“I don’t want to tell you my name yet – or maybe ever,” begins Fruit, a brand new podcast from the mind of Issa Rae. It explores questions of race, gender, identity, and sexuality through the story of a black football star who is questioning his sexuality. It sounds like it could be ripped from the headlines, but it’s a new fictional series from Rae, who is best known as the star of the web series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl.

Why you should listen:

Issa Rae is one of those multi-hyphenate creators who is the star, writer – and brains – behind a tiny empire of creative endeavors. In addition to The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, she’s in another web series called The Choir; meanwhile, Insecure, a comedy pilot that she made for HBO with The Nightly Show host Larry Wilmore, has been picked up. Between all of that, somehow she found time to write Fruit.

It’s no accident that the podcast debuted while the nation’s attention is on American football and the Super Bowl. Fruit tells a fictional story, told in the first person by a man known only as X, who is a professional football player on a journey of self-discovery and sexual exploration.

In the show, under a blanket of anonymity, X discusses his rise from a third string football player to a star. When a man in a bar sparks attraction, he decides to explore his feelings, which he has repressed in the past. In the show, X discusses his relationships with his friends, family, and teammates as he tries to navigate his own emotions amid everyone else’s ideas about his role in an alpha male-dominated industry. As a larger league-wide scandal unfurls around him, X must decide how to tell his own story – not only for himself, but for others like him. It’s an honest and intimate portrayal of not just sexuality or race or how the two intersect, but of humanity – and it’s exactly the kind of storytelling that fans have come to expect of Rae.

The podcast advertising group Midroll was in the market for narrative fiction and when Rae’s business manager presented her with the opportunity, she jumped at the chance. “I’ve been listening to podcasts for several years now, especially the unscripted conversation version,” Rae said. “I really liked the idea of expanding the world of audio and telling a story or listening to a story in my car and being transported without having to sit down and watch something.”

Rae already knew what story she wanted to tell, as it had been floating around in her head for a few years. “It’s a story I’ve always wanted to tell about a young black man’s sexual exploration,” Rae said. A podcast was the perfect format for the story she envisioned. “It feels very personal, like a diary entry,” she said. “This medium that allows for a character to be talking to an audience one-on-one just felt like the appropriate medium. This character, X, is telling very personal stories of his life and to listen with headphones or [in] a room or a car, [it] feels like he is talking to you directly. It just felt like the right type of environment and tone for the journey we’re taking you on with this character.”

While the story sounds reminiscent of Michael Sam, the first openly gay NFL player, Rae swears it’s purely fiction. “I had the idea before Michael Sam came out. I’ve been sitting on this idea for two or three years now. I was just really interested in this hypermasculine sport and hearing stories about football players who couldn’t come out,” Rae said.

“All these alpha-male sports just don’t allow for masculine gay men,” she said. “And masculinity itself is just [so] fragile that I always found it interesting to explore in the sports world. Michael Sam coming out just helped me realize that it doesn’t happen all the time. It just gave more fuel to the story.”

While the opening of the podcast says that the story is based on true events, Rae admits that it’s a bit fuzzier than that.

“It’s based on what I believe to be true events that are unspoken,” she said. “It’s inspired by things that I’ve read about or heard about and chosen to make a narrative story about. In the same way that Fargo is based on true events, this is based on true events.”

Rae is also clear that X is not per se gay, but rather just exploring his sexuality without applying the world’s labels to his actions. “I wanted to explore a character who identifies or is very open and honest about his exploration, but doesn’t want to be labeled,” said Rae, who was also interested in exploring what she sees as a double standard in the treatment of bi-curious women versus men.

“Women can openly experiment and kiss a girl or sleep with a girl and no one will bat an eye and you can still continue being straight, whereas men, if they admit to thinking a guy is attractive, automatically their sexuality and masculinity is tainted,” Rae said.

While Rae may be a newcomer to the world of audio, she’s already a big fan. “It takes way less time than visual storytelling!” she said, laughing. A cast of professional actors and a talented engineer help her re-create the story she envisions in her head. “It’s so much easier to have big budget ideas because you know that no one is seeing it. I can have a football game play out with a stadium full of fans and it doesn’t cost nearly as much as if I had to play that out visually.”

Where to start: Episode 1

Listen to Fruit on the Howl Premium subscription service, via its app or at howl.fm