Front Burner

Last year, a TV show called Pam and Tommy dramatized the turbulent marriage between Canadian actress/model Pamela Anderson and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee.

It’s the latest in a string of documentaries and shows that revisit and reframe the cultural conversation around famous women of the ‘90s and 2000s who were often wronged in the name of entertainment.

But for Pamela Anderson, Pam and Tommy was not vindication. Now the Baywatch star is speaking out against the project, and telling her own story, with an intimate new Netflix documentary called Pamela, a love story.

Today on Front Burner, Constance Grady, senior correspondent on the Culture team at Vox, joins us to cover the documentary and share her thoughts.

Alaa Alakel says the night after major earthquakes struck her home country of Syria was maybe the worst night of her life. She is a student in Toronto and waited sleeplessly by her phone for news from her family back home in Idlib.

Rescue teams continue to search for survivors of the earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and northwest Syria on Monday. It’s the deadliest earthquake in the last decade and, as of Wednesday, the death toll has risen to over 12,000.

Among the hardest hit areas was Idlib province, a rebel-held part of Syria that was home to intense fighting over the last decade of conflict in the region. And the earthquakes are only the latest in a string of humanitarian disasters that have broken apart families and devastated communities.

Today on Front Burner, we’re joined by Alaa Alakel and her brother, Mohammed Alakel. Mohammed spoke to us from his family's home in a camp in Barisha, a village in northwest Syria. And Alaa translated from Toronto.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with all 13 of Canada's premiers on Tuesday to pitch his plan for increased health-care funding to provinces and territories.

The measures would amount to over $46 billion in new funding and – combined with what Ottawa was already planning to pitch in – totals almost 200 billion in total federal health-care spending over the next decade.

Today, CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton breaks down the details of the proposal, discusses why many provinces and territories say it isn't enough, and recaps the latest from Ottawa.

Canadian director Sarah Polley’s new Oscar-nominated film Women Talking is set in an isolated religious community where a group of women and girls must decide how to respond to sexual assault in their community. Over two days, they debate: should they do nothing, should they fight, or should they flee?

Polley has been clear that her story is fiction. It is based on a novel by Miriam Toews, a Canadian author who grew up in a Mennonite family.

But before the book and the film, there was a real community where women woke up with foggy memories and physical pain. That community is the Manitoba Mennonite Colony in Bolivia. Journalist Jean Friedman-Rudovsky traveled there over a decade ago to speak to women about what had happened to them. She says what they told her still haunts her to this day.

*A warning: today’s episode contains graphic details involving sexual assault.*

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger made a prediction about how the world will vie for resources in the coming decades.

For years, Gelsinger said, much of geopolitical relations have turned on access to oil reserves. But in the future, he thinks a more important factor will be where microchips are made.

Intel is a prominent figure in the computer chip business, but some 90 per cent of the world’s most advanced chips are currently made by one company in Taiwan.

And according to Chris Miller, if the TSMC plant in Taiwan was destroyed the disruption of everything from smartphones to cars could be the biggest manufacturing shock since the Great Depression.

Miller is an Associate Professor of International History at Tufts University, and he recently released the book Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology.

Behind every catfish, there’s the bait. Who is Janessa Brazil? Stolen images of an adult entertainment star are being used to con victims out of thousands of dollars, breaking hearts in the process. Journalist Hannah Ajala embarks on a quest to find Janessa, in this 8-part true crime series. And who is responsible for catfishing scams? Produced for the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts by Antica Productions and Telltale Industries. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/La1M2VKj

Ozempic is a brand name for a drug that's prescribed to help manage Type 2 diabetes. But it's also being used in Canada as a treatment for obesity, something that some doctors – and a lot of people on TikTok – are talking about.

There's a lot of questions about the risks and benefits of Ozempic when it comes to weight loss, and so much interest that there's been supply shortages of the drug, particularly in the United States.

Elaine Chen is a cardiovascular disease reporter at STAT News. She covers metabolic conditions including diabetes and obesity. Today, she discusses why some people are calling this new drug a gamechanger and how it is challenging the way the medical community treats people who live with obesity.

This week, a parliamentary committee questioned Gymnastics Canada CEO, Ian Moss, about his organization’s response to allegations of misconduct against a national team coach.

The national gymnastics federation is just the latest in a growing list of sports organizations that have faced scrutiny for their handling of allegations of abuse and misconduct.

Many have called it a safe sport crisis. While Ottawa says it’s taking the issue very seriously, critics – including Liberal MP Kirsty Duncan – say the government hasn’t done enough.

Macintosh Ross is an assistant professor of kinesiology at Western University, where he studies human rights abuses and the Olympics, and a member of Scholars Against Abuse. Today he shares his thoughts on why an independent inquiry is necessary to shift the culture in Canadian sport.

Over the past month, Israelis have taken to the streets in massive demonstrations. They're opposed to Prime Minister Netanyahu's new plan to limit the power of the Supreme Court and worry about what that means for minority rights and Israeli democracy.

Today, we will talk about the make-up of Netanyahu's new coalition government and why that has protestors so concerned. We'll talk about Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir who has been convicted of incitement to racism and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich who has described himself as a homophobe.

Yair Rosenberg is a staff writer for The Atlantic and he'll explain what's behind the government's shift rightward, what it means for democracy, and how it moves Israelis and Palestinians even further from a two-state solution.

Last week, after months of requests, Germany agreed to send German-built tanks called Leopard 2s to Ukraine, to help in their fight against Russia. That decision opened the door for other countries to send their Leopard 2s, including Canada – which will send four. The US also jumped in, agreeing to send 31 of its M1 Abrams tanks. All in, over 300 tanks are being sent to the country.

Now, Ukraine is asking for more weapons – including long range guided missiles – faster.

But this begs the question: how will an influx of heavy weaponry change the situation on the ground? Could this mean an end to the war? Or could it mark the start of a new, increasingly violent and dangerous impasse?

Rajan Menon is the Director of The Grand Strategy program at The Defence Priorities think tank. He’s also a senior research scholar at Columbia. He gives his take on how this next phase of the war could play out.