app_store_button

google_play_button

DK - Details page - Device banner - 894x1036

Nyd den ubegrænsede adgang til tusindvis af spændende e- og lydbøger - helt gratis

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

Front Burner is a daily news podcast that takes you deep into the stories shaping Canada and the world. Each morning, from Monday to Friday, host Jayme Poisson talks with the smartest people covering the biggest stories to help you understand what’s going on.

Front Burner

In 1999 Hugo Chavez was elected President of Venezuela, beginning a years-long ‘Bolivarian Revolution,’ following multiple coup attempts, and time in prison. Chavez would go on to govern the country as President until his death in 2013 — passing sweeping anti-poverty programs, nationalizing oil and industry, and opposing US hegemony in the region.

 

Just before his death, Chavez hand selected Nicolas Maduro as the person to carry forward his political program and legacy. Maduro’s time in power was hamstrung between domestic mismanagement, US sanction regimes, and authoritarian crackdowns. But at the core of his time in power was the ‘Chavismo’ political ideology, created in the image of his predecessor. 

For a better sense of Venezuela’s modern political history, we have a look at its central characters: Simon Bolivar, Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. Today, we’re joined by Alejandro Velasco, a professor of Latin American history at New York University, and author of ‘Barrio Rising: Urban Popular Politics and the Making of Modern Venezuela.’

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

Chavez, Maduro, and the making of Venezuela

Today, Gerry Butts – former principal secretary to Justin Trudeau and current adviser to Prime Minister Carney – is on the show.

Butts is also the vice chairman of the global political risk firm, the Eurasia group, which releases a “Top Risks” list every year. We’ll drill down on a few of them, including their number one risk, the “U.S. political revolution”. The report makes the case that, outside of the U.S. itself, America’s political upheaval has the greatest impact on Canada. We’ll also discuss the “Zombie USMCA” deal and the future of NATO.

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

The world’s biggest risks, with Gerry Butts

In the wake of the U.S. arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, there has been a flurry of concern about what that country’s oil could mean for the Canadian economy.

Is American access to the world’s largest proven oil reserves a major threat to Canada? Have we lost leverage with the U.S. as we move forward in trade negotiations? 

Over the last few days, Trump has threatened Cuba, Greenland, Iran, Colombia and Mexico. What are Canada’s primary concerns as we navigate this new reality?

 

From CBC’s Parliamentary bureau, senior reporter Evan Dyer is here. Evan has a lot of experience covering Canadian foreign policy, Latin America, and has reported extensively from the region.

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

Canada’s Venezuelan oil problem

After months of rhetoric, military presence and strikes, U.S. forces have launched an attack on the Venezuelan capital Caracas. They seized the country's president, Nicolás Maduro, and flew him to New York to face narco-terrorism charges.

U.S. officials say Maduro heads up a cartel responsible for flooding the United States with drugs, but critics — and Maduro himself — say the charges are just a pretext for regime change — and access to the country's vast oil reserves. U.S. President Donald Trump says the United States will "run" Venezuela for the immediate future, and that American oil companies will move in to take over the country's oil industry.

Jon Lee Anderson is a staff writer with the New Yorker who has covered conflict in Latin America for decades. He explains the complicated power dynamics at play with Maduro out of the picture, and what we might see in the weeks ahead.

What will follow Trump's Venezuela attack?

In the fourth and final episode of Understood: The Making of Musk, host Jacob Silverman launches into Musk’s ultimate quest, his desire to colonize Mars, and how he went from wanting to save earth to wanting to escape it. 

You’ll hear the origin story of SpaceX. And hear from an astrophysicist who says Musk’s plan is completely delusional. 

You can find Understood wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/FBxMoM4

And be sure to follow the feed for even more stories that define our digital age.

Front Burner Presents: The Making of Musk, Episode 4

What does Musk, father of 14, expect from his quote, “legion” of children? In episode 3 of Understood: The Making of Musk, host, Jacob Silverman unravels Musk’s quest for genetic optimization, including alleged embryo screening, and his pronatalist views. And we hear from his estranged daughter, Vivian.

You can find Understood wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/FBxMoM3

Front Burner Presents: The Making of Musk, Episode 3

Where did Elon Musk’s epic ambitions begin? In search of clues, the latest season of Understood: The Making of Musk returns to his sheltered youth in apartheid South Africa, a world engineered for white supremacy. 

In this second episode, host Jacob Silverman explores whether Musk’s authoritarian streak traces back to his Canadian grandfather. Before Joshua Haldeman brought his family to South Africa, he made waves as part of the radical 1930s Technocracy movement. And while the two men’s lives only overlapped for three years, we find echoes of Elon’s worldview in Haldeman’s pro-tech, anti-democratic ideology.

You can find Understood wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/FBxMoM2

Front Burner Presents: The Making of Musk, Episode 2

Today we’re joined by lawyer and author Bryan Stevenson for a conversation about the historical Mother Emanuel AME church, and what it means to tell the story of American history through a single institution. 

Then Canadian journalist Paul Wells stops by for a look at the rise of The New York Times, and the lessons for news media writ large. 

And finally, Bookends host Mattea Roach chats with Jayme about Ukraine, the power of the novel, and some very endangered snails.

The books:

Mother Emanuel by Kevin Sack

The Times by Adam Nagourney

Endling by Maria Reva

The books that explained 2025 (Part 2)

Some of our favourite guests of the year return to talk about books that helped meaningfully explain 2025. 

We talk about the evergreen appeal of Plato as well as Jewish identity with former Yale fascism scholar Jason Stanley. 

The déjà vu of trade wars and Canadian nationalism are tackled by journalist and author Stephen Maher. His pick is a book that details the last election of Sir John A. Macdonald and first election of Wilfrid Laurier.

Then the career works of Herman Melville as a blueprint for modern America with historian Rick Perlstein.

This is part one, in a series that will continue on tomorrow’s show! 

The books:

The Republic Book 8 by Plato 

Being Jewish After Gaza: A Reckoning by Peter Beinart

The History of Canada Series: The Destiny of Canada by Christopher Pennington

The Lightning-Rod Man by Herman Melville

The books that explained 2025

In the 1980s and 90s, Satan and his followers were accused of brainwashing children, sacrificing babies, and infiltrating North American society on a massive scale — yet these thousands of alleged Satanists were nowhere to be found. Even so, the narrative became embedded in our cultural memory, warping everything it touched — including the lives of innocent people… And it never quite died out.

In the new 8-part series, The Devil You Know, Sarah Marshall (You’re Wrong About) explores the tangled web of the Satanic Panic, in a journey that will take you everywhere from Victoria, B.C. to rural Kentucky to San Antonio, Texas. This is a show about the people who experienced the Satanic Panic in real-time — the believers, the skeptics, the bystanders, and the wrongfully-convicted. What was it like to be a psychologist told to look for Satanists in every case; a mother slowly recovering memories of supposed Satanic abuse; a teenager accused of conspiracy to murder? The stories of these eyewitnesses point us toward the real underlying problems — individual and societal — that the Panic was a response to. The fault, as ever, was not with Satanists, but in ourselves.

You can find more episodes of The Devil You Know wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/TDYKxFB

Go inside the tangled web of the Satanic Panic from Jaws to Patrick Swayze

The Daily Bread Food Bank in Toronto had their worst month on record last March: more people used their services than at any other time in their 40-year history. The situation is similarly dire at food banks across the country. Today on Front Burner, producer Imogen Birchard heads out to a food bank in Etobicoke, to find out who’s using the service now and what’s driving them there. This is an encore of that documentary.

Encore: Inside a busy food bank

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

Other podcasts you might like ...