40 Plus: Gay Men. Gay Talk.
Welcome to the only podcast exploring the messiness, awesomeness, of masculinity of being a gay man over 40. Each episode is about sparking idea, addressing challenges, and diving deep into what it looks like to be a vulnerable gay guy.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 9
- Latest publication
- Sep 4, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 10, 2026
Latest episodes
Stop Reacting, Start Listening: Joshua Johnson on What Gay Men Get Wrong About Difficult Conversations (opens the original)
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Most gay men do not have a conflict problem. They have a conversation problem. Joshua Johnson spent 25 years in journalism learning why people cannot talk to each other, then turned it into a TED Talk. The former NPR and MSNBC anchor joins Rick to break down what actually happens inside a difficult conversation, why your internal monologue is running the show before you say a word, and why the queer community has a specific and largely unspoken problem with mentorship and validation. This is not
David Lauterstein: Why Fun is Not The Same As Happy (opens the original)
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David Lauterstein co-founded Nasty Pig, one of the most unapologetically sex-positive brands in queer history. Everyone expected his first book to be about that. Instead he wrote Sodomy Gods, a love story about meeting his husband Fred in the 1990s, because 33 years into the marriage he learned something nobody markets to gay men: fun and happiness are not the same thing. Lauterstein talks about what three decades of work, sacrifice, and adaptation actually looks like, what the AIDS crisis taugh
Frank Spinelli on Shame, Trauma, and Why Gay Men Over 40 Are Reading the Wrong Map (opens the original)
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Gay men over 40 have been running from shame their entire lives. Frank Spinelli says that is exactly the wrong move. As a physician, survivor, and author of The Shame Compass, Frank has spent decades watching gay men mistake shame for the enemy when it is actually a diagnostic tool pointing toward healing. The AIDS crisis, childhood trauma, the invisibility of aging, the pressure to perform — all of it leaves a mark. This episode is about what to do with that mark instead of burying it. Frank jo
Dr. Myron Krys: Successful, Wanted, And Still Alone (opens the original)
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Dr. Myron Krys calls himself and loneliness bedfellows. He knows it from the inside, and he sees it every day in his therapy practice with gay men who look like they have it all. Krys explains why open relationships, packed calendars, and career wins do not fix isolation, and how dating apps trade real connection for fetishization and instant rejection. He also opens up about being neurodivergent in a field that rarely talks about it, and why that intersection gets ignored in therapy rooms built
Colin Belcourt: Queer Shame, Self-Erasure, and Stop Cleaning Up Your Story (opens the original)
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Gay men are experts at editing themselves. At work. In relationships. Inside the queer community itself. Colin Belcourt wrote a book about what gets cut out and why it needs to come back. The Blue Hour Gospel is a debut work of fiction built across multiple formats, created entirely by a queer team, and rooted in the parts of queer life most storytelling refuses to touch: shame, longing, self-erasure, and the pressure to become acceptable. Colin joins Rick to talk about what it took to write it,
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