In the early 1980s, the LGBTQ movement experienced the first tremors of a shockwave that would shake its very foundations. A disease outbreak diagnosed in just five gay men in Los Angeles in 1981 would eventually claim the lives of more than 700,000 Americans. Nearly 60% of the dead would be gay or bisexual men.

It was the beginning of a global pandemic: AIDS — the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

To mark World AIDS Day — December First — journalist David Hunt revisits a story he first covered for Pacifica Radio more than 40 years ago: the early years of the AIDS epidemic. The program includes rare audio recordings of the nation’s first AIDS demonstrations, some of the first media interviews of AIDS patients and AIDS activists, and an inside look at the panic sweeping the gay community as the death toll mounted and the Reagan administration remained silent.

The program documents the greed, bigotry, and misinformation that would give the AIDS virus a deadly head start as it spread among some of society’s most marginalized populations: gay men, Haitian immigrants, and IV drug users.

And it follows the first steps a small number of progressive leaders, journalists, and ordinary people would take to meet the crisis and rouse the nation to action.

Featured voices include AIDS activists Bobbi Campbell, Bob Cecchi, Bill Bader, Matt Redman, Douglas Wright, and Daniel Warner. You’ll hear pioneering gay journalist Randy Shilts and San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt discuss their efforts to pressure gay bathhouses to protect their patrons. You’ll find out about a meeting with the blood bank industry that had public-health officials pounding the table in frustration. You’ll learn about the health threat sociologist Laud Humphreys said was greater than AIDS. And you’ll meet the self-described “sexual prima donna of New York City.”

Adding context to the archival recordings are recent interviews with retired Rep. Henry Waxman, who helped secure the first federal funding for AIDS research in 1983; Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter B.D. Colen, who covered the epidemic for Newsday; and AIDS activist Colin Clews, a writer and social worker who spearheaded AIDS information and treatment programs in the U.K. and Australia.

Special thanks to the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at the University of Southern California and the Pacifica Radio Archives. Photo by Daal Praderas.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

Jennie Arnau lives and works in New York City. But her childhood home is in the American South, in Greenville, South Carolina. It’s the place she discovered her passion for music. And the place that called her back in a time of loss and grief.

As she ends a self-imposed break from songwriting and performing, Arnau sat down with journalist David Hunt to discuss her musical journey, life’s ebbs and flows — and her new album, "A Rising Tide."

Find Arnau's music on your favorite streaming platform or visit https://www.jenniearnaumusic.com

"A Rising Tide" will be released Nov. 7, 2025.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

The world faces a refugee crisis. More people are displaced today — by war, famine and climate — than at any time in human history. Among the most vulnerable are people persecuted for their sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics.

But even as the number of refugees and asylum-seekers skyrockets, countries that once provided a safe haven are pulling up the welcome mat — and demonizing immigrants, especially LGBTQ immigrants.

Kimahli Powell, an activist, scholar and former CEO of Rainbow Railroad, talks with journalist David Hunt about the challenges confronting queer refugees and asylum-seekers in an increasingly hostile world.

An edited version of this feature aired on This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

In a wide-ranging interview with David Hunt, Jessica Stern recounts pivotal moments in her career, from her work as a scholar and global human rights activist to her tenure as the top queer diplomat in the U.S. State Department during the Biden administration.

Stern, now a senior fellow at the Carr-Ryan Center for Human Rights at Harvard, critiques the Trump administration’s retreat on LGBTQ human rights and offers her optimistic prescription for reasserting progressive ideals in the U.S. and beyond.

Stern gives a behind-the-scenes look at a historic U.N. Security Council meeting she helped organize in August 2015 that focused the council’s attention — for the first time — on LGBTQ human rights. And she discusses the difficult decision to move to Washington, D.C., in 2021 to become the U.S. Special Envoy Advancing the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons. During her three-year tenure at the State Department, Stern worked to raise the profile of LGBTQ rights in U.S. foreign policy and to assist LGBTQ people facing violence and discrimination around the world.

An edited version of this feature aired on This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

Mainstream news outlets regularly cover LGBTQ stories, reporting on everything from queer culture and the arts to political and legal struggles for equality around the world. But that’s a relatively recent phenomenon. Until the 1990s, most news organizations paid little attention to LGBTQ news beyond coverage of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

In the decade after Stonewall, most news about the gay and lesbian community was covered by a few local LGBTQ newspapers, such as Gay Community News in Boston and the Bay Area Reporter in San Francisco.

But who covered queer news in the bad old days, the pre-Stonewall era, when most LGBTQ people were closeted? It turns out, it all started with a few brave soldiers stationed in the American South during World War II and a young lesbian who worked in the entertainment industry in Hollywood. They published what are believed to be the first gay and lesbian newsletters in the United States — in the 1940s.

David Hunt got the scoop from a pioneering gay historian, Allan Bérubé, at the 1983 convention of the Gay and Lesbian Press Association in San Francisco.

An edited version of this featured aired on This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

Jennifer Knapp burst onto the Christian music scene in the late 1990s with an energy and honesty that resonated with thousands of young people searching for meaning and connection. Knapp’s first three albums sold over 1 million copies and earned the singer/songwriter two Grammy nominations and a Dove Award for New Artist of the Year in 1999.

But success took its toll. Exhausted by the pace and pressures of the industry, Knapp stopped performing in 2002 and left the United States, moving to Australia to clear her head and nourish her heart.

Seven years later, she returned to the U.S. with unexpected news: she was coming out with a new album, “Letting Go,” and coming out of the closet as a proud lesbian in a long-term relationship.

After a firestorm of controversy in the media, Knapp settled down in Nashville and settled into the work of recreating her career — this time outside of contemporary Christian music.

On the eve of her upcoming U.S. tour, Knapp sat down with David Hunt to recall the early days of her career and to discuss her recent work, which still focuses on the human search for love and meaning.

An edited version of this featured aired on This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

Over 5 billion people around the world use social media — and each of them spends, on average, about two-and-a-half hours a day texting, watching videos, gossiping, posting cat pictures and getting the latest news. But in an era of A.I. hallucinations and deepfakes, can you really trust what you hear and see online?

One queer journalist is taking up the challenge of building trust — and an audience — on TikTok and other social media platforms. David Hunt sat down to talk shop with reporter Enrique Anarte, a correspondent at Context, the Thomson Reuters Foundation's journalism platform.

Anarte is an experienced journalist with a master’s in European Union studies and proficiency in five languages. Much of his work for Thomson Reuters involves traditional reporting, which is abundantly sourced and rigorously documented. Less traditional is his presence on social media. Anarte has a large following on TikTok and Instagram, where he posts short, sometimes humorous videos on LGBTQ topics. It’s a new day, he says, and not everyone looks for news and information in traditional formats.

“Social [media] cannot be an afterthought,” he says. “If that happens, you are not serving people with the kind of formats or journalism that they need. We need to understand that social audiences are humans. As Walt Whitman said, ‘I contain multitudes.’ When someone opens the newspaper in the morning and then opens TiKTok before bed, they might be seeking the same kind of information, but in slightly different ways.”

An edited version of this feature aired on This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.

The drive for legal equality for LGBTQ people has faced strong headwinds in the Caribbean in recent years. In February 2024, a court in St. Vincent and the Grenadines dismissed a challenge to the nation’s archaic antigay criminal codes, saying the laws were justified on the grounds of public health and morality. And an appeals court in Trinidad and Tabago reinstated that nation’s anti-sodomy laws in March 2025, ruling that the colonial-era statutes were constitutionally untouchable.

But the winds of progress are blowing strong in St. Lucia, where a coalition of community groups just won a stunning court victory, overturning laws that imposed long prison sentences for same-sex intimacy. This was the coalition’s fourth court victory since 2022, when it successfully challenged anti-queer criminal statutes in Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Barbados. A similar case in Grenada is pending.

David Hunt talked with Kenita Placide, executive director of the Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality (ECADE), the organization behind the legal tempest sweeping across the islands.

An edited version of this featured aired on This Way Out: The International LGBTQ Radio Magazine.

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David Hunt is an Emmy-winning journalist and documentary producer who has reported on America's culture wars since the 1970s. Explore his blog, Tell Me, David.