STORIES by Lea Thau

This is the prologue to my new series, The Hopeful Locals, and I hope you’ll enjoy it. The story continues on Friday. Huge thanks to Dengue Fever, Paul’s band, for letting me use the recording from their live show at The Chapel. They have two very special shows coming up on May 15 and 16 at Gold Diggers in LA, a more intimate club than they normally play, and you can also find them in other cities this spring and summer. Big thanks to their drummer and my true love, Paul Dreux Smith, for making the music for this episode and mixing it. Enormous gratitude to my associate producer, Vix Jensen, who has been my rock editorially, practically, and emotionally over the last year; my project editor, Christina Thyssen, who has helped give the stories shape and make them better; and our resident artist, Pernille Clifforth, who has illustrated this episode and every episode in the series. Also big thanks to Avi Odenheimer for making The Hopeful Locals logo. And thanks to all my supporters on Patreon and Substack for making my work possible, especially my Inner Circle. In the Inner Circle, we support each other’s creative work and commiserate about life through special meetings on Zoom and a private Discord. We’d love to have you if this sounds like fun, and I’m offering a discounted price on the upper tiers through the end of this month. Or join at any level, and I’ll be so grateful for your support. If nothing else, become a free subscriber on Patreon or Substack and get invited to our next Community Hangout tomorrow, Wednesday, April 21 to celebrate our public launch. Questions, comments, story pitches, feedback? Email us at stories@leathau.com or find us on Facebook and Instagram.See you Friday!

Hi friends, I’m back! New episodes start dropping Tuesday! Also, heads-up: I’ll be changing the name of this podcast from Strangers to STORIES by Lea Thau on Monday. That hurts a little, I know – for me too – but I promise it’s not the end of Strangers. The plan is for STORIES by Lea Thau to be an umbrella for all my work, including Strangers, and I want to do a new season of that show next year. But first we’ll kick off next week with episodes from my latest series, The Hopeful Locals. If you can’t wait for the public release and would like to binge the first eight episodes of The Hopeful Locals right now, you can do so on Patreon, where you’ll also find 70 episodes of Strangers that are only available there, and much more.If you can’t afford to pay, you can also join my Patreon community for free and get access to some new and old episodes without ads – Episode 1 of The Hopeful Locals is already up there! If you have questions or comments, or perhaps a story you’d like to share, you can email me at stories@leathau.com or message me on Patreon, Facebook,  Instagram, or Substack. My name on all those platforms is now STORIES by Lea Thau. I look forward to spending a lot more time with you again, so please….don’t be strangers!

Wilmot Collins is an interesting man with an interesting story. This is it. I hope you enjoy it. Find more Strangers content, new and old, at www.patreon.com/strangerspodcast - it's only $1 per month to join - or stay subscribed here for more free episodes, which will drop from time to time. However, if you want to receive regular episodes, and hear the continuation of my series called The Cape, and access our archive of more than 90 episodes, join us on Patreon! 

It’s the time of year when skeletons come out of the closet. We honor the dead, as we get ready for holidays among the living, where secrets will be spilled, and secrets will be created that will haunt us for years to come. You might describe today’s story as a classic “noir,” if it wasn’t … Continue reading Do You Like My Little Lie? → Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Born in a coven of lesbian witches in a Haight-Ashbury commune after the fall of Saigon, young Joshua Safran soon hit the open road with his single mother, Claudia, and things only got stranger from there. A word of warning: this story contains some disturbing moments. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Would you give a kidney to a stranger? Inspired by a previous episode of Strangers, Elizabeth decided to do just that. This is Part 1 of the story that ensued.

One day when Susan was five, her father came home and nailed her bunk bed shut. That was the beginning of a long strange journey.

This is a story of mothers, love, regrets and redemption, and of secrets from many years passed that cast long shadows in our lives. It’s about how Deborah Jiang-Stein came to be pulled over by two highway patrolmen at 19 years-old, with a trunk load of dope, a .38 revolver and a 10” switch blade…and … Continue reading Unconditional →