The Battle for Reality

Misinformation is tearing our country apart, and trust in our institutions, and in each other, is at an all time low. Some experts think we're at a breaking point, and new technologies are only going to make misinformation more persuasive - and more corrosive. To learn about the importance of socia…

The Top of the Pyramid

A TikTok influencer with tens of thousands of followers is convinced that the world is controlled by an evil cabal of pedophiles. How does someone come to harbor such extreme views? And what happens to our politics - and our society - when those views start resonating with a growing number of peopl…

From Russia with Love

In the winter of 2022, thousands of Canadians descended on Ottawa for the Freedom Convoy. It was one of the largest displays of civil disobedience in the country's history - a movement by Canadians, for Canadians. But if that's the case, why did Russia's state controlled TV networks send correspond…

Sharia Creep

After Alexandre Bisonette was arrested for murdering six Muslim men in cold blood, investigators looked into his internet history and found that he'd fallen down a far right rabbit hole. In this episode, we take a step back from the pandemic to tell a story about online extremism, the political ut…

The Snake Oil Salesman

Before a COVID vaccine had even been announced, prominent anti-vaxxers were working on a plan to discredit it. It's unclear whether their plans were driven by greed or by ideology, but one thing is clear: there's big money in espousing conspiracy theories. And a doctor who lost his medical licence…

Freedom, Baby, Freedom

When the pandemic hit in 2020, it suddenly seemed like conspiracy theories were everywhere. But where did those ideas come from? And why did so many people believe them? Selena Paley, the co-founder of an alternative media outlet called Freedom Central, explains her anti-vaccine views and talks ab…

Screen Time S2: The Battle for Reality

When the pandemic hit in 2020, it suddenly seemed like conspiracy theories were everywhere. Did Bill Gates put a microchip in the vaccine? Is the World Economic Forum trying to take over the world? Was the pandemic orchestrated by a secret cabal of elites? A recent poll found that 1 in 4 Canadians …

S1 E6: A new model for a kid-friendly internet

When it comes to data, tech companies treat anyone 13 and over as an adult. How did this happen? Hosts Taylor Owen and Nicole Edwards explore how the internet's definition of a child goes back to a single American law passed in the 1990s. Then, we hear from Baroness Beeban Kidron, an advocate for…

S1 E5: The case for giving your kids more freedom online

Every parent is forced to make tough choices about how much freedom to give their child online. How do you decide what the limits are? And what's the right level of risk? In this episode, hosts Taylor Owen and Nicole Edwards set out to find out just how worried we should be about teens' online saf…

S1 E4: Kids and YouTube: Who's watching who?

YouTube is an ever-expanding video library that's home to a huge range of content-most of which is intended for adults. The difficult task of curating children's experiences on the platform often falls to parents. Co-hosts Taylor Owen and Nicole Edwards explore the reasons YouTube Kids isn't a quic…