Relationscapes: Exploring How We Relate, Love, and Belong

In 1959, a young University of Florida student was pulled out of his final exam by police and taken to a motel room for interrogation. His suspected crime: being gay.

Journalist Robert Fieseler uncovers the hidden history of Florida's Johns Committee, a state-backed investigation that targeted Black activists, supposed communists, and LGBTQ people. Drawing from previously confidenti...

The rainbow flag signals unity. Reality under the banner is messier.

Professor Kaila Story has spent her life navigating spaces where parts of her identity are welcomed while other parts are pushed aside. As a Black lesbian, she has encountered racism within queer communities, queerphobia within Black communities, and exclusion even among people who claim to be fighting for liberation.

Drawing from her book The Rainbow Ain't Never ...

Holly Brown loves TV sitcoms. Growing up, her own family looked like the prototype for must-see TV: a charismatic dad who worked on a top sitcom in Hollywood, siblings and a mother filling the other familiar family roles.

Until it all started to fall apart. As though the writers were playing some kind of sadistic joke. And as her father was dying of cancer, he revealed a secret no one had told her—Holly and her siblings had f...

Kevin James Thornton built a massive audience singing absurd stories from his evangelical past in an auto-tune style on TikTok. But underneath the humor were years of loneliness, secrecy, religious fear, and the slow unraveling of a series of lives he thought he was supposed to live. 

Kevin talks about growing up in a "super fundamentalist" church in Indiana, youth-group purity culture, heartbreak, trying to escape being gay, ...

Why do racist comments from loved ones cut more deeply than overt racism from strangers? What makes it so difficult to name harm when it comes from someone who cares about you? And how do you respond when good intentions don’t match real impact? Samira Mehta says growing up in a mixed-race family showed her how love and harm can coexist in complicated, often invisible ways.

Through personal stories—about food, family ex...

We talk a lot about women’s reproductive health. We rarely talk about men’s.

But that gap isn’t just cultural—it’s built into science itself.

In this episode, Yale sociologist Rene Almeling explains how modern medicine ended up with an entire field devoted to women’s reproductive systems—and no real equivalent for men. From a failed 19th-century push for “andrology” to today&rsq...

She thought there would always be more time to explore—until a routine hike nearly killed her.

In this mini episode, Bailey Buckles recounts how a sudden, life-threatening infection drove home the fact that tomorrow isn’t guaranteed.

It was an especially powerful moment, because as a transgender woman of color in America, she hadn't always wanted to stay alive. 

From climbing mountains to showing up online as her f...

If you lost touch with reality, how would you even tell the difference?

That's the question Sarah Labrie had to confront after her mother was found on the side of a Houston freeway in the midst of a schizophrenic break. And she also wondered, "Am I next?"

In this candid conversation, Sarah discusses growing up between extremes of adoration and abuse, witnessing a parent’s mental illness, struggling with perfectionism, and loo...

Dogs didn’t just become our companions. They helped make us human.

They've been by our side for tens of thousands of years, helping us herd and hunt, migrate, heal, grieve, fight war, imagine the afterlife, and more. 

Religion and environmental studies scholar Laura Hobgood joins us to explore the long, complicated co-evolution of humans and dogs—how humans have loved, used, protected, and sometimes harmed them in ...

Some songs take decades to reveal what they’re really about.

Back in the 90s when 20-year-old Steven Page wrote “What a Good Boy,” he understood it as a plea to ease up on restrictive gender expectations that harmed boys and girls. But as he performed it over the years, he realized it was about much more than that.

The stirring anthem has become a greater exploration of gender identity and sexuality, a perennial w...

When George M. Johnson was a kid growing up in New Jersey, they loved Black History Month. They were thrilled to learn about the people who shaped American history for the better. But as they got older, they started noticing things were missing—hidden stories that might have meant the most to a queer kid like they were.

George was especially drawn to one of the most dazzling moments in Black history, the Harlem Renaissance. T...

Is it possible to raise kind, feminist boys in our era of manosphere misogyny?

Sonora Jha, an Indian-American immigrant and single mother, says yes. But it takes a lot more than good intentions. 

She reflects on raising her son across cultures, teaching empathy through film, talking frankly about sex, consent, and body image, and modeling apology without demanding forgiveness. She pushes back on the idea that feminism harms bo...

Adoption is often framed as a loving and selfless decision made by women who want to give their babies a better life—but many relinquishing mothers say it doesn’t actually feel like a real choice at all.

Private domestic adoption in the U.S. operates under conditions of high demand, limited supply, and deep economic inequality. Researchers say women rarely choose adoption over abortion or parenting, and many relinquishi...

We’re a little over halfway through January and it's already been A LOT. The Trump administration kidnapped the de facto Venezuelan president. The chairman of the Federal Reserve announced he’s being targeted for prosecution because the president wants to control monetary policy. A queer mother in Minneapolis was shot in the head in broad daylight by ICE, who is occupying the city, and the government has been trying to ...

The overturning of Roe v. Wade, which allowed states to outlaw abortion, has had devastating consequences for women across the country—especially because the American health care system was already making pregnancy more dangerous and more unequal in blue states and red states alike.

In her new book Unbearable, journalist Irin Carmon tells the stories of five women whose experiences uncover the realities of pregnancy in Americ...

What happens when you stop chasing romantic love entirely?

After ending a catastrophic relationship, acclaimed author Melissa Febos took an unexpected step: despite being a serial relationshipper, she decided to take a personal vow of celibacy.

What began as a three-month break became a full year that transformed how she understood desire, boundaries, people-pleasing, and love itself. In her latest book The Dry Season: A Memoir of ...

We grow up swimming in gender stereotypes: men are from Mars, women are from Venus. Men are rational and women are emotional. The binary cliches are everywhere, but are they true?

Daphna Joel is a neuroscientist who wanted to know what the science actually says. When she looked at real brains she discovered that each person carries a unique mix of traits, a true mosaic that defies the old binary.

Daphna Joel joins us to talk about ...

The Bible remains one of the world's most influential books, impacting  believers and non-believers alike. As Christian nationalists gain more power over American politics right now, it's as important as ever to understand how the Bible is used to justify laws about abortion, gay marriage, child abuse, and more. Luckily, Bible scholar Dan McClellan is here to give us the data. He's become wildly famous on TikTok unpacking what...

The Department of Education is being dismantled before our eyes. Why does it matter, and can it be rescued? Reporter Laura Pappano joins us with updates on these things, and her latest visit to the Moms for Liberty conference in Florida, where a new tactic is emerging. 

Full transcript is available here at relationscapes.org. 

• "Moms for quote-unquote 'Liberty,' (with Laura Pappano)," Relationscapes (Septem...