21: Ashley Mathews (aka Riley Reid) - The mogul and brains behind America's Sweetheart
The Portal
Kast Media
4.7 • 7.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 February 2020
⏱️ 113 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Historically, fighting obscenity and indecency charges has always been a central part of the free speech movement. Jim Morrison, Mae West, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin have all been arrested for exciting the public in ways that authorities have found threatening. Recently, however, the erotic and comedic arts have undergone more cryptic attacks via Operation Chokepoint, "cancellation", "no platforming", and inadequate press coverage given to cases of legal intimidation (e.g. the federal case under Miller v California standards brought against director John Stagliano).
In this episode, Eric sits down with the business woman who created the enduring character of the unlikely top pornstar Riley Reid. Continuing the theme of the DISC (Distributed Idea Suppression Complex) we discuss issues like Operation Chokepoint and obscenity law as well more subtle issues like the difficulty of finding vendors willing to cross the Rubicon to work with legal erotic businesses.
Ashley, in the role of the Riley Reid character, has defied all pornographic convention by embracing body positivity, forgoing plastic surgery and opting for natural body hair at times. Additionally she has made a social statement by doing a popular artistic scene which makes a political and business case for greater transsexual acceptance. Her main tool appears to be a palpable human decency and sweetness coupled to an uncanny ability to assess, manage and survive extreme business risk within a poorly understood industry that has confounded all expectations.
While this episode is generally not explicit, it is not for everyone given the content and so listener discretion is advised.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It is a very simple observation that sex is sexy. |
| 0:04.0 | That is almost, but not quite, a topology. |
| 0:07.0 | Yet its implications seem, at least to me, to be quite profound and easily missed, given |
| 0:11.4 | that one could argue from first principles that sex is ultimately one of the most powerful |
| 0:15.5 | forces shaping human society. |
| 0:17.6 | But whenever we attempt to discuss sex directly, our autonomic nervous system becomes engaged |
| 0:22.7 | if we're not very careful. |
| 0:24.6 | As the comedian Tom Lehrer once said, when correctly viewed, everything is lured. |
| 0:29.3 | If you look hard enough, you will see that nearly every sentence has a double entendre, |
| 0:33.2 | like that last one. |
| 0:34.9 | As a result, when we attempt to analyze and discuss sex and sexuality using our prefrontal |
| 0:39.1 | cortex, the conversation almost reliably goes off the rails with a probability approaching |
| 0:44.0 | one, as our lower brains become engaged, aroused, and amused. |
| 0:48.9 | It's almost designed not to be discussable. |
| 0:51.5 | Yet there are two groups of people I see who do better than the rest of us in this regard. |
| 0:55.6 | Some academics, such as evolutionary theorists, physicians, and sex researchers, and commercial |
| 1:00.6 | sex workers. |
| 1:02.3 | In this episode, I'm interviewing one of the world's most famous actresses. |
| 1:06.0 | Yet her name is all but unknown. |
| 1:07.9 | She is Ashley Matthews, creator of Riley Reid, one of the top porn stars of our time. |
| 1:13.1 | My goal in this conversation is to try to stop sex from becoming sexy just long enough so |
| 1:17.6 | that we might learn a little bit more about how the pornography community and its civilian |
... |
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