The Laverne Cox Show

On this final episode of the season, the one and only Billy Porter talks about his life in show business. He also candidly shares the trauma of his student days at Carnegie Mellon, the AIDS crisis, and bankruptcy, and his evolution into a multi-award winning superstar. Billy has wisdom to share about what it means to be a true artist dedicated to your craft and explains how his creative expression has been a tool to work through hi...

On this episode, Jennifer Burton Flier joins Laverne again to go deeper into the Community Resiliency Model and to tie in so many of this season’s episodes on healing. They’re all connected! Laverne and Jennifer go over practical skills that you can use to build your resiliency for this (very) challenging world. Those skills are tracking, resourcing, grounding, gesturing, shift and stay, and help now. You can find more helpful ther...

Poor people have always been shamed. Writer, producer and award-winning journalist Mary O’Hara says that’s not new, but the last 40 years of government and corporate interests have created a focused initiative to demonize people who need financial and social assistance. Between the creation of the Welfare Queen trope in the 80’s and vilifying single mothers in the 90’s, most people do whatever they can to not be associated with saf...

In this episode, Laverne introduces us to her opera singing teacher of 25 years, the celebrated opera lecturer, Metropolitan Opera Broadcast co-host and retired diva, Ira Siff. Ira is the creator of La Gran Scena, the all-male cross-dressed opera troupe that performed internationally for over 20 years to much critical acclaim with a cult-like following. Ira was the prima donna of La Gran Scena as his diva alter ego, Madame Vera Gal...

There truly is no better person to discuss spiritual matters with than the delightfully foul-mouthed Reverend Valerie Spencer, therapist, activist and creator of Holistic Empowerment Institute. After an epiphany while meditating on the beach, Valerie decided to “take the God out,” which she explains. Now she specializes in healing that goes beyond physical and mental health. Valerie makes spiritual and relational healing approachab...

This episode is about addressing misinformation, educating, and correcting the record. Right wing media has gone largely unchecked making false claims, distorting statistics, and outright lying primarily about gender-affirming care for trans kids and trans women and girls in sports. The mean-spirited outcry has led to legislators quoting this media and bills becoming very real laws intended to extinguish transgender people. 2021 ha...

In this episode, Dr. Joe Dispenza shares with us techniques to heal the body through meditation. When Joe was a young man he had his spine crushed in a biking accident. Doctors told him that without invasive surgery he may never walk again. Defying the odds, he was able to rebuild his spine in just a few short months using nothing but his thoughts. Since then, he’s devoted his life to the healing potential of the mind-body connecti...

Dr. Nadine Burke Harris is changing the way governments think about and treat mental health. As the founder of the Center for Youth Wellness, she pioneered a system for evaluating Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in order to treat the physical symptoms of childhood trauma. Now, in her role as California’s first Surgeon General, she’s bringing that system to doctor’s offices across the state. Her goal is to integrate mental heal...

We get way more from our ancestors than our height, nose or personality. We absorb life lessons that have been passed down from generation to generation. But what if those life lessons were first learned while trying to survive slavery? What if those skills are now more harmful than helpful and we don’t even know what we’re doing? Psychologist, social worker, researcher and teacher Dr. Joy DeGruy explains how descendants of slaves ...

Laverne, like many of us, struggles with self-criticism. She says it comes from a place of trying to protect herself, but in reality, it can be more debilitating than helpful. Dr. Kristin Neff is a professor and a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research. In this episode, she gives us tools to be more kind to ourselves—- which does not mean being easy on ourselves. Dr. Kristin Neff recently released a book entitled Fierce S...

Warning: Please be aware this episode discusses targeted violence and may be triggering for some, particularly those in the LGBTQ+ community.

If you can understand the cause of something, you can fix it, right? Don’t treat the symptoms; treat the disease. Laverne talks with award-winning forensic psychologist Dr. Karen Franklin about why transgender people, especially women, are so often targeted in violent hate crimes; the role...

What are your dating preferences? Do you prefer a certain ethnicity or race over another? What does it mean to have this sort of preference and where does it come from? Sociologist and social worker Sarah Adeyinka-Skold's latest research involved interviewing Black women about the unique difficulties they experience dating on and offline. In this episode, she and Laverne breakdown how the structures of white supremacy and patri...

Dr. Cornel West, renowned professor and philosopher, and one of the greatest American orators alive speaks with Laverne about what it means to be a love warrior. “Justice is what love looks like in public just like tenderness is what love feels like in private,” is a Cornel West quote that Laverne repeats so often people mistakenly attribute it to her. In this conversation they discuss the resiliency of the Black spirit, how to hol...

Laverne visits with one of her idols and sources of inspiration Tracey ‘Africa’ Norman to talk about her dramatic career in fashion in the 70s and 80s. Norman became a trailblazer when she was chosen as the first Black woman on a box of Clairol hair color in 1975. This was momentous for the entire Black community. It was also momentous for the transgender community, but nobody knew it then. Tracey had been assigned male at birth. S...

Dr. Wendy Walsh, psychologist, author, radio and podcast host, explains just how important our first three years on earth are to the relationships we have over the rest of our lives. There’s this thing called Attachment Theory and it’s based on what happened to us as tiny little beings (thanks, Mom and Dad). As always, there’s hope. Regardless of your personal circumstances, there are definitely ways to rise above! //

Dr. Wendy Wals...

Dating as a trans woman can be complicated, frustrating and even dangerous. Longtime friend, actress and writer Jen Richards, joins Laverne for a very candid truth-only conversation. Together they dish on what they have learned over the years, like why some men are attracted to trans women and why so many men have a hard time being honest about their attraction. Of course they go deep, and Jen shares what she thinks is the biggest ...

In this powerful episode, Laverne talks with Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Rothstein breaks down how the government implemented housing policies in order to segregate Black people primarily in the 1930s and 50s. Though many decades ago, the effects are as present as ever in the education gap, income gap, wealth gap, and “slums.” As violations of the ...

Laverne speaks with Kevin Allred, author, scholar, speaker, who came on the pop culture radar when he started teaching a university course on Beyonce back in 2010. It’s called Politicizing Beyonce, with a syllabus composed entirely of black feminist writers. It’s his mission to facilitate conversations that disrupt America’s racist and heterocentrist status quo by studying America through the eyes of female Black artists and intell...

It was the fall of 2017 when the MeToo Movement exploded. It seemed every woman on social media was typing #MeToo. The reality of how many people had experienced some sort of sexual harassment, assault or other violence shocked nearly everyone. MeToo was the charge that galvanized millions of survivors and allies around the world. MeToo = You Are Not Alone.

The founder of the MeToo Movement, Tarana J. Burke, talks with Laverne a...