S-Town

S-Town is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Brian Reed and created by the producers of Serial and This American Life. All seven chapters were released on March 28, 2017. The podcast was downloaded a record-breaking 10 million times in four days.Moran, Rob, "New podcast from Serial makers, S-Town, breaks download records", The Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 2017
==Title==
Though the podcast was promoted under the name S-Town, Reed reveals this is a euphemism for "Shit Town"—John B. McLemore's derogatory term for his hometown—in the first episode. Reed generally refers to the podcast by the non-euphemized name in the episodes themselves.
==Synopsis==
In 2012, antiquarian horologist John B. McLemore sent an email to the staff of the show This American Life asking them to investigate an alleged murder in his hometown Woodstock, Alabama, a place McLemore claimed to despise. After a year of exchanging emails and several months of conversation with McLemore, producer Brian Reed traveled to the small town in Alabama to investigate.
Reed investigates the crime, and eventually finds that no such murder took place. However he strikes up a friendship with the depressive but colorful character of McLemore over the coming months, recording conversations with McLemore and other persons in Woodstock.
McLemore committed suicide using potassium cyanide on June 22, 2015, while the podcast was still in production. In the narrative of the podcast, this occurs in the second episode, and subsequent episodes deal with the fallout from McLemore's death and explore more of McLemore's life and character.
==Persons involved==
* Brian Reed – host, executive producer
* John B. McLemore – horologist
* Mary Grace McLemore – John B. McLemore's elderly mother
* Dylon Nicols – purported to have been murdered by Kabrahm Burt
* Jake Goodson – employee of John, brother of Tyler; heard details of murder from Kabrahm
* Skyler Goodson – wife of Jake Goodson
* Tyler Goodson – younger friend and employee of McLemore
* Kabrahm Burt – rumored to have committed a murder
* Allen Bearden – clock repairman based in Pell City, Alabama, friend of McLemore
* Reta Lawrence – McLemore's cousin
* Charlie Lawrence – husband of McLemore's cousin Reta
* Jeff Dodson – mayor of Woodstock; briefly a business partner with McLemore in a nursery
* Faye Gamble – Woodstock town clerk
* Allan “Bubba” Cresswell – co-owned tattoo parlor with Tyler Goodson
==Episodes==
All episodes were released simultaneously on 28 March 2017. The podcast is available to stream or download for free on the S-Town website, iTunes, Stitcher, Radiopublic or through the RSS feed.
#	Title	Length (minutes:seconds)	Original release date
==Music==
S-Town incorporates various specially composed pieces of music throughout the episodes from composers Daniel Hart, Helado Negro, Trey Pollard, and Matt McGinley, including an S-Town theme produced by Hart. The show's closing music, used at the end of each episode, is "A Rose for Emily" by The Zombies.
==Further developments==
Shortly after the release of the podcast, John's online obituary was flooded with support and shared reflections from around the world. In an April 2017 interview, Tyler Goodson said that "sometimes I regret ever speaking into that microphone because I was probably upset, or wasn't thinking clearly" since he faced trial for the criminal actions included in the serial. In October 2017, Goodson plead guilty to the burglaries described in the podcast and will serve five years on probation with a ten-year suspended sentence.
==Reception==
The podcast of S-Town was culturally popular and received mixed critical reviews. The Boston Globe's Ty Burr thought the show was complex and voyeuristic. He asked the question, "Is 'S-Town' a freak show for the NPR crowd?" and described the series as "seven chapters of provocative red herrings that almost but never quite add up to a place, a people, or a man". Jessica Goudeau from The Atlantic wondered how Flannery O’Connor, Robert Lowell, or Elizabeth Bishop would have reacted to the podcast and the exploration of poor, white, rural America. Slate’s Katy Waldman wrote that S-Town feels more like a new genre, “something more like aural literature.”
The podcast's critics claimed that the studio took advantage of John's death in order to gain publicity. Crixeo argues that Reed did not have the right to publicly out John as queer. While at the same time, other views share that S-Town was a way for them to take the story of John's death and shed light on mental health in the U.S.
In May 2017, the podcast series was downloaded over 40 million times. The podcast continued to be popular since it was ranked 11th in downloads as of August 2017 and continues to be analyzed by the press.
==References==
Category:Investigative journalism
Category:Infotainment
Category:Audio podcasts
Category:English-language podcasts
Category:2017 podcast debuts
Category:Bibb County, Alabama