Podcast Canon: Making Gay History is a treasure trove of archival recordings

Since the show is built from Marcus’ treasure trove of archival audio, it gives the podcast a unique feel that sets it apart from much of the audio landscape. Interviews proceed at an entirely different pace than those we’ve become accustomed to, more casual and unguarded, and the voice of the interviewer isn’t given a place of prominence. Marcus’ interviewing style is redolent of the work of Studs Terkel, the legendary oral historian from Chicago, capturing the voices of the people as they are, not overly focused on their heroic exploits but more on how they felt in the moment. It’s casually expressive and draws out some incredible audio. The Terkel comparison is so apt that it later inspires a season of the podcast where they mine Terkel’s own prodigious archives of interviews for oral histories of other gay cultural figures from the ’60s on.

In one episode, Marcus lays bare the ethos behind his approach to the project, quoting Bloomsbury Set fixture and author Lytton Strachey. “It is not by the method of a scrupulous narration that the explorer of the past can hope to depict that singular epoch. If he is wise, he will adopt a subtler strategy…he will row out over that great ocean of material and lower down into it—here and there—a little bucket, which will bring up to the light of day some characteristic specimen from those far depths, to be examined with a careful curiosity.” It is the show’s skeleton key, in a sense. No one episode or season of the show is attempting to be comprehensive; rather, it seeks to capture individual moments and feelings. They are allowed to simply be, regardless of any larger context. Every voice is another strand in this vibrant tapestry, no one more important than another; regardless of the weight of their contributions, they all represent the movement for gay liberation. 

That history goes as far back as sexologist Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and his pioneering work and attempt to popularize the idea of inborn, entirely normal homosexuality in Weimar-era Germany that was nearly lost to time following early attacks from the Nazis. The show’s most recent season picks up at that time, filling in the stories of gay, lesbian, and trans people who survived concentration camps in World War II. The bulk of the series’ stories come from the postwar period, from the struggle to remove homosexuality as a diagnosable mental illness from the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders (the industry standard guide for psychiatric diagnosis and treatment), to the founding of the Mattachine Society, the first major gay rights group in the U.S. From there, it works to fill in the gaps between the major tentpole moments in gay history, like Stonewall and the AIDS epidemic. Lest that all sound daunting, there is so much joy and love radiating out of the experiences of the movement’s participants that it’s impossible not to feel swept up in it all. 

The timing of Marcus’ original project, however, does have a faint grim shadow over it. Produced as it was in the late ’80s, one can sense that, with the AIDS crisis having already ravaged the community for the better part of the decade, there was an imperative need to meet with luminaries in the culture and capture their voices and stories. Marcus managed this on many occasions, including interviews with The Celluloid Closet author Vito Russo, CNN anchor Tom Cassidy, and activist Morty Manford, all shortly before they passed away from AIDS complications. That we’re still able to hear them express their stories today, in their own voices and words, is something of a miracle, however heartbreaking. 

As a history-focused program, its interviews largely end at the turn of the millennium, perhaps the latest of those being a conversation with Ellen DeGeneres in the valley between her landmark sitcom getting cancelled and her eventual daytime talk show domination. As a result, one feels that there are many stories still to be told and hopefully Marcus and his team will set out to document all of the events of this past quarter century, when gay culture became effectively mainstream culture.

For a show predicated on the voices of others, it’s perhaps a little ironic that the show’s most illuminating seasons are found in those where Marcus situates himself inside the thread of history, the so-called coming-of-age seasons. One is focused on the AIDS crisis and the other on the tumultuous decade for the movement in the aftermath of the Stonewall uprising. They are most instructive for the way that they do not seek to elide the challenges, and indeed horrors, that have faced the community in its long march towards a semblance of normalcy in North American society. They serve as a bulwark to a certain sense of fatalism that runs through any reactionary movement, showing that real change is possible through continued action, and reminding us to never lose hope.

In the series’ fifth season—commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising—during a live chat at the Stonewall Inn, Marcus reveals that his original intent was to create educational materials out of his recordings, before producer Sara Burningham raised the idea of making them into a podcast. It’s a decision that speaks deeply to me, because of the openness of the podcast medium and its seemingly boundless reach. What might have become part of a curriculum in America—one that could be wiped away by the fickleness (or cruelty, perhaps) of whichever state legislation became uncomfortable with its message—has instead become an almost decade-long podcast presence downloaded in nearly every country and territory around the world. A sonic revolution, bridging the gap between the history of the movement and its present-day beneficiaries and future combatants. That’s the power of this medium, and I’m ever so glad that they chose to become a part of it. 

A one time co-production of Pineapple Street Studios, the series is largely independent these days, and has been made for almost a decade thanks to the help and support of Jenna Weiss-Berman, Sara Burningham, Nahanni Rous, Josh Gwynn, Inge De Taeye, Anne Pope, Janelle Anderson, Rae Kantrowitz, Casey Holford, Michael Bognar, Cathleen Conte, Brian Ferree, and Fritz Myers.