Shows / Restful Rainbow
Restful Rainbow
LGBTQ+ History bedtime and relaxation stories, aiming to offer comfort, representation, and a touch of magic to listeners drifting off to sleep. https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support
Episodes
- Restful Rainbow
The Woman in the Green Bugatti: Tamara de Lempicka 🚗 LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
A refugee, a poet across the landing, and the green Bugatti she never owned. The bisexual painter behind Art Deco's face. Tonight we travel to the Paris of…
- Restful Rainbow
To Frankie, in Return for Sicily: Tennessee Williams and Frank Merlo | LGBTQ History
A playwright, a sailor, and fifteen years behind a white picket fence in Key West. Tonight we travel to the life Tennessee Williams (1911 to 1983) shared with…
- Restful Rainbow
Glad as Heck That You Exist: Lorraine Hansberry 🌱 LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Two quiet letters, three initials, and the young playwright about to change Broadway forever. Tonight we travel to Greenwich Village in 1957 to meet Lorraine…
- Restful Rainbow
A Genius for Flowers: Gluck and Constance Spry | LGBTQ History
A vase of white flowers, a painter known only as Gluck, and the florist who arranged them. A 1930s London love story. Tonight we travel to Hampstead and…
- Restful Rainbow
Woven from Sand: Hastiin Klah, Navajo Weaver and Healer | LGBTQ History
Sandpaintings were made to be swept away. One Diné singer found a way to weave them into wool, so they would last. Tonight we travel to Diné country in…
- 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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
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…
- Restful Rainbow
The Stones That Remembered: Hawaii's Māhū Healers of Kapaemahu
Drift off to sleep learning about the Healer Stones of Kapaemahu, four boulders on Waikīkī Beach that have held a suppressed truth for five centuries. Long…
- Restful Rainbow
The Sun of Tabriz: Rumi & Shams and the Love That Created 40,000 Poems
Drift off to sleep with the most famous love story in the history of poetry. In November 1244, a wandering dervish named Shams of Tabriz stopped a professor's…
- Restful Rainbow
The Emperor Who Cut His Sleeve for Love: Ancient China's 2,000-Year-Old Love Story (Emperor Ai & Dong Xian)
An emperor wakes from an afternoon nap to find the man he loves asleep on his sleeve. Rather than wake him, he calls for a blade and cuts the sleeve off. Two…
- Restful Rainbow
Apology Accepted: The Lavender Scare and the First White House Picket (1950–2009)
They fired thousands for who they loved, and the fired found each other on the sidewalk. Tonight: the Cold War purge history nearly forgot, the ten people who…
- Restful Rainbow
Looking at the Stars: The Rise, Fall & Vindication of Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about Oscar Wilde, the most famous wit in the English language, and one of the most beloved figures in LGBTQ+ history. Born in…
- Restful Rainbow
Equal Dignity: The Love Story Behind Obergefell v. Hodges | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Jim Obergefell and John Arthur were together for twenty years before the law learned the word for it. Tonight: the medical jet on a Maryland tarmac, the…
- Restful Rainbow
One Sentence That Changed Everything: ONE Magazine & the First Gay Supreme Court Victory (Jan 13, 1958) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about ONE Magazine, the first openly gay magazine sold on American newsstands, and One, Inc. v. Olesen, the 1958 Supreme Court…
- Restful Rainbow
The Society of Fools: Harry Hay & the Mattachine Society, America's First Gay Rights Group (1950) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about the Mattachine Society, the first lasting gay rights organization in the United States, and Harry Hay, the man who called it…
- Restful Rainbow
That's God's Job: Dolly Parton, LGBTQ+ Ally (1946–2026) | A Sleep Story Tribute
Drift off to sleep learning about Dolly Parton, the Queen of Country Music, and one of the LGBTQ+ community's most steadfast allies, in this gentle memorial…
- Restful Rainbow
I Stop Somewhere Waiting for You: Walt Whitman, America's Queer Poet (1819–1892) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about Walt Whitman, the poet of Leaves of Grass, and the most openly homoerotic voice in nineteenth-century American literature…
- Restful Rainbow
The Most Talked-About Woman in the World: Christine Jorgensen (1926–1989) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about Christine Jorgensen, the shy Bronx photographer who became, overnight and without her consent, the most famous transgender…
- Restful Rainbow
She Who Makes Her Meaning Known: Audre Lorde (1934–1992) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about Audre Lorde, the self-described "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" whose essays and poems gave a generation the language…
- Restful Rainbow
Someone Will Remember Us: Sappho of Lesbos (c. 630–570 BCE) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about Sappho of Lesbos, the greatest lyric poet of the ancient world, the only woman in the Alexandrian canon of nine, and the…
- Restful Rainbow
The Face in Every City: Hadrian and Antinous (130 CE) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about Hadrian and Antinous, the Roman emperor who lost the young man he loved in the Nile in October of 130 CE, and answered his…
- Restful Rainbow
I Know My Own Heart: Anne Lister of Shibden Hall (1791–1840) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about Anne Lister, the Yorkshire landowner, traveller and diarist often called "the first modern lesbian," who recorded her entire…
- Restful Rainbow
The Corner of Turk and Taylor: The Compton's Cafeteria Riot (August 1966) | LGBTQ+ History Sleep Story
Drift off to sleep learning about the Compton's Cafeteria riot, the transgender uprising that happened three years before Stonewall, on a hot August night in…
- Restful Rainbow
A Quiet Revolution: India's Supreme Court Strikes Down Section 377 (Sept 6, 2018)
Drift off to sleep learning about September 6, 2018, the day India's Supreme Court unanimously struck down Section 377, a 157-year-old colonial law…
- Restful Rainbow
Catullus and the Poets of Rome: Ancient Bisexual Poetry That Survived 2000 Years
Drift off to sleep learning about Catullus (c. 84-54 BCE) and the Roman poets who wrote openly, beautifully, and unapologetically about desire for both men and…
- Restful Rainbow
The Colonel Who Rode with Zapata: Amelio Robles, Trans Mexican Revolutionary
Drift off to sleep learning about Amelio Robles Ávila (1889-1984), a transgender man who became a colonel in Zapata's revolutionary army and lived openly as a…
- Restful Rainbow
The Voices We Carry: African Gender-Diverse Spiritual Leaders | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story
Drift off to sleep learning about sacred gender diversity across African spiritual traditions, from the androgynous Nommo of Mali's Dogon people to the…
- Restful Rainbow
Charlotte Cushman's "Jolly Bachelor Women": The Lesbian Artists' Colony in Rome | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story
Drift off to sleep with the story of Charlotte Cushman's "household of jolly bachelor women", a 19th century lesbian artists' colony in Rome where American…
- Restful Rainbow
Tom Daley's Olympic Gold: "I Am a Gay Man and Also an Olympic Champion" | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story
Drift off to sleep with the inspiring story of Tom Daley—who came out at 19, faced doubt and discrimination, and then stood on the Olympic podium in Tokyo 2021…
- Restful Rainbow
Colette and Missy: Unconventional Love in Belle Époque Paris | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story
Drift off to sleep with the story of Colette and Missy, a French writer and an aristocrat in a three-piece suit who built an unconventional life together in…
- Restful Rainbow
The Two Katharines: "America the Beautiful" Written by a Woman Who Loved a Woman | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story
TITLE: The Two Katharines: "America the Beautiful" Written by a Woman Who Loved a Woman | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story DESCRIPTION: Drift off to sleep with the story…
- Restful Rainbow
Billy Strayhorn: The Openly Gay Genius Behind "Take the A Train" | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story
Drift off to sleep with the story of Billy Strayhorn, the quiet, openly gay Black composer who wrote some of the most beautiful jazz in history, and was erased…
- Restful Rainbow
Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Who Refused Marriage and Chose Herself | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story
Drift off to sleep with the story of Louisa May Alcott, the beloved author of "Little Women" whose own life was far more unconventional than her famous novel…
- Restful Rainbow
Radclyffe Hall: The Banned Lesbian Novel That Changed History | LGBTQ+ Bedtime Story
Drift off to sleep with the inspiring story of Radclyffe Hall, who wore men's clothing in the 1920s, loved women openly, and wrote "The Well of Loneliness"…
- Restful Rainbow
Kestral Gaian: Non-Binary Trans Artist Preserving LGBTQ+ Stories
Drift off to sleep with the inspiring story of Kestral Gaian (they/them), a non-binary trans artist who is documenting LGBTQ+ history right now, preserving…
- Restful Rainbow
Queerest Space in Nairobi: Kenya's 10-Year Fight for LGBTQ+ Rights | African Activism History
Drift off to sleep with the inspiring story of NGLHRC Kenya, a sanctuary for LGBTQ+ Kenyans that fought for 10 years just for the legal right to exist, and…
- Restful Rainbow
Magnus Hirschfeld: The Gay Jewish Doctor Who Built the World's First LGBTQ+ Institute | Berlin History
Drift off to sleep with the inspiring yet tragic story of Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld, who created the world's first LGBTQ+ rights organization and research center…
- Restful Rainbow
Ballroom Houses & Chosen Families: Crystal LaBeija Created Homes for Rejected LGBTQ+ Youth
Drift off to sleep with the beautiful story of ballroom Houses, chosen families created by Crystal LaBeija for Black and Latino LGBTQ+ youth rejected by their…
- Restful Rainbow
Sacred Band of Thebes: 150 Gay Couples Who Were Ancient Greece's Greatest Warriors
Drift off to sleep with the legendary story of the Sacred Band of Thebes, 300 warriors in 150 male couples who became ancient Greece's most elite fighting…
- Restful Rainbow
Hatshepsut: Egypt's Female King | LGBTQ+ Sleep Story
Drift into peaceful sleep with the story of Hatshepsut, ancient Egypt's remarkable female pharaoh who ruled as king for over 20 years. This calming LGBTQ+…
- Restful Rainbow
The Mother of Pride: Brenda Howard's Untold Story
Brenda Howard, known as the Mother of Pride, transformed a single protest into a global movement. Discover how her quiet organizing genius created Pride Month…
- Restful Rainbow
Emma Goldman Defended Gay Love in 1915
Drift peacefully to sleep while learning about Emma Goldman, the anarchist who publicly defended homosexuality in 1915, decades before Stonewall. This LGBTQ+…