| Yeast Radio | |
| Host: | Madge Weinstein (Richard Bluestein) |
| Status: | Daily (mostly) |
| Began: | December 2004 |
| Genre: | Comedy |
Madge Bertha Weinstein is a fictional Internet personality who maintains Yeast Radio, which has developed a cult following and was among the 50 most-subscribed-to podcasts in 2005.[1] Weinstein is the creation and alter ego of underground filmmaker Richard Bluestein and was described by USA Today as "representative of the type of over-the-top content that would never see the light of day at a mainstream media outlet".[2]
Although Weinstein is a fictional character (and never admitted as such), the majority of opinions, social-political commentary and oblique characteristics of her personality are clearly reflective of Bluestein's own. In essence, Weinstein is both an extension and distortion of Bluestein's actual personality.[3]
Weinstein is an outspoken breast cancer survivor and opinionated Jewish lesbian activist. She is a Vassar College graduate, a "woman of Luna" and claims to be a co-founder of the Lilith Fair. She was also the band manager of the now disbanded riot grrrl rock group, 'Goddess Riot Juice'. She is the self-professed "Margaret Mead of podcasting" as she is an amateur cultural anthropologist who, in her free time, studies the sordid sexual activities of homosexual men. She is well known for her advocacy on a variety of women's issues including her long tenure as a spokeswoman on behalf of women suffering from vaginal yeast. Weinstein also suffers from food allergies and fibromyalgia.
Weinstein is the daughter of Irving Weinstein, a funeral director and owner of Weinstein & Schlump Funeral Homes. She grew up in the Grand Concourse in the borough of the Bronx in New York City. She is the former lover of Ethel Merman (although she tends to exaggerate the details of their now infamous 1967 tryst during Ethel's daughter's funeral) and has had affairs with Martina Navratilova, Ellen DeGeneres, k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge and Rosie O'Donnell. In her youth, she claims to have performed oral sex on Nancy Reagan which she now regrets. Weinstein's most notable lesbian relationship was with Gussie Iscowicz (the alter ego of Bluestein's late partner Juan Montealegre), an elderly hairdresser living in Miami, Florida who suffered from Alzheimer's. For many years, Weinstein edited gay pornography for an urban audience (for a company known only as 'the Dorm'). She currently resides in Miami, Florida with her Italian greyhound Trotsky.
Weinstein co-manages the sister site, Insane Films, which features personal video blogs of Madge's alter ego, Richard Bluestein, as well as features by underground filmmakers and miscellaneous visual content. Insane Films is one of the earliest videoblogs ever created, originating sometime in 2000. However, Madge Weinstein's fame grew largely from her indie podcast Yeast Radio, which began in late November 2004 . Weinstein gained notoriety for her viral video, Cooking With Madge: Lesbians On Acid, which featured a disheveled Madge and her unstable, ambiguously gendered friends attempting to cook "les beans" while high on LSD. A pioneer of the podcasting medium, Adam Curry, helped promote the show in its early life. In late April 2005, Weinstein created Yeast2, a free-form experimental channel in which "anyone (could) contribute to the strange, ugly, pretty macabra [sic] and surreal." Yeast2 closed in 2008.
In early July 2005, Weinstein became one of the first members of Adam Curry's PodShow and was featured heavily in the program, which aired on Sirius Satellite Radio from 6-10 p.m. EST on weekdays before the company's ties with the radio network were controversially severed on May 1, 2007. Weinstein's contract with PodShow ended in April 2008.
Around the same time, Madge Weinstein co-created Eat This Hot Show a collaborative podcast featuring five notable members of the ever-growing "queercast" community: Weinstein, Ragan Fox, Wanda Wisdom, Fausto Fernos and his partner Marc Felion. However, Fausto and Marc were expelled from the show after ten episodes due to internal conflicts with fellow hosts, and the three featured a weekly guest in the episodes following. The show eventually dissipated in this format although, in April 2008, the show was revived with Madge, Wanda and new co-host Auntie Vera Charles. As of 2014, after another hiatus and the departure of Auntie Vera Charles, new episodes are being recorded sporadically with current co-hosts Ragan Fox and Wanda Wisdom. Madge Weinstein and Wanda Wisdom also co-created the online community Qpodder.org, which collects podcasts by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people or characters. Sibling site NellyGator.com allows listeners to subscribe to a single RSS feed containing all podcast episodes from the members of Qpodder. In mid-October 2005, Weinstein, a self-described "pioneering lesbian," began heavily promoting the medium of queer video blogging to coincide with the advent of the video iPod. Her new endeavor Faggregator.com does to videoblogging what Nellygator did for podcasting, and features a single page which houses all the video material submitted by members of the Qpodder community.
Bluestein experienced two personal losses in 2006. Juan Montealegre died on February 11, 2006, after a battle with cancer. Not long thereafter, on May 2, 2006, his 14-year-old dog Chauncey, a heavy fixture on the show in its early days including a memorable episode where Weinstein angrily cleaned up his feces, also died. On September 27, 2006, Richard Bluestein announced on Yeast Radio that he was retiring the character Madge and taking over hosting duties himself due to creative concerns. Madge was reported to be in a hospital in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she received adjustable gastric band surgery for her ongoing weight problem. The surgery went horribly wrong, leaving her in a critical condition. Madge eventually recovered and returned to the show on November 7, 2006.
In early January 2008, with the threat of her expiring PodShow contract, Weinstein relaunched Yeast Radio as a live show, airing on her website from 10:00 CT on Fridays. The live format continued until the end of May 2008 when Weinstein decided to return to a more free-form, unscheduled format. In early 2009, Weinstein resumed streaming live shows sporadically. The 1000th episode of Yeast Radio was streamed live on February 12, 2010.
Weinstein's rebellious, queer punk ethics and her podcast's unconventional content, strong, coarse language and stream-of-consciousness structure have made her an endlessly controversial icon within the more conservative podcasting community.[4] Her show serves as an ongoing protest against censorship, the commercialization of mainstream radio and the continued marginalization of gays and lesbians by the growing monoculture.[5]
Weinstein features a variety of vulgar but eccentric characters on her show. Some frequent contributors:
The show regularly features audio clips involving psychic Sylvia Browne, feminist writer Helen Gurley Brown, Big Meets Bigger, My Strange Addiction and other television programs about morbid obesity and bizarre personal habits.
Weinstein has also interviewed political activist Cindy Sheehan, Wigstock founder Lady Bunny, Democracy Now! reporter Amy Goodman, pioneer of the transgressive art movement Nick Zedd, collaborative documentary filmmaker Kent Bye of The Echo Chamber Project and the experimental, underground filmmakers Usama Alshaibi and Kristie Alshaibi. The show frequently features original compositions from Taylor E. Ross (described as Madge's "cunt doctor"), the mysterious "Mr. Zeeche" and Dave from the Chub Creek's podcast. Because of her prominence within the community, Madge also regularly features fellow queer podcasters on her show such as Ragan Fox, Wanda Wisdom, Auntie Vera Charles, Lady Raptastic and Rebecca Nay.