Outward: Slate's LGBTQ podcast - Making ‘When We All Get to Heaven’
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Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 October 2025
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As Outward proudly presents the 10-episode series When We All Get to Heaven, from Eureka Street Productions, Christina and Bryan had the privilege of sitting down with series host Lynne Gerber. Lynne explains how 1,200 cassette tapes became a wealth of archival audio that infuses this series with so much vitality, joy, and shared mourning of queer churches during a devastating epidemic.
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Produced by Palace Shaw.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Outward Slate's podcast about queer politics, culture, and life. |
| 0:13.2 | I'm Brian Lauder and editor at Slate and I'm here with my co-host Slate senior writer Christina |
| 0:17.9 | Karter-Rucci. Hi, Christina. Hi, Brian. Wow. It's so good to see your face again. |
| 0:23.5 | God, I miss being on the mic with you. Today is a very exciting day because we are here together to |
| 0:28.4 | celebrate the launch of a fantastic new limited series called When We All Get to Heaven. In case you |
| 0:34.1 | haven't listened to the first episode yet, which is just before this one in the feed, |
| 0:37.2 | When We All Get to Heaven is a 10-part narrative show that tells the story of one of the first |
| 0:41.6 | gay positive churches, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, and how it faced |
| 0:46.4 | the personal, social, and political trials of the AIDS epidemic. |
| 0:49.7 | The series is full of beautiful, moving archival audio, actually 1,200 cassette tapes worth, of |
| 0:54.6 | MMC leaders and congregants discussing the fraught and yet necessary place of spirituality and |
| 0:59.6 | queer life, and navigating all the horror, grace, and even joy that came with sustaining |
| 1:04.5 | a church home for a community under siege. And there's also music, lots and lots of gorgeous |
| 1:09.9 | music. I have been somewhat familiar with the Metropolitan Community Church before we were approached to present this show, |
| 1:14.6 | but I really had no idea how crucial the force it was and still is in queer history. |
| 1:19.6 | If, like me, you find yourself in the midst of this dire political moment searching for examples of human compassion, |
| 1:25.6 | resilience, and hope, I guarantee that whether or not you go in for Christianity or religion at all, |
| 1:31.1 | you're going to find something really valuable in this series. |
| 1:33.8 | Right, Christina? |
| 1:35.1 | Yeah, I mean, I feel like this show kind of came at a perfect time |
| 1:39.5 | where, you know, there's a lot of fear and questioning and searching for meaning among people right now in this |
| 1:47.3 | current crisis, this, you know, political and cultural crisis that we're in the middle of right now. |
... |
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