S-Town

Artwork by Valero Doval
Hosted by	Brian Reed
Genre	Investigative journalism Serialized audio narrative
Language	English
Production	Brian Reed Julie Snyder
Theme music composed by	Daniel Hart
Ending theme	"A Rose for Emily" (The Zombies)
Audio format	Podcast (via streaming or downloadable MP3)
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	7
Website	https://stownpodcast.org

S-Town is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Brian Reed and created by the producers of Serial and This American Life. All seven chapters were released on March 28, 2017. The podcast was downloaded a record-breaking 10 million times in four days.

Though the podcast was promoted under the name S-Town, Reed reveals this is a euphemism for "Shit Town"—John B. McLemore's derogatory term for his hometown—in the first episode. Reed generally refers to the podcast by the non-euphemized name in the episodes themselves.

In 2012, horologist John B. McLemore sent an email to the staff of the show This American Life asking them to investigate an alleged murder in his hometown , a place McLemore claimed to despise. After a year of exchanging emails and several months of conversation with McLemore, producer Brian Reed traveled to the small town in Alabama to investigate.

Reed investigates the crime, and eventually finds that no such murder took place. However he strikes up a friendship with the depressive but colorful character of McLemore over the coming months, recording conversations with McLemore and other persons in Woodstock.

McLemore committed suicide using potassium cyanide on June 22, 2015, while the podcast was still in production. In the narrative of the podcast, this occurs in the second episode, and subsequent episodes deal with the fallout from McLemore's death and explore more of McLemore's life and character.

All episodes were released simultaneously on 28 March 2017. The podcast is available to stream or download for free on the S-Town website, iTunes, Stitcher, Radiopublic or through the RSS feed.

S-Town incorporates various specially composed pieces of music throughout the episodes from composers Daniel Hart, Helado Negro, Trey Pollard, and Matt McGinley, including an S-Town theme produced by Hart. The show's closing music, used at the end of each episode, is "A Rose for Emily" by The Zombies.

The podcast of S-Town was culturally popular and received mixed critical reviews. The Boston Globe's Ty Burr thought the show was complex and voyeuristic. He asked the question, "Is 'S-Town' a freak show for the NPR crowd?" and described the series as "seven chapters of provocative red herrings that almost but never quite add up to a place, a people, or a man". Jessica Goudeau from The Atlantic wondered how Flannery O’Connor, Robert Lowell, or Elizabeth Bishop would have reacted to the podcast and the exploration of poor, white, rural America. Slate’s Katy Waldman wrote that S-Town feels more like a new genre, “something more like aural literature.”