From Slate Money: “The Business of Black Markets”
Against the Rules with Michael Lewis
Pushkin Industries
4.4 • 9.9K Ratings
🗓️ 1 April 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Here's an episode from Slate Money: Money Talks. Host Felix Salmon is joined by journalist Mariana van Zeller, who has spent years reporting on black and gray markets around the world and has a new podcast, The Hidden Third, that delves into these powerful underground economies. They’ll get into what Mariana has seen embedded with criminal operators, from the surprisingly mundane to the darker side of working outside the system. Podcast production by Jessamine Molli and Cheyna Roth.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.6 | Porn is everywhere. |
| 0:06.2 | Millions stream it every day, yet nobody seems to know who really controls the business. |
| 0:11.7 | I'm Alex Barker. |
| 0:12.9 | I'm a journalist at the Financial Times. |
| 0:14.9 | Years ago, my fellow reporter Patricia Nilsson and I started digging into the porn industry |
| 0:19.9 | to find out how the money flows. |
| 0:22.5 | And in our new audiobook, The Kink Machine, the Hidden Business of Adult Entertainment, |
| 0:27.4 | you'll hear our investigation into the power and influence that drives the most taboo corners of the internet. |
| 0:35.2 | Find the Kink Machine, the hidden business of adult entertainment at pushkin.fm slash |
| 0:41.0 | audiobooks or at audible, Spotify, or wherever you get your audiobooks. |
| 0:50.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:59.0 | It's against the rules producer, L.J. here. |
| 1:02.1 | We're sharing an episode of Slate Money, a podcast hosted by Felix Salmon, Emily Peck, and Elizabeth Spires. |
| 1:10.5 | Each week, they cover the biggest stories in business and finance. |
| 1:14.9 | In this episode, Felix talks to a journalist, Marianna Van Zeller, about black markets. |
| 1:22.2 | Black and gray markets make up 35% of the world economy, and yet we hardly know anything about them. |
| 1:30.0 | Zeller has spent years talking to people who actually work in these markets, and the stuff that |
| 1:35.1 | she's found out is pretty surprising. On Slate Money, you'll hear all about topics like, |
| 1:41.9 | how might the explosion of prediction markets change our world? |
| 1:46.6 | Why did the CEO of McDonald's take such a tiny bite out of McDonald's new burger? |
... |
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