This is a CBC podcast. Hey listeners, I'm Alex Barker, a journalist with the Financial Times. A few years ago, my fellow reporter, Patricia Nilsson and I, spent six months looking at how money flows in the porn industry. 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.

Patricia and I quickly learned that while performers are required to literally bear it all,

information about the people and businesses who run this industry are kept undercover like a state secret.

We started to find a power structure that includes billionaires, tech geniuses, and the most powerful finance companies in the world.

It's a story about control, influence and an industry with staggering cultural reach. If you want to hear more,

find The Kink Machine, the Hidden Business of Adult Entertainment at Pushkin.fm slash audiobooks, or wherever

you get your audiobooks. Introduction.

How did it feel to you to be taken over by a company that no one knew anything about?

Well, the deeper I got into it, the more concerned I became about just the general level of secrecy around the company.

The money has to move, sometimes from a

personal account, sometimes from a business account. That sounded a bit sketchy to me. If you play

that fast and loose in that environment, I have to assume that you're playing that fast and loose

in every environment. That environment she's talking about, it's pornography.

Kelly Holland would know.

She's been a fixture of the porn industry since the 90s.

She even ran one of its most famous brands, Penthouse.

That is, until she lost it to a mystery investor.

And for the industry at large, does it matter that you have these conglomerates that are

buying loads of the industry?

And we don't really know who owns these companies.

I don't think it's healthy.

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