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Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny will mark his 47th birthday June 4, in a maximum-security penal colony where he's serving an 11-and-a-half year sentence. Navalny's press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, joins David Common to discuss the new charges Navalny is to face in court next week, his health, and the current state of opposition to Putin's regime.

It's been an unprecedented year for wildfires in Canada. On Thursday the federal government provided an update on what it's doing to support provinces currently fighting fires. Mike Flannigan, the Science Director of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science joins David Common to respond to those measures and to talk about the challenges that lie ahead this fire season.

In our monthly That's Puzzling! quiz, guest host David Common competes against one familiar voice and one clever listener in a battle of brain games devised by puzzle master Peter Brown. Playing along this week are Andrew Preville of Kelowna, B.C., and Marcy Markusa, the host of the CBC WInnipeg morning show, Information Radio.

Hvaldimir the white whale is back. The alleged Russian spy was first spotted off the coast of Norway in 2019, wearing a made-in-Russia camera harness. The beluga surfaced in Sweden this week, sans harness. Manchester Metropolitan University lecturer Gervase Phillips joins David Common to talk about how animals have been used in conflict, from sea lions trained to sniff out submarines, to dolphins at work during the Vietnam war.

On the eve of the Alberta election, Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi and Edmonton podcast host Ryan Jespersen join guest host Robyn Bresnahan to talk about what's at stake for Albertans and what this election could signal to the rest of Canada.

Slate writer Henry Grabar says parking isn't just a mundane chore or frequent frustration - it can actually tell us a lot about our cities, our psyches and our culture. He lays it all out in a new book, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.

In Canadian author Michelle Min Sterling's debut novel, Camp Zero, Alberta's cold climate is seen as a new and precious resource. Min Sterling, a Berklee College literature professor, joins guest host Robyn Bresnahan to talk about the book and how visiting a cousin working in the oil patch inspired the setting for her first eco-thriller.

The COVID-19 pandemic may have felt like an unprecedented time. But sociologist Jonathan Kennedy says in the course of human history, plagues and pandemics have not only been the norm, they've been the main driver of our evolution— from the rise of homo sapiens and Christianity to the advent of colonialism.

The popular HBO drama Succession comes to a close this Sunday with its highly-anticipated series finale. As the internet buzzes with theories, some are looking to a 1969 poem by Pultizer-prize winning poet John Berryman for clues.

The competition to buy the Ottawa Senators took a new turn this week, when Canadian sports legend Donovan Bailey joined a bid led by U-S businessman Neko Sparks and rapper Snoop Dogg. Snoop Dogg has said he wants to bring more diversity to the game and Bailey tells us why he is getting on board. Ian Mendes, a senior writer at The Athletic also joins Robyn Bresnahan to talk about why the team is attracting so much attention. 

Albertans go to the polls next week in a tight election pitting Danielle Smith's United Conservatives against Rachel Notley's New Democrats. But there is a lot of political space between those two poles, which leads to a question: Where has the centre gone in Alberta politics? CBC Producer John Chipman went looking, and found himself in a true-blue riding, where despite the odds, one candidate believes he can win voters over by occupying the middle ground.

Martin Amis, one of the most celebrated British novelists of his generation died at age 73. His best known works were published in the 1980s, among them Money, in 1985 and London Fields, in 1989. He was also known as the son of another literary great, Kingsley Amis. Critic and author Zachary Leader came to know both men well when he wrote a biography of the elder Amis. He speaks to Robyn Bresnahan about Amis' work and their friendship.

Geoffrey Hinton, the computer scientist who left his job at Google to sound the alarm on AI’s threat to humanity hopes he’s scaring politicians into doing something. In an wide-ranging interview with Robyn Bresnahan, he also offers hope: Humanity has survived big threats before, but only by taking them seriously and getting to work.

Deborah Dundas grew up poor. She didn't always have a refrigerator, her own bed or enough change to do laundry. Her story isn't unique so she wonders why it's still so taboo to talk about class in Canada. Dundas joined Piya Chattopadhyay to talk about her new book, On Class, which she hopes will open up conversations about inequity in our society.

Mary Louise Kelly, the host of NPR's All Things Considered has a new memoir in which she opens up about the hard choices she faced, juggling her family and her job as a host and national security reporter. Kelly decided to hit pause on her journalism career to cherish the last year her family would live under one roof.

More than 400 wildfires have scorched hundreds of thousands of hectares of land in Alberta. Last Saturday, the province declared a state of emergency. CBC National reporter Erin Collins has been on the ground all week and joins us to take stock of the devastation and the recovery efforts.

Tensions between Canada and China are escalating after the Trudeau government expelled a Chinese diplomat this week. China responded by kicking a Canadian envoy out of Shanghai. Reporters Nathan VanderKlippe and Janyce McGregor join Robyn Bresnahan to dig into this latest diplomatic tit-for-tat.