Restful Rainbow

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 Baker: born poor in St. Louis in 1906, famous overnight at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées at nineteen, a spy for French intelligence who hid secrets in her sheet music, the mother of twelve adopted children at her château in the Dordogne, the only woman to give a speech at the 1963 March on Washington, and the first Black woman inducted into the Panthéon in 2021. She sang that she had two loves, her country and Paris. Her son and biographer named six women she loved as well.The story is told twice: once at a natural pace, then again slowly with long pauses to ease you into sleep. Along the way you'll see velvet seats on the Avenue Montaigne, red lamps in Montmartre, small shoes on a château staircase, a hot August afternoon on the National Mall, and a coffin of soil from four homes carried up stone steps.Perfect for falling asleep, bisexual and Black queer history, Jazz Age Paris, women of the Resistance, and anyone who needs a calmer story tonight.Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported. If these stories help you rest, you can support the show at https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support. And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.Related episodes: Gladys Bentley · Ma Rainey · Bessie Smith · Colette and Missy · Marlene Dietrich

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 Africa's first Pride march. Born in Soweto in 1957, he hid his parents from the police as a boy, came out at eighteen, and founded the first group for Black gay men in South Africa. Tried for treason alongside the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, he came out to his comrades in prison and in court, and changed their minds. On October 13, 1990, he marched through Johannesburg in the first Pride on the continent and told the crowd he could not separate being Black from being gay. Six years later, South Africa became the first country to protect sexual orientation in its constitution.Along the way: jacarandas on wet pavement, maize fields under highveld storms, a stack of prison letters, a rainbow flag over a coffin, and two men exchanging rings in a small office eight years later, to the day.Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep.☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.

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 couples could marry. It begins in 1986, when Chi Chia-wei came out on national television, asked a court to notarize his marriage, and was detained for it under martial law. It ends on May 24, 2019, in a registration office beneath Taipei 101, with rainbow-colored forms on the counter and more than five hundred couples signing their names across the island.Along the way: the soft roar of Taipei scooters, night-market steam and temple incense, the first Pride march with its masked faces, a stamped page in a city register, the 2017 court ruling that started a two-year clock, a hard referendum night, and forty thousand people waiting in the rain on May 17 until the president could write two words: love won.Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep.☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.

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 her sitcom character came out together on ABC, and a country gathered in living rooms and bars and one rented theater in Alabama to hear it.Along the way: an oyster counter in New Orleans, a phone call to God, Johnny Carson waving her to the couch, a network that wanted her to get a puppy instead, Oprah and Laura Dern saying yes, a Time cover that said it in three words, the sponsors who left and the ones who stayed, a Birmingham station that went dark and five thousand people who watched anyway. Then the Emmy, the parental advisory, the quiet years, and the long way back: a blue fish, a talk show, a wedding, a medal.Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep.☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.Related episodes: The Unfolding Story of Elliot Page · Tom Daley's Olympic Gold · George Michael · Marlene Dietrich

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 of Tehuantepec in southern Mexico. A Zapotec identity for people called boys at birth who grow up into something the town has always had a name for, and a place at the table.Along the way: the market the women open before sunrise, wind off the lagoons, the legend of San Vicente Ferrer and the three bags of seeds, a mother teaching her child to embroider flowers, the Authentic Intrepid Seekers of Danger and the vela they've held every November since the 1970s, the 2017 earthquake and the rebuilding, the first muxe on the cover of Vogue, and a single red stitch at the end of the day.Told twice, as always: first at a natural pace, then slowly, with longer pauses, to carry you into sleep.☕ Restful Rainbow is independent and listener-supported: https://restful-rainbow.captivate.fm/support And if not, no need at all. Sleep well either way.Related episodes: We'wha of Zuni · Kapaemāhū: The Healer Stones of Waikīkī · The Voices We Carry · The Colonel Who Rode with Zapata: Amelio Robles