Welcome to The Gayest Generation, where we hear LGBTQ older adults speak for themselves. Every episode, we sit down with a different member of the LGBTQ community who laid the foundation for the freedoms we have today. 

In this episode, we speak with Roger LeLievre. Roger has lived a thousand lives--Ann Arbor News reporter, longtime DJ at The Nectarine Ballroom, Lake Superior freight ship sailor. We get an inside look at the height of queer nightlife in Ann Arbor, the unique challenge of interviewing Yoko Ono, and almost killing Sylvester.

Video extra from the feature-length documentary Welcome to Commie High from 7 Cylinders Studio.

Terry Swartzberg, a Jewish “Ethical Campaigner” who has lived in Germany for 45 years, speaks with us from his home in Munich Germany. Terry Swartzberg became a reporter for the International Herald Tribune. Terry talks about the time he met with Presitent Vladimir Putin and the profound effect the invasion of Ukraine is having on Germany.

In The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum explores the alarming state of food production in early 20th-century America and the titanic battle to make food safe.

In honor of World Press Freedom Day, internationally acclaimed journalist Rami Khouri came to AADL to share his latest research on politics and economics in the Middle East. In this talk, Khouri focuses on the Middle East and the links between press freedoms and other destructive trends, such as growing poverty and declining political engagement. He also links Middle Eastern trends with global ones, showing that these are global problems and not specific to one area or culture.