Outward: Slate's LGBTQ podcast

It’s September. Are you ready to warm up your muscles as the temperatures dip and get your apartment all cozy for the cuffing season to come? If so, Outward has you covered. First, listeners Elizabeth and Peter respond to last month’s discussion of Amazon’s film adaptation of Red, White & Royal Blue . Then the hosts talk with sports journalist Katie Barnes about their new book Fair Play: How S...

This month, hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder discuss Amazon Prime’s adaptation of Casey McQuiston’s best-selling queer rom-com Red, White & Royal Blue . They also speak with intersex activist and educator Pidgeon Pagonis about their memoir Nobody Needs to Know and the campaign to end nonconsensual surgeries on intersex kids. The hosts end the show, as always, w...

This month, taking a cue from the sultry, sensual heat of summer, Outward examines the venerable queer practice of cruising—for sex and sex work—in public space. First, hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder make eyes at Park Cruising , a new essay collection on cruising in parks, which explores the pleasures, politics, and complexities of that gay pastime. Author Marcus...

In the last of our Pride month mini-episodes, host Jules Gill-Peterson is joined by Evan Urquhart, the community manager for Slate's comments section who also covers anti-trans propaganda on assignedmedia.org . They discuss Evan’s piece “ Don’t Look Away From Queer Despair ,” which was part of Slate’s “ Not Quite Pride ” package. In a galvanizing conversation, they discuss the need to resist putti...

This month, to celebrate Pride, we’re bringing you some extra episodes of Outward. On Saturdays, we're sharing some great LGBTQ content from around the Slate podcast network. Today, it’s an episode of What Next, Slate’s daily news show. It features a conversation between host Mary Harris and Arkansas pharmacist Gwen Herzig. Gwen is a trans woman who testified before the Arkansas general assembly,...

This Pride month, many LGBTQ people are grappling with complicated feelings. Anti-gay and anti-trans political attacks are becoming all too common, Pride celebrations are being banned or canceled in some parts of the United States, and many of us are wondering how to put this in perspective. Hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder wrestle with some of that complexity as t...

This month, to celebrate Pride, we’re bringing you some extra episodes of Outward. On Saturdays, we'll be sharing some great LGBTQ content from around the Slate podcast network. Today, it’s an interview from The Waves, Slate’s show about feminism and gender. In October 2022, Slate audience engagement editor Sol Werthan spoke with trans rights activist and author Paisley Currah about his book Sex I...

In celebration of Pride month, we’re bringing you some extra episodes of the Outward podcast. This week, host Christina Cauterucci talks to two people who recently visited every lesbian bar in the United States: Krista Burton, author of the newly published book Moby Dyke: An Obsessive Quest to Track Down the Last Remaining Lesbian Bars in America , and Naomi Gordon-Loebl, a writer and sommelier. T...

This month, to celebrate Pride, we’re bringing you some extra episodes of Outward. You’ll still get the biggie on June 21, with Pride and Provocations, the Gay Agenda, and all the usual fun, but we’re going to provide fresh rainbow goodness every Wednesday. On Saturdays, we'll also be sharing some great LGBTQ content from around the Slate podcast network. Today, it’s an interview from Working, Sla...

In celebration of Pride month, we’re bringing you some extra episodes of the Outward podcast. This week, host Bryan Lowder talks to Slate contributor John Culhane about his new book More Than Marriage: Forming Families After Marriage Equality . In the book, Culhane explores legal arrangements other than marriage that could protect people’s relationships and finances. While we might once have decri...

This month, Outward explores utopian fiction and dystopian reality TV. First, Bryan and Christina are joined by author Theodore McCombs to discuss Uranians , his new collection of speculative stories, which uses queer difference and divestment from the normal as an engine to drive five fascinating tales. Then they’re joined by producer June Thomas to discuss The Ultimatum: Queer Love , Netflix’s l...

Spring is in the air, and the Outward hosts are gay like tulips and queer like allergies! First, they discuss a new animated version of the beloved Frog and Toad series of children’s books, which premieres on Apple TV+ on April 28. Then they welcome Daniel M. Lavery to the pod. Danny was Slate’s own Dear Prudence for many years, and now a Dear Prudence book is here to grace our bookshelves. Danny...

This month, hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder explore two parts of the queer world heavily associated with the 1970s: PFLAG and “The Lesbian.” First, they mark the 50th anniversary of PFLAG with a discussion of how the relationship between parents, parenthood, and queer people has changed over the last five decades, how it hasn’t, and what all that means in this dan...

Love is in the air this month, so hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder turn their attention to some very queer questions of love. First, they discuss a new Spanish film, Petit Mal , which explores the intimate drama and everyday feelings of three women in a throuple. Then they consider what is arguably the hardest kind of love: loving yourself in the wake of great loss...

This month, hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder take an in-depth look at the latest fixation of the far right: drag, an art form as old as gender itself, which has brought generations of queer people together. In the first segment, the hosts consider why conservatives are now trying to regulate drag shows out of existence and armed hate groups are showing up at drag e...

This month, hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder reflect on the painful impact of anti-LGBTQ violence and dig into the new possibilities for trans storytelling and filmmaking. First, they talk through their complicated feelings about one of the responses to the shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs last month: Should queer people be organizing in self-defense, or even...

This episode was recorded before the Nov. 19 attack on Club Q. Outward stands with our queer family in Colorado Springs. This month, Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder discuss two major trans news stories from recent weeks. First, the New York Times’ latest article about trans kids and gender-affirming care, this time about puberty blockers and bone density, and how it pla...

Bryan Lowder is still out on book leave, but hosts Christina Cauterucci and Jules Gill-Peterson summon him back to discuss Bros , the gay rom-com of the moment. The film lingers on questions of queer history, shows what happens when a nerdy podcast guy dates a beefy gay bro, and is a fascinating meditation on what it means to be a cis gay man in a time of both progress and prosecution. (This segme...

This month, Bryan Lowder is away, so hosts Christina Cauterucci and Jules Gill-Peterson are joined by the podcast’s founding co-host Brandon Tensley to talk about some new representations of LGBTQ people involved in the wide world of sports. First, they debate whether the new Amazon Prime take on A League of Their Own , starring and co-created by Abbi Jacobson, might possibly be too queer. Then th...

This month, host Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder start the show with a Thots & Queries segment in which a listener asks about orgy etiquette. In a completely different party setting, they try to figure out what on earth is going on in the U.S. Congress, where legislators are debating marriage equality in the form of the Respect for Marriage Act. Then Northwestern Un...

This month, Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder talk about two very different health stories. First, in the Thots & Queries segment, they respond to a listener who has questions about the ethics of moving to another country in an age of Supreme uncertainty. Then they talk with Harun Tulunay , a London-based sexual-health advocate, about his experience with monkeypox. He...

In the final Pride month special episode, Bryan and Christina talk with Slate senior writer Mark Joseph Stern. They assess what the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health , the case that swept away Roe v. Wade , might mean for LGBTQ rights. Should we be worried about marriage equality? Given Americans’ purported love of privacy, is there any way that the right to same-sex inti...

It’s story time, fam! This month, Bryan, Christina, and Jules talk about whether—and why—we still need Pride. Every Pride is someone’s first, and to get that fresh perspective, the hosts spoke with Sammie Bennett, who just celebrated for the first time in Kalamazoo, Michigan. They then talk about their own memories and feelings about the annual queer gathering. Thanks to Alicia DeMaio for our firs...

This month, in honor of Pride, we’re bringing you extra episodes of Outward. This week, hosts Christina Cauterucci, Jules Gill-Peterson, and Bryan Lowder dig into the big gay movie of summer 2022: Fire Island . Directed by Andrew Ahn and written by Joel Kim Booster, who also appears in the film , Fire Island explores the magic of queer spaces like the titular enclave—along with the class and race...

This month, in honor of Pride, we’re going to be bringing you an Outward episode every week. Today, it’s a segment from a 2021 episode of Working, Slate's podcast about the creative process, in which June Thomas spoke with photographer Joan E. Biren, also known as JEB. In the interview, JEB discusses the creation, funding, and printing of her groundbreaking 1979 photobook Eye to Eye: Portraits of...