The Big Listen ended production in May 2018. While this site is no longer updated, all the content remains available for archive purposes.
Writer Jon Ronson has embedded himself with all types of groups at the fringes, most recently porn performers.
In the first episode of The Butterfly Effect, writer Jon Ronson explains his motivation for the series. He was in a hotel lobby waiting to meet a porn performer for an interview. And when she walked towards him, he noticed how other people with looking at her — with abject scorn. Ronson realized that people are only too happy to consume pornography in the confines of their homes. But when a real life porn star steps out from behind the screen and into real life, people are aghast.
That’s what prompted The Butterfly Effect, Ronson’s series from Audible. The proliferation of free online porn has made adult entertainment ubiquitous. Middle schoolers know porn stars by name, people can commission custom porn to satisfy all proclivities and everyone now has the technology to shoot their own porn films if they so desire.
But Ronson wanted to know how we got here. And how the gates of porn swung open. Apparently, it was all the work of one man — Fabian. Fabian Thylmann founded a tech company that allowed users to upload pornography and for viewers to watch it free of charge. Ultimately much of what populated the site was pirated.
Over the course of seven episodes, Ronson tracks the knock-on effect of free online porn. He talks with porn performers who can’t get a bank account because of their work, the evangelical daughter of a man rounded up in the Ashley Madison leak and lots of other folks caught up in the porn world. The series is definitely worth a listen if for no other reason than Ronson gives a voice to people we watch but never hear from.
What Else Is On This Week’s Show?
- The Rooms Project — About a year into her sobriety, journalism professor Jillian Bauer-Reese started a project to document the lives of people in substance abuse recovery. The result is a multimedia endeavor that has taken her to half of the U.S. states interviewing everyone from priests and doctors to people who are homeless about their paths to recovery. When we hear so much about addiction, it’s a nice change of pace to hear from people who have overcome.
- Closer Than They Appear — Writer Carvell Wallace’s work about sports, music and pop culture has always been firmly rooted in context — where we are now, and how did we get here. Recently, he decided to apply that same lens to a dual-narrative podcast about the cracks in his own family and America’s national estrangement. The result is a lush portrait of a man trying to figure things out. And bringing some friends on the journey to help.
- Terrestrial — Environmental reporting can be doom and gloom and super serious and make us want to bury our collective heads in the sand. Ashley Ahearn is trying to change that. She’s an environment reporter, but she’s not so interested in chronicling the problems of our changing planet. The show focuses on the choices people are making in response to those changes. Like, for example, the uptick in environmental asthma or the U.S.’s move to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement.
- Very attractive listener recommendations: Bodega Boys and The Black Russian
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Thanks for listening, pals! ‘Til next time…keep listening, America.
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