bros. Discovery, a massive media conglomerate that owns a historic Hollywood studio, as well as the likes of HBO and CNN. 

This week, Paramount put in a hostile all-cash takeover bid for Warner Brothers worth more than $108 billion. This followed Netflix’s announcement a few days earlier that they had won a bid to buy the company’s f...

Through 2022 and 2023, two Vancouver activists made international headlines with DULF — the Drug User Liberation Front. In a bid to stop overdose deaths, founders Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx sold clean, tested drugs — bought on the dark web — to their members as an alternative to the contaminated street supply.

But that international attention led to political blowback. DULF was raided by police, Kalicum and Nyx were arrested, a...

Today, we bring you a wrap on U.S. politics. We begin with two scandals plaguing U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth, from allegations of war crimes to a scathing report accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence.

And we cover the fallout from President Donald Trump’s tirade against Somali immigrants, including a surge of ICE raids in Minneapolis. Plus, the politics behind Trump’s win of the inaugural FIFA Peac...

In 2015, as governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney’s ‘Tragedy of the Horizons’ speech made waves in the global climate community. It was seen as a landmark call for the financial sector to recognize the costs of climate breakdown.

But fast forward 10 years and a fierce debate is swirling around whether Carney is living up to that warning. Since becoming Prime Minister, he’s scrapped the consumer carbon tax, froze EV mandat...

The U.S. Supreme Court is soon expected to rule on the legality of President Donald Trump's sweeping worldwide tariffs. The court will rule on whether his use of a 1970s national security law violates the U.S. constitution, which clearly states that only Congress has the authority to implement taxes — of which tariffs are a type.

But regardless of which way the court rules, Trump and his administration have made it clear that ta...