エピソード

  • 818: Go Off, Steam with Rainbow Railroad

    818: Go Off, Steam with Rainbow Railroad
    2025/05/06
    Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! Join our Patreon to unlock 25+ full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of our original songs, exclusive Discord access, and more! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers– so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode. You can also support the show by stocking up for Pride at bit.ly/lezmerch & picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that’s, “leaving on a midnight train”. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with Devon Matthews, the Head of Programs for Rainbow Railroad (@rainbowrailroad), a global nonprofit that helps LGBTQ+ people get to safety worldwide. We talk with Devon about how Rainbow Railroad got started (spoiler alert: it took a LOT of gay audacity), what types of requests for help they receive, and how they organize with other nonprofit organizations and even government leaders to make the seemingly impossible, possible. We also discuss the challenges for Devon and the rest of the Rainbow Railroad’s staff of tireless advocates in providing trauma-informed care as people who mostly come from trauma-backgrounds themselves. Content warning for discussions of trauma related to queer and trans identity, situations involving domestic and state-sponsored violence, and the distressing realities of forced displacement. Through the support of partner organizations on the ground in countries all across the globe, Rainbow Railroad has the extraordinary task of connecting queer and trans people who are in great need with critical resources and a pathway to safety. When a request for help comes in, the case managers work to meet individuals where they are and devise a plan specific to their unique circumstances. The realities of assisting a queer youth who is trying to escape from domestic violence at home in a country where being gay is all-out illegal to assisting a trans adult in Europe get to safety are vastly different and require different approaches. Devon explains that the more visible the organization becomes, the more requests from LGBTQ+ people in serious crises come in– a sad fact of Rainbow Railroad’s growth is that it is needed at all (and at an almost unimaginable scale!). With over 120 million displaced people worldwide, there is an immense need for Rainbow Railroad and their partner organizations. But they can’t do it alone. The time is always now. There have never been a larger amount of requests for help from Rainbow Railroad than after the recent election results right here in the United States. If you are feeling fired up and ready to join the fight, consider donating to Rainbow Railroad, signing up to volunteer, or reaching out via email with ways that your access can help. There is always something we can do as individuals to fight for queer liberation– Whether you have a rich aunt ready to donate on your behalf, a property (or literally just a bedroom) you’d like to offer up as a “safe-house”, or are really good at community-building on the ground– YOU can make a difference. Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    55 分
  • SBG 146: Inside Out 2 with Kia Barnes

    SBG 146: Inside Out 2 with Kia Barnes
    2025/04/30
    Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! Join our Patreon to unlock 25+ full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of our original songs, exclusive Discord access, and more! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers– so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) by July 1st will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode. You can also support the show by grabbing some merch at bit.ly/lezmerch or picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that’s just a big vault full of gay thoughts locked deep in your brain. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) hangs out with returning guest, stand-up comedian Kia Barnes (@kiacomedy), to talk about why Disney Pixar’s Inside Out 2 Should’ve Been Gay. Ellie (@elliebrigida) couldn’t make the recording, and she’s devastated to have missed it, especially since Inside Out 2 was the movie she and Bailey saw on their very first date. From the second Val glides onto the screen, it’s instant gay panic, from Riley and every emotion in her head. Whether it’s Anxiety (voiced by queer queen Maya Hawke), Envy (played by none other than Ayo Edebiri!), or Ennui (channeling the energy of a deeply disaffected gay French man), Riley’s internal world is working overtime. Add a suspiciously queer-coded coach to the mix (we’re pretty sure her wife is hidden in the background somewhere) and the gay subtext is basically screaming at us in every scene. Kia shares how deeply she related to Riley, as a baby gay who just wanted to impress the older, cooler butch girls. She even smoked a cigarette (as an asthmatic!!) to get a girl’s attention. Riley trying to fit in with the butch boys club? Been there. We also talk about how hard Disney tried to scrub the gay out… and failed spectacularly. From the queer-coded coach to the LGBTQ+ cast to the metaphorical coming-out arc hidden inside a vault, Inside Out 2 practically demands a rainbow overlay. And let’s not forget “Beardville”, Riley’s imaginary Mount Crushmore of forced heterosexuality, where she literally has to carve boys into stone so she doesn’t forget them. Subtle? Absolutely not. Accurate? Tragically, yes. Then there’s the “big dark secret” locked deep in Riley’s mental vault. It’s glowing purple, heavily guarded, and very clearly not ready to come out yet. We all know what it is (spoiler: it’s lesbianism), but we’d genuinely love to know what straight people think it is. We also break down the tension between Riley and Grace, whose jealous-ex energy is off the charts. Whether Riley’s feelings are mutual is still TBD, but that tension? So real. From baby gay chaos to closet metaphors and a whole lot of repressed sapphic energy, we know one thing for sure: Inside Out 2 Should’ve Been Gay. Don’t forget to give us your Q & Gay answers on Instagram and follow along on TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. You can find your favorite smol and tol hosts at @lshfoster and @elliebrigida. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 25 分
  • 817: The Dark Gay-ges with Making Gay History

    817: The Dark Gay-ges with Making Gay History
    2025/04/22
    Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! Join our Patreon to unlock 25+ full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of our original songs, exclusive Discord access, and more! Right now, we’re retiring our lower tiers– so all new patrons who join at $5/month or higher (or upgrade!) will be entered into a raffle to guest star on a bonus Patreon episode. You can also support the show by grabbing some merch at bit.ly/lezmerch or picking up Lez-ssentials songs on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that believes sharing our individual stories is a powerful way to inspire change. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with journalist and historian Eric Marcus (@makinggayhistorypodcast), the creator of Making Gay History, the podcast that brings LGBTQ+ history to life through intimate, first-person stories from the people who lived it. This is a bit of a heavier episode than we usually do, so please take care of your mental health and listen mindfully. From conversations with trailblazers like Sylvia Rivera and Frank Kameny to countless unsung heroes whose stories deserve to be heard, Making Gay History is a powerful reminder that queer liberation has always been hard-won. (After all, the first Pride was a riot.) These first-hand accounts offer more than nostalgia. They’re blueprints for a much needed resistance. At a time when book bans, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, and chillingly fascist rhetoric are once again becoming the norm, Eric’s archive provides a pivotal look into our collective past so that we can all be better prepared for the road ahead. The struggle sadly isn’t new; but with a little courage and a lot of community, we believe that queer people will always persevere. Eric shares the origins of Making Gay History (which originally started as a book in the late 80s!), the importance of preserving queer voices, and the deep responsibility of memory work in the face of erasure. This episode is both a tribute to the ancestors that fought for our rights and a call to action: to listen, to remember, and to keep telling our stories, especially now. You can explore Eric’s archive and the most recent season of the podcast (A 12-part series about the experiences of LGBT+ people during the rise of the Nazi regime, World War II, and the Holocaust) at makinggayhistory.org. Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 12 分
  • SBG 145: Conclave with Mariel Tarin

    SBG 145: Conclave with Mariel Tarin
    2025/04/15
    Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! When you join our Lez Hang Out family on Patreon you will gain instant access to 25 and counting full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of all our original songs, an invite to our exclusive Discord channel, and more! We can’t wait to see you there. You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch and purchasing our original Lez-ssentials songs for as little as $1 each on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that is about to be cancelled by the Catholic church. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with return guest, comedian and host of Cheers, Queers, Mari Taren (@mariel_taren), to talk about why the 2024 political thriller Conclave Should’ve Been Gay(er). If you are a deeply devoted Catholic, we apologize in advance, because this episode might have you running for the confessional. Whether you’ve seen Conclave or not, we’re almost 100% sure that you have seen at least one version of Mean Girls, so the plot should feel familiar to you. This movie gives viewers a peek behind the curtain into the secretive and ancient practice of electing a new Pope. This might not on the surface sound particularly gay to you, but that is where you would be wrong. We don’t know why SNL is sleeping on such high quality content, but we would give anything for a Love Island-ified Conclave skit. There is no chance in our minds that all these men were shut into a room together and no one hooked up. The entire film is just spilled tea after spilled tea as we follow 108 men who normally don’t get a chance to see one another sequestered in one place. It’s basically just a big sleepover full of hot goss and the most dramatic b*tches you’ve ever seen. These cardinals are so dramatic they don’t even wipe the dust off their robes after getting literally bombed. We talk with Mari about which cardinal we think aligns with which Mean Girls character, why the intersex Pope reveal at the end of the movie felt too rushed, and how the Conclave marketing team missed a huge opportunity in not advertising directly to the gays. We know one thing for sure, Conclave Should’ve Been Gay(er). Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, Youtube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 21 分
  • 816: Lez-ssentials Pretty Little Liars with John Arrow

    816: Lez-ssentials Pretty Little Liars with John Arrow
    2025/04/08
    Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! When you join our Lez Hang Out family on Patreon you will gain instant access to 25 and counting full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of all our original songs (including our brand new song based on PLL), an invite to our exclusive Discord channel, and more! We can’t wait to see you there. You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast where “two can keep a secret if one of them is dead”. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with return guest and founder of TGI Femslash, John Arrow (@jarrow272), to talk about the 7 season teen mystery drama, Pretty Little Liars, for this Lez-ssentials episode, a recurring segment on the essential movies and TV shows in the lesbian canon. Come with us on a journey back to 2010, when television seasons were 26 episodes long and showrunners were just starting to figure out how to harness the power of social media to engage with fandoms in a big way. Pretty Little Liars itself does not age all that well in many ways, especially in the treatment of their one and only trans character; but back in the 2010s it was actually considered pretty progressive for having several queer characters and a lesbian showrunner. If you were queer or questioning in the early aughts you 1000% knew about Shay Mitchell as sporty lesbian Emily Fields who seemingly turned every woman within a 5 mile radius of her gay. If you are a lesbian of a certain age, Emily likely played a role in your own coming out journey too. For those of you who were part of the #BooRadleyVanCullen (like Leigh), you may recall more of the social fandom experience than you do the plot. Before Twitter became the cesspool it is today, there were the golden days of weekly live tweeted episodes of PLL with the cast members, the showrunner and the writers. The extremely unhinged plot made it the perfect group-viewing show and we highly recommend that if you have never watched PLL, you watch with a friend or three. While we do talk about a lot of the major plot points, the whole series is just too convoluted for us to really spoil anything for you. Even hardcore fans like John find something new in each rewatch. At the end of the episode, stick around to hear our original song based on PLL, titled “A Liar”, written by Leigh Holmes Foster and produced by Ellie Brigida. Join us on Patreon at bit.ly/lezpatreon for instant access to mp3 downloads of all our original songs or find us on Bandcamp to purchase songs individually. Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, Youtube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 43 分
  • SBG 144: Jesus Christ Superstar with Sweetbitter Podcast

    SBG 144: Jesus Christ Superstar with Sweetbitter Podcast
    2025/04/01
    Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! When you join our Lez Hang Out family on Patreon you will gain instant access to 25 and counting full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of all our original songs, an invite to our exclusive Discord channel, and more! We can’t wait to see you there. You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch and purchasing our original Lez-ssentials songs for as little as $1 each on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that just doesn’t know how to love Him. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out with return guests, the team behind Sweetbitter Podcast (@sweetbitterpod), Leesa Charlotte (@leesacharlotte) and Alyse Knorr (@spikeskywalker12), to talk about why the 1973 Pope-approved rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar Should’ve Been Gay. This movie answers the question, “What if the entire story behind the crucifixion was really just about Judas having a crush on Jesus?”. Jesus Christ Superstar is a campy masterpiece with a soundtrack that honestly slaps. It features the most dragtastic version of white Jesus we have ever seen surrounded by a bunch of leather daddies in the desert. While there are a few things in the film that had us side-eyeing the 70s (and Leigh still isn’t 100% convinced the movie she saw was not actually a porn parody), according to resident researcher Alyse, the story is actually pretty Biblically accurate. From the homoerotic undertones of Jesus turning to all his boyfriends with a loaf of bread and being like, “eat me”, to the oddly Gelphie-coded relationship between Judas and Jesus, we explore how much better religion can be when it’s queer. We know one thing for sure, Jesus Christ Superstar Should’ve Been Gay. Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, Youtube and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 33 分
  • Rewind: SBG Encanto with Jess Darrow

    Rewind: SBG Encanto with Jess Darrow
    2025/03/26
    Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! When you join our Lez Hang Out family on Patreon you will gain instant access to 25 and counting full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of all our original songs, an invite to our exclusive Discord channel, and more! You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch and by purchasing our original Lez-ssentials songs for as little as $1 each on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that absolutely under no circumstances would ever talk about Bruno, no, no, no. This week we are rewinding the clock to when Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hung out with actor Jessica Darrow (@jessdarrow_) to talk about the myriad of reasons why Disney’s 2021 animated musical Encanto Should’ve Been Gay. When you think of queerness and Encanto the first character to come to mind is probably Jess’s character Luisa, the hunky beefcake older sister with a heart of gold. And yea, obviously she’s gay, but we’d argue that Luisa is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the queerness of Encanto. From the magic “miracle” powers bestowed on each member of the Madrigal family to the colorful, rainbow-filled casita where they reside, this film is practically overflowing with queer energy. There’s Camilo, a shapeshifter who frequently changes gender; Bruno, the misunderstood outcast who just wanted to be accepted by his family; Mirabelle, the main character whose coming out didn’t quite go as planned; and of course Isabela, the “perfect” (closeted femme) sister who is hiding her true self out of fear of ending up rejected like Bruno. One thing is for sure, Encanto Should’ve Been Gay. Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 49 分
  • 815: Aging Gay-fully

    815: Aging Gay-fully
    2025/03/17
    Lez Hang Out is proud to be sponsored by Olivia, the travel company for lesbians and all LGBTQ+ women! When you join our Lez Hang Out family on Patreon you will gain instant access to 25 and counting full-length bonus episodes, ad-free weekly episodes, mp3 downloads of all our original songs, an invite to our exclusive Discord channel, and more! You can also support the podcast by buying our original merch at bit.ly/lezmerch and by purchasing our original Lez-ssentials songs for as little as $1 each on Bandcamp. Welcome back to Lez Hang Out, the podcast that wants to be forever young. This week, Leigh (@lshfoster) and Ellie (@elliebrigida) hang out and talk about the overall experience of aging as a queer person in an ever-changing society. With Ellie and Leigh both having birthdays around the time of recording this episode, they thought it would be interesting to take a look at the nonlinear experience of aging and the differences between coming out back in the day and coming out now. The entire concept of queerness has evolved and changed throughout time both as a political identity and a sexual one. There is widely used language and understanding of queerness and queer identities that just did not exist in the same way when Ellie and Leigh were gaybies. When Leigh got married, she was only able to do so because gay marriage had been legalized in the state of Massachusets (not the entire country, literally just that state). Back then, even just being able to get married at all was astounding and a huge win. And honestly, that was not that long ago! Ellie talks about how when she first showed her girlfriend The L Word, Bailey asked her if Bette and Tina were married. This feels like a wild question to us, because of course we know that it was illegal to be married when this show was actually being made and aired. But for younger gays that have grown up with gay marriage being legal for the majority of their lives, that huge shift in queer rights and overall societal attitude toward the community that we experienced just doesn’t register in the same way for them. With the landscape of queer rights being continually nonlinear and unfortunately experiencing a backslide at the moment in many areas across the globe, it is so important for queer people of all ages to share our experiences with one another. Remember, you can give us your own answers to our Q & Gay on Instagram and follow along on Facebook, TikTok, and BlueSky @lezhangoutpod. Find your fav tol and smol hosts Ellie & Leigh at @elliebrigida and @lshfoster respectively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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    1 時間 6 分