‘The Dirt’ Author Neil Strauss Teams With ‘Atlanta Monster’ Producer To Launch Podcast About Missing Hollywood Actress

The Dirt and The Game author Neil Strauss has teamed with Tenderfoot TV, the team behind hit audio series Atlanta Monster, to launch a podcast about the disappearance of aspiring actress Adea Shabani.

Rolling Stone writer Strauss will host To Live and Die in LA, a 12-episode true crime podcast series. The series will launch on February 28 and will be produced in association with podcast company Cadence13.

To Live and Die in LA, which is Strauss’s first foray into narrative podcasting, will take a deep dive into the mysterious disappearance of 25-year-old Shabani, an aspiring actress and model who vanished without a trace from her apartment complex near Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. Like thousands each year, Shabani, a native of Macedonia, moved to Hollywood with the hope of realizing her dreams of stardom. But in February of 2018, the acting student disappeared just days before her 26th birthday.

Within a week of Adea Shabani’s disappearance, Strauss was contacted by Jayden Brandt, a private investigator who was hired by the Shabani family. Strauss began looking into Adea’s case, interviewing friends and family not for a podcast initially, but for an article to help increase fading media coverage. However, in the process, he and Brandt began to uncover new leads and close in on the main suspect. What happened next was a series of shocking events, revelations, and even death threats that continue unfolding in real time.

Strauss and Tenderfoot TV are represented by UTA and the agency brokered the deal.

“This podcast is for the victims of this story and those who love them,” said Strauss. “I hope to bring them the answers and the closure they deserve after so much pain and uncertainty. There are a lot of problems with procedure after a person goes missing. I hope this series can shed light on them, inform families in similar situations, and lead to a change in procedure, especially in the crucial first week.”

“At Tenderfoot we are committed to telling important stories from a unique perspective,” said Donald Albright, Tenderfoot TV president and executive producer. “Expert storytellers like Neil Strauss are essential to investigative podcasts because they stop at nothing to get the truth, but he takes it one step further. Listeners are inside of the investigation with Neil every step of the way as he’s faced with decisions that change the trajectory of the case. We’ve stretched the true crime genre even further here, detailing a criminal investigation while in progress, all in hopes of exposing the whole truth.”