OUTCAST WORLD

Graeme Smith

Queer politics • sex • culture Outcast World is a queer politics, sex and culture podcast hosted by multi award-winning broadcaster and podcaster Graeme Smith, alongside rotating guests and co-hosts including the Cosmopolitan and Gay London Life writer Topher Taylor and Loud Brown Gays host Nick Charles. It offers progressive political takes rarely heard in a podcast world dominated by right-wing reactionaries. Each week features an eclectic mix of guests. Journalists, comedians, academics, authors, activists and artists appear alongside cult internet figures like the late Sophie Anderson, queer stars from the BBC’s groundbreaking I Kissed a Boy, and familiar faces from global reality franchises including Married at First Sight and TOWIE. The show also features authors of some of the biggest-selling queer books of recent years, leading UK queer academics, and comedians such as Manchester comic Dan Tiernan. The Independent noted, the line-up is “eclectic”. Reactive, candid and often funny, the show unpacks UK and US politics, sexuality and culture through discussion and debate. While rooted in a queer perspective, its cultural analysis and political commentary resonate well beyond LGBTQ+ audiences.A gold winner at the British Podcast Awards and nominated for Best Interview Podcast in 2025 — alongside Louis Theroux and The News Agents — Outcast World has been recommended by The Guardian and The Independent, and was named a must-listen queer podcast by The Independent. Now entering its fifth year, with listeners around the world including a strong US audience, it has established itself as a trusted space for frank, progressive queer focused conversation.

  1. Making a baby with friends… Turned Into A Musical

    3D AGO ·  VIDEO

    Making a baby with friends… Turned Into A Musical

    Welsh-Iranian comedian, writer and rising theatre menace Leila Navabi joins Outcast World for one of the funniest and weirdly moving chats we’ve had in ages. You’ll probably know Leila already from writing on Bad Education, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Deep Fake Neighbour Wars, or from voicing Claire in Don't Hug Me I'm Scared. She’s also become a major name on the UK live comedy circuit, supporting comics including Nish Kumar and Jessica Fostekew while quietly building a reputation as one of the sharpest queer comedy voices working right now. But this episode is really about the project that might push her into another league entirely: turning her real-life queer DIY conception story into a musical. After being told in her twenties that having children might not be possible, Leila and her wife ended up rejecting the expensive, sanitised “acceptable” version of queer parenthood and instead built a family the way queer people often build everything: through friendship, improvisation, emotional honesty and an alarming amount of admin involving sperm. This episode dives into the now-infamous DIY conception setup that inspired her show Relay: spare rooms, a sperm donor who was already one of their closest friends, syringes quietly bought from Boots under the pretence of “having a big dog”, and the deeply surreal ritual of everybody washing their hands and heading out for brunch afterwards while pretending this was a perfectly ordinary Sunday activity. At one point, Leila describes sitting in a café fully aware that her partner is technically “dripping with your best mate’s sperm” while everyone politely orders eggs and coffee. Which honestly tells you almost everything you need to know about the energy of this episode. Underneath all the chaos though, this is really a conversation about modern queer family life, chosen family, emotional honesty and why comedy so often becomes armour for people trying to survive complicated lives in public. There are also cats named after Joan Rivers, emotionally repressed gay people using humour to avoid vulnerability, and a genuinely fascinating discussion about why queer family stories are still treated as niche when they’re often far more emotionally intentional than traditional family structures.

    30 min
  2. I Kissed A Boy & Girl Stars on Cancellation, Toxic Gays & Open Relationships

    MAY 6

    I Kissed A Boy & Girl Stars on Cancellation, Toxic Gays & Open Relationships

    The BBC made history with I Kissed A Boy and I Kissed A Girl. Then they cancelled them.In this episode of Outcast World, Graeme Smith is joined by Gareth Valentino and Amy Spalding, two of the standout names from those shows, now launching their own podcast It Started With A Kiss.What starts as a conversation about queer TV quickly turns into something else.We get into what it actually felt like to come out on national television, the reality of sudden visibility, and why those shows mattered more than the BBC seems willing to admit.Then it shifts.Gay men being brutal to each other. Lesbian solidarity. Open relationships, when they work and when they really don’t. Chemsex culture. Internalised homophobia.And a story about a relationship that went very wrong, involving secrecy, betrayal, and HIV disclosure, that says more about queer dating than most people are willing to say out loud.This is part one of a two-part conversation.In part two, we go further into the politics, Trump, trans rights, the UK, and why queer culture feels like it’s moving forward and backwards at the same time.CHAPTERS00:00 Why I Kissed A Boy and I Kissed A Girl mattered 02:30 What it felt like to come out on TV 06:00 The reality of sudden queer visibility 10:00 Gay men vs gay men 13:00 Lesbian solidarity vs male toxicity 16:00 Open relationships, reality vs fantasy 20:00 When non-monogamy goes wrong 24:00 Dating, sex, and honesty in queer cultureFOLLOW / SUBSCRIBESubscribe for full video episodes of Outcast World Part two drops in 48 hours🎧 Listen on all podcast platforms 📱 Follow for clips and updatesABOUT OUTCAST WORLDOutcast World is queer politics, sex and culture. Smart, funny, occasionally filthy.Everything you do online is tracked, fix it in two minutes, get up to 75% off NordVPN on outcastworld.net-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen.//// Check us on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram @thisisoutcastworld ///// Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    23 min
  3. Queer Fans, Hung Parliament: World's hottest politician Carl Cashman Explains...LIVE

    FEB 17

    Queer Fans, Hung Parliament: World's hottest politician Carl Cashman Explains...LIVE

    You may already know Carl Cashman as the Liberal Democrat politician who keeps making headlines for being ridiculously in shape and unapologetically shirtless on Instagram. The “world’s hottest politician” label follows him everywhere.But what happens when the internet crush turns out to be smart, likeable, politically ambitious — and fully aware that the gays love him?Recorded live in front of an audience at the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Gallery in Fitzrovia, London, Graeme sits down with the 34-year-old leader of Liverpool City Council’s Liberal Democrats to talk trust after the coalition years, immigration rhetoric, trans rights, a possible hung parliament, and what the UK does in a world shaped by Farage, Le Pen and Trump.In a political era dominated by culture-war strongmen, is a pro-EU, openly progressive politician who actually enjoys queer support… such a bad thing?This is the political half of a longer live conversation. To hear the full interview, head to the BOYS! BOYS! BOYS! Podcast.Everything you do online is tracked, fix it in two minutes, get up to 75% off NordVPN on outcastworld.net-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen.//// Check us on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram @thisisoutcastworld ///// Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    16 min
  4. Queer Data: When Being Counted Becomes Dangerous

    FEB 5

    Queer Data: When Being Counted Becomes Dangerous

    We’re joined by Kevin Guyan — one of the UK’s most compelling thinkers on queer life, power and systems. Kevin is a leading academic at the University of Edinburgh and the author of Queer Data and The Rainbow Trap, two books that have become essential reading on how LGBTQ+ lives are shaped, sorted and managed by institutions.It’s about data. Not as numbers, but as power.Kevin asks the question most of us never think to ask until it’s too late: what actually happens when queer people are counted? Because being counted doesn’t automatically mean being protected. Sometimes it means being exposed.We unpack the seductive promise of visibility — the idea that if the state knows we exist, we’ll be safer. Kevin explains why data is never neutral. Every statistic hides decisions about who felt safe enough to answer, who stayed silent, who was answered for, and who disappeared entirely. Once those numbers exist, they travel — into headlines, policy, algorithms and systems far beyond our control.Using the UK census as a starting point, Kevin shows how queer communities globally are trapped in a brutal bind: counted badly, our numbers are weaponised; not counted at all, our existence can be denied. Either way, data doesn’t just describe us — it acts on us.The conversation darkens as we look at history and the future. Data collected in one political moment doesn’t vanish when politics change. It waits.We also explore the algorithmic systems already deciding who you are without asking — sexuality inferred from clicks, gender guessed from behaviour, profiles built silently while you scroll.What happens when the system knows who you are — and you can’t take it back?Everything you do online is tracked, fix it in two minutes, get up to 75% off NordVPN on outcastworld.net-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This helps us become easier to discover. Please take time to rate the show and if you're enjoying the podcast then take time to comment about it wherever you listen.//// Check us on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram @thisisoutcastworld ///// Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    29 min

Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Queer politics • sex • culture Outcast World is a queer politics, sex and culture podcast hosted by multi award-winning broadcaster and podcaster Graeme Smith, alongside rotating guests and co-hosts including the Cosmopolitan and Gay London Life writer Topher Taylor and Loud Brown Gays host Nick Charles. It offers progressive political takes rarely heard in a podcast world dominated by right-wing reactionaries. Each week features an eclectic mix of guests. Journalists, comedians, academics, authors, activists and artists appear alongside cult internet figures like the late Sophie Anderson, queer stars from the BBC’s groundbreaking I Kissed a Boy, and familiar faces from global reality franchises including Married at First Sight and TOWIE. The show also features authors of some of the biggest-selling queer books of recent years, leading UK queer academics, and comedians such as Manchester comic Dan Tiernan. The Independent noted, the line-up is “eclectic”. Reactive, candid and often funny, the show unpacks UK and US politics, sexuality and culture through discussion and debate. While rooted in a queer perspective, its cultural analysis and political commentary resonate well beyond LGBTQ+ audiences.A gold winner at the British Podcast Awards and nominated for Best Interview Podcast in 2025 — alongside Louis Theroux and The News Agents — Outcast World has been recommended by The Guardian and The Independent, and was named a must-listen queer podcast by The Independent. Now entering its fifth year, with listeners around the world including a strong US audience, it has established itself as a trusted space for frank, progressive queer focused conversation.

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