NBA superstar Fred VanVleet had a long road to becoming a beloved Toronto Raptor. He suffered a terrible loss growing up in Rockford, Ill., when his father was shot and killed when he was just five years old. As a young man coming out of Wichita State University, the point guard went undrafted in 2016 and had to fight his way onto the roster of the lone Canadian franchise in the league. But only a few years later, VanVleet was a key member of the team that won the 2019 NBA championship. Now, VanVleet is the undisputed leader of the Toronto Raptors. In this special episode of Front Burner, we meet VanVleet at the OVO Athletic Centre in Toronto to hear about his unexpected journey from underdog to all-star, and why he's partnered with the University of Toronto's undergraduate business program to launch a needs-based scholarship for Black and Indigenous students. This episode orginally aired on September 28th, 2022.

Just over a month into 2022, Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine, and set the tone for what looked like an ominous year for global democracy. High-stakes elections in Hungary, Brazil, the U.S., Israel, and the Philippines put core issues of democracy on the ballot, and it was anyone’s guess how things would turn out. In some cases, authoritarianism made gains. But some regimes best positioned to challenge democracy for its global influence also saw policy failures, and signs of public resistance. Today, Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp on why 2022 was a surprisingly good year for democracy, and how it exposed the fundamental weaknesses of authoritarian political models.

It’s been a historic week in Washington, D.C., for Donald Trump. On Monday, the January 6 House Committee wrapped up its investigation into the capitol insurrection and after months of speculation over whether they would, referred the former president for potential prosecution. And on Tuesday, a different U.S. committee voted to release six years of Trump’s secret tax returns. CBC’s Susan Ormiston has been covering this story. Today on Front Burner she joins us to unpack these two big developments and to explain what this could all mean for a Trump 2024 presidential run.

Pop culture in 2022 started with a bang (or slap) when Will Smith hit Chris Rock at the Oscars, and things only got weirder from there. From Brendan Fraser's comeback to Harry Styles possibly spitting on Chris Pine at the Venice Film Festival, there were a lot of "did that really just happen?" moments in 2022. Today, we're joined by the hosts of CBC's pop culture podcast Pop Chat to discuss Bennifer, the return of whale tails and everything in between.

B.C. is on track to have another record-breaking year for toxic drug deaths. But as people continue to die, a backlash appears to be growing to the province’s current strategies for tackling the crisis. A recent polarizing documentary, Vancouver Is Dying, as well as a recent video by federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, have pointed fingers at B.C.’s slate of harm reduction policies. But many drug policy experts argue just the opposite. Today, Moira Wyton, a health reporter for the Tyee, joins us for a look at the state of BC’s toxic drug crisis, the criticisms coming from both ends of the spectrum, and where things go from here.

After decades of research, in early December scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California made a historic breakthrough in nuclear fusion by generating more energy than it took to create it. It’s a major scientific step because, according to experts, nuclear fusion has the potential to deliver clean and abundant zero-carbon energy. Richard Carlson is the director of energy policy at an environmental charity called Pollution Probe. Today on Front Burner, he'll explain how nuclear fusion uses the same process that powers the sun and why it could be a game changer for clean energy, if we can figure out how to harness it.

James Cameron has directed Titanic, Terminator, and Aliens. But he says the project that kept him from giving up on filmmaking entirely was Avatar. But for all of the film’s initial success Avatar’s lack of cultural impact has become a running joke over the years – there’s even a Buzzfeed quiz called: “Do You Remember Anything At All About Avatar?” Now today, 13 years later, its sequel, The Way of Water, arrives in theatres. CBC Entertainment reporter Jackson Weaver takes us through the first film’s fall from grace, what the sequel’s all about, and whether James Cameron has another big commercial hit on his hands.

On Sunday, Twitter owner Elon Musk joined comedian Dave Chappelle on stage and was roundly booed. Musk responded on Twitter saying, “Technically, it was 90% cheers,” and that “It’s almost as if I’ve offended SF’s unhinged leftists … but nahhh.” Musk has said that he’s politically a centrist, but the tweet is just one recent example of how he’s adopted partisan language in a social media culture war. Musk has distributed Twitter records that are supposed to reveal biased censorship, indulged in far-right talking points about COVID-19 and unbanned white nationalist accounts. Today, a discussion with the Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel about how and why Musk is aligning himself with different factions of the right. Warzel writes the Galaxy Brain newsletter about tech, media and politics.

In recent weeks, the latest versions of AI art-creating tools, along with a compelling new AI chatbot have flooded social media. The tools can be fun, with people creating artistic and enhanced selfies using Lensa, strange concept art with DALL-E 2, or exploring the way the chatbot, ChatGPT, creates seemingly original and complex prose in seconds. But the new tools are also a demonstration of how powerful AI has become, and hint at a relatively near future where it could convincingly replace human workers. Today, Will Knight, senior writer with WIRED, joins us to discuss what’s behind these popular new AI tools, some of their pitfalls, and the impact they’re already having on society.

A surge of respiratory illness is putting pressure on an already overloaded healthcare system in many places across the country and making it even harder for many Canadians to get examined by their family doctors, at walk-in clinics and even in the emergency room. Today we’ll be hearing personal stories from people who say they’ve struggled to get timely access to the medical care they desperately needed. Julia Murray is a mom in Conception Bay South in Newfoundland whose 3-year-old son Jack came down with an awful fever in early December. Bianca Gallant of Memramcook, New Brunswick, says she recently had a 14 hour wait in a Moncton ER that ended in her needing emergency surgery.