I started this podcast in the fall of 2015 with a notion to tell stories of the many ways people think about home. For 27 episodes, that’s what I’ve done. I don’t think that going in I ever conceived HOME as a project that would go on in perpetuity, and now, in the fall of 2017, I’m finding that it’s reached the end of its natural lifespan. So I’m putting the show on an indefinite hiatus. Producing this show has been one of the best and happiest experiences of my working life. I’ve learned...

HGTV and glossy magazines have sparked a boomlet of interest in tiny homes, but they’ve also made them look fun, cute and easy. The realities of a tiny lifestyle can be more daunting. Municipalities often don’t know what to make of tiny houses, and living in one legally is, in many places, challenging. There’s a lack of infrastructure for people who want to build them. And although they’re in many ways an imaginative solution to some of the most vexing urban housing issues, they don’t yet...

“The best historians in L.A. are storytellers. They’re gangsters in east L.A., they’re ex-cons, they’re guys who worked in their garage their whole life, they’re guys who’ve worked at one business for forty years, people who’ve lived on one street for forty years… “ “All Night Menu” started with a question: What is a well-known photograph of William Faulkner not telling us about his time in Hollywood? Since then writer Sam Sweet has spent four years prowling LA for its most closely-held...

The original Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in the hills above Glendale, may be best known outside California for inspiring the sledgehammer satire of the 1965 cult comedy “The Loved One.” For tourists and curiosity-seekers, it’s the gonzo life’s work of Hubert Eaton, who memorialized himself as The Builder in the park’s every corner. For the families of the people interred there, though, it’s something more, and harder to joke away: A place of their own, green and quiet, and...

How will we live in 20 years? Or 50? Or 100? A one-of-a-kind, only-in-LA plot at the very end of Mulholland Highway inspired some of the world’s best designers to think hard about the home of the future, in Los Angeles and beyond. MUSIC: * “One More Time,” by Quincy Jones *  Theme from “The Jetsons” * “Hollywood Holiday,” by Frank Samuels * “On A Wing,” by Podington Bear * “Business Gateway,” by Scott Holmes * “Oui,” By Podington Bear * “Netherland,” by Podington Bear * “Cylinder...

Join me, won’t you, as I peel back the curtain on this podcast and kick around some thoughts about its future. (TL;DR: I’m slowing the production cycle a bit to make the project sustainable over the long haul. New season is coming this spring. Also, if you’re a social media wizard and would like to help me flack this thing, drop me a note. ) MUSIC: * “Tiptoe Through The Tubas,” by Sam Fonteyn * “Alien Village and Flute Solo,” by Podington Bear * “The Spy Set – Closing 2,” by R....

HOME is going on a between-seasons hiatus, but will return in the New Year. Sköl!

Who were we? How did we live, and what did it look like? The vast archive of castoff slides captures, in vivid colors, images of the American family at midcentury. But the stories that go with the pictures are most often lost, and we’re left to create our own, and reflect on millions of conscious decisions to untie the knot of memory. (Click slides to embiggen) MUSIC by Podington Bear: * “Motivate” * “Poise” * “Wilt” * “Aria Area” * “Arp Arc” * “Gymnopedie 2” Thanks once again to...

Color slides were once the state of the art in family photography — vibrant, immersive, ubiquitous. So ubiquitous, in fact, that millions, maybe billions of them survive. This week it’s a conversation with midcentury pop culture expert Charles Phoenix: What can we learn from the vast shadow world of orphaned slides about the way we used to live in our homes? Music: * “Leaves In The Pool,” by Podington Bear * “Diamond Bossa Nova,” by Francesco de Masi * “Clog Dance,” by Dick Walter *...

Some stories don’t end when you think they do. Some stories just pause. And then they sneak back around and whap you across the back of your unsuspecting head. So here’s one I didn’t expect to revisit, although maybe I should have: Part 2 of Episode 7, “Unmaking A Home.” Music: * “Driftwood,” by Podington Bear * “Trailing Comma,” by Blue Dot Sessions * “Something In The Distance,” by Scott Holmes * “Empires,” by Scott Holmes * “Bless,” by Podington Bear * “Busy Life,” by King...

What happens to a utopia that never got off the ground? Bits and pieces of one, an experiment in postwar living for the masses, are hiding in plain sight in the hills above Sunset Boulevard. Architect and author Cory Buckner talks about Crestwood Hills, a Modernist vision for a cooperative future that never quite arrived. MUSIC: * “Melange,” by Podington Bear * “Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive,” by Johnny Mercer * “Bargains Galore,” by Stuart/Crombie/Dennis Barry * “Solan,” by Podington...

What happens when you bring a kid from the other side of the world into your home forever? How does it change what home means to her? And to you? This week it’s the story of one mom, the daughter she chose, and the way they keep Ethiopia alive in the home that’s now theirs. PROGRAM NOTE: This is the last episode of Season 3. See you back here in October for Season 4. Subscribe to the newsletter for updates and between-seasons bonus content.  Can the Web series be far behind? Cook With...

A roving, shifting company of dance and performance artists is nudging its audiences to think about home differently — by bringing one-off, site-specific performances to houses, live-work spaces and tiny apartments all over the Los Angeles area. Meet homeLA. Music by Podington Bear: * “Tuxes” * “Happy Transit” * “Osprey” * “By Grace” At top: Flora Wiegman, Swimming Laps, at the home of Chloë Flores and Tim Lefevre in Mount Washington. Performed by Flora Wiegman Here’s a gallery of...

When TV producer Phil Savenick started collecting vintage TVs and TV memorabilia, he didn’t anticipate that he’d end up with what he now calls a “dreamland of televisions” in the living room of his West Los Angeles home — or that he’d end up helping the family of the man who invented TV heal some old wounds. See more of Phil’s TV Dreamland here. You can learn more about Philo T. Farnsworth here. I also recommend Jeff Kisseloff’s excellent oral history of the early days of television, “The...

The process by which one place stops being home and another starts — it’s a mysterious thing. It happens, most often, when we’re not paying attention. And sometimes, as it did for comedy writer and transplanted East Coaster Janis Hirsch, it happens in stages. First she started to feel at home in Los Angeles; but it was only later, after a series of addresses and a run-in or two with Bette Davis, that she landed in the exact place that would be, finally, her home. HOME is a member of the...

Actress/writer/artist Rose Portillo lives in the house she was born into, in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles. It’s the annual scene of her legendary Day Of the Dead parties, and it was the setting for her family’s story of ascension, assimilation and culture clash — as well as the long, wary dance of accommodation, spanning life and death, that Rose has performed with the formidable spirit of her grandmother, Mercedes Mendoza Portillo. Music: * “Los Chucos Suaves,” by Lalo Guerrero...

Not a hotel, not a dorm, not quite a hostel, open by design and communitarian in spirit  — Los Angeles-based PodShare is something else. And, potentially, something bigger: An affordable way to foster community in a city that’s increasingly stratified by class. This week, to start Season 3, it’s the story of one young entrepreneur and her unstoppable enthusiasm for her big idea. Music: * “Happy Wanderer” by Louis Prima * “Hey Bellboy” by Gloria Wood * “On A Wing” by Podington Bear *...

Here’s an audio update on the upcoming season. In extra bonus content — and let me stress that this is 100% free of cost to you, the home audience — I beg for your help! (That is, if you’re a social media or business development ninja.) Music: “Frosted Glass,” by Podington Bear

It looks like a Hopper painting plunked incongruously down on a busy commercial street in West Los Angeles — The Apple Pan, home to freshly-baked pies and what hamburger aficionado George Motz says may be the best burger in America. But the affection Angelenos have for The Apple Pan only starts with the food. It’s an oasis, a rock, a spot out of time, essentially unchanged since the day it opened in 1947. It may not be the kind of place where everybody knows your name, but if you’ve been...

The crowning paradox of the touring comic’s life may be this: You have to leave home to make a name, but without the grounding and security of home you may not have anything to say. This week, three experienced comedians on striking the tricky balance between the road and home. Music: * “Sophistication,” from the Complete Capitol Production Music * “Track 2,” from “I Love You Alice B. Toklas” (original soundtrack) * “Rythn,” by Podington Bear * “Pretty Simple,” by Podington...

How far would you go to rescue the remains of a bygone world you’ve loved since you were a kid? Peter Knego went to Alang, India, and then did it again and again, to save what he could of the great ocean liners being scrapped there. But he didn’t just want to save the ships. He wanted to live in one. And to a remarkable degree he’s succeeded, filling his home in Oceanside, CA with a breathtaking array of maritime memorabilia. This week: One man’s mission to recreate, in landlocked miniature,...

Suppose you wanted to design a home away from home. What would you put in? What would you leave out? What kind of seating would you have? (Soft? Hard? Low? High?) What kind of tables — big working slabs or intimate little two-tops? A good “third place” may seem casually homey, but its design is the end result of a million tiny decisions. This week, it’s a conversation with Kambiz Hemati, who oversaw store design at Starbucks for two years and now owns Love Coffee Bar in Santa Monica, where...

Up in the manicured hills of Los Feliz, a neighborhood that boasts at least three famous murder houses, the one with the weirdest history may be the Perelson house… where, deep in the night of December 6, 1959, a husband and father of three lost his fragile grip and went terribly, shockingly crazy. But the story only starts there. Why did Harold Perelson snap? What does it mean when, without warning, the safety of a family home is shattered from within? And how do you explain what’s happened...