Hey everyone, hope you've all been hanging in there. No theme song today because this is not a gender reveal episode. Today I have the pleasure of sharing the first episode of the second season of the After Lives podcast. It's been a couple years since we shared someone else's podcast episode in the gender reveal feed, and this is mostly because people sort of stopped making narrative radio

due to do economic constraints and changes in the industry.

You don't care about that.

That's fine.

The point is that, thank God, there are still a few people out there making incredible long-form

narrative work, and one of those shows is the After Lives podcast. After Lives is hosted by

Raquel Willis, who you may remember from previous episode of Gender Reveal or the fact that

she is very famous. And After Lives is an extension of the work that Raquel had previously done at Out Magazine

on the Trans Obituaries Project.

So After Lives seeks to honor trans people and the legacies that they leave after they pass away.

And the first season was about Lailene Polanco.

The second season is about Marsha P. Johnson. You might remember that a few episodes ago, I spoke

with Heron Walker about the marshyification of Cecilia Dintilly. And we talked about

marshyification as the concept of taking a trans person

and flattening them so that they don't really get to have a lot of depths. They don't really get

to have a true personality. They're more like an image that a brand would slap on a t-shirt if

they were feeling. You know, remember when brands used to make gay stuff. So, like, maybe that's an outdated

reference. But you know what I mean? Like, people are always, like, invoking Marcia's name to make a

point that they know about black trans women. But what do they actually know about Marcia? What do you

and I even know about Marcia? Well, one thing that I love about this new season of afterlifes is that

Raquel is willing to really get in there and be like, yeah, Marcia was a real person who had many different experiences and relationships and qualities and good days and bad days.

And this is just what I've really been looking for with Marcia.

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