The Day Darwin Rolled Over...Plus More Pride Month Pics

A Field Guide To Gay Animals is a luxurious listen...plus buckle up for another historical do-over with the series: The Boss Belongs To Us....plus my two pics for the two OG queer podcasts

Whether it was the billboard that framed Times Square last week, the premiere at Tribeca two weeks ago, or the ample support this series has already received online, The Field Guide To Gay Animals has only begun, but I can already tell it’s going to be a disruptor. It is an absolute and complete joy.

Roll over Darwin, not all of your ideas hold water….survival of the fittest isn’t the only end game here. Hosts Laine Kaplan-Levenson and Owen Ever remind us that “The Animal Queendom” is sometimes here just for some good sex.

The series artfully mashes up the narrative style, with field tape and a two-host format. Each episode begins with a cold open and then moves into some combination of field tape, interview tape, and lovely two-host banter (which is usually open and frank discussions about sex). While discussing how female elephants pleasure themselves, while debating all the different ways that the animal queendom has and enjoys sex, the hosts share this repartee:

“What's it like to receive a sext with your foot?

I mean, putting your grinder alerts on vibrate and just putting it in your shoe. That's the closest we could get.

The phone taped to your shoe said to vibrate. 100%. 100%.

Oh, my God.

Field Guide merch idea number 58.”

From A Field Guide to Gay Animals: GAY ARK, Jun 20, 2024

The fact that the entire series opens a disclaimer that you likely haven’t heard in your typical podcast app says it all: “The show contained detailed discussions of sexuality in humans and animals…that’s the point. Enjoy!”

This series offers a refreshing new queering on the podcast space, a rewash on all those biology textbooks you’ve read, and now a whole new way to consider what the sex lives actually involve of all the animals that surround us. Pure joy this one!

Speaking of re-writing our old heroes and personal narratives…Bruce Springsteen

Aka The Boss. He’s about as American as it gets. His tight-ass blue jeans, the tour t-shirt from 1984 emblazoned with the American Flag….he even pals around with former President Brack Obama to mull over life, two bosses together.

But wait, hold the phone. There is another narrative about The Boss. He’s not just from the Heartland, held over by the democratic dreams that a younger demographic will head to the polling stations, renew their trade union membership and finish the day by milking the cows. As this 7-part narrative series will explain, Bruce Springstein is also a queer icon, who affirms queer identity, helps to protect queer space, and has defined a generation whose parents are old enough to have listened to him in the 1980s.

Because The Boss Belongs To Us is a new series, hosted by Jesse Lou Lawson and Holy Casio, and co-produced by Molten Heart. Allow this series to take you on a journey…all the way from Jesse’s small not-gay town in Northern England, straight into the heart of queer teens, on both sides of the ocean.

Two Formative Queer Podcasts

Beginning in 2014, the seminal How To Be A Girl is a personal journey of a family who chronicled the journey from their child being born a boy, through the transition, towards becoming a girl.

This is mother’s journey; the child was just six-years-old when the podcast project began. By the time she turned 14, she said she was done with the project. The mother’s last update from 2023 reflects on the process of sharing all their stories and offers some more recent details (yes, her daughter is taking estrogen, and is pleased with the results). Each episode is brief, they use pseudonyms, and they offer a lifeline to other families who are navigating hate, and discriminatory laws in various states and jurisdictions.

The mother uses this space to share candid reflections, like: “Sometimes I miss my baby boy.” She walks through the big picture details about how she spent an agonizing year wondering what to do…and how to react to the fact that as soon as he could speak, he told his parents that he was actually a girl. After a “frantic” year trying to figure out what to do, they decided to embrace and help their very young child transition. This series tells the story of that journey.

The whole series is refreshingly honest and holds space, as well as helping other families to find a roadmap for raising a transgender child. I appreciate that it shares in a way that’s helpful, and not sensationalist. It also was not an elaborate scheme to raise money. It’s just honest helpful advice. And an incredibly inspiring story.

Uncover: The Village (Season 3)

This series could have simply been a grisly True Crime murder story. What it offered instead was an oral history of how the gay village of Church Street, located in downtown Toronto, came to be: How it managed to survive hatred and bigotry in the early days, how it learned to thrive as a cultural mecca, and then how it learned to stay alive when a killer targeting that community for a decade.

It took years for them to be heard; men started going missing. Insiders could sense there was someone who had targeted them. For years the police ignored these tips and then the cries for safety Finally, detectives determined that indeed someone had been targetting gay men; especially those who were estranged from their families, or recent immigrants with few family members in this country.

The CBC series Uncover has been running for 27 seasons. Back in 2019, for Season 3, journalist Justin Ling finally tells the story of how the gay community helped police to find Bruce McArthur and convict him of multiple murders. But much more interestingly, this series tells the history of The Village; this one happens to be in Toronto, but many major cities have one of their own.

This series was an early example of how to do true crime right. Lean away from the name and the sensational details; look behind the headlines to tell the story of a community.

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