Everything & Anything...and a bit gay Podcast

Nathan spent years climbing the corporate ladder at L'Oreal, eventually reaching senior vice president level across brands like Kiehl's and Baxter of California. But the more success he found in corporate beauty, the more disconnected he felt from what stylists and their clients actually wanted — so he walked away to start his own company from scratch. That company became Filament Sciences, home t...

Zach welcomes Philip Anthony, host of Downright Upright on Minnesota's AM 950 — "the Progressive Voice of Minnesota" — for a conversation that moves from career origin stories all the way to the heart. Philip shares how he went from teaching and legal work to becoming a flight attendant, landing (unexpectedly) in Minneapolis-St. Paul, where he found a tight-knit community, met his husband, and eve...

Neyla Pekarek spent eight years as the cellist and vocalist for The Lumineers, joining the band just weeks after graduating college in 2010 after answering a Craigslist ad. What started as a way to get out of her parents' house turned into Grammy nominations, a Saturday Night Live performance, opening for U2, playing Madison Square Garden and Red Rocks, and an invitation to perform for President O...

Support for same-sex marriage in America just dropped six points since 2022 — and Zach wants to know why. In this week's solo episode, he digs into a recent Gallup poll showing acceptance falling from 71% to 65%, even as LGBTQ+ identification among Gen Z and millennials continues to climb. It's a contradiction that's been sitting with him, and he works through it out loud. The conversation ranges...

In this deeply moving episode, Zach sits down with Arnold Dahl-Wooley — a nationally recognized Two Spirit public speaker, advocate, and founder of Two Spirit Advocacy in Minnesota — for a conversation about identity, culture, and survival. Arnold opens by defining "Two Spirit" for listeners unfamiliar with the term: a sacred identity within Native American culture referring to those within the LG...

It's Friday, which means it's time for The Gay Bit — Zach's weekly dose of camp, commentary, and community talk on Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay. This week: summer is officially Zach's least favorite season, and he's not sorry about it. He breaks down why he'd rather be bundled up in a sweater than baking in the heat, why he's never been a beach person despite growing up in Miami, and why hi...

Kathy Anderson joins the show to talk about her new short story collection, Vamoose , fifteen stories centered on older lesbians standing on the edge of something new. She traces the book's title back to a single line of dialogue that captured the collection's spirit of letting go of the old to make room for the new. The conversation moves through Kathy's own path: coming out at 17 in the late 197...

Zach opens up about the relationship people ask him about most: his 28-year partnership with his husband, Andrew. Prompted by the same question on every radio and podcast appearance lately — "how did you two make it work?" — Zach walks through the whole origin story: meeting on AOL in 1998 (dial-up, flip phones, and all), their first date, moving in together, and the honeymoon phase giving way to...

Today on Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay , Zach sits down with British author Matt Cain — bestselling novelist, former editor-in-chief of Attitude magazine, MBE recipient, and founder of Pansy , the UK's dedicated LGBTQ+ publishing house. Matt opens up about growing up gay in a working-class town outside Manchester during the height of the AIDS crisis, being bullied for being "too girly" befor...

Author Ryan La Sala joins the show to talk about his new horror novel The Dead of Summer , now out in paperback, and the fictional island of Anchor's Mercy — a queer sanctuary modeled on Provincetown, right down to the drag queens who run the town after the tourists clear out. Ryan opens up about writing horror as a way to process fear and courage, the complicated dynamic between year-round locals...

Every gay content creator has a Karen. Mine has several — plus a Brent, a Donna, and a Gary with exactly six followers and one Pokémon post to his name. This week on The Gay Bit, Zach breaks down the taxonomy of the strangers who slide into his comments and DMs to inform him he's going to hell: the drive-by, the scripture bomber, the concerned auntie, and the rarest breed of all, the debate-me bro...

In this episode of Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay , Zach talks with Felix Eller — the Richmond, Virginia native who unexpectedly went viral for winning a Heated Rivalry -themed lookalike contest. In this episode: Felix's coming out story — being told he was gay before he'd considered it himself Middle school bullying, a death threat, and a year of homeschooling A first relationship ended by a...

In this week's This Is Everything episode, Zach takes listeners on a trip back to Southern Illinois, where he visited his mother for her birthday and revisited the tiny rural town he lived in until age seven. He reflects on what his life could have looked like had his family never relocated to Florida — the bullying he likely would have faced, the lack of diversity in his childhood school, and the...

Title: Inside the Furry Fandom: A Veteran's Journey Through Fursonas, Community & Healing Episode Summary: This week on Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay , Zach sits down with Mika (Mikadothebusky25), a content creator and proud member of the furry fandom, for a conversation that goes far beyond the stereotypes. Mika breaks down what the furry community actually is, how fursonas are created, and...

Author Neil Adams joins the show to talk about his memoir chronicling the extraordinary life of his late best friend, Michael Dorian — a veterinary technician who talked his way past the barricades on 9/11 to help exhausted firefighters at Ground Zero, despite having no medical credentials and living with HIV. Neil traces Michael's story from a chaotic childhood in the Bronx, through an HIV diagno...

It's Friday, and that means it's The Gay Bit — where Zach makes sure the week ends as gay as possible. This week, Zach takes us on a tour of a very specific type of friend: the one who knows every owner, attended every opening, and has somehow been to every event before you even finish your sentence. You know the type. Zach does too — and he's got receipts. He also flashes back to a wild chapter f...

What happens after the cancer is gone? For actor, filmmaker, author, and cancer survivor Edward Miskie, the answer is: the hardest part. In this raw, deeply honest, and at times hilarious conversation, Edward joins Zach to talk about being diagnosed with lymphoma at 24 while performing in Hairspray in Reno, Nevada — a tumor the size of a grapefruit growing under his arm, costumes being let out to...

Gay people have attitude. It's a stereotype — and it's also true. But the question was never why are gay people bitchy? The real question is: what did the world do to create that? In this episode of This Is Everything , Zach gets personal about the armor that LGBTQ+ people build just to survive — the thick skin, the shade, the sharp wit, the hypervigilance about who's safe in the room. It's not a...

One of the most recognizable names in beauty joins us for a deeply personal, wide-ranging conversation. Chaz Dean — the creator of WEN Cleansing Conditioner, with over 100 million bottles sold — sits down with Zach to talk about far more than hair. This is a conversation about following your instincts, building a legacy on your own terms, the chosen family that shapes you, and why giving back isn'...

Kink, Leather Culture & Sexual Authenticity with The Kink Collective What does it really mean to know who you are — and to be brave enough to live it? In this episode of Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay , Zach sits down with three remarkable people: Cat, Joshua, and Natalie, co-founders and members of the Kink Collective, an organization built on a single radical idea: people before kink. The K...

This week on Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay , Zach sits down with Colombian actress, model, and former beauty queen Elisa — a woman who has done it all. From winning pageants in Barranquilla (the city that gave the world Shakira and Sofia Vergara), to earning a law degree she never used, to walking runways in Miami and eventually landing roles on Netflix and Starz's Black Mafia Family , Elisa...

Is your gaydar working — or is it completely broken? In this week's Gay Bit, Zach Randles-Friedman gets into one of the most timeless (and hilariously relatable) topics in gay culture: how do you actually spot a gay man in the wild? It all started at a bar when a guy walked in and Zach's friend called "straight" — but was he? Zach breaks down the unscientific but very real phenomenon of "gay face,...

She married a man she didn't love because a prophet told her to. She buried her firstborn daughter. She taught abstinence-only education in Ohio while quietly asking questions no one wanted to answer. And now, Hope With Holly has 750,000 followers across platforms — and she's burning down every lie she was handed. In this raw, funny, and deeply moving conversation, Zach sits down with Holly, a for...

Every gay man has a journey. In this deeply personal episode of This Is Everything, Zach gets real — maybe more real than ever — about the phases of his own gay life, from confused seventh-grader sneaking looks at the JCPenney catalog to fully out, proudly gay podcaster in his 50s. Zach walks through the stages so many LGBTQ+ people will recognize: the denial phase, the "maybe I'm bi" phase, the c...

Actor, Broadway star, and cabaret performer Clayborne Elder sits down with Zach for one of the most anticipated interviews in Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay history — and yes, Clay was literally on Zach's top five wish list. Clay opens up about playing John Adams on HBO's The Gilded Age , what it felt like when his character was written off the show, and the bittersweet experience of saying g...