Episodes

  • Episode 304 Pride Month 2026 - The Curious Case of the Gay Ghost Hunters

    Episode 304 Pride Month 2026 - The Curious Case of the Gay Ghost Hunters
    Jun 11 2026
    In this episode, we celebrate the diversity and inclusion of pride month with an examination of the world of the paranormal, the world of spiritualism and even the world of the Horror space, and how these dark, liminal spaces are not only super inclusive, but also are currently being used to expore and reveal more LGBTQ+ history. This week we go deep into the cultural phenomenon of gay Ghost Hunters, and LGBTQ+ representation in Haunted Tours. All this and more in this special Pride Month episode of the Family Plot Podcast!

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    59 mins
  • Episode 303 Pride Month 2026 - The Lavender Scare

    Episode 303 Pride Month 2026 - The Lavender Scare
    Jun 4 2026
    Have you heard of 'Tail-Gunner Joe' McCarthy and the Red Scare? What about Roy Cohn? These two not only kicked off the Red Scare where they pursued supposed communists in Government and later the military, but also went aafter gays under the theory that they were 'moral perverts susceptible to blackmail.'. Despite no evidence appearing that even one of these people were blackmailed outside the movie Clue (which is complete fiction), thousands of employees were fired between 1953 and the 90's when gay employees were forced out of government positions or fotced to live lives undercover simply because of who they loved. We cover the history of the lavender scare, people who were targeted because of it, a similar case in England where Alan Turing, the father of Artificial Intelligence was convicted of gross perversion for his relationship with another man and was chemically castrated which led to the unraveling of his brilliant mind. All this and more in this, this is why we celebrate PRIDE because we need to remind ourselves just how bad it's been for the LGBTQ during our lifetimes episode of the Family Plot Podcast.

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    1 hr and 7 mins
  • Episode 302 It's Mostly Fiction - The Mythology of the Odyssey

    Episode 302 It's Mostly Fiction - The Mythology of the Odyssey
    May 28 2026
    We have a heck of an episode for you. Arthur is turning 17 and our episode is inspired by the right wing pushback against Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey'. We dig into the origin of the work, what we know of it's 'author' Homer, the real, the mythical, the things that are somewhere in between. We say goodbye to a family friend and gget downright hostile about people judging movies based on trailers in this deep dive into the origins of the Odyssey and all it's attendant mythology in this little bit of history, whole lotta weird imagined horrors episode of the Family Plot Podcast!

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    1 hr and 21 mins
  • Episode 301 Jane Stanford - Polished, Poised and Poisoned - The Death of a Child and the Birth of a University

    Episode 301 Jane Stanford - Polished, Poised and Poisoned - The Death of a Child and the Birth of a University
    May 21 2026
    Such An Episode! On Deck we have Jane Stanford, born Jane Lathrop out of Albany New York, she married her lawyer husband who lost everything in a fire, went west to seek his fortune in the Gold Rush and found it selling supplies to miners and settlers. When his wife joined him in San Francisco, he had become a railroad baron. Eventually they had a child and Jane doted on the boy. We won't tell you more here, but there's a death, a poisoning, a university being founded and not necessarily in that order in this powerful episode of the Family Plot Podcast!

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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Episode 300 - Audie Murphy - An American Tale

    Episode 300 - Audie Murphy - An American Tale
    May 14 2026
    This episode, we go deep into the life, heroism and spectacle that was Audie Murphy. Audie Murphy was a sharecropper's son from Hunt County Texas, small, skinny, barely fed and full of work. When his dad would disappear, he worked, when his mom died, he worked. When his family came apart, he tried military service. He was rejected by the marines, the paratroopers, only the Army would eventually accept the skinny kid from Texas because in the 1940's they needed manpower. We discuss Audie's training and how he went from being an unlikely soldier to the most decorated Combat Infantryman of World War II. He had over twenty medals and barely enough chest to pin them on. He would come home suffering from what we would today call PTSD and tried to build a life. He was invited to LA by actor James Cagney where he worked Westerns and military pictures before being chosen to play himself in the movie To Hell And Back.based on Audie's memoirs. He would marry twice, and become a songwriter with hits like Shutters and Boards. All this and more in this special, All American Episode of the Family Plot Podcast.

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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Episode 299 Bird Lives - The Musical Life of Charlie 'Bird' Parker

    Episode 299 Bird Lives - The Musical Life of Charlie 'Bird' Parker
    May 7 2026
    Well, in this episode we dig into our Kansas City Roots. We go to Kansas City in the 1920's where under 'Boss' Pendergast the city was a machine that kept clubs open all night and the liquor flowing. It was a town famous for being a little naive, jazz, good barbecue and something called the Kansas City Stomp. Kansas City had heard rumors of Prohibition and wanted no truck with it. It was into this world that a young man named Charlie Parker, a man who would be nicknamed 'Bird' began to play an alto sax and he would get humiliated and come back stronger. He became a good musician, and then he was in a car accident that broke his ribs and twisted his spine. He was given morphine for the pain and this would start a second addiction, the first was to music. He studied and practiced all he could in recovery and when he emerged he was a different player, he took the town by storm and he would go on to become one of the greats of Jazz and he'd become a big part of a muisc called bebop. So come listen to a local tale of Kansas City and learn how a man became a myth and musical legend in this magical, mythical and musical episode of the Family Plot Podcast

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    1 hr and 17 mins
  • Episode 298 - The Jewel Box Revue and Club 82 - Drag takes Center Stage

    Episode 298 - The Jewel Box Revue and Club 82 - Drag takes Center Stage
    Apr 30 2026
    This episode has so much. We cover the Jewel Box Revue, the drag show that originated in the thirties and toured through the seventies creating a space for drag, female impersonators and gender bent comics in a show that advertised itself as 25 men and 1 girl. We also cover anti-crossdressing laws, the police's informal three article rule and how newspapers at the time published the names of those arrested for cross dressing, performing drag, or even just being openly gay. We talk about how drag shows came up from French cabarets like the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergere and morphed into something different and special in America. We also discuss Club 82, the New York nightspot run by the Gallo crime family that made a safe place in New York for drag long before Pride Marches and rainbow flags. We even discuss how movies like La Cage Au Folles, The Rocky Horror Picture Show,,The Birdcage, Priscilla Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo, Thanks for
    Everything, Julie Newmar owe a lot of their DNA to these early expressions of queer joy and drag glamour. These were some of the earliest safe spaces in America and we owe them a lot. So come along on this celebration of LGBTQ history and found family! It's fun and we guarantee you will learn something! And in case you aare curious, the person bringing us back from commercial is part of an old song by gender bent comedian Rae Bourbon.

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    1 hr and 25 mins
  • Episode 297 Executive Order 9066 - Creating American Internment Camps

    Episode 297 Executive Order 9066 - Creating American Internment Camps
    Apr 23 2026
    Here we go! Another little bit of history that really matters. In 1942, following Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt signed executive order 9066 which allowed the military designated Military zones and control who lived in them in the United States. The order did not mention Japanese American citizens or concentration camps by name, but effectively that'w who was targeted and what was created in this executive order. Japanese Citizens were rounded up, sent to camps and forced to live in old horse stalls or worse before being transferred to some of the worst hellholes in the country. This is after many were blocked from citizenship or owning land. We go into the why's and howfores in this special Abolish ICE we've seen this crap before episode of the Family Plot Podcast!

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    1 hr and 9 mins