As When We All Get to Heaven wraps up, Christina sits down with series host Lynne Gerber and producer Siri Colum. They discuss how the church has changed, the value of fleeting queer spaces, and what a decade or more spent working on this story has meant to—and taught—them. Get more Outward with Slate Plus! Join for weekly bonus episodes of Outward and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Outward show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify , or visit slate.com/out...
Dec 17, 2025•31 min•Ep. 11
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by culture writer Angelina Mazza to discuss the online reaction to the new HBO series, Heated Rivalry. Before the Canadian show premiered, let alone was picked up in the U.S., a dedicated online fandom committed to helping it succeed. Why did this show become such a sensation, and what happens to a niche fandom when their subject suddenly goes mainstream? This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay, with help from...
Dec 17, 2025•42 min
In the final episode of When We All Get to Heaven, we catch up on what’s happened in the many years between the emergence of effective treatment for AIDS in the late ‘90s and the fall of 2025, when we recorded this episode. We linger on a moment back in June 1999, when Jim was still pastor and called on the church to remember that AIDS wasn’t over. Because—advances notwithstanding—it still isn’t over. For more on Gilbert Baker and the history of the rainbow flag see the Gilbert Baker Foundation ...
Dec 10, 2025•53 min•Ep. 10
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by culture writer Mikala Jamison to talk about the rise in online concern about celebrities’ bodies. Mikala writes the newsletter Body Type , and her forthcoming book The Forever Project details her recovery from an eating disorder. Following the premiere of movies like Wicked: For Good , fan concern and speculation about celebrity bodies has culminated in a larger discussion about the return of “this is in.” But did “thin” really ever go away? And...
Dec 06, 2025•59 min
In 1996 everything changed. With the introduction of antiretroviral medications called the “AIDS cocktail,” people started getting better – some dramatically – and surviving AIDS became a real possibility. In the wake of these changes, MCC found itself taking stock of what they lost to AIDS and using what they learned to address larger social issues– from medical marijuana to homelessness. Sometimes these political stances felt heroic and a way to use that collective energy, and other times it m...
Dec 03, 2025•53 min•Ep. 9
On today’s episode host Kate Lindsay is joined by senior supervising producer Daisy Rosario to unpack the 25-part TikTok saga titled the “Danish Deception.” After a former Bachelor contestant came forward with a story about her scamming ex, TikTok turned on her instead. Why didn’t Onyeka get the Reesa Teesa treatment? And who is the real villain of this story? This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, and Kate Lindsay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adch...
Dec 03, 2025•51 min
In 1995 Rev. Jim Mitulski became HIV positive -- what's known as seroconversion. It was 14 years into the epidemic and people knew what HIV/AIDS was, how you got it, and how you could prevent it. And when Jim got sick, he got very sick. What was it like to become ill so publicly? How would the church and the community respond? And what could Jim possibly preach about on his first Sunday back? “My Soul Doth Magnify” is from Camille Saint-Saens’ Christmas Oratorio, Op. 12, 1858. “The 23rd Psalm (D...
Nov 26, 2025•1 hr•Ep. 8
When the Metropolitan Community Church was founded in the late sixties, it was one of the first gay positive churches in America. When AIDS hit, it became a refuge for people who were sick and those who were mourning them. In this episode, Anna talks to researcher Lynne Gerber, about finding boxes of cassettes under the church floor in an MCC church in San Francisco, and how those recordings of sermons and songs became a podcast about finding community and comfort during a crisis. Lynne Gerber i...
Nov 25, 2025•55 min
Between the drastic budget cuts and provisions in the Big Beautiful Bill, the Trump administration has found a way to drain Planned Parenthood and other reproductive health centers and cut off access to abortion services—as well as any other health care those clinics provided. Guests: Shefali Luthra , reproductive health reporter at The 19th, author of Undue Burden: Life and Death Decisions in Post-Roe America . George Hill, President and CEO of Maine Family Planning. Want more What Next? Subscr...
Nov 24, 2025•33 min
On today’s episode host Kate Lindsay is joined by porn historian Noelle Perdue , author of the Porn World newsletter. OpenAI announced that they’d allow adult users to have erotic conversations with ChatGPT, just one more way AI and porn are becoming intertwined. As sex becomes more online, not only does it become more solitary, but also more surveilled. Both of these things are intended to divide us, but Noelle is confident that AI’s attempted sex-takeover will fail. This podcast is produced by...
Nov 22, 2025•49 min
Scott and Bruce were the hottest couple in church. Scott, a hula dancer, seemed destined for Bruce, the hunky “lumbersexual,” and the church delighted when they got together. Their brief love affair sparkled before Bruce got sick and died. Their story is one of multiple “dress rehearsals”– when friends, family and lovers went through AIDS with their loved ones wondering who would be next and sometimes knowing it might be you. You can see Scott perform in a 1992 InterPlay piece called “God, Sex a...
Nov 19, 2025•49 min•Ep. 7
The Sunday after Magic Johnson announced his HIV-status, Jim Mitulski preached a sermon on being tired of people dying. We’re sharing it as an interlude, a pause, and an immersion into one moment in AIDS’ bleak midwinter. For images and links about this episode visit https://www.heavenpodcast.org/interlude. In the sermon Rev. Mitulski refers to ARC. That means AIDS-Related Complex, a diagnostic category meant to indicate an earlier stage of HIV infection than AIDS. It was common in the period to...
Nov 16, 2025•31 min
On today’s episode host Kate Lindsay is joined by writer and content creator Josh Lora, who also goes by TellTheBees . Josh’s Substack essay, Boyfriendland , was cited in the viral Vogue article written by Chanté Joseph, “ Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing Now? ” Many women are hiding their boyfriends online, or losing followers if they hard-launch. Some go as far as to say having a boyfriend “feels republican.” Is this heterofatalism gone too far, or a long-overdue correction to the patriarchy...
Nov 15, 2025•49 min
It didn’t take long to go from Beyoncé holding for applause in front of the word “FEMINISM” to a headline in the New York Times asking “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” How long is this backlash going to last? Guest: Danielle Kurtzleben, political correspondent at NPR. Want more What Next? Subscribe to Slate Plus to access ad-free listening to the whole What Next family and across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of our show page...
Nov 12, 2025•32 min
San Francisco’s gay/lesbian community in the 1980s wasn’t just facing an AIDS crisis, they also struggled against ongoing anti-gay violence. In 1989, in the midst of a campaign to legally establish anti-gay violence as a hate crime, MCC San Francisco made headlines when their AIDS minister was attacked in her home. The city, the police department, and the LGBTQ community rallied around the church and the minister. And when they finally solved the puzzle of who did it, the answer shocked the chur...
Nov 12, 2025•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 6
When Rev. Ron Russell Coons got diagnosed with AIDS he thought a lot about what healing meant when death was certain. He pursued it in his strained and broken family relationships and he preached about it from the pulpit. Though he knew, without a doubt, that he would die from AIDS, Ron claimed that he believed in and had experienced healing. What does healing mean when everybody knows it can’t mean survival? Maybe healing is one’s biological family and queer kin showing up and reaching for conn...
Nov 05, 2025•57 min•Ep. 5
As MCC grew as a denomination, they tried to figure out if and how to relate to other churches. Would any befriend a queer church? And if so, would that friendship help other churches shift their perspective on homosexuality? These questions got harder as AIDS numbers grew—it made people more afraid yet friendship more vital. But sometimes friendship emerges in the most unlikely of places. Like when a children’s choir visited an AIDS ward in San Francisco and sang for an MCC member there. That c...
Oct 29, 2025•51 min
On today’s episode, host Kate Lindsay is joined by writer and streamer Laura Kate Dale to talk about what happened to Emiru at this year’s TwitchCon. The streamer was assaulted during a meet-and-greet, after a number of female streamers had already dropped out of the convention in fear for their safety. What is it about TwitchCon that makes creators feel unsafe, and why are female streamers, in particular, still paying the price? Get more of ICYMI with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episod...
Oct 25, 2025•51 min
In the late ‘80s, two MCC San Francisco ministers wrote an article called “We Are the Church Alive, the Church with AIDS.” We wanted to know how a gay/lesbian church came to call itself “a church with AIDS.” The answers lie in the years before our audio archive begins. So we started asking people. We explore two stories in what’s likely a more complicated shift. One story is about a pair of religion geeks who learned to make queer church in New York during the early years of the AIDS crisis and ...
Oct 22, 2025•47 min•Ep. 3
If you recently lost your job—or think you might lose it soon—Laura Brown and Kristina O'Neill are here to help! On this episode of How To!, Carvell Wallace talks to the authors of All the Cool Girls Get Fired about what to do when you get the ax—and how to turn termination into a real opportunity. If you liked this conversation, check out the Slate podcast Death, Sex & Money’s recent episode on “Why Job Hunting Feels So Grim Lately, Especially for Gen Z.” Looking for a different kind of car...
Oct 21, 2025•43 min
Christine Brown Woolley grew up in Utah with a dad and two moms, in a polygamist community called the Apostolic United Brethren. When she became an adult, she joined a polygamist marriage as a third wife, helped raise more than a dozen kids, and became co-star of the TLC reality show Sister Wives . Fast forward to 2025, and she has left her marriage and her polygamist faith. This week, she talks to Anna about the pros and cons of her former lifestyle, how being on a reality show helped her famil...
Oct 21, 2025•1 hr 1 min
On this episode: Friend of the show Jamilah Lemieux tackles helping kids get a better night's sleep. She’s joined by gentle sleep coach Macall Gordon. They discuss what to do with “live-wire kids”, how to avoid burnout when trying to get your kid to sleep, why we need to stop blaming parents for kid sleep issues, and more. But first, Care and Feeding producer Cheyna Roth joins the team to talk about a recent New York Times piece, “ How Video Games Are Shaping a Generation of Boys, for Better and...
Oct 20, 2025•38 min
Why would an out queer person in the Gay Liberation Days of the 1970s go to church? What church would they go to? And why would they stay? In the 1960s, and ‘70s, the separation between God and gays was not as vast as it seemed. Rev. Troy Perry started the first Metropolitan Community Church in his Los Angeles living room. Tired of flying to LA every week, a Navy veteran started the second one in a San Francisco gay bar. And the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco was there for a youn...
Oct 15, 2025•59 min•Ep. 2
As Outward proudly presents the 10-episode series When We All Get to Heaven, from Eureka Street Productions, Christina and Bryan had the privilege of sitting down with series host Lynne Gerber. Lynne explains how 1,200 cassette tapes became a wealth of archival audio that infuses this series with so much vitality, joy, and shared mourning of queer churches during a devastating epidemic. Get more Outward with Slate Plus! Join for weekly bonus episodes of Outward and ad-free listening on all your ...
Oct 15, 2025•31 min
In 1993, more than 10 years into the AIDS epidemic, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCC-SF) tries to remember all they’ve lost. We think about remembering too after encountering an archive of 1,200 cassette recordings of this queer church’s services during the height of the epidemic. Whether you’re a regular church goer or would never step into one, we invite you to spend time with this LGBTQ+ San Francisco church as it struggles to reconcile sexuality and faith in the midst ...
Oct 15, 2025•26 min•Ep. 1
Contemporary women are primal-screaming and hitting rage rooms, but are these really the solutions to our personal and political anger? On this episode of How To!, Courtney Martin talks with Soraya Chemaly , journalist and author of Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women’s Anger , about her own recent upsurge of anger. Soraya explains how to identify, understand, and harness what’s bottled up inside you—and use it for change. If you liked this episode check out How To Make Imposter Syndrome Your S...
Oct 14, 2025•47 min
On today’s episode, hosts Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by culture writer Aja Romano to try to make sense of Theo Von. Von was one of the podcasters credited with helping Donald Trump win the election, but in recent months, he’s deviated from the administration when it comes to his views on ICE raids and the war in Gaza. Who is Theo Von, really? What does it mean that influencers like him are part of the future of politics? And what does it say about us if we find him…kinda funny? Get ...
Oct 11, 2025•48 min
Kate Lindsay and Candice Lim wade through the negative reactions to Taylor Swift’s album The Life of a Showgirl. From outdated meme references to clunky shots at other female artists, Swift’s album indicates an oddly distant relationship with the internet. However, is she a devious online mastermind or a blundering millennial? Plus, why it’s important that this album’s backlash has gone largely unchallenged by fellow Swifties. Get more of ICYMI with Slate Plus! Join for exclusive bonus episodes ...
Oct 08, 2025•46 min
On today’s episode, hosts Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay are joined by Slate senior editor Tony Ho Tran to talk about why it matters that EA Games has been sold to Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner. In addition to likely cost-cutting, this new ownership puts games like The Sims even more at risk of censorship, especially when it comes to LGBTQ+ characters . If your Sim groom can’t end up making out with his new father-in-law at the end of his wedding, then what is The Sims even for ? Get more of ICYM...
Oct 04, 2025•41 min
Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay pour one out for MTV’s Catfish, which was recently cancelled by MTV after 9 seasons and 12 years. Back in 2010, Nev Schulman was the subject of the Catfish documentary, which revealed the heartbreaking truth about a woman he fell in love with online. The documentary helped coin the internet phenomenon of people creating fake personas to manipulate, extort, or trick others online. However, instead of scamming for money, the protagonists of MTV’s Catfish were coerced i...
Oct 01, 2025•37 min
