• President Joe Biden’s Final Days in office
    Jan 10 2025

    Joe Biden will end his reign as President as not only the oldest holder of the executive office, but one of the longest tenured lawmakers in American history. As he enters his twilight in public life, we look at the President’s final few weeks in office and ask: how is Joe Biden likely to be remembered?


    President Biden’s final weeks in office include the controversial decision to pardon his son, Hunter, and the passage of the largest single-day grant of clemency in modern American history. But many believe he should use his final days to pass meaningful legislation on issues ranging from racial justice to the environment, national parks, abortion and Gaza.


    Our guest is Alex Shephard is a Senior Editor at The New Republic and has been writing about Biden through his Presidency, and beyond.


    For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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    27 mins
  • Donald Trump threatens to annex Canada
    Jan 9 2025

    With just under two weeks until he re-takes the Oval Office, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump has outlined a mind-map of sorts to, as he says, “make Canada the 51st American state.”


    He has referred to the border separating Canada and the U.S. as an “artificial line,” called Justin Trudeau Canada’s “Governor” and said Canada would “dissolve” without U.S. assistance.


    At the same time, he’s not ruling out forcibly incorporating the territory of Greenland into the U.S. and seizing control of the Panama Canal, a crucial shipping route.


    Threat, negotiation tactic, or meaningless bluster? CBC Washington correspondent Katie Simpson unpacks where it’s all coming from.


    For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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    24 mins
  • Grappling with Trudeau’s political legacy
    Jan 8 2025

    Nearly a decade ago Justin Trudeau rode a wave of hope and optimism — his so-called "sunny ways" — to the prime minister's office, leading a once-flailing Liberal party out of the wilderness.


    A lot has changed since that time. Not only for Trudeau and his party's fortunes, but for the world — and how many people feel about the kind of hopeful vision that once helped propel people like Trudeau into power.


    Today we're going to grapple with Trudeau's legacy, and how he may be remembered: the accomplishments, the failures, the scandals — and whether, as the world transformed around him, Trudeau was able to adapt with it.


    Our guests are Aaron Wherry, CBC senior writer and the author of Promise and Peril: Justin Trudeau in Power, and Stephen Maher, author of The Prince: The Turbulent Reign of Justin Trudeau.


    For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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    31 mins
  • Trudeau resigns. What’s next for the Liberals?
    Jan 7 2025

    After months of non-confidence votes and growing pressure, Justin Trudeau has stepped down as the leader of the Liberal Party. He’s still the Prime Minister, for now, after proroguing Parliament until March 24th so that the Liberals can hold a leadership race and find his successor.


    Wayne Long, a backbencher from New Brunswick, was among the first voices from within Trudeau’s own party to call for him to step down. Now that it’s finally happened, he talks to us about what the “internal battles” in the party actually looked like and what he thinks needs to happen next for the Liberals to have a fighting chance in the next election.


    For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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    25 mins
  • Is Justin Trudeau about to resign?
    Jan 6 2025

    For the last couple weeks, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has apparently been thinking about his future. At the same time, he faced new calls to resign: from his colleagues, the country and political rivals.


    Will he make it through the day, the week or the election?


    Tim Powers shares his thoughts on Trudeau’s political future. He’s the chair of Summa Strategies, managing director of Abacus Data, a former Conservative adviser and a regular columnist at the Hill Times.


    For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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    24 mins
  • Encore: Is high finance killing Hollywood?
    Jan 3 2025

    What is the point of Hollywood? There are two obvious answers, right? To make good stuff that entertains people. And to make money for the big studios and the people who work for them.


    Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But writer Daniel Bessner believes increasingly they have been.


    Bessner spent a year working on a deep dive into how Hollywood has evolved for Harper’s Magazine, called “The Life and Death of Hollywood”. Bessner is also a historian and host of the podcast “American Prestige”. He spoke to host Jayme Poisson last April.

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    23 mins
  • Encore: The ‘trad wives’ glamorizing life at home
    Jan 2 2025

    For some time now, there’s been a growing trend on TikTok and Instagram of young women sharing about their daily lives as “trad wives.” “Traditional wives” forego the workplace, extol the virtues of homemaking, and often talk about the ways they “submit” to their husbands.


    So why do these women say they’ve chosen a life at home? How does their messaging cross into religion and politics? And is this “movement” a reaction to the burdens on modern women, or a threat to feminism’s progress?


    We revisit a conversation with journalist Sophie Elmhirst from last April, who wrote a piece in the New Yorker called “The Rise and Fall of the Trad Wife”.

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    25 mins
  • Front Burner Presents Céline: Understood, Episode 4
    Jan 1 2025

    Céline Dion is having a moment. It’s not her first. And millions of fans are hoping it won’t be her last. While Céline’s international stardom seems obvious now, it was all so unlikely. This is the final episode of the four-part series from Understood, the anthology podcast that takes you out of the daily news cycle and inside the events, people, and cultural moments you want to know more about. Hosted by Thomas Leblanc.


    More episodes of Understood are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/n5NBQC

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    33 mins