Hi and welcome back to Outward. I'm Tinsley the associate editor at New American a contributing writer at Pacific Standard magazine and I'm currently on a strict diet of

Robin Bops as I prepare for a concert this month. I'm Brian Lauter, editor of Outward, and while I love making and eating desserts, I'm going to have to pass on a serving of silky nutmeg

Ganesh.

I'm Christina Katerucci, a staff writer at Slate and host of the Waves,

Slate's Podcast about Women and Gender, and I recently learned that if you get served the

check when you're out to dinner, your server has decided that you of the couple are the top.

This month, our theme on the podcast is town and country.

For almost as long as gay and queer have been conceptualized as identities and not just categories of sexual behaviors, the narrative around LGBTQ communities has revolved around cities.

So on this episode, we're going to talk about how that urban

centricity came to be, how cities helped form expectations of

queer life, why the stereotype of the urban gay has proved remarkably persistent, how queer people decide

where to make their homes, and why LGBT life thrives in some of the most outwardly, unlikely

places.

To help us unpack some of these questions, we're going to talk to author Hugh Ryan, who studied

gay communities in Brooklyn in the 19th and early 20th century about how cities have provided records of some of these historical queer lives.

Then we'll chat with the Daily Beasts, Samantha Allen, who has written a new book about

LGBTQ life in red states.

That's two authors, so y'all are going to get red. We'll also

answer a listener's questions about building queer community in rural areas.

But first, we're going to kick things off with our March edition of Pride and Provocations.

Brandon, what do you have for us this month?

I am feeling Pride this month per us.

...