Part two of Sequoia Schmidt's story. Enjoy! You can find her at sequoiaschmidt.com. And you can find me at patreon.com/strangerspodcast.

Meet Sequoia Schmidt - a most interesting and unusual young woman from a most interesting and unusual family. This is Part 1 of her story. Part 2 drops next week. Enjoy!

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 …

Ashley’s husband, Corey, is accused of the worst thing imaginable. What follows sends the family on an ever darkening journey, swinging between answers, hypotheses, emotions, and, ultimately, the truth. This story is not appropriate for children. 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…

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 …

A waitress, a former bomber pilot and a retired railroad engineer embark on the adventure of a lifetime. A version of this story was previously featured on Season 1 of Strangers. Get the full story here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesBy Lea Thau

Two young men receive a surprise delivery. And it’s a newborn. Whaaa! Get the full story here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesBy Lea Thau

Murder, music, mystery. A controversial event in 1997 changed the fate of two band mates. Get the full story here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesBy Lea Thau

Madelyn Blair’s company name Pelerei represents two root words that mean “lifting people up.” She made up the name as a hidden reminder of who she is and why she is here. Learn more about Madelyn’s books: Riding the Current and Essays in Two Voices. In Essays in Two Voices Madelyn offers a simple process for two people to better understand an issue…

Imagine waking up every morning and seeing a stranger in the mirror… Get the full story here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesBy Lea Thau

The best part of this podcast may be when Madelyn’s husband shows up and gives her a bouquet of red roses for their 40th anniversary! But the rest of it is pretty good too. This week’s conversation begins as Madelyn Blair (www.pelerei.com) describes the idea of Narrative Intelligence. She describes a quick process she recently used at a Knowledge M…

Lea Thau, creative director of TheMoth.org for a decade (2001-2010), Lea teaches business people not so much how to tell personal stories, but how to use the principles of storytelling to shape strategy, to roll out new initiatives, or frame business proposals. However I learned most by asking more about her process at the Moth and with her radio s…

Lea Thau was creative director of TheMoth.org for a decade (2001-2010), developing the format and process that has become one of the most popular storytelling organizations in the world. From the beginning, Lea favored the idea of sticking to true stories told in the first person – a critical decision that created what we know as “the Moth format.”…

And most guitars have more than one story… Guitars are known by the stories of those who loved them and the music they created. When Ian opened his guitar shop, he didn’t so much sell guitars as tell their stories. Ian Rhodes not only found his way back to his passion for playing guitar, he started blogging about it – way back when blogging meant y…

A man spends 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but comes out ahead… Get the full story here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesBy Lea Thau