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

Gay and Nan Talese eloping in Rome 1959
 

Gay and Nan on their wedding day

Gay Talese at the typewriter ca. 1969
 

The Taleses in 1980, the year “Thy Neighbor’s Wife” was published
 

Gay and Nan in Rome 1984

“Strangers” producer Lea Thau hosting Gay Talese at the 2008 Moth Ball,
the annual …

First… there’s a story that Joanna Solotaroff‘s mother, Claudia, once told her; a story so shocking that Joanna impulsively pushed her in the street when she heard it. (Mom was fine) The story goes like this… When Claudia was a young woman in disco-era Minneapolis, she met a guy in a Bee Gees suit who invited her to his house for dinner. What followed was one …

Time for another super fun Strangers party, hosted by KCRW’s storytelling podcast Strangers and producer Lea Thau! Join KCRW listeners, “Strangers” fans, and storytelling lovers. Enjoy drinks and appetizers at specialty prices in Más Malo’s más funky basement cantina, make new connections and live to tell the tales…
WHEN: Wednesday, May 15th at 7PM til 10PM
WHERE: Mas Malo, 515 W. 7th Street, Los Angeles, CA90014
To RSVP, …

Hundreds of exotic show chickens vied for the title of Best in Show at the Seaside Feather Fanciers Spring Fling poultry show in Ventura last month. The last competition of the season offered birds and breeders a final chance to bag a chicken-topped trophy along with bragging rights until September. Scroll down for a slideshow with more pictures of chickens at the Seaside Feather Fanciers Spring …

“We live next to the ocean, but we also live on the edge of the desert. And without water, the dust will rise up and cover us as though we never existed.” – Chinatown
Gold made California boom. But water kept it going. That’s especially true for Los Angeles, whose never-ending quest for water is a deep part of its history. Much of LA’s water comes from the …

A few years ago, the Children’s Nature Institute moved its headquarters from a rustic outpost in Franklin Canyon to the very urban Pico-Union neighborhood with the mission of raising awareness of the nature that exists in the urban world. They also started taking kids and their families on urban nature hikes —  in their own neighborhoods. The Institute also takes nearly 20,000 kids, ages three to eight, into nature and has “Wondermobiles” …

There’s an obscure monument in London, tucked within a small park behind a church. It’s easy to miss, just a few humble rows of tiles commemorating some brave souls who died while saving others. Each tile has a handful of lines describing the moment when the event happened. It’s called The Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice. Most of the tiles reference events that happened a …

Meredith Glaser is a svelte 31-year-old from Long Beach. A couple of years ago she found a job as an urban planner in Rotterdam, the second-largest city in the Netherlands. She’s learned to tolerate the wind and snow. And she’s fond of riding her bike on Rotterdam’s impressive bicycle infrastructure.
Before the second world war, Rotterdam had narrow streets and typical Dutch row houses. But in …

Soccoro Diaz is a single mom with seven kids. Just a few years ago her family was homeless and staying at a hotel. Now they live in a small, two-story, low-income apartment at the Jordan Downs Housing Projects in Watts in South Central LA. Three of her children suffer from acute asthma. Why are her kids — and a lot of other kids across LA County …

In this story from the Love + Radio podcast, a chance meeting in the Nevada desert that leads to a series of court battles that lasted for over 30 years.
Love + Radio comes from producer Nick Van der Kolk. He and his collaborators make strange and intense sound stories while aggressively bending and breaking almost every rule of conventional radio. Plus their topics are bloodier, stranger and …