Disruptors
RBC Thought Leadership, John Stackhouse · Royal Bank of Canada
Show overview
Disruptors has been publishing since 2018, and across the 8 years since has built a catalogue of 240 episodes, alongside 10 trailers or bonus episodes. That works out to roughly 110 hours of audio in total. Releases follow a fortnightly cadence, with the show now in its 10th season.
Episodes typically run twenty to thirty-five minutes — most land between 26 min and 33 min — and the run-time is fairly consistent across the catalogue. None of the episodes are flagged explicit by the publisher. It is catalogued as a EN-language Business show.
The show is actively publishing — the most recent episode landed 5 days ago, with 24 episodes already out so far this year. Published by Royal Bank of Canada.
From the publisher
Disruptors, now in its 10th season, has become your front-row seat to Canada’s innovation story—200+ episodes exploring the people, ideas, and technologies reshaping Canada’s future. Each episode, hosted by John Stackhouse, SVP, Office of the CEO at Royal Bank of Canada—and former Editor-in-Chief of The Globe and Mail—cuts through the hype and focuses on what you need to know. This season, we’re leaning into urgency: the global economy is shifting, geopolitics are noisy, and Canada needs to respond. You’ll hear from founders, investors, scientists, operators, and policy leaders at the forefront. Listen for a clearer understanding of the tech and innovation shaping Canada and the world—and practical insights to help you make sense of what’s coming next.
Latest Episodes
View all 240 episodesDigital Refineries: Data centres as Alberta’s new resource
Canada's Biotech Challenge
Two Middle Powers. One AI Bet
Canada's A.I. Potential
David, Goliath, and Drones: The New Map of Geo-Technology
REBOOT: The Trust Advantage: How OpenText is Securing Canada’s Information Layer
REBOOT: Beyond the Battery: Inside Quebec’s Mine-to-Refine Transformation
REBOOT: Port to Prosperity: How Roberts Bank Terminal 2 Is Rebuilding Canada’s Pacific Gateway
From Ottawa to Orbit: Two Views on Canada’s Big Day
Own The Stack: Canada's Data Sovereignty Test
Can AI Fix ER Wait Times?
Canada’s Tech Growth Challenge
Permission To Prompt: AI’s Path From Experimentation to Scale
The Canadian Unicorn Who Stayed
From MLB to Metallica: The Canadian Company redefining live events
Street Smarts: The Waterloo company tackling global gridlock
AI's power, pitfalls, and potential
REBOOT: Building Canada: A new generation takes charge.
S10 Ep 6Trust at Scale: Lessons from Wikipedia
Trust at Scale: Lessons from Wikipedia Wikipedia is one of the internet’s most-used public resources, but what makes people trust it in an era shaped by AI, misinformation and institutional decline? On this episode of Disruptors, John Stackhouse speaks with Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales about how Wikipedia built trust, why neutrality still matters, and what generative AI gets wrong. They discuss community governance, social media, local journalism, online accountability, young people’s information habits and what businesses can learn from a platform designed around public trust. In this episode you’ll understand: Why Wikipedia still earns trust when so much of the internet does not. What neutrality looks like in a polarized digital environment. Why AI makes trusted human systems more important, not less. RBC – Thought Leadership Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
S10 Ep 5Tech Wins Gold: How Canada Can Rebuild Its Olympic Pipeline
Canada’s Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics delivered unforgettable moments — and also a hard signal: podium success is increasingly won upstream, through systems, sport science, and technology. In a world where competitors treat sport science as infrastructure, Canada is trying to win with a thinner pipeline and a funding model that can push costs onto athletes. That’s not just unfair — it’s strategically risky. In our latest Disruptors episode, host John Stackhouse sits down with David Shoemaker, CEO and Secretary General of the Canadian Olympic Committee, and Jennifer Heil, Olympic champion (Turin 2006 gold; Vancouver 2010 silver) and Chef de Mission for Team Canada at Milano Cortina 2026. This episode unpacks what “modernization” means. It’s the same logic that drives performance in business: small gains compound when the system is designed to learn. You’ll also hear why talent identification matters and how RBC Training Ground points to what a scalable pipeline can look like when measurement meets opportunity.Home-field advantage: How to scale Canadian sport tech primerRBC Training GroundRBC Thought Leadership Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.