Jonny and Hearher check in about their busy queer weekend . Less fun, the check in on how that Skrmetti case went in the Supreme Court last week. From that they pull a theme they explore in the back half of the show--how actions are connected and the world is a web of interconnections. While this can be daunting when phobias spread across those strands, it can also be hopeful when justice and resistence do too. With that in mind, the discuss anti trans laws in Alberta, Canada and the regime chan...
Dec 11, 2024•59 min
Jonny and Heather discuss World AIDS Day, reflecting on their own histories and lessons learned from the disease, including lessons we might take into the future. They discuss new breakthrough medications for the syndrome that approach the level of vaccination. In the back half of the show, they discuss the pending Supreme Court case challenging Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for trans youth. They detail the trans masculine lawyer working for the ACLU and speaking before the court as w...
Dec 04, 2024•58 min
Jonny and Heather dive into the ludicrous new House Rule segregating bathrooms based on transphobic fears...or maybe its just toxic politicking? They turn to the already building evidence of assaults on trans rights as states submit bills for consideration in 2025 and President Trump advertises his first intended Executive Orders. They also look at what detention camps for queer and trans people will likely look like in the new regime, created in ways that might allow cis/het folks to ignore the...
Nov 27, 2024•58 min
Jonny and Heather pause to recognize the Trans Day of Remembrance with information about services in Carbondale while also taking a moment to hear the names of the trans folks who have died in the last year in the US. They lean into why times are so rough right now for queer and trans folks with a general discussion of resources avaialble to get through the coming rough(er) times. In the back half of the show they discuss the weaponization of mental illness aganst trans people and how LGBTQ folk...
Nov 20, 2024•59 min
Jonny and Heather discuss the outcome of the 2024 election. They try to avoid finger-pointing and armchair quarterbacking campaign choices and, instead, process their feelings and look to evidence of a shifting political landscape. They find glimmers of hope where they can while preparing for the worst. They note that, while the top of the ticiet and the majorities in Congress are pretty dire, there was considerable good news in state referenda on abortion access and historic elections of LGBTQ ...
Nov 13, 2024•58 min
Jonny and Heather face the challenge of recording a show on a Monday afternoon before it airs on a Wednesday morning in the first week of November....in a very contentious and signficant election year. Acknowledging the challenge of recording before any results or consequences are yet known, they offer some escapes from election anxiety and, perhaps, a harsh return to one. The review and gush over Disney+ and the MCU's "Agatha All Along." The then turn to reminding folks to check in on how the L...
Nov 06, 2024•59 min
Jonny and Heather discuss the horrors of Halloween--that is, the actual horrors of these last days of the Presidential campaign alongside the queertastic holiday celebrations of Halloween. In the back half of the show, Jonny interviews Sister Texas Hotbox of the SOIL Sisters about their holiday card project, sending holiday greetins to queer and trans folks who may not be receiving such worm wishes from their families of origin, If you would like a personalized holiday greeting from from Sister ...
Oct 30, 2024•59 min
Heather and Jonny kick off the show with a geek-out over good Dr. Who news before moving into the threatened dystopia of a President Vance. They dig into the irony of the anti-LGBTQ senator's gay billionaire patron, delving into the influence ot technolibertarians and a philosophy of Dark Enlightenment. After detailing this bleakness, they check in on queers actually serving in the federal government and running for office, including the psychological challenges of such work. They close out with...
Oct 23, 2024•59 min
Jonny and Heather record the episode on Columb--er, Indigenous People's Day, and have some things to say about the costs of colonialism and the importance of Two Spirit/Q-Spirit. The review some events last week, one a planned pesentation on the queer history of the region and the other a grassroots protest for an anti-trans speaker brought to speak in Carbodale on National Coming Out Day. They then switch to some TERF-y women causing additional problems for queer and trans folks with their loos...
Oct 16, 2024•59 min
Jonny and Heather reunite and check back in on the stormy weather, from Hurricanes to politics and a a whirlwind of lies. In the back half of the show, the review some recent court cases and try to predict from their mostly favorable aoutcomes for trans folks what we might expect from forthcoming Supreme Court decisions on LGBTQ+ issues. The close out with some muche appreciated LGBTQ+ entertainment worth following.
Oct 09, 2024•58 min
Jonny details his experiences with Hurricane (Tropical Storm, by the time it got to him) Helene during the 35th Annual Gay Spirit Visions Fall Conference at The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center outside Highlands NC. He tells a story of adaptation and resilience and communities coming together to deal with a crisis. In the back half of the show, he takes on the misinformation already circulating about the storm's damage and the Federal response to it. In the process, he assesses both the poli...
Oct 02, 2024•59 min
Jonny and Heather lean into their various fandoms and geek out a bit over genre fiction before diving into recent news. The quuer geekdom follows as they discuss 2 LGBTQ+ history making actions by Joe Biden in the last week and the queer alignments of the parties and candidates in the 2024 election. In the back half of the show the briefly check in on the St. Louis gay bar that was crashed into by a police hehicle. They then turn to Eastern Europe and the struggles against and capitulations to R...
Sep 25, 2024•59 min
Jonny turns over the first half of the show to fellow SOIL Sister, Sr. Benedeta Cuna-lingee, and her new podcast dealing with queer spirituality, Holy Spectrum. Episode 1, "Queer Spirituality 101," lays out the plan for the podcast's future episodes and some basic starting assumptions of queer spirituality. In the back half of the show, Jonny and Heather are joined by Sr Cuna-lingee's alter ego, Dr. Christina Ivy, to discuss the episode and why a podcast about queer spirituality is much needed.
Sep 18, 2024•58 min
Jonny and Heather have to discuss yet another school shooting with yet again alleged queer overtones. First, it is the war of words between the Vice Presidential candidates over what really is a "fact of life." Second, it is the immediate and false charge that the shooter (and all recent school shooters) is trans. In the back half of the show, Jonny and Heather acknowledges former President Trump's increased lying, especially about trans youth, and trace the influence of these lies to Cold War p...
Sep 11, 2024•58 min
Jonny is on his own this week, recording the show on Labor Day Monday. In the front half of the show, he details "autogynephilia" as a debunked pseudo-scientific theory still popular among the gender critical and transphobes. It is one of the ways LGB (No T, No Q) folks bracket out trans experience from "gay" experience. He also details its cousin, the myth of "Transing the Gay Away." In the back half of the show, he leans into his own queer story and evolution into understaning of his gender no...
Sep 04, 2024•59 min
Heather returns, and she and Jonny recap the Democratic National Convention, parsing their feels and the ways the DNC did and didn't represent queer community. In the back half of the show, they continue the political campaign analysis with a dive into Twitter/X and who is and isn't Tweeting (X-crementing?) there these days. They ponder if harsh right wing social media might finally be facing some serious and legal push back.
Aug 28, 2024•58 min
Jonny is on their own again this week. They offer a recognition of the 104th anniversary of the radification of the 19th Amendment and uses it to link together several stories about political change. In the back half of the show, he shares a persuasive argument from Anna Marie that transphobia and racism, binary gender and Whiteness are firmly linked. The implication of this argument is that queer and trans advocacy is the central fight of the culture right now, and Jonny shares examples of wher...
Aug 21, 2024•58 min
Jonny is on his own this week and digs into why this current election season is so rough for LGBTQ+ and particualrly trans people. He shows how the Harris-Walz ticket is being challenged with mischaracterizations of their LGBTQ+ advocacy, but also why such advocacy is a distinguishing element of their candidacy. In the back half of the show, he digs into Project 2025 and Agenda 47, which are particulalry focused on restricting queer and trans rights and visibility. He closes with two stories tha...
Aug 14, 2024•59 min
Heather returns to the show to share some her experiences with CoVid as the Country experiences another surge in cases. Jonny and Heather then turn their attention to the Olympics and the social media kerfuffle about women's boxing, particularly continued misogynist gender critical attacks against the elligibility of Imane Khelif and Lin Yu-Ting. In the back half of the show, they discuss recent developments in politics, including the LGBTQ+ advocacy record of new Democratic VP candidate, Govern...
Aug 07, 2024•58 min
Jonny is joined again this week by Craig as Heather still struggles to get a negative test with CoVid. They discuss the Olympics and particularly the opening ceremony and the (misplaced) Christian outrage at its content. They also discuss the status of LGBTQ Olympians as the contest continues. In the back half of the show they turn to the Democratic Party's successful use of "weird" to mark he policies and practices of Trump and the MAGA Republicans. How do queers feel about allies calling peopl...
Jul 31, 2024•58 min
Jonny is joined by his husband, Craig, to discuss the slew of recent political dramas at the national level. They use their perspective as scholars of Performance Studies (and queer theory and popular culture and...) to review the Republican National Convention, the selection of J.D. Vance as the GOP Vice President candidate, and the elevation of Kamala Harris to potential Democratic Presidential nominee after the stepping down of Joe Biden from the ticket.
Jul 24, 2024•59 min
Jonny interviews Dr. Joe Hassert who was a resident of Carbondale from 2000 to 2012 and was remarkably active in making community art projects happen here. Joe now lives in Las Vegas where he is a professor of Communication Studies at the College of Southern Nevada. He is the current president of the queer faculty and staff advocacy group there and works with students in the student LGBTQ organization to bring about positive, material change in their institution. Jonny and Joe talk about life in...
Jul 17, 2024•59 min
Jonny yields the microphone (mostly) to SIU's The Intersectuionality Project and the Black and Queer Roundtable for a discussion of the importance of education and the educational disparities that face Black, Brown, and queer youth. Daniel, Janine, and Mendez pull from their own experience and recent research to drive a lively and informative discussion.
Jul 10, 2024•58 min
Jonny and Heather process their desire for a month of hibernation following a very active Pride Month. They then turn their attention to recent developments in presidential politics and connections between agism and homophobia/transphobia. Also, maybe why presidential immunity isn't such a good thing. In the back half of the show, they review a SCOTUS decision on states' rights when dealing with unhoused people on public lands and connect that to trans-advocacy, including trans- and empathy-advo...
Jul 03, 2024•59 min
Jonny interviews Jo Clifford, playwright and performer of "The Gospel According to Jesus, Queen of Heaven," being presented at The Church of the Good Shepherd in Carbondale in the coming week (June 29 and July 2). They discuss the topic of the play, which considers,"What would happen if Jesus did come back to earth in the present day as a trans woman?" In the back third of the show, Heather and Jonny review two legal developments for the LGBTQ community, one that seems like pretty good news for ...
Jun 26, 2024•58 min
Jonny and Heather interview Shay Miller, the director of Mae West's "The Drag," a Stage Company performance coming up for the last two weekends of Pride Month. A 1931 play by queer icon Mae West adapted by Darrin J. Pufall Purdy and Minerva Jayne, "The Drag" has many resonances with current attempts to ban drag performance. While focusing on the play, Jonny, Heather, and Shay also touch on other events going on in Southern Illinois to celebrate Pride.
Jun 19, 2024•58 min
Jonny interviews Carrie Vine of Rainbow Cafe and the Southern Illinois Pride Collective about the incredibly full weekend of SI PrideFest activities in Carbondale this coming weekend (June 15). In the back half of the show, he and Heather discuss some recent "historical moments" impacting the LGBTQ community.
Jun 12, 2024•59 min
Jonny and Heather update on some upcoming Pride events in Carbondale and respond to some in the community's disdain for Pride Month. They then turn to the Trump's "hush money" court case and the jury's verdict of guilty on all 34 counts. They link this to other court cases, Congressional hearings, and current events where attention to actual evidence and due process yield meaningful and believable results. And yes, this all ties back to queer identity and advocacy.
Jun 05, 2024•59 min
After a brief digression on the challenges of travel on aging queer bodies, Jonny and Heather review the slew of Pride activities coming up in Southern Illinois in June. In the back half of the show, th discuss "rules" for those non-queer folks resistant to Pride festivities and some of the various people or practices banned from Pride. They conclude with a study of the obvious, that X (formerly Twitter) is the most hostile social media platform for LGBTQ+ folks.
May 29, 2024•58 min
Jonny sits down with Janine Armstrong and Daniel Killins, both members of the Southern Illinois University Registered Student Organization (RSO), The Intersectionality Project (TIP), to discuss the Black and Queer Roundtable. They discuss very personal experiences of intersectional identities and articulate why identiy affirming organizations that explore intersectionality are so important for students in higher education. The queerness is real. The Blackness is real! And all of it is real toget...
May 22, 2024•59 min
