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PODCAST

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire

Deepfake porn is a billion-click industry built on stolen faces, while the people making it hide theirs behind screens. Hosted by journalist Sam Cole, Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire traces the decades-long rise of synthetic porn, the targets who are fighting back, and the global investigation that led to its Canadian kingpin.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

technology

All Episodes

00:35:04

Episode 4: The Fake Porn Pharmacist

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2026/03/10

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 inon the Canadian deepfake porn kingpin and demanding answers.Featuring: Eric Szeto, Ida Herskind, Zakaria Hameed, Ross Higgins, Suzie Dunn, and Aaron Mackey.

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00:34:05

E3: The Notorious D.P.F.K.S.

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2026/03/03

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

en-ca

00:31:47

E2: So You’ve Been Deepfaked

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2026/02/24

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

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00:38:02

E1: The Dawn of Fake Porn

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2026/02/17

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

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00:03:13

Introducing Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2026/02/13

Non-consensual deepfake porn is becoming increasingly pervasive, and itdidn’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 source,

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00:44:36

E4: The Great Trek

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/10/28

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 advocateTom Moline, former SpaceX

en-ca

00:49:31

E3: The Legion

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/10/21

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.Guests 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

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00:48:03

E2: Technocracy, Inc.

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/10/14

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 CBCDerek Proudian, early investor in Zip2.comWill Shoki, South African journalist

en-ca

00:38:30

E1: Escape from Pretoria

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/10/07

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 MuskWill

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00:02:47

Introducing Understood: The Making of Elon Musk

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/09/26

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 —

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00:22:51

Introducing: Click Here | Citizen Lab is still...

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/07/15

Today we’re sharing an episode from the Click Here podcast from Recorded Future News and PRX.The early Internet was all about hope and utopian possibilities. But the founder of the Citizen Lab, Ron Deibert, always had an unsettled feeling about the web and its dark underbelly. So he created a team of digital sleuths to investigate.More episodes of Click here are available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/click-here/id1225077306

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00:41:48

Bonus: Cory Doctorow chats about his new novel on...

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/06/09

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

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00:41:20

Kick 'Em in the Dongle

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/05/26

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

en-ca

00:36:33

In God We Antitrust

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/05/19

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

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00:28:34

Ctrl, Ctrl, Ctrl

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/05/12

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

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00:36:47

Don't Be Evil

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/05/05

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

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00:03:49

Introducing Understood: Who Broke the Internet?

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2025/04/28

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.

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00:32:42

The Céline-aissance

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2024/11/05

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.

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00:30:46

The Globalization of Céline

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2024/10/29

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.

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00:30:14

The U.S. Gamble

Understood: Deepfake Porn Empire ·

2024/10/22

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.

en-ca

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