Bad Gays

Adele Spitzeder

Adele Spitzeder, born into operatic royalty, washed up when she tried a career on the stage: so instead, she started accepting bank deposits for 10% monthly interest, and paying old customers with new customers' money. In three years, she  amassed deposits of 38 million Gulden, or the equivalent of more than 500,000,000 euros: the world’s first Ponzi scheme. Attempts to squirrel away some money by smuggling it with her girlfriend went about as well as expected. 
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

Anne Lister

 She was an industrialist, a lesbian, a landlord, a traveler, a businesswoman, a womanizer, a butch, a snob, a pioneer of gay marriage, a Tory. She was the original Tory girlboss, and19th century English diarist who coined such terms as "grubbling," for mutual masturbation. Ey up love, been grubbling? She was, of course, Anne Lister.
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

Larry Kramer

Today we profile Larry Kramer, the writer and AIDS activist. Kramer took space, took credit, operated in the world with tremendous privilege, and was somewhere between actively and passively misogynist and racist. But politically effective people are not always as we imagine them. We document Kramer's exclusions and blind spots, and explore how his hatred and fear of gay male sex culture, one that predated the AIDS epidemic, made his political work less effective; his gay male supremacism that led actual gay men to constantly disappoint him; and his prefiguring of a moralizing social media politics understanding rhetorical maximalism as the proof of radicality. We address Kramer as one of his narrators addressed his stand-in in the first volume of his last novel, The American People: “You fuckster! You are so fucksome. I love you very much.”’
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

TRAILER - Extra Bad Gays: Extra Bad Gays January 2025: Unity Mitford, Lavender Scares, and Gay Guys With Girlfriends

In this month's subscriber-only episode, we examine some recently discovered diaries from Unity Valkyrie Mitford, odious sister of the odious Tom. How precisely was her brother supposed to be a devoted Nazi but "not an anti-semite?" Only British journalists can tell. Then, we discuss Trump's executive orders in the context of lavender scares past and present before diving into a slutty advice segment about a woman dating two gay guys. She's confused! So are we! Subscribe on Patreon or Apple Podcasts for the full story.

Abd Al-Ilah

The Crown Prince of Iraq, Abd Al-Ilah, ruled the country as a prince regent on behalf of his nephew, from 1939-1953 - although not interrupted. A member of the powerful Hashemite dynasty, Al-Ilah was also an authoritarian antisemite who once took refuge on a British naval ship called the HMS Cockchafer. A dandy, he charmed MP Chips Cannon into writing: "We are very intimate …I never can resist a Regent.”
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

Reed Erickson

Today's episode profiles an eccentric, wealthy businessman––with the pet tiger, Mexican nudist ashram, ketamine and cocaine habits, and baroque legal battles over the title to various compounds to prove it––who also financially supported trans research, gay history, and dolphin ESP. Reed Erickson forged his own path in a difficult world and his life helps us understand two connections that were crucial for the developing gay and trans liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s: sexology and the New Age. 
Today's episode of our podcast was recorded before the 2024 United States Presidental election. Given yesterday's executive orders, discussion of the anti-trans backlash and fighting transphobia are more important than ever. Today, please consider contacting Trans Lifeline if you need support, or donating if you are able. 

Albrecht Muth

For today’s episode, I we take you into the murky world of the Washington foreign policy elites, and one of its murkiest characters, a man named Albrecht Muth. Who is Albrecht Muth? Well, that’s another question entirely. He claimed to be a dashing German aristocrat and married into Washington's foreign policy elite. The shocking truth became one of official Washington's biggest mysteries...
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

Elisar von Kupffer

A fascist femboy, a Baltic count, an orientalist white supremacist, editor of the first anthology of gay literature, painter of a 30-meter cyclorama featuring 90 androgynous twinks disporting themselves in the nude in a fantasia of the four seasons, devotee of Adolf Hitler, founder of a new religion, and poet: it's Elisar von Kupffer.
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for monthly episodes, our advice segments, and to support our work.
Check out our new merch, including hats, shirts, and socks.

Tom Mitford

Today's episode profiles a very bad bisexual: the lawyer, soldier and society favourite, Tom Mitford. But the idea of featuring Tom is partly a ruse. This will be not just a profile of Tom himself, but of his whole family, and especially his six siblings, the famed Mitford Sisters, whose intense, often conflicting relationships have become something of an obsession for English culture - and not always a very healthy one. They embody so much about the English elite: eccentric, vicious, often listless and desperately sad. We also promise to you, as has become a theme of the podcast, some DBNs - Disturbingly British Names. And an indescribable cover of Right Said Fred by Jessica Mitford and Dr. Maya Angelou, on both voice and kazoo.
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for more from us.
Check out our new merch.

Olive Yang

From almost the first season of the show, we’ve been tantalised by stories of the Burmese gangster Olive Yang. Now, to open season 8, we have their story: Olive was a lesbian — or possibly transmasculine — gangster born royal in 1927 British colonial Burma, who when first married off to a man threw a pot of their own urine at him to prevent the marriage from being consummated. They ran away from polite society, dated actresses, ran opium, were involved with the CIA, and helped negotiate settlements between ethnic groups. 
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays for more from us.
Check out our new merch.