The AIDS Crisis: The LGBTQ History Every Generation Needs to Know | PART ONE

What really happened during the AIDS crisis?

In Part One of this series we take a deep dive into one of the most devastating chapters in LGBTQ history. From the optimism of the post-Stonewall era to the terrifying emergence of a mysterious illness that would eventually become known as AIDS, this episode explores how an entire generation of gay men saw their futures change forever.

Learn about the world before AIDS, the first reported cases, the fear and stigma that followed, and the devastating reality of what happened when thousands of LGBTQ people became sick while much of the country looked the other way.

This episode examines:
• LGBTQ life after Stonewall
• The rise of gay communities in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles
• The earliest years of the AIDS epidemic
• The "Gay Plague" narrative and media coverage
• Government response and political inaction
• How stigma intensified the crisis
• Why understanding AIDS history matters today

Whether you're part of the LGBTQ community or simply interested in American history, this episode provides essential context for understanding the people, activism, and losses that continue to shape our world today.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to hot air. I am your host, Joshua Robert, and today we're beginning what may be one of the most important episodes that I have ever created. That's a big expectation I'm setting. For many younger LGBTQ people, the AIDS crisis feels like something that is extremely distant and something that we know happened, but we don't fully understand. We know that it was devastating. We know people died. We know it changed the community forever. But what was life actually like before AIDS? Insert question mark here. What happened when the first cases began appearing? And how did an entire community go from experiencing this newfound freedom and optimism in the 1970s to living through one of the deadliest public health crises in modern history? So, in part one, because this is gonna be a two-parter, so in part one in this series, we're going back to the beginning, we're going to explore the world before AIDS, the hope and momentum that existed within the LGBTQ communities after Stonewall, the terrifying emergence of a mysterious illness that nobody understood, and the painful reality of what happened when thousands of people began dying. Well, much of our country looked the other way. This episode is emotional, it's educational, it's uncomfortable at times, but it's also a piece of LGBTQ history that deserves to be remembered because the world we live in today was shaped by the people who fought battles. Many of us will never fully understand. And before we jump in, make sure you're following me on Instagram and TikTok at underscore hot airpod. Head on over to my website, hotairbert.com, to shop my merch and submit your listener stories and topic suggestions. So now let's travel back in time, before H I V, before AIDS, and before anyone knew the storm that was coming. So I guess buckle up is a is a wee bit heavy. And let's hit it.

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Let's be real.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

So before we can understand the AIDS crisis, before we can understand the grief, the fear, the anger, the activism, and the unimaginable loss that would follow, we need to talk about what came before it. Because one of the biggest misconceptions people have is that queer history is just one long story of oppression. And that's certainly part of the story. We know that, but it's not the whole entire story. What often gets lost when we talk about the AIDS crisis is that it arrived at a moment when many gay people were finally beginning to feel hopeful. For the first time in modern American history, there was a sense that maybe things were changing. Maybe there was a future for the community. Maybe there was a possibility of living openly instead of constantly hiding. And that's what makes what happened next so devastating. The AIDS crisis did not just take lives, it interrupted an entire chapter of queer history that had only just begun. And before I go any further, I can't say LGBTQ a 7,000 times in this episode. So I'm just gonna say queer. Okay. That's gonna be the term we're using today because I'm already getting tongue twisted. So to understand that optimism, we need to go back to the late 1960s and 1970s. Now, if you're under 30, I mean, good for you if you're under 30, but it can be difficult to imagine just how different life was for queer people. Being openly gay could cost you your job, it could get you kicked out of your apartment, it could destroy relationships with your family. In many places, same-sex relationships were literally criminalized. Police were regularly raiding bars. Newspapers sometimes published the names of people that were arrested during those raids, which would effectively out them to their employers, sometimes their spouses, their neighbors, their families. Like imagine getting arrested for simply existing and trying to find your people and then seeing your name in the local paper the next morning. Like that's the world that many queer people lived in. Then came Stonewall in 1969. Now, Stonewall has become one of those historical events that gets condensed into a neat little paragraph in history books, if it's even lucky. But what made Stonewall significant wasn't that it magically created equality overnight. It was that people finally fought back. And after years of harassment, humiliation, police abuse, members of the queer community pushed back against another police raid at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. And the riots that followed became a catalyst for the modern queer rights movement. It was essentially a collective movement where people said, actually, no, we are done accepting this type of treatment. And the decade that followed was unlike anything that many queer people have ever experienced. Gay liberation organizations began forming across the country. Newspapers, magazines aimed specifically at queer audiences started appearing. Activists organized marches, community centers opened, businesses began catering openly to queer customers. Entire neighborhoods started becoming gathering places for queer communities. Places like the Castro District in San Francisco, Greenwich Village in New York City, and parts of West Hollywood, Hillcrest here in San Diego became more than just neighborhoods. They became those safe havens. They became places where people could finally see other people just like themselves that were living openly. And I think that that is something that younger, queer people sometimes take for granted because many of us grew up with at least some level of representation, including myself. Maybe you saw those queer characters on TV, maybe you followed queer creators online, depending on how old you are. Maybe you had openly gay teachers or coworkers. But for many people in the 1970s, which is not that long ago, moving to one of these gay neighborhoods was the first time they had ever met other openly queer people. Like, think about that. Some people spent their entire childhood believing they were the only ones, completely alone. And then they arrive in San Fran or New York or Wiiho and suddenly they're like, wait, there's thousands of people like me. There's people that are just like them. Like that kind of realization changes a person. Many historians and survivors describe the 1970s as a period of extraordinary optimism within parts of the gay community. Not because discrimination disappeared, because it absolutely did not, but because for the first time there was a sense of this momentum. There was a sense that progress was possible. There was a feeling that the future might be bigger than simply just surviving, right? People were building lives, they were creating friendships and relationships, businesses, political organizations, sports leagues, artistic communities, and chosen families. They were imagining futures they had previously never even allowed themselves to like contemplate for a hot second. Now, let's be clear about something, because this wasn't some perfect gay utopia where everyone was frolicking through the fields of disco balls and glitter while like Donna Summer was playing in the background. That sounds fucking great, but that wasn't it. Discrimination was still everywhere as it is now. Homophobia was still freaking rampant. Many people remained closeted out of necessity. Violence against the queer people was very common. Religious condemnation was widespread. Families were still rejecting their children. Politicians were still openly hostile, which sounds a lot like today, doesn't it? But despite all of that, there was movement. Okay. Movement. There was energy, there was hope, there was something pushing the community forward. And it's also important to understand that many gay men who came of age during this period has spent years hiding fundamental parts of themselves. They were growing up believing that their future consisted of pretending to be someone else forever, pretending to date women, pretending not to be attracted to men, pretending not to notice the things that you notice, pretending not to feel the things that you felt. Like they suddenly found a community where they didn't have to pretend anymore. That's part of why this period is remembered with so much affection by many survivors. It wasn't simply about nightlife and parties. It was about freedom and it was about authenticity and it was about finally getting a chance to become yourself. And the irony is that this period of optimism arrived after decades of struggle. Queer people had spent generations fighting simply to exist. Then, just as the community began envisioning a brighter future, something started happening that nobody understood. In 1981, doctors in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco began noticing unusual illnesses among young gay men. These were not elderly patients, these weren't people with known immune disorders. These were otherwise healthy young adults developing rare infections and cancers that doctors typically only saw in people with severely compromised immune systems. And at first, nobody knew what was happening. There was no HIV diagnosis. There was no AIDS diagnosis. There was no treatment, nothing, not a. Okay. Maybe you finally moved away from your hometown in middle America after years of hiding who you were. And you found your chosen family there. You maybe you fell in love. Maybe you built a life that feels authentic to who you actually are. And the future started looking brighter than it ever was. Possibilities were endless. And then one of your friends gets sick. And at first, nobody thinks much of it. People get sick, right? Whatever. That's life. But then another friend gets sick, and then another, and then another, and the illnesses seem a little strange. And young, otherwise healthy men are suddenly developing these rare cancers and infections that doctors don't normally see in people their age. Some are diagnosed with a rare cancer, which often appeared as purple lesions on the skin, and others develop a type of pneumonia that typically only affects people with severely weakened immune systems. Nobody understands what's happening. Doctors don't get it. Researchers don't get it. Patients certainly don't understand it. And the worst part is that there doesn't seem to be any clear explanation. Like now that we've gone through COVID, I think we can relate to this a little bit more. But today, when something new emerges, like COVID, information spreads almost instantly, right? We have social media, news alerts, podcasts, YouTube videos, endless sources of information. But in the early 1980s, people were trying to piece together what was happening through rumors and newspaper articles and whispers in the bars, conversations between friends, and the occasional television report. Imagine hearing that another person you know has become seriously ill and nobody can tell you why. Nobody knows. Imagine hearing a rumor that it might be contagious, but nobody knows. Then hearing another rumor that it isn't and nobody knows. Then hearing someone claim it's caused by poppers or something. Then hearing someone else say it's caused by stress, then hearing another theory entirely. Like nobody knew what to believe when all the information was just rumor. And that uncertainty obviously was terrifying because human beings are remarkably good at dealing with bad news when we understand the problem. What we're terrible at is dealing with uncertainty. And if you tell someone there's a disease and here's how it spreads, here's how to prevent it, and here's how it's treated, people can at least make decisions, right? But that's not what was happening. Nobody knew how it spread. Nobody knew who was at risk. Nobody knew if they had already been exposed. And nobody knew whether they might be next. And it sounds a lot like COVID, doesn't it? As cases increased, the media began referring to it as the gay plague. And that's another word I say funny, plague, plague. I can't even say it. Feels weird. But like the gay plague, really? Come on. Before scientists understood HIV, the illness was initially labeled grid, which stood for gay related immune deficiency. Like, think about how devastating that label was. I laugh because it's so insane. Before doctors even fully understood what the fuck was happening, an entire disease became associated with one community. And suddenly being gay wasn't just socially stigmatized, it was medically stigmatized too. The public conversation quickly shifted from concern to blame. And many people were not asking how to help. They were asking what gay people had done to deserve it. And if that sounds harsh, that's because it was. Okay, religious leaders went on television and declared the disease God's punishment. Some politicians treated the crisis as a moral lesson rather than a public health emergency. Certain media outlets portrayed the epidemic as something happening to those people rather than fellow human beings. The underlying message was often very clear. If this disease primarily affected gay men, then maybe it wasn't a problem worth prioritizing. Can you imagine hearing that while your friends are dying? Imagine sitting at a hospital bed watching someone you love struggle to breathe while public figures debate whether their suffering is somehow deserved, especially based on fucking God. Absolutely not. That's the part of this history that gets lost. AIDS wasn't just a medical crisis, it was a moral crisis. It revealed how much of society genuinely valued queer lives. And for many people, the answer was devastating because it was nobody, right? As the epidemic worsened, fear began infiltrating every aspect of daily life. A cough wasn't just a cough anymore. A fever wasn't just a fever. A swollen lymph node could trigger panic. Every doctor's appointment became a source of anxiety, much like COVID. Every unexplained symptom sent people spiraling. Every phone call carried the possibility of bad news. Imagine waking up every day, wondering whether you might be carrying something that could eventually kill you and having no way to know for sure. Again, we can kind of relate. I hope I don't get in trouble for saying just like COVID sounds familiar. I'm not sure if that's like appropriate for me to compare those things because they are different. But like it all of these symptoms and the way this played out is so familiar, obviously without the discriminatory context. And then there was the loss. The loss is difficult to fully comprehend because most of us have never experienced anything remotely similar. Entire friend groups were devastated. People would attend multiple funerals in a single month. Sometimes multiple funerals in a single week. There are survivors who describe periods where it felt like everyone they knew was either sick, caring for someone who was sick, or grieving someone who had already died. And think about your closest friend group and imagine half of them like disappearing within a few years. Then imagine more after that. It's almost impossible to wrap your head around just all your friends being sick. What makes it even more heartbreaking is how many people faced this suffering alone. Families rejected their sons after they came out. Some families refused to visit them in the hospitals, some refused to acknowledge their partners. There are stories of long-term partners being denied access to hospital rooms because they were not considered family, which is exactly why we need marriage equality when people ask why. Imagine spending 10 years building your life with someone and then being told you had no right to be at their bedside because your relationship is not recognized under the law. And then there were people who did show up: the lovers who became caregivers, the friends who became nurses, the community members who stepped in when families would not. And one of the most extraordinary aspects of the AIDS crisis was watching queer communities create support systems because they had no other choice. People learned medical terminology, they organized meal deliveries, they raised money, they cleaned apartments, they sat beside hospital beds, they held hands during final moments. They became family for people who had been abandoned by their own. My own friend Jana, who is 60, I always think she's 61, but I think she's 65 now. Could be wrong. She's probably actually not even listening anyway. But she used to live in San Francisco. And during this time, at the height of it, and she was telling me the other day about how a lot of her friends that she knew died, and a lot of them she was taken care of, and she would bring food over and clean their apartments. And she was one of the people that was not scared that was like, I'm gonna help my friends regardless, before you know people knew if this was airborne or whether it was sexually transmitted or not. Like she was that baddie that was out there supporting her queer friends, which I just think is not only badass, but still hard to wrap your head around. That my friend that today, right before I started recording this, was hanging out with me at the pool, was at her friend's bedside during the AIDS crisis, helping them be comfortable while they died. Like, that's some heavy shit. But even acts of compassion could not stop all of the fear. Because for years, the disease remained a mystery. Scientists didn't identify HIV until the mid-1980s. And testing was limited, treatments were virtually non-existent, a diagnosis often felt like a death sentence. And that's not an exaggeration. Okay. Today, when someone is diagnosed with HIV, they can often live long, right? A healthy life with proper treatment. But in the early years of the epidemic, most people didn't expect to survive. They expected to die. Even now, there's a hell of a lot of stigma, and it's, you know, there's still a lot of stigma now. Like, think about how that changes a community. Think about what it does to your relationships, your dreams, your plans for the future when you just almost know you're gonna die. How do you imagine retirement when you don't think you're gonna live long enough to reach it? How do you plan a future with someone when you're not sure either of you will be alive in five years? Like that's heavy shit. You can't build a career when death feels like it's lurking around every corner. And this is why many survivors describe the AIDS crisis as a period of collective trauma, unlike anything they had ever experienced again. It wasn't just the disease itself, it was the uncertainty, it was the stigma around it, the isolation, the abandonment, the feeling that the rest of the world was watching from a distance and deciding whether your life was worth saving. And again, that's where I want younger queer people to pause and try to understand. When we talk about AIDS, we're not just talking about a virus. We are talking about a period when an entire community was forced to confront death on a scale that is almost unimaginable. We're talking about a generation that watched friends, lovers, mentors, artists, activists, and community leaders disappear just one after the other. And we're talking about people who woke up every morning not knowing who would still be alive by the end of the day, the week, the month, the year. The disease was devastating enough on its own. But the fear, the stigma, and the indifference is what made it so much worse. And and unfortunately, as we are about to see, the darkest part of the story was still ahead. So at this point, I think we need to ask a question that makes a lot of people very uncomfortable. It's a question that many queer people have been asking for more than 40 years. And it's a question that still sparks arguments today, and it's a question that survivors of the AIDS crisis have wrestled with for decades. Where I wanted to say, I wanted to swear, but where was everyone? Where the fuck was everyone? Because if you listen Listened to the first part of this episode. I hope you didn't just fast forward to hear, but like you probably found yourself being like, what's going on? Where were the people to help? And if thousands of people were getting sick, if hospitals were filling up, if entire communities were watching their friends die, where the fuck was the government, right? Where were the politicians? Where were the national leaders? Where was the urgency? Where was the outrage? Where was the response? And honestly, that's one of the most painful parts of this entire thing. Because the tragedy of the AIDS crisis isn't just that the virus spread through a vulnerable population. The tragedy is that as the crisis grew, many queer people felt like they were screaming for help and that nobody was listening. Facts, right? Now, before we get into that, okay, I want to be very careful and very factual because this is where conversations about AIDS often become emotionally charged. And I will probably get heated. There is a conspiracy theory that the that HIV was intentionally created to wipe out gay people, right? There is no credible evidence, as far as I am aware, to support that claim. Historians, scientists, epidemic, epidemic, epidemic, epidemic God, I can't, why can't I say that? Epidem it's not coming out of my mouth, you guys. Epidemiologists, that's what we're going with, and public health experts, okay, overwhelmingly agree that HIV was not engineered as a weapon against the queer community. The virus originated naturally and spread through human populations over time. But believe what you want to believe, okay? But just because the virus wasn't intentionally created doesn't mean there aren't difficult questions about how society responded to it. And frankly, I love a conspiracy and I think anything is possible. I'm not saying I believe it, but like, would I be surprised? No, probably not. But that this is just where things get like way more complicated. Okay. When AIDS first appeared in the 1980s, it was primarily affecting gay men. It would later impact many other populations as well, okay? Including intravenous drug users, women, and children. But like in those early years, public perception framed AIDS as a gay disease. And that leap, that label shaped everything and continues, you know, to be part of our label. Like, think about the political climate of the time. Ronald Reagan was president. Conservative religious movements were gaining significant influence. Homophobia was still deeply embedded in American culture, which it still is. Being openly gay was still considered controversial in much of the country, which it still is. And queer people had limited political power, which they still do and don't. Limited visibility, limited public sympathy, like basically how I feel like we're living today. So when thousands of gay men started getting sick, many people just looked away, right? And does that sound harsh? Yes. But history doesn't really give us another conclusion other than people turn their fucking backs on us. The first official reports of what would become known as AIDS appeared in 1981. Yet years passed before the crisis received the level of national attention that many activists believed it deserved. Years, okay? Think about that. I'm gonna say that a lot this episode. Think about it. Imagine a mysterious illness killing increasing numbers of people today, and national leaders barely discussing it. Imagine watching the death toll rise while feeling like the people in charge are moving at a glacial fucking pace. One of the stats that often shocks younger people is that President Reagan did not publicly address AIDS in a major way during the earliest years of the epidemic, despite mounting deaths. Okay. Meanwhile, reporters, activists, doctors, and affected communities were desperately trying to sound the alarm. For many queer people, the silence felt, well, deafening. And here's where I think we need to be honest about something, aka everything, but something more specific. People often assume history is made up of obvious villains and obvious heroes. They imagine that if they've lived through a crisis, they would have immediately recognized what was happening and stood on the right side of history. But history ain't that simple. The reality is that many Americans didn't know much about AIDS, right? Many were misinformed, many were scared, many believed false information. Some genuinely thought casual contact could spread the disease. There were people afraid to shake hands with someone who had AIDS. People were afraid to sit next to them. People were afraid to work with them. People were afraid to touch them. Much like COVID. Fear can make people very, very cruel. It's scary, right? Like ignorance can make people insane. And the AIDS crisis became that perfect storm. The public panic wasn't just directed at the disease, it was directed at the people who had the disease. And that is very important. That distinction matters here. Imagine having a terminal illness while simultaneously being treated as though you were the problem. You were sick, and you're hearing these public figures imply that your suffering is a consequence of your being, of just being alive, of being gay. Imagine losing friends and then hearing people joke about it. Imagine knowing that society views your death as less tragic because of who you are. Those things happened, and again, those things still happen today. And that's why so many survivors carry anger alongside their grief. Not because they expected miracles, not because they expected leaders to immediately solve an unknown disease, but because they expected people to just care a little bit, give a fuck about them. And at the heart of this conversation is a question that historians still debate today. How many deaths might have been prevented if the response had been faster? That's obviously a very difficult question because we will never know the exact answer. What we do know is that earlier research funding and earlier public awareness campaigns and earlier testing, earlier treatment development, and earlier government mobilization could have changed the outcomes. Like we know that activists spent years demanding greater urgency because they believed that people were dying while bureaucracy moved at a snail's pace. Like, imagine if in 2020 the government and the world just ignored COVID, right? Imagine they were just like, oh, well, it'll be fine. We'll ignore that it's even existing, that people are dying. And they waited years to work on what is that called? To work on the vaccine. And like they didn't do any campaigns to tell us about how we can avoid getting COVID. And and they just sat on their asses and were like, hmm, okay. I mean, they didn't do that because this affected everyone. And that is also a very important part of this episode. But like, we'd all be fucking dead, probably. Like COVID would have just kept going, going, going, and morphing into some crazy, crazier disease, and we'd all be screwed. But they, I mean, they kind of hustled on it, right? We got we got to the vaccine pretty quick. Although there's questions surrounding that, but that's not what this episode is about. But imagine in 2020, they were just like, meh, we would all be affected way more. Now, bringing it back to the HIV crisis. Back then, our leaders were moving at a snail's pace. And when you're attending a funeral and then another funeral, your patience becomes barely any barely there, right? This is where some people began asking whether AIDS was a form of genocide. Was this intentional? That's where this rumor started to bloom from, the conspiracy theory. And personally, that question, whether it was a form of genocide, is like, I think that's kind of worth discussing, but it's important to define our terms here very carefully. Like, I don't want to come across as an absolutely insane person, but like, was HIV intentionally created to eliminate gay people? Again, no evidence supports that. Was there a coordinated government plan to infect and kill queer people? Again, no credible evidence supports that. I mean, the evidence, where is it coming from? Government people, right? But like, can prejudice influence whose suffering society prioritizes? Absolutely. So while it may not have been created, was it allowed to go on simply to like get rid of us? I don't know, maybe. Can political indifference cost lives? Absolutely. Can systemic discrimination affect who receives attention, resources, funding, and compassion? Well, history tells us yes. And that's where the conversation becomes very powerful and where this conspiracy becomes less of a conspiracy and more of a shift in perspective? Because maybe the more important question isn't whether AIDS was intentionally designed as a genocide. Maybe the more important question is this Would the response have looked different if the primary victims had been straight, suburban, middle class families? That's the question that activists were asking. And I mean, I'm still asking it since the 1980s. And like that's a question that still makes people uncomfortable today. Like, the the reaction would have been much swifter if it wasn't the queer community. Nobody can definitively prove what would have happened in an alternate reality. But many people who lived through the crisis believe they already knew the answer. Those people that survived this, they watched society hesitate. They watched politicians avoid the issue. They watched media outlets treat it very differently. They watched public sympathy arrive slowly, if at all. And they couldn't help but wonder whether things would have unfolded differently if the disease had affected a different population first. And whether you agree with that conclusion or not, it's impossible to understand the emotional reality of the AIDS crisis without understanding that feeling. The feeling that your community was expendable. The feeling that your lives mattered less than others. And the feeling that the people in power were comfortable moving slowly because the people dying were people they didn't particularly care about. That's the wound many survivors still carry. And that is so relevant right now. And that's why I did this episode. That's why this is so important, because this is very on the nose for 2026. And yet in the middle of all that abandonment, there was still something extraordinary that happened. When queer people realized that nobody was coming to save them, they made a decision. They would save themselves. And that decision would change not only the course of the AIDS crisis, but the course of queer history forever. And as we wrap up part one of our AIDS crisis series, I think the biggest takeaway is this. Before AIDS became a medical crisis, it was a human crisis. And today we explored the optimism and liberation that many queer people experienced in the years following Stonewall. We talked about the communities that were forming, the futures that people were building, and the hope that finally seemed possible after generations of hiding. And we also examined the terrifying emergence of a mysterious illness, the fear and uncertainty that followed, and the devastating reality that thousands of people were becoming sick while very few answers existed. And then finally, we looked at the question that haunted an entire generation. Where the fuck was everyone? Where were you, bitches? Sitting on your fucking thumb and twisting. Where was the urgency, the compassion, the response when so many lives were hanging in the balance? And as per usual, if there's one thing I hope that you take away from today's episode, it's that history isn't just about dates and statistics. It is about people and real people, okay, with dreams, relationships, careers, families, futures, like that were forever altered by this crisis. Like I feel like I can't even do it justice when I'm trying to explain what the hell went down. Like understanding what happened is essential if we want to understand the queer community that we have today. Okay. And in part two, we're gonna dive into one of the most powerful chapters of this story, which is the activists who refused to stay silent. I just got full body chills. I couldn't even talk when I said it. The movement that changed medicine forever, and the devastating impact of what many call the missing generation. So until then, I mean, as per usual, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Like, follow me on Instagram and TikTok at underscore hot airpod. So you can like, you know, leave me comments, join the conversation. You can also visit hotair with joshelobert.com to shop my merch, submit your listener stories and topic suggestions, and find all my episodes there, should you want to. And also, if you're on Apple Podcasts, you can now watch the visuals for the pod on Apple Podcasts, which is great. And it's better to do it there than on YouTube, because YouTube does not count towards the downloads. And I get some episodes get a shitload of downloads or streams or whatever on YouTube. I'm like 700 years old. I don't even know what the term is. But if you do it on Apple Podcasts and you watch there, that counts towards how well the podcast performs. So pick Apple. Okay. So thank you for spending your time with me on this first part. Take care of yourselves. I feel like I need to go like meditate or something. Take care of each other and never stop learning the history that brought us here. And happy pride. It's still Pride Month, episode two or part two will come out on Friday. Okay. And until then, I'll see you next Friday. And then I'll see you next Tuesday.

SPEAKER_00 36:19

No filter. Say what I mean. Let's be real.