Though podcasts exploring queer culture are welcome all year round, I’m using Pride Month as a great excuse to shout out 12 incredible podcasts that also happen to be created by queer people. These shows aim to give voice to different aspects of the queer experience, exploring lesbian bars and asexuality, tackling trans hate, and reminding queer people (and everyone else) to love themselves unapologetically. June is all about celebrating all kinds of love, and I all kinds of love these podcasts.
But We Loved
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Jordan Gonsalves knew nothing about queer history when he was a gay kid growing up Catholic in conservative Texas. With But We Loved, he has created a show that will help ensure no queer kids today grow up under similar circumstances. He brings together multigenerational guests to talk about impactful moments in LGBTQ history, including the Stonewall Riots, AIDS crisis, and the fight for marriage equality. Every conversation is authentic, and introspective; Jordan is a fantastic interviewer and his guests are unfailingly engaging storytellers.
Second Sunday
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Second Sunday is a podcast about Black queer people finding, keeping, and sometimes losing faith in the Black church. The show is part of the PRX Big Questions Project, and seeks to consider questions at the intersection of spirituality, culture, and identity. You’ll hear valuable advice—and experience real, vulnerable stories—about the challenges and complexities of Black queer culture that will keep you thinking for days.
Queer The Music
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Queer art has had an outsized influence on popular culture. On Queer the Music, Scissor Sisters’ frontman Jake Shears and his guests unearth the queer anthems that have dominated the dance floor, seeped into the mainstream, and impacted the LGBTQ community. Each show considers a song’s history, and shines a light on the queer artists who made a mark on the world through their (sometimes risky) self-expression.
Lost Spaces
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Considering the enduring conservative climate in many parts of the U.S. (and, let’s face it, everywhere), talking about safe queer spaces remains important. Lost Spaces is a show that explores how queer spaces have helped shape people’s lives. It considers their importance, weighs the impact of their loss (when they are lost), and shares the beautiful stories that come out of them. Through candid interviews with varied guests, host K. Anderson breaks it all down.
Free From Desire
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Thirty-five-year-old Aline has never been attracted to anyone—not sexually, not romantically. On their podcast Free From Desire, launching June 7 and debuting at Tribeca, they tell us how difficult it was to realize and accept their asexuality and their aromantism in a society that prefers to center love and sex. This acceptance is what also allowed them to have a child via artificial insemination. From adolescence, to their first fascinations with relationships and sexuality, and arriving at single parenthood, Aline talks to us about how different stages in their life illustrate their experience of asexuality. Throughout the show, Aline talks to experts, sociologists, and even acquaintances and friends to discuss our society’s relationship with sex and our preoccupation with traditional coupling.
Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness
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On Getting Curious, Jonathan Van Ness (of Gay of Thrones and Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) is curious…about everything. Every week he brings on experts in super niche subjects, from trash collection, to ancient beauty rituals, to cheesemaking, to the child welfare system. Each topic is one Jonathan is passionate about, and he doesn’t hold back his squeals of excitement at everything his guests teach him. Even when focused on weighty subjects, these conversations are lightened by Jonathan’s sparkle, sense of humor, and ability to view anything and everything through a queer lens. I particularly love it when he talks about animals—so check out the “Prairie Dog” episode first.
LGBTQ&A
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Nominated for Outstanding Podcast at the 2023 GLAAD Awards, LGBTQ&A sets up Jeffrey Masters with some of the most interesting and influential LGBTQ+ people in the world; past guests have included Laverne Cox, Janelle Monáe, and Pete Buttigieg. Their conversations will help you brush up on queer history and keep abreast of how current events and affecting the queer community, providing you the necessary context needed to understand the challenges faced by less visible sexual and gender minorities navigating modern American culture.
The Queer Family Podcast
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On The Queer Family Podcast, queer mom Jaimie Kelton’s has funny conversations with guests about how they’ve shaped their families, and how they show up in a world that wasn’t necessarily designed for them. Each episode is a snapshot of the diverse ways families can work and thrive, confirming that queer families can be just as strong as any other. (Kids still have tantrums and refuse to eat their vegetables, no matter who their parents are.) The Queer Family Podcast normalizes the new ways people are choosing to build theri families in a world built for straight people.
BEING Trans
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BEING Trans feels like a reality TV show for your ears. Through the course of six episodes, you’ll meet Jeffrey, a transgender man and standup comic navigating a relationship with his partner Emma; Mariana, a trans woman from Guatemala who is tackling tough issues at a local LGBTQ center along with her coworker Kadence; Chloe, who’s new to Los Angeles and new to dating as a trans woman; and Sy, who’s figuring out their relationship and family dynamics with their husband Robert since coming out as non-binary and trans. Jeffrey, Mariana, Chloe, and Sy share the tiny, human moments in their lives—triumphant and trying alike—and giving you a small glimpse of what it’s like to wake up and go to bed every day as a trans person.
Black Fat Femme
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The B.F.F. Podcast (that’s “Black Fat Femme”) gives voice to two of the leading queer, fat and Black change makers who are determined to prove that every single person has the right to love themselves unapologetically, even in a world where loving yourself often feels impossible. Jon and Joho feel like friends who will hold your hand and talk you through days that feel like a struggle. They interview (and pour shine on) guests who find joy in unexpected places, and they will make you feel shined on, too.
TransLash
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Today trans people are facing extreme political, social, and physical violence on a daily basis, but that doesn’t tell the full story of the trans experience. On TransLash, award-winning journalist Imara Jones gives trans people and allies a platform to fight back. It’s a culture podcast that celebrates trans people: the way they live their lives and how they are changing the world. Each episode is a mixture of heavy topics balanced with moments of joy, full of equal parts heart and bad-assery.
Love and Luck
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Set in present day Melbourne, Australia, Love and Luck is a fictional radio play podcast told through voicemails between two men, Jason and Kane, who fall in love even as they discover they have magical abilities. It’s an positive story in sea of podcasts that go to dark and terrible places—an inventive slice-of-life narrative that finds beautiful moments around every corner, with carefully produced sound, nuanced writing, and acting that will draw you in.
Gay Future
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The year is 2062, and North America is controlled by a totalitarian government with an insidious gay agenda…because everyone is gay. One teen holds the keys to rebellion, because he has a dark secret: he’s straight. Obviously Gay Future is a fiction show, but with its comedic tone and tightly written script, it makes a point about sexuality and power that will have you in stitches.
Cruising
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Lesbian bars are disappearing from the world, and you can think of Cruising like a shrine to their memory. Three queer women, Sarah Gabrielli, Rachel Karp, and Jen McGinit, buckle into a Honda SUV to visit the bars that are standing, aiming for the longest lesbian bar crawl ever. (You’d think this would be daunting, but there are seriously less than 25 of them remaining in the U.S.) The fact that this podcast is even possible tells a story about queer identity today. Does it mean that safe spaces for lesbians are no longer needed, or have they experienced a form of erasure? (Consider Henrietta Hudson, a former lesbian bar in New York City that now calls itself “a queer bar built by lesbians.”) Cruising strings together micro-stories of the people who were able to come out because of the safety these places offered them and the people who fought to create them.
Making Gay History
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It’s one thing to read about the history of gay rights, and another thing to hear spoken about by the people who made it. Making Gay History offers a peek into Eric Marcus’s decades-old audio archive of rare interviews that allow you to hear the voices of the people who were witnesses and champions in the struggle for gay rights. The audio is carefully curated and crafted into gripping pieces that paint Intimate, personal portraits
Gender Reveal
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On Gender Reveal, journalist and educator Tuck Woodstock takes a crack at answering the question: What the heck is gender, anyway? They’re not doing it alone. Through conversations with poets, drag artists, organizers, comedians, and more, they talk about the vast diversity of trans experiences through interviews with a wide array of trans, nonbinary, and two-spirit people.
We’re Having Gay Sex
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Comedian Ashley Gavin spent 10 years as a serial monogamist, but in We’re Having Gay Sex, she’s traded in her U-Haul and committed herself to notching enough casual hookups to exhaust a 20-year-old, and she’s ready to tell us about every single tender kiss (and beyond.) She’s also enlisted her younger queer friends to help brush her up on the latest nuances in queer dating; it’s up to them to keep her from doing something embarrassing or getting canceled. Together, they interview hilarious guests from all over the sexuality spectrum about the “gay” sex they had that week.
