The Underworld Podcast - Who Rules Porn? From Hot Money

Episode Date: June 7, 2022

We’re shaking things up today and sharing a preview from Hot Money, a new podcast from our friends at Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times. When Financial Times reporter Patricia Nilsson started digging into the porn industry, she made a shocking discovery: Nobody knew who controlled the biggest porn company in the world. Now, Nilsson and her editor, Alex Barker, have figured out who the guy was, and much more. Their reporting reveals a shadowy power structure that includes billionaires, tech geniuses and the most powerful finance companies in the world. You can hear more from Hot Money at https://podcasts.pushkin.fm/hotmoney?sid=underworld. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Like we do here on Underworld, hot money takes an investigative reporting approach to uncover the power behind porn. When Patricia Nielsen and Alex Barker, two Financial Times reporters, started digging into the porn industry, they made quite the discovery. Porn relies on performers to literally bear it all,

yet information about the people and businesses who run the industry is kept like a state secret. Through firsthand interviews with performers, bankers, directors, and tech pioneers, Patricia and Alex find out out not only who was pulling the strings, but also exposed the barons behind the camera, the digital disruption of the industry, and the competition to be the leader in adult entertainment. It's a story that goes way beyond a single man, revealing a decades-long history that includes

billionaires, tech geniuses, and the most powerful finance companies in the world. In the preview you're about to hear, you'll meet Stoya, a porn star who saw firsthand how a fire hose of free porn online transformed the adult industry. And I actually know Stoya, and she's great, so I think you guys are going to enjoy this. She sends Alex and Patricia on a quest. Get to the bottom of how the business of porn really works. You can hear the full episode and more from Hot Money wherever you get your podcasts. How did it feel to you to be taken over by a company that no one knew anything about? Well, the deeper I got into it, the more concerned I became about just the general level of secrecy around the company. The money has to move. The money has to

move, sometimes from a personal account, sometimes from a business account. That sounded a bit sketchy to me. If you play that fast and loose in that environment, I have to assume that you're playing that fast and loose in every environment. That environment she's talking about, it's pornography. Kelly Holland would know. She's been a fixture of the porn industry since the 90s. She even ran one of its most famous brands, Penthouse.

That is, until she lost it to a mystery investor. And for the industry at large, does it matter that you have these conglomerates that are buying loads of the industry? And we don't really know who owns these companies. I don't think it's healthy. I think it's very problematic. It's healthy for somebody's bottom line and it's healthy for shareholders. But I don't think it's healthy for clients, consumers and the general climate. You know, you can make a choice in business to be friendly competitors,

which is the healthiest way to go and the most profitable way to go, or you can be enemies. I'm Patricia Nelson, and I'm a reporter for the Financial Times. I write about business. Some days it's a fashion chain, on others it's tobacco or a cannabis startup. But recently, my job has mainly involved porn. I started writing about the industry about three years ago, but I have to admit, this last year it's become an obsession.

Business papers don't usually write about the porn. industry, even though it basically owns a big corner of the internet. That in itself made me curious. Why wouldn't we write about porn just like we do with any other legal industry? And I think it's because no one really likes to talk about porn. We're embarrassed to. Even though most of us watched it at some point, it's taboo. And so I started where any business reporter would. This is just an industry with companies, right? I can normally figure out who the owners are, how much money they make, how they're regulated, but porn? It turned out that porn was world apart. The whole industry depends on performers to literally bear it all, but basic information about the businesses

who run the industry are kept like a state secret. I kept finding names that weren't names, and companies that weren't companies. It often felt like I was wandering around the maze. You know that strange sense of never knowing where you're heading or how anything's connected, turns that lead to unexpected places? Like those murky transactions that Kelly Holland talked about, what were they for? What were they hiding? Who or what is behind the business of porn?

And you know what? The Financial Times, we call it the FT, they encouraged me to keep going, to report this out. And my boss? He got sucked in too. That's me, Alex Barker. I managed Patricia's team of business reporters, but my main job is writing about the media industry, the Murdox, Netflix, that kind of thing.

When Patricia asked to look into porn, I knew it wasn't exactly the FT's cup of tea. But it was different and intriguing and only career-threatening if we really botched it up. So I said, sure, see what you can find. And bit by bit, this story of the power behind porn drew me in too. It started with a routine email from Patricia, a little update on her reporting with a bombshell buried halfway down.

She said, I think I found the secret owner of the world's biggest porn company. And she had. But it was just the first turn in that maze. Once we started following the leads, we soon realized we weren't just. just tracking one man or one company, but power. And that's when I really got hooked. Because this industry has outsized influence, truly enormous over our culture,

over the way my kids learn about sex, over almost 8% of all internet traffic. So as journalists, we decided to give the subject the time it deserves. We'd report on the business of porn and the kind of way the FT would report on any other industry. We wanted to work out who made online porn what it is today. Understand who the real decision makers are. What's driving their choices?

Basically, to work out who rules porn. We spent months roving around. We interviewed bankers, porn stars, bankers who became porn stars, even a New York billionaire who helped change the industry with one Texas. message. And after all that, we found some answers. It way out of the great maze of Pornland to a place we definitely didn't expect to end up. This is hot money, a show about power and finance from Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times. Bonjour, compadre. It's the Priceline negotiator. How do I negotiate so many great travel

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What's completely normal and an average Tuesday to me is completely fascinating to like the whole rest of the world. This is Jessica. You might know her from her stage name Stoya. We wanted to talk to Stoyer because she's been there for all the big changes that we're interested in. Stoyer's won the equivalent of an adult Oscar. She's been a headline star and a bit of an alternative porn icon. She's written a book, run literary book clubs, and her columns have appeared in the New York Times and Slate.

Her fans all over the world had bought thousands of sex toys molded on her vagina This is my first proper interview with a porn star I wasn't exactly in my comfort zone So I started with a softball question Just to warm things up Can you tell me a bit about

You know where you grew up and school family No I am here as a porn star So we don't talk about my life Before I turned 18 I think it's inappropriate That's absolutely fine I didn't realize that

So I wouldn't have asked if I had. No worries, but there are some strange people in the world who will fetishize those details and then message me about it. And it makes me feel gross. So I just have a blackout before I turned 18. Absolutely. Stoya is not afraid to speak her mind or step on toes, whether they belong to a porn kingpin or a news reporter.

At this stage, what we really wanted to speak to Stoya about were her early years in the industry. A time when online video streaming changed the porn industry forever. That was a preview of Hot Money, a new podcast from our friends at Pushkin Industries and the Financial Times. Listen to more episodes of Hot Money wherever you get your podcasts. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line.

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