Everything & Anything...and a bit gay Podcast

He made a first-ever climb of Denali’s north face, hitchhiked around the world at 22, got thrown out of two countries in one week, and was one of the last Americans standing in northern South Vietnam when the North invaded in 1972. Now 84, John Graham is “Badass Granddad” to 127,000 followers, and in this episode he tells Zach how an adrenaline junkie learned that the biggest adventure of all is f...

Zach returns with a solo This Is Everything segment, working through the headlines that have been weighing on him and on the LGBTQ+ community. He starts with the Supreme Court’s two trans sports ban cases, asking how a ruling could collide with the dozens of state laws and school policies already in place, and points to Massachusetts as proof that anti-trans talking points can cost a candidate. Fr...

A Baptist preacher who’d never held a gun walks into the FBI Academy, and 24 years later walks out a different man. On this episode of Everything & Anything…and a Bit Gay , Zach sits down with Eric Robinson, author of Irreverend: From Saving Souls to Chasing Sinners in the FBI , for a conversation Zach admits he might have turned down a few years ago. Eric spent years as a youth pastor, assist...

Is LinkedIn secretly the hottest dating app out there? On this week’s Gay Bit, Zach Randles-Friedman ends the week super gay with a campy deep dive into the world’s most “professional” social network, where the job posts are depressing, the headshots are suspiciously gorgeous, and the scammers never sleep. In this episode: The LGBTQ+ Professionals group: Why Zach and a friend trade screenshots of...

Why does everyone ghost? Why do dating apps feel like a hamster wheel? And is there still a way to find real, lasting love in the LGBTQ+ community? Zach sits down with Dr. Frankie Bashan, clinical psychologist, certified sex therapist, and founder of Little Gay Book, one of the nation's leading LGBTQ+ matchmaking agencies. Since 2009, Dr. Frankie has combined her psychology training with a lifelon...

What happens when a Real Housewives editor decides to kill off the Housewives himself? Timothy Hedden has spent 25 years behind the scenes of reality TV, cutting Real Housewives of Atlanta, New Jersey, and Potomac, plus Mob Wives. Now he's channeled all of it into his debut novel, Dead Housewives of Philadelphia, a campy, dark-comedy murder mystery out today. And this is his very first podcast int...

In this solo This Is Everything episode, Zach Randles-Friedman takes on the exhaustion so many people are feeling right now. He talks about doom scrolling and a news cycle that feels like a horror show. He covers a job market where AI-polished applications flood every listing, grocery prices that jumped his weekly Instacart order from $200 to $312, and a McDonald's hot fudge sundae that now costs...

What do people really think when no one is watching? Startup founder Kiko Zang joins Zach to talk about the gap between how we perform online and what we actually believe, and why she's betting $3.6 million on closing it. Born in China and sent to an all-girls boarding school in small-town New Zealand at just 12, Kiko grew up as one of only a handful of Asian people in town. She opens up about the...

and Facebook and finds thousands of unread DMs waiting for him. After wading through the Nigerian princes, SEO pitches, and spam, he pulls out the real ones and reads them on air, Jimmy Kimmel mean-tweets style, except not all of them are mean. In this episode: Why Zach ignores most comments, and the one thing that always gets a clapback (anyone coming for trans people) A listener who has walked 6...

What happens when a surgical device inventor and serial entrepreneur discovers she can "see" inside the human body from across the world? Zach sits down with Julie Ryan — medical intuitive, psychic medium, author of eight books, and host of the Ask Julie Ryan show — for a wide-ranging conversation about what she calls "the buffet of psychicness." Julie shares how a birthday gift of Caroline Myss's...

In this solo episode, Zach talks about something most of us hit eventually: the moment you just stop caring what people think. For him, it clicked at 50. Now 53, he's still cutting people out, or at least putting them "on pause." He gets candid about the second half of life and the things nobody warns you about, from a surprise frozen shoulder diagnosis to the role reversal of caring for aging par...

At 25, Vinney Tolman was found dead on the floor of a Dairy Queen bathroom. Medics pronounced him dead, zipped him into a body bag, and loaded him into an ambulance. Then a rookie medic in the back of that ambulance got a feeling he couldn't ignore. In this episode, Zach talks with Vinney, author of The Light After Death: My Journey to Heaven and Back, about watching his own death without realizin...

Fighting for Their Lives: Jenn Garofolo on Mental Health & Raising a Trans Son Fellow Bostonian Jenn Garofolo joins Zach to talk about her book Fighting for Their Lives, a mother's account of two separate but overlapping journeys: her son Daniel's severe mental health struggles, which began when he was a toddler, and his coming out as nonbinary and then as a transgender young man at 11. Jenn h...

Zach sits down with Damian Pelliccione (he/they), co-founder and CEO of Revry, the free, ad-supported LGBTQ+ streaming network, and co-creator and Kings' Court judge of the hit competition series King of Drag. As Revry nears its 11th year and King of Drag returns for season 2, Damian opens up about the Apple keynote that sparked the whole idea, the years of pitching a drag king show to advertisers...

This Friday on The Gay Bit, Zach comes clean about one of his most embarrassing and most beloved talents. From junior high through college, and let's be honest, still today, he was the undisputed crank call king of his Miami friend group. Armed with a landline, a phone book, three-way calling, and a voice that could pass for a blonde teenage girl, Zach led up to ten friends at a time on late-night...

What happens when a couple married for 40 years finally says something out loud to each other for the first time? Certified sex therapist Keri Green, LMFT, CST has seen it, and she says nearly every relationship problem comes down to one thing: communication. Zach and Keri cover a lot of ground. They talk about the three C's she looked for while dating as a single mom in her 40s. They get into why...

What happens when you track down every person you've ever kissed, dated, or hooked up with and ask them what really happened? Zach sits down with comedic actor, writer, and fellow podcaster Miriam Katz, the creator of The Ex Appeal Podcast. Her show is built around exactly that premise, and it caught the attention of The View and the New York Post. Miriam's list runs to 112 people. So far she's in...

Zach sits down with psychic medium and mentor Alysa Conger — a working model of nearly 17 years who also teaches people how to access their own intuition. They dig into what it actually looks like to build a mediumship practice, how Alysa's own psychic path was catalyzed by her father's suicide in 2022 (three days before her birthday), and the eerie "signs" she picked up in the days before it happ...

In this week's "This Is Everything" segment, Zach digs into the history of the Boy Scouts of America — now rebranded as Scouting America — tracing it from its 1910 founding through a devastating sexual abuse scandal that led to a $2.46 billion settlement and 2020 bankruptcy filing. He covers the organization's slow evolution on LGBTQ+ inclusion (gay youth in 2013, gay leaders in 2015, transgender...

Zach sits down with his friend of 27 years, Justin Schiefner, a ten-time Burning Man attendee, to unpack everything the HBO Max documentary doesn't fully capture. Justin walks through his evolution from a broke first-timer in a canvas tent to a seasoned burner with a full RV setup, breaking down the real costs, the gifting economy, and the radical inclusion that defines the Black Rock City experie...

Guests: Nicholas Molencupp (writer, co-director, star) and Cameron Moir (actor, producer) of the upcoming film In Between Episode Overview: Zach sits down with Nicholas Molencupp and Cameron Moir ahead of the world premiere of their film In Between at the Out on Film festival (an Oscar-qualifying festival) on September 26th. They dig into how the two met — Cameron cold-emailing Nicholas after seei...

In this week's Gay Bit, Zach finally unpacks a story he's been sitting on since 2004: the time his husband Andrew talked him and their friend Tony into a week at "Camp Camp," an adult LGBTQ+ sleepaway camp in rural Maine. What followed was less "magical queer retreat" and more survival horror — rusty sink water, a shower shared with granddaddy long-legs spiders, a toilet that wasn't bolted to the...

Zach continues his real-talk series on surviving a 28-year relationship — from moving in together and fighting over furniture to the terrifying night his husband said "I'm not happy." Honest, funny, and unfiltered relationship talk.   Picking up from Part 1's origin story, Zach recaps the whirlwind first year and a half before he and Andrew moved in together The awkward apartment-hunting saga...

Guest: Matt Freeman — theater educator, arts administrator, and founder of Change Arts Growing up in the On Tour Company magnet theater program in Belmore/Merrick, NY Being closeted alongside other gay classmates in the '90s vs. kids coming out today Coming out to his parents the same night his father later came out too — on Fire Island, at nearly 70 How Matt found Fire Island through his husband...

Zach sits down with writer, fashion industry veteran, and unlikely viral sensation Brenda Cullerton — a woman who spent decades writing for major publications and working alongside Anna Wintour before reinventing herself as an internet personality in her seventies. They cover Brenda's accidental path to virality through TikTok's "subway takes" and her Instagram series "I Don't Know," her solo show...