Conversion Therapy Podcast ‘Dear Alana’ Leads Tenderfoot TV Slate Alongside Weekly Series & Spinoffs

Peter White
·5 min read
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EXCLUSIVE: Tenderfoot TV, the podcast company behind series such as To Live and Die in LA and Up and Vanished, is expanding its slate.

The company has unveiled a raft of new series, including Dear Alana, a dual-narrative series created by Simon Kent Fung about the life and tragic death of devout youth Alana Chen, whose aspiration to become a nun led her to conversion therapy, and a number of weekly series and spinoffs of existing shows.

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Dear Alana is an eight-episode series that sees Kent Fung explore the psychological theories behind conversion therapy today, as he goes behind the scenes of an ascendant brand of American Catholicism sweeping college campuses now, and unearths the complicated boundary between earnest faith and spiritual manipulation, the promise of perfection and the price we pay to belong. It features Chen’s extensive journals, which reveal her hidden struggles with her sexuality and faith. Chen died, aged 24, in Boulder, after being hospitalized for depression. The series will launch in August.

Elsewhere, there are spinoffs of Up and Vanished, To Live and Die in LA and Culpable as well as a weekly talk spinoff of Radio Rental, Rattled & Shook, which is hosted by Meredith Stedman and Aprile Ruha that has launched.

Talking To Death sees Tenderfoot co-founder Payne Lindsey take off his investigative hat for a new role as weekly host of his first true crime talk show. The series will see guests talk to him about death and delve into crime, life and mystery. It launches in September and is produced in partnership with iHeartMedia.

The Estate, which launches in September, asks what happens when a Mexican man, a Black man and an Italian man start a business in 1970’s Stockton, CA? One of them ends up murdered, the other in jail, and the third is Alex Estrada’s dad. A serialized true-crime documentary podcast following host Estrada as he tries to solve a family mystery: Was his dad involved in a murder? The series is a co-production with Sonoro in partnership with Audacy.

The Vanishing Point is a spinoff of Up and Vanished and is a five-part series hosted by Celisia Stanton, focusing on a series of unsolved cases, all connected by a single location. In this first installment, the team travels to Hoopa, California to look into several cases of missing indigenous people from the Hoopa Valley Reservation, a small Northern California community with a disproportionate number of missing person’s cases.

Up and Vanished will also launch a weekly series in September that looks not only at past cold cases with a fresh perspective, but also dives into recent cases ripped from the headlines; featuring discussion, case details, interviews, and more. The series is produced in partnership with Audacy.

Elsewhere, season four of Up and Vanished returns in November with a new case of a disappearance in Alaska.

To Live and Die in LA is also getting a new miniseries in December. Hosted by Neil Strauss, the series will explore cold cases that have plagued the Los Angeles area after previously having investigated the disappearance of aspiring Albanian Macedonian actress Adea Shabani in season one and the case of Elaine Park, a 20-year old aspiring actress and musician who vanished from Malibu in 2018 in season two.

Culpable’s Case Review is a new take on the true-crime series hosted by Dennis Cooper. Launching in August, it covers six new cases over six weeks including the mysterious death of Andrew Thomas Wall. The series is produced in partnership with Audacy.

Down Range, which launches in November, around Veteran’s Day, highlights first-hand narratives of combat. Hosted by retired Navy Seal and actor, Remi Adeleke and retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Rich Choppa, the eight-episode series tells the stories of the American Special Forces.

The series, which is produced in partnership with Telegraph Creative, will tell stories such as those of former spy for U.S.  Intelligence, Sergeant Major Hamody Jasim, who became one of America’s most valued assets in the fight against Al-Qaeda’s and ISIS; Lieutenant Jason Redman, who received a dozen medals including the Bronze Star and Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq in 2007 and Tu Lam, aka “Ronin,” an elite Special Forces Green Beret who is a playable character on Call of Duty Modern Warfare.

“Telling powerful and profound stories will always be at the center of what we create, and this slate embodies the repertoire of content that focus on new innovative ways to tell these stories from narrative storytelling to talk format,” said Tenderfoot TV CEO and co-founder, Donald Albright. “We’re excited to continue to diversify the content we’re covering, like the story of Alana Chen in Dear Alana, and give a voice and platform to the marginalized and forgotten.”

“Building on the success of our franchise series through spinoffs is going to allow us to connect to our listeners even more granularly,” said Payne Lindsey, founder of Tenderfoot TV. “Listeners can expect a lot of firsts with this year’s slate, including my first-ever talk show Talking to Death, which is a fresh new approach to covering true crime topics and discussions.”

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