Restful Rainbow

Cherry Grove: America's First Gay and Lesbian Town | LGBTQ History

Long before Stonewall, there was a little town on the sand where people could step off the ferry and be themselves. Tonight we travel to Cherry Grove on Fire Island, oft

Pride Before Pride: A Queer History of Halloween

For decades, Halloween was the one night a year queer people could walk out the door as themselves. Tonight we travel through many Halloweens, from Alfred Finnie's 25-ce

No Kisses Is Like Yours: The Love Letters of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus

In 1859, a young woman who had never been to school began writing love letters. Her sweetheart kept every one. Tonight we travel to Hartford, Connecticut, in the years a

Silence = Death: ACT UP and the Monday Night Room (1987)

In 1987, a few hundred people in an old New York schoolhouse decided they would not be silent. Tonight we travel to New York City in the spring of 1987 to meet ACT UP, t

The Soldier With No Name: Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore

Two artists in love fought an army with tissue paper, and signed each note "the soldier with no name." Tonight we travel to the island of Jersey to meet Claude Cahun and

That Is My Road: Osh-Tisch, Two-Spirit Warrior of the Crow | LGBTQ+ History

They cut her hair and dressed her as a man. Her chief told the agent to leave. Her answer never changed. Tonight we travel to the northern plains to meet Osh-Tisch of th

Karl Heinrich Ulrichs and the First Coming Out, 1867 | LGBTQ+ History

In 1867 one man stood before 500 German jurists and said it out loud. He was shouted down. He was also heard. Tonight we travel to Germany and Italy to meet Karl Heinric

The Rough Voice of Tenderness: Chavela Vargas, Who Came Out at 81

A red wool poncho. A single guitar. A blue house. A mountain that answers back. Tonight we travel to Mexico to meet Chavela Vargas: born in the coffee hills of Costa Ric

Joined in Life, Joined in Death: Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum | LGBTQ+ History

A lamp in a dark doorway. Four thousand years of color. Two men, nose to nose. Tonight we travel to Saqqara, around 2400 BCE, to meet Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep: royal m

Two Loves: Josephine Baker, Spy, Star, and Bisexual Icon | LGBTQ+ History

Lamplight on wet cobblestones. A cheetah on a diamond collar. A cup of coffee that changed a speech. Tonight we travel to Paris in 1925 to meet Josephine Baker: born poo

The Wardrobe Door: Simon Nkoli and Africa's First Pride (1990)

Paper bags in the rain. A wardrobe door. Two parts of one person, refusing to be divided. Tonight: Simon Nkoli, the gay anti-apartheid activist who led Africa's first Pr

Love Won in the Rain: Taiwan, First in Asia (2019)

Rainbow umbrellas in the rain. Sixty-six votes. A question 33 years old, finally answered. Tonight: how Taiwan became the first place in Asia where same-sex couples coul

The Night Ellen Came Out (1997)

Forty-two million people. Two words. One microphone she didn't mean to lean on. Tonight: The Puppy Episode. The night in April 1997 when Ellen DeGeneres and her sitcom c

The Town With Three Genders: The Muxes of Juchitán

A town told for five hundred years to have two kinds of people, and it simply declined. Tonight: the muxes (MOO-sheh) of Juchitán de Zaragoza, on the Isthmus of Tehuante

The Surgeon's Secret: Dr. James Barry

He saved a mother and child on a kitchen table by candlelight. He fought cholera with clean water and open windows. And he kept one secret for fifty years. Tonight, drif

The Sword and the Silk: The Chevalier d'Éon

London bet a fortune on whether the Chevalier d'Éon was a man or a woman. She never answered. She just got dressed. Tonight, drift off to the story of Charles-Geneviève

The Middle Place: We'wha of Zuni

A Two-Spirit Zuni weaver charmed 1886 Washington, met the President, and walked forty miles home. She was six feet tall, wove blankets on the lawn of the Smithsonian, a

My Beloved and I: The Ladies of Llangollen

Two women climbed out of their windows in 1778, dressed as men, and ran for the sea. Drift off to sleep with the story of the Ladies of Llangollen. Lady Eleanor Butler o

A Thing That Wants Virginia: Woolf, Vita, and Twenty Years of Letters

Two married women met at a dinner party in 1922 and wrote to each other for the rest of one of their lives. Drift off to sleep with the story of Virginia Woolf and Vita

It Belonged to All of Us: Gilbert Baker and the First Rainbow Flag

Drift off to sleep learning how the rainbow flag was made: in an attic, in trash cans, by thirty people with dye on their hands. In June 1978, Gilbert Baker and around t