Radiotopia Binge Week 3: KCRW’s Strangers Podcast
For Fans Of: Voyeurism, Meeting New People, and Crying Profusely Because Reasons
Here’s the deal: Radiotopia.FM, the brainchild of Roman Mars (99% Invisible, PRX Remix) and the Public Radio Exchange, was announced into existence last week. There are seven shows currently included in the project: 99% Invisible, Love + Radio, KCRW’s Strangers, The Truth, Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything, Radio Diaries and Fugitive Waves. More shows will be added over time.
I’m going to listen to as many episodes of each show in Radiotopia as I can. This week, I listened to 30 episodes of KCRW’s Strangers Podcast, by Lea Thau — two years’ worth. You can listen to 99% Invisible on iTunes and Stitcher, and find out more about it here.
“Welcome to Strangers, from KCRW’s Independent Producer Project. My name is Lea Thau, and I’ve spent most of my life around people like myself, who left their hometown to go to the big city. And I’ve always wondered: why is it that some people cannot wait to get out of their hometown, and others never want to leave? And for those of us that did leave, what were we seeking? Would we find it? And what was the cost?” — Lea Thau, Episode 17: “Mike Gerle: American Mormon-International Mr. Leather”
We’re approaching the halfway mark in our bingelistenthrough (gesundheit) of every podcast in the Radiotopia.FM stables. At this point, I suppose I should be concerned that I haven’t actually been able to finish any of the series I’ve listened to so far. I certainly came close this week, thanks to a last-minute “stay-up-all-night-listening-to-podcasts” ultra-binge, but I was still six episodes away from the finish line for KCRW’s Strangers Podcast.
Every public radio show not concerned with talking to politicians or other newsmakers about current affairs is, in a sense, making an attempt to connect the listener with a person or a point of view not their own. The difference between this myriad of other shows and Lea Thau’s Strangers podcast is that Thau wants you to know that you’re explicitly in this realm.
The format of Strangers is simple enough: Thau introduces each episode with either a personal anecdote or a general parable about the show’s theme, followed by an interview with the particular stranger she wants us to meet. Strangers has introduced us to an ex-Mormon, polyamorous, gay leather daddy, a man who used primal scream therapy to try and erase a painful past, a woman who works as a producer for court television shows, and so much more. The episodes are short but incredibly sweet, leaving a hook in the back of the listener’s brain that compels them to want more.
Thau’s main project since starting the show in 2011 seems to be simply: illuminate the sometimes-disparate, sometimes-convergent nature of the human experience. Prove to the listener that meeting strangers is an important part of our lives. We do this all the time, usually without thinking about it. But what if we took special care in thinking about everyone we interacted with?
That’s why I would recommend you dropped what you’re doing and go listen to Strangers right now.