STORIES by Lea Thau

Legendary non-fiction writer, Gay Talese, discusses his marriage, his work, and the scandals that have made waves in both. 

Producer Lea Thau embarks on a strange online dating adventure. 

While doing a story about online dating, Lea gets her heart broken (yet again). Get the full story here. The original Love Hurts series had four epsiodes, which were dowloaded millions of times and  was the most popular series Lea has ever created. Only the first two of those episodes are available here (this one and the next one), the others are for paying subscribers only (who also get access to the entire Strangers archive, ad-free).  Join for $5 at Leasplace.substack.com or Leasplace.supercast.com to gain full access  and support my work! 

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. A version of this … Continue reading Falling Slowly → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our storyteller today is Erika Warren-Yarber. She’s the COO of the Wind River Development Fund and the Wind River Sage Fund. Please consider supporting their work.And please consider supporting my work by becoming a paying subscriber on Patreon or Substack. Thanks to the Just Transition Fund for connecting me with Erika. I directed a storytelling show for their partner convening, and Erika was one of the storytellers. If you’d like to hire me to direct a storytelling show, or teach a storytelling workshop, or help you craft your story, email me at stories@leathau.com.The champion song that played when Erika got the big news was by Indian Hill at Sho-Ban Festival Powwow 2022. Thanks, as always, to Paul Dreux Smith for making the music and mixing. Also big thanks to my Associate Producer, Vix Jensen, and my Project Editor, Christina Thyssen, and to Pernille Clifforth for illustrating the series, to Avi Odenheimer for making The Hopeful Locals logo, and to Heather Kitching and Jen Alevizos for their input and support.

Today you're going to meet some members of the Wind River community and hear their stories. This episode is a continuation of last week's episode with Erika Warren-Yarber. If you missed that, you might be glad to hear it first, but you can also jump in right here.This is Episode 7 of The Hopeful Locals for my paying subscribers and it's the Episode 2 here on the free podcast. If you would like to support my work and unlock the entire Hopeful Locals series + my member-only series The Way Forward + the entire Strangers archive of nearly more than 90 episodes, you can join us at STORIES by Lea Thau on Patreon and Substack. Big thanks this week to Art Lawson and Wilma Wagon of the Wind River Fish & Game and Jason Baldes of the Tribal Buffalo Initiative, as well as Paul Huberty and Erika Warren-Yarber, who run The Wind River Development Fund and The Wind River Sage Fund, where you can track the progress of their Recompete grant projects and support their work.I also want to thank the Just Transition Fund for introducing me to Erika. They’re the only philanthropic initiative focused on coal community transition in the U.S., working to create economic opportunities for the frontline workers and communities hardest hit by the transition away from coal.Huge thanks to my Associate Producer, Vix Jensen, to Paul Dreux Smith for making the music and mixing, to our resident artist and illustrator Pernille Clifforth, to my project editor, Christina Thyssen, to our production intern Jen Alevizos, and a special thanks this week to Heather Kitching for her help.Questions, comments, story pitches, feedback? Email us at stories@leathau.com or find us on Facebook and Instagram.See you next week!

The hope holds strong in this final episode about the people on the Wind River Reservation. It is brought to you by our supporters on Patreon and Substack. Huge thanks to the visionaries of this episode: Jackie White, Kelly Pingree, and Erika Warren-Yarber. Please visit The Wind River Sage Fund, which was established by The Wind River Development Fund to manage their Recompete grant projects, and please check out and support the Sweetgrass Food Lodge and the Wind River Food Sovereignty Project.We have a COMMUNITY HANGOUT, open to all FREE & PAID members, TOMORROW:Thursday, May 21: 11:30am PT – 12:30pm MT - 1:30pm CT – 2:30pm ET – 7:30pm GMT – 20:30 CET – 4:30am (Fri) AEST. Become a FREE member on Patreon or Substack to see photos from this episode. Or become a paid member and join our IN-PERSON hangout in Copenhagen June 25th! INTERN WITH US:We’re looking for a summer intern. If you think that might be you email us at stories@leathau.com and tell us a little bit about yourself — your interests, relevant skills, and availability. Position can be remote. Thanks to our sponsors, Tink Media, a woman-founded, gender-inclusive podcast growth and discovery company, and Podcast The Newsletter, which is a weekly roundup of the best things in podcasting from Lauren Passell. If you like my work, I think you’ll like the things Lauren writes about. And thanks to the Just Transition Fund for introducing me to Erika, and for supporting communities like hers and helping organizations like The Wind River Development Fund secure the grant funding they need to make a real difference.As always, I’m grateful to my associate producer, Vix Jensen for all her help, to Paul Dreux Smith, for making the music and mixing, and to Pernille Clifforth for illustrating this series. Also big thanks to my project editor, Christina Thyssen, and to Heather Kitching and Jen Alevizos for their help.Last but not least, thanks to all of you for listening. If you like what we do, please rate and perhaps review the show wherever you listen to podcasts. It helps our rankings!Questions, comments, story ideas? Email us at stories@leathau.com.

Today you’re going to meet John Doyle, and I’m going to let him tell most of the story, because I like the way he tells it. John has had an interesting life, and he tells his story in the same warm, frank, meandering way that he seems to approach most things. He lives and works in the town of Crow Agency, and it’s small enough that the only directions he gave me to his office were to “drive through town and look for the pink house.” Inside, I found John, surrounded by machines and samples that related to his scientific research, and I found a story of hope, resilience, and reconciliation, beyond what I’d imagined – and beyond what I, myself, can muster, even on my best days. This is episode 10 of The Hopeful Locals for our paying subscribers on Patreon and Substack, and I want to thank them for making our work possible. If you 'd like to join us, you'll unlock more than 100 bonus episodes and get invited to my member hangout in Copenhagen on June 25, our monthly community hangs on Zoom, and much more. If you'd like to see photos that go with John's story become a FREE newsletter subscriber on Patreon or Substack, or join our community on Facebook and Instagram. Big thanks to John Doyle for sharing his story. He’s getting ready to retire from Little Big Horn College where he’s served as Principal Investigator and Project Coordinator for the Crow Water Quality Project and several environmental health grant research initiatives. He also works closely with Montana State University and with the Crow Environmental Health Steering Committee, which he co-founded. John serves on the Board of the local non-profit, Plenty Doors, which he helped Charlene Johnson start. They’re a native CDFI, supporting new businesses on the reservation, and they run a number of great programs, including a workforce development program and an Elders and Youth program, where the youth learn from the elders and benefit from their cultural knowledge and wisdom. Be sure to check out and support their work!Thanks to Paul Dreux Smith for making the music and mixing, and to my Associate Producer, Vix Jensen, for her help with this story and so many other things. Also thanks to my project editor, Christina Thyssen, and to Pernille Clifforth for illustrating this series. A special thanks to Heather Kitching and Jen Alevizos for their help this month.You can email us anytime at stories@leathau.com. We love hearing from you!

This is a story of mothers, love, regret, and redemption, and of secrets from many years past that cast long shadows into our lives. It’s about how Deborah Jiang-Stein came to be pulled over by two highway patrolmen at 19 years-old, with a trunkload of dope, a .38 revolver, and a 10” switch blade. That was only the beginning of her long journey towards what she was looking for. This story is a Strangers rerun from 2015, followed by a little catch-up with Deborah. It's the first installment of our Summer of Strangers where we revisit some of our favorite stories from that show. All the stories we’ve picked for the series relate in some way to the American experience, as we take a close look at the country that just turned 250, through the personal stories of some of its people. If you’d like to see pictures that go with this episode, you can find them in these free, public posts on Patreon or Substack where you can also sign up for our free newsletter. Thanks to our storyteller, Deborah Jiang-Stein, author of the memoir Prison Baby, and the story collection Lucky Tomorrow, and founder & CEO of the unPrison Project.Thanks to Paul Dreux Smith for making the music for the new parts of this episode and for helping me mix. Big thanks, as always, to my associate producer Vix Jensen, and to our interns, Crab Saylor Hochsprung-Cotrell and Aviva Barry, as well as to Heather Kitching.We’d love to hear what you think of this story, and of this series, and of life in America. If you have anything to say, send a voice memo to stories@leathau.com and we might use it on the show, or just send us a regular email. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram. If you’d like to help make our work possible and access another 80 Strangers episodes like the one you just heard, and much more, become a paying subscriber on Patreon or Substack.Thanks for listening…and don’t be strangers:)