If you haven’t listened to S-Town, you’ve probably heard a friend, colleague or family member ranting about how they’re hooked on it.
The seven episode show from Serial and This American Life aired in one fell binge-inducing swoop on March 28.
It’s narrated by journalist Brian Reed who gets a tip off about a murder in a small town in Alabama (also known as S-Town), and goes to visit the informant - John B McLemore - an eccentric clock repairer who tells Reed all about his small town.
Now Tyler Goodson, McLemore’s next door neighbour and close friend, is facing trial for burglary after being accused of stealing items including an 18 wheeler truck from McLemore’s home - and his words on the podcast might be used to build a case against him.
Bryan Jones, the prosecutor in Goodson’s case doubled the charges against him after listening to the podcast, and has previously tried to use his quotes on the show to keep in locked up, according to The Guardian.
Jones told the Tuscaloosa News of Goodson: 'In the podcast, he basically admits to the trespass and the burglaries and the thefts.'
Goodson has said that sometimes he regrets being part of the show: ‘It’s caused a lot of stress in my life, and my life’s been pretty stressful as it is,’ he told Alabama news station WVTM-13 in an interview.
‘Sometimes I regret ever speaking into that microphone because I was probably upset, or wasn’t thinking clearly.’
S-Town is a wildly successful podcast, it can still be found at the top of the Apple Podcasts chart, had 16 million downloads in its first week, and is widely hailed as an incredible piece of audio literature.
FYI: This rest of this article includes spoilers so if you are planning on listening to S-Town, send this piece on to a friend who has listened to all the episodes, and bookmark it for when you have too.
At the time of release, S-Town raised questions about journalistic responsibility and integrity - how much does Reed owe to the subjects he covered? Reed clearly has concerns about McLemore’s mental health. McLemore had bouts of depression, would tattoo and pierce his body over and over again, and perhaps had mercury poisoning from a rare method of clock repair.
In addition McLemore never consented to the tapes being used for the purpose they were eventually used for, he dies at the end of episode 2, yet there are 5 more episodes that explore his life, his sexuality, his house, his family all in great detail. McLemore, as far as we can tell, didn’t want or expect to be the subject of such intense posthumous inspection, he wanted Reed to investigate a murder he mistakenly thought had happened in his town.
When Reed found out that there had been no murder, should he have left? Reed clearly did not separate his own opinions and feeling from his subjects, he became friends with them, you can hear his grief when he finds out that McLemore committed suicide… because he keeps the tape rolling the whole time.
Future podcasts of this nature will have to take this all into consideration, knowing what we know now, should S-Town ever have been made, purely on the merit of being a good story?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.