Historical Homos

Powdered wigs. Satin breeches. Candlelit salons. And of course: sodomy . This week we’re swanning back into Georgian England (1714–1837), a century of empire, cholera, imperialism, and very flouncy coats – but also one of the gayest domestic revolutions in history. With special guest Dr. Anthony Delaney (author of Queer Georgians , out today!), we explore the LGBTQIA+ pioneers who didn’t just hook...

The Dark Ages: Rome has fallen, the Church won't shut the fuck up, there's a killer plague for every season, and everyone else is dying of BOREDOM. Right? WRONG. Western Europe may have been a shitshow for much of what we ridiculously call the "Dark Ages," but the rest of the world had its act together. Specifically: Baghdad around the 800s AD. At the height of the Golden Age of Islam. They had li...

Welcome to The Hanky Code, aka Grindr for Boomers. Following on from our cruise through history last week, we've delved deeper into the notorious handkerchief code. The code was a form of flagging, which used different coloured bandanas to signal sexual / kink preferences. In this bonus Quickie episode, Bash unpacks the extremely colourful history of flagging—from gay Gold Rush cowboys to scrappy...

You know the feeling: when you lock eyes and the look lingers just a little too long. His hand brushes over his fly. And boom! A small smile confirms it: You're about to be cruising, my king! And all it took was a public park, centuries of sexual shame, and a little bit of courage to get you there... Now it's no surprise that the elegant and much-envied act of Fucking in Public has been around for...

He fiddled while Rome burned. He married two men. He may even have kicked his pregnant wife to death. But he ALSO  invented animal pelt kink, so could he have been THAT BAD?! This week, Bash is joined by classicist and queer historian, Professor Andrew Lear, to discuss the scandalous, salacious, and slanderous life of Emperor Nero — Ancient Rome’s most notorious bisexual bad boy. From castrating (...

🏴‍☠️ Before there was BRAT, there were Butt Pirates. 🏴‍☠️ This week we're hoisting our slutty sails – that's what I call my underpants – to plunder the treacherous homosexual deep, with pirate historian and author Dr. Rebecca Simon ( Pirate Queens ; The Pirate’s Code ) to answer the age-old question: Why are men on a ship always kinda gay? First of all, when we say "pirate," we mean the real 17t...

Leonardo da Vinci? More like Leonardo da Fist Me . We've all heard of the man behind the Mona Lisa. But did you know he was also one of Florence's sodomitical sweethearts? In this episode, we pull back the vajazzled curtain on Leonardo da Vinci to reveal a homo neither tormented nor repressed, suffering dramatically for his art, but a messy, charismatic, and brilliant dilettante obsessed with the...

Hot, rich, European, emotionally unavailable... sound familiar? It's your Hinge profile all over again. No, silly, it's vampires! We are thrilled to welcome back folklorist and queer historian, Sacha Coward (author of Queer as Folklore ) this week, as we trace the gloriously queer history of vampires—from ancient blood-sucking demons to modern brooding bisexuals. Drape your capes and get ready to...

Heads up! This is the episode where we solve gender. Famously a "construct," it turns out Mx. Gender has been around for hundreds of thousands of years. This podcast is only 70 minutes long so we're sticking to the last 5,000... but still. Not bad. Join Bash and his honoured guests this week – Kit Heyam and Marty Davies – as they delve into the deep-cut history of gender, long before we had words...

She was young, she was hot, and she was hated. But did she eat pu$$y? Marie Antoinette was many things: a teen bride, a fashion icon, and according to Sofia Coppola, a big fan of The Strokes (I knew I liked this bitch!) She's famous nowadays for losing her head, but did she also give it? And to whom / with what degree of relish? In this week’s episode, Bash is joined by bestselling author and roya...

Once upon a time—aka the 90s, when I bravely decided to be born—gay marriage was the only thing we queers could talk about. But why? Why were we so hell-bent on getting married? And how did the fight for marriage equality impact real people on the ground? In this episode, Bash is joined by writer and memoirist Jeremy Atherton Lin , author of Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told , to explore...

Imagine a world where you're Russian, gay, and happy about it. No this is not propaganda from the ultra-secret "Pinko" department of the Kremlin (they def have one of those). This is the very real story of the magnificent Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, one of the world's greatest composers and a big old homosexual. He wrote the 1812 Overture , The Nutcracker , and the world’s gayest violin concerto (be...

What's so gay about food? (Besides the fact that you use your mouth for it.) The answer, OF COURSE, lies in 18th century France. In fact, food's sexy origins go even further back, all the way to the ancients: from Eve's naughty apple to Ancient Roman oysters (they made their orgasms more intense!). But it was the invention of the restaurant in 18th century Paris that made food sexy, dangerous, and...

Why do bottoms always die in Greek mythology? If you're a fan of Greek myth, you know the gods love to act like humans: they love, they fuck, they fight...they throw dinner parties. But they also love to kill us. When gods show up on Earth, it typically means someone's about to get pregnant or dead, real quick. (Or both.) And the pattern holds for the gay Greek myths. (With admittedly fewer pregna...

The year is 1395. The city: London. The crime: an "unmentionable, ignominious vice" commonly known as sodomy. And the perp? A rascally, resourceful enigma named John Rykener, who enters the court records "calling herself Eleanor," wearing women's clothes, and defying gravity / everything we know about medieval gender. But John/Eleanor Rykener – or Jeleanor, as they shall henceforth be known to sch...

What comes after the collapse of capitalism? Mass famine? Global war? Environmental destruction? Oh wait, all of that's already happening! It seems like, as a species, we're at a bit of a breaking point. Which means revolution is afoot, and we have to wonder: what the hell happens when it gets here? For most of us, though, it's not easy to project what life looks like after the next economic revol...

What if it's actually your butthole that will lead the revolution? This week, we're getting penetratingly political with writer and podcaster Josh Rivers ( ⁠ Busy Being Black ⁠ ), as we explore the radical legacy of Mario Mieli's ⁠ Towards a Gay Communism ⁠ . Here's the thing: Capitalism doesn't just steal your time and money—it also reinforces the gender binary, nuclear families, and heterosexual...

We're back my little Hormones! Join Bash and his heavy flow of genius guests this season for another no-fucks-given romp through humanity's Big Gay Past. (We all have one!) Come for the history, stay for the laughs, and if you're lucky, leave with a boner. Please note: Erectile Gift With Purchase (EGWP) not guaranteed. First cum, first served. We'll be penetrating your tight little earholes – with...

Happy Hole-idays, my little Hormones! For our last episode of the year, we welcome Coco, the Time Traveling Slut, into your tight little earholes to answer some eternally pressing questions: Where do sluts come from? Have gay men always been promiscuous? Have lesbians not? Who were the greatest skanks in history? And why can't women f*ck in peace, for once, generally speaking, like ever? From the...

“Being transgender is the least important thing about me. I’m a person. I’m just a perso n” – Conner, 18, college student from Ohio Ever wondered what it’s like to be a trans kid in America today? (Hint: it f*cking sucks.) Groups on the right and their politicians use trans kids as pawns in the political game of vote and media attention.  And they love to act like trans kids are an anomaly of mode...

Quit playing with your Lincoln log and listen up , because President Abraham Lincoln is here, he's queer, and we all better get used to it! Lincoln is commonly called the greatest president in American history: but what if he was also frequently in love with men? What if he slept with them in bed for years of his life? What if he had moved to Fire Island, fallen in love with Bowen Yang, and roamed...

"I live life in the margins of society. And the rules of normal society don't apply in the margins." Welcome to the saucy, scandalous slag-paradise that is Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980)! Tamara was a Polish-born aristocrat, bisexual painter, and Art Deco diva who took Paris by storm in the 1920s after escaping the Russian Revolution. She was known for her hunger, a deep yearning to become a great...

Wait, why are mermaids so gay? It turns out everyone’s favorite sea-gals have been floating around for millennia, from ancient Syrian mer-goddesses to medieval water witches, all the way up to Princess Ariel. But how did these dangerous divas of the deep become the sympathetic heroines we love and cherish today? What is it about mermaids that makes them such magnets for LGBTQ+ symbolism? Join me a...

How do you start a renaissance? The one woman who knows - Beyoncé - was unavailable to answer my questions. So instead, we've gone back to 1920s Harlem this week, to figure out the good gay truth. It turns out the Harlem Renaissance was a lot more queer than we learned in school. And half of its greatest luminaries, who represented a major step forward in Black queer history, have been largely for...

“I wake up cold, I who Prospered through dreams of heat Wake to their residue, Sweat, and a clinging sheet.” (The Man with Night Sweats , Thom Gunn, 1992) Never heard of Thom Gunn? Me neither! That's because straight people want to destroy us. Thom was one of the great poets of the 20th century, up there with Philip Larkin and Ted Hughes. But he's scarcely remembered in the 21st century, because h...