Front Burner

Shortly before Vladimir Putin was re-elected for a fifth term as Russia’s president he eliminated his last possible rival for power, Alexei Navalny, who from all available evidence was murdered in an Arctic labour camp. The deaths of dozens of Putin's opponents, often in mysterious circumstances, have been a hallmark of his time in office. Tortoise’s Giles Whittell sets out to find out why so many of Putin’s enemies have met an early end.This is episode 1 of Putin's Murders from Tortoise. You can listen to episodes 2 and 3 wherever you get your podcasts by searching for The Slow Newscast.

Online rumours and disinformation surrounding the identity of the suspect in a mass stabbing incident that left three little girls dead in a British seaside town led to an explosion of anti-immigrant and anti-migrant riots throughout the U.K. The unrest was led by mostly white far-right groups.

As sudden as the riots came, the festering of resentment towards immigrants and anti-migrant rhetoric has been circulating online and throughout British politics for years. 

Freelance journalist and regular commentator on the politics podcast ‘Oh God, What Now?’, Zoë Grünewald, joins us to talk about the political context of this past week’s violence and what figures like Nigel Farage and Elon Musk have had to do with it. 

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

The condo market in Greater Toronto, whether it’s resale or new, is struggling.

According to a recent CIBC Economics study, sales have “have dived off a cliff” to their lowest level since the late 1990s. Some condos in Toronto are now sitting empty for six to seven months, despite an ongoing housing crisis in the country.

John Pasalis has been looking into why this is happening. He’s the president of Realosophy, a realty brokerage in Toronto. He’ll talk to us about the road that led to this point…and what can be done about it.

By ideas, dollars and in personal connections, Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance is intimately tied to an amorphous ideological movement known as the “New Right.”

Some of its major players, which include billionaires and tech elites, want to gut the US’ institutions and upend democracy in what they see as necessary, radical action to reverse the tyranny of liberalism. 

So what is the New Right? How far would JD Vance be willing to go to advance its ideas in the White House? Or do Vance’s allegiances lie elsewhere? 

Matthew Sitman is a writer based in New York City and co-host of the podcast Know Your Enemy.

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

Last week’s boxing match between Italy’s Angela Carini and Algeria’s Imane Khelif lasted just 46 seconds. But it has ignited a firestorm online, and led to a slew of misinformation about Khelif’s sex and gender — leading commentators from Elon Musk to Donald Trump to Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling to allege that the International Olympic Committee is allowing a man to compete in women’s boxing.

Those claims are not true. Imane Khelif is a cisgender woman, something both she and the IOC have been extremely clear about. 

But these debates around sex and who qualifies for women’s sports are nothing new. In fact, they’ve been going on for nearly a century. Today, we speak to Rose Eveleth, host of the new podcast Tested, from CBC and NPR, about the controversial 100-year history of sex testing in women’s sports, and the many complex questions this story raises.

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

Tested is a new podcast series from CBC and NPR that asks the question, who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women’s sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women’s category. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. To understand how we got here, we trace the surprising, 100-year history of sex testing. More episodes of Tested are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/xY7QrHco

Olympic FOMO is your daily Olympics recap, in 20 minutes or less hosted by longtime radio duo and media best friends Mark Strong and Jemeni. Together they provide a fresh perspective to the Olympic conversation as they chat with athletes, entertainers and celebrities to get their take on the Games. In this episode, Mark and Jem chat about how Simone Biles battles haters left and right and still manages to score gold, and how a Turkish sharp shooter went viral for his hitman vibes. Mark and Jem also talk with Soca queen and legend Alison Hinds about her favourite Olympic sport. And it continues to be ‘Summer time’ — with McIntosh taking home another gold on August 1st, her third medal of the Games. More episodes of Olympic FOMO are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/j5kfQhRc

Since US President Joe Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to take over as the next Democratic nominee, the US election campaign has been awash in memes.

Memes about coconut trees, weirdos, Brat and even intimate relationships with couches.  

But as both U.S. and Canadian political parties are learning, the power of the internet is a double edged sword that can energize campaigns or severely backfire. So when do memes work? Why do they fall flat? And what is the risk of trying to manifest the internet in real life? 

Rebecca Jennings is a senior correspondent at Vox covering internet culture, and Elamin Abdelmahmoud is an author and the host of CBC’s Commotion.

On Tuesday, the leader of Hamas’s political wing, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Iran. The killing is widely believed to have been an Israeli strike, although Israel has not claimed responsibility. 

News of Haniyeh’s death came just hours after Israel announced it had killed a top Hezbollah commander in Beirut, Lebanon, which it said was in retaliation for a deadly attack in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights a few days before.

Now, the two attacks — coupled with Hamas and Hezbollah’s ties to the Iranian government — are stoking fears that a broader regional war could be closer than ever.

Today we’re speaking about all of this with Khaled Elgindy, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, and the author of the book Blind Spot: America and the Palestinians, from Balfour to Trump.

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

After the Bank of Canada hiked interest rates at an unprecedented pace the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of talk about whether we’ll be tipped into a recession. Now, as rates have finally started to come down, a lot of people are struggling. Unemployment’s gone up, people are accumulating debt, and despite inflation cooling, everything still seems really expensive. 

So, it can start to feel like we’re in a recession. But most experts aren’t calling it one. So what is it? BMO Financial Group’s chief economist Doug Porter joins us to talk about the state of the Canadian economy and how to make sense of it.

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