David Simon’s “The Deuce” Charts the Rise of Pornography

David Simon’s “The Deuce” Charts the Rise of Pornography

WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. Sign up for our newsletters to stay up to date on the stories that matter.

David Simon is sympathetic to the sex workers he depicts in “The Deuce,” which will return to HBO for its second season in September. He is even sympathetic to some of the pimps and mobsters who were involved in the early years of the porn business. He is unambiguously critical, however, of porn’s effect on America. He tells David Remnick that porn—universally available on the Internet in its most extreme forms — has warped a whole society toward misogyny, and that we have not yet begun to reckon with its effects. Plus, the fiction writer Yiyun Li on the appeal of cemeteries, and Nick Lowe talks about getting old gracefully in rock and roll.