Lea Thau is a Peabody award-winning podcaster, writer and director. She created the popular podcast Strangers, which made Slate's list of the 25 Best Podcast Episodes Ever and won Public Radio's 2015 March Madness contest, beating out other shows like Radiolab and This American Life for the top spot.

During her decade-long tenure as the Executive & Creative Director of The Moth, Lea co-created The Moth Radio Hour, which is carried on nearly 600 radio stations nationwide and is downloaded more than 100 million times per year as a podcast.

Lately, Lea has been developing a new storytelling series, The Hopeful Locals, most of which is only available here.

Lea's Place artwork by Avi Odenheimer - Avi was a Strangers listener, who one day, out of the blue, sent a series of watercolors he'd created while listening to the show. One of them was this illustration of Lea recording in her closet.