Joe Carstairs

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 ...

7 Maj 20255min

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 wou...

30 Apr 20251h 18min

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 thoug...

10 Apr 202511min

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...

11 Mars 202551min

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 "ant...

28 Feb 202512min

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...

19 Feb 20251h

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 Engli...

11 Feb 20251h 7min

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 misogynis...

5 Feb 20251h 10min