Matt Baume

My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is often unrecognizable. Josh Duart creates cosplay looks that are so elaborate that as soon as he puts them on, he simply vanishes into whatever character he’s re-creating. I personally met him several times over the course of a recent weekend at a conventi

As we head into spooky season this October, I want to take a peek back into the Sewers archives for a chat with Sam Irvin. As a kid, Sam loved Bride of Frankenstein, and he brought that influence with him as an adult when he co-produced the film Gods and Monsters, and directed the show Dante’s Cove

Sorry this week's Sewers of Paris is coming a few days late -- it took a little extra time to arrange but I think it's worth it! This week I’m chatting with Scott Heim, the author of the 1995 novel Mysterious Skin, which was adapted into a film by Gregg Araki in 2004. Scott's book is the story of tw

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris is Damian Pelliccione, who started his career as an actor — if you watch closely, you can catch him on a 2005 episode of Gillmore Girls. Twenty years later, he’s in a very different role, as the co-founder and CEO of the streaming video service Revry. That ser

Like everyone on Earth, I’ve been looking back at the work of both Dolly Parton and Tim Curry, in absolute awe of everything they gave us. For this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris, we’re revisiting an interview that touched on both Dolly and Tim: My 2018 conversation with the drag performer wh

My guest this week has a track record of going viral — whether he wanted to or not. Mike Aylesworth’s first brush with fame was as a teenager in the late 90s when he challenged the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay members… then in adulthood when he dreamed up an invention in the bathtub that changed his life,

You might recognize the voice of this week’s Sewers of Paris guest — Tony Rodriguez plays Julio on The Simpsons, a role originated by Hank Azaria. This part didn’t come to Tony in the way you might expect. It was a combination of talent, training, taking some very bold initiative, and an intercessio

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is writer and historian Jack Shoulder. You might know him from his daily social media posts focusing on butts from across art history, or for his upcoming book Museum Hotties… which is about exactly what it sounds like. As a kid, Jack’s interest in classical

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is David Lauterstein, the founder and CEO of Nasty Pig. You probably know his company for their sexy fetish-infused street wear, so you might not expect that David’s background is in writing poetry. But the closer you look at his approach to designing clothi

This week marks the birthday of the author and activist James Baldwin, and to mark the occasion for this week's Sewers of Paris podcast, we’re heading into the archives for a conversation that touches on the expansiveness of Baldwin’s writing. In 2022, I spoke with a guest named Jonathan about how l

My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is Iain Bell, who made a career out of his personal passion for music. But he took a winding road to get there ... and could never have predicted that a job as a personal trainer would be a crucial step towards premiering an opera in Vienna.

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

Apologies for this week's Sewers of Paris episode being a few days late! I'm just getting over a cold, as you'll probably notice in the introduction. But I'm very excited for this week's guest! A few months ago, I came across an incredible video: It’s the early 70s, and a local Chicago talk show is

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris is writer/comedian Mano Agapion, whose work you may know from his appearances on Hacks and Bajillion Dollar Properties, his writing on the new Punky Brewster, or from his podcasts We Love Trash and Drag Her. Mano developed his sense of humor alongside the weir

When you compare what queer life was like at the end of the 80s to the start of the 2000s, the differences are so shocking it’s hard to believe that those years are only separated by a single decade. The author and historian Hugh Ryan has a new book about the people who shaped that decade, entitled

You might’ve seen that I have a new video up on YouTube this week — it’s about the long hard fight for marriage equality, and how some Hollywood icons got involved in the cause. The battle for the freedom to marry has been very much on my mind lately, so for this week's Sewers of Paris, I wanted to

Next week sees the release of a new Supergirl movie, so for this week’s Sewers of Paris we’re diving into the archives to revisit my 2020 interview with artist Joe Philips. Joe’s illustrations of handsome, happy gay men were some of the first glimpses I got of gay life, back in the 90s when I was a

For this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris, we have two guests: Andrew Klaus-Vineyard and Daniel Talbott are the directors of a new documentary short called Welcome to Tool Shed, which opens to the door to an iconic leather bar in Palm Springs. They’re just back from showing the film at Cannes,

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is Caleb Roehrig, author of young adult mysteries and the occasional romance. Caleb had always wanted to be an author, but life intervened and he found himself living in LA, working as a producer on reality TV shows. He didn’t realize it at the time, but tha

The world just celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday — born in late April, a scant four hundred and sixty two years ago, which makes him almost as old as this podcast. Over the years we’ve had many guests on The Sewers of Paris for whom Shakespeare’s work was an inspiration, and this week we’ll hear my

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is Jes Battis, who’s just written an appreciation and analysis of the movie Labyrinth entitled It’s Only Forever. Labyrinth turns 40 this year, which marks 40 years of Jes’ particular fascination with the goblin characters — and wondering why he’s always fel

To mark the recent re-re-re-rebooting of The Muppet Show, this week we’re heading into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2020 interview with Dan Steadman. Dan grew up in a household that was so religious, his parents forbade him from watching certain episodes of The Muppet Show, due to a guest appea

A few weeks ago I came across an online video from a comic convention featuring a phalanx of comic book figures — life-size statues, painted to look like they’d walked off the pages of a comic book. Their creator is Greg Maraio, an actor and artist in Boston who fills his time between shows with thi

The day this episode comes out (March 26, 2026), is the 115th birthday of renowned playwright Tennessee Williams. And to mark the occasion, we’re heading into the Sewers archives to hear my 2020 interview with writer William V. Madison, whose career was inspired in part by a moving experience in col

My guest this week in The Sewers of Paris is illustrator Ricardo Bessa, whose beautiful art features lush colorful fantasy settings and characters on fabulous adventures, often very queer. Ricardo knew he was a fish out of water in the town where he grew up, and planned to move to London to find oth

On last week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris we heard from drag comedienne Pissi Myles, and this week we’ll hear from Pissi’s husband, photographer and creative director David Ayllon. David’s specialty is weird colorful visions that lean heavily on the spooky, the queer, and the poppiest of pop art

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris is drag comedienne Pissi Myles, who always knew she needed to be on stage but wasn’t always sure where she fit in… thanks to a music theater education that left her feeling like she couldn’t measure up to her classmates, and comparing herself to the host of Bl

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the release of Pokémon, and to celebrate we’re diving into the Sewers archives to hear my 2019 chat with Cody Shipman. Cody’s a graphic designer and artist here in Seattle whose work is very beautiful, very gay, and very explicit. For a long time, he felt hesi

This week, I’m welcoming back Randy West, who was my guest in the Sewers of Paris way back in 2017. Randy is a TV industry veteran whose voice you might recognize from announcing on shows like The Price is Right, Supermarket Sweep, Big Brother, and countless others. From his decades behind a microph

My guest this week is Steven Salvatore, author of young adult romances like And They Lived…, No Perfect Places, and When Love Gives You Lemons. Steven’s plan, when he was younger, was to be an artist… until a cruel art teacher crushed his dreams. But that set the stage for him to discover a passion

My guest this week is game developer Tim Cain, who’s shown us what the end of the world looks like. Back in the mid-90s, Tim was working with a small team on a post-apocalyptic game with a 1950s aesthetic — a weird mix of styles that Tim was worried would bomb so hard he expected his next job would

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Massachusetts State Senator Julian Cyr, whose district includes Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket — a situation he never expected to find himself in. As a teenager, Julian was mainly focused on singing, and planned to pursue a career in the

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is queer artist and illustrator Cheyne Gallarde, whose style blends drag icons with classic comic book covers. Cheyne first discovered drag in queer bars of Hawaii, and after a memorable night getting pulled up onstage, he started translating the magic

Congratulations to actor-writer-comedian Joel Kim Booster, who got married last month to his partner John. You might know Joel as the writer and star of the movie Fire Island, or as a voice actor in KPop Demon Hunters, or from shows like Big Mouth, Search Party, and Loot. But before all that, Joel w

You may know this week’s guest from his online persona, The Black Gay Comic Geek — an identity that grew out of his Buffy fandom, which was so intense that for a time he was an administrator of a Buffy role-playing community where he was a magic shop owner and queen of the vengeance demons. These da

My guest this week is author Jumata Emill, whose new novel is entitled I Don’t Wish You Well. It’s about a true-crime reporter who uncovers a queer coverup in his hometown — based in part on Jumata’s prior work as a real-life crime writer, before he made the jump to fiction.

I can think of few better ways to spend the holidays than seeing some live queer theater, whether it’s Golden Girls Live, a sing-along to Mame, or shows with some of my local Seattle drag legends like Dina Martina and Scott Shoemaker. And one of the most iconic holiday duos to emerge from the Emeral

My guest on this week's Sewers of Paris podcast is Steven Milliken, author of a book of autobiographical essays entitled Late Bloomer Baby Boomer. Steven was a class clown who grew up to become a teacher in some fairly rough schools, and had to move in and out of the closet over the years as he navi

For this week’s Sewers of Paris, we're doing something a little different: I’m chatting with four Oz superfans about their intense connections to films like The Wizard of Oz, books like Return to Oz, and adaptations like Wicked. (These conversations are all part of my new video about Oz and queer cu

To mark the recent release of the second Wicked film, for this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris we’re revisiting my 2020 interview with Dee Michel, author of the book Friends of Dorothy: Why Gay Boys and Gay Men Love the Wizard of Oz. Dee’s book is an in-depth examination of queer Oz fandom, wh

I am delighted to welcome back a friend of the Sewers, film critic and holiday aficionado, Linoleum Knife’s Alonso Duralde. His book, Have Yourself a Movie Little Christmas, is now out in a revised and updated edition, gathering even more expert recommendations for holiday films to enjoy this season

The second of the Wicked films comes out later this month, and so for this week’s episode of The Sewers of Paris podcast we’re jumping into the archives to hear my 2017 chat with Tony winner Stephen Oremus, who was the music director for Wicked on Broadway and conducted the orchestras for the two Wi

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris podcast is Trung Le Nguyen, author of the new graphic novel Angelica and the Bear Prince. Trung’s books emerge from his lifelong love of fairy tales, some of them quite dark, and also his fascination with people figuring out how to take care of each other. A

My guest this week has been giving a lot of thought lately to what he was born to do. Wellington Love is one of the producers of the new documentary I Was Born This Way, which tells the story of Archbishop Carl Bean. That might not be a household name, but you’re certainly familiar with his work and

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris podcast is writer Mark Waddell. His novel, Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World, comes out next week on October 7 — a queer story about an office worker whose career advancement involves world-ending consequences. There’s an autobiographical edge to the s

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

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is David Secter. As a student in the 1960s, David bluffed his way into getting equipment, money, and crew to make a groundbreaking queer film called Winter Kept us Warm. And despite the fact that he went in with zero filmmaking experience, the movie wound up

I’m chatting with two guests on The Sewers of Paris podcast this week: TV producer David Moor and historian Dr. Lee Arnott of the delightful podcast The Problematic Gaze — that’s “gaze” as in an intent stare, though they’re the other kind of gays as well. David and Lee both grew up in small towns wh

My guest on The Sewers of Paris this week is the Reverend Joseph Peters Matthews, the vicar of St. Hilda St. Patrick Episcopal Church in Lynnwood Washington. Joseph’s path to the clergy took him from the small-town South to New York City, along the way developing a love for musical theater that he p

I have two guests on this week’s Sewers of Paris, both of them connected to a secret society of mutants. JP Karliak is the voice of Morph on X-Men ‘97, among many other roles; and Anthony Oliveira is a writer of many Marvel comics, among many other books. I spoke to them both about why the X-Men hol