Queer As Fact

Today's episode is on queer activist, drag performer, and gay superhero Stormé DeLarverie. Join us to hear your hosts discuss the history of drag performance, Stormé's short-lived career as a circus performer, and an obituary we can all aspire to. Sources

Today's episode is on Julius Caesar! Join us for a discussion of Caesar's dress sense, old men yelling at clouds, and our theories on what did happen in that bedroom in Bithynia two thousand years ago. You can also check out our introduction to male sexuality in ancient Rome. Sources

Happy New Year! Today we bring you a very special episode of Queer as Fiction, covering not one, but three queer, historical films from 2018. Join us as we discuss depictions of mental illness in Vita & Virginia, trans representation in Colette, and historical accuracy in Bohemian Rhapsody. Time-stamps for each film: Vita & Virginia: 00:42 Colette: 20:00 Bohemian Rhapsody: 48:21 Note this episode contains one instance of mild swearing which snuck past our editing and isn't mentioned in the content warnings.

Today we are talking about the frontman of Queen, Freddie Mercury! Tune in to learn about Freddie’s college antics, his rise to fame, and his many, many cats. December is AIDS Awareness Month, and Freddie lived with HIV for the last years of his life, dying in 1991 of AIDS-related illness. We encourage you check out these links for resources in the ongoing fight against AIDS: The UN's 2018 World AIDS Day site, Know Your Status The Mercury Phoenix Trust, founded by members of Queen in honour of Freddie The International AIDS Society

Back in October, we promised that if our episode on Oscar Wilde reached 2000 downloads, we would try milk punch - the drink Oscar and his fellow queer poet Walt Whitman shared when they met in 1882. Today, we bring you the fulfillment of that promise, as well as an announcement about what's coming up for Queer as Fact!

We are back from our hiatus with an episode on the bisexual Israeli poet, Yona Wallach. Join us as we visit Tel Aviv's 1960s gay scene, learn about gender in Hebrew, and read some of Yona's most controversial poetry. Sources

This is the second part of our two-part episode on Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde! We're talking about the latter half of Oscar's life, including the wittiest comedy in the English language, the tumultuous relationship between Oscar and Alfred Douglas, and Oscar's trial and imprisonment. Listen to Part 1 here.

It's time for our much-anticipated episode on Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde! Today we're covering the first half of Oscar's life, from his birth in 1854 to the publication of his homoerotic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray in 1891. Tune in to hear about his rise to notoriety, his scandalous fashion choices, and whether he and Walt Whitman ever had sex.

Today's episode is on the erotic pottery of the Moche people of 1st to 7th century Peru. Tune in for skeleton sex, dragging bad scholarship, and the possibility of a third gender in ancient Peru. Sources [Image source: Janusz Z. Wołoszyn and Katarzyna Piwowar's "Sodomites, Siamese Twins, and Scholars: Same-Sex Relationships in Moche Art" in American Anthropologist, Vol. 117, No. 2 (2015), p.288]

Today's episode is on the 19th-century Chinese poet and playwright Wú Zǎo. We'll be reading queer love poetry, talking about gender, and discussing the relatable experience of drinking wine while reading sad books. Sources [Image: text from Wú Zǎo's play Qiáo Yǐng]

Today's episode is on Billy Tipton, well-known jazz player and transgender man.  Tune in for a man who could play the piano and the saxophone simultaneously, a nude portrait featuring an erupting volcano, and more dogs than you could possibly wish for! 

Today's Queer as Fiction episode is on the famous 1982 epistolary novel by Alice Walker, The Color Purple. Join us for a discussion about intersectionality, what qualifies as good representation and the critical reaction to the novel since its publication. 

What does it take for a painting to ruin a friendship, initiate a court case, and change the Australian art world forever? Tune in to this episode on the Australian artist William Dobell and his controversial win of the 1943 Archibald Prize for portraiture to find out! (Image: William Dobell, Self Portrait, 1932.)

This week we have our first ever collaborative episode, where we meet with our fellow queer history podcast History is Gay to compare queer slang in Australia and the USA. Join us as we talk about lavender linguistics, Gilette blades, and our favourite ways to say we're queer. You can find History is Gay on Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, and check out more of their episodes on their website, or wherever you find your podcasts.

In this episode, we're talking about the early-20th-century Spanish poet and playwright, Federico García Lorca. Join us as we discuss Federico's relationship with Salvador Dalí, 19-year-old Jesus Christ's fights with his parents, and the mystery surrounding Federico's death.

Today's Queer as Fiction episode is on the 2007 novel and 2017 movie Call Me By Your Name. Join us as we chat about Jewish identity, whether or not this is really a gay movie after all and, of course, the controversial age gap. Please note that this episode contains swearing in a quote - our apologies for not including it in the content warnings! Sources  

Today's episode is on the godmother of rock and roll, gospel singer Rosetta Tharpe. Join us to learn about Rosetta's rise to fame, mad guitar skills, and the invention of everything from the tour bus to stadium rock. Also, Queer As Fact has a sponsor! Have a listen to pick up a discount code for Sudio Sweden headphones.  Transcript available here Sources

Today's episode is on the story of Pope Joan, the 9th-century woman who disguised herself as a man and became pope. Tune in for popes, antipopes, medieval Catholic pageantry, and the truth about Pope Joan. Sources (Image: Pope Joan in papal garb holding an infant in her arms. Engraving from Hartman Schedel's Chronica Universalis or Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493 by Anton Koberger. Via Wikimedia Commons.)

Today's episode is on Horace Walpole, 18th century man of letters and writer of the world's first gothic novel. This episode features a number of firsts for Queer As Fact, including our first possible asexual person, and the first Queer As Fact Historical Goth-Off!  Transcript available here Sources (Image: Portrait of Horace Walpole by Pierre Subleyras, via Wikimedia Commons)

For our second episode of Queer as Fiction, we'll be talking about Mike Nichols' 1996 comedy film 'The Birdcage'. Join us as we discuss gender performance, gay fatherhood and unnecessary sequels.