LGBTQ+ History Month occurs every October, arguably the coziest month of the year. What could be more quintessentially queer than chunky, campy sweaters and endless excuses to snuggle? For the days when you want to stroll around in the autumn breeze with your still-iced coffee, consider queuing up some queer history lessons.
Podcasts are one of the many accessible ways to access thousands of oral histories and present conversations that continue to shape our collective future. Plug into any of the podcasts below on Apple Music, Spotify, or anywhere else you can stream for free.
Hosted by Leigh Pfeffer, this podcast provides a monthly dose of queer history from across the spectrum. Focusing on lesser-known or underappreciated queer icons and events, this podcast brings together a class of incredible queer thinkers, writers, and creatives in conversation. Start off spooky season with Lavender Apparitions!
Ericka Hart and Ebony Donnley contextualize queer history and future from a Black perspective. In the process, they examine the cultural legacies of music, celebrity, and imperialism. T podcast demonstrates hope for a liberated future in each episode through its queer, decolonized lens. Check out the episode “Why Ya’ll Gagging Tho” to learn about Black queer and trans origins of the house, techno, and club music we know and love today.
Author and co-founder of the American LGBTQ+ museum Eric Marcus founded Making Gay History to focus on the importance of oral history in queer archives. Twelve seasons in and counting, this podcast explores the legends who led the fight for queer visibility and those whose names we may not yet know.
Morgan M Page hosts this transgender history podcast, which interviews current trans leaders in the movement to discuss icons, media, and historical events within the community. Listen to their interview with Librada González Fernández, who is currently working to collect queer and trans histories from the Cuban diaspora for its own unique archive, or the story of La Prophetesse, a “gender non-conforming mystic” whose actions contributed to the Haitian Revolution.
This Melbourne-based podcast seeks to gather bits of queer history from around the world. From the Epic of Gilgamesh to tabletop RPGs, Alice, Eli, Irene, and Jas will uncover queerness where you might least expect it. Additionally, they introduce us to the lives and legacies of many queer individuals throughout history who may not be immortalized in traditional fame but live on in their own unique ways.
Before dating apps, how did other queer people find one another? Haley of Queer Personals Podcast delves into newspaper archives to share queer personal ads from the 1970s to the 2000s. Along the way, guest historians, writers, and fellow queers across professions to dig a bit deeper into the cultural contexts surrounding these ads. Pick any episode and enter a niche of queer society, carefully preserved in these wholesome calls for company.
Focused on queer liberation in the United States, this podcast is hosted by writer and produced Devlyn Camp. In three seasons, spanning 1924 to 1970, Queer Serial examines the sociopolitical history that led to the Stonewall riots, bringing on writers and historians to tell us more about the queer culture that developed under the radar.
Shan and Alison try “to set the record a little less straight” in their deep dives into the lives of past sapphics. From Audre Lorde to Louisa May Alcott and Christina of Sweden, this podcast will make you reconsider the way history is traditionally recorded and reflect on how to track sapphic ancestry. Though discontinued, this podcast has an excellent archive!
We hope that listening to these stories brings you knowledge and joy. No matter how you exist this month, your community is happy that you do.
