The 20 years since Matthew Shepard's death have been transformative for his mother, Judy. Plus: we talk to Samira Wiley, who appeared in an anniversary production of The Laramie Project.

— Judy Shepard is president of the Matthew Shepard Foundation.

— Moisés Kaufman is founder and artistic director of the Tectonic Theater Project; he co-wrote and directed the play The Laramie Project.

— Samira Wiley is an actor best known for her work on Orange is the New Black and The Handmaid’s Tale.

— You can stream the film version of The Laramie Project on HBO.

— Special thanks to Christina Russo and Maxim Ibadov.

Original music by Jeremy Bloom with additional music by Alexander Overington ("Inter C") and Broke For Free ("The Great").

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"Jewel's Catch One," a new documentary from C. Fitz, explores the legacy of America's oldest black-owned disco club, as well as the life of businesswoman and activist Jewel Thais-Williams. For four decades, Jewel provided safe spaces in Los Angeles for the black, L.G.B.T.Q., and AIDS-impacted communities. The club closed in 2015. The film was recently acquired by Ava DuVernay's grassroots distribution company, ARRAY.

Thais-Williams and Fitz join the program to discuss the film and what Jewel's nightclub meant for Los Angeles's marginalized communities at the height of the AIDS crisis.

Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear this segment. Don't have time to listen right now? Subscribe to our podcast via iTunes, TuneIn, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts to take this segment with you on the go.

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Alaska Thunderfuck 5000, winner of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 2, joins Phoebe to chat about the early years in drag, subverting norms and — porn. Plus, Phoebe visits Lululemon!

Watch the best of Alaska on RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars

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Even after "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed, the military wasn't an easy place to be out.

Audrey Quinn

• • , a WNYC health reporter, reported and produced this story.Special thanks to Alex Wagner, Tarak Shah, Todd Breasseale, and Sue Fulton.All season we'll be reporting stories about being out at work. Tell us yours at

 nancypodcast.org/work

• .

Episode scoring by Jeremy Bloom and Isaac Jones with additional music by Andy G. Cohen ("A Perceptible Shift"), Kevin MacLeod ("Dances and Dames," "Faster Does It," and "I Knew a Guy"), Anamorphic Orchestra ("Creature Comforts" and "Taking Dark Matter Lightly"), the U.S. Army Band ("To The Color"), and the U.S. Army Old Guard Fife & Drum Corps ("Soldier's Farewell").

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Edmund White has been a central figure in gay fiction since the nineteen-seventies. His trio of autobiographical novels captured decades of gay experience and the glory days of pre-AIDS gay culture. Now seventy-six, White says that “gay life has changed so much and as a novelist, the aesthetic has changed.” He talks to his former student, The New Yorker’s Joshua Rothman, and reads from his new novel, “Our Young Man.”

If you like what you heard, subscribe to THE NEW YORKER RADIO HOUR for free.

Fifty years after the Stonewall Uprising, we look at what happened that night, through the voices of people who were there. WNYC's Jennifer Vanasco says that Stonewall — a filthy dive bar — was a most unlikely setting for the start of a crusade.

One morning, Oliver Sipple went out for a walk. A couple hours later, to his own surprise, he saved the life of the President of the United States. But in the days that followed, Sipple’s split-second act of heroism turned into a rationale for making his personal life into political opportunity. What happens next makes us wonder what a moment, or a movement, or a whole society can demand of one person. And how much is too much? 

Through newly unearthed archival tape, we hear Sipple himself grapple with some of the most vexing topics of his day and ours - privacy, identity, the freedom of the press - not to mention the bonds of family and friendship. 

Reported by Latif Nasser and Tracie Hunte. Produced by Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Latif Nasser and Tracie Hunte.

Special thanks to Jerry Pritikin, Michael Yamashita, Stan Smith, Duffy Jennings; Ann Dolan, Megan Filly and Ginale Harris at the Superior Court of San Francisco; Leah Gracik, Karyn Hunt, Jesse Hamlin, The San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, Mike Amico, Jennifer Vanasco and Joey Plaster.

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"When I want it badly enough, I can...really steel myself and just be like, 'Don't freak out, just stay still, kiss them. Just do it!'" 

This is how Katie Heaney talked about her dating life when we first spoke back in 2014. She'd just published her confessional first book, Never Have I Ever: My Life (So Far) Without a Date—a chronicling of her lifelong singledom until age 25. And she'd recently moved to New York City from Minnesota to take a job at BuzzFeed as an editor. When we talked, the 27-year-old was also a virgin—something that made her really uncomfortable. "I really don't like it," she told me. "And I also hate that I don’t like it. Because that feels like conceding that it bothers me and that I am susceptible to the opinions of others." 

Listening back to herself two years later, Katie winced. "I hear myself talk about all the fear and the dread and 'making myself,' and I'm just like, 'Ugh, you don't have to feel that way,'" she told me. Now 29, Katie says she's adjusted to life in New York—and along with that adjustment, has also come to terms with the fact that she's gay. "I remember being on the subway and looking around at all the guys. And being like, 'I don't want to date any of you. Like, I just don't - I don't want this,'" she said. "And...the attraction like fell out of my body." Soon after, Katie started dating a woman, and says that while she was nervous on their first date, she wasn't "uncomfortable to [her] core" in a way that she had been in the past on dates with men.

Despite her newfound comfort in her sexuality, Katie says she's still learning how to be in a relationship. "I have to learn how to not catastrophize every disagreement or every feeling that comes to me that isn't a 100 percent joyous one," she told me. "I thought that I had struggled so long to find [a relationship] that once I did, it would just be perfect or easy. And, you know, I was naive about what it really means to spend that much time with someone." 

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Masha Gessen co-hosts this episode of New Yorker Radio Hour, guiding David Remnick through the fifty years of civil-rights gains for L.G.B.T.Q. people. From drag queens reading to children at the library to a popular gay Presidential candidate, we'll look at how the movement for L.G.B.T.Q. rights has changed our culture and our laws. The actress and comedian Lea DeLaria takes us through five decades of queer history in five minutes. Gessen talks with a Stonewall historian names Martin Duberman about whether the movement has become too conservative, and, later, she visits with a gay asylum seeker who recently fled Russia's state security agency. 

If you like what you heard, subscribe to THE NEW YORKER RADIO HOUR for free.

Coming out means taking a risk and sharing something deeply personal with another person. In this hour-long episode of Nancy, the critically acclaimed podcast about the queer experience, hosts Tobin Low and Kathy Tu bring you three stories about different kinds of coming out. You'll hear from two gay men of different generations about what it's like to disclose an HIV diagnosis; a young woman who tracks down the queer role model she didn't know she needed; and a young man trying to save his father's life, even if it means a painful confrontation. 

If you like what you heard, subscribe to NANCY for free.

In honor of Stonewall’s 50th anniversary, it’s time for an intergenerational queer conversation. Kristin Tomlinson (pictured above) is a gender fluid, pansexual 21-year-old. She takes Kai into her very fluid online and IRL world of cartoon cats in crop tops, Instagram icons and friends who see gender as just another construct. Along the way, we look at the meaning of labels and categories for youth today and whether they’re necessary to create and claim political and social space in the LGBTQ community.

We also hear from:

- Pose actor Bhawk Snipes

- Paulette Thomas-Martin, teaching artist at SAGE Center Harlem and Vice-President of HarlemYes, Inc.

Radio Rookies is supported in part by the Margaret Neubart Foundation and The Pinkerton Foundation.

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