S-Town co-creator Brian Reed pulls back the curtains, goes deep into how the podcast was made

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S-Town remains one of the most popular podcasts of all time. The limited series program, that tells the story of an eccentric man and his community in Bibb County, Alabama, has been downloaded over 100 million times. Now, S-Town’s co-creator, Brian Reed, is coming back to Birmingham, taking audiences on a deep dive into his three-year investigative journey that led to the creation of a podcast that captivated millions. The live event is titled, “Creating S-Town: A New Way to Tell a Story,” and will be held at the Alys Stephens Center, February 28. Prior to taking the stage, Reed sat down with WBHM’s Richard Banks.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity.

When you were at This American Life, you got a message from the man who had become the main character in S -Town. Out of all the messages you must have received, all the story ideas, how did you know to call him back and follow up?

I mean, it was a good subject line. “John B. McLemore lives in s*** town, Alabama.” It’s quite possible without that subject line, maybe I wouldn’t have paid him more attention. But then, once I did speak to John, I was like, oh man, this is a special guy. That was just undeniable.

And then you decided to stay with the story. What made you decide to stay with it?

The way the show starts, it’s pretty focused on me trying to see if a murder happened. He also wrote us about a member of the local sheriff’s department who had been arrested for sexual abuse. He was kind of offering up different examples of injustice that had happened in Bibb County. All to prove his overarching point, which is that Bibb County was an s-town. What mattered to him was you have to come understand this place. I was interested in this man who knew this place in his bones and was so torn up about it.

Your newest podcast, Question Everything, it’s been airing since late last year. Tell us about that.

The genesis of the idea came out of something having to do with S-Town. I was sued for S-Town in 2018 by some people down in Alabama. And eventually the suit settled, a couple years later. What the people who sued me were alleging was that S-Town is not journalism. And it put me in this position that I’ve never been in before of having to argue like, in a legal sense, that S-Town was journalism. And I don’t know, it just kind of put me in this head space of really having to kind of, like be a baker having to describe what bread is. And I wanted to actually turn the lens back on it and just wonder why do we do things we do and how can we be better? How can we change in this moment, when change is probably demanded? And what could the public understand better about what we do as well?

The very first episode in Question Everything, you discuss and are even interviewed by one of the critics of S-Town. It’s a really interesting instance in which you allow the microphone to get turned back on to you.

It was really a one-of-a-kind conversation that will always stay with me. This critic, she’s a fellow journalist. Her name is Gay Alcorn. She had, of her own volition, heard S-Town back in 2017 and decided to write a piece arguing that it was morally indefensible. So it wasn’t like, “oh, I don’t like it” or “I was bored by it.” She felt something was very deeply troubling about it. And so that’s what we end up talking about. I think it just reminded me that, oh, yeah, this is one of the things that is just truly wonderful about and special about the work that I do, that we do, which is we get to talk to people who really believe things that are different than us. And there just is a tremendous value in that.

The title of your new live event that’s going to be at Alys Stephens Center is “Creating S -Town, A New Way to Tell a Story.” Describe the new way to tell a story you and your team pioneered, or at least helped pioneer.

With S -Town, we decided to really look to novels, specifically, and the way novels are structured and the experience you have when you’re reading a novel, as kind of like our storytelling model for this reporting.

Give us a few specifics of that structure that relates to a novel.

Often, I find that you have to be — when you’re especially doing kind of like complex or even newsy reporting in audio — you kind of have to be very straightforward, like this is why this is important. Here are the stakes. I’m going to play you this interview. Here’s what you should listen for. And we really did away with all that with S -Town, trying to more immerse you in something and earn your trust through the material, and the storytelling. They’ll just throw you in with a character at the beginning of a novel, or even, like, halfway through you’ll start some chapter and there’ll be a new character you haven’t met and you’re just kind of going along with them on their day. So in the talk, I’ll actually play examples of this from S -Town and kind of from outtakes and talk you through how we thought about certain moments where we would have normally done one thing and we did it differently to kind of give you this experience as a listener.

Without giving away any spoilers, what do you hope your audience will take away from your visit to Alys Stephens?

I hope they get to see how a journalist, like the behind the scenes of journalism, [make] decisions and stories. But in doing that, you’ll hear about how we think about the work. … We’re very dedicated to making very engaging, emotional, surprising, moving stories that are rigorous journalism, and kind of talking through how we balance those things and do that.

Brian Reed will host “Creating S-Town: A New Way to Tell a Story,” February 28, at the Alys Stephens Center.

The Alys Stephens Center is a program sponsor on WBHM, but our news and business departments operate independently.