My guest this week is historian Eric Gonzaba, whose fascinating work includes the Wearing Gay History archive — a collection of vintage queer t-shirts — and Mapping the Gay Guides, an accounting of queer travel guides from the 60s and 70s. Eric’s interest in history was piqued at an early age, when he developed an obsession for the Kennedy Center Honors, which pay annual tribute to lifetime innovators in the cultural fields. And it’s through his field of study that he continues to explore our...

My guest this week is an old friend. I first met Tim Sheridan about a decade ago, when we were both writers trying to figure out how to make a living doing what we loved. Well, it took some time, but we both figured it out. Today, Tim’s the celebrated writer of major movies and comics, from Justice League to He-Man and Transformers and Batman and Superman. His latest series is Alan Scott: The Green Lantern, which explores the story of a superhero hiding his homosexuality in the 1940s. We’ll...

My guest this week is actor Ray Stewart, who first came to my attention in the role of Darryl Driscoll on the 70s sitcom Barney Miller. Ray played half of a same-sex couple at a time when such characters were vanishingly rare. But you’ve also seen him on everything from The Bob Newhart Show to Benson to Days of Our Lives and more — and that’s not even touching on his career in film and Broadway. Ray’s work has taken him around the world and across countless stages, and at 91 years old he’s...

My guest this week is Karel Bouley. Back in the 90s, Karel and his partner Andrew Howard were the first openly queer couple to host a major market drive time radio show in the US. And after Andrew unexpectedly passed away in the early 2000s, Karel helped change California laws around suing for wrongful death. For leaving a mark in those and many other ways, the city of Long Beach will recognize the couple with a ceremony next week, adding them to the local wall of fame in Harvey Milk Plaza. I...

I’m speaking this week with Wilson Paulino, who co-hosts the Wilferland podcast with his partner Fernando. Wilson grew up in a pretty idyllic tourist town in the Dominican Republic, where life was good … as long as he didn’t talk about who he really was. Quietly closeted, he watched gay couples on American TV shows, living lives that seemed impossibly far away. But meeting his partner helped open a new chapter for them both — one that bears surprising resemblance to some of their favorite...

In honor of the start of October, the spookiest month, this week we’re diving into the Sewers of Paris archives to hear my 2015 interview with Jamie Mauer, who you may also know as Rantasmo, the creator of the Needs More Gay YouTube series. Jamie grew up loving unsettling stories — like a lot of queer people. For those of us who feel pressure to hide their true selves, horror and fantasy — and particularly Halloween — provide a chance to trade one mask for another, be someone new, and scare...

My guest this week is Frank Abate, who’s about to open the first shelter and community center for queer youth in the Dominican Republic. He’s been working on this project for a long time, with the help of many fellow activists, and it hasn’t been easy. But Frank’s drawn inspiration from many sources, from moving queer stories in movies like Torch Song Trilogy … and from his travels around the, which were partially inspired, many years ago, by sitcoms. Which is how queer youth in the Dominican...

My guest this week is Scott Mainprize, a two-spirit author, lawyer, and instructor based in Ottawa. Scott’s been walking in multiple simultaneous worlds his whole life, and he’s always found himself drawn to stories of characters doing the same — starting with a childhood interest in the movie The Little Mermaid and a lesser known TV show called The Little Vampire. Both are about people figuring themselves out while living in places they were told they weren’t allowed to be — a topic of...

My guest this week is Tate Barkley, whose new memoir comes out next week and is entitled Sunday Dinners, Moonshine, and Men. It’s the story of a closeted kid growing up in an environment surrounded by toxic masculine figures, protective women, and moonshine operations that planted the seeds of a dangerous relationship with alcohol. Pulling himself up out of that world was a years-long process — and these days, Tate’s found a life that brings him joy he couldn’t possibly have envisioned back...

My guest this week is Frankie Miranda, the first openly gay president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation — a nonprofit serving the Latino community. Frankie’s background isn’t what you might expect for the head of a political organization. When he moved from Puerto Rico to New York, the plan was to study theater. But his dramatic training turned out to serve him well in work where he could serve his community — especially after stepping into a leadership role that threw him multiple immediate...

On last week's Sewers of Paris podcast I spoke with Ben Miller of the Bad Gays book and podcast. This week I’m talking to his co-host and co-author, Huw Lemmey, a writer whose work investigates the disgusting. It’s an unlikely fascination, one borne out of attitudes he heard expressed about queer people when he was growing up. In looking at the realities of human life, from its best to its worst, Huw’s writing has evolved from asking whether people can be loveable despite being gross … to...

My guest this week is Ben Miller, co-author and co-creator of the Bad Gays book and podcast. Ben was headed for a career in international relations until he realized just how out of place he was in that role. It was a lucky encounter with a historical communist leader who helped him course-correct, and now he helps lead the largest queer archive in the world while enjoying his passions for opera and some of the most infamous queer villains in history. We’ll have that conversation in a...

My guest this week is John Griffiths, the founder and executive director of GALECA — that’s The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics. From an early age, John loved spending time with TV families, and as an adult he turned that passion into a career, spending time hob-nobbing and covering icons of entertainment. But like those found-families that captured his attention as a kid, he’s also assembled a family of his won — one consisting of hundreds of like-minded queer journalists and cultural...

My guest this week is illustrator Kevin Jay Stanton. I can’t remember how he first came to my attention, but for the last few years I’ve been following him and his lovely artwork of plants and woodland creatures, which find their way onto all manner of objects from tarot cards to bomber jackets. Kevin’s work draws heavily from the natural world, which is why I was surprised to hear that for a time, he set those motifs aside and was pursuing work that he was told would be more commercially...

My guest this week spent eight years auditioning for Drag Race before he was accepted and his life completely changed. Alexis Michelle, aka Alex Michaels, was a theater performer when he discovered a love of drag, and gradually figured out how to turn his hobby into his career. Now Alexis known for two much-talked about appearances on Drag Race, for appearing on the show Dragnificent, for multiple off-Broadway roles, an album, and an upcoming live tour. But Alex (and Alexis) are only just...

My guest this week is Trip Galey, who grew up in the macho world of rodeo before leaving it all behind to join the world of fairies. At his first opportunity, Trip left home to study literature and Shakespeare, finding himself drawn to classical fantasies — to the point that he reshaped his life around them, finding a home in England and dedicating himself to the study of magical tales. Now, his first novel is about to debut. It’s entitled A Market of Dreams and Destiny, and it’s about a...

My guest this week is Jesse Finley Reed, co-director and co-producer of the new documentary All Man, which dives deep into the famous (or infamous) catalog/magazine International Male. If you were a curious young queer in the 90s, chances are good that you took a furtive look through the pages of International Male, or had copies hidden in places only you knew about. It was a source of daring, adventurous fashion, and plenty of exposed male flesh. When it comes to telling the story of the...

I have two guests this week — Shantel Buggs and Trevor Hoppe are the co-authors of a new book about how queer people talk to each other about sex entitled “Unsafe Words: Queering Consent in the #MeToo Era.” I spoke to them both about what brought them to this topic, and about their individual experiences growing up as queer people in very different environments. We’ll hear first from Shantel, who planned to be a doctor before she felt the unexpected call from a very different field of study....

Welcome back to the Sewers of Paris. Thanks for your patience during the brief pause in the podcast during the month of June — and now I’m delighted to get back behind the mic for more conversations about the entertainment that changed the lives of queer people. On tonight’s episode:  My guest this week is Manuel Betancourt, whose new book of essays about hunks, heartthrobs, and what pop culture taught him about men — and the desire for them. Manuel’s found his way through a series of...

On the last episode of Sewers of Paris, we heard from Max Miller, host of the YouTube series Tasting History the book of the same name. This week, we’re revisiting my 2020 conversation Max’s partner José, who as a kid was a shy gay nerd before he grew up to be … also a shy gay nerd. But one who helped launch Disney Plus, who now cohosts a YouTube series of his own, created a life for himself he could never have imagined when he was young. Also: A quick reminder that I’ve got a book of my own...

This week, we’re diving into the Sewers of Paris archives to revisit my 2020 interview with Max Miller. He’s the creator of the Tasting History YouTube channel, and author of the book Tasting History, which comes out this week. In Max’s video series, he shares historical recipes and intriguing stories about the origin of the foods that humans have eaten throughout history, and his book expands on that work. It was inspired, in part, by Max’s appreciation for The Great British Bakeoff, and at...

My guest this week is Andrew Rimby, host of the Ivory Tower Boiler Room podcast. Andrew’s career as an entertainer began at an early age as a stage performer, but then he took an unexpected swerve into academia, and he’s spent the last decade pursuing a PhD, exploring the work of Victorian poets and in particular the homoerotics of Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde.  We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First, a reminder that I’ve got a book coming out this May — Hi Honey, I’m Homo, now...

Author Christopher Rice is known for a lot of things, from his thrillers to his podcast to collaborations with his mother Anne Rice to his more recent foray into novels about gay romance. I spoke to him last year about his book Sapphire Sunset, and now he has a new book in that series coming out. It’s entitled Sapphire Storm, and it’s about two men who start as bitter enemies before they realize that there’s an irresistible force pulling them closer together. I caught up with Christopher for...

My guest this week is Harvey Brownstone, who in 1995 became Canada’s first openly gay judge. Focusing his career on family law, Harvey helped shine a spotlight on Canada as a destination for same-sex couples to wed before it was legal in the US. But before all that, he was a young gay kid who’d been thrown out of the house, struggling through school, living on welfare, and searching for others like him. We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First just want to let you know that we’re...

If you happen to be in Toronto this weekend, you may want to find your way down to Massey Hall on Saturday night for a one-night-only performance called Och and Oy!, starring actor Alan Cumming and NPR correspondent Ari Shapiro. Their collaborative show is a mix of cabaret and storytelling, and to mark its debut, I’m diving into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2018 conversation with Ari Shapiro, who was then as now one of the hosts of NPR’s flagship show All Things Considered. As a...