Coming Out Pod

We're joined by Germana Belo, co-writer of the award-winning, *very* sexy and sapphic web series RED, as well as a brand new series that she and Nicole wrote TOGETHER! Growing up in Brazil in the 1980s, Germana feared that the feelings she had for women (especially Brooke Shields...) were a sin, or even a curse. She talks about falling in love with her first therapist at the age of eighteen (class...

We're starting the year off right with actor/content creator/all-around-joyful-and-hilarious-human-being, Nikki Garza! Nikki explains how she's distanced herself from the term "body positivity" as she's watched it come to mean insecurity in general, as opposed to the actual marginalization of othered bodies. Nikki prefers the term "body confidence," and discusses how so many people are attracted t...

You know it, you love it, you can't live without it - it's our third annual LISTENER MAILBAG EPISODE! We had some *great* questions this year, including how to recognize the subtle differences between aesthetic attraction, sexual attraction, and being attracted "to the person," and an epic four-part question about polyamory. Plus, we tackle that tale as old as time itself: why does EVERY queer wom...

We hear a raw, inspiring story of survival and resilience from our guest, Stelle. One of eight children, Stelle grew up in an extremely isolated religious cult started by her father in rural Oregon. Among other things, cult life entailed corporal punishment, and teachings that women must submit to their husbands unconditionally. Stelle shares how she managed to free herself, and recalls the point...

We have a beautiful conversation with Lauren's buddy, “Jay,” who tells us the story of his daughter’s coming out, and shares his own experience as a “cis hetero male dad” raising a trans child. At three years old, Jay’s AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) daughter began giving “insistent, persistent, and consistent” signals that she felt she was a girl. Jay discusses what he and his wife observed in the...

Sexting, libido, and dildos, OH MY! These are just a few of the things we go deep into (you're welcome) with queer sex educator Gabrielle Kassel! It's a *very* uncensored ep of the pod as Gabrielle shares the questions she is most frequently asked in her particular line of work. Gabrielle, who defines sex as "any meaningful act of pleasure," blows our minds by laying out the difference between spo...

Our DMs have been overflowing with a veritable cornucopia of polyamory-related questions, so seeing as tomorrow is Thanksgiving, we thought we'd bring not one, not two, but THREE poly folks to the table to discuss loving in abundance! Morgan (@chillpolyamory) provides peer support for poly folks, and nesting partners Bear & Fifi (@bear.n.fifi) offer intimacy coaching. They were all kind enough to...

It's deeply embarrassing for a queer podcast to go 3+ years without featuring the founder of an animal rescue, but that all ends TODAY! Natalie Garcia lost her dog Maggie Mae in an unthinkable accident, but the tragedy inspired her to create MaeDay Rescue. Eleven years later, MaeDay is one of the most popular rescues in Los Angeles - in fact, it's where Nicole got Dobby! Eventually we manage to pu...

Get ready to have your pants charmed off (consensually) by James Barnes, aka The Trans Coach! A corporate trainer who specializes in LGBTQ education, James transitioned almost seven years ago, and today has a wife and two small children. But he started out in a family of missionaries, and was groomed from an early age to be a pastor due to his ability to effortlessly connect with people. James sha...

In a truly one-of-a-kind episode, we talk to American ex-pat and professional jazz saxophonist(!) Mariela Mulder, who has a very unique set of circumstances: for a harrowing year, Mariela taught in Kuwait, and agreed to speak to us candidly about what it's like to live in a country where it's illegal to be gay. From the queer students and adults who risked coming out to her, to the secret location...

Because the world needs more white cis people sharing their views on Dave Chappelle!!! In all seriousness, we explain up top why it felt necessary to address "The Closer," and how we hope this episode amounts to getting sh*t out of our systems before having a trans guest on to discuss. We share some opinions we KNOW won't be popular! We do some yelling! Lauren mentions Ashlee Marie Preston a billi...

It's our most VISUALLY STUNNING episode yet, with a guest whose coming out story spans Maine, Scotland, and Alaska! Eileen Hanley (Crazy Hot: The Podcast) always thought/knew she was bisexual, but internalized biphobia and an eight-year relationship with her boyfriend made her feel like she'd somehow be "lying" if she came out. She tells us about her deliciously awkward first sexual experience wit...

SURPRISE! It's our annual National Coming Out Day minisode! More and more, we hear folks in our community say that they're "tired" of coming out stories, and would rather see queer people "just living their lives." While we definitely want to see that, too, we not-so-surprisingly think that coming out stories are still ESSENTIAL! We get to the heart of why we so strongly believe this, in addition...

We have a mind-expanding conversation with aroace lesbian and mental health advocate, Rebecca Ashley! Rebecca uses the label of "lesbian" in addition to identifying as asexual/aromantic, and one of the first things we discuss is the ostensible contradiction between those terms. Rebecca does an incredible job of shedding light on alllllll the different kinds of attraction *beyond* just sexual and r...

Fawzia Mirza (Her Story; Signature Move) started out as an actor, but soon realized that the roles available to queer, Muslim, South Asian women were not exactly...plentiful. So she began writing her own work, with the goal of centering folks who are all too often just "friends of the center story." We discuss the pressure put on queer female relationships to be EVERYTHING, and the difficulty of h...

We're closing out Bi Visibility Week with a special ep featuring not one, but *two* of Nicole's BFFs from college! Not only are Nicole, Katie, and Lorelei all bisexual, they're also all in long-term relationships with cis men. They discuss the inherent conflict between passing privilege and erasure, the significance of losing your virginity to a woman when you're a bi woman, and bi myths they'd li...

We're joined by one of our all-time FAVORITE facilitators at the L.A. LGBT Center, Maggie Tielker! For the past eighteen months, Lauren and Maggie have been Zoom-facilitating together nearly every Monday night. But at age twenty-seven, Maggie herself went through the Center's Women's Coming Out Workshop! Maggie shares her suspiciously feminine childhood crushes (Hanson, Jared Leto...you get it), t...

We cover some entirely new ground this week in a fantastic conversation with disability advocate AJ Detwiler! AJ lives at the intersection of queer, female, and disabled, but many of her dating experiences have sadly revealed our community to be...less "body-positive" than we'd like to imagine. AJ discusses the pressure she feels to prove her physical autonomy in relationships, and we talk about t...

Comedian and author Sophie Santos literally wrote a memoir about her coming out story, so needless to say she knows it well! Sophie was the only girl in her middle school's tackle football league, but pulled a super-femme 180 the moment she got her period ("I am now a swan"). She muses on the "copious" amount of men she slept with while in an Alabama sorority to try to convince herself she was int...

We dyke out with Melody Kamali, comedian and co-host of one of our favorite podcasts, Dyking Out! Melody shares the pivotal moment she had with *that* scene in True Lies, talks about getting "heterocurious" in her early 20s, and discusses the flack she's gotten for claiming the word "dyke" as someone who identifies as bi/pan. Plus, we get pumped about queer Persian representation in The L Word and...

The podcast hits an important milestone when we talk to our first EX-NUN! Kelli Dunham dropped out of Bible college in the late '80s and went to Haiti to volunteer at a school. However, she ended up volunteering at a Haitian missionary instead, which ultimately led her to join the Missionaries of Charity, an especially strict order (even by Catholic standards!). Now a comedian, Kelli regales us wi...

Hey. Hi. How're you doing? Feeling a bit stressed? Maybe a tad overwhelmed? Wow, that's so crazy; us, too! Haha!! HahahahAHAHAHA!!!! With everything that's been going on...everywhere, we thought we'd take the opportunity to do a li'l mental health check-in: just the two of us, sitting in our respective closets, getting candid about how we've been feeling lately. We both come out about some big men...

We have a powerful conversation with Julie Rodgers, author of "Outlove: A Queer Christian Survival Story," who is featured in the just-released Netflix documentary Pray Away. Shortly after coming out at the age of 16, Julie's mother took her to meet with someone from Living Hope Ministries. What followed were weekly conversion therapy sessions for the next eight years. Julie discusses the irony of...

We get *candid* about what turns us on in this week's episode with Nikki Levy, creator and host of the Don't Tell My Mother! podcast and live show! Nikki's story begins with a split-second moment in eighth grade that changed everything, then continues down a long and winding road that includes a first kiss with a girl named "Fish," and a threesome with a future rabbi. ARE YOU SUFFICIENTLY TEASED??...

We absolutely adore speaker, author, and host Raga Olga D'silva, whose warmth and positivity will literally BLEED THROUGH YOUR HEADPHONES! Raga discusses the surprising way in which sexuality and gender are thought of in patriarchal Indian culture, and the impact that has had on her. She also talks about realizing she was a lesbian when she was married with two young children, her close-knit commu...