It’s about people, the people of S-Town, specifically, one person from that town, an amazingly talented and troubled person-John B. S-Town is about a dead man, but that only scratches the surface. With this, Brian is building a great analogy that sets a couple themes and ideas to hook the listener, but quickly the podcast is no longer following the original investigation. Proleptic, meaning the representation or assumption of a future act as if presently existing, is a theme throughout the series, with person after person declaring or claiming something to be true, when it hasn’t happened, or at least not yet.Īnother prominent theme is horology, the study of time and making clocks. In the first chapter, Brian defines proleptic, a word that John uses to describe the town. Through the series and in each chapter, S-Town illustrates the human condition. To keep with the theme of a literary novel, each episode of S-Town is a chapter. I compare S-Town to This American Life and Serial not just because they’re from the same creators, but because they are two of the most well-known podcasts, and they produce high-quality programming. S-Town is the refinement of the medium to the mature artistic level podcasting deserves. According to an article in Wired, Serial was modeled after television, ending each episode with a cliffhanger. Serial tweaked and played with that format to bring podcasts to a new level of popularity and awareness. The podcast This American Life brought the established radio show to the medium of on-demand audio programming, which has always felt like the podcast equivalent of a magazine. The crew behind this show is a group of seasoned producers and hosts, the audio quality and production is top of the line, and it’s just a great story that you’ll want to hear to the end and talk about with all your friends, and hopefully me! I’m on Twitter. However, the show is more about understanding the people of Woodstock, Alabama, what John calls Shit-town, their misunderstandings, their feuds, and their humanity. McLemore, a clockmaker, in Alabama who contacts Brian Reed at This American Life about a murder that he believes was covered up by the police. S-Town is a seven-part series, ranging from 48-63 minutes per episode, released all at once, for a total of six and a half hours. S-Town, an audio masterpiece that takes podcasting to a new level more akin to literature than you may expect, is by the producers of This American Life and Serial. Podcasts have been a source of news and comedy and a way to learn about topics I’ve always been interested in and things I’ve never heard of. I’m fortunate to have a job where I can spend all day listening to whatever I please, and most of the time, I choose podcasts.
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