Front Burner, a podcast by CBC - Stats, Episodes and Rankings

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ChatGPT and the Tumbler Ridge shooter

Thursday, February 26, 2026 • Duration 34:12

This week OpenAI’s head of U.S. and Canada policy and partnerships Chan Park was hauled in front of a meeting with Canada’s AI minister Evan Solomon after it was revealed that Jesse Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account was suspended back in June for describing scenarios involving gun violence, and that a group of people at the company debated telling the RCMP, but didn’t.

Van Rootselaar went on to kill eight people in Tumbler Ridge, BC. The meeting has provided us with no new information. No answers about what Van Rootselaar said or wrote to ChatGPT, or what it said back. There are no substantial answers about why OpenAI didn’t alert the police.

Solomon and the federal government are saying they expect changes from the company. They are framing regulation as an option, but not an inevitable one.

Today Maggie Harrison Dupré speaks with guest host Jason Markusoff. She is a senior staff writer at Futurism where she reports on the rise of AI. They discuss how chatbots can validate, rather than discourage users’ dark or violent ideas and about why regulation isn’t a louder drumbeat.

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

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Jason Kenney on Canadian immigration

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 • Duration 35:51

Over the last week or so the debate over Canada’s immigration policy has come to the forefront.

In Alberta, Premier Danielle Smith has promised to put a series of restrictive new immigration policies to a provincial referendum.

In Ottawa, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has brought forward a motion that would compel the federal government to review and restrict the services available to asylum seekers.

Critics have said both moves scapegoat immigrants.

This is all happening at a time when polling shows that popular support for immigration is on the decline.

Today's guest is someone who is uniquely positioned to talk about the proposed changes in immigration policy.

Jason Kenney is the former United Conservative Party Premier of Alberta.

Prior to that, Kenney spent nearly two decades in federal politics, and was a cabinet minister in Stephen Harper’s Conservative party.

He spent years working on the immigration and multiculturalism file and was widely credited for shifting the support of new Canadians from the Liberals to the Conservatives.

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

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Mexico in chaos after El Mencho killed

Tuesday, February 24, 2026 • Duration 35:00

Mass violence broke out on Sunday in Mexico after a military raid killed the most wanted, and feared, cartel boss in the country — a man known as El Mencho.

We take a closer look at the aftermath of the operation and ask some questions: who was this kingpin, what is the powerful criminal organization he presided over, and what could happen in his absence?

With us today is David Mora in Guadalajara. He’s the senior Mexico analyst at International Crisis Group.

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

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Olympic Hockey heartbreak and more

Monday, February 23, 2026 • Duration 25:25

From two heartbreaking hockey losses to the fiery debate over whether the men’s gold medal curling team was cheating, Milano Cortina 2026 was a dramatic one for Team Canada. The games also brought some headscratching moments like a Norwegian biathlete confessing to infidelity minutes after a race and an investigation into Olympic ski-jumping dubbed ‘penis-gate’.

We break down the storylines from the Winter Olympics that dominated our timelines and got us talking with senior contributor at CBC Sports, Shireen Ahmed.

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Epstein fallout: ex-Prince Andrew arrested

Friday, February 20, 2026 • Duration 23:09

On Thursday, former Prince Andrew was arrested by U.K. police.

After years of controversy, scandal and allegations of sexual assault, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was taken into custody on suspicion of misconduct in public office.

The arrest is related to his decades-long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, and the former prince is alleged to have sent confidential government documents to the convicted sex offender.

Today, Andrew Lownie, a historian and the author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, joins the show. We get into the details of the arrest, the long-standing ties between the former prince and Epstein and what recently released documents reveal.

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Floor-crosser defects to surging Liberals

Thursday, February 19, 2026 • Duration 28:18

Prime Minister Mark Carney and the Liberals welcomed a third Conservative floor crosser on Wednesday – Edmonton MP Matt Jeneroux.

And with three by-elections coming up, two from Liberal strongholds, a Liberal majority is looking like a possibility. So a pretty seismic day on Parliament Hill.

CBC’s senior writer Aaron Wherry is here to talk through how this could all play out for the Liberals and for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservative Party.

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

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The Rise of ‘Looksmaxxing’

Wednesday, February 18, 2026 • Duration 36:32

Looksmaxxers are a community of young men dedicated to the pursuit of maximizing their physical appearance, often at great personal cost. Many are spending thousands of dollars on cosmetic procedures, or even taking blunt objects to their faces, in the hopes of masculinizing their features to become more handsome. Or, as they refer to it: “ascending.”

In a world where so many young people — particularly young men — feel as though it’s impossible to get ahead, we’ve got a conversation about this viral community augmenting their bodies in the hopes of doing exactly that.

Aidan Walker is a writer and content creator whose work explores all kinds of online subcultures. He joins the show to talk about looksmaxxing, its central characters, connections to the far right, and what the movement reveals about young men right now.

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

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Will AI agents take over the workplace?

Tuesday, February 17, 2026 • Duration 21:56

Last week, a 5000 word post on X with the headline “Something big is happening” went viral. It was written by Matt Shumer, the CEO of HyperWrite, an AI writing tool and in it he says he’s recently watched AI go from a helpful tool to something that “does my job better than I do”. And he’s not the only one. The CEO of Anthropic, one of the biggest AI companies today, wrote an essay saying it could replace half of all entry-level white collar jobs in the next one to five years.

What’s behind the sudden vibe shift? A good part of it has to do with the abilities of AI agents, which are basically AI models you give a task to perform for you, with the promise of little supervision.

Are we on the precipice of something big? Or is it another way to build hype amid fears of a bubble? Will Douglas Heaven, senior AI editor for the MIT Technology Review, joins us to separate reality from hype.

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

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The mother of all questions: do you want kids?

Monday, February 16, 2026 • Duration 40:32

Get lost in someone else’s life. From a mysterious childhood spent on the run, to a courageous escape from domestic violence, each season of Personally invites you to explore the human experience in all its complexity, one story — or season — at a time.

In the latest season of Personally: Creation Myth, Helena does not want kids. Her husband believes she’ll change her mind—she has so much love to give, she would be a perfect mother. That will never happen, she tells him. Again. And again. Until one day, he leaves.

In the silence, doubt starts rushing in. So she asks her close friends, her mother, her sister, even a perfect stranger—did she make the right decision? What is the purpose of life? Center your pleasure, says one friend. Go for adventure, says another, and isn’t parenthood the biggest adventure of all? Be true to yourself, says a father who regrets his decision. But the voice she needs to hear is her own. More episodes of Creation Myth are available wherever you get your podcasts and here: https://link.mgln.ai/CMxFB

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Cuba is pushed to the brink

Friday, February 13, 2026 • Duration 27:05

Cuba has been facing rolling blackouts, food shortages, and rationed hospital resources after a month with no oil imports. The energy crisis has also been a major blow to the country’s tourism industry, as major airlines suspended service to the country.

The cutoff came after the United States severed the island’s access to Venezuelan oil in January, and then warned any country supplying Cuba it could face retaliation.

The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson has been reporting on the region for decades. He joins us to talk about how the Trump administration hopes this could end communist rule in the country.

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Front Burner – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

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Front Burner – Details, episodes & analysis

Podcast details

Recent rankings

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

Shared links between episodes and podcasts

CBC12

Other99+

Apple Podcasts13

RSS feed quality and score

Publication history

Latest published episodes

Similar podcasts and content

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

Related Shows Based on Content Similarities

CBC12

Other99+

Apple Podcasts13

Apple Podcasts

Spotify