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- [00:01]
Ava Smithing
Hey, y', all, it's Ava. Before we start, I wanted to send out a big thank you and some love to those of you who are listening to this podcast. The stories and the issues we cover, they mean a lot. Not just to me and this team, but to a lot of young people. So thank you so much for spending this time with us. And if you've been enjoying this podcast, I have a small favor to ask. Please send it to somebody in your life who might like it. It'll really help us get the show out into the world. Okay, now, here's our last episode. It contains reference to suicide, so please take care while listening.
- [00:41]
Harrison Haynes
I woke up in this giant white room. I mean, it was infinite. It was like an infinite white haze. There wasn't even walls.
- [00:52]
Ava Smithing
This is the dream that changed everything for Harrison Haynes.
- [00:57]
Harrison Haynes
And there was this giant, like, landscape picture frame, and it's this really deep maroon, red, brown, like, kind of burgundy for, like, three quarters of the image. It's that it's a gradient, darkest to brightest, and this small little sliver of, like, beige white.
- [01:17]
Ava Smithing
You might remember Harrison from our last episode when he was 12. He was victimized by a stranger online, and that abuse pulled him away from his family and into a life on a screen and eventually into a porn addiction.
- [01:33]
Harrison Haynes
I'm almost 14. School's hard, relationships are hard. My family's difficult, and I have no sense of community. I decide that I'm going to take
- [01:46]
Ava Smithing
my life, and that's when Harrison had this dream.
- [01:51]
Harrison Haynes
And I'm looking at it and I don't understand. And I focus really hard on the bottom, and there's this little dot right in between the convergence of these colors. And I'm looking at it, and I'm just like, what am I looking at? Like, I don't even understand. It's like some weird abstract art you'd see in a museum. And this just soft, gentle, but powerful voice boomed over me and said, my son, you've planted all your seeds in the wrong gardens, and it's time to wake up. I woke up and I was, like, shaking and crying. I was excited, but also angry. But ultimately, I was grateful because, like, I had a reason to be alive, because I had something to discover
- [02:35]
Ava Smithing
after waking up, both literally and figuratively. Harrison knew he needed to make a change, so he joined a Christian youth group at his school. At the time, he wasn't even religious, but he was desperate to find community somewhere that wasn't mediated by a screen.
- [02:52]
Harrison Haynes
And I was kind of just sitting there observing everything that was happening around me. And this guy, he stands up and he's like, my mom is at work all day. My dad hasn't been a part of my life for so many years. And he just opens up. He's like, I have a chronic porn addiction and I really need help. It was a co ed group too, so it took a lot of boldness for him to say that. And at the end, I awkwardly approached him and was like, you know, dude, I. I think that might be me, too.
- [03:26]
Ava Smithing
Then Harrison joined a support group on Discord, an online platform that, ironically enough, led him to real life connection for the first time.
- [03:34]
Harrison Haynes
I started experiencing real friendships.
- [03:37]
Ava Smithing
From that moment on, Harrison has tried to build a life for himself centered
- [03:41]
Harrison Haynes
around community, just being fully, unapologetically human in front of other people.
- [03:47]
Ava Smithing
He now shares a house with five other guys who have the same vision as him. A life where technology isn't in the driver's seat.
- [03:56]
Harrison Haynes
My phone is locked down by my roommate. He has a passcode on it. I have a passcode on his. Everybody in the house. There are six of us. We have accountability buddies. We all want to see a life where we're free from pornography and also other things. You know, I don't like the Infinite Scroll. I don't want to spend my time on that. So I don't have YouTube on my phone. I don't want to be pulled into endless emails from work on a Saturday, so I don't have email on my phone. I don't want to spend my precious hours, you know, my 75 years doing things that I hate. You know, Americans spend four and a half hours on average on their phone a day.
- [04:38]
Ava Smithing
That's a lot of time.
- [04:39]
Harrison Haynes
Four and a half. And we spend 8.1 at work. We spend two and a half hours a day watching television. That leaves about 8% of your waking hours for the things that you say matter most. And so if it's working, it's working. And if you love the way that you have a relationship with your phone, keep going. But if you'd like to see 8% go to 25%, then that's when it's time to make a change.
- [05:01]
Ava Smithing
Harrison isn't alone in thinking this. The Financial Times recently found that social media use actually peaked in 2022 and has been declining ever since. And that decline has been the steepest for young people.
- [05:16]
Harrison Haynes
I think that this beautiful invention of the iPhone that was supposed to bring people together, the fact that it has unintentionally pulled people apart is really a tragic experience.
- [05:28]
Ava Smithing
It seems like our generation is finally starting to realize that maybe spending a good chunk of our lives on platforms designed to capture our attention isn't the best way to spend our time.
- [05:39]
Harrison Haynes
We can experience the deepest, richest humanity that people have experienced for generations, generations on generations. There are thousands of generations inside of our bones that have experienced the beauty of humanity that we are missing out on, that that technology is robbing us of.
- [05:55]
Ava Smithing
But just as we're beginning to figure out what a healthy relationship with tech might look like, something else is happening at the same time.
- [06:03]
News Anchor
Tonight, Australia taking an unprecedented step, becoming the first country in the world to ban the use of social media apps for anyone under the age of 16.
- [06:12]
Ava Smithing
Countries like Australia and Denmark are forcing kids off social media.
- [06:17]
Maddie Freeman
This one's for the mums and dads. Social media is doing harm to our kids and I'm calling time on it.
- [06:25]
Ava Smithing
In the us, eight states have attempted to implement similar bans, although for the moment, they've been blocked by the courts. And in Canada, Nova Scotia and Quebec are reportedly considering bans as well. Proponents of these laws argue that they're exactly what we need to keep kids safe online. Their critics say they're taking away a vital lifeline for kids, a place where they can learn and play and find community.
- [06:52]
News Anchor
Some psychologists say actually this ban could isolate a generation of children.
- [06:59]
Ava Smithing
So on the precipice of Australia's social media ban, one question remains. Can kids figure out how to use social media in a way that actually works for them? Or will governments make that decision for them? I'm Ava Smithing from Paradigms in the Toronto Star. This is Left to Their Own Devices. Episode 10 left to our Own Devices.
- [07:46]
Julie Inman Grant
I'm going to just turn off my email because it is the time of morning where you're going to hear lots of pinging.
- [07:54]
Ava Smithing
Julie Inman Grant is Australia's esafety commissioner. She didn't come up with the idea of the social media ban, but she's the one responsible for enforcing it.
- [08:03]
Julie Inman Grant
I'm often referred to as the poacher turned gamekeeper. I was born in Seattle and always want to work in Washington. And so I went to work for my hometown congressman with big ideals and even bigger hair. Cause it was the early 1990s and was working on a range of social issues when one day he put his head around the cubicle and said, hey Julie, we've got this small little software company on our electorate. It's called Microsoft. So would you work on tech issues as well?
- [08:34]
Ava Smithing
After doing a little work on the Microsoft file Julie switched teams, so to speak.
- [08:40]
Julie Inman Grant
I was then recruited as one of Microsoft's first law firm in Washington D.C. and we truly believed that if the Internet was over regulated and overtaxed that it would stop the growth of the Internet in its tracks. Of course we weren't thinking about social media then. Mark Zuckerberg was probably playing Dungeons and Dragons at that time.
- [08:59]
Ava Smithing
And then after nearly two decades at Microsoft, Julie went to work for Twitter.
- [09:04]
Julie Inman Grant
I felt so passionate about democratizing and leveling effects of social media and the ability to speak truth to power. But the truth was when I was on the inside, I saw how horrific the online abuse was, particularly to marginalized communities.
- [09:21]
Ava Smithing
Around this time, a story started making headlines in Australia.
- [09:25]
News Anchor
Good evening. After a long and public struggle with
- [09:28]
Ava Smithing
depression, a story that would change the way much of the country thought about social media.
- [09:34]
News Anchor
Television personality Charlotte Dawson's life has ended tragically with her body discovered this morning at her woolloomooloo.
- [09:41]
Ava Smithing
Charlotte Dawson was a 47 year old woman best known as one of the judges on Australia's Next Top Model. And for whatever reason she became the target of online trolls and she had
- [09:53]
Julie Inman Grant
a nervous breakdown which was very public. And I remember seeing tweets like why didn't you stick your head in the oven and finish the job? Just terrible abuse. And unfortunately and tragically she ended up taking her life. And you know, Australians started saying enough is enough.
- [10:12]
Ava Smithing
This was back in 2014. A year later, the Australian government established the world's first Esafety commissioner.
- [10:20]
Julie Inman Grant
That's kind of the origin story.
- [10:22]
Ava Smithing
Julie says the Esafety Commissioner has a three pronged approach which she calls the three prevention. In other words, educating the public to
- [10:32]
Julie Inman Grant
sort of build critical reasoning skills and digital literacy and resilience protection, making sure
- [10:38]
Ava Smithing
people aren't exposed to harmful or illegal content.
- [10:41]
Julie Inman Grant
I mentioned cyberbullying. We also have an image based abuse scheme that also captures things like deep
- [10:47]
Ava Smithing
fakes and proactive change, ensuring that technology products are safe before they're rolled out to the public.
- [10:55]
Julie Inman Grant
And that's really about how do we minimize the threat, surface for the future and become an anticipatory regulator so that technology change doesn't hit us in the face.
- [11:05]
Ava Smithing
Around the world, this three pronged approach is widely endorsed as good digital policy. But when Australia announced they were banning social media for kids, they were stepping into uncharted territory.
- [11:18]
Julie Inman Grant
I would say it's a much more monumental rather than an incremental step that we've been taking over the past 10 years.
- [11:24]
Ava Smithing
Australia is the first country to Try something like this and no one really knows whether or not it'll work. But the public seems to have gotten behind it. A YouGov poll from last November found that more than three quarters of Australians supported a ban.
- [11:40]
Julie Inman Grant
I would say that this was really very much a political populist movement, but
- [11:46]
Ava Smithing
the law is definitely controversial. And one reason for that may be the way it came about.
- [11:52]
Julie Inman Grant
It actually started with the South Australian premier, whose wife had read Jonathan Haidt's the Anxious Generation.
- [12:00]
Ava Smithing
Banning social media for kids under 16 is something Haidt explicitly recommends in his book. But you might remember that earlier in the series we spoke with some researchers who are skeptical of many of the arguments Haidt makes.
- [12:14]
Harrison Haynes
Everybody's like, eating up the Anxious Generation and freaking out because basically it's bad science.
- [12:22]
Ava Smithing
I wanted to raise this with Julie. I was actually going to ask about that if you feel like the policy is supported by the research in this space.
- [12:31]
Julie Inman Grant
Well, I've said for a long time that the research and the science isn't totally fixed on this. But again, we're trying to build the evidence base. Probably it's the tail wagging the dog in some ways, but at least we're going through that effort so that other jurisdictions that consider this can learn from what we did well, but also learn from our mistakes.
- [13:00]
Ava Smithing
I appreciate Julie's honesty here. The fact of the matter is a social media ban isn't really grounded in science.
- [13:07]
Julie Inman Grant
There wasn't really an evidence base that was used to choose 16 as the age.
- [13:12]
Ava Smithing
But part of me is also grateful that unlike Canada and the US at least Australia is doing something about social media and its effects on young people.
- [13:21]
Julie Inman Grant
When we import cars into Australia, we expect them to be built to Australian safety standards. Why should the technology industry be any different?
- [13:35]
News Anchor
The federal government's World first reforms, banning teenagers from social media are a step closer to being rolled out with just over a month to go. Breaking news now the government is expanding its social media ban with new websites soon to be restricted. And Anthony Albanese says he's confident it will be a success. The Prime Minister sat down with the ABC.
- [13:56]
Ava Smithing
The Australian ban goes into effect on December 10, 2025. The list of restricted platforms is somewhat in flux, but it currently includes not just social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, but also sites like Reddit and YouTube.
- [14:12]
Julie Inman Grant
And I can find platforms up to 49.5 million if they fail to implement adequate age verification technologies.
- [14:22]
Ava Smithing
The challenge these platforms now face is how to verify their users ages. The government has said that Platforms can't require kids to upload their IDs, which means they need to figure out another way to do age assurance.
- [14:35]
Julie Inman Grant
There's one coming out of France that I think is interesting. I haven't seen the test results. It's called border age, and it has. You move your fingers around and apparently the. The AI can tell based on the ligature and the movement of the hands, the relative age within a couple of months.
- [14:54]
Ava Smithing
In theory, this sounds great, but with only weeks to go before the ban goes into effect, there is one problem.
- [15:01]
Maddie Freeman
One minute I'm getting 15, the next I'm getting 19.
- [15:03]
Ava Smithing
Right now, these tools that predict users ages are only about 85% accurate.
- [15:09]
Maddie Freeman
Oh, it gave me 29. That same one looking at it, and I've been told my whole life I look like about four years younger than what I actually am. Foreign.
- [15:21]
Ava Smithing
It's unclear whether these kinks can be worked out. But even if they can get age assurance working, I think there's a bigger question looming over all of this. Is keeping kids off social media actually what's best for them? Look, you've heard countless stories on the show about young people who have been harmed by social media, but you've also heard from people like Kiera McDuffie, who learned she had a rare genetic disorder through TikTok.
- [15:48]
News Anchor
The algorithm does a lot of bad, but its ability to look at what I was interested in really was probably
- [15:56]
Maddie Freeman
one of the only reasons I ever
- [15:58]
Julie Inman Grant
realized what was wrong with me.
- [16:00]
Ava Smithing
And from Sophie Fergie, the teenage influencer who used her platform to start a conversation about sexual abuse.
- [16:07]
Maddie Freeman
I had people DMing me like, wow,
- [16:09]
Julie Inman Grant
I'm very inspired by you.
- [16:11]
Maddie Freeman
And I'm.
- [16:11]
Julie Inman Grant
I'm gonna go speak out about what's been happening at home, which is very moving to me.
- [16:17]
Ava Smithing
And we talked to the social media researcher Ethan Zuckerman, who says that most kids are totally fine on social media.
- [16:24]
Harrison Haynes
For the vast majority of people, social media has almost no effect on their overall happiness and mental health.
- [16:34]
Ava Smithing
So again, does a ban really make sense? I think only time will tell. But if Australia is a model for how a government can intervene in the most dramatic way possible, something else entirely is playing out on the other side of the world. In Canada and the U.S. where our governments have yet to step in, kids are taking matters into their own hands.
- [17:04]
Maddie Freeman
Maddie.
- [17:06]
Ava Smithing
Hello, girlfriend. The last person I want to introduce you to is a good friend of mine, Maddie Freeman. I know that you are a very important person, so I appreciate that you would make time for me.
- [17:19]
Maddie Freeman
You're an Important person, Ava. So thank you for your time.
- [17:23]
Ava Smithing
This whole interview should just be us gassing each other up.
- [17:26]
Maddie Freeman
I think, personally, I could do that for hours.
- [17:32]
Ava Smithing
Like, so many good Gen Z stories, Maddie starts with Justin Bieber.
- [17:36]
Maddie Freeman
I used to be, like, a big fan girl, and I worked really hard to get Justin Bieber to follow me on Twitter. And I'll never forget the day that I was sitting at lunch in the cafeteria, and I got a notification on my phone that said, justin Bieber followed you back. And I literally cried so hard, like, I was freaking out. Like, that was, like, the best day of my life. And I called my mom hyperventilating, and she literally thought someone, like, died. And I was like, mom, just, if
- [18:05]
Ava Smithing
you ever followed me, I can confirm. At that age, getting the Biebs to follow you, that's a huge deal.
- [18:13]
Maddie Freeman
I think the general consensus was just, like, phones are awesome. Like, I feel like everyone just really liked it. And so I feel like all of my peers just really enjoyed having access to it and being online. We really liked Snapchatting each other. We really liked posting on Instagram.
- [18:30]
Ava Smithing
But as Maddy and her friends got older, something troubling started happening in her community.
- [18:36]
Maddie Freeman
Everyone felt like our town had, like, a curse on it.
- [18:39]
Ava Smithing
Young people around her, Maddy's friends and crushes and classmatess started dying at an alarming rate.
- [18:46]
Maddie Freeman
People were just dying left and right,
- [18:48]
Ava Smithing
and most of those deaths were suicides.
- [18:52]
Maddie Freeman
I think there are many reasons why. There's no one reason at all. I will say, like, each person obviously probably had their own unique struggle and maybe some small thing or big thing that kind of set them off. Like, maybe family troubles, maybe relationship troubles. But I think collectively, we grew up as a generation that was just mentally unwell. And I feel like. I mean, to be transparent, like, I struggled immensely with. I had severe depression since sixth grade, and I had, like, horrible suicidal ideation from the time I was 12 years old on. And I barely made it through. Like, I barely, barely, barely scraped by to, like, stay alive.
- [19:37]
Ava Smithing
When Maddie looks back on this horrible period, she thinks a few things may have been going on. One of them was that many of her peers started using drugs.
- [19:46]
Maddie Freeman
Because we live in Colorado, there is a certain kind of, like, drug culture here that I think is unique because marijuana was legalized so early. And I think, I mean, transparently, every single person that passed away was smoking every single day.
- [20:00]
Ava Smithing
The other was the rise of school shootings.
- [20:03]
Maddie Freeman
Those school shootings, I think, gave kind of a dystopian feel of the world, which is Also a little more uniquely our generation. Like, we've gone through that a lot.
- [20:11]
Ava Smithing
And the final thing was that everyone she knew was glued to their social media feeds.
- [20:17]
Maddie Freeman
I think social media just amplified everything that's hard with growing up. Like, going through puberty is hard. You know, like, mental health things come up. So many issues come up. Your social life is so complicated. You're discovering who you are, and social media just taxes you on that. Like, it just makes it so much more difficult. It just exacerbates issues that already existed for previous generations. And I think that just made it even more difficult for people to function and exist.
- [20:49]
Ava Smithing
Everything that you're saying, I think is very unique to our generation. So I think everything that you're speaking about aren't three different issues. I think that those are, like, maybe we're smoking because we look around and we see our world state and we see, oh, like, people my age are getting shot and there's nothing we can do about it. So I'm gonna do something to cope. I'm gonna smoke weed. And then your coping mechanism is on steroids all of a sudden, because now you can smoke and consume content.
- [21:19]
Maddie Freeman
Yeah.
- [21:21]
Ava Smithing
As her high school years wore on, Maddie watched helplessly as more and more of her peers succumbed to suicide.
- [21:28]
Maddie Freeman
When someone passed away, it became this term my friend coined, the grief Olympics, where people would be posting, like, photos with the person who died, and it was like a competition of who was closest to that person. It became this really weird thing where people felt the need to always take pictures together because if they ended up dying, then they'd have proof that they were friends. It was literally the most screwed up thing ever.
- [21:54]
Ava Smithing
Eventually, the curse that had fallen on this small town came for someone really close to Maddie.
- [22:00]
Maddie Freeman
The one that really messed me up is actually the reason why I started doing this work. She was someone that I cared about so much, and I was so worried about. Like, I had a feeling something was gonna happen to her. And I tried so hard to help her, and she just didn't want the help. And she was just suffering so much. And, like, after that happened, I just, like, felt like I. I couldn't do it anymore. Like, I didn't know what to do with myself. And that's why I ended up kind of channeling that grief into action because I literally didn't know what else to do. Like, I was just, like, at a loss.
- [22:31]
Ava Smithing
As she was wrestling with the death of her friend, Maddie started learning more about the business model of social media.
- [22:38]
Maddie Freeman
I just had no idea. I did not know social media was designed to be addictive. I did not know that, like, my attention was being bought and sold. I was like, oh, my God. I think this is, like, part of the why. Like, I've been asking myself for so long, like, why? Why is everyone dying? Like, why is this happening? And that felt like a partial answer. I was like, oh, my God, wait, this feels like a threat that is, like, absolutely accurate. Like, and in that moment, I feel like it all flooded back to me. I was like, oh, my gosh. All that time I was spending online, my. My own depression, my suicidal ideation, like, I was getting recommended pain, pictures of girls cutting, and then, like, all of it just came to a head and I was like, oh, wow. Like, this is a big issue. And I felt so much anger inside me. And I remember feeling this feeling that I just wanted everyone to know.
- [23:30]
Ava Smithing
Getting the social media companies to change felt insurmountable. So Maddie came up with another idea. What if she and her friends just logged off?
- [23:41]
Maddie Freeman
If you're interested, like, you can voluntarily participate in like, a month long detox. With me, I had never done that either. And so I was scared because I was at this point still really addicted to social media.
- [23:51]
Ava Smithing
A handful of other students decided to join in too. And on the first day of the month, they started to detox.
- [23:59]
Maddie Freeman
It sucks for the first, like, three, four days because your mind and body is so conditioned and used to having the platforms as an outlet and something you can, you know, click on when you're bored, click on when you're sad. And when you don't have that anymore, your brain is like, whoa, like, what is going on? It's a little scary for a second because I think when you realize you don't have something that can distract you, the instant thing that you need to do is sit with your thoughts. And, like, people can't embrace those awkward or negative emotions anymore. Like, we can't just sit with them and experience that. Like, we have to numb it and distract it. And I think that's something that, like, we do so automatically. Like, we've been programmed to do that, right? And so I've just realized how much tech takes us away from mindfulness.
- [24:46]
Ava Smithing
I went through the exact same thing when I quit social media. You literally feel like you don't know what to do with yourself or even how to just be with yourself.
- [24:55]
Maddie Freeman
And when you're in that state, it's easy for, like, sad, scary thoughts to come up.
- [25:00]
Ava Smithing
But when those 30 days were over, Maddie says she felt like a different person.
- [25:05]
Maddie Freeman
And it was just like life changing. Students were emailing me. I didn't even know who they were, but they were emailing me. They were like, this is like drastically improving my mental health. People were like, my issues with my body, they've improved so much because I'm not seeing harmful content anymore. And they're like, my anxiety vanished. I literally don't have anxiety anymore. I had crippling anxiety before and I couldn't even talk to people. And now I'm calling for from middle school and like going out on dates, like, this is changing my life. And I was like, whoa. Like, this is having real impact. Another girl told me that it literally saved her life. She was like, I tried attempting suicide multiple times. Like, I feel like if I didn't do this, I don't think I'd be here.
- [25:48]
Ava Smithing
After seeing how kids were responding, Maddy wanted to try and scale the idea. So she decided that every November, she and whoever else wanted to join her would do a month long social media detox. She called it no.
- [26:03]
Maddie Freeman
So November, things started exploding.
- [26:06]
Ava Smithing
Just five years after starting no sew, Maddy now has thousands of kids detoxing with her from all over the world. Even kids who might seem like they're hopelessly addicted to their devices.
- [26:18]
Maddie Freeman
They didn't even really want to do the detox. And then after like a few weeks, weeks of doing it, they were like, wait, this is crazy. Like, my life is so good right now. Like, I don't want to go back.
- [26:36]
Ava Smithing
What has stepping away from social media done for your life?
- [26:41]
Maddie Freeman
Oh my gosh, I could write a book about that. I mean, I think the biggest thing is like, presence. I've just like changed what my day to day life looks like dramatically because it used to be nothingness. Like, I just scroll. And now it's so. It's so full. My life feels so vibrant. I've struggled so much my whole life, and this is the first time I feel just like, good. Like, I feel really happy.
- [27:11]
Ava Smithing
Over the course of these 10 episodes, we've shown you what can happen when a technology is unleashed on a generation of kids without any guardrails. You've met young people who developed eating disorders because of their algorithms, kids who became addicted to porn before they even hit puberty, and parents who lost children after they were victimized online. If we want to stop these things from happening, governments need to intervene. But I also think that laws can only take us so far. Because even if a country decides to ban certain platforms, kids will always have access to some technology. So we need to figure out how to live with it in a way that works for us.
- [27:53]
Harrison Haynes
Our lives are so chronically short. We do not live the lives that we want to. We live lives that are consumed by technology, by social media, by things that we don't want to do.
- [28:09]
Ava Smithing
It's something that my wise friend Harrison Haynes has thought a lot about as well.
- [28:14]
Harrison Haynes
It took empowering myself to realize that I am in control of the decisions that I make every day. There are lots of things that just happen and I'm not in charge of those things, but that 8% of my day that I have. I fight for realizing that you are in control of your choices. And if Instagram isn't on the top of the list of what's the most important thing to you, then why isn't that reflected in the way that you live? You can make adjustments to the things that matter most to you to have your life align with what you said matters most and to create that space to enjoy moments between moments where there is silence and staring at a wall and fully accepting the gift of boredom. I mean, it's huge. And I don't think that this is an end all, be all solution for the next generation, but I do think it's a healthy start.
- [29:09]
Ava Smithing
My generation was handed the most powerful technologies in history and then just left to our own devices. We didn't get any say in that. But what we do next, well, I think that's up to us. Left to their own devices is hosted and produced by me, Ava Smithing. It's written, produced, mixed and sound designed by Mitchell Stewart. Our story editor is Kathleen Goldhar. Additional audio editing by Cameron McIver. Our social producer is Emma Frattasio. Episode artwork by Pietro Galeano. A special thanks to Cochrane Imagination Music Studios. The executive producers for Paradigms are James Millward, Helen Hayes, Taylor Owen, and Mitchell Stewart. The executive producer for the Toronto Star is JP Fozo SA.