Serial And This American Life: S-Town By Brian Reed

S-Town by Serial and This American Life, hosted by Brian Reed, is an adventurous and suspenseful podcast following a local hillbilly’s interpretation of a murder. Brian Reed is a broadcaster for This American Life. He receives an email with a subject line that catches his eye, “John B. Macklemore lives in shit-town, Alabama.” Brian finds that there are two stories in the email, the first one is about a local police officer who forced women into sexual acts. The second one is about a murder, a young man in his 20’s named Dylan Nichols who was killed by the son of a prominent, and wealthy family. Brian emails John back and forth over the course of a year before finally speaking to him. John explains on the phone how he had overheard one of the

Kabram Burt is the son of the millionaire family who owns a lot of land in the area and a timber operation called K3 Lumber, around where John lives. The Burt family had made the murder disappear, until Kabram started bragging about it. Jake Goodson, an associate of John’s, ran into Kabram at a Little Caesars after a year of not seeing him. Kabram explains how he was in drug rehab, and then tells the story of the murder. Dylan was at a party, when he got into an argument with Kabram, he and his friends taunted Dylan until he retaliated, causing him to get jumped. Dylan pulled a knife and cut the throat of Kabram’s friend, which lead Kabram to get Dylan on the ground where he kicked his head repeatedly until he was unconscious. Jake asked how he got away with it, to which Kabram replied that he claimed self defence. Brian decided to visit Alabama. When he got there, John gave him a tour of Woodstock, and then the two got to investigating. At times, Brian thought he was wasting his time, until he asked Skylar, Jake Goodson's

This podcast is heavily influenced by privilege and understanding privilege, talking about the murder of a young man and how the murderer was able to get away with it. Kabram Burt was able to get away with the murder because he came from a prominent and wealthy family. His family was able to make the murder disappear by making people stay quiet and falsely claiming self-defence. The victim’s family could not get justice for the loss of a young Dylan Nichols. Kabram bragged about getting away with the murderer clarifying who he is as a person, he does not appreciate his privilege and does not understand that he has it. He is a white male in a society dominated by white males, to add onto that he is wealthy and has power in the area because of his family’s background. Brian Reed is giving a voice to the injustice that is happening in the town of Woodstock, bringing light on the topic that was swept under the rug. This issue taking place in “s-town” may as well be taking place in many cities across the country and bringing light to this topic may inspire other people across the nation to stand up for the injustices