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It’s the Amazing Race Season 34 finale, and Nicole and Karen not only interview the top 3 teams, but they also bring back Aastha and Nina, the lesbian team woefully eliminated at the very start of the race, for a S34 post-mortem. Will Derek and Claire have it out with our hosts for not only erasing Claire’s bisexuality, but also rooting against them most of the time? What will Emily and Molly reveal about the extent of Emily’s injuries? And what makes Michelle, of Luis and Michelle, so fearless about heights? All this and so much more on our grand finale.

There’s a schism in this week’s gay scores doled out by Karen and Nicole, as Karen thinks “all of Iceland is lesbionic,” while Nicole is a little more skeptical as we confront three out of four “straight-facing couples” in the final four. David with the Good Hair touches us with his bravery as he confronts his difficulties swimming this week. We digress into educational riffs about spectrums of racialized masculinity, plus there are several important reveals in our Elimination Station with David and Aubrey, our favorite straight-couple team on The Amazing Race! 

Despite the prevailing heterosexuality (and one lone bisexual) amongst our remaining contestants, episode 10 of The Amazing Race offers the most gaymazing detours yet, from dressing a flamenco dancer, to a challenge dubbed  “Bend Over Backwards,” testing how much a brick arch can, in Phil’s words, “take a load.” Marcus of Michael and Marcus joins us in our elimination station to break down exactly how far behind they were from other teams. Plus, digressions on vegan gravy, the queerness of aesthetics, and other gaymazing topics.

The Amazing Race serves up another Mega Leg, so we have no elimination station this week: just teams racing around Malaga, Spain recreating art, riding bicycles, and pumping up paddleboards. We get into some of the racers’ squeamishness while undertaking a sardine-grilling challenge, and Nicole makes her case for why our hypothetical team might want to choose the other side of the detour. Karen sees Derek’s homage to Salt Bae and is not amused.

The Amazing Race teams head due south from Domme to Toulouse, and Karen and Nicole are tantalized by the Road Block which involves running drills with an entire French women’s rugby team. BUT FIRST, our hosts atone for their bisexual erasure of one of the remaining contestants. Even amidst this gay plentitude, deprivation looms on the horizon as our last officially GAYmazing team, the co-ed cheerleaders Quinton and Mattie, find themselves in our Elimination Station. PLUS: why French horns evoke homo-panic memories, and the poetic local who looks like Karen’s grad school ex.

Nicole and Karen get into a discussion about reclaiming pejoratives like “dyke” and “queer” while recapping The Amazing Race’s return to Europe and the Dordogne region in the South of France. Is the lady-Knight at the genealogy challenge actually Nicole’s “lesbian” doctor in L.A.? Are the short-haired women who used their tractor to rescue the team who drove into the ditch family? Plus, we welcome Glenda and Lumumba into our Elimination Station with a most heavy heart.

The Amazing Race manages another first during its visit to the Kingdom of Jordan: the first team ever to be eliminated for testing positive for Covid is cut from the race within this episode’s opening minutes. Is it just us, or are we starting to see Quentin and Mattie (our official Gaymazing team) beginning to make strides in the competition, including limber stretches to grab tinfulls of nails? We also speculate on whether or not we’d run into gender trouble if a same-sex team elected to do the “flirt dance” during the detour. Plus, we pump Will and Abby for all the info on TAR’s Covid policies and protocols.

The Amazing Race makes its first visit ever to the Kingdom of Jordan, and Karen and Nicole are excited to welcome camel caravans and cute puppies into the show’s environments.. Despite some Gaymazing references to Lawrence of Arabia and the like, this episode scores low on our Gaymazing-meter until we have a chance to meet with Linton & Sharik in our Elimination Station, and hear about Sharik’s queer-of-color storyline that didn’t make its way into the main edit. Listen in for a truly moving visit with the father-daughter team, and our fan-fiction explorations of gay storylines we’d like to see in this season’s TAR.

The first MEGA-LEG reaches its conclusion this week in Florence, Italy, or as Quinton reminds us, “Firenze in Italian.” Nicole beams in from NYC where she just accepted an Edward R. Murrow award for her other pod series Relative Fiction–HOORAY!--and Karen does her best to up episode 4’s Gaymazing score with a couple of gay flourishes, and a mini-rant about exposing kids to straightness. Plus, we “ask for a friend” if teams would be penalized for eating a pinch of mortadella from the charcuterie boards they have to collect from Florence’s bubonic plague windows, and we welcome motivational speakers Rich and Dom to our Elimination Station, after their third anniversary together ends with an L on TAR.

Leg 3 kicks off the first MEGA LEG of Season 34 - but almost certainly won't be the last. This to-be-continued episode has everything from lectures, wheels of cheese, socket wrenches, and of course, driving (or failing to drive) stick shift. Since there was no elimination station, Karen and Nicole are joined by a Gaymazing-Amazing-Race Superfan, Katy Davidson! 

Leg 2 S34 departs from Munich and lands in Innsbruck, Austria and its Alpine environs for some yodeling, cowbells and a leather-clad butt-slapping dancing in the square. Karen speculates whether or not she would be allowed to select her gender-affirming version of the lederhosen/dirndl attire the contestants had to wear throughout the entire leg. Nicole tells us what both incontinence and Jesus have to do with her viewing this week’s episode, and the two welcome team T-Rex to the “Elimination Station.”

Season 34 of The Amazing Race has returned, and so have we! Join Nicole & Karen as they recap the new season from an LGBTQ POV. How do we feel about “the scramble” replacing our old familiar road blocks, detours and route info? How much do we love the engaged lesbian couple, Aastha and Nina from L.A., and who else triggers our gaydar and queer admiration? Plus, Elimination Station returns–we’lll interview this season’s eliminated teams each week right after they get the boot. New episodes drop every Monday with bonus ambient cat and dog noises in the background.

To wrap up the season, we're bringing you post-finale interviews with Raquel and Cayla, Dusty, and Arun and Natalia. 

In this supersized episode of TGR, Nicole and Karen recap the final two legs of the race in Lisboa and Los Angeles. Cayla and Raquel continue to inflame all the fanfic we’ve been weaving about them by calling each other “babe” all over Portugal and Los Angeles. Dusty talks-up Ryan’s upper-body strength in a rowing challenge. Arun and Natalia demonstrate what can be accomplished without ever working out, and Kim and Penn dork out doing foley sound effects after enacting serious piñata carnage in El Pueblo de Los Angeles. Plus: WE INTERVIEW THE WINNERS OF S33, which Nicole predicted midseason after a careful reading of the edit, and video BoCo.

Could leg 9 of season 33 be the gayest episode of The Amazing Race yet? Nicole and Karen have such rich Hellenistic content to explore, from all the Thespians featured throughout this leg in Thessalonaki to the Oracle of Delphi giving us endurance-oriented experimental theater vibes. Through it all, Cayla offers Raquel a back massage, Ryan won’t do the same for Dusty, and at least 3 cats show up, along with a dog who races to the pit stop with a trailing team.

In this food-centric leg 8 of The Amazing Race, we witness more kitchen hubris from the guys, ladies climbing ladderless, some dumpster diving, and add to our TGR Dogs & Cats tally. Plus, Lulu and Lala join us for an elmination station interview to talk about their touching goodbyes to Phil and give the inside scoop on some...digestive realities of the race. 

Today Nicole is joined by noted Amazing Race superfan Poulomi Saha to discuss Amazing Race 33 Episode 7 (Gently Down the Stream) , while our faithful host and executive producer Karen Tongson recuperates from Covid.  We watch the teams try Casu Marzu in Corsica, count metal fish together under the water, fake-almost-drown thanks to editing, and MORE. Tune in!  Poulomi Saha (@poulomiqsaha)  is  an Assistant Professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley, where she teaches courses in postcolonial studies, gender and sexuality theory, and ethnic American literature. She is also the  author  of the award-winning book, An Empire of Touch: Women's Political Labor & The Fabrication of East Bengal.

Leg 6 of The Amazing Race is not for the lactose intolerant, as our contestants take cheesin’ to a whole other level. We get a clear picture of which teams know how to manipulate strips of leather and metal loops round an ass to properly strap on giant metal milk containers. Is sisterhood powerful? Or is it all lip service between the all girl teams whose actions don’t always match their feminist rhetoric? Plus, Akbar and Sheri join us in our very own elimination station to process how they went from masterful fromage making, to spelunking into last place. 

Nicole and Karen experience actual physical distress when they see this week’s Amazing Race Road Block: the second highest bungee jump in the world. Would our resident vegan Nicole be able to stomach the sausage-making challenge that Karen thought was a “no-brainer” choice at the Detour? And which of the teams visits our elimination station?!? Plus, find out more about the three teams who couldn’t return to the race when it resumed in September 2021.

Nicole and Karen rejoin the race as it resumes in St. Gallen Switzerland after a 19 month suspension. The contestants confront dizzying Alpine heights, some fast-moving clouds that Sils Maria would be proud of, and a leather challenge that our hosts feel confident they could master. PLUS: Starting this week, Nicole and Karen will be welcoming TAR 33’s eliminated teams for a special exit segment! Tune in as we chat w/ Michael and Moe about karaoke, the race’s Covid protocols, and their experiences at “elimination station.”