Introducing "Operator" from Wondery and Topic Studios

Infamous America

Black Barrel Media

True Crime, Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.5 • 2.8K Ratings

🗓️ 8 November 2021

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

During the 1-900 number craze of the Nineties, one company provided the vast majority of phone sex. American Telnet was an empire founded by the man who called himself “The Telephone Pimp.” He ran the company “like General Motors” and got filthy rich doing it. But for the (mostly) women who answered the calls and delivered fantasies 24-7, it was a different story. The powerful stigma against sex work was always lurking just beneath the surface, until it threatened to tear apart the whole company. Hosted by Tina Horn (Why Are People Into That?), OPERATOR is an eight-part series about big ambitions, Shakespearean-level corporate backstabbing, men and women at the cutting edge of a technological revolution...and on the front lines of a sexual one. Listen to Operator now! http://wondery.fm/OP_Infamous_America Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Slack. With Slack, you can bring all your people and
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0:26.9	Slack.com slash DHQ. Love for skin, long for skin, looking for skin? Well, it's simple.
0:33.4	Go to all four, the UK's biggest free streaming service and watch the iconic BAFTA
0:37.2	award-winning coming-of-age series that is Skins. So remember, think all four, four skins.
0:43.4	Watch now on all four. Watch and re-watch.
0:47.4	Compare Channel 4.com slash verify.
0:50.4	Hey, everyone. We've got a wild one here from Wondry and Topic Studios. It's called Operator,
1:02.7	and it's the untold true story of the phone sex line company that took over the world.
1:09.4	In the 1990s, ads for phone sex lines were everywhere, from late-night cable TV commercials
1:15.5	to the backs of magazines, while phone sex operators worked around the clock to fulfill
1:20.9	fantasies. It started with an idea from Mike Pardez, the CEO and founder of American Tell
1:27.3	Net, who proudly called himself the telephone pimp. He was joined by his partner, Michael
1:33.4	Self, who was a tech genius known as the Bill Gates of Phone Sex. But it was the women
1:39.7	on the phones who created the close-knit, yet dysfunctional family that turned American
1:45.8	into the multi-billion dollar company that revolutionized the sex industry.
1:51.2	As fortunes grew, the founders threw wild drug parties on lavish yachts and burned through
1:57.5	cash, and the FCC watched their every move.
2:01.9	Wondry and Topic Studios' new podcast operator is the untold true story of a company that dominated
	...

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