Next week sees the release of a new Supergirl movie, so for this week’s Sewers of Paris we’re diving into the archives to revisit my 2020 interview with artist Joe Philips. Joe’s illustrations of handsome, happy gay men were some of the first glimpses I got of gay life, back in the 90s when I was a teenager exploring the Internet. I remember finding his art both sexy and wholesome, showing scantily-clad young men in romantic scenes. It wasn’t until a few years later that I learned about his work on mainstream superhero comics … and his more erotic artwork. Joe’s portfolio spans a wide variety of settings and themes, not unlike his childhood, which spanned rural farms and big cities, with influences that include classic TV, Broadway musicals, church, and his grandmother: A practicing witch.

We’ll have that interview in a moment. First a quick reminder that I host weekly livestreams every Sunday on Twitch, and I hope you’ll join me for those. Plus — check out my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo! at GaySitcoms.com; subscribe to my email newsletter at MattBaume.com, and if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, support the show on Patreon at Patreon.com/mattbaume. 

Also, if you’re in Seattle, I’m hosting a live talk about coming-out scenes this Monday, June 22! It’s at Elliott Bay Books on Capitol Hill, and tickets are free. More info on my website at mattbaume.com/events.

For this week’s episode, we have two guests: Andrew Klaus-Vineyard and Daniel Talbott are the directors of a new documentary short called Welcome to Tool Shed, which opens to the door to an iconic leather bar in Palm Springs. They’re just back from showing the film at Cannes, and it’ll be popping up at film festivals around the world in the coming months. Daniel and Andrew are longtime collaborators, first with daring theater projects, then with queer horror, and now with a documentary about how a generation that never expected to be senior citizens, and what they have to teach us about not just enduring difficult times, but thriving.

My guest this week is Caleb Roehrig, author of young adult mysteries and the occasional romance. Caleb had always wanted to be an author, but life intervened and he found himself living in LA, working as a producer on reality TV shows. He didn’t realize it at the time, but that work was a training ground for storytelling. Though he still might not have figured it out until an economic crisis forced him to try something new.

We’ll have that interview in a moment. First a quick heads-up that Sewers of Paris episodes will take a pause for the month of May — but you can come see me live, because I’ll be on a book and speaking tour all month long. Come see me in Stockholm; Vienna; Utrecht; and Heidelberg, Germany. Details and dates here!

The world just celebrated Shakespeare’s birthday — born in late April, a scant four hundred and sixty two years ago, which makes him almost as old as this podcast. Over the years we’ve had many guests on The Sewers of Paris for whom Shakespeare’s work was an inspiration, and this week we’ll hear my 2021 with Jeffrey Masters — then the host of the acclaimed podcast LGBTQ&A, and now a senior producer at The New Yorker Radio Hour. Jeffrey launched his career in interviews and storytelling with a move to LA, planning to be an actor. And at first, he found that his Shakespearean training left him unprepared for what Hollywood was looking for. 

Also: A quick heads-up that the Sewers of Paris will take a little pause for the month of May — but you can come see me live, because I’ll be on a book and speaking tour all month long. Come see me in Stockholm; Vienna; Utrecht; and Heidelberg, Germany. More details and dates are on my website.

My guest this week on The Sewers of Paris is Jes Battis, who’s just written an appreciation and analysis of the movie Labyrinth entitled It’s Only Forever. Labyrinth turns 40 this year, which marks 40 years of Jes’ particular fascination with the goblin characters — and wondering why he’s always felt so eager to descend into their weird scrungly world. Fortunately, writing a book about it provided some clues.

To mark the recent re-re-re-rebooting of The Muppet Show, this week we’re heading into the Sewers archives to revisit my 2020 interview with Dan Steadman. Dan grew up in a household that was so religious, his parents forbade him from watching certain episodes of The Muppet Show, due to a guest appearance by Alice Cooper. His upbringing in a sheltered religious community found him placed in a lot of unusual circumstances, including a reboot of his entire identity when his family swapped lives with a family in Brazil. A career in showbiz took him to Los Angeles, where he worked alongside big-time celebrities and also faced a crisis — the more comfortable he was living as an openly gay man, the more he realized that he’d have to cut ties with some of the homophobic celebrities he worked with.

A few weeks ago I came across an online video from a comic convention featuring a phalanx of comic book figures — life-size statues, painted to look like they’d walked off the pages of a comic book. Their creator is Greg Maraio, an actor and artist in Boston who fills his time between shows with this unique project that’s turned into an artistic calling … though for many years, it seemed like it was bringing him to financial ruin.

 We’ll have that interview in a moment. First a quick reminder that I host weekly livestreams every Sunday on Twitch, and I hope you’ll join me for those. Plus — check out my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo! at GaySitcoms.com; subscribe to my email newsletter at MattBaume.com, and if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, support the show on Patreon at Patreon.com/mattbaume.

The day this episode comes out, March 26 2026, is the 115th birthday of renowned playwright Tennessee Williams. And to mark the occasion, we’re heading into the Sewers archives to hear my 2020 interview with writer William V. Madison, whose career was inspired in part by a moving experience in college involving a Streetcar Named Desire. That brought William to a series of adventurous jobs, from working on Broadway shows to producing the news alongside Dan Rather, singing to Angela Lansbury, earning a nickname from Fidel Castro, and writing a biography of Madeline Kahn. 

My guest this week is illustrator Ricardo Bessa, whose beautiful art features lush colorful fantasy settings and characters on fabulous adventures, often very queer. Ricardo knew he was a fish out of water in the town where he grew up, and planned to move to London to find others like him … and that worked, at first, but he didn’t count on running into burnout that nearly ended his career.

On last week’s episode we heard from drag comedienne Pissi Myles, and this week we’ll hear from Pissi’s husband, photographer and creative director David Ayllon. David’s specialty is weird colorful visions that lean heavily on the spooky, the queer, and the poppiest of pop art — a career that he thought he’d blown after one particularly disastrous interview and a years-long search for something that seemed, for a long time, impossible: A job that pays the bills and is creatively fulfilling. 

We’ll have that interview in a moment. First a quick reminder that I host weekly livestreams every Sunday on Twitch, and I hope you’ll join me for those. Plus — check out my book Hi Honey, I’m Homo! at GaySitcoms.com; subscribe to my email newsletter at MattBaume.com, and if you’re enjoying The Sewers of Paris, support the show on Patreon at Patreon.com/mattbaume.