Front Burner

'The Apprentice' premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and received an eight minute ovation. The film follows a young, awkward, ambitious Donald Trump during his bid for respect among New York City's elite, and his formative relationship with notorious NYC lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn.

But in the time since its Cannes debut, team Trump has unleashed a pressure campaign to keep the film from the public.

Dan Bekerman is a producer of 'The Apprentice', and joins us for a discussion about the film's complicated journey to theatres, and the challenges of making art about powerful people.

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

Canada’s fertility rate just hit a record low: 1.3 babies per woman, placing us among some of the lowest birth rates globally. 

While discourse around declining birth rates has been dominated by the likes of Elon Musk and Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance, it’s not just tech billionaires and social conservatives paying attention to this issue. Governments around the world have tried to enact policies to encourage their citizens to have more children, in most cases to no avail. So why is the world’s population shrinking and what can be done about it?

Jennifer Sciubba, a political scientist and demographer from the Population Reference Bureau, joins us to talk about the myriad of factors behind the global trend and the dangers of politicizing the issue of reproduction. 

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

Floridians are packing up and evacuating their homes as Hurricane Milton, one of the biggest hurricanes ever recorded, bears down on Tampa Bay. A major hurricane hasn't hit the region in more than 100 years, during which time the city has grown massively in population and built up significant residential developments along the waterfront — all as climate change has made hurricanes bigger, stronger and more frequent.

Thomas Mantz, president and CEO of Feeding Tampa Bay, tells us what's happening on the ground in preparation for Wednesday night's anticipated landfall. Then, meteorologist and climate journalist Eric Holthaus explains why the Tampa area is uniquely vulnerable to a hurricane of this size, and the scale of what could happen in the days and weeks ahead.

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

NOTE: In yesterday’s episode, we promised to bring you a conversation with a man who’s spent the last year in Gaza, both living through and reporting on Israel’s military campaign there. We were logistically unable to bring you that today, but we will do so as soon as we possibly can.

For decades, the Darién Gap, a jungle crossing straddling the Colombia and Panama border, was considered impossible to cross.

Today, it’s a path that many migrants take, risking their lives, to try and make it to the United States. Eight hundred thousand people are expected to use it this year, nearly 200,000 of them are children.

This is all happening at a time when immigration is among the most pressing issues for voters in the upcoming U.S election, with presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

The Atlantic’s Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Caitlin Dickerson recently took three trips to the Darién Gap over the course of five months.

She spoke to host Jayme Poisson about her report, Seventy miles in hell, which focuses the experiences of those caught in the middle of this ongoing immigration debate.

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

‘Time stopped on October 7th.’

Jonathan Dekel-Chen was a longtime resident of Nir Oz, an Israeli kibbutz near the Gaza border. Nearly a quarter of the residents there were either killed or taken hostage on October 7th, 2023, when members of Hamas and other armed groups killed around 1200 people, and took 251 Israelis and foreigners hostage.

That set off Israel’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, which has now killed an estimated 41,500 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.

Jonathan’s son Sagui was taken hostage on October 7th, and he’s believed to still be in Gaza today. He speaks to host Jayme Poisson about the attack on his kibbutz, the challenges he’s faced in trying to get his son home, and the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

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

In the second episode of The Flamethrowers, host Justin Ling explores how President Ronald Reagan takes the shackles off right-wing radio and inaugurates a golden era of conservative politics. And Rush Limbaugh — almost by accident — becomes a kingmaker in the Republican party and changes radio forever.

The Flamethrowers was originally produced in 2021. More episodes of The Flamethrowers are available here.

The war in Afghanistan is the longest in both Canadian and American history. The U.S.' withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, signaled not only the end of a 20-year war, but it also marked the re-introduction of a familiar era in the country's history: the return of the Taliban, and the widespread subjugation of women. 

Three years into Taliban rule, CBC News chief correspondent Adrienne Arsenault brings us inside a secret mission, led by a group of Canadian MPs, to rescue Afghanistan's last female politicians, and bring them to safety in Canada.

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

Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

China’s economy has changed drastically in the last four decades. When China started to open up to the world in the late ‘70s and ‘80s, it went from one of the world’s poorest countries, to one of the world’s fastest growing major economies.

But now, that same economy is struggling. Home prices are in freefall, retail sales are slowing down, unemployment is up. Things have gotten so rough that last week the Chinese government announced a set of stimulus measures that are meant to give the economy a big boost.

Jonathan Cheng is the Wall Street Journal’s China bureau chief. He walks us through what these economic challenges mean for China, its citizens, and the global economy.

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

Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In most American elections, the vice presidential debates are almost an afterthought — but this has not been a typical election. Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz are relative newcomers on the national stage, both making headlines since their selection, and this will likely be the only time they face off in a one-on-one debate.

CBC Washington correspondent Alex Panetta breaks down the debate's biggest moments, and what it can tell us about the parties' strategies for the final month of the campaign.

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

Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Last Friday, Lebanon-based militant group, Hezbollah, confirmed that their secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beirut. 

As a significant political and cultural leader in the region, the death of Nasrallah poses a number of questions. 

Where does this leave the “Axis of Resistance”, the Iran-led coalition of militias united against Israel, of which Hezbollah is a crucial part? Does this open the door for an Israeli ground invasion in Lebanon? And what does it all mean for the fate of the Palestinians as the war in Gaza rages on?

Kareem Shaheen, the Middle East editor of New Lines Magazine, joins us to unpack the significance of Nasrallah’s death its potential ripple effects throughout the region. 

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

Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.