Big laughs. Smart takes. Every day. Commotion is where you go for thoughtful and vibrant conversations about all things pop culture. Host Elamin Abdelmahmoud calls on journalists, critics, creators and friends to talk through the biggest arts & entertainment stories of the day, in 30 minutes or less.
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Big laughs. Smart takes. Every day. Commotion is where you go for thoughtful and vibrant conversations about all things pop culture. Host Elamin Abdelmahmoud calls on journalists, critics, creators and friends to talk through the biggest arts & entertainment stories of the day, in 30 minutes or less.
Subscribe to Sounds Good: CBC's Podcasts newsletter for the finest podcast recommendations and behind-the-scenes exclusives.
If the World Series showed us anything this year, it’s that the game was about so much more than baseball. Elamin Abdelmahmoud sits down with Morgan Campbell, Kaitlyn McGrath and Joyita Sengupta to talk about why Canada's team came out on top, despite not winning it all.
Sonya Ballantyne, Beatrice Loayza and Laura Hall join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about the horrifying return of Pennywise the clown in HBO’s ‘Welcome to Derry,’ the existential horror of Emma Stone’s film ‘Bugonia,’ and nightmare-inducing Canadian indie horror film ‘Dream Eater.’
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Misty Copeland took her final bow last week, retiring from a 25 year career at American Ballet Theatre. A decade ago, she made headlines when she became the first Black woman to be promoted to principal dancer at the company. Lydia Murray, marketing and communications manager at Baryshnikov Arts in New York, joins Elamin Abdelmahmoud to reflect on Misty Copeland’s career as both a star and trailblazer in the world of ballet.
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Culture writer Olivia Petter, and music critic Reanna Cruz delve into Lily Allen’s new album ‘West End Girl’ with Elamin Abdelmahmoud and talk about how it doesn’t just hint at the breakdown of a marriage, it paints a detailed, devastating picture, and why fans are obsessively dissecting every track.
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With the new film ‘A House of Dynamite’ and season 3 of the ‘The Diplomat’ streaming now on Netflix, Elamin Abdelmahmoud is joined by culture critics El Jones and Kathryn VanArendonk to look at the ways political thrillers are being received amidst our real world geo-political tensions. And CBC Music journalist Natalie Harmsen talks about the new album from Juno and Grammy-Award-winning R&B star Daniel Caesar, and how it reflects a more spiritual state of mind.
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Film critic Adrian Horton, music journalist Dominic Tardif, and podcaster Vish Khanna join Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about the new Bruce Springsteen biopic ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere’ and whether it offers any fresh insight into the making of his 1982 classic ‘Nebraska,’ which has also recently been reissued in a deluxe box set.
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It's game three of the World Series tonight. And no matter how it all ends, it's been an incredible post-season for Canadian baseball. Elamin Abdelmahmoud talks with Jays superfan Sadaf Ahsan and sports reporter Shireen Ahmed about how the Blue Jays are challenging the idea that it’s ‘America’s Game.’ And podcaster and comedian Marlon Palmer talks about Vybz Kartel's first-ever concert dates in Canada.
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Globe & Mail film critic Barry Hertz, culture writer Anne T. Donahue, and CBC entertainment reporter Jackson Weaver join the Group Chat to discuss the new season of Netflix’s hit comedy ‘Nobody Wants This,’ Richard Linklater’s latest Ethan Hawke showcase ‘Blue Moon,’ and Blue Jays World Series fever.
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Gwyneth Paltrow, the Oscar-winning actor, multi-millionaire founder and CEO of Goop and unofficial arbiter of gorgeous living, is upset about the way she’s characterized in Amy Odell’s new biography about her. Lainey Lui and Jen Sookfong Lee join guest host Amil Niazi to discuss how her reaction is a little off-brand. And Deven McClure talks about why so many of the NPCs in the latest Pokemon game seem to be going through an existential crisis.
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'The Perfect Neighbor' is a new Netflix documentary about how a seemingly trivial neighborhood dispute turned into a tragedy. And the doc is told almost entirely through bodycam footage. Culture critic El Jones and Rolling Stone journalist C.T. Jones join guest host Amil Niazi to talk about the doc's unique approach to this true crime story. And comedian Ali Hassan drops by to talk about ‘Who Killed the Montreal Expos?’ The documentary investigates why Canada’s first MLB team folded and moved to Washington in 2004.
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ChatGPT is expanding into erotica, for verified adults, while Instagram is restricting content for teen users. Tech journalist Samantha Cole and policy analyst Vass Bednar talk with guest host Amil Niazi about the direction of both these platforms. And police are still searching for the thieves who pulled off a jewel heist at the Louvre. Karen K. Ho explains people are turning to pop culture to make sense of the dramatic crime.
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Have you noticed hemlines getting longer? Blouses being more buttoned up? Kelsey Stiegman and Tashira Halyard join guest host Amil Niazi to talk about how politics in the era of U.S. President Donald Trump are reshaping fashion, from the fall runways to TikTok trends to your own closet. Plus, music journalist Grayson Haver Currin discusses the highly anticipated new album from Australian psychedelic-pop artist Kevin Parker — a.k.a. Tame Impala — and how this reclusive producer from Perth, Australia has become one of the most influential forces in mainstream and underground music over the past two decades.
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Rock star Kevin Hearn of the Barenaked Ladies is doing rock star things — like buying paintings. And what better painting for an iconic Canadian rocker to buy than one by Norval Morrisseau, one of the most iconic Indigenous artists in Canada? But when Kevin’s Morrisseau painting is featured in an exhibit, it gets taken down because the head curator says it’s “questionable.” Kevin tries to get some answers but every answer leads to more questions. Host of Forged, Adrian Stimson traces Kevin’s dogged quest to find out the truth about his painting — and learns how this one painting is the key to cracking a whole underworld open. Forged is a six-part series, from CBC in Canada and ABC Australia, host Adrian Stimson, an artist from the Siksika Nation, travels from Thunder Bay to the Northern Territory of Australia, to reveal what's believed to be the largest art crime fraud in the world. More episodes of Forged are available here: https://link.mgln.ai/ForgedxCommotion
This week on the group chat, critics Hoai-Tran Bui, Reanna Cruz and Jackson Weaver chat with guest host Amil Niazi about Luca Guadagnino’s #MeToo film ‘After the Hunt’ featuring Julia Roberts, the musical ‘Kiss of the Spider Woman’ starring Jennifer Lopez, and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. We'd love to hear from you! Complete our listener survey here.
Marc Maron’s groundbreaking podcast WTF is over – he dropped his very last episode this week, more than 15 years after it launched. Culture critics Dominic Tardiff and Niko Stratis join Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about how the podcast changed them, changed public discourse, and so much more. Plus - tickets for Rush's tour officially go on sale this Friday. Music journalist Annie Zaleski discusses the surprise return of the Canadian rock legends, whose surviving members will embark on a 50th-anniversary tour in 2026 – their first shows since the 2020 passing of their long-time drummer Neil Peart. And the moment when the band will introduce us to its newest member, drummer Anika Nilles.
Grammy-winning R&B singer-songwriter D’Angelo died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. Elamin is joined by music critics Jay Smooth and David Dennis Jr. to look back on D'Angelo's legacy, and how his music helped to change the trajectory of soul, R&B and rap music as we now know it. Plus, legendary Anishnaabe artist Norval Morrisseau is one of the most celebrated Indigenous artists in the world, and criminal fraudsters have capitalized on his popularity by creating fake Morrisseau paintings — the extent of which is believed to be the largest art crime fraud ever. Elamin chats with Adrian Stimson, an artist from the Siksika Nation and the host of the new podcast 'Forged' from CBC and ABC Australia, about the art crime underworld of fake Morrisseau paintings.
With the controversial theater production ‘Slave Play’ coming to Toronto, Elamin Abdelamhmoud is joined by culture critics El Jones and Matt Amha with their thoughts on this most recent staging of the play and the themes around race, slavery and interracial relationships that it covers. Plus, creators are frustrated after the AI platform SORA introduced stricter controls around what they could do with copyrighted characters and real people - but will the guardrails work? Or will people just use OTHER AI tools … with fewer rules? Samantha Cole joins Elamin to discuss.
More than three decades after his death, Canadian actor and comedy trailblazer John Candy is currently enjoying a renaissance thanks to a new documentary and book about his life and legacy. The book’s author, Paul Myers, joins the Group Chat alongside entertainment reporter Teri Hart and podcaster Vish Khanna to explain why Candy remains such a revered figure in Canadian pop culture.
Elamin Abdelmahmoud talks about new movies out this week with culture critics Sarah-Tai Black, Roxana Hadadi and Jourdain Searles: the horror film Good Boy, starring a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever named Indy, the Channing Tatum led crime comedy Roofman and suspense thriller Lurker starring Quebec actor Théodore Pellerin.
One of the bestselling books of the year has to be The Tell by Amy Griffin. It's a memoir about how MDMA-assisted therapy helped her unearth this buried childhood trauma, but a New York Times investigation is now casting doubt on the book. Elamin chats with Nathan Maharaj and Jen Sookfong Lee about the controversy. And MTV cancelled Catfish after 9 seasons. Elamin chats with Candice Lim, co-host ICYMI, Slate’s podcast about internet culture, about how the show reflected our complicated relationship with the internet. Fill out our listener survey here. We appreciate your input!
