From Lea Thau, Peabody award-winning producer and former Director of The Moth, comes the storytelling podcast Strangers. Strangers is hosted and produced by Lea Thau, with music and mixing by Paul Dreux Smith.
Each episode is an empathy shot in your arm, featuring true stories about the people we meet, the connections we make, the heartbreaks we suffer, the kindnesses we encounter, and those frightful moments when we discover that WE aren’t even who we thought we were.
Subscribe to Strangers by signing up on Supercast, where you’ll find exclusive access to the new 2023/2024 season of Strangers + the archive of OG Strangers episodes.
Or browse the show archives of which a limited number is available for playback here, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Strangers, at its core, is about the beauty and the struggle of human connection and what happens in those moments when we get closer to someone else, or, say, further removed from ourselves. Often that change is subtle and slow, but sometimes it is sudden and monumental. Here is Lyena Strelkoff. Check out Lyena’s blog. A version of this story was previously featured on Season 1 of Strangers. Dean and Lyena A waitress, a former bomber pilot and a retired railroad engineer embark on the adventure of a lifetime. Story told by Jennefer Ludwigsen. A version of this story was previously featured on Season 1 of Strangers. Big Jim arrives in Los Angeles Producer Lea Thau investigates why she’s single. She goes back to guys who didn’t want to date her in recent years and asks them why. From ages 15 to 38 Lea was never single, but since her fiancé left her while she was pregnant, finding love again has been hard these last few years. Is she too old? Is she too broken from that last big heartbreak? Is she too much this or not enough that? While looking for answers, the man she is dating disappears. This is the first installment in a series. For nearly three years, we’ve been following Patrick and Steve and their attempt to adopt their foster daughter, and no other story we’ve done has generated as many emails from you, wondering how it all worked out. Today you will finally know. You can find out more about Patrick Hinds and his podcasts at www.theaterppl.com. An episode about the randomness of fate and how life changes in an instant at the hand of a stranger. A controversial event in 1997 changed the lives of two band mates and their friends. This is their story — with Seth Goldsamt, Matt Gross, Jakob Gurevitch, Ben Mintz, and Jane Burmeister. Matt (Top R) Christoffer (B) and bass player Thomas Vang (Top L) Jenni Rowell had surgery last year that altered her appearance forever. She wrote to us and said “I have a story about seeing a stranger every time I look in the mirror.” As we worked on her story, things took a turn for the worse… Check out Jenni’s blog. A 16-year old is sentenced to life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. One day he is going to high school, worrying about girls and homework, the next day he is arrested for a murder he had nothing to do with and is locked up, never to see the outside again. Twenty years go by while he writes hundreds of letters from prison proclaiming his innocence. Against all odds, he manages to get a retrial, where the prosecutor from his original trial starts crying on the stand, admitting that there were doubts about his case all along (as evidenced in this ABC7 video below). But somehow in the face of injustice, during 20 long years of incarceration, Franky keeps his spirit alive. Young Franky with his dadFalling Slowly
Photo by Julia Sherburne
Big Jim and Smokey Joe
Love Hurts
Two Men and a Baby
(more…)
The Long Shadow
in the New York days before the event
Jenni Rowell: Life, Interrupted
Jenni’s friend did a photo shoot with her before the surgery
Photo courtesy of Koko Warner
Franky Carrillo: Life
