Front Burner

Skyrocketing housing costs, decaying infrastructure, anxiety over public safety and budgets stretched thin. On June 26, Canada’s biggest city goes to the polls to decide who will lead Toronto’s approximately two-and-half-million residents amidst all these issues and more.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

A lot of the problems that the Toronto mayoral candidates are going to have to confront are felt in cities across the country.

Today on Front Burner, CBC Toronto municipal affairs reporter, Shawn Jeffords, discusses the problems Toronto’s facing and how the big names in the mayoral race are saying they’ll tackle them.

Canadian and U.S. Coast Guard officials are undertaking a desperate search in a vast swath of the North Atlantic, after five men in a small sub embarked on a risky dive to the wreck of the Titanic, 3,800 metres below the surface. Passengers each paid $250,000 for a spot in the cramped submersible, which has no chairs, one small portal, a consumer-grade gaming controller to operate the vessel, and a limited amount of oxygen to sustain life.

On this episode, Timothy Bella, a national reporter with the Washington Post, shares the latest details of the search, the expedition that’s gone awry, and the company offering the pricey opportunity for tourists to see the Titanic for themselves, OceanGate.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

In recent years, Pride Month has seen a flood of corporations using rainbow logos and products to show LGBTQ support. Whether the brands are being helpful or opportunistic has been cause for debate.

But this year, amidst a wave of hate against queer and trans people, boycotts and threats are leading some brands to walk back their Pride marketing and merch.

Today, Xtra Magazine senior editor Mel Woods discusses whether corporate support for Pride matters, and what brands giving in to homophobic demands could signal about rising hatred.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

To the frustration and hurt of the families of Paul Bernardo’s victims, the notorious rapist and murderer has been moved from a maximum security prison to a medium security one.

Conservatives are calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to intervene and move Bernardo back to a maximum security facility. They also want Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino to resign over how his office handled information about the transfer.

Ashley Burke is a senior reporter at the CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau. She’s been looking into how the Liberals handled Bernardo’s move and the controversy that has followed.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

There’s a growing sense that the internet – or at least the big sites we use all the time like Amazon, Facebook and Google – is becoming worse. Instead of seeing what’s best for us at the top of our searches, we’re seeing more and more of what makes the tech giant the most money pop to the top. Cory Doctorow calls it ‘Enshittification.’ He explains how it works.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Before his death, John Lennon recorded a demo of a new song, "Now and Then" on a cassette. His Beatles bandmates later tried to repurpose it for release, but abandoned the project in part because of the poor voice quality.

This week, Paul McCartney revealed that, 43 years after Lennon's death, the song will drop – thanks to AI technology.

It's just the latest example of artificial intelligence's increasing presence in the music industry. Fake Drake songs, AI-generated Kanye covers and posthumous Biggie collabs have raised alarm about copyright, and existential questions about songwriting and creativity.

Today, Saroja Coelho speaks with the host of Vulture's Switched on Pop podcast, Charlie Harding, about what the technology means for the music industry and art itself.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

This week, Silvio Berlusconi died at the age of 86. He served as Italy’s prime minister three separate times, leaving a permanent mark on the country’s politics, media, and culture. Berlusconi created an empire for himself, based on money, sex and a willingness to push legal limits — and in many ways, he created a template for billionaire populist political leaders.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

On this episode, Alexander Stille, professor of journalism at Columbia University and the author of The Sack of Rome: How a Beautiful European Country with a Fabled History and a Storied Culture Was Taken Over by a Man named Silvio Berlusconi, discusses how Berlusconi changed Italy and the world.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump pleaded not guilty on Tuesday to 37 federal criminal charges that he unlawfully kept national-security documents when he left office and lied to officials who sought to recover them.

CBC’s Washington Correspondent Alex Panetta explains the evidence against him and the ramifications of this case for the next presidential election.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

As smoke from wildfires in Ontario and Quebec blanketed the nation’s capital early last week, air quality advisories caused residents to wear masks and kids to stay inside for recess.

Most debate in the House of Commons, however, remained around the economy and inflation – including arguments that climate change measures should be stopped or curtailed.

Smoke and burning skies in Toronto, New York, Philadelphia and Washington have since sparked international conversations about our changing climate. Today, CBC senior writer Aaron Wherry joins us to discuss why – even as Canada itself burns – our environmental policy debate continues to stagnate around the merits of carbon taxes.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

After more than eight weeks of fighting, the power struggle between two rival military groups continues in Sudan. The conflict has turned the capital of Khartoum into a battleground. With hundreds of civilians killed and thousands wounded, people are migrating en masse to bordering countries in search of safety.

Tens of thousands of people have headed southward into South Sudan, the world’s poorest nation.

CBC News Foreign Correspondent Chris Brown spent several days at the border between the two countries. Today, he joins us to share what he learned from refugees and humanitarian workers about concerns the conflict’s spillover effects could destabilize an already vulnerable region.

For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts