“Running Red-Lights” is a limited series podcast about the untold history of sex work in San Antonio and the women who ran the industry, but who weren’t allowed to make history.

We talked with librarians, pastors, archivists and sex workers to help uncover San Antonio’s red-light district. It was one of the busiest in the country.

City government, the military, the church — all institutions that still loom large in the city today — played a role in the making and breaking of the district. But the madams’ stories are mostly unknown. Today the sex industry operates underground. History will repeat itself if we lose these stories forever.