The Red Light Review
Sex work, power, and money — past and present, around the world.
The trillion-dollar industry that runs through every city on earth at every moment in history, told the way it actually works. Amsterdam windows and Bangkok blow job bars. Pompeii graffiti and Edo Yoshiwara. Epstein's flight logs and Madame Claude's little black book.
Episodes
Every region. Every era. The details polite history leaves out.
EP. 01 Bangkok Go-Go
Bar fines, blow-job bars, and the ping pong show — inside the most institutionalized red-light economy in Asia
EP. 02 Amsterdam
The window economy, regulation, and the Dutch model
EP. 03 Jeffrey Epstein
The financier, the island, and the network
EP. 04 The Anal Trade
Pompeii pedicare graffiti, the Berlin FKK menu, the Bangkok A-level surcharge, the honor-culture inversion
EP. 05 Ancient Rome
Lupanars, prices, and the regulation of vice in the empire
EP. 06 Tokyo Fuzoku
How Japan rebuilt its sex industry around legal loopholes — soapland, pink salon, fashion health, delivery health
EP. 07 Price of Sex
What an hour cost in Pompeii vs. Edo Yoshiwara vs. Belle Époque Paris vs. modern Bangkok
EP. 08 Belle Époque Paris
Maisons closes, Le Chabanais, and the great courtesans
EP. 09 Heidi Fleiss
The rise, arrest, and trial of Hollywood's billion-dollar madam
EP. 10 The Oral Trade
Pompeii fellatrix, the French vice, the Storyville Blue Book, the Bangkok BJ bar, the OWO/CIM menu
EP. 11 New York City I
Tenderloin, Five Points, and the gilded-age brothel boom
EP. 12 Hamburg
Reeperbahn, the Herbertstraße wall, and German legalization
EP. 13 Pattaya
Walking Street, Soi 6 short-time bars, BJ bars, ping pong shows — the Pattaya tourism economy
EP. 14 The Profumo Affair
Sex, spies, and the scandal that shook Westminster
EP. 15 Ancient Greece
Pornai, hetairai, and Aspasia of Miletus
EP. 16 Las Vegas & Nevada Brothels
Mustang Ranch, Moonlite BunnyRanch, and Nevada's licensed brothel system
EP. 17 Seoul
Kiss bangs, room salons, the 10% culture, the juicy bar scandal
EP. 18 Berlin
Artemis, the post-2002 brothel boom, and Oranienburger Straße
EP. 19 Weimar Berlin (1920s)
Cocaine, Eldorado, and the kinks of pre-Nazi Germany
EP. 20 Polly Adler
NYC's Jazz Age madam and 'A House Is Not A Home'
EP. 21 Tokyo II
Kyabakura, snack bars, the JK business and host clubs
EP. 22 New York City II
Modern NYC, Queens massage parlors, Eliot Spitzer, and the escort-app era
EP. 23 Paris (Modern)
Pigalle past and present, and the abolitionist law of 2016
EP. 24 Imperial China
Courtesan culture and Shanghai's flower houses
EP. 25 Medieval Europe
Church-licensed brothels, the stews of London, and sumptuary laws
EP. 26 Manila & Angeles City
Bar fines, the US military legacy, and Fields Avenue
EP. 27 Los Angeles
The Hollywood escort scene, Sunset Strip, and modern LA
EP. 28 London I
Soho's history, walk-ups, and the Maltese gangs
EP. 29 The Hand Job Trade
The Pompeii frictrix, the Victorian masseuse, the Bangkok soapy, the Florida AMP, the German FKK hand-finish tier
EP. 30 Ancient Mesopotamia
Temple priestesses and the sacred-prostitution debate
EP. 31 Mumbai & Kolkata
Kamathipura and Sonagachi — the world's largest red-light districts
EP. 32 Tijuana & Mexican Border Towns
Zona Norte, the Hong Kong Bar, and cartel-controlled border vice
EP. 33 Madrid & Barcelona
Club Paradise, highway clubs, and Spain's grey-zone industry
EP. 34 Victorian London
Child prostitution and W.T. Stead's 'Maiden Tribute' exposé
EP. 35 Madame Claude
France's super-madam to presidents and kings
EP. 36 Ho Chi Minh City & Hanoi
Karaoke ôm, massage parlors, and Vietnam's hidden vice economy
EP. 37 Rio & São Paulo
Vila Mimosa, the termas, and Brazil's complicated legal status
EP. 38 Prague & Eastern Europe
Czech mega-brothels, K5 Relax, and the post-Soviet sex economy
EP. 39 Comfort Women System (WWII)
Imperial Japan's military comfort-women system
EP. 40 Bangkok II
Soapy massage, happy-ending parlors, and ladyboy bars
EP. 41 Phnom Penh & Sihanoukville
The Cambodian bar scene and the Chinese capital influx
EP. 42 Bogotá & Medellín
La Candelaria, Parque Lleras, and prepago culture
EP. 43 Athens & Greece
Licensed houses and the Greek regulation model
EP. 44 Cynthia Payne
Streatham's 'Madam Cyn' and the luncheon-voucher brothel
EP. 45 Bali & Jakarta
Spas, Blok M, and the closure of Dolly
EP. 46 Macau & Hong Kong
Saunas, the 'fishball' girls, and mainland clientele
EP. 47 Buenos Aires
Tango's brothel origins and the Zwi Migdal trafficking ring
EP. 48 Zürich & Geneva
Sex boxes, Swiss regulation, and the high-end Swiss escort scene
EP. 49 London II
Modern escort agencies and the sugar-baby economy
EP. 50 Trans Sex Workers Across Cultures
Kathoey, hijra, travestis — trans sex work across cultures
EP. 51 OnlyFans & the Digital Revolution
How the internet changed sex work — OnlyFans and the digital revolution
EP. 52 Dubai & the Gulf
How prostitution works in Dubai and the Gulf — illegal and inevitable
Listen anywhere
About the show
The Red Light Review is an investigative-journalism podcast about sex work, power, and money — what it actually costs, who actually profits, and how the industry has been organized across four thousand years and every continent on earth.
We follow the receipts. The exact bar-fine on Soi Cowboy and the markup an Amsterdam window operator takes off the top. The graffito on a Pompeii wall advertising Eutychis for two asses. The Yoshiwara rank system that priced a top-tier oiran at more than a samurai's annual stipend. Madame Claude's index cards on senators and presidents. Heidi Fleiss's $1,500-a-night ledger. The flight logs out of Palm Beach.
Each episode is built from primary documents — court records, police archives, parliamentary inquiries, cuneiform tablets, ledger books, academic monographs, and on-the-ground reporting in the cities themselves. The goal is the texture of how the trade actually works: the prices, the power structures, the laws that get written and the ones that get ignored, and the people who get rich while everyone else looks away.
No erotica. No moralizing. Just the facts of a trillion-dollar industry that touches every city on earth, hosted by people who took the time to read the footnotes.
Tips, corrections, requests: [email protected]