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Question Everything
Host Brian Reed Confronts his Toughest Critic
00:48:06
Brian Reed talks to a fellow journalist who called his most well-known work “morally indefensible.”
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- [00:00]
A
Happy New Year, Everybody. It is 2026 now. I guess this is a week where you take stock, think about what we've done, what we've learned, what we might have done differently. And we've been doing a bit of that here at Question Everything. We're incredibly able to look back now at dozens of episodes we've made, which this fall have turned to focus in a lot of ways on how tech can influence and warp our understanding of the world of reality. We've been looking at how Section 230 protects social media companies and others from lawsuits. But we've also been hearing from whistleblowers, from people dealing with the worst of deepfakes and AI. We've been trying to stay on top of one of the biggest stories of the year, the Epstein story, and just generally trying to make sense of what's broken in our information ecosystem and where it might be fixable. And as I look back, I kept coming back to where the whole project began. Our very first episode. That conversation set the tone for this whole show. The idea that if we're going to question journalism, question the way we get information, we have to start by questioning ourselves. So to kick off the new year, we're sharing our first episode again. It's a memorable and awkward conversation I had with one of my toughest critics, someone who believed a story I put out into the world was morally indefensible. If you're new to this show, this conversation set the groundwork for why we started Question Everything and what we're still trying to do even as we take the show in new directions. So today we're bringing you that episode again, kind of a New Year's reset. A heads up. This episode discusses suicide and self harm. Here's how this all came about. The story this person criticized was S Town, a podcast series I hosted in 2017 about a man named John B. McLemore who lived in rural Bibb County, Alabama. John B. Was a listener to the radio show I worked for at the time who wrote in asking us to do a story about how corrupt and decrepit his area was. He called it Shittown. He and I started emailing. Eventually our emails turned to phone calls.
- [02:13]
B
We have just an incredible amount of police corruption. We have the poorest education. We are one of the child molester capitals of the states.
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A
We talked a bunch.
- [02:26]
B
I'm in an area that just hasn't advanced, for lack of a better word. I'm gonna have to eat a Tums here. Sorry about that.
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A
Is your stomach bothering You. And over time, we grew familiar.
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B
Oh, I have constant acid reflux, you know, I've had it all my life.
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A
So why can you tell me why did you yell me? John would tell me all these stories about how bad it was in Shittown. The poverty, the police, abuse. One of the first stories he told me was of a murder committed by a local rich kid who'd gotten away with it. And so I investigated, only to discover after about a year that hadn't actually happened. It was just a rumor run wild. But while looking into the not murder, I'd gotten to know John B. He was funny, outrageous, profane, brilliant.
- [03:08]
B
For example, P and D orbitals. An electron can be in two places at the same time, but not in the middle. And I use that as an analogy to how it is now theorized that a quasars which can appear, you know, light years distances across universes can be fed by matter entering a spiraling black hole. You know, I was explaining.
- [03:31]
A
John b. Was a 49 year old bachelor who lived with his elderly mother on a beautiful old property in the woods. He spent his days maintaining a giant hedge maze in his backyard, railing about society's miseries and performing arcane chemical processes in his workshop. Also, John was a world renowned antiquarian clock restorer. Collectors from all over came to him for his expertise. Even though John rarely ventured far from his secluded home, he was engaged with the wider world, felt the problems of the wider world very deeply.
- [04:01]
B
When I think about the end of my own existence, I take the biggest possible picture. I don't just look at myself as a 49 year old semi homosexual atheist living in a shit town full of Baptists in but Foxville, Alabama. I look at myself as a citizen of the world. I try to look at the biggest picture possible.
- [04:24]
A
On June 22, 2015, John killed himself. I went to his funeral in Bibb county and shortly afterwards came to the decision that there was still a story worth pursuing about this man I'd come to know, but whose life and death there were all these questions about. For instance, why hadn't a man as meticulous a record keeper as John left a will and what had become of the wealth he'd accumulated fixing antique clocks. So I kept reporting. I spent a year and a half interviewing John's friends and neighbors and family, learning about his life and the impact of his death on the people close to him. And that became S town. And S Town became a phenomenon that overwhelmed me. Don't get me wrong, I was proud of the podcast, but Once it came out, it took on a momentum that was beyond anything I could have imagined. It broke records. Millions of people listened. Jimmy Fallon had me on the Tonight Show. I was invited to speak in cities around the world, in London, at the Sydney Opera House, to impart my thoughts about S Town and journalism writ large. Please welcome the executive producer and creator of S Town, Brian Reed. I was a public radio producer in my early 30s. The attention was cool, but also weird. And it came with backlash. S Town was a character study of sorts, told in seven episodes, centered on this one man, John, who was an extraordinary person, but he wasn't a public figure. And so some writers and journalists started putting out pieces, wondering if, even if, they enjoyed the podcast, I'd exposed too much about John's life. They thought my reporting about his mental health, his relationships, his experience as a queer man in Alabama was too intrusive, and that John might not have wanted me to do such a personal story about him if he were alive. This is an NPR reporter giving his thoughts about the podcast at an event. I'll be honest with you, A lot of it made me as a journalist, uncomfortable like that. I'm peering into something that's really not something that we should be quote, unquote reporting. This is. This is a human drama. This is an incredibly well told story, but I don't know that it's like what we should be doing. And here's a culture reporter for vox.
- [06:38]
C
The thing that makes it so amazing is also one of the things that makes it so troubling to me.
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A
She's talking about S Town on a radio show.
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C
Maybe we didn't have a right to know any of these things about this dead man who never really understood that after he died, a story of his life would be made and then downloaded by 40 million people.
- [06:58]
A
I heard these critiques, but I was a little dismissive of them, maybe a little defensive. I don't know. I thought about other journalists, biographers who've written stories about people after they died. Did they get this kind of criticism? Plus, lots of good has come out of telling John's story. A national exhibit of his clock restoration work, a suicide prevention program that's grown to train over 10,000 people in Alabama since the podcast came out. And so many listeners who said they'd just been moved by John. So, except when interviewers asked me about the critics, I didn't give them too much thought. Then I got sued. It was a group of Alabama lawyers who sued me. They argued that under a new Alabama law, John B. McLemore's estate was entitled to money from the podcast. They used some of the articles that were critical of me to make their case. They even suggested in court filings that I might have allowed John to kill himself so I could get a story out of it and broadcast it, quote, to the entire world to sell advertisements for mail order meals and home mortgages. Two of our sponsors were Blue Apron and Rocket Mortgage. I had to turn over my interviews, my notebooks, my phone and computer. I was deposed. There were several things that were bizarre about the suit. For one, the lawyers who were suing me had no personal connection to John, nor did they have the support of John's family, who'd actually tried to prevent the lawyers from being able to do this. But perhaps weirdest of all to me was that under this new law, in order to win their case, the lawyers had to prove that S Town wasn't journalism, which meant that I had to prove that it was. Imagine trying to convince somebody that the thing you do for work every day is indeed the thing that. That it is, or that you think it is. We ended up settling, and the lawyers said in a statement that we'd acted responsibly in our reporting. But during the nearly two years we fought the case, I became consumed by the question, what is journalism? I was like a baker wondering, what is bread? And that question, what is journalism? Has only come to feel more urgent. It occurred to me how few hard and fast rules our profession has. There's no qualification exam. You can go to school for it, but lots of us don't. We just learn on the job. And that can really vary behind so many of the disagreements we're in the middle of as a society, the confusions and fights. There's a debate about journalism, what it is, how it should be done, who should get to do it, and how we can make it better. I see it everywhere in my late night doom scrolling on the news itself. This is not journalism. This is not news. Another journalist. You're a punk. I almost threw up reading it. That's not journalism. He steals data. He's not a journalist.
- [09:46]
D
A few months ago, I realized, that's not journalism.
- [09:49]
B
You're not doing journalism.
- [09:53]
A
I've been troubled by the state of journalism and by how much the relationship between journalists and everyone else has deteriorated. That's why I'm making this new show. I want to create a space that isn't filled with accusations and talking over each other, where people with opposing views can hear each other out. A place where journalists are able to be introspective about their own work, open to criticism and self evaluation. But how can I ask other people to do that if I'm not willing to do it myself? And so I've decided to do something a little intimidating. I'm going to speak to someone who criticized my most well known story, questioned whether I should have made it at all, from KCRW in Los Angeles and placement theory. This is question everything. So here's the thing about the critics of I never actually had a conversation with any of them, to be honest. Headlines like S Town is a stunning podcast. It probably shouldn't have been made struck me as a little clickbaity, and I was annoyed that the people who'd written these hadn't at least called me for a comment beforehand. I'd like to say their stories didn't bother me, but they did. As I've been getting ready to launch this podcast, I thought a lot about the lack of trust in our industry and the many differences of opinion about what good journalism is. And inevitably, I thought about the debate over S Town and whether, despite its popularity, it was good journalism. I started rereading the criticism. One of the toughest columns was by an Australian journalist named Gay Alcorn. Gay's piece had run in the Guardian, Australia under the headline S Town Never Justifies its Voyeurism, and that makes it morally Indefensible. The subhead stung even more. John B. Macklemore's agonies are laid out for our entertainment, with scant reflection by the podcast's reporter as to the ethics of what he's doing. There was a photo of me talking to my editor with a big grin on my face. I think it finally hit me, or at least I finally let myself acknowledge what was underneath the more abstract discussion of journalistic ethics. It felt to me like the critics were suggesting that maybe I wasn't a decent person, that I'd treated someone, that I'd treated John badly. Gay Alcorn's been a reporter and editor for about 30 years, twice as long as me. She's won major awards for her feature writing. In the early 2000s, she was stationed in Washington for multiple Australian papers. She later became editor of one of Australia's oldest newspapers. The the Age. The idea that such an accomplished journalist had found fault with my work isn't one I was eager to dwell on. But here we are. Gaye and I speak late on a Tuesday night, my time, early morning for her. The next day over in Melbourne, we talk for more than two Hours. I learn as we're talking that after her column ran, she had tried to get an interview with me when I spoke about S Town in Australia. I don't remember this exactly, but I must have gotten the request, seen who it was, and declined. Which is to say this is a conversation seven years in the making. I'm surprised how nervous I am going into the interview, frankly. I don't even know if it is an interview. Will I be interviewing gay? Is gay interviewing me? When I sat down to prepare, instead of writing questions like I normally do, I spewed out pages and pages, paragraphs of thoughts, arguments, chronicling, I guess, my reasons for making various decisions in S Town. I ask a what she remembered about the first time she listened to my podcast.
- [13:33]
D
I did find it so compelling and interesting and remarkable, but the more it went on, the more I thought, oh, this is really worrying me.
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A
What worried you about it?
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D
There are a couple of issues. I mean, the first one is the obvious one, which is that John came to you for a specific purpose, which was to investigate a murder in Chittown, as he called it. That was the basis of the interviews. And then after he died, after he took his own life, the story shifted and became about his life. And I think you say at some point in the podcast that I think it's a worthwhile thing to understand another human being. And I do too. And that's what we do. But that's different. To understand another human being, to do a seven part podcast series on them, revealing every intimate and sordid detail of their life when they haven't given you explicit consent to doing that. That's what worried me. And I think I said in my piece that I could forgiven you almost anything if you'd taken me through the process of explaining why you thought this was worthwhile to do, if you'd explained your thinking and your producers thinking about the ethics and the morality of telling the story, depending on what you said, I think the program is justifiable because it is worthwhile telling human stories. And it was a rich life of a human being. But it just, I just thought, when is he going to say why is he using this? I mean, I'm interested in whether you or your producers talked about that. As in he did come to us for a different purpose. But you know, you had all these tapes. Was there a discussion about the ethics of telling his story when he was now dead?
- [15:21]
A
Yes, I mean, there was discussion about what do we do now? Is there a story? I mean, the first thing was I Just wanted to go to the funeral, you know, And I did feel a little confused about my relationship to that. I think I even say this in the story, but you know, to John and, you know, to the people there. But I was told come, and I wanted to come by that point. Gay's question was a straightforward one, but my answer wasn't. I told her about how John didn't just come to me about the murder. There was lots he wanted me to look into. I told her how even after there turned out to be no murder, I was talking to John about still trying to do a different story about his town, how I was making plans to come back down in a few weeks to do more reporting when he killed himself. What I ended up going down for was John's funeral instead. And pretty quickly, people who knew John were telling me about things that seemed suspicious to them. There was the question of a will with somebody hiding it. There was the question of gold John had, what had happened to that. Plus, I told Gay, I found myself with questions about who this man was that I'd gotten to know, who I felt had made an impact on my life and was upset, had taken his life. So that was the conversation when I came back from John's funeral. I talked with my editors about this, and kind of what we agreed I would continue to look into. I don't think we were like, this is a story and we're airing it.
- [16:53]
D
Yes.
- [16:54]
A
But I think I was aware of the, I don't know, perverse or kind of morbid reality that suddenly, after someone dies, there was something to report on, you know, And I think that is like a dark truth about our work and maybe the world. But, yeah, that was the. That was the process.
- [17:14]
D
That's interesting. And I guess it gets trickier. And were there conversations, particularly about his sexuality and his abuse of himself and tattoo after tattoo and his. His desire for pain, which I found very, very confronting. And obviously it was confronting what Gaye's talking about.
- [17:34]
A
Here is the last chapter of S Town, where I go into detail about the end of John's life and how he'd taken to getting tattooed and pierced over and over for the pain.
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D
Were there discussions apart from. Yes, let's go on and do a bit of more reporting about those particular things and the ethics of revealing the most difficult and private parts of a person when he had not consented to that. Were there discussions with your editors about those particular things? Sorry, I feel like I'm interviewing you here.
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A
Yeah, no, absolutely.
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D
Yeah.
- [18:07]
A
There's my answer. As to who's interviewer and interviewee. And when I re listened to the recording of this conversation later, I realized how frustrating an interviewee I was. Somehow I was talking a lot without answering Gay's question. Like when I read your critique, honestly, it surprised me because the idea that the existence of the story would be questioned, that wasn't something that felt controversial to me. That is not to say there weren't many challenging ethical and editorial decisions to make along the way about what to include why and how to include them and what to do in the reporting about that. So it was filled with very difficult decisions. But the question of whether it would be okay to even do the story in the first place was surprising to me in your critique. But all that is to say I.
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D
Wasn'T the only critique who, who said that. I know there were others.
- [19:00]
A
Yeah, no, no, you weren't. I was surprised by it.
- [19:02]
D
I wondered whether or not. Yeah, I can see why you were. But wondered what's the justification for this at all? Particularly when he's not a public figure in any way, he hasn't given you specific consent to do a story on his life and particularly the most sensitive parts of his life, you know, why do you think this is a story at all? What's your answer to that criticism of mine and others even questioning whether or not it's legitimate to do this to a private, private person when he's not around to consent or otherwise?
- [19:38]
A
I think I and others learn important things about the world and about the experience of other people from stories like this. And I know that sounds like maybe a little touchy feely or something, but that is truly the belief I was operating from was I felt that I was learning things, that this very terrible tragedy had happened, but that there was a way to make meaning out of it that could be helpful and meaningful to other people. It may have been different, for instance, if when I started calling people who John had known, if people said, you really shouldn't do this, I don't think this is a good idea. I cannot think of a single person who said that. In fact, it was often quite the opposite. You know, as his professor told me from his college professor who had become a lifelong friend, he said, I've been waiting for someone to tell the story of this man who's one of the most remarkable people I've ever met. Yes, had that not been the case, maybe I might have made a different decision.
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D
That's a very good answer and I understand your thinking on that, I guess. Can you address the issue of consent directly.
- [20:42]
A
Yeah. I mean, let's take the issue of sexuality specifically, because I think that is really at the core of a lot of your criticism and other people's criticism and, you know, reasonable questions to what extent and whether to talk about his sexuality was a serious thing. It just wasn't one decision. It was something that happened over time. And John talked to me about his sexuality on the record. Had he stayed alive and I'd continue doing a story, I think there would have been an ongoing discussion that I had with him. And he may have at some point said, you know, I don't want you talking about my sexuality in the story. And I cannot imagine a world in which I would have said, well, tough shit. That said, we didn't have a big discussion about, I'm gonna do a story where this is in the story. Because I didn't know that the opportunity for having that discussion, you know, would go away. And so I wasn't sure when we started. You know, I was like, I don't know if this needs to be included. I don't know if this is okay to include. And my decision about it came out of many months of reporting and talking to people and getting a sense of, is this important to the story, and is there public interest in this, and what effect will this have on John's legacy and on his community? So that comes from kind of getting a sense of who he was out to, who knew about his sexuality, who didn't, what they said about it, if they thought it was important to him, you know, if they thought it was important to understanding why he died and why he was depressed and decisions he made. And then a really important conversation I had was with John's. So John's closest living relative was his mother, who has dementia, her conservator. And the person who was really managing John's affairs was his cousin Rita, who came in from Florida. And at some point, I had a conversation with her about John's sexuality to kind of get a sense like, do people in the family know this? How would you feel about this? And I came out of that conversation comfortable with the impact this would have. And that was not the case with many things that we didn't include. I did believe very deeply it was important to tell this man the story of this man's life and why he ended it. And that story, I don't feel you can tell without talking about his experience as a queer man in the Deep South. And so maybe that, you know, that's a decision we could have made. But there was no way to tell that story without including that, that I could imagine that would be fair and truthful to the world. So that was like my thinking about it.
- [23:20]
D
And yes, that episode in particular was a really powerful insight in what it was like to be a gay man in the south at those times. I just wish you'd been a little bit more. But it sounds like you didn't really have any serious ethical issues as you were doing it. Once you'd made the decision to tell John's story after he died, then, you know, you thought that was fair enough. He'd given you all these interviews. It was never going to be a story really, just about the murder. Even though the first couple of episodes are about that, that I wonder whether you thought there were any significant ethical issues that you confronted with.
- [23:56]
A
I guess there wasn't. What I'm saying is there wasn't a fundamental. Once we kind of like. As I began to talk to people and get their participation and encouragement and their understanding about the enterprise of the story, the question of whether or not to do it wasn't a huge ethical question. It was more these kind of decisions along the way.
- [24:19]
D
I guess I'm interested in whether the show got enormous praise and enormous accolades, but it did get some criticism along the lines of mine, I think, generally, whether or not you thought they had any validity, those critiques.
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A
Upon revisiting it, I think there is absolutely something in your piece that I can agree with, and that is the overarching argument you make, which is that we should have been clearer or could have been clearer and more transparent about our decision making process when we did struggle, why we did make a certain decision about what to include or why we did something in the story. And that criticism, I think is legitimate and real.
- [25:03]
D
Well, it's so interesting because you reveal all other things in this podcast. You don't pretend you're an objective reporter, but that those issues you don't talk about much. And that I do think was a real weakness of the show. Whether or not you still think the show's worthwhile.
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A
Yeah, I think you call it in the piece like a fake transparency. Like a fake or limited transparency.
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D
Indeed.
- [25:23]
A
Yeah, like I can understand that. I think that nothing would have been lost by us explaining more our thinking. And in fact, there could have been a lot to be gained. Like there's this one part I've always wished that I'd done differently. I'm pulling it up here.
- [25:45]
D
Hold on.
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A
So this is in chapter six. I'm driving around with John and we get to a conversation about what it's like to be gay in his county. This is gonna sound like a ridiculous question, but is there a gay scene down here?
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B
Oh, my God. There's no telling how many closet cases are in this town. You turn that off and I'll tell you something.
- [26:05]
A
And this is when he tells me to turn the tape recorder off, hit.
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B
The kill button for a second.
- [26:11]
A
This is one of the few. And I write here. This is one of the few times John ever asked me to turn my recorder off. What that usually means is that I wouldn't tell you what he said without getting his permission to describe it. But there are a few reasons. I'm going to give you an overview of what he told me in the car that day. First, since John died, two other people who knew him well have told me the same information on the record. Also, John was very clear that he did not believe in God or an afterlife. So John, in his own view, is worm dirt now unaffected by this. And lastly, what John disclosed and where it led me after he died, helped me understand him so much more. And I think trying to understand another person is a worthwhile thing to do. So this is a part where I've all, like. I've looked back, and.
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D
I think that's. I think that's a big glib, Brian, to be honest.
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A
Yes, exactly. Yes, I think it.
- [26:57]
D
I think it is.
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A
I think it can come off that way.
- [26:59]
D
I do wonder, though, why you could talk about his sexuality and being gay in the south and his yearning for love that he never really found, which was also very moving, without actually saying that he had an affair with a married man, like a straight married man in the town. I mean, that was the particular thing, I think, where he said, this is off the record. I don't want you to talk about this.
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A
The specific thing was the identity of the man. So the part that he wanted. And that's another part that I wish, like I'd written more precisely here, okay. Specifically, was the identity of this person. And that has remained off the record. So I didn't breach a specific request to be off the record, but I understand why it's not clear. And that's another part why I regret this writing. I don't think it's. I both don't think it's broad enough and deals with the broader question. And then I don't think it's precise enough. And then could be received, as you did, as glib, which is certainly not my intention.
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D
No, I'm sure it wasn't your intention because it's the only time you directly address it and it was just a little bit quick and throw away.
- [28:01]
A
Yeah. I've always kind of had a sense like, I wish I could redo this part and then rereading your piece. And I think I even have a bigger understanding of what I would do differently. Can we go back to something? I think you'd asked me a question that maybe I didn't totally answer or brought up a point that I didn't totally answer, which was about the extent to which John had consented to the story or which story he consented to. What's the specific consent you would have wanted or that you feel would have been needed to do the story? We did in a way that wasn't so worrying.
- [28:40]
D
Well, he couldn't give consent because he died. So that's the whole question about whether the story should have been done at all. He obviously consented to give you all sorts of interviews where he ranted on and on and on about all sorts of things, but he never consented for you to do a story that would go into the most private and painful and sordid details of his life and his significant mental illness. He never consented to that or tell me he did.
- [29:07]
A
No. I mean, he never explicitly told me he had mental illness. I think he was undiagnosed. So certainly no. Like, we never talked about Mercury. I've been in Gay's position as a reporter. You aren't satisfied with the answer you're getting, so you keep asking it slightly different ways in the hope of shaking loose what you're looking for. I wanted to give Gay what she was looking for, but I don't think I ever quite did because I still couldn't fully internalize Gay's criticism until later, after we were done talking. Gay wasn't arguing that I wasn't allowed to tell John's story. She was posing the question of whether I should have. She was saying that even if John came to us and wanted me to do a story, even if he shared personal information with me for it, he died in the middle of the process, before I knew exactly what the story would be. He killed himself. While I was figuring that out, a week or two before I was supposed to go visit him again and do more reporting. And so I never was able to say to him directly, I'm gonna produce an in depth portrait of your life. Is that okay? And he never got to say yes or no. Gay wanted to know and wished I'd said in S Town how much I'd wrestled with that. And the truth was, I hadn't. Not in the way Gay was picturing. I reached out to my editors on S Town to see if they'd ever experienced inklings of the moral conflict Gay feels. They hadn't either. There was also something I was trying to get across to Gay in this conversation, though I noticed that after John died, I felt my responsibilities shift. John's consent mattered, but I often found myself giving the needs of the living more weight. How would my reporting affect people who are alive? How could it help or hurt them? Those were the ethical questions my editors and I wrestled with most. It came up when Gay said this about my telling of John's life.
- [30:57]
D
It was. It was very intrusive, and not just the things that he'd told you, but of the detail of his masochism, I guess, or the pain and getting tattoo after tattoo and being whipped. You didn't get that from him at all. You got that from Tyler. And I found that really intrusive.
- [31:19]
A
Tyler is Tyler Goodson, a local guy in his early 20s that John had introduced me to. John had become kind of a father figure to Tyler, who was estranged from his own dad, a criminal. But at the end of John's life, he'd recruited Tyler into some of his pain rituals, asking Tyler not only to tattoo him over and over, but to whip him. Clearly, John and Tyler had a complex relationship, but Tyler was devastated when John died. He'd been with him just hours before. People believed that Tyler had been taking advantage of John, playing him for money, getting him into a dark headspace of tattoos and drinking, which led to his death. But for me, learning about the pain rituals put the lie to this narrative about Tyler. Speaking with Tyler showed a different power dynamic between the two men. John was much older than Tyler. He had money, Tyler didn't. John was pressuring and sometimes paying Tyler to inflict pain on him, even though Tyler had said he wanted to stop and was no longer comfortable with it. People had an inaccurate or at least incomplete view of Tyler and John's relationship, one that could have had implications for Tyler. So I included those confronting details, as Gay called them, out of a sense of journalistic fairness to Tyler.
- [32:34]
D
Yes, and that does come across. I think that part of the series is about empathy for Tyler. I think that does certainly come across.
- [32:47]
A
Did hearing S Town bring anything specific to mind when you said, like, it worried you or you found it confronting an experience you'd had with a subject or source or a story? That you'd be open to talking about.
- [32:58]
D
You know, when I was younger, I think I was. We're hungry for bylines and to. For our own advancement and our own ego in some ways. And I love being a journalist and I think it's a great profession. But as I've got older and I think a lot of journalists, as they get older, see the Greys a little bit more, particularly with private individuals, people who are ordinary people. I mean, I certainly have done stories where I've kind of thought, oh, you know, did they really particularly long narrative stories, did they really understand the impact this story might have on their life or their relationships to their siblings or their family and friends? But I did work on a series many years ago, narrative series on a gambler. And we decided to. There was a lot of gambling problems in Melbourne at the time and we decided to try to tell one person's story to kind of reveal the broader issue through one person story. And it was a man who's migrant to Australia who had driven up beside the casino and said, I'm going to blow the casino up.
- [34:05]
A
Gay says there was a huge standoff with police. The whole area by the casino was corjoned off. In the end, there wasn't a bomb in the man's car.
- [34:13]
D
It was a hoax. It was a, you know, cry for help, some people might say. And it turned out that he'd lost everything through gambling. And I told his story over, I think it was a seven part series. And I interviewed his wife and his children and his, you know, all sorts of people. And I remember a couple of days before the story was to be published, he, he rang me up and he said, I don't think I want this story out. I'm really worried about this story. I can't remember whether he actually said, I don't want you to run it. I can't remember if he was specific of that, but he was sort of. And I understand. Goodness me. Wouldn't you be, wouldn't you be nervous, Brian, if someone wanted to tell you your entire life? Yes, I would too. And I don't know if I would agree to that to. And I, I sort of talked him, talked him about it and tried to calm him down, but the idea of pulling the story at that point was probably not gonna happen.
- [35:01]
A
Do you remember at all what you said in that discussion where he was worried?
- [35:05]
D
I think I sort of said, look, you know, it's been very carefully done, you know, you don't come out of it, you know, badly. It's there's a lot of empathy for your situation here. It's not an attack on you or a criticism of you or your family in. And I probably would have said, you know, it might help others in some way, that it has, that it has a public purpose. I don't know really what the fallout was for them. But also I don't think that I went back to him and his family enough afterwards. I didn't. I think the impact of that story would have been very large on their family. And I don't think I was as sensitive and empathetic as I should have been. I was terribly proud of the story. Do you know what I mean?
- [35:57]
A
Yeah.
- [35:58]
D
And I don't think that I, you know, really understood. I was a lot younger then. I don't think I really understood the impact and also my obligation to go back and support them as much as I should have.
- [36:11]
A
So did you have any follow ups?
- [36:13]
D
Some follow ups, but I, you know, I wish I had, you know, gone and saw them again. I think I called them and so on, but gone and saw them and just talked it through a little bit more about, okay, what did particularly their.
- [36:25]
A
Kids had, teenage kids would have following up with them. Do you think that would have helped them, would have helped you feel better? What would have come of that, that you regret that you didn't do?
- [36:36]
D
So if I had followed up more, yeah, I think it could have just been a decent person, you know, like. I'm not saying I'm not a decent person. I think I am and I think I'm an ethical journalist. Although I've made mistakes and regret things in the past, but I think to sort of say you treated me in some ways a friend and you've revealed things to me that are very personal and that are painful to you and that I am still here for you even after the story is published, that I'm not, you know, I'm not going to do that in a sort of a casual way, but in a substantial way and make, make time, you know, for you to say what you think. I don't know, maybe it would have made no difference, but I think it might have help them and whether it would have helped me or not, I think I'd feel better about it now. I've always felt a little bit ashamed of it. I think I said in a piece that, you know, ultimately these stories are your stories. You know, it's not John's story, it is the reporter's story. And ultimately what we care about most. This is what My, My daughter, who has made podcasts, sort of said to me when I said I was terribly worried about S town and she said, oh, well, that's what you do. You know, you don't really care about the people you're dealing with. You care ultimately about the story. And I found that a very harsh thing that she said, but it was sort of true that your first obligation is to do the very best story you can. And people think you're. They might think you're their friend and you're not their friend. The story is ultimately the thing. And that's what my daughter said to me. That's what you. That's what you do.
- [38:24]
A
Mum, how did it feel for her to say that to you?
- [38:27]
D
I was so hurt. I was so hurt and upset and I thought, ah, you know, and I thought, oh, you know, I think I said in that piece that she knows me so well, that, you know, she's seen me do these things many times. And as I say, look, I do take ethics seriously and certainly as I've got older, I see the Greys so much more than I did in my 20s. But ultimately people have to know that the story is that comes first and that your Brian reads or my first obligation is to the story.
- [39:03]
A
This dilemma I definitely know. Last December, Tyler, the local young man John had been close with, who I'd spent a year and a half reporting on. After John died, was shot and killed by police at his house. He was 32 years old. I went to his memorial in Woodstock. His family, he has young kids, were wracked with the shock and sorrow of it. They still are. It was the second funeral I'd gone to in Woodstock, Alabama. These two men, Tyler and John, I knew them in a powerful way, a way that's singular, I think, to someone who's documented the life of another person. Knowing them had changed my life for the better and I believe it has changed others lives for the better. But my work hadn't stopped their suffering. I wasn't at Tyler's memorial as a friend, but I wasn't there as a journalist anymore either. I was just there. Do you mind if I just see if I have any questions? I haven't asked you that I've thought of.
- [40:12]
D
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
- [40:14]
A
Take a minute.
- [40:16]
D
I think we've gone through most of it.
- [40:20]
A
It's funny even in this discussion of. I don't know, it's not funny, but I'm noting that even in this discussion about the human tragedy at the heart of S Town we're still talking about the story and the reporting choices.
- [40:31]
D
Yes.
- [40:32]
A
And honestly, if I really think about the real thing I regret in this whole experience, and that I feel real guilt about, is that I wasn't able to or didn't do enough to stop John from killing himself. Like, that's the actual just human guilt that I feel and I felt through this whole experience, separate of the story, but somehow we're still talking about the storytelling decisions, but I feel less conflicted about what I did after and much more conflicted about what I didn't do before.
- [41:13]
D
You think you could have done something else, or is that sort of a general human thing to say? I wish I could have done something, even though, you know, you couldn't really.
- [41:20]
A
I think it's both. I don't think it's fair. Like, I would. If someone else were saying this to me, I would say, don't blame yourself, you know, and in fact, I have said that to people and I've had that said to me. That said, I do think there are, you know, now I attended one of these trainings that they're giving in Alabama for suicide prevention. There are specific things you can try to do. It's qpr, question, persuade, refer. I wish I'd known that, you know, and had kind of that training at the time. And maybe there's, you know, there could have been a little more framework to how I was talking to him, the times he brought up suicide rather than just winging it. So I think the answer is kind of both, you know, but. Yeah, it's been really helpful to talk to you, Gay. Thank you. It's been. Been really helpful and I'm glad. I guess I'm just curious if you think there's anything I haven't. I don't know, answered.
- [42:17]
D
I guess I think we've gone through all of it, Brian.
- [42:21]
A
I'm sure there's another three hours I could do.
- [42:24]
D
Yeah, but, you know, you've allowed yourself to be stripped and, you know, oh, Brian, why you. Why are you doing this to your.
- [42:31]
A
That's what my wife said. She's like, you're a very interesting person to submit yourself to these. I don't know. I feel honestly, there's a. We shouldn't be afraid of this. And it's kind of my thought about this show is just if we talk about this more, if there's more openness about the process, hopefully we'll build trust in various directions. I don't know, maybe this is just an idealistic. I don't know, I just want to make sure I say this. I'm sorry that I. I declined your interview request. I'm trying to remember exactly why I would have.
- [43:03]
D
Oh, that's okay.
- [43:04]
A
No, but I'm probably. I was probably like, afraid to talk to you, honestly. And so, yeah, I'm sorry about that.
- [43:11]
D
You know, I was obviously interested enough to want to talk about it more. So it did have an impact on me, that podcast.
- [43:16]
A
Yeah.
- [43:17]
D
But I wasn't devastated when you said no, but I was, you know, I just thought, oh, it'd be good to talk to you.
- [43:21]
A
No, Amore. I'm disappointed in my previous self for not saying yes.
- [43:25]
D
Seven years later. Here we are. Brian.
- [43:26]
A
Yeah, thank you, Gay.
- [43:28]
D
Thank you.
- [43:29]
A
I'm grateful for your openness to talking to me.
- [43:31]
D
You are very welcome, Brian. Good luck with it.
- [43:34]
A
Gay Alcorn in Melbourne, Australia. Making this episode posed a unique challenge I want to tell you about. I've never asked someone to talk with me on the record, where the roles of interviewer and interviewee were more hazy than they were with me and Gay. My team and I thought, if Gaye is preparing to talk to me, she was. She re listened to all of S Town before we spoke and interviewing me critically on my show. And I'm the one editing and presenting that interview. That's certainly a conflict of interest. How did that affect the final product? Was I being fair to Gaye and her position? So, in keeping with the mission of the show to experiment with ways of doing journalism differently, we shared a draft of the entire story with Gay before air. This is something I don't think I've ever done before, but we wanted to make sure we'd represented her accurately and fairly. She responded that we had. You can read Gay El Kern's full response at our substack that's at question everything.substack.com Please subscribe and I know we covered some heavy topics in this episode. If you're having thoughts of suicide, please call or text 988 to get help and support. This episode first ran in September of 2024 and I just thought I'd mention that a few weeks ago, Tyler Goodson's family, his estate filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the police who killed him in Alabama. Lisa Pollack and Robin Simeon produced this episode along with me. It was edited by Jonathan Goldstein with additional support from Lars Starcheski, Neil Drumming and Mike Dodge Weiskopf. Fact checking was by Kalyn lynch, sound design and mixing by Brendan Baker, and our Music by Matt McGinley. Our executive producers are me and Robin Simeon. The rest of our team includes managing editor Kevin Sullivan, producers Sophie Kazis and Zach St. Louis, contributing editors Neil Drumming and Jen Kinney and associate producers Kevin Shepard and Emma Grillo. Our partners at KCRW include Arnie Seiple, Tejal Azumara, Natalie Hill and Jennifer Farrow. Next week, One year after the LA fires. What was it like to cover that story while your own house was burning down? We go to la, buy some journalists a drink and ask them, how are things going now? Happy New Year. We'll see you next Thursday.
- [46:07]
C
I just got my new phone and the KCRW app is the best way to get the music and shows you love from kcrw. And it's been totally redone to be cleaner, faster and more reliable. And there's two new music Dance 24 and Vintage 24. And they're only in the app. Plus real time now playing so you never miss a track ID. Look up KCRW in the App Store and be sure to make a free account to use all the new features.