Bad Gays

E. M. Forster

30 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! Live fr...

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays December 2025

24 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

It's never too late to give the gift of Bad Gays this holiday season: invite a friend or loved one into our community at https://www.patreon.com/badga...

Captain Moonlite

23 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! Another...

Tracey Wigginton

16 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The place: Queensland, Australia; a state just recovering from decades of rule by "hillbilly dictator" Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a petty authoritarian with...

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays November 2025: Tourism House Down Boots

04 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

With apologies for the delay, it's your episode of Extra Bad Gays for November of this year. We start by breaking down Ben's fight with a gay u...

Angela Calomiris

01 Dec 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! Today w...

Jacob Israël de Haan

25 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! Today's...

Charles Hitchen

18 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! Let us ...

Dorian Corey

11 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! Many pe...

Little Richard

04 Nov 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners!   Toda...

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays October 2025

29 Oct 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Patreon for the full episode. It's Extra Bad Gays LIVE! from Helsinki, where we discuss Donald Trump–our first stragg...

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays September 2025

30 Sep 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This month on our subscriber-only show, we discuss the supposed A-Gays of Trump's Washington. Will the people working for the Leopards Eating People's...

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays August 2025

21 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For the full conversation, subscribe in Apple Podcasts or on our Patreon.

Special Episode: Coil (with Hannah Pezzack)

12 Aug 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today, we welcome music writer Hannah Pezzack to talk about the experimental electronica band Coil – namely, its two frontmen and only consistent me...

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays July 2025

31 Jul 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A preview of our conversation about Mayor Pete this week. For more, subscribe at Patreon or Apple Podcasts.

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays June 2025, The Second: Touring, Representation, and Gaggony Guncles

24 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For full episodes of Extra Bad Gays, subscribe on our Patreon or directly through Apple Podcasts. Join our community of nefarious nellies and help sup...

Special Episode: Gavin Arthur (with Maurice Casey)

10 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

  Join our community of Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple Podcasts for special episodes and more!   Have you ever wondered who the sexual link betw...

Extra Bad Gays June 2025, The First: Weird Vibes Pride, Edmund White, and Bisexual Dilemmas (TRAILER)

05 Jun 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This is just a trailer! For the full episode, join our community of Extra Bad Gays on Patreon or Apple Podcasts.  Weird Vibes Pride Month, nefarious ...

Come See Us Live!

27 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

We're coming to a city near you! Berlin on June 7, Sheffield June 20, and Bath June 22!  Tickets and info: badgayspod.com/live

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays - The Sex We Cannot Have

07 May 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This month, it's all about a fantastic reader question about the sex we cannot have. What do we learn from it? How do we think about it? What can it t...

Special Episode: Alexander von Humboldt (with Michael Huldt)

30 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we welcome Michael Huldt, host of Worm From Home, an environmental history podcast focused on East London, to discuss the German naturalist Alex...

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays Gaggony Guncles

10 Apr 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribers to our monthly "extra" show get to hear advice segments that we, (hopefully) charmingly refer to as the Gaggony Guncles. Here's last month...

Jacques de Molay

11 Mar 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s subject, Jacques de Molay, was the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, or to give them their full title, the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of C...

TRAILER–Extra Bad Gays February 2025: German Elections and How To Sauna

28 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

This month, we begin with a conversation about the just-occurred German elections. The far right made gains: but the elections offer a ray of hope for...

Adele Spitzeder

19 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Adele Spitzeder, born into operatic royalty, washed up when she tried a career on the stage: so instead, she started accepting bank deposits for 10% m...

Anne Lister

11 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

 She was an industrialist, a lesbian, a landlord, a traveler, a businesswoman, a womanizer, a butch, a snob, a pioneer of gay marriage, a Tory. She ...

Larry Kramer

05 Feb 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today we profile Larry Kramer, the writer and AIDS activist. Kramer took space, took credit, operated in the world with tremendous privilege, and was ...

TRAILER - Extra Bad Gays: Extra Bad Gays January 2025: Unity Mitford, Lavender Scares, and Gay Guys With Girlfriends

31 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

In this month's subscriber-only episode, we examine some recently discovered diaries from Unity Valkyrie Mitford, odious sister of the odious Tom. How...

Abd Al-Ilah

29 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

The Crown Prince of Iraq, Abd Al-Ilah, ruled the country as a prince regent on behalf of his nephew, from 1939-1953 - although not interrupted. A memb...

Reed Erickson

20 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

Today's episode profiles an eccentric, wealthy businessman––with the pet tiger, Mexican nudist ashram, ketamine and cocaine habits, and baroque le...

Albrecht Muth

14 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

For today’s episode, I we take you into the murky world of the Washington foreign policy elites, and one of its murkiest characters, a man named Alb...

Elisar von Kupffer

07 Jan 2025

Contributed by Lukas

A fascist femboy, a Baltic count, an orientalist white supremacist, editor of the first anthology of gay literature, painter of a 30-meter cyclorama f...

Tom Mitford

31 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today's episode profiles a very bad bisexual: the lawyer, soldier and society favourite, Tom Mitford. But the idea of featuring Tom is partly a ruse. ...

Olive Yang

24 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

From almost the first season of the show, we’ve been tantalised by stories of the Burmese gangster Olive Yang. Now, to open season 8, we have their ...

Extra Bad Gays December 2024: Luigi Mangione, Folk Hero? (Trailer)

19 Dec 2024

Contributed by Lukas

available with easy shipping to both sides of the Atlantic.   On this month's episode of Extra Bad Gays, we discuss Luigi Mangione, who has now been ...

Extra Bad Gays November 2024: The Transatlantic Anti-Trans Post-Election Backlash (Trailer)

30 Nov 2024

Contributed by Lukas

  Our new merch–evil twink energy socks, camo hats, and more–is now available with easy shipping to both sides of the Atlantic.   In the wake...

Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie (with Indigo Dunphy-Smith)

30 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today's special guest is the researcher and museum worker Indigo Dunphy-Smith, who is bringing her expertise to the case of Marianne Woods and Jane Pi...

Extra Bad Gays October 2024: Meet Your New Gaggony Guncles

28 Oct 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Say hello to your new agony uncles: or is that Gaggony Guncles? A gay guy wonders if he's having enough sex! People ask about moving to Berlin. A fres...

Jerome Robbins (with Liz Rosenfeld)

25 Aug 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today, special guest Liz Rosenfeld discusses the choreographer Jerome Robbins. Born in New York to Jewish immigrants, Robbins pursued dance and radica...

Extra Bad Gays June 2024: Pride From Stonewall to Subaru (Trailer)

03 Jul 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Starting with a reading from Martin Duberman's book Stonewall about the riots that kicked off a revolution, we reflect on the history of increasing co...

Christopher Marlowe (with Will Tosh)

25 Jun 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today's special guest is Will Tosh, Head of Research at Shakespeare's Globe, London, and the author of a new book, “Straight Acting: The Many Queer ...

Rotha Lintorn-Orman

25 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

We close out our season with the story of a dashing tomboy who was the first woman to found a British political party. The only problem: that party wa...

TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays April 2024 - Tory Sex Scandals and Capote's Feud

22 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Enjoy a sneak preview of EXTRA BAD GAYS, our monthly, subscriber-only show on contemporary queer politics and culture. For the full episode and a new ...

Baron Franz Nopcsa von Felső-Szilvás

18 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s subject had a multi-hyphenate name and a multi-hyphenate resume––, in his 55 years of life, he was an adventurer, a geologist, a spy, a ...

Qutbuddin Mubarak Shah

09 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

"If you have to take an beautiful enslaved convert boy from another province to become your lover, and then you fall hopelessly in love with him, and ...

Marthe Hanau

02 Apr 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Marthe Hanau built a several-hundred-million-franc financial powerhouse: which turned out to be a fraud. Her investors had been promised returns of 8%...

John Whitgift

19 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today's episode is about England and its capacity to be deeply weird. Weget into one of England's weirdest, bloodiest, and maybe horniest moments, the...

James Levine

12 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Warning: this episode contains discussions of child sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and workplace sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised. Ma...

Elagabalus

05 Mar 2024

Contributed by Lukas

This episode has everything: a tyrannical little boy king, a dictator who wanted to overthrow the Roman pantheon and install a meteorite as the object...

Ahebi Ugbabe

27 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s subject was an uneducated woman who was born in approximately 1880 and rose in her nearly 70 years of life from enslavement to sex work to f...

Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell

20 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Warning: this episode contains discussions of domestic violence, child sexual abuse, and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.  A rare twofe...

Karl Lagerfeld

13 Feb 2024

Contributed by Lukas

Are you wearing the Chanel boots? Yes, we are. A white-haired, powdered, starch-cuffed petty dictator who ruled over the expanding business with an ir...

Simeon Solomon and Sascha Schneider - Live from Podfest Berlin

25 Dec 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS, our monthly conversation on politics and culture, here or by clicking "Subscribe" on Apple Podcasts. Merry Christmas! Hap...

Benedetta Carlini

06 Jun 2023

Contributed by Lukas

What's your favorite Paul Verhoeven film? We knew you were going to say Showgirls–but we'll put in a word for his latest, Benedetta, with Charlotte ...

Tokugawa Iemitsu

30 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Through the life of this 17th century Japanese shogun, we explore the role of same-sex relationships in Japanese court culture of the time, the radica...

Dong Xian

16 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

There’s power in being the king who sits upon the throne, but also power in being the throne upon who the king sits. This was true as ever  in the ...

Tom Driberg

09 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s figure is the sort of character who has been extinguished from British public life today, and maybe that’s for the best. He’s a mass of ...

Griselda Blanco

02 May 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Nicki Minaj once rapped: Drug Lord Griselda, I used to move weight thru Delta. She’s referring to today’s subject, la Madrina, the drug lord of t...

André Gide

25 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Warning: this episode contains discussions of child sexual abuse. Listener discretion is advised.  This week, we tackle the French author André Gide...

Mustapha Ben Ismaïl (with Arthur Asseraf)

11 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Today we welcome special guest (and Associate Professor in History at the University of Cambridge) Arthur Asseraf to talk about Mustapha Ben Ismaïl, ...

Jorge Horacio Ballvé Piñero

04 Apr 2023

Contributed by Lukas

Argentina, 1942: a scandal breaks. Tabloids scream about newly discovered photographs –– taken by the amateur photographer Jorge Horacio Ballvé P...

Julie D’Aubigny

28 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

She's an icon, she's a legend, and she is the moment: today’s subject caused such a scandal in her life that even its fictionalized depiction in a ...

George Santos

20 Mar 2023

Contributed by Lukas

We're starting off Season Six with George Santos, who rocketed the pathological homosexual narcissism we've spent much of our show discussing to the h...

Jack Saul LIVE! at Foyles in London with Shon Faye

25 Dec 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Happy Christmas! It's Bad Gays Live! Relive our reading of the Jack Saul chapter – covering the life and times of the Victorian sex worker and por...

Magnus Hirschfeld (with Laurie Marhoefer)

05 Oct 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's the Magnus Hirschfeld episode. We invited Laurie Marhoefer – Jon Bridgman Endowed Professor of History at the University of Washington, and one...

US Tour!

08 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our UK tour has been fun -- and the US is next! Ben (sadly Huwless) will be stopping in San Francisco, LA, Chicago, New York City, and Boston in th...

Eugen Sandow (with Ruby Hann)

01 Jun 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Happy Pride! We invited Ruby Hann, who completed her MA in History in 2020 and her MSc in History in 2021, both at the University of Edinburgh, to ta...

Our UK Tour! (US Coming Soon)

19 May 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Our book, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History is now available for pre-order from Verso –– and we're making many, many stops across every corner of Gre...

Jeffrey Dahmer

15 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For white, suburban, heterosexual middle America, Jeffrey Dahmer, like AIDS, was the natural, even the righteous, consequence of homosexual promiscuit...

John Wojtowicz

01 Mar 2022

Contributed by Lukas

It's a dog day afternoon: today's episode profiles the bank robber John Wojtowicz, who infamously (and as memorialized in Sidney Lumet's 1975 film DOG...

Cressida Dick (Part Two)

22 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Unusually for this show, which normally focuses on long departed historical figures, today we’re going to talk about someone who’s still very m...

Cressida Dick (Part One)

15 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Unusually for this show, which normally focuses on long departed historical figures, today we’re going to talk about someone who’s still very much...

Freddie Mercury

08 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

For a time, one of the world's most famous rock stars – singer of stadium rock anthems that still signify foot-stomping machismo – existed as an a...

Franco Zeffirelli

01 Feb 2022

Contributed by Lukas

A very special opera queen episode profiling an opera queen gone wrong: the Italian opera and film director (of 1968's famous Romeo and Juliet) who fo...

Anne Bonny

25 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

Are you ready to have your timbers shivered and your mainbrace spliced? Today’s subject is a mysterious one, a historical figure whose life and repu...

Philipp, Prince of Eulenburg

18 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The "Eulenberg Affair," a series of media scandals about homosexual behavior at the highest levels of the German Imperial court, dragged on in the pre...

Ernst vom Rath

11 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

This Nazi diplomat was assassinated by the Jewish activist Herschel Grynszpan –– and his death became a pretext for the murderous pogroms of Krist...

Joe Carstairs

04 Jan 2022

Contributed by Lukas

The eccentric inheritor of an enormous oil fortune and gender non-conforming-lesbian-trans man (we'll talk about it!) who dated Marlene Dietrich, race...

Francis Bacon

24 Dec 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Francis Bacon was an artist whose radical generosity teetered on the edge of self-obliteration –– and he sometimes pulled others over the edge wit...

Pacchierotto and Florentine Sodomites (with Max Fox)

10 Aug 2021

Contributed by Lukas

Not a huge amount is known about Pacchierotto, a sodomite who was convicted and publicly humiliated in Florence, Italy, in 1486, but his story tells u...

Arthur Gary Bishop (with David Eichert)

13 Apr 2021

Contributed by Lukas

The crimes, trial and execution of Utah citizen and devout Mormon Arthur Gary Bishop seemed to be the manifestation of many of both the public fears a...

Dennis Cooper (with Diarmuid Hester)

23 Feb 2021

Contributed by Lukas

On the (in)famous author of the George Miles cycle, The Sluts, and many other classic works of radically transgressive gay fiction. Joining Ben to tac...

Violette Morris

22 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Violette Morris, a powerhouse athlete with 14-inch biceps, discovered a love for trousers and fast driving while piloting ambulances for the Red Cross...

Camilla Hall

14 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Camilla Christine Hall was born on March 24th, 1945, in St Peter Minnesota. Her father was a Lutheran pastor, and her childhood was suburban and unrem...

Gertrude Stein

08 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Gertrude Stein is remembered as a novelist, playwright, poet, and, art collector –– and the hostess of a Paris salon that gathered the cream of in...

Prince Albert Victor

01 Dec 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Today’s subject is the man who would be King, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, firstborn son of Edward VII, Grandson of Queen Vi...

Truman Capote

24 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Born in a violent and difficult childhood in the American South, Truman Capote would rise to the highest levels of literary celebrity, praise, and fam...

Carl Van Vechten

17 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A man with a passion for the dangerous, subversive, and avant garde; who eschewed the middle brow and loved the urbane and modern. Known in his life n...

Benjamin Britten

10 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The composer Benjamin Britten was a central figure of 20th century music; and the national composer that Britain had been searching for since the deat...

Jeremy Thorpe

03 Nov 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This is a story of sex, death and political malfeasance that will make Teddy Kennedy look like Anne of Green Gables. It has everything you’ve come t...

Liberace

27 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

This "deadly, winking, sniggering, snuggling, chromium-plated, scent-impregnated, luminous, quivering, giggling, fruit-flavored, mincing, ice-covered ...

Cecil Rhodes

20 Oct 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Season 4 –– ! –– with apologies for socially-distanced audio quality. Today's victim was a British colonist and mining magnate who served as P...

Special Episode: John Maynard Keynes (with Richard Power Sayeed)

01 Sep 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Despite beginning his career as a member of the civil service ruling Britain's colonial empire, John Maynard Keynes was also a key member of London's ...

Radclyffe Hall

28 Jul 2020

Contributed by Lukas

The author of the iconic lesbian –– and trans –– novel The Well of Loneliness was born to privilege before consorting with suffragettes and...

Lisa Miller

26 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

To close our season, the story of Lisa Miller, an American woman who gave birth to a child coparented with her partner Janet Jenkins, and then left Ja...

Morrissey

19 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

An essay on the Smiths frontman whose music and lyrics turned the abject aspects of the identities of so many queer teenagers into something that mad...

Aileen Wuornos

12 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

In 1992, Aileen Carol Wuornos, an itinerant sex worker, was arrested for the murders of seven men in or near Volusia County, Florida in 1989 and 1990:...

Roger Casement

05 May 2020

Contributed by Lukas

At the height of his career, today's subject was a national hero in the UK, knighted by George V. His life ended as a traitor and a pervert, executed ...

Philip Johnson

28 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

Philip Cortelyou Johnson may be more responsible than anyone for the shift from Modernism as a new way of living to Modernism as an elite bauble. Bor...

Elmyr de Hory

21 Apr 2020

Contributed by Lukas

A fraud and liar of epic proportions: a dashing art forger whose difficulties selling his naturalistic work in the Modernist-dominated 20th century ar...