Celebrating Pride Month with Podcasts
Slate’s Outward Podcast picks their eight favorite LGBTQ podcasts.
This is a guest post and a curated list of podcasts by Slate’s Outward Podcast
Podcasting is a singularly intimate medium. In the privacy of their own homes, cars, or earbuds, listeners get to hear other people’s perspectives delivered in their own voices and words. As the hosts of Outward, Slate’s podcast about LGBTQ life and culture, we think that the medium is uniquely suited to contemporary queer storytelling. And with their rich histories of DIY media and self-expression, queer communities are uniquely suited to podcasting, too.
We see Pride Month as a time to surround ourselves with LGBTQ culture, to revel in the diversity and vitality of the stories queer people tell about themselves and their surroundings. It’s a time to seek out queer joy and connection. It’s also a time to renew our commitment to building a more equitable world, drawing on the traditions of LGBTQ trailblazers who came before.
This Pride Month marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, one of the major galvanizing events of the modern gay rights movement. As LGBTQ people around the world gather to celebrate the beauty of our identities, share gratitude for our queer ancestors, and remind each other how much we still have to fight for, there’s no better time to explore some of the great queer podcasts out there. After all, today’s queer podcasters are helping write tomorrow’s queer history.
Our Podcast Picks:
Queery
Queer comedian Cameron Esposito invites LGBTQ notables into the studio for deep, intimate, often side-splitting one-on-one conversations.
Making Gay History
Eric Marcus, who once wrote an oral history of the gay civil rights movement, uses the tapes from those interviews to bring the personal and political stories of LGBTQ heroes to life.
Nancy
A high-production narrative show from WNYC, featuring the charismatic Tobin Low and the endearingly awkward Kathy Tu.
Uncover: The Village
The third season of the CBC’s investigative podcast series tells the story of the serial killer who targeted men in Toronto’s Gay Village for years, even as law enforcement told concerned community members that there was no reason to suspect a murderer was at fault for the many men who’d gone missing.
Food 4 Thot
A weekly chat between four pithy queers who discuss the intersections of sexuality, identity, and race, sliding seamlessly between the extremely highbrow and absolute trash.
Keep It
Joyously honest. That may be the best way to describe this refreshing podcast hosted by Ira Madison III, Kara Brown, and Louis Virtel, who grapple with pop culture and politics with equal parts cleverness and humor.
Still Processing
A podcast whose power is right there in its title: Hosts Jenna Wortham and Wesley Morris don’t pretend to have neat answers to the biggest culture questions of the day. Rather, they invite listeners to sit in and think through the messy muck of their own attachments to the world around them.
What the Tuck
It’s a delight to hear hosts Matt Rogers and Mano Agapion — avowed RuPaul’s Drag Race historians — approach the beloved show with both a critic’s eye and a fan’s devotion.
My Dad Wrote a Porno
Hosts Jamie Morton, James Cooper, and Alice Levine have mastered the art of intimacy. Yes, in the obvious way that they’re reading some of the worst erotica on the planet (two words: “lids popping”), but also in how their disarming banter feels like an invitation to listeners to think about sex without all the skittishness and stigma.
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Thanks to Slate and Outward for this guest post! Outward is a whip-smart monthly salon in which hosts and guests deepen the audience’s understanding of queer culture and politics, delight them with unexpected perspectives, and invite listeners into a colorful conversation about the issues animating LGBTQ communities.
You can access their picks in the Stitcher app by clicking here.
View our entire Pride collection in the browse tab of the Stitcher app.
