What’s the story you plan to leave behind, and what happens if that story doesn’t go according to plan? My guest this week is Sheldon Goodman, a historian who specializes in cemeteries, discovering the untold stories of people who are long gone, and excavating the memory of bygone eras — metaphorically speaking. In his work Sheldon’s discovered countless stories that were previously lost — particularly of LGBTQ people — and he’s considered nearly every aspect of how he himself wants to be rememb...
Jan 07, 2021•54 min•Ep. 318
Next week marks the anniversary of the original theatrical release of the film Girls Will be Girls, an otherworldly drag comedy by writer and director Richard Day. For today’s episode, we’re revisiting my 2016 interview with Richard, in which we talked about his time working on shows like Ellen, It’s Gary Shandling’s Show, and Arrested Development — and how he found inspiration from John Waters and comedians who mined comedy from the secret abnormalities of the suburbs. We’ll have that conversat...
Dec 31, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 317
Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris Holiday Special Special! In the spirit of the season, we’re diving back into the Sewers archives for my 2017 conversations with numerous past guests about their very favorite seasonal entertainment. We'll have an appreciation of Batman Returns from writer Anthony Oliveira, author of Lord of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling among many other works. There's a tribute to Snow Miser from Glen Weldon of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour. Performance artist Johnnie Junglegut...
Dec 24, 2020•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 316
There are incredible secret stories hidden all around us if you just know where to look, and today’s guest knows where to look. Sacha Coward is a historian, escape room designer, and mermaid hunter in London who’s always had a passion for stories of myths and monsters. And as a museum professional, he now gets to explore those stories, discover new ones, and share them with the world. We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First a quick thanks to everyone who supports the Sewers of Paris on P...
Dec 17, 2020•47 min•Ep. 315
You may think you love reruns, but this week’s guest lives them. Taylor grew in literally the most geographically isolated town in the lower 48 states, where his only connection to the outside world was syndicated TV. Fortunately, he had a ticket out, and found a way to create an entire career around investigating, studying, and teaching others about the magic of old TV shows. We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First a quick thanks to everyone who supports the Sewers of Paris on Patreon —...
Dec 10, 2020•49 min•Ep. 314
Happy December holidaytime, listeners, I hope you’re able to celebrate and relax and revel and enjoy what has always been a weird time of year, now that we’re in the weirdest year of our lives. For this week’s episode, I wanted to bring you one of my favorite Christmas-themed episodes from the Sewers of Paris archives — a conversation with Jose Gonzales, who found an unexpected connection with his distant father through, of all things, the Arnold Schwarzenegger Christmas movie Jingle All the Way...
Dec 03, 2020•47 min•Ep. 313
I’m so excited to bring you this week’s guest — the wonderful Frank DeCaro, writer, performer, pop culture encyclopedia. Frank was a role model for me back in the 90s when I would watch him on The Daily Show, and it was an absolute joy to geek out about pop culture with him and hear his disbelief that a weird little kid from Jersey got to grow up to have as many bonkers adventures as he has. We’ll have that conversation in a minute. First a quick thanks to everyone who supports The Sewers of Par...
Nov 26, 2020•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 312
Last week we heard from Great British Bakeoff’s Edd Kimber, and this week I’m so excited to bring you another guest whose life was touched by the show. Max Miller is the creator and host of the fantastic YouTube series Tasting History, where each week he shares a historical recipe as well as an intriguing story about the surprising origin of some food we still eat today — and occasionally have never even heard of. The series was inspired in part by historical segments that appeared on early seas...
Nov 19, 2020•50 min•Ep. 311
We’re getting close to Thanksgiving, and what better way to celebrate that than with good food, feeling of thanks, and a guest who does not actually observe the holiday at all. This week we’re diving into the Sewers of Paris archives for my 2016 conversation with Great British Bakeoff Winner Edd Kimber, who found his life forever changed when he won the first season of the cooking competition. Edd was a shy, unhappy banker when his cakes, cookies, and pies catapulted him to national fame, a life...
Nov 13, 2020•52 min•Ep. 310
What does it take for you to feel comfortable truly letting loose and being yourself? For my guest this week, it took some flamboyant game show guests, improv class, and more speedos than he knew what to do with. Brett White is a pop culture critic at Decider and biographer of unjustly forgotten queer TV stars. He was inspired by giddy flamboyant 70s figures like Charles Nelson Reilly to become a professional TV-gay… but he wasn’t expecting that inspiration to extend to swimwear in his personal ...
Nov 05, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 309
What unexpected superhero powers might you possess? My guest this week was inspired by Wonder Woman to become one of the world’s foremost experts on wastewater — and yes, I promise, it’ll all make sense once you hear it. Raul Pacheco-Vega has been obsessed with women superheros his whole life, an obsession his parents indulged by enrolling him in martial arts classes, perhaps knowing that their young gay kid might need to defend himself at some point. But heroism came in an unlikely form, lendin...
Oct 30, 2020•42 min•Ep. 308
As we stumble along through spooky season, I want to dive into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2015 episode about The Rocky Horror Picture Show. My guest back then was Matthew Hintzen, a programmer who found Rocky Horror in its early days, the late 70s, when he was a closeted kid on the verge of running away from home to live on the streets. He found that the rebellious community developing around this weird new horror-musical was exactly what he needed back then — but he also found that there...
Oct 22, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 307
The Sewers of Paris is independent, ad-free, and listener supported. Head over to Patreon.com/mattbaume to join the folks who make the show possible, and to check out the rewards for backers. My guest this week is the legendary performer Peppermint, star of stage and screen, from Drag Race to Pose to Broadway. Her new album “A Girl Like Me” comes out this week, featuring autobiographical songs about a turbulent relationship, along with a steamy music video called Good Sex. And she’s got some liv...
Oct 15, 2020•46 min•Ep. 306
My guest this week is the drag artist known as Deere. You may know her from her livestreams on Twitch, where she plays primarily horror games. She’s also the founder of Stream Queens, a collective of drag artists, makeup monsters, and creatures who adopt amazing costumes and personas to livestream games. Off-camera, Deere’s a quiet introverted artist who never expected her drag alter ego to take on a life and career of her own. We’ll have that in a minute. First, a reminder that The Sewers of Pa...
Oct 09, 2020•38 min•Ep. 307
My guest this week is Chris Pepin-Neff, the world’s foremost expert on human-shark interaction. His life was shaped, you will be shocked to hear, by the movie Jaws — but also by his time in a socialist commune, as well as working alongside Frank Kameny, one of the leading gay rights activists of the 20th century, not to mention his friendship with Gore Vidal. Chris has so many fascinating stories to share and I am so excited to bring them to you. But first, a reminder that The Sewers of Paris is...
Oct 02, 2020•50 min•Ep. 304
You may have seen the very exciting news this week that BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon will release a holiday special this year — an adaptation of their wonderful live holiday show. I helped out with the shooting of the special and without giving away too much, I can tell you that it is going to be AMAZING. For this week’s Sewers of Paris, we’re jumping into the archives to revisit my 2016 interview with BenDeLaCreme, a performer who specializes in breaking boundaries, upending order, and causin...
Sep 25, 2020•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 303
Love is in the air this week with my guest Philip William Stover, writer of numerous romance novels both gay and straight. Growing up, he hid his love of romance, tearing the covers off of books so nobody would notice what he was reading. But as he grew up, he started to realize the extent to which queer people are often denied an opportunity to see loving relationships depicted in media. And so he made it his mission to fix that. Also, a reminder that The Sewers of Paris is on Twitter and Faceb...
Sep 18, 2020•46 min•Ep. 302
The Sewers of Paris is independent, ad-free, and listener supported. Head over to Patreon.com/mattbaume to join the folks who make the show possible, and to check out the rewards for backers. My guest this week likes a good scare. As a kid, Sam Irvin loved Bride of Frankenstein, and he brought that influence with him as an adult when he directed the show Dante’s Cove and the movie Elvira’s Haunted Hills — among many other projects. Whether working with Christopher Lee, Brian DePalma, or Ian McKe...
Sep 10, 2020•1 hr•Ep. 301
This is the three hundredth episode of the show, and I just want to take a moment to say how incredibly grateful I am to the hundreds of amazing guests who’ve made time to talk to me, listeners like you who download the show and recommend it to friends, and of course everyone on Patreon whose support allows me to create the show week after week. In the nearly five and a half years that I’ve been doing The Sewers of Paris, I’ve spoken to hundreds of fascinating people, and for this three hundredt...
Sep 03, 2020•47 min•Ep. 300
On this episode we’re remembering Chi Chi DeVayne, performer and Drag Race star who passed away last week at the age of 34. I spoke to Chi Chi back in 2018, when she was appearing on All Stars, about her roots, her religion, and how she drew on military training as she discovered her love of drag. This week I’ll also be posting some clips on the Sewers of Paris Twitter and Facebook of stuff that Chi Chi and I talked about — Big Freedia, To Wong Foo, and Bulletproof. Also I hope you’ll join me fo...
Aug 27, 2020•50 min•Ep. 299
The topic this week: Tori Amos, Steel Magnolias, and Alice in Wonderland. What piece of media gets you through your rough patches? For my guest this week, it’s Steel Magnolias, a movie that helped him understand his place as a little gay kid among powerful southern women. It’s also the film that got him through election night 2016. First, a reminder that The Sewers of Paris is on Twitter and Facebook , where I post clips of the stuff that we talk about on each episode. This week you can look for...
Aug 20, 2020•57 min•Ep. 298
Imagine if there was someone out there who could, in a matter of minutes, help you make sense of the unanswered questions you’ve asked about yourself for as long as your can remember. My guest this week is JP Karliak, a voice actor and writer who you might recognize as the voice of the characters Boss Baby, Wile E Coyote on those occasions when he speaks, as Spider-Man and Willy Wonka and tons of voices from The Last of Us to Castlevania to Evangelion. JP was always making of characters and voic...
Aug 13, 2020•59 min•Ep. 297
You might’ve seen the news this week that after three decades, NBC cancelled the entertainment show E! News. For this week’s episode, we’re revisiting my 2015 conversation with one of the hosts of E! News, Steve Kmetko. Steve was the face of the E! cable network from 1994 to 2002, and in addition to hosting the news show he also anchored countless Oscar and Emmy broadcasts, reported from film festivals, and interviewed everyone who was anyone in Hollywood. It was his dream job, but privately, he...
Aug 07, 2020•53 min
My guest this week is Tom Zohar, whose love for stories about powerful women led him to movies like Death Becomes Her and The Joy Luck Club, and whose hippie parents brought him to musicals like Hair. A common thread through a lot of Tom’s favorite media is characters who are completely and totally un-repressed, but self-repression was an issue he had to deal with as a teenager when he re-closeted himself and became increasingly shy about his accent. Theater is what helped him reclaim his voice,...
Jul 30, 2020•58 min•Ep. 296
My guest this week is Hamish Steele, whose graphic novel Deadendia is being adapted into an animated series at Netflix. The show will feature a gay trans man as the lead character, and it’s inspired both by Hamish’s friends and his love of shows like Dr Who and movies like The Addams Family Values, which feature queer-ish if not explicitly queer ensembles. Hamish is also running a Kickstarter right now for a comic book called Croc and Roll, that promises to be TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA meets JEM AND ...
Jul 23, 2020•52 min•Ep. 295
You might have seen that Disney is about to release a new documentary called Howard, all about the legacy of the great Howard Ashman whose music gave live to stories like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and many more. For this week’s episode, we’re diving into the Sewers of Paris archive to revisit my 2015 conversation about another of Howard Ashman’s projects: the musical Little Shop of Horrors, a film that transformed the life of my guest Brad Cerenzia. From an early age, Brad knew h...
Jul 16, 2020•51 min
Hello and welcome to the Sewers of Paris. This week’s guest, Terry LaBolt, was suggested to me by a Sewers of Paris listener, and I’m so glad that they did. Terry has an absolutely amazing collection of stories from across his career, starting as a young kid transfixed by musical theater, then later as Carol Channing’s music director, and now as a teacher sharing his wisdom with the next generation of showbiz stars. From touring with Carol, to finding himself, to enduring the dark days of the HI...
Jul 09, 2020•59 min•Ep. 294
My guest this week is illustrator and film obsessive Dashiell Silva , who you might know from his excellent Oscar guides and also as an artist on the just announced Netflix series Deadendia, which looks, by the way, amazing. Dashiell grew up in the West of Ireland where nobody understood his taste in film that was, in hindsight, extremely queer. His devotion to Sunset Blvd and Mommie Dearest made him feel like some kind of weird anomaly in his little town, until he started creating art and disco...
Jul 02, 2020•1 hr 10 min•Ep. 293
As we reach the conclusion of a particularly busy Pride month, I wanted to dive back into the Sewers of Paris archives for a conversation with someone who knew Greenwich Village in the years before Stonewall. The Village is the gay enclave that was the model for many of the enclaves we know today, a place where people went to reject the mainstream after the mainstream had rejected them. Playwright Robert Patrick wandered into the Village as an unsuspecting young gay man in the 1960s. He was only...
Jun 25, 2020•44 min•Ep. 292
This week’s guest is Michael Hobbes, writer for the Huffington Post and co-host of the fantastic podcast You’re Wrong About. Michael’s influences are like the jump cut in the movie 2001: one of the pieces of media that shaped him as a person takes place in prehistoric Eurasia; and another is set in early 2000s gay bars of Pittsburgh. The thing that unites them is that they’re both about clans and chosen family — a topic of particular importance to Michael in his search for gay community. Also, a...
Jun 18, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 291
