Hello, hello, and welcome back to a bit fruity. I am so happy that you're here.

Before we get started this week, if you like the show and want to support it, we are on

Patreon, we are doing, I say we, it's just me, it's really just me, but I'm doing

monthly bonus episodes over there and we have a private chat group and it's really nice time and so I'd love if you could support and if not then that is perfectly fine too.

Just kick back and hang out. Today is a really, really special day for the show and for me personally.

I want to give a little bit of background as to why I'm here today and why we're joined by this incredibly important guest to me.

When I was growing up, I didn't know anything about HIV AIDS.

I mean, we were introduced to the topic in school very briefly and the only thing that they taught us was that HIV stood for human-amuna deficiency virus and don't get it and good luck.

And I didn't even know that it had a relationship to the queer community or gay history or anything I mean the AIDS crisis the political like none of that was talked about in health class and history class and so I just didn't know I came out in 2013 when I was in high school and my mom at the time God bless her but she was like don't you don't get AIDS and I didn't even have a framework to understand what that meant And when I was a senior in high school, I came across a picture on Instagram of an act-up protest. And I didn't know what I was looking at. I did a little digging and I ended up coming across a documentary which had come out not long before called how to survive a plague and I watched it and it was like a portal into this part of history

that I felt like I had been denied was just open and it like sucked me in and

for like the second half of my senior year of high school, I did nothing but research about the AIDS crisis and teach myself everything that there was

that you know I you know consuming every documentary every book every TV show

everything that was publicly available one of the main subjects of that documentary

I watched how to survive a Plague was Peter Stately.

In the late 1980s, because of circumstances of his life, which he will tell you about,

Peter went from a Wall Street bond trader, which I don't even really know what that means, but he went from doing something on Wall Street to becoming a full-time AIDS activist and he is here to tell the tale.

In a not-so-abstract way, I credit Peter and his colleagues with my life, really,

which I know is probably a weird thing to say to you, Peter, but it's true.

And I'm so honored to be here talking with you all of these years after you ignited something in me that I hope

sharing your story with people listening today will also ignite in them.

Peter, welcome to a bit fruity. It's a great honor, Matt, to be on your podcast. I've been following you for years and I just love that you got bit by the curiosity bug to learn what had come before you and your generation.

I mean the thing that was crazy to me was the story of the AIDS crisis and of Act Up was it is just so unbelievable.

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