Event and Ticketing Details
Dates & Times
Wednesday 26 July
6:15 PM - 7:30 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 Raf Epstein, Reed will discuss storytelling, the unsaid, and knowing John B. McLemore.
Note: Due to overwhelming demand and the need to accommodate a second session, the time of this event has changed. If you previously booked for a 7.30pm–8.45pm event, we've contacted your booking email address with further information about the changes and your options.
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.
Rafael Epstein
Rafael Epstein is a journalist who has worked in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Timor, Indonesia, Europe and the Middle East.
He has covered national elections in the UK and Australia, East Timor’s vote for independence in 1999, the 2000 Sydney Olympics, the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, the 2005 London bombings, and the arrest of several high profile war crimes suspects in the Balkans.
Rafael won a Walkley Award for his reporting on the links between police and Melbourne’s underworld wars. He won a second Walkley for his coverage of the Mohammed Hanif case, the Indian born doctor charged over his connections to the failed bombings in London in 2007.
He has also worked at the Investigative Unit at the Age, focusing on politics as well as Australia’s special forces and their role in Afghanistan. Rafael currently hosts the Drive program on 774 ABC Melbourne. His first book Prisoner X is published by Melbourne University Press in March 2014.