The Sewers of Paris

This week we’re diving into the Sewers archive to revisit a chat with my friend Phuong, who is always tirelessly MAKING stuff. When we chatted three years ago, he was busy baking bread, crafting soap, knitting hats, and more — but this summer he’s embarked on his biggest project yet, a new YouTube channel called Rabbit Hole where he posts videos full of fascinating, weird, surprising features of t...

This week I’m chatting with José, host of the delightful YouTube series Ketchup with Max and José , and the partner of past Sewers of Paris Guest Max Miller (host of Tasting History ). As a kid, José was a shy gay nerd before growing up to be … also a shy gay nerd, but one who helped launch Disney Plus and also cohosts a food history show with his partner and is about get married.  We’ll have...

My guest on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week is Scott, host of the podcast The Movies that Made us Gay. His first glimpse at gay life was the same-sex couple on the show Six Feet Under, which inspired him to formulate an escape plan from his small Montana home, his sights set on Hollywood. The plan was to find his way into the entertainment industry, but that all changed shortly after he arri...

My guest this week is Fran Tirado, who you might recognize as the host of the Food 4 Thot podcast. Fran grew up in a sheltered religious community, and it was a chance encounter with gay Greek myths that helped him break out. Now he’s dedicated himself to a different kind of scripture — one of powerful femmes, radical queer liberation, and sex without shame. We’ll have that conversation in a minut...

My guest is writer and comedian H. Alan Scott, whom you may know as co-host of the Out on the Lanai podcast. I first met him back when I lived in LA, and worked as a nightlife photographer — H. Alan was one of the people I looked forward to seeing most, because he never posed. He just let me photograph him candidly, honestly, sometimes with a smile and sometimes not. I didn't know it, but at the t...

My guest this week might sound a bit familiar, because you’ve almost definitely heard his voice before — even if you didn’t realize it. Carl Bishop is the voice you hear on countless commercials. He’s been the voice of hardware stores, he’s warned you about medication side effects, he’s sold shampoo and razors and laundry detergent and cars and pizza. When Carl got his start as a radio personality...

My guest this week is TV writer Stan Zimmerman, whose credits include episodes of The Golden Girls, Gilmore Girls, The Brady Bunch Movie, and the gay kiss episode of Roseanne, among many many more. As a kid, Stan created a fantasy television network in his bedroom, giving a weekly variety show to his idol Lily Tomlin; something that he was able to tell her years later when they became colleagues.&...

Hello, I’m Matt Baume, and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. We’re on a podcast search for the entertainment that changed the lives of queer people. My guest this week is author Benji Carr, whose novel Impacted comes out next week, and is the product of a lifelong obsession with soap operas. It’s not entirely surprising, as his own life was often more dramatic than he knew how to handle. It was show...

My guest this week is Ravi Roth. You may know him from his travel series Ravi Round the World , or his new show Gaycation , where he visits queer hotspots across the globe. Ravi knew from an early age that he loved performing, and for a time he was laser-focused on making it to Broadway. But once he was there, he found that he had a talent for travel, and found himself journeying far from the city...

This week, to celebrate Pride month, we’re heading into the Sewers archives for a chat with a man who was present for the Stonewall Riots. He earned the nickname Tree thanks to his six-foot-five stature, and he’s been a part of New York’s gay community going back to the fifties, when he didn’t even know a community existed. Tree’s been a member of Brooklyn street gangs, worked with the mob, and co...

My guest this week is comic artist Joe Glass, author of the just-released Pride Omnibus which collects several years of his queer superhero stories. Joe’s work is heavily influenced by his youthful love of heroes from X-Men to Buffy, and like those heroes, there were times when people tried to stop him from pursuing the work that he knew was right. We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First,...

My guest this week is a legend — the amazing Justin Vivian Bond, or just Vivian — an actor, singer, performer, icon. You may recognize their name from the act Kiki and Herb, or from performances ranging from La MaMa to Carnegie Hall, or from collaborations with Jake Shears, John Cameron Mitchell, and Rufus Wainwright. Vivian knew they wanted to be a performer from an early age, and their journey t...

This week’s guest is John Epperson — also known by his stage name, Lypsinka, who you might’ve seen in the documentary Wigstock, in the movie Black Swan, and gracing New York stages from the legendary Pyramid Club to Lincoln Center. John moved from small town Mississippi to New York to chase a dream of a life in the theater, and found fame with his drag alter-ego in the wild 1970s and 80s, all whil...

Listeners, I’ve got a handful of interviews coming your way that you are going to love, with some Broadway drag icons. They’re not quite ready yet, but this week I want to prepare you for what’s coming with a conversation about someone who chased his dreams all the way to New York, and then followed his heart back home. This week, we’re diving into the archives to hear my 2016 interview with Mark...

We’re just a few days away from the start of Eurovision, the giant extravagant celebration of over-the-top music and outrageous costumes and, every now and then, taste. Eurovision is a big ball of fun, and it was the subject of the very first episode of The Sewers of Paris. So this week, we’re revisiting my 2015 interview with Jānis, who first introduced me to the joy of Eurovision, along with the...

On last week’s episode I talked with James Sie about the importance of one well-placed Bette Midler album, and this week I want to dive into the Sewers archives with another guest whose life was changed by Bette — in his case, when she called him to offer him a job. Today we’re revisiting my 2017 interview with Bruce Vilanch, a writer an comedian who’s been slipping sly queer jokes into mainstream...

My guest this week is James Sie, whose voice you may recognize from Kung Fu Panda, Curious George, King of the Hill, and as an unlucky cabbage merchant on Avatar. He’s also the author of Still Life Las Vegas, and a new queer young adult novel called All Kinds of Other, which will have a launch celebration next Friday, May 7, to benefit the Los Angeles LGBT Center. As a young gay man entering colle...

You may recognize my guest Brian Falduto for his music, his coaching, or his role in the 2003 movie School of Rock as Billy, the stylist kid. When he shot his scenes, Brian had no idea what gay even meant, but as soon as the movie came out, it seemed like the whole world was telling him who he was. That pushed him deep into the closet, until another musical experience helped him find his authentic...

 A few years ago, this week’s guest Steven Wakabayashi lived to party. His gay agenda centered on nightlife and a relentless fitness routine, but that all came to an end when the physical toll became too much for his body to bear and he found himself hospitalized for months. To recover, he had to completely change his life and set himself on an entirely new path — one that’s led him to film a...

This week I’ve got a very special guest — the wonderful Kristin Russo, whom I’m sure you know from the podcast Buffering the Vampire Slayer, the YouTube channel Everyone is Gay, the book This is a Book for Parents of Gay Kids, all-ages Pride in New York, and oh my God so many great projects. And it all started with a young queer woman watching My So-Called Life, wondering if she was more like the...

This week’s guest spent time on the front lines of a revolution in the 60s and 70s. Steve Bull is an activist who fought for gay liberation in Los Angeles, and then brought those tactics to his small town in Maine when it was time for him to retire and move back home. Now he teaches the radical queer tactics that he learned to young organizers who want to follow in his footsteps. We’ll have that c...

Back in 2015, one of the very first guests on The Sewers of Paris was my friend Amp, who was then just getting started on his career as a kink educator and adult performer. In the years since, he’s built a huge following for his podcast and YouTube series, Watts the Safeword, and on Friday of this week he’ll appear on the Epix TV show Sex Life , a documentary series about sex-positive households....

A few years ago, the Royal National Theater in London recorded an amazing production of the play Angels in America, starring  Andrew Garfield, Nathan Lane, Russell Tovey, and more. And they just made that recording available to stream at NTatHome.com . For this week’s episode, we’re revisiting my 2015 interview with actor and singer Jonathan Blalock, whose life was completely changed by Angel...

My guest this week is Rob Urbanati, a New York playwright and director. He had a unique upbringing — he grew up openly gay in a small suburb in the 1960s, and people were generally accepting. That gave him an unusual freedom to explore the gay scene, the hippie scene, the club scene, and the drug scene. But the great mystery that he wonders about to this day is how he wound up interested in the mo...

You might’ve seen that I just released a new video over on YouTube about the queer secrets of the show Bewitched, and how this bizarre sitcom from the 60s managed to be about homosexuality without ever saying so. For this week’s episode, we’re jumping into the Sewers archives for another conversation about witchcraft — it’s my 2015 interview with a Minnesota entertainer named Joe, a Sister of Perp...