Understood: Artificial Intimacy

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.

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Episoder(45)

The Naked Emperor Episode 4: It Takes a Village

Sam Bankman-Fried couldn’t have marketed FTX to the masses on his own. He had help – from the institutional investors who brought in the big bucks, to the celebrity endorsers who told the public that ...

3 Apr 202334min

The Naked Emperor Episode 3: Busted

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 h...

27 Mar 202332min

The Naked Emperor Episode 2: The Beginning of the End

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...

20 Mar 202335min

The Naked Emperor Episode 1: The Hype

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 al...

13 Mar 202333min

The Naked Emperor Trailer – Season 1 of Understood

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 chang...

22 Feb 20233min