Are two-minute vertical videos the future of television? On this week’s episode, gonzo reporter extraordinaire Daniel Kolitz walks us through “Secret Billionaires, Mafia Brides, Alpha Kings: The Insane World of Microdramas,” his brain-bending New York Times Magazine cover story on the smutty, histrionic, questionably money laundering-adjacent world of the microdrama, a shortform vertical video-based spin on the traditional soap opera that is sort of the televisual brainrot equivalent of the Romantasy craze.

We dig into how the Chinese-born phenomenon of microdramas rose to become a driving economic engine of post-pandemic Hollywood, what its mercenary production practices tell us about the state of labor in the industry, and the geopolitical implications of companies in countries like China effectively offshoring to the U.S. We also get into softcore pornography’s increasingly central role propping up contemporary cultural industries, and what it means to live in a world where this sort of algorithm-driven slop can co-exist with three-hour movies like You Can See Everything and the sort of ambitious longform journalism Daniel specializes in. Plus, Daniel tells us about his just-announced first book, Goonworld, which is loosely inspired by his ASME award-winning article about the gooning community for Harper’s.

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“Paid Phones: Owing the payday loan apps” (The Baffler)

“The Goon Squad: Loneliness, porn’s next frontier, and the dream of endless masturbation” (Harper’s)

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Inside the microdrama industrial complex

The Culture Journalist

Inside the microdrama industrial complex