Bad Gays

Episode 9: Leopold and Loeb

They were young, rich, and in love in the Jazz Age – until they killed their neighbor just to prove they could get away with it. Hitchcock's Rope is based on their story; now learn the truth behind the fascinating lives of Leopold and Loeb. 

Episode 8: Ronnie Kray

He was a a thug, a bully, and a murderer who made himself a British popular hero. He was a friend of Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra, and he once said, “I’m homosexual but I’m not a poof”. We use the deplorable story of Ronnie Kray to explore class, crime and postwar British attitudes towards homosexuality. A content note: this episode contains frank discussions of childhood sexual abuse; as such, listener discretion is advised. 

Episode 7: Friedrich Radszuweit

Born in 1876,Weimar-era gay publisher and activist Friedrich Radszuweit joined public gay life in 1923, when he founded the Bund für Menschenrecht (Federation for Human Rights, or BfM) in Berlin and began publishing dozens of gay, lesbian, and trans*-themed periodicals. The BfM grew to become the largest (indeed in some sense the only) mass-membership LGBT organization of its time. It claimed 100,000 members. Too bad its founder would end up advocating for collaboration with the Nazis. 

Episode 6: Sir Antony Blunt

Cambridge-educated art historian, Keeper of the Queen's Pictures, expert in French baroque art – and soviet spy? We profile Sir Antony Blunt, an art historian whose youthful political convictions reveal intriguing connections between sexuality and espionage, and whose dramatic life provided the basis for John LeCarrè's classic Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. 

Episode 5: Andrew Sullivan

It's Andrew Sullivan: the gay catholic conservative journalist, supporter of race science, inventor of gay marriage, and self-appointed arbiter of the morality and respectability of the gay community.

Episode 4: James VI and I

If you liked Yiorgos Lanthinos' court psychodrama The Favourite, you'll love this exploration of the complicated life of James VI and I – a king who united Scotland and England, persecuted witches, and granted his male favorites extraordinary power and privilege. Come for the court drama and stay for in-depth discussions of primitive accumulation and the question of whether using the word 'gay' to describe a 16th-century monarch makes any sense at all. 

Episode 3: Lawrence of Arabia

We take a look at the fascinating life of T. E. Lawrence: poet, archaeologist, sadomasochist, and agent of Arab self-determination and British colonial rule. 

Episode 2: Bosie

We profile Lord Alfred Bruce Douglas, the beautiful and dissolute poet, publisher, and lover of Oscar Wilde–who helped bring Wilde to ruin, became an antisemite, and generally personifies the term "evil twink energy." 

Episode 1: Ernst Röhm

A discussion of the life and ideology of Ernst Röhm, the world's first openly gay politician: and a Nazi.