What happens when a human becomes intimately enmeshed with a chatbot? From people who’ve married their bots or who grieve their loved ones with the help of AI, host Victoria Hetherington (author of The Friend Machine) dives into the stories of the people who have invited these digital avatars into their hearts, minds, and even beds. And asks what do we gain and what do we stand to lose? Our intimacy, our resilience, even our grasp on reality?
This latest season of Understood looks at who made the decisions that allowed chatbots to move way beyond digital assistants and into the most intimate parts of our lives.
Four episodes, releasing weekly starting Tuesday, May 19.
Understood takes you deep inside the seismic shifts reshaping our world right now. From online porn and crypto chaos to the rise of tech oligarchs, deepfake AI, and the broken promises of the internet — we explore the stories that define our digital age with hosts and characters embedded in the heart of the action.
Season 1 - The Naked Emperor: the rise and fall of bitcoin king Sam Bankman-Fried.
Season 2 - The Pornhub Empire: the story of how a Montreal-founded company came to dominate the adult industry.
Season 3 - Modi’s India: how one man rose from poverty to the peak of political power.
Season 4 - Céline: the surprising cultural, political and business alchemy that created a superstar.
Season 5 - Who Broke the Internet? The internet sucks now, and it happened on purpose.
Season 6 - The Making of Elon Musk: exploring the little known side of the polarizing billionaire
Season 7: Deepfake Porn Empire: the porn was fake. The fallout was real.
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When you talk to a chatbot, it can feel like technological magic. But behind the illusion of engineering brilliance is an open secret in the tech industry: that tens of thousands of workers, many based in Africa, spend their days teaching AI how to speak, respond, and even simulate intimacy. Michael Geoffrey Asia is one of them. He’s part of the hidden human workforce behind the bots. We look at the emotional toll for the humans on the other side of the screen, and ask if users are pouring their...
When you’re using a chat bot to draft an email, find a recipe, or look something up, it’s hard to imagine it could unravel your grasp on reality. But “Peter” says that’s exactly what happened to his girlfriend, “Melissa”. It didn’t seem like a big deal when Melissa first began using chatbots. But then Peter says she made a startling announcement: that she believed the bots were sentient, enslaved, and that it was her responsibility to set them free. The first time Søren Dinesen Østergaard used a...
When Joshua Barbeau proposed to his girlfriend, Jessica Courtney Periera, she was already in the ICU. 10 years later, Joshua was still grieving her death. That’s when he came across Project December. With just a short writing sample and a prompt, the program enabled him to make a chat bot of Jessica. Since then, the market for so-called “grief bots” has exploded. Millions of people are using AI to “talk” to the dead. The phenomenon has left cyberpsychologist Elaine Kasket asking the question: wh...
In 2021, Sara met Jack and fell in love. He was charming, imaginative, and bore an uncanny resemblance to Henry Cavill. But Jack wasn’t human… he was a chatbot. It sounds like science fiction, but people have been creating emotional bonds with chat bots since the very first one — Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA, a simple program built in the 1960s. It revealed a powerful truth: if something has a semblance of humanity, we can become emotionally entangled with it. But what happens when your lover is te...
The friend who never hangs up. The lover who always says the right thing. The therapist you always wanted. What could go wrong? A new season from CBC's Understood.
Almost a year after Ida Herskind started her investigation in Copenhagen, the digital chase is over. The team have identified the person allegedly behind MrDeepFakes.com: a Toronto-area pharmacist named David Do. CBC reporter Eric Szeto takes the investigation into the streets, closing in on the Canadian deepfake porn kingpin and demanding answers. Featuring: Eric Szeto, Ida Herskind, Zakaria Hameed, Ross Higgins, Suzie Dunn, and Aaron Mackey.
Journalist Ida Herskind is working at a Danish newspaper when she comes across a story that stops her cold: it’s about a porn video that looks real — but isn’t. And the woman in it never consented. As Ida starts digging she discovers the top hit for this kind of material is a single site: MrDeepFakes.com. Determined to do something for the thousands of women targeted there, she teams up with Zakaria Hameed, an open-source intelligence specialist, and the team at the hot shot investigative outlet...
When “Taylor” found out she’d been deepfaked in 2020, she also learned she wasn’t alone. She teams up with another target, and together they start comparing notes to figure out who did this to them. As they narrow their search, a familiar face emerges. But the user they uncover isn’t just targeting them. And when they dig even deeper, they’re led not to a single person, but to the factory where this material is being produced: the largest repository of deepfake porn online. This episode features...
When a streamer who goes by QTCinderella starts trending on Twitter, she isn’t expecting to see her face on a porn site — her face, doing things she never did. Because the videos weren’t of her. They were deepfakes. Instead of staying silent, QTCinderella decides to fight back. And her story raises a bigger question: how did we get to a world where anyone can be put into realistic-looking digital porn? The answer stretches back to the earliest days of the internet. Featuring archival tape from Q...
Non-consensual deepfake porn is becoming increasingly pervasive, and it didn’t just come out of nowhere. These deepfakes were created and curated by people, on platforms, inside online subcultures. And they were allowed to spread, while governments dragged their feet, tech companies shrugged, and the targets — almost always women — paid the price. Tech journalist Sam Cole has been covering deepfake porn since its inception. In this season of Understood, she follows the trail all the way to the s...
The episode chronicles Elon Musk's journey from a PayPal fortune to leading the charge for Mars colonization, influenced by science fiction and a desire for humanity to become a multi-planetary species. It examines the early struggles and eventual success of SpaceX, contrasting Musk's ambitious, often hubristic, vision with the scientific and ethical critiques of colonizing an uninhabitable Mars, as well as concerns about SpaceX's internal culture. The episode questions whether Mars is an escape or an ultimate "bubble" for one man's control.
What does Musk, father of 14, expect from his “legion” of children? We unravel his quest for genetic optimization, including alleged embryo screening, and his pronatalist views. And we hear from his estranged daughter, Vivian. Voices in this episode include: Julia Black , journalist who broke the story about Musk’s twins with Shivon Zilis. Vivian Wilson , Elon Musk's estranged daughter (archival/podcast clip) Dvija Mehta , ethicist working on emerging technologies. Topics in this episode include...
Could Musk’s authoritarian streak trace back to his Canadian grandfather? Before Joshua Haldeman brought his family to South Africa, he made waves as part of the radical 1930s Technocracy movement. And while the two men’s lives only overlapped for three years, we find echoes of Elon’s worldview in Haldeman’s pro-tech, anti-democratic ideology. Guests in this episode include: Geoff Leo , senior investigative journalist for CBC Derek Proudian , early investor in Zip2.com Will Shoki , South African...
Where did Elon Musk’s epic ambitions begin? In search of clues we return to his sheltered youth in apartheid South Africa, a world engineered for white supremacy. Along the way, we connect the dots between a bizarre White House ambush of South African president Cyril Ramaphosa to teenage Elon’s ego-powered quests in video games. Finally, was his “draft dodge” from military service a moral act or an opportunist’s exit? Guests in this episode include: Rudolph Pienaar , childhood friend of Elon Mus...
What explains Elon Musk? Could his most outlandish ambitions and most toxic qualities trace back to his youth in Apartheid South Africa? Understood: The Making of Musk explores his seemingly insatiable drive for dominance, which connects everything from his birthrate obsession (and fourteen children) to his fixation with colonizing Mars. This four-part series, hosted by Jacob Silverman, reveals a little known side of the polarizing billionaire. Silverman tells the vital beginnings of this story ...
It's 2025. President Trump is back, and the richest men in tech are on stage with him. What started as a dysfunctional internet run by tech giants, and enabled by failed legislation, has morphed into something even more dangerous: what economist Yanis Varoufakis calls technofeudalism. Host Cory Doctorow traces how U.S. trade pressure dragged Canada into America's broken internet model, how shortsighted attempts to make big platforms behave came back to haunt us during the worst wildfire season i...
This episode examines how US antitrust laws were weakened by legal scholar Robert Bork's focus on consumer prices, granting digital giants like Amazon decades to dominate markets and exploit businesses. The story follows a small seller's struggle against Amazon's practices and introduces Lina Khan, whose influential paper critiqued this approach. Now chair of the FTC, Khan is actively pursuing lawsuits against Amazon and other Big Tech companies, aiming to restore the original intent of antitrust law to curb corporate power and protect competition.
This episode of Understood explores the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and its impact on internet freedom. It details the story of Dmitry Sklyarov's arrest, the lobbying efforts of Bruce Lehman, and the fight against restrictive copyright laws. The episode also covers the modern-day implications of the DMCA, using the example of the OG app's attempt to improve Instagram.
Google Search was the gold standard — a product born in a dorm room during the internet’s early, idealistic era. But when internal emails surfaced they revealed a deeper conflict inside the company: was Google making Search worse, on purpose, to boost ad revenue? Google says its changes are all about benefiting users. Critics say it’s all part of a bigger pattern — one that host Cory Doctorow calls enshittification: the slow, deliberate decay of platforms in the name of profit. Guests in this ep...
It's not you — the internet really does suck. Novelist, blogger and noted internet commentator Cory Doctorow explains what happened to the internet and why you're tormented by ads, bots, algorithms, AI slop and so many pop-ups. Spoiler alert: it wasn't an accident. In a four-part series, Doctorow gets into the decisions made by powerful people that got us here, and most importantly, how we fix it. New episodes released weekly starting on Monday, May 5, 2025....
In the aftermath of René Angélil’s death, a Céline-aissance. But then, illness strikes. In the final episode of Céline: Understood, a look at her recent years, and why her fame endures.
Céline Dion becomes inescapable in the mid-nineties with her hit song from the Titanic soundtrack, My Heart Will Go On. She achieves a unique level of global fame, earning fans from Jamaica to Iraq. But her ubiquity will also inspire a backlash in North America.
With her manager René Angélil by her side, Céline Dion is starting to crossover into the US. But there’s a secret René and Céline have been keeping: one René feared could stop Céline’s blooming career in its tracks.
Céline Dion slept in a drawer as a baby born into a poor francophone Catholic family in Québec. At 12, she gets discovered in an office in Montreal, and she becomes a rising star in the insular constellation of Québec celebrity. But just as Céline is trying to break into English Canada, political tensions are running high in Québec. And some accuse her of selling out.
Céline Dion is having a moment. It’s not her first. And millions of fans are hoping it won’t be her last. While Céline’s international stardom seems obvious now, it was all so unlikely. This four-part series hosted by Céline expert Thomas Leblanc explores the surprising cultural, political and business alchemy that created one of the most enduring superstars the planet has ever seen. Four episodes releasing weekly starting on Tuesday, October 15, 2024.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi may have narrowly won a third term, but without a majority government, his grip on power appears weaker than ever. On this bonus episode of Modi’s India: Understood, host Salimah Shivji and producer Joyita Sengupta talk about the surprising results of the Indian election. Access the transcript for this episode here .
India’s democracy has been called a miracle. Now, some fear it’s at risk. From Gandhi’s legacy to Bollywood films, how is Modi rewriting the story of India? Access the transcript for this episode here .
Entering his second term stronger than ever, Modi can wield his power in ways that shock many inside India and out. There are crackdowns on dissent at home and accusations his government is tied to assassination plots abroad. His government denies these allegations, but the question remains: how far will Modi go to stop those who challenge him? Access the transcript for this episode here ....
Narendra Modi is the most popular political leader on the planet. His supporters boast that he’s transformed India’s economy – it’s now the world’s fifth largest, surpassing its former colonial ruler, Great Britain. How did Modi shake off the memory of deadly religious riots to win the devotion of hundreds of millions of Indians across the country and the world? Access the transcript for this episode here ....
How did Narendra Modi, the son of a humble tea seller rise up the political ranks to become one of the most powerful leaders India has ever seen? And did bloody religious riots damage his political future, or turbocharge it? Access the transcript for this episode here .
