Ep. 4: Children

November 3, 2017·30 min·2 clips

A 13-year-old finds a custom porn video of her mother having sex on her bed, sent by classmates at school.

The frame stays unsettled on purpose. A friend wants the series to come down anti-porn, while Conor Habib tells John Ronson that upbeat and bleak stories both live in the valley. Ronson lets that bias sit in the room instead of pretending it is gone. Mike Quasar, whom Ronson has followed for months, talks about darkness in the business and young girls being pushed by older boyfriends. Then the episode leaves the valley. Ronson drives through flat Oklahoma farmland to meet Nathan, whose family story becomes the episode's sharpest example of children watching free online porn. Nathan is 22 years old and lives with his mother, Tina, in a house at the edge of town. They start with his infancy. Tina remembers a child who never slept, always moved, and could get by on a 15-minute nap. Doctors arrived early. She says Nathan was diagnosed with multiple disorders and given medication to help him sleep. What happened next still sounds wild: within 24 hours, she says, he lifted and threw a heavy floor model television because it was raining outside. Nathan is blunt about it. He lists ADHD, ADD combined type, asthma, Asperger's syndrome, autism, and bipolar one with psychotic features. His age stops Ronson. Nathan says most of those diagnoses came when he was two years old. The episode keeps resisting a neat argument. Nathan is not turned into proof. His mother, his own plain account, and Ronson's road narration do the work. The closing exchange is colder. A performer says she does not picture 10-year-old children watching while she works because that thought would make it hard to function. Then Ronson says the butterfly effect will reach a church school in New Orleans, and the story is no longer contained in one house.

As heard by us

A grave, patient look at porn, children, and the damage that follows the stories people prefer.

This episode treats porn as both story and aftermath, with John Ronson keeping a measured distance while Conor Habib, Mike Quasar, and Nathan's family pull the subject in different directions.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

If you want a sober, intimate look at porn's collision with childhood, press play.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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