
58 episodes

Outward: Slate's LGBTQ podcast Slate Podcasts
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- Society & Culture
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4.1 • 172 Ratings
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Outward, Slate's queer podcast, 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.
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The Promise of Pride
It’s story time, fam! This month, Bryan, Christina, and Jules talk about whether—and why—we still need Pride. Every Pride is someone’s first, and to get that fresh perspective, the hosts spoke with Sammie Bennett, who just celebrated for the first time in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They then talk about their own memories and feelings about the annual queer gathering.
Thanks to Alicia DeMaio for our first "Thots & Queries" segment. Here’s the them.us piece she referenced.
Items discussed in the show:
“The Battle Over Gender Therapy,” by Emily Bazelon in the New York Times Magazine
Jules’ Twitter thread
Jules’ Substack response
Postmates’ “Eat With Pride” ad campaign
Leo Herrera’s Instagram story about this campaign
Christina’s Slate story about a U-Haul truck full of Nazis who headed to a Pride celebration in Idaho.
New York City Drag March
Gay Agenda
Bryan: Buzzfeed’s roundup of “This Pride Month” memes
Christina: Kaftko
Jules: Read a banned LGBTQ book
This podcast was produced by June Thomas.
Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com.
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Is Fire Island the Gay Rom-Com We've Been Waiting For?
This month, in honor of Pride, we’re bringing you extra episodes of Outward.
This week, hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder dig into the big gay movie of summer 2022: Fire Island. Directed by Andrew Ahn and written by Joel Kim Booster, who also appears in the film, Fire Island explores the magic of queer spaces like the titular enclave—along with the class and race disparities that so often beset them. The film, which also stars Bowen Yang, Margaret Cho, and Conrad Ricamora, is a gay resetting of Pride and Prejudice. Does it succeed? The hosts discuss this, and much more, in spoiler-filled detail.
This podcast was produced by June Thomas.
Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com.
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Pride Month Special: A Pioneering Lesbian Photographer
This month, in honor of Pride, we’re going to be bringing you an Outward episode every week.
Today, it’s a segment from a 2021 episode of Working, Slate's podcast about the creative process, in which June Thomas spoke with photographer Joan E. Biren, also known as JEB. In the interview, JEB discusses the creation, funding, and printing of her groundbreaking 1979 photobook Eye to Eye: Portraits of Lesbians, which was reissued by Anthology Editions in 2021.
The Working episode was produced by Cameron Drews.
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Pride Month Special: Supporting Trans Youth
This month, in honor of Pride, we’re going to be bringing you an Outward episode every week. You’ll still get the biggie on June 22, with Pride and Provocations, the Gay Agenda, and all the usual fun, but we’re also going to supply some shorter snacks of gay goodness every Wednesday.
We’ve got some great things lined up--interviews, coverage of the big queer summer movie, and of course reflections on Pride--but we also want to share some great LGBTQ content from around the Slate podcast network.
Today, it’s a segment from a recent episode of Mom and Dad Are Fighting, Slate’s parenting podcast. In light of the attacks on trans youth around the country, hosts Jamilah Lemieux, Zak Rosen, and Elizabeth Newcamp invited Outward’s own Jules Gill-Peterson onto the show to provide some historical context and offer advise on what people can do to support trans kids and their parents.
The Mom and Dad Are Fighting episode was produced by Rosemary Belson and Jasmine Ellis.
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Prisons in Queer History and Pop Culture
This month Bryan, Christina, and Jules explore the intersection of queer life and incarceration. How has America’s prison-loving penal system shaped our history and present, and how does that experience get channeled—or not—into the culture we make and consume? The hosts are joined by Hugh Ryan, author of the new book The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, which uses one infamous mid-century institution in New York’s Greenwich Village to return the overlooked lives of incarcerated women and transmasculine folks to our collective story, and to make a stirring case for prison abolition as a queer issue. Then they discuss how prison shows up in pop culture—and whether they’re entirely comfortable with those fantasies.
Items discussed in the show:
Selling Sunset
Two recent articles on phalloplasty: “How Ben Got His Penis,” by Jamie Lauren Keiles in the New York Times, and “My Penis Myself,” by Gabriel Mac in New York
Original Plumbing
“Madison Cawthorn Thrusting His Naked Body on Another Man’s Face Doesn’t Tell Us Much About His ‘Gayness,’ ” by Bryan in Slate
Not Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, by Jane Ward
The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, by Hugh Ryan
When Brooklyn Was Queer, by Hugh Ryan
Huey P. Newton’s 1970 speech on the women’s liberation and gay liberation movements
Chained Heat 2
Orange Is the New Black
Gay Agenda
Christina: Great Freedom
Jules: The Vice series Transnational
Bryan: From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium, by Justin Elizabeth Sayres
This podcast was produced by June Thomas.
Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com.
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Queer Families in Kindergarten and the Multiverse
This month Bryan, Christina, and Jules take a break from talking about the hostile legislation queer and trans people are fighting against to talk about what they’re fighting for. Brooklyn kindergarten teacher Eliza Cutler joins the hosts to share what it looks like when teachers are free to speak about LGBTQ lives in the classroom. Then they discuss the queer family drama at the heart of the new genre-bending, multiverse-hopping film Everything Everywhere All at Once. (NOTE: If you don't want to hear spoilers for Everything Everywhere All at Once, you can jump from the 33-minute mark to the 59-minute point, but come back after you've seen the movie. You don't want to miss this conversation.)
Items discussed in the show:
Robbie Pierce’s Twitter thread about the homophobic harassment his family endured while riding Amtrak
Queers responding to homophobic legislation with … merch
The long life and sad demise of Bitch Media.
They She He Me: Free to Be, by Maya Christina Gonzalez and Matthew SG
Morris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, by Christine Baldacchino and Isabelle Malenfant
Jacob’s New Dress, by Sarah and Ian Hoffman and Chris Cage
Introducing Teddy, by Jessica Walton and Dougal MacPherson
Pugdog, by Andrea U’Ren
“Everything Everywhere All at Once Is a Queer Masterpiece of Colossa Sincerity,” by Drew Gregory, in Autostraddle
“Everything Everywhere All at Once Is an Emotional Gut Punch About Queer Erasure, Acceptance,” by Patrick Ryan, in USA Today
“This One Stale Joke Won’t Let Everything Everywhere All at Once Be Great,” by Kyle Turner, in W
“On Being Trans and Watching Everything Everywhere All at Once,” by Linda Codega, in Gizmodo
Gay Agenda
Christina: “Sex, Love, and Art in the Suburbs,” by Garth Greenwell, in Esquire
Bryan: “This Beach in Mexico Is an L.G.B.T.Q. Haven. But Can It Last?” by Oscar Lopez and Lisette Poole, in the New York Times
Jules: Manhunt, by Gretchen Felker-Martin
This podcast was produced by June Thomas.
Please send feedback, topic ideas, and advice questions to outwardpodcast@slate.com.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Customer Reviews
Complicated at best
Lonnnnnng time listener who has been growing tired of the show having a static idea of what queerness is. Finally had to unfollow today after the discussion of how “some queer content shouldn’t be made”. As someone who believes that we need MORE queer content and celebrates the fact that now we have so much content we can even celebrate the bad … I’m gonna celebrate this pod and the years of listening by giving you a 4 star rating but also unsubscribing.
Frustrated Ex Subscriber
Ditto to the last unsubscribing review- was a 3 year listener (since the Brandon Tensley days) and grew pretty frustrated by the over analysis of rom coms like the holiday episode and the Fire Island episode. Is that really the stuff they set out to do? And with one pod a month, is that the best use of anyone’s time? The culture stuff clearly doesn’t bring them joy (Bryan even says he hates rom coms in the Fire island episode) when the filmmakers are working so hard to bring joy to others in this joyless world. Let rom coms be rom coms and stick to the doom and gloom facing our community that you cover quite well!
Smart & Fun
I love this podcast. It brings consistently thoughtful perspectives from informed hosts with a good blend of topics across the LGBTQ spectrum. I’ve discovered so much queer content thanks to their recommendations over the years. 🙏