Front Burner

After six weeks of war and a fragile ceasefire Iran is going into high-level talks with the U.S. battered but defiant. Whether any kind of real agreement can be reached remains to be seen. The U.S. and Iran are extremely far apart in their demands.

Vali Nasr is a professor of international affairs and Middle East studies at Johns Hopkins University and the author of “Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History”. He joins us to talk about why Iran’s leadership remains steadfast and what the war has meant for its domestic and international standing. 

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

By the end of the day on Wednesday, the tenuous ceasefire between Iran and the U.S. was already being tested. 

Israel continued to bomb Lebanon heavily, and Iran attacked Gulf countries. There was confusion over whether the Strait of Hormuz was open or not. 

And then there are the larger questions. What was the real cost of this war? Who came out on top?

Today on the show The Economist geopolitics editor David Rennie is here. He also talks about the shape of this deal and whether it resolves any of the big issues that existed before the fighting started.

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

Today on the show we are going to talk about a grave threat made by U.S. President Donald Trump towards Iran where he wrote that unless the Strait of Hormuz is opened up “a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”

It set off a whole day of worried speculation. Could this mean the obliteration of Iran’s energy grid and water plants? A nuclear strike? Or could it be some incredibly high stakes bluster in search of an off-ramp?

On Tuesday evening the picture got marginally clearer when Trump said he’d extended his self-imposed deadline by two weeks.

Alex Shephard from The New Republic is back on the show. He joined us before Trump’s deadline extension offer, and the conversation remains very helpful.

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

Today, a check-in on Israel’s expanding wars in Iran and Lebanon, violence in the West Bank and details of a new law that could see the death penalty for Palestinians convicted of deadly attacks.

Jayme welcomes Israeli journalist Meron Rapoport back to the show. Meron has been reporting on Israel for over 30 years, and was formerly the head of news at Israel's Ha’aretz newspaper. He’s now an editor with the Hebrew-language news site Local Call.

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

Deepfake porn is a billion-click industry built on stolen faces, while the people making it hide theirs behind screens. Hosted by journalist Sam Cole, Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire traces the decades-long rise of synthetic porn, the targets who are fighting back, and the global investigation that led to its Canadian kingpin.

Understood takes you deep inside the seismic shifts reshaping our world right now. From online porn and crypto chaos to the rise of tech oligarchs, deepfake AI, and the broken promises of the internet — we explore the stories that define our digital age with hosts and characters embedded in the heart of the action. 

More episodes of Deepfake Porn Empire are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/DPExFB

As the Iran war wraps up its fifth week, the increasing price on fuel and food is wreaking havoc on consumers and businesses around the world. Global markets are also incredibly volatile.

Right now, the economic fallout is more pronounced in the Gulf, Asia, and Europe, but analysts say the shockwaves could soon be felt in North America.

Liz Hoffman is the business and finance editor at Semafor, and the host of their podcast, Compound Interest.

She talks to host Jayme Poisson about how close we are to a full blown global economic disaster.

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

Since the beginning of the U.S.-Israeli war, Iran has been publishing AI propaganda videos online trolling the United States, and Donald Trump. 

Conversely, the U.S. military, and Donald Trump specifically, have spent the better part of the last year publishing all kinds of war and military content and propaganda of their own. 

Propaganda has always been part of war. But in 2026, something about it looks and feels different: it’s shorter, funnier, more synthetic, and tailored to the algorithm. 

Nicholas Cull is an authority on propaganda and has written a number of books on the subject including ‘The Cold War and the United States Information Agency.’ He’s a professor at the University of Southern California.

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

Today we’re joined by Alex Panetta, journalist and former Front Burner guest host. You may remember him as a regular on this show when he was a CBC Washington correspondent.

Alex is now on sabbatical studying artificial intelligence and has been grappling with a lot of the big questions we have been thinking about too.

So today we’re going to talk about the ways he’s been using AI in his own life and interrogating how this technology can impact our ability to think critically. Will AI make us all dumber?

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

Nearly a year after the federal NDP’s most devastating election result in history, the party declared Avi Lewis – who ran on a campaign of democratic socialism – its new leader.

It was a decisive win – Lewis won over half of the 70,930 eligible votes cast. The turnout was high – at about 70 percent of membership.

Avi Lewis talks to host Jayme Poisson about his vision for the federal NDP’s future, the challenges ahead for the party, and what pressures he plans to put on Prime Minister Carney’s Liberal government.

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

Experts, market watchers and the authorities in Iran have accused the U.S. President of engaging in market manipulation surrounding the Iran war by timing military announcements around market opens and closes.

On top of that, there have been questions of possible insider trading in connection to Trump’s moves. Last Monday, a spike of highly suspicious and extremely lucrative oil futures trades and prediction market bets took place minutes before Trump posted about the war winding down. 

It follows a pattern seen before around tariff policy, and the attack on Venezuela. To parse the accusations of market manipulation and insider trading, we’re joined by Mike Bird, the Wall Street editor at The Economist and co-host of The Economist’s Money Talks podcast. 

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