Born into the churn of Reconstruction-era Georgia, Ma Rainey, born Gertrude Pridgett, carved a voice that could not be silenced.

Long before the blues was archived, categorized, or commercialized, Rainey lived it, on tent-show stages, in juke joints, and in a life that unsettled respectability politics.

Known as the “Mother of the Blues,” she sang openly of desire, migration, and survival, leaving lyrical traces that scholars still parse for their radical honesty. Rainey’s recordings and rumored relationships complicate neat binaries of gender, sexuality, and propriety, offering instead a textured portrait of Black self-definition in the early twentieth century.

If we've made an error, please let us know at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://binarybasherspodcast.com⁠

Binary Bashers is produced by Embracing All of Me. EAOM is a storytelling and advocacy platform for the multi, complex, and in-between, uplifting the voices of Bi+ BIPOC, people of color, our kin and friends. ⁠⁠⁠Visit our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FAQs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sources page⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about how this episode was developed.

Meet Claude McKay (1889–1948), the Harlem Renaissance poet whose brilliance, rebellion, and contradictions still echo through Black, queer, and literary history in 2026. Known for his fierce critiques of racism and empire, McKay also lived a life shaped by desires and identities that society had no safe language for yet.

This episode explores the tension between visibility and survival: how a Black man, writing in an era of lynching, criminalization, and moral surveillance, carved out interior freedom while navigating public danger. Through narration, historical context, and careful archival research, Binary Bashers interprets McKay's own words, desires encrypted in verse, truths revealed obliquely in letters, as both survival strategy and creative act.

If we've made an error, please let us know at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://binarybasherspodcast.com

Binary Bashers is produced by Embracing All of Me. EAOM is a storytelling and advocacy platform for the multi, complex, and in-between, uplifting the voices of Bi+ people of color, our kin and friends. ⁠⁠⁠Visit our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FAQs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sources page⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about how this episode was developed.

The bi and queer grandpa you never had taught strangers on airplanes how to love their kids.

ABilly S. Jones-Hennin spent 81 years living out loud — organizing the first March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, building movements nobody else would build, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, loving his husband Chris for 45 years, and never once agreeing to be simple.

That's who ABilly was. Not a monument. A person. The elder who left a door open so wide you could walk through it decades after he first unlocked it.

This is his story. And maybe a little bit of yours.

If we've made an error, please let us know at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://binarybasherspodcast.com. Binary Bashers is produced by Embracing All of Me. EAOM is a storytelling and advocacy platform for the multi, complex, and in-between, uplifting the voices of Bi+ people of color and complexity.

⁠⁠⁠Visit our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FAQs⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Sources page⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to learn more about how this episode was developed.

In a world shaped by code, culture, and the stories we inherit, Binary Bashers emerges to unearth the lives that refuse to fit neatly into boxes. Black or white. Gay or straight. Saint or Sinner are just a few of the binaries explored.

Each episode journeys through the archives, recovering voices often flattened by history, and reassembles them with care, context, and wiser language.

This series is not just about the past or retroactive labeling; it is about the frameworks we still live within, and challenge, today. By tracing the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, culture, and computation, Binary Bashers invites listeners to question binaries of all kinds and to see history as a living, evolving dialogue.

Binary Bashers is produced by Embracing All of Me - a storytelling platform centering the voices of bi+ people of color and complexity.

If you notice any factual errors, please contact us at [email protected]. We are committed to accuracy and respect of the figures legacy and family and will issue corrections as needed. Visit https://binarybasherspodcast.com to view our sources and FAQ pages.