Introducing: Operator

We Saw the Devil: A True Crime Podcast

Robin Coleman

True Crime, News Commentary, History, News

4.2 • 968 Ratings

🗓️ 9 November 2021

⏱️ 6 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! "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_We_Saw_The_Devil

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/we-saw-the-devil-a-true-crime-podcast--4433638/support.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hey listeners I just started a new miniseries from Wundery and Topic Studios called Operator, the
0:06.9	untold true story of the phone sex line company that took over the world.
0:11.4	In the 90s, ads for phone sex lines could be seen everywhere,
0:14.6	flickering on late night cable channels and printed on the back of magazines while
0:19.1	phone sex operators worked around the clock to fulfill fantasies.
0:23.2	It all started with an idea from Mike Parties, the CEO and founder of American Telnet, who proudly
0:29.0	coined himself the telephone pimp.
0:32.3	He was joined by tech genius and partner Michael Self who was known as the Bill Gates of phone sex. But it was the women behind the phones who created the close-knit yet dysfunctional family that turned American
0:43.8	Talnut into a multi-billion dollar company and revolutionized the sex industry.
0:48.8	As fortunes grew, the founders were sailing lavish yachts, fueling wild drug parties, and burning through cash by the minute, and the FCC was watching their every move.
0:59.0	Wondery and Topic Studios new podcast operator is the untold true story of a company
1:04.6	which dominated the phone sex industry until the money blinded them and it all came
1:09.1	crashing down. I'm going to play you a brief preview of operator and introduce you to The Heart Victoria.
1:16.0	But while you're listening, make sure to follow operator on Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music,
1:21.0	or you can listen early and ad free by subscribing to Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts or The Wondery App.
1:27.0	I got a call about 2 o'clock in a morning from one of the male supervisors and he says
1:38.0	there are a bunch of men with guns on the property and we don't know what to do.
1:45.0	Victoria had been working in American Telnet for several years.
1:49.0	She'd seen her share of emergencies so she didn't freak out right away. And I said, okay, are they
1:54.8	police? He says, I really don't know they're plain clothes. I said plain clothes suits
1:58.9	or he goes, no jeans. He goes, they said they were placed, but they were refusing to show a badge.
2:05.0	Victoria's job was managing a big team of phone operators, all crammed into a nondescript warehouse
	...

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