Coming Out Pod

We're so excited to be releasing the episode of The Bechdel Cast that we both guested on back in June of 2019! Listen to us discuss allllllll the gay goodness of the *classic* holiday film Carol, and remember: always leave your gloves behind if you want to help a repressed shopgirl have her lesbian awakening. Follow The Bechdel Cast at @BechdelCast, and follow hosts Caitlin and Jamie at @caitlindu...

HAPPY HOLIGAYS, Y'ALL!!! It's our annual Listener Mailbag episode, and we got *so* many great questions from you this year! We discuss a wide variety of queer queries, ranging from the serious (what to do about transphobic colleagues and how to check in with a loved one re: their mental health) to the sexy! Listen as we share resources and spicy personal anecdotes; plus, Lauren closes out the year...

In the past couple of years, the term "DEI" has started popping up *a lot* online, to the point where Googling just those three letters turns up hundreds of hits! However, you would not be alone in admitting that you maybe don't exactly know what DEI...like...is. Fortunately, Lily Zheng (author of the recently-published "DEI Deconstructed: Your No-Nonsense Guide to Doing the Work and Doing It Righ...

Throughout her adolescence, Iris Liu ticked off a number of familiar boxes: SUPER good ally; "isn't *everybody* attracted to their friends...?"; all the greatest hits. But it wasn't until she fell in with the rugby team at college that Iris finally had her Aha! moment ("It was like, all of a sudden, all my friends were lesbians"). Today, Iris identifies as both queer and polyamorous, but it's been...

If you've ever wondered what could make a lawyer leave their profession to create the world's first undies for oral sex (and who among us hasn't?), then this is the episode for YOU! Melanie Cristol, Founder & CEO of Lorals, discovered she was queer in college; a realization that so deeply influenced her sense of social justice that she ended up going to law school. As a lawyer, Melanie went to wor...

Eden Robinson's story has a little bit of everything: A dad who was both a rabbi *and* a pastor! Marlee Matlin as a gateway drug to The L Word! Kate McKinnon as the final nail in the coffin for compulsory heterosexuality! Eden shares how, despite an upbringing where she was praised for questioning everything, she nevertheless was too frightened to truly interrogate her own sexuality until she was...

Last week, America held its midterm elections, and many of us were nervously anticipating a so-called "red wave." What ended up happening, however, was a red...and orange...*and* yellow...*AND*--okay; we're just gonna cut to the chase: IT WAS A RAINBOW WAVE!!! Lauren and Nicole take a week off from coming out stories to discuss the historic wins queer candidates had in this pivotal, record-breakin...

We have officially set a new record with this week's guest Tricia Friedman, who has lived in a whopping *eight* countries as a result of her longtime work as an educator! And as if that weren't exciting enough, Tricia also gifts us with our first coming out story to ever involve being mistaken for a spy by Russian authorities WHO IS THIS WOMAN OF MYSTERY AND INTRIGUE?! From humble beginnings in Ne...

We have a rapid-fire discussion about one of our all-time favorite topics: queer female representation in media! Karen Frost describes herself as a "professional lesbian dabbler," but that majorly downplays the WEALTH of knowledge she has as a result of ceaselessly mining the data for queer TV shows, films, and web series! We discuss how (and why) projects like Nicole's As Love Goes face increasin...

It's Intersex Awareness Day, and we are thrilled and honored to at long last have on our first ever out intersex guest, the brilliant Val Hill! Val (they/she) is a queer intersex community advocate who facilitates the group Club Intersex for the L.A. LGBT Center, so you would never in a million years guess that, pre-pandemic, she didn't even *know* the umbrella term "intersex!" Val shares how a ro...

At the age of nineteen, journalist and author Jessi Hempel came out. Tale as old as time, right? But far less traveled territory is what proceeded to happen over the next several years: four out of five members of Jessi's immediate family - including her father - *ALSO* came out! Two decades later, in the midst of lockdown-induced isolation, Jessi, her parents, and her two younger siblings somewha...

Surprise! We're dropping this week's episode a day early because IT'S NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY, Y'ALL! And we're celebrating in a big way with none other than actor Janet Varney, who voices bicon Korra on The Legend of Korra! Janet was never "in" the closet ("The first kisses I ever had were with girls, and that never stopped"), so she found it confusing when the internet informed her that she had...

Actor, writer, and longtime friend of Nicole's, Doug Plaut (Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Hurricane Bianca: From Russia with Hate), had what can only be described as a roughhhhh childhood. When Doug (they/he) began exhibiting non-heteronormative traits at an early age ("I was a four-year-old who loved Barbara Streisand"), his parents sought out medical intervention. By late high school, Doug had seen...

We're closing out Bi Visibility Month with makeup artist, photographer, and Leif Pacent-Lindquist's "Number One" Babysitter, Kyrsta Morehouse! Kyrsta grew up in a small, conservative town in Northern California and was raised in a "very Christian" home. However, when she became aware of her attraction to women, it wasn't being a lesbian that Kyrsta was afraid of, but rather "living in that weird l...

Episode 33 guest Ash Holzer returns for an episode we've really been looking forward to, because WOW have things changed in her life since she was first on the pod! When we spoke to Ash (formerly "Ashley") in January of 2019, she had recently been part of the L.A. LGBT Center's Women's Coming Out group; she and her husband were living on different sides of the same house while co-parenting their t...

We talk to one of our co-facilitators at the L.A. LGBT Center, Tawni Sofia Acosta! Tawni is sixty-two, and was born at a time when there was zero information on being transgender ("or if there was information, it was just the freak show information"). As a result, she had no language to explain what she was feeling; she only knew that if she expressed it to her family and friends, things would not...

We bask in the glow of the LUSCIOUSLY-MANED Garrett Schlichte (he/they)! When Nicole heard Garrett's essay "My Relationship Guru Is a 14-Year-Old Girl" on the Modern Love podcast, she knew we had to have him on to talk about "second adolescence," or as it is affectionately known in our community, "queer puberty." Garrett was in the fourth grade when he first got called "gay" by a classmate (becaus...

Uh oh! We have a new BFF in Nashville and it's singer/songwriter GODDESS, Nicole Serrano! Nicole (she/they) identifies as non-binary ("I feel like 'female-plus'"), and remembers having crushes on girls as early as preschool. Growing up in the Pentecostal Church, however, meant constant messaging that "gay people were going to Hell," so when it came to her burgeoning sexuality, Nicole says, "I knew...

In the grand tradition of Sappho, Audre Lorde, and probably Emily Dickinson (just sayin'), the pod finally hosts our first ever lesbian poet! Sofia Fey has always "just gravitated towards terms that felt right," and found reclaiming the word "lesbian" to be important to them. However, it wasn't until years later when they began identifying as non-binary and exclusively using they/them pronouns tha...

Raised in a traditional Middle Eastern family, author and podcaster George Azar ("My Gay Church Days") knew that he was attracted to men even before puberty hit. But when his older brother came out in middle school and was summarily put into therapy, George receded even further into the closet. He became a Young Republican in order to gain his father's approval, and was subsequently drawn to Chris...

It's a conversation that's been four years in the making! In her first appearance on the pod back in Episode 9, Lauren Ludwig (she/they) told us her coming out story, and detailed a number of parallels that it shared with her own mother's journey, which started back when Lauren was a child. Now, in a special guest co-host episode, Lauren and Lauren (double your Laurens, double your fun!) at long l...

Nicole is in Sweden, so we're taking the week off! But since Lauren is *not* in Sweden, she wanted to briefly hop on the mic to give some alternate listening suggestions, tease next week's very exciting episode, and share the single most lesbian thing she's ever done! Please enjoy all of her lip smacks and "um's" - she had to edit this minisode herself, and has absolutely no idea what she is doing...

When she was first on the podcast back in December of 2018, Valentina D'Alessandro had only been in the U.S. for three years, and had been married to her wife Cynthia for just under two. What we did *not* reveal during that episode was the fact that she and Cynthia had also spent the past year trying for a baby. At that point, they were still hopeful, despite a number of emotional, biological, and...

Shohreh Davoodi (host of the Conjuring Up Courage podcast) has had a...tumultuous couple of years, to say the least. Raised in the strict, expectation-heavy Baháʼí Faith, Shohreh was always regarded as the "black sheep of the family." But the fact that she was naturally more feminine-presenting meant that her queerness didn't ping for anybody, including herself! Shohreh shares how her slowly-dawni...

We've got J.P. Der Boghossian (he/they), creator of the Queer Armenian Library and host of the brand new podcast, This Queer Book Saved My Life! J.P. grew up with messaging from his religious Armenian community that AIDS and hate crimes were "divine punishment" for being gay; as a result, he believed well into his twenties that he was going to die young. J.P. walks us through his unexpected brush...