Podcasts by Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive
Intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to history brought to you from rare archival interviews.
Further podcasts by Eric Marcus
Podcast on the topic Geschichte
All episodes
Season 10: Episode 6: Michelle Lopez from 2022-03-31T06:00
Women can’t get AIDS—or so Michelle Lopez thought until she tested positive for HIV in 1990. Viable treatments were years away, but the undocumented immigrant from Trinidad would not be defeated. S...
ListenGuest Episode: LGBTQ&A: Peter Staley: ACT UP Changed the World — Here’s How from 2022-03-26T06:00
As a complement to our episode featuring Ann Northrop, meet Peter Staley, another seminal member of ACT UP, in this 2021 interview courtesy of the LGBTQ&A podcast, hosted by Jeffrey Masters and pro...
ListenSeason 10: Episode 5: Ann Northrop from 2022-03-24T06:00
Fierce and unflappable, veteran journalist Ann Northrop is a natural activist. In this episode, she discusses her most dramatic ACT UP arrest, her work as an AIDS education advocate, her blue-blood...
ListenSeason 10: Episode 4: Randy Boyd from 2022-03-17T06:00
Randy Boyd’s “gay agenda” was to be radically open about who he was: a gay, HIV-positive writer—not the straight professional athlete he was always assumed to be. Determined to blow up stereotypes ...
ListenSeason 10: Episode 3: Sara Boesser from 2022-03-10T07:00
From her home in Juneau, Alaska, Sara Boesser watched with alarm as the AIDS epidemic rolled across the lower 48 states, threatening lives and hard-won gay rights. The soft-spoken building inspecto...
ListenSeason 10: Episode 2: Dr. Ronald Grossman from 2022-03-03T07:00
Dr. Ronald Grossman treated his first AIDS patient before the disease even had a name. But with a New York City practice serving predominantly gay men, he would soon become an expert on the disease...
ListenSeason 10: Episode 1: Randy Shilts from 2022-02-24T07:00
Out gay journalist Randy Shilts desperately wanted to work for a big-city newspaper. No one wanted him. But reporting on the AIDS crisis brought him the success and fame he craved—and more than a l...
ListenSeason 10: Preview from 2022-02-17T07:00
We’re back with more stories from the AIDS crisis. Hear Eric Marcus in conversation with six people whose lives and activism were transformed by the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s and beyond. Learn mor...
ListenIntroducing: We Were Always Here: They Weren't Us from 2021-12-23T07:00
Marc Thomson was just getting his footing as a young Black gay man in South East London when AIDS hit. Hear his story as he introduces us to people whose experiences have often been overlooked, inc...
ListenIntroducing: The Log Books: "Please Be Gentle" from 2021-11-30T07:00
In commemoration of World AIDS Day, MGH host Eric Marcus introduces a poignant episode about the early years of the AIDS crisis from The Log Books, an award-winning documentary podcast that tells u...
ListenComing of Age During the AIDS Crisis: Chapter 6: Making History from 2021-09-10T06:00
Being HIV+ was a virtual death sentence. So why get tested? But by 1988 there is a promising, if toxic, drug shown to extend life. Eric and Barry schedule their first test just as Eric starts work ...
ListenComing of Age During the AIDS Crisis: Chapter 5: In or Out from 2021-08-27T04:30
“You’re doing too many stories on AIDS.” The word had come down from on high at CBS This Morning. Eric didn’t want anyone to think he was biased, but as the only out gay person on the production st...
ListenComing of Age During the AIDS Crisis: Chapter 4: Complications of AIDS from 2021-08-12T06:00
“I hope you both die of AIDS,” the young man in the pickup truck yells at Eric and Barry as they wait for the light to change while on a run in Central Park. By 1985, the AIDS crisis has arrived on...
ListenComing of Age During the AIDS Crisis: Chapter 3: 318 West 22nd Street from 2021-07-30T06:00
A straight drug addict. A gay waiter on a ventilator. Eric is confronted with the reality of AIDS when he volunteers for the Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Decades later, he speaks with his client’s wido...
ListenComing of Age During the AIDS Crisis: Chapter 2: Not Alone from 2021-07-15T06:00
Even as the epidemic spreads, a rousing AIDS fundraiser at the circus, a new boyfriend, and journalism school combine to bring joy, a sense of community, and purpose into Eric’s life. Visit our epi...
ListenComing of Age During the AIDS Crisis: Chapter 1: Buried Headline from 2021-07-01T06:00
“Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” said the New York Times headline on July 3, 1981. It was the first time Eric Marcus read about what came to be known as AIDS. Nothing for me to worry about, he...
ListenComing of Age During the AIDS Crisis: Preview from 2021-06-24T06:00
AIDS first made national news 40 years ago. MGH host Eric Marcus was 22 at the time, a gay kid in search of love and a career in New York City. In this six-part audio memoir, Eric explores his memo...
ListenBonus: Remembering Kay Lahusen from 2021-05-27T06:00
In memoriam: Kay Lahusen, January 5, 1930 - May 26, 2021. Kay was a monumental figure in the LGBTQ civil rights movement. From the earliest homophile protests to gay liberation and beyond, she neve...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 8: Meg Christian from 2021-01-07T07:00
Olivia Records cofounder Meg Christian helped ignite the women’s music movement of the 1970s with lesbian classics like “Ode to a Gym Teacher.” Meet Meg, in song and conversation, in our final epis...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 8: Meg Christian from 2021-01-07T07:00
Olivia Records cofounder Meg Christian helped ignite the women’s music movement of the 1970s with lesbian classics like “Ode to a Gym Teacher.” Meet Meg, in song and conversation, in our final epis...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 7: Leonard Matlovich from 2020-12-24T07:00
When Leonard Matlovich was thrown out of the Air Force for being gay, he sued for reinstatement. It was 1975 and it was the first case of its kind. Hear the LGBTQ rights pioneer—and startlingly fra...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 7: Leonard Matlovich from 2020-12-24T07:00
When Leonard Matlovich was thrown out of the Air Force for being gay, he sued for reinstatement. It was 1975 and it was the first case of its kind. Hear the LGBTQ rights pioneer—and startlingly fra...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 6: Jill Johnston from 2020-12-10T07:00
Sparks flew when radical lesbian feminist Jill Johnston sat down for an interview with Studs Terkel in 1973. Jill had just published a controversial manifesto called “Lesbian Nation,” which advocat...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 6: Jill Johnston from 2020-12-10T07:00
Sparks flew when radical lesbian feminist Jill Johnston sat down for an interview with Studs Terkel in 1973. Jill had just published a controversial manifesto called “Lesbian Nation,” which advocat...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 5: Mattachine Midwest from 2020-11-26T07:00
A half-century ago, Studs Terkel interviewed three members of the homophile group Mattachine Midwest: the organization’s president, a student activist, and lesbian pulp author Valerie Taylor. Join ...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 5: Mattachine Midwest from 2020-11-26T07:00
A half-century ago, Studs Terkel interviewed three members of the homophile group Mattachine Midwest: the organization’s president, a student activist, and lesbian pulp author Valerie Taylor. Join ...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 4: Quentin Crisp from 2020-11-12T07:00
From a young age, Quentin Crisp was determined to be himself—makeup, painted nails, dramatically dyed hair, and all—even if it consigned him to a life of poverty and isolation. Hear the author, rac...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 4: Quentin Crisp from 2020-11-12T07:00
From a young age, Quentin Crisp was determined to be himself—makeup, painted nails, dramatically dyed hair, and all—even if it consigned him to a life of poverty and isolation. Hear the author, rac...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 3: "Les-Lee" from 2020-10-29T06:00
Canadian female impersonator John Falk Tomkinson appeared around the globe under the stage name Les-Lee for over three decades. In 1967 Studs Terkel interviewed the performer to talk about his art ...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 3: "Les-Lee" from 2020-10-29T06:00
Canadian female impersonator John Falk Tomkinson appeared around the globe under the stage name Les-Lee for over three decades. In 1967 Studs Terkel interviewed the performer to talk about his art ...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 2: Lorraine Hansberry from 2020-10-15T06:00
In 1959 Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Soon after “A Raisin in the Sun” made history, the 28-year-old writer and activist talked to Studs Terke...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 2: Lorraine Hansberry from 2020-10-15T06:00
In 1959 Lorraine Hansberry became the first Black woman to have a play produced on Broadway. Soon after “A Raisin in the Sun” made history, the 28-year-old writer and activist talked to Studs Terke...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 1: Christopher Isherwood from 2020-10-01T06:05
Author Christopher Isherwood left England for Germany in 1929. His stories about his years there inspired the musical “Cabaret,” which shaped the image of decadent interwar Berlin in the popular im...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel: Episode 1: Christopher Isherwood from 2020-10-01T06:05
Author Christopher Isherwood left England for Germany in 1929. His stories about his years there inspired the musical “Cabaret,” which shaped the image of decadent interwar Berlin in the popular im...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel Radio Archive: Preview from 2020-10-01T06:00
Making Gay History is back! Join us as we mine the Studs Terkel Radio Archive in Chicago for stories from our proud LGBTQ past to bring you eight intimate conversations conducted between 1959 and 1...
ListenMGH&Studs Terkel Radio Archive: Preview from 2020-10-01T06:00
Making Gay History is back! Join us as we mine the Studs Terkel Radio Archive in Chicago for stories from our proud LGBTQ past to bring you eight intimate conversations conducted between 1959 and 1...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 13: Larah Helayne&Jean O’Leary from 2020-06-18T06:00
When high schooler Larah Helayne heard MGH’s episode with Jean O’Leary, it changed the course of her life. Plans to become a nun gave way for a new role as an LGBTQ trailblazer. In this season fina...
ListenIntroducing: Those Who Were There: Voices from the Holocaust: Leon Bass from 2020-06-14T06:00
MGH is Eric Marcus’s first love. But he also co-produces Those Who Were There. Have a listen to this episode featuring Leon Bass. He faced racism growing up in 1930s Philadelphia, in the Army durin...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 12: Bayard Rustin from 2020-06-07T06:00
Making Gay History stands with the countless Americans protesting systemic racism and the deaths of black and brown people at the hands of the police. And we draw inspiration from civil rights hero...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 11: Larry Kramer from 2020-05-29T06:00
June 25, 1935 - May 27, 2020. In the early ’80s, author and playwright Larry Kramer was one of the first people to sound the alarm about AIDS. He became one of the loudest voices in the fight again...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 10: Perry Watkins from 2020-05-23T06:00
When Perry Watkins was drafted in 1968, he assumed the Army would reject him for being gay. They didn’t. When they got rid of him after 15 years of service, he fought back. As we face the systemic ...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 9: Joyce Hunter from 2020-05-16T06:00
In 1939 Joyce Hunter was born into a world so hostile it’s a wonder she wasn’t crushed. Instead, the challenges and brutality she faced proved to be the launchpad for an expansive life of pioneerin...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 8: Morris Foote from 2020-05-09T06:00
In late 1955, the police of Boise, Idaho, started a sweeping investigation into an alleged “homosexual underground.” Fearing arrest, Morris Foote fled town, not to return till 20 years later. A sto...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 7: Ellen DeGeneres from 2020-05-02T06:00
Today, Ellen DeGeneres needs no introduction. But as she explained in a 2001 MGH interview, her very public 1997 coming out took a dramatic professional and personal toll. When life goes off the ra...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 6: Kay Lahusen's Gay Table from 2020-04-25T06:00
When did you make gay history? Join host Eric Marcus, pioneering photojournalist Kay Lahusen, and a group of LGBTQ history-making elders for their monthly retirement community dinner. Happy memorie...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 5: Vito Russo from 2020-04-18T06:00
Vito Russo’s legacy—as a film historian, activist, and co-founder of GLAAD and ACT UP—is hard to overstate. In this 1988 interview, legacy was also very much on Vito’s mind: it was the height of th...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 4: Shirley Willer from 2020-04-11T06:00
“I’ve spent a large percent of my life being angry.” That was Shirley Willer, reflecting on the death of a close friend and fellow nurse who in 1947 received fatally inadequate hospital care becaus...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 3: Wendell Sayers from 2020-04-04T06:00
Wendell Sayers understood isolation. Born in western Kansas in 1904, Wendell was the first black lawyer to work for Colorado’s attorney general; living openly as a gay man wasn’t an option. When he...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 2: Edythe Eyde from 2020-03-28T06:00
Musical uplift for anxious times. When Eric Marcus interviewed lesbian publishing pioneer Edythe Eyde in 1989, she treated him to a concert for one on her front porch singing her gay songs from the...
ListenRevisiting the Archive: Episode 1: Frank Kameny from 2020-03-21T06:00
In 1957, Frank Kameny was fired from his job at the U.S. Army Map Service for being gay. He went on to fight the federal government for 14 years and never lost his resolve. And he won! Inspiration ...
ListenBonus: From the Vault: Sylvia Rivera&Marsha P. Johnson, 1970 from 2019-12-27T07:00
In 1970, a young radio reporter recorded an interview with Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and other members of the newly formed Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries—STAR. Nearly 50 years l...
ListenSeason 6: Episode 5: Damien Martin from 2019-12-19T07:00
Damien Martin grew up in foster care and on the streets of Philadelphia, so he knew all too well about the needs of vulnerable youth. In 1979, when he and his partner, Dr. Emery Hetrick, heard abou...
ListenSeason 6: Episode 4: Nancy Walker from 2019-12-05T07:00
In 1976 Nancy Walker joined the Gay Community News, an influential Boston-based weekly paper. She was in her 40s, an outspoken New Yorker, and a moderate pragmatist. Not surprisingly, Nancy and the...
ListenSeason 6: Episode 3: Barbara Smith from 2019-11-21T07:00
For nearly half a century, Barbara Smith has been speaking truth to power—as a woman against misogyny, as an African American against racism, as a lesbian against homophobia, and as a black lesbian...
ListenSeason 6: Episode 2: Vernon E. "Copy" Berg III from 2019-11-07T07:00
In 1975, long before “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the Navy asked, and Officer Copy Berg told: “Yes, I am gay.” When Copy chose to challenge the military’s ban on homosexuals, the Pentagon fought back w...
ListenSeason 6: Episode 1: Ruth Simpson from 2019-10-24T06:05
There’s a war on out there. That was Ruth Simpson’s Stonewall takeaway—and she was ready to fight. But when Ruth pushed the NY chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis to be more political, the FBI and ...
ListenSeason 6: Preview from 2019-10-24T06:00
Making Gay History mines Eric Marcus’s 30-year-old audio archive of rare interviews to create intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to LGBTQ...
ListenBonus: Stonewall 50 Minisode: Craig Rodwell from 2019-06-28T05:23
This was the moment Craig Rodwell had been waiting for. He’d been bumping up against the limits of how far the Mattachine Society was willing to challenge the status quo. And when the Stonewall upr...
ListenBonus: Stonewall 50 Minisode: Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen from 2019-06-28T05:22
Stonewall turned the page on the homophile movement. Pre-Stonewall activists like Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen were dinosaurs in the eyes of some of the gay liberationists, and they found thems...
ListenBonus: Stonewall 50 Minisode: Morty Manford from 2019-06-28T05:21
Nineteen-year-old Columbia University student Morty Manford thought it was just another night at the Stonewall Inn, but then the police swept in and the raid was on. Morty shared his memories of th...
ListenBonus: Stonewall 50 Minisode: Marsha P. Johnson&Randy Wicker from 2019-06-28T05:20
A rebroadcast of Eric’s 1989 interview with Marsha P. Johnson and Randy Wicker. Hear conflicting perspectives on Stonewall from this pair of unlikely roommates. Marsha co-founded the Street Transve...
ListenStonewall 50: Episode 4: Live from Stonewall from 2019-06-27T06:00
What made Stonewall different? How can we carry the lessons of the uprising with us today? Eric is joined by one archivist and four activists to answer those questions in an intergenerational conve...
ListenStonewall 50: Episode 3: "Say it Loud! Gay and Proud!" from 2019-06-20T09:00
Like so many other acts of queer resistance, the 1969 Stonewall riots could have become a footnote in history. But the protests and organizing that followed launched a new phase in the fight for LG...
ListenStonewall 50: Episode 2: ”Everything Clicked… And The Riot Was On” from 2019-06-13T06:00
The Stonewall uprising began in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969. Revisit that moment, and the hours and days that followed, with voices from the Making Gay History archive. Relive in vivid...
ListenStonewall 50: Episode 1: Prelude to a Riot from 2019-06-06T06:00
Conflict has context. In the first episode of Making Gay History’s Stonewall 50 season, we hear stories from the pre-Stonewall struggle for LGBTQ rights. We travel back in time to hear voices from ...
ListenStonewall 50: Preview from 2019-05-23T23:00
A special season of Making Gay History to mark the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. Hear the voices of the rioters, and of the activists who turned a riot into Gay Liberation—a new and e...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 11: Martha Shelley from 2019-02-21T10:00
Brooklyn-born Martha Shelley was a rebel. She didn’t like being told what to do, wear, or say. She hated the lesbian bars, and even after joining the Daughters of Bilitis she strained against the s...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 10: Dick Leitsch from 2019-02-07T08:00
Dick Leitsch came to New York City in the early 1960s to smoke cigarettes, drink cocktails, and pick up handsome young men. He got his wish and then some, but the native Kentuckian also took on the...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 9: Ernestine Eckstein from 2019-01-24T08:00
Ernestine Eckstein is an iconic figure from the 1960s homophile movement—from photos showing her as the only African American woman at the earliest protests, to her trailblazing cover story in The ...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 8: Bayard Rustin from 2019-01-10T08:00
Bayard Rustin was a champion of the black civil rights movement—mentor to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. But because he was gay and out, he faced bigotry ins...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 7: Reed Erickson from 2018-12-27T08:00
Reed Erickson was a trans man with a big checkbook, a pet leopard, big dreams for a better world for gay people and trans folks—and single-handedly financed ONE Incorporated and founded the first t...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 6: Stella Rush ("Sten Russell") from 2018-12-13T10:00
“I’m a bisexual ki-ki s.o.b butch-femme.” Stella Rush railed against rules and binaries: butch/femme, gay/straight. Fighting for social survival, and wielding a pen, Stella (aka Sten Russell) carve...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 5: Dorr Legg, Martin Block, and Jim Kepner of ONE from 2018-11-29T10:00
ONE, the first national gay magazine, attracted the attention of the FBI and was at the heart of a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case. Dorr Legg, Martin Block, and Jim Kepner were key to ONE’s succes...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 4: Billye Talmadge from 2018-11-15T11:00
Investigated by the FBI, blackmailed, but bold enough to keep going, Billye Talmadge was one of the early members of the earliest lesbian rights organization in the U.S., the Daughters of Bilitis. ...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 3: Harry Hay from 2018-11-01T06:00
Harry Hay had a vision, and that vision led to the founding of the first sustained gay rights organization in the United States—the Mattachine Society, in 1950. Mattachine (and Harry’s) first task—...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 2: Magnus Hirschfeld from 2018-10-25T06:02
More than a century ago, Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld chose to take a stand for LGBTQ rights, founding a movement, providing a safe space, and seeking justice through science. The Nazis crushed his vision...
ListenSeason 4: Episode 1: Introduction from 2018-10-25T06:00
Our fourth season is about beginnings. So we’re going to start at the beginning and hear from the activists and visionaries who got the ball rolling for LGBTQ civil rights. In this episode, meet so...
ListenSeason 4: A Message from Our Listeners from 2018-10-11T13:25
Making Gay History is coming back with all new episodes that bring queer history to life through the voices of the people who lived it. Hear the trailer now. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...
ListenBonus: Farewell Dick Leitsch from 2018-06-23T06:00
May 11, 1935 - Jun 22, 2018. Dick Leitch, Kentucky native, New Yorker at heart, one-time president of the Mattachine Society of New York, was an early gay rights advocate who challenged police entr...
ListenBonus: Kay Lahusen’s Gay Table from 2018-06-21T12:00
Join us as Making Gay History pulls up a chair at Kay Tobin Lahusen’s monthly gay dinner table. Spend some time with this gang of elders and hear how love, friendship, and activism live on for thes...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 11: Morty Manford from 2017-12-28T08:00
Morty Manford was one of thousands of young people who joined the fight for gay liberation in the early 1970s. As a member of the Gay Activists Alliance, he challenged New York City's mayor face to...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 10: Greg Brock from 2017-12-21T08:00
Greg Brock blazed a trail for LGBTQ journalists by being himself at a time when being yourself could sabotage your career or cost you your job. But Greg didn't just come out on the job, he came out...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 9: Paulette Goodman from 2017-12-14T08:00
As a Jewish child growing up in Nazi-occupied Paris, Paulette Goodman knew what it meant to be a despised minority. After the war, her family sought refuge in the U.S. But when Paulette found out t...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 8: Morris Kight from 2017-12-07T08:00
Morris Kight was a whirling dervish champion of LGBTQ civil rights. He cut his activist teeth in the labor, civil rights, and anti-war movements, and from 1969 on brought all his passion to bear on...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 7: Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin from 2017-11-30T08:00
Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin were the originals. With six other women, they co-founded the Daughters of Bilitis—the very first lesbian organization in the U.S. DOB seems tame and timid today, but in...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 6: Larry Kramer from 2017-11-23T10:00
In 1981 Larry Kramer sounded an alarm almost no one wanted to hear. Gay men were dying from a mysterious disease and the only way to stop its spread was to stop having sex. The outspoken activist w...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 5: Deborah Johnson&Zandra Rolón Amato from 2017-11-16T08:00
In 1983, Deborah Johnson and Zandra Rolón Amato went to a Los Angeles restaurant for what was supposed to be a romantic dinner. Instead they wound up in court. They fought back against discriminati...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 4: J.J. Belanger from 2017-11-09T08:00
You may know his face from an iconic 1953 photo booth photo. But there’s a full life’s story behind that photo that includes love, heartbreak, Alfred Kinsey, and fighting for trans rights. Visit ou...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 3: Ellen DeGeneres from 2017-11-02T07:00
Everybody loves Ellen. But that wasn’t always so. When she came out on screen and in real life the backlash was fierce and her future cast in doubt. In this 2001 interview, hear a beloved icon at a...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 2: Perry Watkins from 2017-10-26T07:00
Sergeant Perry Watkins played by the rules. The U.S military did not. Drafted in 1968, he was thrown out fifteen years later despite his honesty and stellar record of service. He fought back and wo...
ListenSeason 3: Episode 1: Sylvia Rivera — Part 2 from 2017-10-22T08:00
Welcome back to Sylvia’s kitchen, for the second part of a never-before-heard interview from 1989. Pull up a chair for a conversation with the Stonewall veteran and trans rights pioneer who reflect...
ListenSeason 3: Preview from 2017-10-19T07:00
Making Gay History mines Eric Marcus’s 30-year-old audio archive of rare interviews to create intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to LGBTQ...
ListenBonus: Edythe Eyde's Gay Gal's Mixtape from 2017-10-11T17:38
Already a visionary with her pioneering lesbian 'zine Vice Versa in the 1940s, "Gay Gal" Edythe Eyde broke the mold again when she started singing positive ballads and gay-friendly parodies in LA's...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 11: Tom Cassidy from 2017-05-04T08:00
CNN business anchor Tom Cassidy kept his “private life” strictly separate from his public life. Three decades ago he had to. But then he was diagnosed with AIDS. Visit our episode webpage for backg...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 10: Joyce Hunter from 2017-04-27T07:43
Joyce Hunter’s childhood and adolescence were stolen from her and she was determined to keep that from happening to other LGBTQ youth. She survived suicide attempts, years in an orphanage, and a br...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 9: Evander Smith and Herb Donaldson from 2017-04-20T08:00
Four years before the 1969 uprising at NYC’s Stonewall Inn, a San Francisco confrontation between the police and that city’s LGBT community proved a turning point. Gay attorneys Herbert Donaldson a...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 8: Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen from 2017-04-13T08:00
When the Stonewall uprising upended the 1960s homophile movement, Barbara Gittings and Kay Lahusen refused to be put out to pasture. They brought all their passion, humor, and determination to the ...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 7: Herb Selwyn from 2017-04-06T08:00
Herb Selwyn never hesitated to stick his neck out for others. That included gay people at a time when other straight attorneys cashed in on the persecution of homosexuals and gay attorneys were too...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 6: Morris Foote from 2017-03-30T08:00
On November 2, 1955, when 30-year-old Morris read on the front page of Boise's newspaper, the Idaho Statesman, that the police were rounding up and arresting gay men, he did the only thing he could...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 5: Jean O'Leary - Part 2 from 2017-03-26T08:00
Jean O’Leary had a vision for the national LGBTQ civil rights movement. On March 26, 1977 she led the first delegation of lesbian and gay activists to the White House. And in 1988 she co-founded Na...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 4: Jean O'Leary - Part 1 from 2017-03-23T08:00
Jean O’Leary was passionate—about women, nuns, feminism, and equal rights. She left an indelible mark on the women’s movement and the LGBTQ civil rights movement, but not without causing controvers...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 3: Hal Call from 2017-03-16T19:55
Hal Call never minced words. The midwestern newspaperman and WWII vet wrested control of the Mattachine Society from its founders and went on to fight police oppression and champion sexual freedom....
ListenSeason 2: Episode 2: Shirley Willer from 2017-03-09T09:00
Shirley Willer had good reason to be angry—she was beaten by the police and a dear friend was allowed to die. Because they were gay. She channeled that anger into action, traveling the country in t...
ListenSeason 2: Episode 1: Marsha P. Johnson and Randy Wicker from 2017-03-02T11:00
Meet Marsha P. Johnson and Randy Wicker—two very different heroes of the early LGBT civil rights movement. Marsha was a Street Transvestite Action Revolutionary. Randy led the first gay demonstrati...
ListenSeason 2: Preview from 2017-02-23T11:33
Making Gay History mines Eric Marcus’s 30-year-old audio archive of rare interviews to create intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnesses to LGBTQ...
ListenBonus: Love Is Love from 2017-02-14T05:18
The right to love and be loved for who we are has always been a driving force in the fight for LGBT civil rights. Eric shares four special love stories from his archive featuring activists who help...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 10: Vito Russo from 2016-12-15T08:00
Vito Russo loved movies, but he looked behind the silver screen and saw how Hollywood was sending a message that LGBTQ people were less-than-human. He decided that that had to change. He wrote a bo...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 9: Barbara Gittings and Kay "Tobin" Lahusen from 2016-12-08T08:00
Self-described gay rights fanatics and life partners Barbara Gittings and Kay “Tobin” Lahusen helped supercharge the nascent movement in the 1960s and brought their creativity, passion, determinati...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 8: Dear Abby from 2016-12-01T08:00
A generation ago, tens of millions of people turned to "Dear Abby” in her daily newspaper column for advice. Long before others did, and at considerable risk, she used her platform and celebrity in...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 7: Chuck Rowland from 2016-11-23T12:47
A WWII veteran turns theory into action, co-founding one of the first LGBT rights groups, the Mattachine Society, in 1950—a time when gay people were considered sick, sinful, criminal, and a threat...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 6: Jeanne and Morty Manford from 2016-11-17T14:30
When Jeanne Manford’s gay son was badly beaten at a protest in 1972, she took action and founded an organization for parents of gays known today as PFLAG. Visit our episode webpage for background i...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 5: Frank Kameny from 2016-11-10T18:06
Frank Kameny fought for what was right. And he never gave up. Lessons for us all. Visit our episode webpage for background information, archival photos, and other resources.Learn more about your ad...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 4: Dr. Evelyn Hooker from 2016-11-03T03:19
In 1945 Dr. Evelyn Hooker’s gay friend Sam From urged her to do a study challenging the commonly held belief that homosexuals were by nature mentally ill. It was work that would ultimately strip th...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 3: Edythe Eyde aka Lisa Ben from 2016-10-27T03:19
In 1947, Hollywood secretary Edythe Eyde, aka Lisa Ben, had the audacity to publish “Vice Versa,” the first ever “magazine” for lesbians. Even more audacious, she imagined a future gay utopia that ...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 2: Wendell Sayers from 2016-10-20T04:37
You’ve never heard of Wendell Sayers, but once you hear his story, you’ll never forget him. Born in Western Kansas in 1904, Wendell was the first black lawyer to work for Colorado’s Attorney Genera...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 1: Sylvia Rivera from 2016-10-13T11:13
A never before heard conversation with trans icon, self-described “drag queen,” and Stonewall uprising veteran Sylvia Rivera. Sylvia relives that June 1969 night in vivid detail and describes her s...
ListenSeason 1: Episode 1: Sylvia Rivera from 2016-10-13T11:13
A never before heard conversation with trans icon, self-described “drag queen,” and Stonewall uprising veteran Sylvia Rivera. Sylvia relives that June 1969 night in vivid detail and describes her s...
ListenSeason 1: Preview from 2016-10-05T23:43
The Making Gay History podcast mines Eric Marcus’s decades-old audio archive of rare interviews to create intimate, personal portraits of both known and long-forgotten champions, heroes, and witnes...
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