PODCAST · history
Bad Gays
by Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller
A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history. Why do we remember our heroes better than our villains? What can we learn by focusing on the dark side of queer history?
Episodes
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Special Episode: Liza Minnelli's Bad Gays
Happy pride! Gather around, we've got a story to tell! For Stonewall weekend, a special treat: writer, critic, and journalist Cameron Cook joins Ben to talk about the one and only Liza through the stories of the bad (and good) gays in her life, from her father Vincente Minnelli to her first…
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Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode 6
The final episode of our saga: Mandelson's fall from grace in the aftermath of Keir Starmer's election first as leader of the Labour Party and then as one of Britain's most rapidly unpopular Prime Ministers. Can't get enough Mandelson? Subscribe now to Extra Bad Gays to hear our subscriber-only...
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Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode Five
Today we are reaching the next to last chapter––for now!––of the Mandelson story. Listen to the sixth and final episode now by subscribing to Extra Bad Gays on Patreon. As we are recording this, on 18th May 2026, the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is facing a potential leadership challenge and a...
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Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode Four
Peter Mandelson has been the definitive comeback kid of British politics, and it’s impossible to ever rule out his return. Listen to Episode Five right now and get Extra Bad Gays every month by subscribing on Patreon! Today, we will learn why he got that reputation as we look at Mandelson in…
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Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode Three
This week, on Mandelson: A Homosexual History, we cover the 1992 UK election and the birth of New Labour. Subscribe on Patreon to support our work and stay a week ahead on this miniseries! If Huw's Margaret Thatcher wasn't enough to turn your stomach, try his John Major on for size. Neil Kinnock...
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Mandelson: A Homosexual History - Episode Two
Subscribe on Patreon to hear Episode Three now, get our monthly Extra Bad Gays episodes, and stay a week ahead on the miniseries. Last week we looked at Mandelson’s early years, and his move from a flirtation with Marxism to being firmly on the right of the Labour Party. We also discussed the...
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Mandelson: A Homosexual History–Episode One
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to hear Episode Two of Mandelson: A Homosexual History now, and to stay a week ahead as the miniseries continues. They call him the Prince of Darkness. Peter Mandelson's decades-long political career is a skeleton key to everything that's...
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Special Episode: Daniel Dunglas Home
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! Daniel Dunglas Home always knew he wasn't like the other boys. Not because he was gay, but because, while they were out on the sports field playing rugby,...
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays February 2026: Mandelson, Gay Mafias, And Liza's Floor Mop
THIS IS A TRAILER! SUBSCRIBE ON APPLE OR PATREON TO HEAR THE FULL EPISODE We have heard your pleas. The news has made them even more urgent. We're going to do a whole main feed Peter Mandelson episode in Season 10: but for now, here's a taste of our legally-bounded musings on his arrest and what…
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Tom of Finland
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 from Helsinki, we close out our season with Tom of Finland, the man who advertised the concept of gay masculinity to gays becoming men. Originally…
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William Beckford
William Beckford, who was born not in Bath but in London in 1760, is someone for whom property, in every sense of the word, was the defining factor in his life. He was a novelist, a member of parliament, a collector of art, antiquities, and books, a travel writer, and a builder of great palaces…
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays January 2026: Heated Rivalry
This trailer is just a preview–for the full episode, click here to subscribe on Patreon, or subscribe directly through Apple Podcasts. We heard you, we see you, we're here for you: it's our take on Heated Rivalry, or at least on the Discourse surrounding it––straight women loving gay romance,...
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E. M. Forster
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 from Sheffield DocFest, it's E. M. Forster: who in his 91 years of life was one of Britain’s most successful novelists. He was raised in a climate of...
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays December 2025
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/badgayspod/gift This month, we discuss Christmas spirit, the cancellation of the Netflix Marines drama Boots and the death of homonationalism, and then...
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Captain Moonlite
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 episode down under: Andrew George Scott is best remembered to history as the enigmatic “Captain Moonlite”, and the story of his short but eventful...
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Tracey Wigginton
Subscribe to Extra Bad Gays on Apple Podcasts or Patreon to support our work, get monthly bonus episodes, and join our community of listeners! The place: Queensland, Australia; a state just recovering from decades of rule by "hillbilly dictator" Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a petty authoritarian with a...
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays November 2025: Tourism House Down Boots
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 underwear brand, Huw's writing residency in an abandoned Austrian castle, and the Netflix series Boots: come for the homonationalism, stay for the shower...
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Angela Calomiris
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 we’re discussing a strange and compelling figure, the photographer Angela Calomiris. We can start at the end of her life, as a denizen of...
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Jacob Israël de Haan
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 subject, Jacob Israël de Haan, wrote one of the first gay dutch novels. "What is it that I long for," he asked. "The sanctity of Israel or an Arab...
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Charles Hitchen
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 take ourselves back to a very exciting time: we’re talking London, at the turn of the 18th century. The city is the largest in Europe, and growing…
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Dorian Corey
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 people in our audience will have seen Jennie Livingston’s 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, an exploration of Black and Latinx ball culture in New...
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Little Richard
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 episode is about three very different men and how their lives overlapped. The first was a pioneering rock and roll musician who stunned audiences...
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays October 2025
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 straggot President–and his pardoning of George Santos. Then, Ben plugs an upcoming queer leftist novella you'll probably love, freshly translated into...
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays September 2025
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 Faces Party get their faces eaten, or is their work paradoxically evidence that LGBT liberalism, now in its flop era, actually did deliver…
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays August 2025
For the full conversation, subscribe in Apple Podcasts or on our Patreon.
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Special Episode: Coil (with Hannah Pezzack)
Today, we welcome music writer Hannah Pezzack to talk about the experimental electronica band Coil – namely, its two frontmen and only consistent members: vocalist Geoff Rushton, who performed under the stage name John Balance, and Peter Christopherson, nicknamed “Sleazy." At the heart of it all...
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays July 2025
A preview of our conversation about Mayor Pete this week. For more, subscribe at Patreon or Apple Podcasts.
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays June 2025, The Second: Touring, Representation, and Gaggony Guncles
For full episodes of Extra Bad Gays, subscribe on our Patreon or directly through Apple Podcasts. Join our community of nefarious nellies and help support the show!
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Special Episode: Gavin Arthur (with Maurice Casey)
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 between Edward Carpenter and Allen Ginsburg was? Wonder no more, and meet Gavin Arthur: grandson of US President Chester Allan Arthur, astrologer…
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Extra Bad Gays June 2025, The First: Weird Vibes Pride, Edmund White, and Bisexual Dilemmas (TRAILER)
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 nellies! What is this Pride Month's vibe? Who is its target audience? We're confused. How do we build power as queer movements hollowed out by...
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Come See Us Live!
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
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays - The Sex We Cannot Have
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 teach us? Please keep sending your Gaggony Guncles questions to us: emailbadgays[at]gmail[dot]com. And for the full segment, and to support the…
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Special Episode: Alexander von Humboldt (with Michael Huldt)
Today we welcome Michael Huldt, host of Worm From Home, an environmental history podcast focused on East London, to discuss the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt. Born in Berlin in 1769, he would travel the world amassing a wealth of botanical, geological, and human knowledge. Working in...
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TRAILER: Extra Bad Gays Gaggony Guncles
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's sample–for one or two juicy questions and thoughtful answers each month, plus conversations about the latest in queer history, culture, and...
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Jacques de Molay
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 Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Ever since their dissolution, the Knights Templar have been associated with all sorts of apparent manifestations…
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TRAILER–Extra Bad Gays February 2025: German Elections and How To Sauna
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 the Left, and a conclusive disproving of the "anti-woke" left thesis. Then, we turn to a discussion of a Gaggony Guncles question: how to gay…
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Adele Spitzeder
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% monthly interest, and paying old customers with new customers' money. In three years, she amassed deposits of 38 million Gulden, or the equivalent…
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Anne Lister
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 was the original Tory girlboss, and19th century English diarist who coined such terms as "grubbling," for mutual masturbation. Ey up love, been...
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Larry Kramer
Today we profile Larry Kramer, the writer and AIDS activist. Kramer took space, took credit, operated in the world with tremendous privilege, and was somewhere between actively and passively misogynist and racist. But politically effective people are not always as we imagine them. We document...
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TRAILER - Extra Bad Gays: Extra Bad Gays January 2025: Unity Mitford, Lavender Scares, and Gay Guys With Girlfriends
In this month's subscriber-only episode, we examine some recently discovered diaries from Unity Valkyrie Mitford, odious sister of the odious Tom. How precisely was her brother supposed to be a devoted Nazi but "not an anti-semite?" Only British journalists can tell. Then, we discuss Trump's...
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Abd Al-Ilah
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 member of the powerful Hashemite dynasty, Al-Ilah was also an authoritarian antisemite who once took refuge on a British naval ship called the HMS...
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Reed Erickson
Today's episode profiles an eccentric, wealthy businessman––with the pet tiger, Mexican nudist ashram, ketamine and cocaine habits, and baroque legal battles over the title to various compounds to prove it––who also financially supported trans research, gay history, and dolphin ESP. Reed Erickson...
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Albrecht Muth
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 Albrecht Muth. Who is Albrecht Muth? Well, that’s another question entirely. He claimed to be a dashing German aristocrat and married into Washington's...
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Elisar von Kupffer
A fascist femboy, a Baltic count, an orientalist white supremacist, editor of the first anthology of gay literature, painter of a 30-meter cyclorama featuring 90 androgynous twinks disporting themselves in the nude in a fantasia of the four seasons, devotee of Adolf Hitler, founder of a new...
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Tom Mitford
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. This will be not just a profile of Tom himself, but of his whole family, and especially his six siblings, the famed Mitford Sisters, whose intense,...
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Olive Yang
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 story: Olive was a lesbian — or possibly transmasculine — gangster born royal in 1927 British colonial Burma, who when first married off to a man…
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Extra Bad Gays December 2024: Luigi Mangione, Folk Hero? (Trailer)
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 charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City earlier this month. How do some assassins become folk heroes? Why is...
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Extra Bad Gays November 2024: The Transatlantic Anti-Trans Post-Election Backlash (Trailer)
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 of Donald Trump's dismaying reelection to the Presidency, the most cynical consultants and commenters on both sides of the Atlantic have decided it's trans...
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Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie (with Indigo Dunphy-Smith)
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 Pirie, two Edinburghian school teachers who found themselves embroiled in a sex scandal and court case in the early years of the 19th century. Their...
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Extra Bad Gays October 2024: Meet Your New Gaggony Guncles
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 freshly out transmasc wonders: am I becoming an evil twink? For the full story, subscribe to EXTRA BAD GAYS directly in Apple Podcasts or on Patreon.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history. Why do we remember our heroes better than our villains? What can we learn by focusing on the dark side of queer history?
HOSTED BY
Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Bad Gays have?
Bad Gays currently has 140 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Bad Gays about?
A podcast about evil and complicated queers in history. Why do we remember our heroes better than our villains? What can we learn by focusing on the dark side of queer history?
How often does Bad Gays release new episodes?
Bad Gays publishes regularly with 140 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
Where can I listen to Bad Gays?
You can listen to Bad Gays on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Bad Gays?
Bad Gays is created and hosted by Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller.
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