What is the point of Hollywood? There are two obvious answers, right? To make good stuff that entertains people. And to make money for the big studios and the people who work for them.

Those two things don’t have to be mutually exclusive. But writer Daniel Bessner believes increasingly they have been.

Bessner spent a year working on a deep dive into how Hollywood has evolved for Harper’s Magazine, called “The Life and Death of Hollywood”. Bessner is also a historian and host of the podcast “American Prestige”. He spoke to host Jayme Poisson last April.