Podcast
Understood: Artificial Intimacy
Hosted by CBC · EN
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.
28episodes
Episodes
Newest firstAll episodes
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Ctrl, Ctrl, Ctrl
May 12, 202500:28:34Summary readyIn 1998, the United States Congress tried to tame the wild internet with a new law: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. But buried in its fine print was a provision that would end up giving tech giants ultimate legal protection and control, and stop innovators from fixing what's broken. Host Cory Doctorow traces how a law written for a different era led to the arrest of a researcher, became the playbook for Meta's enshittification, and lets platforms degrade your online life today — protecting them while they do it. Guests in this episode include Seth Schoen and Pam Samuelson. Archival recordings feature Dmitry Sklyarov, Bruce Lehman, Al Gore, and Steve Sipress.
SummaryDon't Be Evil
May 5, 202500:36:47Summary readyGoogle 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 episode include Ed Zitron, Emmanuel Goldstein, Clive Thompson, and Steven Levy.
SummaryIntroducing Understood: Who Broke the Internet?
Apr 28, 202500:03:49Summary readyIt'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.
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Céline Episode 4: The Céline-aissance
Nov 5, 202400:32:42Summary readyIn 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.
SummaryCéline Episode 3: The Globalization of Céline
Oct 29, 202400:30:46Summary readyCéline 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.
SummaryCéline Episode 2: The U.S. Gamble
Oct 22, 202400:30:14Summary readyWith 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.
SummaryCéline Episode 1: Conquering Québec
Oct 15, 202400:37:50Summary readyCéline 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.
SummaryIntroducing Céline: Understood
Oct 8, 202400:02:56Summary readyCéline 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.
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