S-Town Review

It’s very odd how familiar sound can be, how our brains make connections between sounds and particular things and memories. Every time I began a new chapter of S-Town and was greeted by Brian Reed’s voice, something in my brain screamed “NPR!” I’m not sure if it’s the particular tone quality of his voice or his style of speaking, but something about the sound of S-Town immediately reminds me of hearing NPR played in the car while one of my parents was driving, myself more often than not begging them to switch the radio to music. The fact that my brain made this connection is not surprising as Brian Reed is also a producer for This American Life, a radio show broadcast on public radio stations similar to NPR. As I listened to S-Town, however, I found that the long-form content was very different from the brief-er snippets I associated with public radio.

As someone who is not a frequent listener of podcasts, I was very skeptical of S-Town. I wondered what this podcast could offer me that was better than reading the same story in a book or long article. What I found, however, was that the presence of the real voices of the characters made all the difference in my reaction to the story. Often times, the things said by John or Tyler seemed so shocking that I almost wondered if I would not have believed if I had read them in print form. The difference with this form of media, though, is that you have no choice but to believe what you are hearing, as you are literally hearing them say it in the exact moment. The presence of their voices in my ear almost made me feel more connected to the characters. At the end of the second episode, when Skylar called Brian to tell him that John committed suicide, I felt equally shocked. It was hard to imagine that this man, who’s voice I had heard so clearly, ranting and raving about this and that, was dead, never to speak again. I think that I felt this more strongly that if I had simply been reading about a character, hearing about him through the lens of the author’s words.

I was fascinated by the way that Reed chose to tell the story, guiding us, as listeners, through it. He often looped back around to things that had happened previously, rather than presenting things exactly chronologically. It worked well, though, grouping elements of the story together in the way that made the most sense. The only part of the seven part series that I felt disappointed with was the final episode, where Reed reveals that John’s depression may have been a result of extreme exposure to mercury. My initial reaction was that this felt like a cheap solution, a way to explain away his suicide, rather than address the lack of mental health resources in the deep south. The thing is, though, that’s what really happened. If this had been a work of fiction, my annoyance might be justified, but Reed is reporting the facts and John was exposed to huge amounts of mercury, which is known to cause depression and paranoia.

While I am not sure I will become a regular listener of podcasts, S-Town has given me a new appreciation to the genre and the unique ways in which it can tell stories better than traditional print media.