In this episode, August returns to Rumi Missabu — Cockette, runaway, and legend — in a raw, intimate conversation recorded less than three months before Rumi’s death on April 2, 2024. Born in Hollywood and self-exiled from official life for decades, Rumi helped found the Cockettes, San Francisco’s glitter-drenched, anarchic performance collective that shattered gender and theatrical norms at the height of gay liberation. What follows isn’t an interview but a phone call: unfiltered, obscene, hilarious, and very much alive.

Rumi talks about being a groupie, sex and celebrity, proximity to genius, and life lived entirely on his own terms — including stories that could only come from him. The episode closes with Rumi’s notorious single “White Slavery” and an invitation to keep his legacy moving forward, including Rumipalooza on January 22 at Bureau of General Services–Queer Division in NYC. This is queer history as it actually sounded — unruly, unforgettable, and impossible to sanitize.

This episode takes a look at the life of Rumi Missabu, a founding member of the late 1960s and early 1970s Cockettes, a radical drag performer, and a counterculture visionary who spent years reshaping what art and identity were during his time. After the dissolution of the Cockettes, Rumi spent over 35 years off the grid, living in almost complete anonymity; however, his contributions to drag, performance, and queer culture continued to resonate long after his departure.

This episode highlights not only the effects of renouncing one's notoriety but also how an individual can choose to remain anonymous while having a legacy that continues to grow in his absence. Rumi Missabu truly made the greatest comeback since Lazarus.

In this episode, we have Dr. Rick Huskey, a physician and theologian who was instrumental in the creation of Affirmation: United Methodists for LGBTQ Concerns. As a college student in 1971, Rick was one of the first to help create the Northfield, MN, Gay Liberation Front. He later took the fight for LGBTQ inclusion in the United Methodist Church head-on and challenged the church from within. Doing so cost him nearly 30 years of being able to be ordained. Rick lived his life in faith, quietly resisting the church to the best of his ability until he was finally ordained as a United Methodist Elder, just one day before he passed away.