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Front Burner

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Aug 19, 2023 • 28min

Weekend Listen: The Dose

The Dose is a weekly look at the health news that matters to you. Dr. Brian Goldman brings you the best science from top experts in plain language. This episode answers listener questions about perimenopause and menopause symptoms and treatments. Dr. Shafeena Premji, a family doctor and medical director of Mahogany Clinic in Calgary, shares her best advice on how to manage symptoms and when to speak to a health-care provider. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/mOAbEQfT
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Aug 18, 2023 • 23min

Hawaii wildfires lay bare tensions between locals, tourists

For tourists interested in a beach vacation, Maui residents have a simple message: this is not the time to visit Hawaii. The wildfires that decimated the historic town of Lahaina, leaving at least 111 people dead and hundreds more still missing, have also laid bare the long-simmering tensions between native Hawaiians, and wealthy tourists and developers. Today we’ll be talking about why many Hawaiians have been asking tourists to stay out long before the fires and why many are afraid recovery will open the door to even more outside ownership. Savannah Harriman-Pote is an energy and climate change reporter and the lead producer of This Is Our Hawaiʻi, a new podcast from Hawai‘i Public Radio. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
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Aug 17, 2023 • 23min

Rudy Giuliani: from RICO prosecutor to RICO defendant

This week, Donald Trump and 18 of his associates were charged under the state of Georgia’s RICO Act. RICO stands for Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, and it was originally designed to crack down on organized crime. And while Trump’s at the center of these latest charges, a lot of the heat is also on his former attorney, Rudy Giuliani. The former mayor of New York made his name in the 80s as a federal prosecutor for using the RICO act to take down the city’s mob. So how did this tough-on-crime anti-mafia crusader end up being charged with a legal tool he himself pioneered? Today on Front Burner, VICE News reporter Greg Walters on what led Giuliani to this point, and what these charges in Georgia could mean for his future. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
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Aug 16, 2023 • 20min

Why is Alberta pausing new renewable energy projects?

This podcast discusses the Alberta government's pause on new solar and wind projects, Premier Danielle Smith's opposition to a net zero power grid, concerns about stability in Alberta's power grid, concerns raised by rural Albertans and the Alberta Utilities Commission about renewable energy projects, the role of natural gas as a bridging fuel, and the potential impact of Alberta's decision on the renewable energy industry and job market.
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Aug 15, 2023 • 31min

Niger, and an era of mutiny in Africa’s Sahel region

Last month, the African nation of Niger became the seventh government in Western and Central Africa to suffer a military takeover in the last three years. And as of today, virtually every country in Africa’s Sahel region is governed by a current or former military officer. The Sahel is a part of the world that was dominated by France through the colonial period — and many leaders of military governments that have taken over, from Mali to Burkina Faso, have identified the unresolved legacies of colonialism as a source of their dissatisfaction. For decades, Niger, and countries in the Sahel more broadly, have received enormous investment from both France and the U.S. They have been called a “strategic partner” by both nations in the fight against islamic extremism in West Africa. Niger specifically was long touted as West Africa’s last bastion of democracy. So what happened? Today, BBC journalist Beverly Ochieng, whose reporting has long focused on the region, on what’s happening in Niger, and whether this era of insurrection in the Sahel is evidence of an anti-colonial renaissance, or something a little more complicated. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
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Aug 14, 2023 • 25min

Ontario’s Greenbelt, Doug Ford and an explosive audit

Last Wednesday, Ontario auditor general Bonnie Lysyk delivered a scathing report about the province’s plans to build on parts of the protected Greenbelt. While Premier Doug Ford had promised to preserve this vast network of vulnerable greenspace, he announced in November that the province would lift protections on thousands of acres to build more houses. The auditor general’s report finds there’s no evidence the land was needed to meet the government’s housing target and says that it was chosen under heavy influence from a small group of well-connected developers. The report goes on to say that those same landowners now stand to make a lot of money and could “ultimately see more than a collective $8.3 billion increase to the value of their properties”. To make sense of the report, we’re joined by an Ontario reporter with The Narwhal, Fatima Syed. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
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Aug 12, 2023 • 33min

Weekend Listen: Buffy

Singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie has announced that she's retiring from live performances. For 60 years Buffy’s music has quietly reverberated throughout pop culture and provided a touchstone for Indigenous resistance. This five-part series, hosted by Mohawk and Tuscarora writer Falen Johnson explores how Buffy’s life and legacy is essential to understanding Indigenous resilience. In this episode, Buffy is traveling from gig to gig in the 60s, armed with her guitar and little else. She makes a splash on the coffeehouse folk scene, rubbing shoulders with artists like Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan. Tectonic changes are around the corner, and her rising success comes with some hard lessons about who to trust — and what it means to be a Indigenous woman in the music business. More episodes are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/v_Eag6h4
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Aug 11, 2023 • 24min

The Eras Tour, and Taylor Swift’s massive popularity

Taylor Swift has been on tour for months but finally, Canadian fans have been given a chance to see her here. She’s having not one or two but six shows at the Rogers Centre in Toronto next year and even though there are 300,000 tickets up for grabs, fans have been likening the scramble to the Hunger Games. Swifties may be known for their dedication but those outside the fandom might be wondering: what is it about Taylor Swift that commands this kind of hype? Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of CBC Radio’s Commotion and known Swiftie, breaks it down for us. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
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Aug 10, 2023 • 25min

Metro workers on strike and a “Hot Labour Summer”

Right now, some 3,700 workers from 27 Metro grocery stores across the Greater Toronto Area are on strike – and they’re not alone. From British Columbia’s ports to Manitoba’s liquor stores to Hollywood, a wave of people across different industries have gone on strike this summer. Today on Front Burner, we head to a Metro picket line in East Toronto. We talk to workers there about what’s at stake for them as they strike, and take a closer look at what’s driving this recent labour unrest with McGill University’s Barry Eidlin, author of ‘Labor and the Class Idea in the United States and Canada’ For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts
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Aug 9, 2023 • 25min

Worldcoin’s utopian aims, dystopian fears

A metallic orb scans your iris and turns it into a numeric code, providing a unique ID that confirms you as human. This is the process people in dozens of countries are undergoing for Worldcoin, a new cryptocurrency project that’s handing out free tokens and even local currency in exchange for biometric verification. The project claims it can prove our personhood online and enable voting, financial equality or even the distribution of a universal basic income. But even before its official launch late last month, Worldcoin was already facing accusations of deception, exploitation and crypto-colonialism in countries like Kenya and Sudan. Today, Jacob Silverman explains the utopian promises and dystopian fears surrounding Worldcoin. Silverman is co-author of Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, and he’s also the host of Front Burner’s special series The Naked Emperor. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

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