S-town Podcast Discussion
A new podcast from This American Life and Serial dropped yesterday. They dropped all seven episodes at once and I was up half the night listening to it. Drop everything you're doing and download it now. It's the most beautiful and devastating and interesting story I've ever experienced outside the confines of a book or a screen. Would love to discuss with the community.



This discussion has been closed.
Comments
@April_May_June, Do you think someone stole the gold, or do you think there was no gold?
I really liked meeting all the friends on the list as well as the one gent from the call line. I also thought the search for gold and uncovering JBM's horology feats were a good way to tie in the secondary stories. Plus one of the most hilarious rants is in the latter episodes: "We ain't nothing but a nation of [series of expletives] whiney, fat, flabby, out of shape, Facebook looking, twerk fest, peeking out the windows and slipping around listening on the cell phones and spying in the peep hole and peeping in the crack of the gd door and listening in the sheet rock... *sigh* I gotta have me some tea." I laughed so hard.
I'd be interested to hear what didn't work for you.
@NikkiP - I don't know! I kind of think someone did (I go back and forth between Tyler and the clerk lady), but then sometimes I think there never was any gold ...
What do you think?
@NikkiP - good points. To be honest, I think almost everyone's worst sides came out after John's death. I mean, between the cousin's weird comments about wanting John's nipple rings, to Tyler's basically looting the house and all the searches, to the clerk (seemingly on purpose?) not calling all the people on John's list, to ... I could go on and on.
One major take-away from this is that if you want your possessions to go to specific people after you pass, you need to make sure you have a will!
I'm also heartbroken that the amazing maze John made will most likely not be around to much longer. I've seen pictures of it, and it's incredible.
I think that there either wasn't any, or there wasn't nearly as much as he led people to believe - in which case I'd guess that the police took it. I don't think that anyone in a town like that could strike it rich without their spending habits noticeably changing and/or suddenly packing up and moving - either would cause suspicion (especially because there was a limited number of people who had access, and suspicious behaviour from any of them would instantly be linked the gold).
John mentioned leaving 20 oz of gold to Tyler and someone else. 40 oz of gold could easily fit in a freezer (as the clerk said it was), and it's worth about $50,000. That's an amount of money that could be divided up between a few cops who investigated the scene and wouldn't cause any major changes in their spending habits.
Having said that, the fact that he meticulously kept track of everything, was openly suicidal and didn't have a will leads me to think that in the end he didn't have anything left to give (which might have been a contributing factor to his suicide).
I also wonder how much the cousin made for selling that very large property, and why she didn't even spend a small amount of that to buy the man a dang headstone. Disgusting.
In the scheme of everything else though, the gold is a minor point. The real gold in all this was sweet Olan and his proper way of speaking, the opera-loving grandma, John's old professor, cousin Jimmy's affirmations, learning about antiquarian horology, and seeing pictures of the maze.
I am glad they didn't try to push this as a serial part 3, because this is something very different. But I dare say I liked this narrator a little more than Sarah. He is a lot less biased.
After the first episode or so John B started to wear on me, but he is such a unique guy I can't help but like him