On this episode of Strangers, Stephen Rochelle tells the story of his son Matthew, once a sweet little boy, who was on trial for murder back in July 2011. It’s a story of father and son, but also of mental illness and the criminal justice system. Stephen describes how it feels when your own child becomes a stranger.
Strangers is produced by independent producer Lea Thau.
On today’s episode, two stories about fathers lost and found. Christopher Johnson tracks down his estranged father and finds a man eager to remedy one of his biggest mistakes. Then, Zak Rosen recounts the tale of an immigrant looking for a father he never knew. He uses the skills he learned from his mentors to change his life and help others.
Independent producer Christopher Johnson tells how he tracked down his father …
Stealing an idea from Jim Jarmusch, we drop down to five random locations and hear personal stories that all take place in the nighttime.
Insomnia
During the day, Michael White works at the concession booth, handing out popcorn and candy at the movie theatre. But when night comes, he cannot sleep. This story was produced byMatthew Swenson at the Salt Institute for documentary studies, and came to us by way …
Today, a special for the beginning of the holiday season…. a compilation of family stories from the first year of this program.
In the first story, storyteller David Ellis Dickerson talks about his mission of mercy to save his Evangelical Christian family from themselves. It does not go as planned.
He has a book called House of Cards: The True Story of How a 26-Year-Old Fundamentalist Virgin Learned about Life, …
On this program, three very funny stories told by L.A. based storytellers. In all three tales, the human’s life is significantly changed by the peculiar feelings we have about our pets. (This programs originally aired on May 10, 2011.)
Bad Dog
In the first story, performer Lauren Weedman adopts a dog, then realizes too late that he’s much more than she can handle. It isn’t until she finds the …
Occupy Wall Street appeared only a few weeks ago, almost spontaneously, on a small patch of lower Manhattan real estate. The Occupy movement has gone global in a matter of weeks, but for one weekend in the middle of October, Occupy Wall Street looked like it might all fall apart as rapidly as it had come together. Veteran public radio producer Alex Chadwick spent that weekend at …
Our feature story, Double Jeopardy, is about small group of soldiers who find themselves barricaded in a house during the Vietnam War. No battle-hardened soldiers, they were support troops and a civilian engineer trying to set up a radio and TV station and they hadn’t fired their weapons since basic training. Two of the men escaped in two different directions, and their choices affected the rest …
On a summer night in the early 1990′s, a small group of friends gather for a dinner party in Los Angeles. Just for fun, someone suggests having a little séance. The group sits around a big oak table and a makeshift Ouija board is assembled from scraps of paper and a glass turned upside down. Four people put their fingers on the stem of the …
Kensington, Maryland is a town just outside Washington DC and like a lot of small towns, they use a volunteer crew of firefighters and EMT’s to work overnights and weekenights when the career paid force is off duty. But unlike other stations, Kensington offers its volunteers a special incentive, if they’re willing to pull four shifts a week. A lot of these volunteers are young …
Reporter and producer Christopher Johnson describes his frustrating year-and-a-half-long struggle to diagnose his chronic and sometimes painful dizzy spells. His story starts where the spells did, in a central African rain forest. As the dizziness gets scarier, Christopher tries with little success to name and treat this vague symptom. He calls on everyone he can think of for help, including his doctor, his friends, and even the …
