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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.

Understood

Finally, we launch into Musk’s ultimate quest — his desire to colonize Mars — and how he went from wanting to save earth to wanting to escape it. We hear the origin story of SpaceX, including why one astrophysicist calls Musk’s Earth-exiting plan “delusional.” Is the red planet the ultimate “bubble” of total control, or does it represent a level of hubris that’s out-of-this-world? 

Guests in this episode include:

Robert Zubrin • , aerospace engineer and Mars-exploration advocate
Tom Moline • , former SpaceX employee and co-signer of an open letter against Musk’s antics
Adam Becker • , journalist with a background in Astrophysics, Mars mission skeptic

Topics in this episode include:

 • How Mars Society advocates courted Elon Musk in his PayPal days, but soon went from patron to self-appointed messiah of the movement
 • The origin and history of SpaceX, its “toxic” and loudest-voice-wins culture, and its plans to colonize Mars and turn humanity into a "multi-planetary species"
 • The ethics and feasibility of space colonization, Elon’s open fascination with Sci-fi and fantasy — especially utopian ideas and Isaac Asimov’s book Foundation
 • The very real challenges of colonizing Mars, from poison dirt to high radiation to the unpredictable impacts on human biology, fertility and psychology 
 • Planet B and the idea of Mars as the ultimate, engineered "bubble" — and why even optimists like Zubrin are troubled by the scope of Musk’s promises, calling them “bat guano crazy.”

E4: The Great Trek

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:

 • Elon Musk's 14 children and views on pronatalism, dysgenics, embryo screening, IVF (in vitro fertilization), surrogacy and genetic optimization (via Orchid)
 • The film Idiocracy and its influence on Musk
 • Elon Musk’s trans daughter Vivian Wilson, on her transition, estranged relationship with her father, and reaction to his public statement that she was killed by the "woke mind virus"
 • Neuralink and Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI), Nolan Arbaugh’s experimental surgery, and ethical concerns over thought privacy and “cyborg” rhetoric

E3: The Legion

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 journalist and writer
Adrienne LaFrance • , executive editor of The Atlantic

Topics in this episode include:

 • The life and lasting influence of Elon Musk’s Canadian grandfather, Joshua Haldeman; his influence within the Technocracy movement and his historical context (the Great Depression and the dust bowl) 
 • Elon Musk's early career moves, including his time at Zip2.com, PayPal and the "PayPal Mafia,” and the Baasskap (bossism) management style
 • The relationship between techno-optimism and authoritarianism, and Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto”

E2: Technocracy, Inc.

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 Musk
Will Shoki • , South African journalist and writer

Topics in this episode include:

 • Donald Trump’s Oval Office ambush of President Cyril Ramaphosa with conspiracy theories about an anti-white Afrikaaner farmer genocide, or “white genocide” in South Africa
 • Elon Musk's South African childhood, including his time at Pretoria Boys High School and his approach to fantasy role playing video games
 • Apartheid and structural white privilege/supremacy 
 • The South African Border War, conscription and draft-dodging

E1: Escape from Pretoria

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 — because the Elon era is far from over.

New episodes drop weekly, starting October 7, wherever you get your podcasts.

Introducing Understood: The Making of Elon Musk

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.

Who Broke the Internet? | E4: Kick 'Em in the Dongle

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.

Who Broke the Internet? | E3: In God We Antitrust

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.

Who Broke the Internet? | E2: Ctrl, Ctrl, Ctrl

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.

Who Broke the Internet? | E1: Don't Be Evil

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?

Jacob Silverman sits down on CBC's Front Burner podcast to discuss how the biggest crypto exchange in the world is being sued by an American regulator accusing Binance and its billionaire founder of breaking a string of laws and misusing investor funds. Changpeng Zhao and his company say they will fight back "vigorously."

The Naked Emperor BONUS: Binance and its CEO sued in major crypto case

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