History is Gay

About History is Gay

History is Gay is a podcast that examines the underappreciated and overlooked queer ladies, gents, and gentle-enbies that have always been there in the unexplored corners of history. Because history has never been as straight as you think. Follow us on social media! @historyisgaypod on Twitter and Instagram, historyisgaypodcast on Tumblr, and subscribe to us wherever you listen to podcasts!

Publisher

Leigh Pfeffer

Category

history · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

19 Dec 2017

Latest episode

6 Jan 2025

Latest episodes

93 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   6 Jan 2025

   48. All Your Children's Books Are Belong To Us (Gays), Part 2

   Welcome back to History is Gay, with part 2 of our three-part exploration of classic queer children's literature authors, with guest host Aubree Calvin! In this second installment, we give more background on the history of queer children's literature and dive a bit deeper into our favorite Queer Kid Lit fairy grandmother Ursula Nordstrom before moving into our main coverage focusing on two additional authors, beloved James Marshall, author of George and Martha and the Miss Nelson series, as well as the iconically curmudgeonly Maurice Sendak, known best for Where the Wild Things Are. Part three will be coming your way soon with even more queer children's authors to explore :) Outline 0:00 – Introduction 9:35 – Socio-Historical Context: Timeline of Overt LGBTQ Rep in Children's Books 17:42 – Socio-Historical Context: Fear of the Queer Child 17:42 – 23:22 – CONTENT WARNING: Discussion of bigoted association of homosexuality with child sexual abuse 23:22 – More about Ursula Nordstorm: our queer kid lit fairy gaymother 29:27 – Who Were They? Bio Time: James Marshall 45:08 – Who Were They? Bio Time: Maurice Sendak 56:05 – Why do we think they're gay? 1:14:14 – Closing and Where to Find us Online Want to help us continue to make the show? Support us on Patreon and get awesome goodies, behind-the-scenes access, special minisodes, and more! We have a Discord server for everyone to hang out in, exclusive O.G. Lesbian Sappho t-shirts, Pop-Culture Tie-In movie watches, and some really fun extras coming your way! You can also get merch in our store! Shirts, hoodies, totes, mugs, magnets, and other neat things! If you’d like to help us transcribe the show for our d/Deaf and hard of hearing fans, please head on over to www.historyisgaypodcast.com/transcribe to join the team of volunteers! Find our full list of sources and bonus content at www.historyisgaypodcast.com. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Don't forget to rate and review so more folks can see the show!

2. 

   1 Oct 2024

   47. All Your Children's Books Are Belong To Us (Gays), Part 1

   This episode marks the return of History is Gay after hiatus, and we're excited to be back in your podfeeds diving into the fascinating world of classic children's literature through the lens of queer authors. Leigh is joined by wonderful guest co-host, Aubree Calvin, to explore the lives and works of several groundbreaking authors, revealing how their sexualities and personal experiences shaped the books we cherished as children. In this first of a multi-part episode, we're focusing on four beloved authors whose works were some of our favorites: Tomie dePaola, most notable for our favorite Italian grandma Strega Nona, Margaret Wise Brown, the bisexual poet behind beloved picture books Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny, Ann M. Martin, who introduced us to our friends in The Babysitters Club, and Arnold Lobel, the man behind the cozy shared lives of Frog and Toad. This conversation doesn't end here; stay tuned as we will continue to explore more queer authors and their impact on the world of children's literature in the next episode, coming soon! Outline 0:00 – Introduction 4:51 – Socio-Historical Context: History of queer children's literature 10:00 – Who Were They? Bio Time for some of your queer kid lit faves 1:00:15 – Why do we think they're gay? 1:15:57 – 1:16:03 – CONTENT WARNING: Mention of suicidal ideation 1:37:01 – Closing and Where to Find us Online Want to help us continue to make the show? Support us on Patreon and get awesome goodies, behind-the-scenes access, special minisodes, and more! We have a Discord server for everyone to hang out in, exclusive O.G. Lesbian Sappho t-shirts, Pop-Culture Tie-In movie watches, and some really fun extras coming your way! You can also get merch in our store! Shirts, hoodies, totes, mugs, magnets, and other neat things! If you’d like to help us transcribe the show for our d/Deaf and hard of hearing fans, please head on over to www.historyisgaypodcast.com/transcribe to join the team of volunteers! Find our full list of sources and bonus content at www.historyisgaypodcast.com. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts! Don't forget to rate and review so more folks can see the show!

3. 

   1 Oct 2024

   We're Back, Baby! New episode drops tomorrow, October 1!

   Hello, queerlings! Welcome back to History is Gay! First off, I just want to say I’m so sorry for the unexpected hiatus and disappearance! Significant life events in early 2024 threw wrench after wrench into my plans and my ability to focus on the show, and I made the difficult decision in early June to announce an official hiatus to the patreon supporters with plans to return in the fall, but never sent anything out to the wider listenership, so I imagine you all felt left hanging, and I apologize for the radio silence! If you want to read more to get a better sense of the reasons for the hiatus, that Patreon post from June is public and accessible by everyone, which you can read here. All that being said, we are back! I’m so happy to share with you that we’ll be returning to your podfeeds tomorrow, October 1, with an episode which has been a very long time coming, where guest-host Aubree Calvin and I start a deep dive into all your favorite classic children’s book authors who, turns out, are queer! We had so many folks we wanted to get into that it’s expanded into a 2-3 part episode, so we’ve got more coming your way soon to close out 2024, including Maurice Sendak, James Marshall, Louise Fitzhugh, and more! I also wanted to announce that going into 2025, we’ll be bringing some changes to the format and structure of the show, in an aim to make it more sustainable for us to produce and freshen things up a bit! We haven’t figured out exactly what it will look like yet, but it will likely involve switching to a seasonal format with a set number of episodes followed by a break, and having our usual research deep-dive format be only one type of episode, alternating with things like learning from other queer historians and interviewing queer historymakers. More detail and information is on another publicly available Patreon post, linked here. I hope you’ll follow along with this new phase of History is Gay, and support us in exploring new ways to keep the show going, and let us know what you think! But for now, we’ll see you tomorrow with episode 47!

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.8 / 5

472 ratings

Spotify

4.8 / 5

881 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 39 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

48

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

76

Contact History is Gay

Guest appearances

Does not typically book guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.