Welcome to Sounds Like Impact!
October is LGBT History Month! This edition we chat with Eric Marcus, host and author of Making Gay History. Also, don’t leave this edition without seeing what I am currently listening to at the end!
ICYMI: Last edition we had a guest curation from Adesuwa Agbonile, host of Backlash podcast.
#SLI Community
Other Men Need Help is expanding next year and is looking for Brand Strategists who have experience working with small media startups. Please reach out if this is you, or send leads to
.Jérémie Mani and the Podcasthon team invites podcast hosts from all over the world to dedicate a single episode of their show to a charity of their choice. These episodes will be released simultaneously in mid-March 2025, creating a powerful wave of inspiring, awareness-raising audio content globally.
Definitely something you would not want to miss, right? And there is a passionate volunteer team giving their time to make it happen. Registration is smooth, easy and … free! Check-out the first registered podcasts and get all details at www.podcasthon.org.
The State of Podcasting Roundtable from Never Post featured some of my favorite folks:
, and Sounds Like Impact interviewee Ronald Young, Jr. If you are interested in hearing perspectives on the podcast industry, definitely check out the recording.Elizabeth Doerr, a former guest curator, wrote a piece processing the devastation that befell Asheville, North Carolina due to fossil-fueled Hurricane Helene. She includes mutual aid links you can donate too as well.
Here is more from Future Earth about the hurricane that struck the Southeast United States a week ago and more info on how to help.
And if you are still wondering why you should have empathy, consider these thoughts from Marion Tenade, who is from the region.
Reminder: To guest curate, be interviewed, advertise and more, click here.
📣 Spotlight

For the full interview with Eric where we talk more about documenting LGBT history through books and podcasting, and to learn about his advocacy efforts, please click the link below.
When did you know that you wanted to document LGBT history? What did you feel was missing from the mainstream conversation?
This work wasn’t my idea! I will take credit for coming up with the idea for my first book, The Male Couple’s Guide to Living Together, which was published in 1988. That book was my excuse to research all the questions I had about how to have a relationship with another man at a time in history when everyone said it couldn’t possibly last. (When I started work on the book I’d been together with my first partner for three years and was pretty clueless. We lasted another six years. My current partner and I just celebrated our 30th anniversary.)
My history book, which was originally published in 1992 under the title Making History, was commissioned by an editor at Harper & Row (now HarperCollins). It was his idea to document the history of our movement in the form of an oral history book patterned after the work of the great oral historian Studs Terkel. I was at a moment in my career as a journalist when it had become clear that I would not get to do what I wanted to do, which was to be an on-air correspondent at CBS News, where I was working on their morning show as a segment producer. I was told point blank that they would never put an openly gay person on camera on national news. It was around the same time that I was offered the opportunity to write Making History. So I made the leap and left CBS to write the book.
It was once I started my research that my passion for our history was kindled. I had no idea that we had such a rich and proud history of activism dating back to the middle of the 20th century in the U.S. And the people I got to meet and interview were extraordinarily interesting and inspiring. Sitting with them and hearing about their lives and adventures was the best kind of time travel.
The Making Gay History podcast came decades later, but because I had recorded my interviews using broadcast quality equipment and had donated my archive to the New York Public Library with an agreement that they digitize my collection, I was well-positioned to mine my own archive for the podcast, which we launched in 2016. I really can’t take credit for the podcast idea, which was our founding producer’s idea—Sara Burningham, who now produces the Amicus podcast for Slate. The impetus for revisiting the archive came after I was fired from my job at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, but that’s a story for another time.

How has Making Gay History evolved? You’ve done thirteen seasons now, including a half-dozen bonus episodes, which is pretty incredible!
I could never have imagined! The podcast started out as a small education project where we were going to provide short clips from my archive to a new nonprofit organization called History UnErased. They were going to develop lessons and other educational resources about LGBTQ history for K-12 teachers. It was when Sara Burningham started cutting tape for that project that she said, “This sounds like a podcast.”
There were many angels along the way who took us under their wings and helped get the podcast launched, including Jenna Weiss-Berman from Pineapple Street Studios. We had very modest expectations and were told we should be happy if we had 500 downloads per episode. At the end of the first season of ten episodes we’d had 25,000 downloads in 200+ countries and territories around the world, which blew our minds! Since then, we’ve produced 100+ episodes and have had 6 million downloads. Turns out that there’s great hunger for LGBTQ history as told through the voices of the people who lived it. We also have a fully fledged website where we provide full transcripts, extensive episode notes with links to additional resources, and archival photos.
What is next for Making Gay History? What are histories that you have not covered yet that you would like to?
Two things. First, right now we’re deep into production on a 10-part series (Season 14) that explores the experiences of LGBTQ people during the Nazi regime and through the Holocaust. It’s been a very time consuming and expensive project because of the extensive research that was necessary in order to uncover and gather enough material to produce an entire series. The middle eight episodes feature individual stories that were recorded in other languages, so we’re having to work with actors to record English translations of the archival testimony.
We recently recorded voice over with Bianca Leigh, one of the stars of the Broadway hit “Oh, Mary!” Bianca voiced testimony from Luci Salani, an Italian trans woman who had an extraordinary story of survival to tell. We’ll begin releasing that series in late January to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Second, we’re working in partnership with the National Education Association (NEA) to create lessons for middle and high school teachers anchored by Making Gay History podcast episodes. The lessons have been created by a dozen teachers from across the country and we anticipate releasing the lessons later this year or early next. The lessons and accompanying materials will be made available on Making Gay History’s website and through the NEA to educators everywhere for free.
🎧 Currently Listening
Tested is a new 6-part series from NPR's Embedded and CBC.
Who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women's sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women's category. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. To understand how we got here, we trace the surprising, 100-year history of sex testing.
🌟 Classifieds
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ooh i have to listen to Tested!