A Death In Cryptoland

What ever happened to some of the first girls to grow up – and blow up – on the internet? 

In the late 2000s, YouTube gave rise to a new profession: kid-fluencer – kids making content for other kids, earning millions-strong audiences and massive paycheques. And for years, some of the most popular YouTube videos for girls lived on one channel: Seven Super Girls. It featured a rotating cast of tween and teen girls uploading sketches, skits and vlogs daily. Host Split Screen: There Goes My Childhood, Lauren White was one of them. Over time, they gained billions of views, big-name sponsors, lineups of screaming fans and more money than a child would know what to do with.

But with their growing success, came new rules from the man in charge: their manager. He began as a mentor, a kind of father figure. Then, he began dictating how the girls had to look, dress and behave. Above all, they had to look as young as they could for as long as they could. And for years, the girls did as he said… until he was put behind bars for hurting one of their own.

Almost a decade after the YouTube empire they built collapsed, the girls are now old enough to tell their own stories for the first time – the fame, the fortune, the friendships and the man they trusted for far too long.

About Split Screen: Welcome to Split Screen, an examination of the utterly captivating, sometimes unsettling world of entertainment and pop culture. From reality TV gone awry, to the cult of celebrity, each season of Split Screen takes listeners on an evocative journey inside the world of showbiz. 

More episodes of There Goes My Childhood are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/TGMCxCrypto

How did sports betting go from being illegal to being EVERYWHERE? The answer lies in the convergence of daily fantasy sports apps, a bombshell New York Times op-ed, and the potential of a multi-billion dollar payout. This episode of Understood: The Big Bet tells the story of how a pivotal Supreme Court ruling set the stage for one of the biggest scandals in sports history — one involving a Toronto Raptors bench player named Jontay Porter. 

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.

More episodes of The Big Bet are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/TBBxCyrptoland

It’s here. AI has arrived in the criminal justice system and it’s in the role of witness. The Expert Witness, hosted by Sam Mullins asks: what happens when AI enters the courtroom? Who is benefitting from this mysterious technology? And who’s accountable when AI gets it wrong? More episodes of The Expert Witness are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/TEWxCryptoland

About UNCOVER: Crime. Investigation. Revelation. Uncover brings you explosive, high-caliber true crime year-round. From CIA mind control to serial abuse, mysterious disappearances to wrongful imprisonment. Each season features a new host who is deeply connected to the story, committed to tracking down the truth. 

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 promises of the internet — we explore the stories that define our digital age with hosts and characters embedded in the heart of the action. 

More episodes of Deepfake Porn Empire are available wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/DPExDC

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?

Know more, now. Understood is an anthology podcast from the CBC that takes you out of the daily news cycle and inside the events, people, and cultural moments you want to know more about. You can find Understood wherever you get your podcasts, and here: https://link.mgln.ai/CryptolandxMoM 

A murder victim with multiple identities. A criminal on the run from his past. Dirtbag Climber from Uncover is a five-part podcast series investigating the unsolved homicide of “Jesse James,” a “dirtbag” rock climber found dead in Squamish, British Columbia, Canada. Local reporter Steven Chua dives into the case, determined to find answers. Along the twisted way, he tracks a stranger-than-fiction story that criss-crosses North America, unveiling a stunning portrait of an enigmatic con artist — a troubling victim whose twisted life story foreshadowed the darkest digital undercurrents of our time. More episodes of Dirtbag Climber are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/dc-cyrptoland

The Outlaw Ocean is an anthology podcast that plunges you into the vast and often lawless world of the open seas. Today we're featuring an investigation from S2 called The Repo Man of the Seas. 

In this episode, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ian Urbina joins Max Hardberger. Depending on who you ask, Max is either a seagoing James Bond or a swashbuckling pirate. Hardberger runs a rare kind of repo service, extracting huge ships from foreign ports. His company is a last resort for ship owners whose vessels have been seized, often by bad actors, and over the years he’s built a reputation for taking the kinds of jobs others turn down. Hardberger’s specialty is infiltrating hostile territory and taking control of ships in whatever way he can – usually through subterfuge and stealth. Whatever part of the world his missions take him, Hardberger thrives in its grey areas.

More episodes of The Outlaw Ocean are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/oo-crypto

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 Understood: Who Broke the Internet, Doctorow gets into the decisions made by powerful people that got us here, and most importantly, how we fix it. More episodes of Who Broke the Internet are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/jBaUeU

FBI undercover agent Scott Payne’s job was to infiltrate the most dangerous gangs of our times: outlaw bikers, drug cartels and the international neo-Nazi networks hellbent on inciting a race war. 

He was taking down these groups from within. And Scott was good at it — people confided in him their most audacious plans for mass violence and domestic terrorism.

In the second season of White Hot Hate, host Michelle Shephard gives you an unvarnished view of a life undercover. Because after a 28-year-long career pretending to be somebody else, Agent Payne is ready to tell his side of the story. 

This series was produced alongside a book co-written by Scott Payne and Michelle Shephard titled Code Name: Pale Horse: How I Went Undercover to Expose America's Nazis.

More episodes of White Hot Hate: Agent Pale Horse are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/bkXg16

Kaitlyn Braun, a pregnant young woman in crisis, takes dozens of birth workers through an escalating series of disasters – rape, baby loss, and even a coma. One by one, the doulas struggle to support her and grieve with her, and even save her life as they’re led down a distressing path. And then the truth comes out.

In this six-part true crime series, Sarah Treleaven untangles a complex web of lies and deception to ask who Kaitlyn really is and why she did the things that she did. Cases like these puzzle legal experts and raise intricate moral and ethical questions. This is not your average con. Kaitlyn is not your usual scammer.

Kaitlyn's Baby is Season 2 of The Con — a podcast exposing the art of deception — from CBC and the BBC World Service. Season 1 - the critically acclaimed catfishing quest, Love, Janessa, launched in January 2023.

Content warning: The latest season of The Con contains references to medical emergencies, including baby loss. We also deal with sexual assault and there is some strong language.

More episodes are available at: https://link.mgln.ai/ioH2wt