Madge Weinstein

Madge Weinstein with poster design by Fausto Fernós
Hosted by	Madge Weinstein (Richard Bluestein)
Genre	Comedy
Updates	Daily (mostly)
Debut	December 2004
Website	yeastradio.com

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. 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".

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.

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.