Lea Thau, Peabody Award winner & former Director of The Moth, has created Strangers, featuring true stories about people we meet, the heartbreaks we suffer, the kindnesses we encounter, and those frightful moments when we discover that WE aren’t even who we thought we were…
Gil Garcetti – Image Credit: Strangers Podcast
The above description is taken directly from the website for Strangers, a storytelling podcast. Lea Thau has developed a vehicle for the exploration and unpacking of real-world experiences. Listening to any of the episodes for even a few minutes leaves listeners with no choice but to identify with those telling the stories, to empathize with perfect strangers.
One of the first storytellers for the show was Gil Garcetti, the former District Attorney for Los Angeles and father of current major of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti. Lea Thau begins the show by drawing a parallel between the recognition of celebrities in public to the recognition Garcetti would get as DA. His office would see 100,000 felonies per year. Thus, he understandably lost track of who was involved in what case. Those prosecuted, though, only had one person to keep track of: him. In this podcast he recounts three instances in which he was recognized in public and the impact that each encounter had on him.