What Next - Corporate America Retreats From Pride
Slate News
Slate Podcasts
4.5 • 6K Ratings
🗓️ 10 June 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After years of bigger floats and bigger rainbow-ified logos, corporate sponsorship for Pride Month celebrations is dropping off this year. But, given that Pride is the commemoration of an uprising against police harassment, maybe that’s a good thing.
Guests:
Christina Cauterucci, Slate senior writer and the host of Outward, Slate’s podcast about LGBTQ+ life, and Slow Burn: Gays Against Briggs.
Tessa Skara, comedian, musician, co-host of annual comedy show “Corporate Pride” with James Tom.
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Podcast production by Ethan Oberman, Elena Schwartz, Paige Osburn, Anna Phillips, Madeline Ducharme, Isabel Angell, and Rob Gunther.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I think you're going to be my funniest guest ever. |
| 0:10.1 | Oh, my Lord. |
| 0:11.5 | No pressure. |
| 0:12.6 | Yeah, no pressure at all. |
| 0:16.0 | Tessa Scara is a comedian and a friend. |
| 0:19.7 | I asked them to come into the studio because it's June. |
| 0:23.6 | And Tessa loves pride. |
| 0:27.1 | And also my birthday is in June, so. |
| 0:29.5 | Oh, so it's the whole package. |
| 0:30.4 | I'm kind of the mascot. |
| 0:31.5 | I should have always known I was gay, but I didn't. |
| 0:33.7 | Yeah. |
| 0:34.9 | Yeah. |
| 0:35.6 | No, I love June. |
| 0:37.6 | Oh, it's glittery. |
| 0:39.1 | It's rainbow. |
| 0:40.7 | There's community. |
| 0:42.4 | And this year, it's so, so dark. |
| 0:49.4 | Pride is feeling a little dark this year for a lot of reasons, but a big one is money. |
| 0:58.6 | For the last decade or so, many pride celebrations have been bankrolled by name brand American businesses. |
| 1:06.2 | Pepsi, UPS, Dyson, the vacuum cleaner company. |
| 1:14.7 | This year, a whole lot of those businesses have pulled their funding back, prompting a lot of people to ask, what was corporate pride anyway? To be real, |
... |
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