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Host Cory Doctorow coined the word "enshittification" to describe the state of the modern internet: a broken down, decaying place, once full of promise, now overrun with intrusive ads, hateful trolls, aggressive algorithms, zero privacy, and AI-generated slop, with every billionaire tech titan in a race to the bottom to bleed their users and their customers alike.

It can feel like it was inevitable — but it didn't have to be this way.The modern internet is the result of decisions made by powerful people, at key moments in history, despite repeated warnings about where it would lead.

In Understood: Who Broke the Internet?, Doctorow traces the downward spiral from the heady days of '90s tech-optimism through to today's rotten "enshitternet." You'll meet everyone from visionaries to villains to regular people just trying to survive in today's online world. And you'll discover who broke the internet — and, more importantly, a plan to fix it. 

Know more, now. Understood is an anthology podcast that takes you out of the daily news cycle and inside the events, people, and cultural moments you want to know more about. Over a handful of episodes, each season unfolds as a story, hosted by a well-connected reporter, and rooted in journalism you can trust. Driven by insight and fueled by curiosity…The stories of our time: Understood.

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.

Understood

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.

Introducing Understood: Who Broke the Internet?

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 episode include Ed Zitron, Emmanuel Goldstein, Clive Thompson, and Steven Levy.

Don't Be Evil

In 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.

Ctrl, Ctrl, Ctrl

American antitrust laws were designed to stop companies from wielding the power of kings. But in the 1970s, a legal scholar named Robert Bork convinced Washington to ignore those laws. Host Cory Doctorow traces how Bork's influence gave digital giants like Amazon a decades-long free pass to dominate markets, crush competitors, exploit their own business clients, and treat users like hostages — and how, after 40 years of inaction, former FTC chair Lina Khan took on the fight to rein in monopoly power. 

Guests in this episode include Michael Wiesel, Lina Khan, and Clive Thompson. Archival recordings feature Robert Bork.

In God We Antitrust

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 in Canadian history, and offers up a solution for how to save the internet, asking: in a post-free trade world, why are we still playing by American rules?

Guests in this episode include Yanis Varoufakis, Delaney Poitras, Michael Geist, Pam Samuelson, Clive Thompson, Ed Zitron, and Emmanuel Goldstein. Archival recordings feature James Moore.

Kick 'Em in the Dongle

In this special bonus conversation, Cory Doctorow sits down with Bookends host Mattea Roach to discuss his latest novel, Picks & Shovels. The book is the third in his series about forensic accountant Martin Hench, who investigates financial crime in Silicon Valley.

When the book ends, the conversation begins. Mattea Roach speaks with writers who have something to say about their work, the world and our place in it. You’ll always walk away with big questions to ponder and new books to read.

You can find Bookends wherever you listen to podcasts, or here: https://link.mgln.ai/5tjomL

Bonus: Cory Doctorow chats about his new novel on Bookends with Mattea Roach

In The Naked Emperor journalist Jacob Silverman explains how Sam Bankman-Fried built and destroyed FTX, a multi-billion dollar crypto currency empire. Who helped? Who was hurt? And will anything change following one of the most stunning financial collapses in modern history?

The Naked Emperor is season 1 of Understood from the CBC. All episodes are available now.

The Naked Emperor Trailer – Season 1 of Understood

Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't like other crypto moguls: he drove a Toyota Corolla, he was an advocate for government regulation, he said he would give billions away to charity. That is, until he lost it all in what has been called “one of history’s greatest-ever destructions of wealth.” Sam Bankman-Fried, aka SBF, had an empire. His cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, and hedge fund, Alameda Research, together were worth billions. Celebrities sang his praises, and politicians took his donations. Then, it all collapsed – almost overnight. There were millions of FTX customers. Now, they don’t know where their money is. Host Jacob Silverman, co-author of a forthcoming book about crypto and fraud, takes a closer look at the hype around SBF and FTX, and how it only grew, even as other crypto companies crashed around them. How powerful was Sam Bankman-Fried? And how did he initially manage to hang on, to thrive even, as other giants tumbled towards bankruptcy?

The Naked Emperor Episode 1: The Hype

We return to the beginning of Sam Bankman-Fried’s lucrative foray into crypto and ask: how did it all fall apart? Sam Bankman-Fried rose to the top of the crypto world with help from his friends. Gary Wang was a former fellow math-camper and brilliant programmer; Caroline Ellison was a former colleague at an elite Wall Street firm and an avid LARPer on the side. While still in their twenties, they were entrusted with billions of dollars of customer and investor funds. But in retrospect there were signs that maybe their enormous fortunes weren't created simply through their supposed technological and financial genius. For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

The Naked Emperor Episode 2: The Beginning of the End

In the weeks after FTX filed for bankruptcy Sam stuck to his story: he did not commit fraud. FTX’s post-collapse CEO claimed the company had been a managerial and financial disaster, writing that he had never seen “such a complete failure of corporate controls and such a complete absence of trustworthy financial information.” In response to his cratering public image, Sam Bankman-Fried talked. A lot. He exhibited an almost reckless desire to tell his side of things, insisting he could explain – and vindicate – himself. It was an exceptionally bizarre move for someone who had lost not just his personal fortune, but potentially the funds of millions of customers. Even as U.S. prosecutors filed charges, and his former friends turned on him, SBF was unwavering. With the legal odds against him, why would SBF risk so much by refusing to shut up? Update: Since this episode was published, U.S. prosecutors have added a new charge against Sam Bankman-Fried, accusing him of conspiring to bribe one or more Chinese government officials. The charge has not been proven in court. For transcripts of this series, please visit here.

Bonus: Cory Doctorow chats about his new novel on Bookends with Mattea Roach

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