

Outward: Slate's LGBTQ podcast
Slate Podcasts
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.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Sep 21, 2022 • 1h 19min
Is A League of Their Own Gratuitously Gay?
This month, Bryan Lowder is away, so hosts Christina Cauterucci and Jules Gill-Peterson are joined by the podcast’s founding co-host Brandon Tensley to talk about some new representations of LGBTQ people involved in the wide world of sports. First, they debate whether the new Amazon Prime take on A League of Their Own, starring and co-created by Abbi Jacobson, might possibly be too queer. Then they discuss the making of Stay on Board: The Leo Baker Story, the new Netflix documentary about a transgender pro skateboarder, with Nicola Marsh, who directed the movie, along with Giovanni Reda, and executive producer Alex Schmider. Finally, they add some new items to the gay agenda.Items discussed in the show:Race Deconstructed, Brandon’s newsletter at CNNA League of Their Own, on Amazon PrimeStay on Board: The Leo Baker Story, on NetflixSlate’s coverage of the Yummers debacleThe 2022 NLGJA Convention in ChicagoThe Transgender Issue, by Shon FayeGay AgendaBrandon: Listen to Rina Sawayama’s new album Hold the GirlJules: Follow actor, writer, model Hari Nef on InstagramChristina: Listen to Lauren Ober’s new podcast The Loudest Girl in the WorldThis 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

Aug 17, 2022 • 1h 29min
Viruses and Our Profoundly Unequal World
This month, host Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder start the show with a Thots & Queries segment in which a listener asks about orgy etiquette. In a completely different party setting, they try to figure out what on earth is going on in the U.S. Congress, where legislators are debating marriage equality in the form of the Respect for Marriage Act. Then Northwestern University professor and journalist Steven Thrasher joins them to discuss his new book The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide. Finally, they add some new items to the gay agenda.Items discussed in the show:Taylor Blake and her emu friend EmmanuelBeyoncé’s RenaissanceA shocking tweet from the official Log Cabin Republicans accountThe June 29 episode of Outward in which Mark Joseph Stern considered how the Dobbs decision might affect LGBTQ rights“Why Is There More Republican Support for Gay Marriage Than for Abortion Rights?” by Moira Donegan, in the NationThe Viral Underclass,, by Steven ThrasherLet the Record Show, by Sarah Schulman“An Uprising Comes From the Viral Underclass,” by Steven Thrasher in Slate, June 12, 2020 Gay AgendaJules: X, by Davey DavisBryan: The Sandman, on NetflixChristina: “We Failed,” by Eric Neugeboren, in the Texas Tribune 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

Jul 20, 2022 • 1h 14min
Demystifying Monkeypox
This month, Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder talk about two very different health stories. First, in the Thots & Queries segment, they respond to a listener who has questions about the ethics of moving to another country in an age of Supreme uncertainty. Then they talk with Harun Tulunay, a London-based sexual-health advocate, about his experience with monkeypox. He has been sharing his experiences with the disease, including the challenges of receiving a correct diagnosis. In New York City, the rollout of the monkeypox vaccine program was a disaster. Then they are joined by journalist Io Dodds to discuss her recent piece for the Independent: “ ‘Never Ask Permission’: How Two Trans Women Ran a Legendary Underground Surgical Clinic in a Rural Tractor Barn.” (Note, Jules was interviewed for the piece.)Items discussed in the show:Conjuring Kesha, on Discovery +“ ‘Never Ask Permission’: How Two Trans Women Ran a Legendary Underground Surgical Clinic in a Rural Tractor Barn,” by Io Dodds, in the IndependentGay AgendaBryan: “What Should a Queer Children’s Book Do?” by Jessica Winter in the New YorkerChristina: The Other Two, on HBO MaxJules: P-Valley, on StarzThis 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

Jun 29, 2022 • 26min
Is Marriage Equality in Jeopardy?
In the final Pride month special episode, Bryan and Christina talk with Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern. They assess what the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, the case that swept away Roe v. Wade, might mean for LGBTQ rights. Should we be worried about marriage equality? Given Americans’ purported love of privacy, is there any way that the right to same-sex intimacy, protected in Lawrence v. Texas, might now come under attack? Mark helps the hosts find hope, slim though it might be, amid the cruelty of the Dobbs decision.Items discussed in the show:The episode of Amicus in which Dahlia Lithwick and guests discussed Dobbs (and Bruen).Season 7 of Slow Burn, about Roe v. Wade and the history of abortion rights in America.A special post-Dobbs episode of The Waves, with Christina and Cheyna Roth.“The Supreme Court’s Next Target Is Marriage Equality. It Won’t Be the Last,” by Mark Joseph Stern“The Lawlessness of the Dobbs Decision,” by Dahlia Lithwick and Neil S. Siegel.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

Jun 22, 2022 • 1h 20min
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 MagazineJules’ Twitter threadJules’ Substack responsePostmates’ “Eat With Pride” ad campaignLeo Herrera’s Instagram story about this campaignChristina’s Slate story about a U-Haul truck full of Nazis who headed to a Pride celebration in Idaho.New York City Drag MarchGay AgendaBryan: Buzzfeed’s roundup of “This Pride Month” memesChristina: KaftkoJules: Read a banned LGBTQ bookThis 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

Jun 15, 2022 • 44min
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 8, 2022 • 33min
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jun 1, 2022 • 26min
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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

May 18, 2022 • 1h 27min
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 SunsetTwo 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 YorkOriginal Plumbing“Madison Cawthorn Thrusting His Naked Body on Another Man’s Face Doesn’t Tell Us Much About His ‘Gayness,’ ” by Bryan in SlateNot Gay: Sex Between Straight White Men, by Jane WardThe Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, by Hugh RyanWhen Brooklyn Was Queer, by Hugh RyanHuey P. Newton’s 1970 speech on the women’s liberation and gay liberation movementsChained Heat 2Orange Is the New BlackGay AgendaChristina: Great FreedomJules: The Vice series TransnationalBryan: From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium, by Justin Elizabeth SayresThis 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

Apr 20, 2022 • 1h 11min
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 AmtrakQueers responding to homophobic legislation with … merchThe long life and sad demise of Bitch Media.They She He Me: Free to Be, by Maya Christina Gonzalez and Matthew SGMorris Micklewhite and the Tangerine Dress, by Christine Baldacchino and Isabelle MalenfantJacob’s New Dress, by Sarah and Ian Hoffman and Chris CageIntroducing Teddy, by Jessica Walton and Dougal MacPhersonPugdog, 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 GizmodoGay AgendaChristina: “Sex, Love, and Art in the Suburbs,” by Garth Greenwell, in EsquireBryan: “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 TimesJules: Manhunt, by Gretchen Felker-MartinThis 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