18 Episodes About Gender Transitions

Galen Beebe
Bello Collective
Published in
7 min readSep 30, 2016

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Update: Greetings! Since I originally published this list, a plethora of new podcasts have joined the scene, many of which are hosted by trans and nonbinary creators. The shows listed below tell stories of gender transitions, but they are almost entirely hosted by cisgender creators.

I recommend finding podcasts about LGBTQ+ experiences that are made by folks in the LGBTQ+ community. You can start with these lists from Gender GP, Podcast Review, and Poddraland.

Here are eighteen great episodes from the past fifteen years about people who transition from one gender to another — socially, physically, and legally. Each episode tells the story of someone, or someones, who is assigned one gender at birth and decides to live as another. Some transition completely, some live as both male and female, and some find a place in between.

1. ‘The Secret (and Not So Secret) Life of Theresa Sparks’, Fugitive Waves

[May 12, 2015, 17 minutes]

Theresa Sparks is a San Francisco police commissioner, mom, LGBTQ+ activist, and trans woman. In this episode, we hear about her transition and the work she’s done with the San Francisco Police Commission from her, her son, her colleagues, and comedian Margaret Cho.

2. ‘Mama, I’m a Girl’, How to Be a Girl

[June 7, 2014, 7 minutes]

At three years old, host Marlo Mack’s child informed her that she was not the the boy everyone had assumed she was, but a girl. After some adjusting (on Marlo’s part), M, as Marlo calls her daughter on the show, transitioned. This is the first episode of a show about their lives — from choosing elementary schools to telling friends to fighting transphobic legislation in their home state. (As an added bonus, you can watch the amazing, animated version of this episode.)

3. ‘I’d Rather Have a Living Son Than a Dead Daughter’, Only Human

[Aug. 2, 2016, 27 minutes]

A year ago, Dr. Deanna Adkins opened the only center for transgender youth in North Carolina — the same state that recently passed HB2, aka the bathroom bill. Since opening the center, Dr. Adkins has seen kids from all over the south — some of whom wait for months and travel for days to have their appointment. In this episode, we hear from three teenage patients who are in the midst of their transitions.

4. ‘My Name Is Shawn and I Prefer He’, The Leap

[Dec. 16, 2015, 20 minutes]

It took Shawn over forty years to come out as trans. He wasn’t hiding it — he just didn’t know that being trans was an option. For years, he lived as a lesbian, and even after he moved to San Francisco and trans outreach workers began approaching him, he didn’t realize that this was the missing piece that kept things feeling off. It wasn’t until he saw another black trans man that he realized what he wanted to change. In this episode, Shawn tells his story. (Content Warning: Mention of child sexual abuse.)

5. ‘‘Maddy’ Just Might Work’, Modern Love

[April 6, 2016, 22 minutes]

Jennifer Finney Boylan reads her own story from the New York Times’s Modern Love column about her transition from Daddy to Maddy, and how her family has changed along with her. After reading, she discusses how her life has changed since her essay was published.

6. ‘Lili’, The Heart

[Feb. 17, 2015, 8 minutes]

A short episode about Lili Elbe, a Danish trans woman who was born in 1882. Elbe began her transition after sitting for one for her wife’s paintings when a female model wasn’t available and went on to become one of the first known people to undergo gender confirmation surgery. This essayistic episode includes passages from Elbe’s book, Man Into Woman.

7. ‘Shayle Matsuda: My First Expedition As a Man’, The Story Collider

[Nov. 24, 2014, 14 minutes]

Marine biologist Shayle Matsuda tells the story of going on his first expedition post-transition, describing how he learned to find sea slugs while everyone around him learned to get his pronouns right. A touching, funny story told before a live audience.

8. ‘How to Become a Princess’, The Heart

[22 minutes]

Stefonknee Wolscht, a trans woman and age player in a poly relationship, seamlessly switches between all of her identities: girl, boy, snow plow driver, princess. After living as a man for most of her life, at age 52 she’s found a family that lets her be herself — and loves the person she is.

9. ‘“Am I Trans?”: One Teen’s Quest and How Gaming Helped’, Note to Self

[May 6, 2015, 21 minutes]

This episode starts with the story of Rachel, a.k.a. Razur, who struggled to find her place among the girls until she joined an otherwise all male video game team. Thousands of miles apart, the team quickly forgot that Razur was a girl — which led her to question if that was how she identified at all. Next, we hear from trans video game creators about how video and tabletop games create opportunities for people to assume different characters and to play as genders other than the one they were assigned at birth.

10. ‘Femme Voice’, Us and Them

[Feb. 28, 2016, 37 minutes]

Anne Kelly Skinner is in the midst of her transition, and all is going well — except her voice. No matter how much she practices, she can’t get her voice to sound as feminine as she wants. In this episode, we hear about her struggles to change her voice, how her transition has affected her relationship with her best friend, Dan, and why he has a special attachment to the way her voice sounded before.

11. ‘The Power of Categories’, Invisibilia

[Feb. 6, 2015, 58 minutes]

Paige Abendroth was identified male at birth, and for many years that’s how she identified. But then, in high school, Paige started flipping back and forth between male and female modes. One moment she’d feel like a woman, and then the next — man again. The timing wasn’t predictable, but the shift was complete. In this episode, hosts Lulu Miller and Alix Spiegel explore Paige’s story and the science behind her experience.

12. ‘Aging After Transition’, Beyond Gender Podcast

[Feb. 4, 2016, 39 minutes]

Max transitioned in 1979, at age 20. In this episode, he talks to host Caleb Arring about transitioning, living in “stealth mode”, coming out, and advocating for trans elders. They also talk about the changing norms around coming out and the struggles that trans people face as they age. A combination of a meaningful story and advice on how to help aging folks in the trans community.

13. ‘En Busca de las Palabras / Finding the Words’, Radio Ambulante

[March 11, 2015, 19 minutes]

A Spanish-language podcast about one person’s journey to define himself and how he landed on the term non-binary. Raised in Mexico, Micah came to the U.S. for college, where he learned the word trans, and then non-binary, and then began his transition. As his identity morphed, he had to figure out how to describe himself in Spanish, a language in which talking about oneself requires giving oneself a gender. And then there’s the issue — in the U.S. and Mexico — of describing oneself legally, another system where there are only two options: male and female. (For non-Spanish speakers, there’s an English-subtitled version of the episode on their website.)

14. ‘Finding Miles’, Transom

[June 8, 2010, 27 minutes]

In which Miles transitions — on tape. He begins the story as Megan, a 28-year-old struggling to draft the letter in which he comes out to his parents as trans. Over the course of a year, he takes hormones, gets surgery, and becomes Miles, recording every step of the way.

15. ‘Joy Ladin — Gender and the Syntax of Being: Identity and Transition’, On Being

[Dec. 11, 2014, 53 minutes]

Joy Ladin, Professor of English at Stern College for Women of Yeshiva University, is the first openly transgender person to be employed by an orthodox Jewish institution. In this episode, Ladin talks to Host Krista Tippett about Judaism, poetry, and what it means for her to be a woman.

16. ‘Living the Dream’, This American Life

[Aug 3, 2001, 59 minutes]

A show about being whoever/whatever you want, with a segment on trans teens living in Los Angeles. The segment focuses on Foxxjazell and Ariel, young trans women who are figuring out how to come out, find love, and deal with bullies.

17. ‘Testosterone’, This American Life

[Aug. 30, 2002, 59 minutes]

This show about — you guessed it — testosterone includes an interview with Griffin Hansbury about how taking testosterone changed his beliefs about nature versus nurture when he began acting in stereotypically male ways. He also discusses his complicated relationship with passing as a man — both what he loves about it and what he misses about being read as female.

18. ‘What Is This Thing?This American Life

[Sep. 19, 2003, 59 minutes]

A show about love, with a segment on finding love after transitioning. The segment, narrated by Griffin Hansbury (see above), describes how he and his friend Ray have navigated finding relationships post-transition, including how things that seemed edgy when Griffin was a lesbian came off as sleezy when he began identifying as a man.

Additional Listening:

The Making of the Homobile’, Fugitive Waves

[June 24, 2014, 21 minutes]

The story of making a safe ride service for trans and gender nonconforming people.

The Runway’, StartUp

[May 20, 2016, 37 minutes]

The story of one woman’s quest to find the perfect suit to wear to her wedding, and how that mission led her to start a company for trans and gender nonconforming people in search of a suit that fits.

Close Relations’, Scene on Radio

[May 4, 2016, 17 minutes]

The first story in this episode is about the effect that a woman’s transition has on her wife through the frame of 36 questions that are intended to bring people closer together.

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Editor at the Bello Collective, co-founder of Etc. Gallery (etc-gallery.com), script editor of the podcast Writ Large.