Queering Reality Podcast

About Queering Reality Podcast

Queering Reality is a series for exploring and reshaping the world through a queer lens by Elizabeth Earley, a queer writer, scientist, and ex-christian with magical thinking who is also a mom and Board President at Jaded Ibis Press. www.queeringreality.com (https://www.queeringreality.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Elizabeth Earley

Category

society & culture · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

14 Aug 2024

Latest episode

17 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

49 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   17 Sept 2026

   Queering Reality with Heb Murphy (@hebontheweb)

   What happens when you stop trying to make the art you think you’re supposed to make and start paying attention to what actually wants to come out? In this episode of Queering Reality, I talk with musician, songwriter, comedian, and internet delight Heb Murphy (@hebontheweb) about unlearning the rules we’ve inherited: about gender, conflict, creativity, success, and even what makes something worthy of being called art. Heb tells me how the pressure to become a “real” musician eventually made it almost impossible for her to pick up a guitar — and how a tiny, ridiculous song about corn unexpectedly gave her creativity back. We talk about finding softness in a world that teaches us to fight, the strange hunger of internet virality, nature and community as antidotes to despair, and what might happen after we die. Somehow we make our way from clowns and corn to patriarchy, psychedelics, collective consciousness, sex, death, and the possibility that none of us actually knows what the hell is going on. Which, really, is exactly where I like Queering Reality to begin. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.queeringreality.com (https://www.queeringreality.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

2. 

   29 Jul 2026

   Queering Reality with Ibram X. Kendi

   In this episode of Queering Reality, I sit down with bestselling author, historian, and public intellectual Dr. Ibram X. Kendi to explore how ideas — not just policies or institutions — shape the world we live in. Drawing from his powerful new book Chain of Ideas, we discuss how narratives rooted in fear spread through communities, why authoritarian movements rely on emotion over evidence, and how racism, sexism, homophobia, and other forms of bigotry are connected through larger systems of power. We also talk about the responsibility that comes with privilege, the importance of teaching children how to think rather than what to think, and why books remain one of our greatest tools for expanding empathy. Along the way, we wander into fiction, Toni Morrison, the mysteries of what happens after death, and the enduring hope that liberation, like oppression, is something we build together. If you’ve ever wondered why certain ideas take hold — or how we begin to dismantle them — this conversation offers both intellectual rigor and genuine humanity. DR. IBRAM X. KENDI (https://www.ibramxkendi.com/) is one of the world’s foremost historians of racism and a leading antiracist scholar. He is the Carter G. Woodson Endowed Chair in History at Howard University, and the inaugural director of Howard’s Institute for Advanced Study. Dr. Kendi is the author of Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, making him the youngest author to win that award. Stamped from the Beginning was adapted into highly acclaimed books for young readers and an Emmy-nominated documentary on Netflix. Dr. Kendi also authored the international bestseller, How to Be an Antiracist, which was described in the New York Times as “the most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” In total, Dr. Kendi has published eighteen books for adults and children, including twelve New York Times Best Sellers, five of which were #1 New York Times Best Sellers. Time magazine named Dr. Kendi one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world. He was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, popularly known as the Genius Grant. His latest critically acclaimed book and Best Seller is Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age, which was published in March. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.queeringreality.com (https://www.queeringreality.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

3. 

   30 Jun 2026

   Queering Reality with Julian Randall

   Today’s guest is Julian Randall (https://juliandavidrandall.com/), a poet, essayist, educator, and the author of Refuse, a collection that explores family, race, masculinity, illness, inheritance, and the complicated ways we learn who we’re supposed to be. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and many other publications, and he serves as an assistant professor of English at the University of Chicago. What draws me to Julian’s work is its refusal to flatten experience into certainty. His poems are deeply attentive to contradiction — to the ways tenderness and anger, grief and joy, vulnerability and strength can occupy the same body, the same family, the same moment. Rather than resolving those tensions, he invites us to live inside them. That feels deeply connected to what we explore on this podcast. Queering reality isn’t simply about sexuality or gender — it’s about resisting the pressure to make ourselves legible through binaries. It’s about questioning the stories we’ve inherited about what makes a family, what makes a man, what makes a body, what makes a life. Julian’s work reminds us that identity isn’t something we arrive at once and for all; it’s something we continually negotiate with memory, history, love, and loss. I’m especially excited to talk with him about poetry as a way of holding complexity without rushing toward resolution, about inheritance and the stories families pass down and leave unsaid, about vulnerability as a creative practice, and about what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to be more than one thing at once. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.queeringreality.com (https://www.queeringreality.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_1)

Who has been a guest on Queering Reality Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• ROBERTA PAYNE
• Jennifer Racioppi
• Janine Rose
• Torrey Peters

Reach and audience

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

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

2 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 23 / 100

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

Quality

33

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

32