From The Kink Machine: The Hidden Business of Pleasure
Deep Background with Noah Feldman
Pushkin Industries
4.4 • 848 Ratings
🗓️ 10 February 2026
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Streamed by millions every day, porn is everywhere. It shapes our culture, our relationships, and even technology. Yet, nobody seems to know who really controls the business. The power brokers tend to lurk in the shadows, while their performers remain quite literally exposed.
In Pushkin's new audiobook, The Kink Machine: The Hidden Business of Adult Entertainment, two Financial Times journalists, Patricia Nilsson and Alex Barker, start digging into the porn industry and following where the money flows. Their reporting uncovers a shadowy power structure that includes billionaires, tech geniuses, and the most powerful finance companies in the world.
A gripping exposé of how power operates behind the most taboo corner of the internet, Nilsson and Barker unravel a story about control, influence, and an industry with staggering cultural reach that no one really wants to talk about—until now.
Find The Kink Machine on Audible, Spotify, pushkin.fm, or wherever you get audiobooks.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.5 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:04.1 | On June 11, 1998, a deputy from the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department went missing. |
| 0:10.7 | Hey, if don't kill a cop and bury him, what are they going to do to me? |
| 0:14.0 | What really happened to the missing deputy? |
| 0:17.8 | Valley of Shadows, a new series from Pushkin Industries about crime and corruption in California's high desert. |
| 0:26.3 | Listen to Valley of Shadows wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:41.1 | Pushkin. |
| 0:47.2 | Hey listeners, I'm Alex Barker, a journalist with the Financial Times. |
| 0:55.6 | A few years ago, my fellow reporter, Patricia Nilsson and I, spent six months looking at how money flows in the porn industry. |
| 1:02.4 | We gathered our findings in a new audiobook, The Kink Machine, the hidden business of adult entertainment, and today I'm dropping into your feed to share a preview. |
| 1:07.5 | Patricia and I quickly learned that while performers are required to literally bear it all, |
| 1:13.0 | information about the people and businesses who run this industry are kept undercover like a |
| 1:18.6 | state secret. We started to find a power structure that includes billionaires, tech geniuses, |
| 1:25.1 | and the most powerful finance companies in the world. |
| 1:29.0 | It's a story about control, influence, and an industry with staggering cultural reach. |
| 1:35.5 | If you want to hear more, find The Kink Machine, the hidden business of adult entertainment |
| 1:41.2 | at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever you get your audiobooks. |
| 1:49.9 | Introduction. |
| 1:52.7 | How did it feel to you to be taken over by a company that no one knew anything about? |
| 1:59.3 | Well, the deeper I got into it, the more concerned I became about just the general level of secrecy around the company. |
| 2:06.9 | The money has to move, sometimes from a personal account, sometimes from a business account. |
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