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 […]

HOME: Stories From L.A.

Goodbye (for now)

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 […]

Episode 26: Going Tiny

“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 […]

Episode 25: Lost Heroes and Miniature Histories

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 […]

Episode 24: Life, Death, Ego and Eternity

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 […]

Episode 23: The Last House On Mulholland

Update: Season 5 starts July 5

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 […]

Update: The Future of HOME

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

Update: New Season Coming

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 […]

Episode 22: Kodachrome, Pt. 2

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 […]

Episode 21: Kodachrome, Pt. 1

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 […]

Episode 20: Everything Must Go

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 […]

Episode 19: Almost Utopia

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. […]

Episode 18: Cooking With Mihrette

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 […]

Episode 17: Dancers In The House

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 […]

Episode 16: TV Dreamland

What do we mean when we talk about home? A podcast from Bill Barol.

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HOME: Stories From L.A.

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