The Sewers of Paris

Hello, I’m Matt Baume, and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. Last week we heard from a Twitch streamer from Germany who goes by the name Jygglypuffdaddy, and this week I want to bring you a conversation with another streamer — Brian Gray, also known online as Urban Bohemian. A shy kid, Brian used to find it difficult to make friends… until he realized that his love of nerdy culture like Clue and Bri...

Hello, I’m Matt Baume, and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. My guest this week has been on a wild adventure since high school. Andre, also known online as Jygglypuffdaddy, grew up in a small German village and found queer friends online, eventually leaving home to move in with his internet-boyfriend in Berlin the day after he graduated from high school, eventually getting married. It was a risky mo...

With Valentine’s Day coming up soon, I wanted to bring you a special episode from 2016 — a conversation with several wonderful queer folks about the romantic entertainment that changed their lives. Join me now on a candle-lit paddle through the Sewers, where we’ll bump into Louis Virtel, host of the Keep It Podcast; Edd Kimber, the first winner of Great British Bakeoff, Comedian Kevin Yee, Artist...

My guest this week is Timothy Siragusa, who was very popular with about 30 lesbians in Omaha. He was part of an experimental theater scene in a small city that was at first a little, let’s say, challenging for mainstream audiences to appreciate … until one night he had a brainstorm that transformed their struggling avante garde troupe into a huge local hit. We’ll have that conversation in a minute...

We’re trying something different this week. Perhaps you've been watching Marvel’s new TV series WandaVision, a strange, otherworldly series that debuted earlier this month with each episode so far re-creating the genre of classic old sitcoms. Episode 1 was a throwback to The Dick Van Dyke Show, Episode 2 referenced Bewitched, and last week’s Episode 3 has traces of The Brady Bunch. As someone who...

My guest this week wears a lot of hats, and occasionally frocks. Lewis Bartlett is a bee scientist, baker, and drag queen who found his way from Yorkshire, England to Athens, Georgia. A shy, nerdy kid, he found refuge in Lord of the Rings novels and Live Action Role-Playing (or LARPing) groups, but he reached a turning point where he decided to give all that up, along with years-long friendships,...

My guest this week is one of the most wholesome people on the Internet — a Twitch streamer who goes by Blizzb3ar . His goal is to create refuge from drama and competitiveness and cynicism, and for viewers to be able to relax in the comfort of good clean kind fun. It’s the sort of environment that he realized he was missing for himself, and now he’s got big goals for transforming his life in 2021....

What’s the story you plan to leave behind, and what happens if that story doesn’t go according to plan? My guest this week is Sheldon Goodman, a historian who specializes in cemeteries, discovering the untold stories of people who are long gone, and excavating the memory of bygone eras — metaphorically speaking. In his work Sheldon’s discovered countless stories that were previously lost — particu...

Next week marks the anniversary of the original theatrical release of the film Girls Will be Girls, an otherworldly drag comedy by writer and director Richard Day. For today’s episode, we’re revisiting my 2016 interview with Richard, in which we talked about his time working on shows like Ellen, It’s Gary Shandling’s Show, and Arrested Development — and how he found inspiration from John Waters an...

Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris Holiday Special Special! In the spirit of the season, we’re diving back into the Sewers archives for my 2017 conversations with numerous past guests about their very favorite seasonal entertainment. We'll have an appreciation of Batman Returns from writer Anthony Oliveira, author of Lord of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling among many other works. There's a tribute...

There are incredible secret stories hidden all around us if you just know where to look, and today’s guest knows where to look. Sacha Coward is a historian, escape room designer, and mermaid hunter in London who’s always had a passion for stories of myths and monsters. And as a museum professional, he now gets to explore those stories, discover new ones, and share them with the world. We’ll have t...

You may think you love reruns, but this week’s guest lives them. Taylor grew in literally the most geographically isolated town in the lower 48 states, where his only connection to the outside world was syndicated TV. Fortunately, he had a ticket out, and found a way to create an entire career around investigating, studying, and teaching others about the magic of old TV shows. We’ll have that conv...

Happy December holidaytime, listeners, I hope you’re able to celebrate and relax and revel and enjoy what has always been a weird time of year, now that we’re in the weirdest year of our lives. For this week’s episode, I wanted to bring you one of my favorite Christmas-themed episodes from the Sewers of Paris archives — a conversation with Jose Gonzales, who found an unexpected connection with his...

I’m so excited to bring you this week’s guest — the wonderful Frank DeCaro, writer, performer, pop culture encyclopedia. Frank was a role model for me back in the 90s when I would watch him on The Daily Show, and it was an absolute joy to geek out about pop culture with him and hear his disbelief that a weird little kid from Jersey got to grow up to have as many bonkers adventures as he has. We’ll...

Last week we heard from Great British Bakeoff’s Edd Kimber, and this week I’m so excited to bring you another guest whose life was touched by the show. Max Miller is the creator and host of the fantastic YouTube series Tasting History, where each week he shares a historical recipe as well as an intriguing story about the surprising origin of some food we still eat today — and occasionally have nev...

We’re getting close to Thanksgiving, and what better way to celebrate that than with good food, feeling of thanks, and a guest who does not actually observe the holiday at all. This week we’re diving into the Sewers of Paris archives for my 2016 conversation with Great British Bakeoff Winner Edd Kimber, who found his life forever changed when he won the first season of the cooking competition. Edd...

What does it take for you to feel comfortable truly letting loose and being yourself? For my guest this week, it took some flamboyant game show guests, improv class, and more speedos than he knew what to do with. Brett White is a pop culture critic at Decider and biographer of unjustly forgotten queer TV stars. He was inspired by giddy flamboyant 70s figures like Charles Nelson Reilly to become a...

What unexpected superhero powers might you possess? My guest this week was inspired by Wonder Woman to become one of the world’s foremost experts on wastewater — and yes, I promise, it’ll all make sense once you hear it. Raul Pacheco-Vega has been obsessed with women superheros his whole life, an obsession his parents indulged by enrolling him in martial arts classes, perhaps knowing that their yo...

As we stumble along through spooky season, I want to dive into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2015 episode about The Rocky Horror Picture Show. My guest back then was Matthew Hintzen, a programmer who found Rocky Horror in its early days, the late 70s, when he was a closeted kid on the verge of running away from home to live on the streets. He found that the rebellious community developing arou...

The Sewers of Paris is independent, ad-free, and listener supported. Head over to Patreon.com/mattbaume to join the folks who make the show possible, and to check out the rewards for backers. My guest this week is the legendary performer Peppermint, star of stage and screen, from Drag Race to Pose to Broadway. Her new album “A Girl Like Me” comes out this week, featuring autobiographical songs abo...

My guest this week is the drag artist known as Deere. You may know her from her livestreams on Twitch, where she plays primarily horror games. She’s also the founder of Stream Queens, a collective of drag artists, makeup monsters, and creatures who adopt amazing costumes and personas to livestream games. Off-camera, Deere’s a quiet introverted artist who never expected her drag alter ego to take o...

My guest this week is Chris Pepin-Neff, the world’s foremost expert on human-shark interaction. His life was shaped, you will be shocked to hear, by the movie Jaws — but also by his time in a socialist commune, as well as working alongside Frank Kameny, one of the leading gay rights activists of the 20th century, not to mention his friendship with Gore Vidal. Chris has so many fascinating stories...

You may have seen the very exciting news this week that BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon will release a holiday special this year — an adaptation of their wonderful live holiday show. I helped out with the shooting of the special and without giving away too much, I can tell you that it is going to be AMAZING. For this week’s Sewers of Paris, we’re jumping into the archives to revisit my 2016 intervi...

Love is in the air this week with my guest Philip William Stover, writer of numerous romance novels both gay and straight. Growing up, he hid his love of romance, tearing the covers off of books so nobody would notice what he was reading. But as he grew up, he started to realize the extent to which queer people are often denied an opportunity to see loving relationships depicted in media. And so h...

The Sewers of Paris is independent, ad-free, and listener supported. Head over to Patreon.com/mattbaume to join the folks who make the show possible, and to check out the rewards for backers. My guest this week likes a good scare. As a kid, Sam Irvin loved Bride of Frankenstein, and he brought that influence with him as an adult when he directed the show Dante’s Cove and the movie Elvira’s Haunted...