Podcast: Play in new window | Download (19.4MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS

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 to the house since?

Read blogger Jen Clay’s account of a 2012 trip to the Perelson house here. That’s her photo to the right.

Thanks to Jeff Maysh, whose “The Murder House” is the definitive work of reporting on the Perelson case; Scott Michaels of Dearly Departed Tours; and Yolonda E. Lawrence.

Special thanks again this week to the fantastically talented, prolific and generous Podington Bear, a/k/a Chad Crouch, whose work is an invaluable repository of music that’s free for non-commercial use. 

MUSIC:

• “Epiphany,” by Podington Bear
• “Dark Matter,” by Podington Bear
• “Strikes Again!” by Podington Bear
• “Preservation,” by Podington Bear
• “How Fortunate The Man With None,” by Dead Can Dance
• “Corridor,” by Podington Bear
• “Velcro,” by Podington Bear
• “Got Spark,” by Pdington Bear

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (15.7MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS

When an elderly parent dies after a long life of lovingly acquiring things, she leaves behind more than memories for her kids. She leaves something much more tangible: The things. So many, many things. Is it things that make a home?

This week, to kick off Season 2, it’s a story of life, death, memory, loss, Christmas, trash bags, and what it means to unmake a home.

One housekeeping note: With this episode, HOME joins such excellent shows as You Are Not So Smart, Futility Closet and Gweek on the Boing Boing Podcast Network. I’m delighted to be partnered with one of the smartest, liveliest names in online culture. bb

MUSIC:

• “Plastic Glare,” by Podington Bear
• French cafe music by David Lewis Luong
• “Summertime Outing,” by Dick Walter
• “Jack,” by Podington Bear
• “Christmas,” by The Metro Strings
• “Bated Breath,” by Podington Bear
• “Cradle Song for A (Interstate B3),” by Max Richter

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.8MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS

Season 2 of HOME comes your way in January. Subscribe today and new episodes will automagically fly through the aether to you more or less the very second they’re released. And if you get a moment between now and the start of the new season to tell your friends about the show, or even better, to rate and/or review it at the iTunes Store, why, there’ll be a fine fat goose under your Christmas tree!*

(Many thanks to the most excellent Podington Bear for much of the music used in Season 1, including “Vox Bubble Rumba,” heard in this audio update.)

*Not a binding promise of an actual goose

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (20.9MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS

The venerable Villa Carlotta — home to show business A-listers in the Golden Age, and later to a generation of young actors, writers and musicians  — sits, a hollowed-out shell, on Hollywood’s Franklin Avenue. It may or may not be about to undergo a transformation into an upscale hotel. What happens to a community when it’s driven from the place where it’s made a home? One resident stubbornly hangs on, battling for the soul of a building that once buzzed with life and energy.

MUSIC:

• “Home,” by Henry Hall and his Gleneagles Hotel Band
• “Twine,” by Podington Bear
• “It’s All Forgotten Now,” by Ray Noble and His Orchestra
• “Tuesday’s Tune,” by Herschel Burke Gilbert
• “Toccatta and Fugue in D Minor,” by Johann Sebastian Bach
• “Zombie,” By Johnny Fever (Sam Fuller)
• “Csm,” by Podington Bear

Photos, top to bottom:
Carlotta exterior 2008 by Stinson Carter. 
Carlotta lobby 2015
Carlotta lobby 2014 by Stinson Carter
Carlotta courtyard 2014 by Stinson Carter
Carlotta courtyard 2015 

Thanks to Sylvie Shain (above). For more information on the campaign to save the Villa Carlotta, see its Facebook page.

Read Stinson Carter’s excellent piece about The Carlotta in Vanity Fair.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (19.4MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS

There’s the San Fernando Valley, the one you can find on a map… and then there’s The Valley, the one that exists in the culture, whose notoriety far outstrips its size. How did that happen? How did it come to be that you can mention The Valley to people in Milwaukee or Toronto or Tokyo and they’ll know what you’re talking about? And what does it mean to call The Valley home? This week HOME looks at the tangled legacy of a place that managed to be both the iconic American suburb and an industrial powerhouse that cranked out everything  from beer to cars, and moon rockets to The Brady Bunch.

For more on the history of the San Fernando Valley, visit the Valley Relics Museum.

MUSIC:

• “Holiday Commercial,” by Alan Hawkshaw
• “San Fernando Valley,” by Johnny Mercer
• Theme from “The Brady Bunch” (Season 1)
• “It’s Not Unusual,” by Enoch Light

Photo: The Valley Relics Museum, 2015.

Thanks to Denny Tedesco, Kevin Roderick, Hal Lifson and Tommy Gelinas.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (23.5MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS

Andy Puddicombe left college at 22 and spent a decade tramping the world before returning to the UK and landing, eventually, in Los Angeles. He’s lived in so many countries that he has trouble recalling them on demand. How did his travels, and his training in Buddhism, alter the way he thought about home?

Photo courtesy Andy Puddicombe, Headspace.com

This week on HOME: The winding road that led an ex-monk from Bristol to Venice Beach.

Music, once again this week, by the prolific and generous Podington Bear:

• “Gamma Ray”
• “Sienne”
• “Little Dipper”
• “Kitten”
• “Teen Bean”
• “The Falls”
• “Peas Corps”

Here’s an article I wrote on Headspace, the Web-and-app-based meditation platform founded by Andy and Rich Pierson, for Fast Company. For more information, visit Headspace.com.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (15.5MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | TuneIn | RSS

This week it’s a story about Amboy, CA, a ghost town 30 miles from anywhere on the old Route 66, and the chicken magnate who’s spent a fortune trying to keep it from collapsing into the desert sand. Can Albert Okura really hold back both history and nature?

Read more about Amboy here and here. You can find a video about Albert, his right-hand man Charlie and the town here.

MUSIC:
All the music in this episode is by the wonderful Podington Bear, a/k/a Chad Crouch of Portland, Oregon. Crouch has composed and performed hundreds of instrumental tracks that he distributes freely for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons license. You can license his work for commercial use here, or buy his recordings here.  The tracks used in this episode are:

• “Cascades”
• “Ah Clouds”
• “Pong Delight”
• “Going Forward Looking Back”
• “Flicker and Burn”
• “Gentle Marimbas”
  

Thanks to Albert Okura and Charlie Aceves.

Albert Okura (left) and Charlie Aceves: Amboy, August 2015