Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 26 July
8:30 PM - 9:45 PM
S-Town has rattled the conventions of longform audio journalism, broken podcast download records and provoked a deluge of obsessive online commentary and conjecture. Made by reporter Brian Reed with the team behind Serial and This American Life, the series is enthralling and disquieting, and marks another shift in podcasting’s creative renaissance.
At the centre of Reed’s series – set in the small town of Woodstock, Alabama – is one unforgettable character: the obsessive, eccentric and doomsaying horologist, John B. McLemore. In Reed’s rendering, McLemore is as vivid and novelistic as any subject drawn from the hand of Truman Capote.
Bringing a literary aesthetic to audio storytelling, S-Town explores poverty, prejudice, apathy, intimacy, greed and mental illness in America today. In its reception, it’s stirred rich and widespread critical discussions of the form – as well as debates about journalistic ethics. At the Athenaeum Theatre, with host Sally Warhaft, Reed will discuss storytelling, the unsaid, and knowing John B. McLemore.
Featuring
Brian Reed
Brian Reed is the host and co-creator of the groundbreaking podcast S-Town, which is a production of Serial and the public radio show This American Life. Reed is also the senior producer of This American Life.
S-Town was downloaded 16 million times in its first week, setting a new record in podcasting, and is currently the number one podcast on iTunes. Reed spent more than three years reporting and writing S-Town, which began when a man named John B. McLemore asked Reed to investigate an alleged murder in his small Alabama town.The series won widespread popular and critical acclaim for elevating audio storytelling into the realm of great literature.
As senior producer of This American Life, Reed oversees the editorial direction of the programme with host and executive producer Ira Glass. In his seven years with the show, Reed has created some of its most ambitious stories, including 'The Secret Recordings of Carmen Segarra', an investigation into the US Federal Reserve’s supervision of Goldman Sachs; 'Cops See It Differently', a nuanced look at the relationship between African Americans and the police; 'Abdi and the Golden Ticket', which follows a Somali refugee desperately trying to get to America; and 'What Happened at Dos Erres', the story of a massacre in Guatemala and its reverberations decades later.
Reed has investigated multiple sketchy FBI operations, as well as produced stories about strange coincidences and car salesmen on Long Island and a turkey who terrorized a neighborhood before getting murdered by police. His journalism has helped an immigrant gain asylum in the US and prompted a Senate Committee to grill the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Before joining This American Life as an intern in 2010, Reed reported and produced for NPR as one of their Kroc Fellows and their first Above the Fray Fellow. Reed has received the Dart Award for Reporting on Trauma, the Overseas Press Club Award and the Peabody Award.
Sally Warhaft
Sally Warhaft is a Melbourne broadcaster, anthropologist and writer. She is the host of The Fifth Estate, the Wheeler Centre’s live series focusing on journalism, politics, media, and international relations, and The Leap Year ...