Matt Baume

My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week grew up in challenging circumstances — a gay kid in Nigeria with a religious family, Bisi couldn’t imagine anywhere on Earth he might belong. Especially after he came out on national television, and had to apply for asylum to escape his increasingly dire liv

As you may have seen, I have a new video premiering this weekend about the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman, which features an iconic performance from a then-obscure actor named Raul Julia. Thanks to my research into Raul’s career, I’ve had another of his iconic roles on my mind lately — that of G

Hello there! I'm chugging away on multiple videos for you right now -- one about Roy Cohn and Angels in America; and another about the 2013 British sitcom Vicious. For this week's bonus video, I've got some fun backstage stories from the stars of Vicious, the always-iconic Sir Ian and Sir Derek, reg

Hello there! For this week's bonus video, I thought you might like a closer look at some of the movies that followed through the door that Victim opened: Brave films that included even more queer content like Taste of Honey, The Leather Boys, If..., and Sunday Bloody Sunday. (One little correction:

Hello there! I've got a real whale of a bonus video for you this week. In my research into the movie Victim, I noticed that a lot of the queer roads kept leading back to -- for some reason -- Disney's Mary Poppins. A lot of the women in this film have astonishingly adventurous lives, from the people

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is my friend and colleague Tyler Albertario, a writer and researcher with a magnetic enthusiasm for queer history and culture. Tyler always had an interest in our vast queer past, but it was a chance viewing of a show about gay life in the 80s that turned it

There’s a new trailer out for the upcoming Wicked movie, so I thought it was a good time to dive into the Sewers of Paris podcast archives to revisit my chat with Gregory Maguire, author of the Wicked novel, among many other works. Though I’m sure you’re familiar with his book and the musical adapta

Hello! It's time once again for the monthly feedback video! This is the series of videos that's free to everyone on Patreon -- it started as a Q&A but over the months it's become a fun way for Patrons to recommend stuff that they like to each other. So! If you like my stuff, you might like these oth

My guest this week is Professor Paul Baker, a writer and linguist whose work includes some FASCINATING explorations of Polari, the secret 19-century queer language that existed in England a century ago. He’s also delved deep into the history of British don’t-say-gay laws, gay seafarers, and in an up

How do you awaken your own untapped courage? This week's guest is Andrew Wheeler, writer of adventure and intrigue novels featuring defiantly gay characters. Though his stories are swashbuckling, Andrew tends to live a quiet, more domestic life than his globetrotting heroes. It was through his books

We all know life's short, so how do you make the most of the time you've got? My guest this week is Scott Flashheart, comedian and host of the podcast Probably True. He grew up in a tiny British mining town -- or at least, what WAS a mining town, before the mine was closed, sending the place he live

At this point, we're all very familiar with the foundational queer story that many of us have lived: feeling like outcasts, fleeing from small towns to big cities, and searching for our tribe. But what happens once you get to that big city? What can you create once you're free to create the life you