Restful Rainbow

Ducky Media
  • 5.0 (4)
  • Mental Health

LGBTQ+ History bedtime and relaxation stories, aiming to offer comfort, representation, and a touch of magic to listeners drifting off to sleep. https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support

  1. 20h ago

    The Night Ellen Came Out (1997)

    Forty-two million people. Two words. One microphone she didn't mean to lean on. Tonight: The Puppy Episode. The night in April 1997 when Ellen DeGeneres and her sitcom character came out together on ABC, and a country gathered in living rooms and bars and one rented theater in Alabama to hear it. Along the way: an oyster counter in New Orleans, a phone call to God, Johnny Carson waving her to the couch, a network that wanted her to get a puppy instead, Oprah and Laura Dern saying yes, a Time cover that said it in three words, the sponsors who left and the ones who stayed, a Birmingham station that went dark and five thousand people who watched anyway. Then the Emmy, the parental advisory, the quiet years, and the long way back: a blue fish, a talk show, a wedding, a medal. Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep. ☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way. Related episodes: The Unfolding Story of Elliot Page · Tom Daley's Olympic Gold · George Michael · Marlene Dietrich

  2. 2d ago

    The Town With Three Genders: The Muxes of Juchitán

    A town told for five hundred years to have two kinds of people, and it simply declined. Tonight: the muxes (MOO-sheh) of Juchitán de Zaragoza, on the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico. A Zapotec identity for people called boys at birth who grow up into something the town has always had a name for, and a place at the table. Along the way: the market the women open before sunrise, wind off the lagoons, the legend of San Vicente Ferrer and the three bags of seeds, a mother teaching her child to embroider flowers, the Authentic Intrepid Seekers of Danger and the vela they've held every November since the 1970s, the 2017 earthquake and the rebuilding, the first muxe on the cover of Vogue, and a single red stitch at the end of the day. Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep. ☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way. Related episodes: We'wha of Zuni · Kapaemāhū: The Healer Stones of Waikīkī · The Voices We Carry · The Colonel Who Rode with Zapata: Amelio Robles

  3. 4d ago

    The Surgeon's Secret: Dr. James Barry

    He saved a mother and child on a kitchen table by candlelight. He fought cholera with clean water and open windows. And he kept one secret for fifty years. Tonight, drift off to the story of Dr. James Barry, born Margaret Ann Bulkley in Cork around 1789, who sailed to Edinburgh in 1809 under a new name, qualified as a doctor in 1812, and joined the British Army in 1813. In Cape Town he reformed the prison, the asylum, and the leper settlement, and in 1826 performed the first caesarean in the British Empire where both mother and baby lived. He served in Mauritius, Jamaica, St Helena, Malta, Corfu, and Canada, rose to Inspector General of Hospitals, and scolded Florence Nightingale for standing in the sun without a hat. When he died in 1865, his wish not to be examined was ignored, and the whole empire learned what he had never told anyone. The army sealed his records for a century. His headstone says what he wanted it to say. You'll walk the tidal quays of Cork, sit in a chalk-and-lamp-oil lecture hall, watch cloud pour over Table Mountain, stand beside a candlelit kitchen table, ride a sleigh over the frozen St. Lawrence, and rest at a quiet stone in long grass. Told twice: once at a natural pace, then slowly, with long pauses, to guide you into sleep. Support the show: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support. And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.

  4. Sep 26

    The Sword and the Silk: The Chevalier d'Éon

    London bet a fortune on whether the Chevalier d'Éon was a man or a woman. She never answered. She just got dressed. Tonight, drift off to the story of Charles-Geneviève d'Éon de Beaumont, born in Tonnerre, Burgundy, in 1728: a spy in Louis XV's secret network, a wounded captain of dragoons, a diplomat who helped end the Seven Years' War and then refused to go home, holding the king's own invasion plans as insurance. When a new king sent the playwright Beaumarchais to get them back, the price of the deal was strange: d'Éon would be recognized as a woman and must live as one for the rest of her life. Dressed by Marie Antoinette's own dressmaker, presented at Versailles in 1777, mocked, impoverished by the Revolution, she returned to London and earned her living fencing in a black silk gown, beating men half her age before the Prince of Wales, with the Cross of Saint Louis pinned over her heart. She died in a small room in Holborn in 1810, nursed by a widow named Mrs. Cole, and rests under the plane trees at St Pancras Old Church. You'll walk through a blue-green spring rising from limestone, candlelight on Russian snow, coffee-house London loud with wagers, a dressmaker's rooms full of silk and pins, the ring of steel in a fencing hall, and a warm bed near a window at the end. The story is told twice: once at a natural pace, then again slowly, with long pauses, to carry you into sleep. Support the show: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support. And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.

  5. Sep 24

    The Middle Place: We'wha of Zuni

    A Two-Spirit Zuni weaver charmed 1886 Washington, met the President, and walked forty miles home. She was six feet tall, wove blankets on the lawn of the Smithsonian, and shook the President's hand. Washington never knew she was lhamana. Tonight's story is We'wha of Zuni (c. 1849 to 1896), a master potter and weaver, a ceremonial dancer, and the most famous lhamana, a Zuni Two-Spirit gender role, on record. Orphaned by smallpox, raised at the heart of her village, We'wha built a bridge to the outside world one silver dollar and one woven blanket at a time. In 1885 she rode the train to Washington with anthropologist Matilda Coxe Stevenson and spent six months as the toast of the capital, then called on President Grover Cleveland on June 23, 1886 with a wedding gift made by her own hands. Seven years later she was jailed by soldiers for defending her home, and walked forty miles home through the winter desert. She died during the Sha'lako ceremony of 1896, mourned by her whole village. You'll drift off to juniper smoke at dusk, corn ground on a stone, red clay under strong hands, a shuttle passing through a loom, and the red face of Corn Mountain at evening. The story is told once at a natural pace, then again slowly with long pauses for sleep. Support the show at https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support. And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.

  6. Sep 22

    My Beloved and I: The Ladies of Llangollen

    Two women climbed out of their windows in 1778, dressed as men, and ran for the sea. Drift off to sleep with the story of the Ladies of Llangollen. Lady Eleanor Butler of Kilkenny Castle and the orphaned Sarah Ponsonby met in 1768, planned a life together for ten years, and eloped on the night of 30 March 1778 with a pistol and a small dog. They were caught and brought home. They refused to give up. With the help of Sarah's maid, Mary Carryl, they wore their families down, and in May 1778 the "two fugitive ladies" crossed to Wales. They settled in a stone cottage above Llangollen and named it Plas Newydd, "new place." Over fifty years they filled it with carved oak, built a library in five languages, kept a garden with a brook running through it, and dressed in dark riding habits and tall black hats. The world came up the hill to see them: Wordsworth, Wellington, Walter Scott, Anna Seward, and in 1822 a woman from Yorkshire named Anne Lister, who went home and married her own love. In her journal, Eleanor called Sarah the same thing every day for five decades: "my Beloved." Told twice, as always: once at a natural pace, then again slowly with long pauses. Candlelight on old oak, rain over a green valley, a ruined castle on a hill, and the sound of water over stones all night. 💛 Support the show: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support. And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.

  7. Sep 19

    A Thing That Wants Virginia: Woolf, Vita, and Twenty Years of Letters

    Two married women met at a dinner party in 1922 and wrote to each other for the rest of one of their lives. Drift off to sleep with the story of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. They met on 14 December 1922 at Clive Bell's house in Bloomsbury, where Virginia was unimpressed and Vita was not. Three years later Virginia spent three December nights at Long Barn in Kent, and Vita's diary recorded only that it was a peaceful evening. In January 1926, unable to sleep in Milan on her way to Persia, Vita wrote the plainest sentence she ever wrote: "I am reduced to a thing that wants Virginia." Out of it came Orlando, begun in October 1927 and published by the Woolfs' own Hogarth Press on 11 October 1928, dedicated to Vita and illustrated with photographs of her costumed as its hero, who lives three hundred years and changes sex along the way. Vita's son later called it the longest and most charming love letter in literature. That same year Vita lost Knole, the house she was born in, because she was a daughter and the estate followed the male line. In 1930 she bought a ruin called Sissinghurst and spent the rest of her life building a garden there, including a white garden that still glows after sunset. Woolf's last letter to Vita, six days before her death in March 1941, ends not in longing but in thanks. Told twice, as always: once at a natural pace, then again slowly with long pauses. Winter lamplight in Kent, hand-set type in a basement, deer under old trees, pale roses at dusk. Support the show: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support and if not, no need at all, sleep well either way.

  8. Sep 17

    It Belonged to All of Us: Gilbert Baker and the First Rainbow Flag

    Drift off to sleep learning how the rainbow flag was made: in an attic, in trash cans, by thirty people with dye on their hands. In June 1978, Gilbert Baker and around thirty volunteers hand-dyed a thousand yards of muslin on the top floor of a San Francisco community center and stitched two flags, each thirty feet by sixty. The eight stripes carried meanings, hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic and art, indigo for serenity, violet for spirit. On June 25 they rose at United Nations Plaza, and Baker said the crowd understood in an instant, that it belonged to all of us. Tonight's story follows him from a Kansas railroad town through the Army, through Harvey Milk's election and his assassination, through the practical accidents that turned eight stripes into six, through a mile-long flag carried by ten thousand people in 1994 and a flag laid from one ocean to the other in 2003, to his death in 2017 and the rediscovered fragment of an original flag that came home to San Francisco with its colors still bright. Told twice, once at a natural pace and once more slowly with longer pauses to carry you into sleep. Expect hot dye stirred with broom handles, stained knuckles, wet cotton, and color drying on lines in the last of the afternoon light. 💛 Support the show: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support and if not, no need at all, sleep well either way.

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5
out of 5
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About

LGBTQ+ History bedtime and relaxation stories, aiming to offer comfort, representation, and a touch of magic to listeners drifting off to sleep. https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support

Information

  • Creator
    Ducky Media
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    140
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Ducky Media
  • Show Website
    Restful Rainbow