Who Are These Podcasts? - Ep55 - S-Town

Episode Date: April 17, 2017

This week on WATP we tackle the highly popular podcast, S-Town.  If you're a fan of S-Town then you know that listening and reviewing just episode 1 might not capture everything but Kevin and Karl do their best to introduce you to John B. Mclemore and his series of unfortunate events.  Enjoy yer gooch meat! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's show time. Just a handful that don't suck That's where we come in Our cascades are like a lower man than I'd give them W-A-T-P W-A-T-P W-A-T-P Who are these partners? W way you wait to be? Who likes these partners, not WHOAGP? Who likes these partners, that won't be on me?

Who are these partners, WHOAGP? I'm your host Kevin with me here is always his carl. We want to remind everyone if you want to check out the show on whoarethese.com or you can leave us some feedback on iTunes. We'd appreciate that as well. We're also on Facebook and something called Twitter at whoarethesepod. Today's show will be reviewing S-Town. As always, we have both listened to the episode separately. We have not discussed it beforehand. So let's get into it. How you doing, Carl? I'm doing well, Kevin. Yeah. Yeah. I listen to the very first episode of Ashtown, which is all the rage right now in the podcast universe. Yes. Of course. We kind of got crossed up last week as you started talking about it. And then, oh,, that's what we're gonna listen to next week.

That was our teaser. So you've already listened to the entire series. I have, yeah. And I re-listened, I guess, to most of the first episode again, just to kind of re-familiarize myself, because it's been a couple weeks, I guess, since I binge through all of it. So it's gonna be very difficult for me to be kind of

negative about this because I really, really like the show quite a bit. Oh, no one's asking me to be negative, Captain. We're reviewing podcast. That's what we're doing here. We're viewing the podcast. This is the trash can on our logo. That's cool.

Yeah, so, you know, let's, I guess let's get into it. I mean, I don't know I didn't really actually I didn't pull any clips because I I figured I would just kind of off the cuff it here because I I know the whole run of the show I also wanted to put that up front to like for people who that up front too, like for people who are planning on listening to all of the, the whole run of the show, I might spoil it here. So just be careful. I will say it, I guess, before I say stuff that you might want to skip ahead or maybe I could wait to the end to kind of talk about it. but I don't know. Let's see how it goes. I think everyone who wants to hear is probably heard it by now. It's been around for a few weeks. It's very popular.

And if you haven't heard it, let me just break down the premise. And I will say that I'm well aware that how the show starts is not how it ends and that there's a lot of twists and turns. So listening to just the first episode is probably not the best representation of how the show is overall and it's critically clean and everybody loves it. But I think it's interesting to note that you're going to listen to a show that's 50 minutes long. That show is going to probably give you an idea whether you want to keep listening to it, even the first 20, 30 minutes of it. So that's kind of the way I'm approaching,

listening to this show. And the setup here is that there's this guy, John B. McLeanmore, who is getting in touch with Brian Reed from this American life because he hates his town. He thinks there was a murder that has been covered up by the police and he wants Brian Reed to do some investigative reporting on it to get to the bottom of it. Correct. Yeah, that's the kind of a setup, if you will, in the first episode of what's going on. So this guy, he lives in this shit town in Alabama, hence the name Ashtown. And I'll play you a track. This is that guy, John, who's a Redneck, explaining why it's a shit town. Play track too. We are one of the child molester capitals of the state. We have just an incredible amount of police corruption.

We have the poorest education. We've got 95 churches in this damn county. We'll have two high schools, no secondary education. Hey, if you don't like it, go to Russia. So this dude's super depressed. He thinks he's smarter and better than everybody else in his town. That's kind of the premise of this. This guy is like, come down here.

Everyone here is an idiot and a redneck and I'm super smart. I don't like people who self-proclaim how smart they are. I have a track out here. I have a track out here that is John explaining how smart they are. I have a track I hear. I have a track I hear is John explaining how smart he is. Play track seven. Whereas I was interested in the Astrolabe Sundiles, projective geometry, new wave music, climate change, and how to solve Rubik's cube. But you can't tell a redneck that the cool, you know, greenland melt falling

directly into the left-inch water where the thermohaline confector normally hits back south is sufficient firstly try to explain that the earth is more than five thousand years old yeah i mean i definitely see you know your point with the guy kind of boasting about how Oh, this guy loves climate change. Oh shit, I really think out of his mouth climate change, I understand you live in Alabama it's fucking hot there. I would be more on my radar too.

I love that. Now did you, you just listen to the first episode? Have you listened to any others? I've gotten through the first two. Okay, so did you feel compelled to listen to the second one or was that just for the show for WATP? I listened to it for WATP. And there's a good chance I'll listen to the rest a bit.

All right, Jesus, get out of my back. It's good, right? It's compelling, mate. They put a good product together in this American life. And well, there's something that they do. And it's this trick where they make it seem like it's important, or it's just this production value

that other podcasts don't do. And I think it tricks people into thinking that what they're listening to has more merit than it actually does. I have a track on here, number nine. I call it Talking Over Music Equals High End Production. After that first conversation with John, I do some research online and I find no evidence of this murder. I see there is a place called K3 Lumber owned by the Burke family. K3 in Rural Alabama, is that just a coincidence?

Yeah, I don't know. They do that a lot. You know, it comes back and then the music comes in, it's like this soft like music and then he starts talking and it that seems to be the thing that ties everything together. Yeah, it's well they did serial so if if anybody's listened to serial you know kind of the format are ready so it's very if follows that you know as Carl said you you you know you have music and then somebody's talking over the music, but I don't know what the hell, whatever they do, it's ultra-fucking

compelling. I don't know what it is, but. Well, Kevin, I agree with you. So I went ahead and made an attempt at making our sounds, our show sound professional and important. All right. This is what I call my attempt at producing an important sounding show.

I wonder why I should care about this. It sounds important because of the production, but in reality, it's not. It's boring as shit. Try just keep listening because everyone talks about how amazing it is and I'll look stupid and if I declare I don't get it Isn't my time too valuable to do that? Well now the whole premise of the show listening to podcasts that suck multiple times proves my time is not valuable

Fucking I listen to the shitty shit town show happy I Fucking I'll listen to the shitty shit town show happy I gotta tell you I was kind of compelled I want to see I'm gonna go like it where's he going? All right good well here's here's my attempt number two You make our show sounded important play Jack 11 Kevin is doing his impressions again Yeah, everyone is really interested in Copa Commander's take on this show. I know, I'm supposed to, yes, and everything to keep the show moving, but come on.

I have eight more clips with hilarious Simpsons and South Park drops. Wait until you hear Chief Wiggum sound confused. It's dynamite. That one's just plain up true. I mean that's Kevin I'm wondering if this should become a staple of our show And maybe we just need to We'll talk about the show and then we'll just put in in post We'll just put in some breaks where we reflect on what's going on. I actually really like that. I think it's good All right, well then this isn't gonna make a lot of sense, but here's my third attempt at it.

It's way too much. It's way too much. It's way too much. It's way too much. So I'll admit it, I thought this bit would go over better than it has. I guess it's actually not that funny at all, and making fun of the show that everybody likes,

trying to figure out some type of angle to goof out. It's more difficult than I had realized. Feels like a total failure at this point but you know what maybe Kevin will do coba commander. That'll save it. Is this one I go in a coba commander? No, no, I think I called out your cover competitor the other ones. So, I like it. I remember one, I think that that's, however they do it, it's not that difficult, I guess is my point.

Yeah. You make ourselves out, you know, important. Yeah. Because I'm listening to the show, Kevin, and it's about this murder that we don't even know whether it happened or not in some small town in Alabama and the guy who's the main character is someone that no one's ever heard of or cares about. So I'm sitting there and going, what is compelling about this? Why am I, why am I listening to it? But I guess they do a good job of making it seem important. Yeah, I think really to to me, it rides on the merits of cereal.

So when I first heard about it, it was like, oh, this is from the people who did cereal. I'm like, all right, I like cereal. So let's give it a shot. And the first, I guess, 20, 30 minutes of the show, you are kind of feeling around like what the fuck are they getting? Scratching your head a little bit. Right.

What are we doing here? We're not ready to go visit this guy now. What's going on? Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I think your expectation in the beginning is that this is going to be some, you know, 10 episode long murder mystery that you're going to slowly peel the layers back and figure out who you know covered up this murder in this small town you know and this there's this crazy you know southern guy named John that's gonna kind of

walk you through it but it it certainly does not turn out that way by the time you're finished with the entire run of the show. In fact, it changes pretty drastically right in the beginning when you kind of learn more about this murder that he episode. I just want to play some clips. This guy, John, is a little bit of a character. I have a clip on here that says, Super Generic Old Guy Thing to say. You know how these kids talk on cell phones all day long. You can't do, you can't get them to do nothing because they're on the cell phone. And they're tweaking in their YouTube, and they're always on Facebook. Tweaking on YouTube. Yeah, tweet and then you've taken. Yeah, it's how it's scripted.

I'm like, there's no way he really just said that. Well, the first time I listen to the show, like, first time you hear John's voice, I was so, I thought it was somebody doing an impression. Like, I'm like, there's no way that this guy. That's why. So I think you and I both thought of the same person. And I pulled a clip of it. I call it John's voice reminds me of this guy is. So I think you and I both thought of the same person and I pulled a clip of it. I call it John's voice reminds me of this guy. Play track 4. I don't want to be accused. Do you do

that thing? Do you ever do that thing where there's like a silhouette of the person and then you make their voice like a monster voice to disguise what who they is. So yeah, South Galapagnais, which is the twin brother of the Galapagnais, that has that voice. And it's, I mean, he's obviously putting it on, but it sounds exactly like this John guy. Yeah, it's, it's really funny. There's, there's a clip on Funny or Die. It's actually taken from one of ZX stand-up specials, and it drops into this interview that he has with supposedly NPR. This is the Seth Gallifinakis, and it's so perfect because he's having this interview thing in the same way that John and those are on Estonets. It was really pretty

funny back and forth, but it's so over the top, and I hate to say it's like kind of like the stereotypical gay voice, if you know what I mean, like it's just got that, that pitch to it and stuff and it doesn't sound real. But then you realize that it's very much real. This is this guy's voice and he says some pretty crazy shit and it's, it's, it's pretty hilarious. I have a good example of that. So, Play Track 15. And I was talking to John about how he would explain to people in town what I was doing down there if they saw me with him. Just everyone around here thinks I'm a queer, I could just tell you I'm fucking you damn dick. Oh, why don't we have more Gilbert Grinch wraps. That's great. I don't know. No, no, no, we're going to work on that.

Yeah, so now I want to get in a little bit to the spoiler you think, because it's going to be hard to talk about some of this stuff. But unless you watch. Before we do that, because it's going to make some of these clips less relevant, let me just play through a couple of these things that I pulled out. And again, I'm listening to this and going, so why would anybody want to keep listening to it?

This is Brian kind of summarizing why he's even creating the show in the first place. I call this, this is the convoluted story. This show is based on track five. So just to clarify, so what, so you're hearing this from a guy named Jake Goodson. He ran into cabrum and cabrum told him that we told the other guy to keep his mouth shut and we claim self defense. That's what he told him. There you go. So you're saying that you know this guy who talked to this other guy and that guy said that his friend once said that look really this is what we're doing. I thought that was a pretty good summation of it. I think it speaks pretty well to the call volume that they probably get at this American like that this was.

Oh yeah. This was what was out there like, you know what fuck it? I'm gonna go down Right, right I have another clip here that shows that John even though he thinks he's very smart. He's kind of a dumb play track six My god, I am 49 years old or 48 one closer to 49 You are stupid Has Yeah, yeah, I guess it goes on. Well, I don't want to like, it's hard to move forward with the discussion. Let me just blow through this and then and then we can move on and talk about twist and turns and all that I can stuff. This is a track that I call this is stupid. Check 13 and then I'll explain why this is stupid. The whole place feels like it's of another time and it is literally. John doesn't follow daylight

savings. So his property is on a time zone separate from the world around it. daylight savings. So his property's on a time zone separate from the world around it. Okay, he doesn't follow daylight savings, which is another way of saying all of the clocks in his house are wrong. You can't decide whether you follow daylight savings or not. Would it just an hour late to every appointment? Well, sorry, yeah, so I don't follow daylight savings. That's like, all right, well the doctor's gone. I don't know what to tell you. You don't have a choice in it. Well, that's why I thought I was either 48 or 49 I'm not even sure It could have been tomorrow. It could have been today. I don't even know. I just thought that was so dumb

Like he's trying to add more Durama to like he doesn't even live in this time. So yes, he does everybody lives in the fucking time zone Yeah, except in Arizona where I am. Who are you don't am. No but you still live in your anyway. Whatever. Well it should also be said that this guy is a clockmaker too so I don't know if that has anything to do with you know his decision to do that or if he's just lazy and doesn't want to change his clocks. Well speaking of the clockmaking, so the show starts off talking about how difficult it is to repair clocks, and it's all metaphor-y and blowhardy. At the end, this is where the show gets super blowhardy and loses me.

Play track 16. It's amazing if you think about it. The sheer variety of methods we've concocted over the centuries to keep track of time. We pour sand through a glass. We swing pendulum's back and forth. We count the cycles of radiation coming off an atom. We count Mississippi's. Yeah, we cut. We cut. We cut. We cut. We count Mississippi's. We count How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going?

How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going?

How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going?

How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? How's it going? and senile. And there when he goes down when the host, Brian Reed, goes down to visit him at his house, he's talking to his mom. And I didn't understand this back and forth. I don't even know what the answer to the question is. So I'm not even sure why they left this in the show. Maybe you can help me out play track 14. This is an old area. Yeah. Or we live in real old. Old. It's time I reckon. No. Maybe I'm talking about.

What did she say? It's time I reckon? Since time. Like it's old. Since time. Like which still doesn't make any sense, but. No, it doesn't. Does it help me out at all? All right. All right. So, um, let's we can move this along now. Okay. All right.

So let's talk about the first thing that drops in the second episode is the whole premise of this show, figuring out if this murder was covered up, we find out that the person who supposedly died didn't die. There was no murder. Right. So, I mean, I shouldn't have to say it, but if you want to check out the rest of the show, we're about to fucking ruin it for you. So, there's your little, you know, the point. Well, I mean, but yes, we don't have to analyze the entire show, but I thought that was

interesting. Oh, we do. I thought that was interesting. Oh, we do. I thought that was interesting, then. It's like, oh, yes. So this guy convinced me to come down to Alabama and investigate this thing that actually didn't happen. Like, okay, that's interesting. And when he calls John to tell him that it never happened, John pulled out a hilarious ISIS joke. Wait, track 17.

The cluster fuck of sorrow Is this making progress you know is that time Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I'll play track 18 when I come spoiler alert. Has anybody called you? No, not that I know. I have a few missed calls. I don't think there for anybody down there. Why? We have some bad news to tell you. Okay.

John, they killed this self Monday, not. Holy mackerel. I feel sondai is over, right? And what it keeps going after that, I understand there's twists and turns, but I listen to that, I'm like, okay, well, there's nothing else to do here. That was a fun two hours of my life. Yeah, it kind of explores the guy's life, and it kind of gets into, there's a whole kind of, not a custody battle, but after his death there's like some mystery around some money that

he had hidden and that type of thing and there's some conspiracies between the people that are left behind kind of dealing with his estate. And then it kind of morphs into just what this guy was all about, like living as a gay man and Alabama and those types of things and really kind of coming out of it that this guy really was a pretty fucking smart dude that just really had a shit, it was Delta shitty hand in life and you know that's basically what the whole kind whole show turns out to be. And the tattoo thing is fucking ridiculous because he gets out of the view ever seen pictures.

You can actually look up there's pictures. Yeah, it's a nipple pier, saves it everything. Yeah, yeah, it was really crazy. He was into like pain and stuff. So he was having his buddies like repyrus as nipples multiple times and he had like what was whip like whip lashes like how slaves used to get whipped or whatever he had that like put on his back and then tattooed so he has like these crazy lash marks like all over his back and like I guess the guy was tattooing over other tattoos you repeatedly, which is, it's just ridiculous. So the guy obviously, yeah, I add some fucking issues, but it's, I don't know, it's an interesting, even

though the guy killed himself and you kind of explore some of that too, at the end of it, you feel kind of sympathy for this guy, like, that he just have this kind of... I don't know. I don't know if Gilbert Gottfried has any 70. No, I don't think he does. He's a dick. Oh, that's like a blast. That's old. Oh, God. So for anybody, I guess, who likes a, it's hard to,

to say what genre this falls into. It's not a murder mystery thing. It's not a feel-good story of the weak type of thing either. It's a reality show. Yeah, it's like a character study of one person. It's very, very unique type of person. So it's very, I don't know. It's MTV's The Real World for 2017. You guide it, yeah. Yeah, for rural shittown, Alabama or whatever. Right. But let's find out what happens when redneck stop being polite. It's starting getting real. And start talking like this when they talk and build clocks and stuff. There's a there is one hilarious moment. And I think it's an episode two where there's the nicest joke. Is that it?

No, no, this this was one that has stayed with me for a while and it's They're talking to the guy like the the actual fight where this person supposedly died was just like a bar room fight or whatever that spilled outside or whatever and They're fighting each other and a knife came out at some point and went to stab or whatever it was but the guy says, man he almost hit me in the gucce meat. I don't know if you call that but gucce meat, gucce meat is fucking pretty goddamn way. So that's the one ridiculous thing that's not to me in this in this show through 10 fucking episodes. But you keep saying 10, I think there's seven episodes, right? Is it seven? I don't recall.

It's been a few weeks now. But then I go pretty quick. I think I hammered through them all in one day. I was like, I got through the whole show. So look, if you like it, if you like cereal, and you just like people talking over music, like Carl said, it's a good listen and it's not a huge investment of time and I think it ends up in a place where you feel kind of sorry or, I don't know, so that's sorry, but you feel closer in a way to this whole scenario than then you would

having you know listen to WATP for five minutes You're saying that you learn more from this podcast than you would from ours. Yeah, yes, I think so you get a little more Little more insight to how life works. That sounds about right. Listen, the whole reason why we reviewed S-town was just so we could get some SEO boost from it. I know everyone's searching for it.

So it's like, if I could, we might as well have an episode called S-town so we can get a few more lessons. So if that's you listening right now, ha ha. We got you. I'm just like, fuck herer now go to our archives. All right. So Kevin, next week, next week, you and I are going to do this again. We're going to have a whole new podcast to listen to and review. Really? Oh! Let's make a baby.

Oh my god! I'm gonna live that alone! I'm gonna live that alone! I'm gonna live that alone! Oh my god! You know what that means. It's time for the teaser clip where I play a little snippet from the show we'll be reviewing next week so that you get very excited to get your panties on a bunch

Very excited for next week's episode of WATP Kevin play next week's teaser We had a damage control to do. Oh, yeah, yeah, I said a lot of shit that was like really We definitely didn't just record that episode like you called it and you call pumpkins nature's basketballs Which I thought was good. I thought was okay to say but a but a lot of you think so, but there's always that pumpkin defense front. The PDF. I thought it was more. That's my favorite.

Yeah. Okay. This is a show called the comedy button. Okay. Button like press a button. Like press a button. Yeah. So the comedy button There's many hosts as you could probably tell from that clip Brian Scott Anthony Ryan and Max

This is an episode will be listening to is from April 14th, 2017 these guys have tons of reviews on iTunes overwhelmingly positive. So figured we'd give this a listen and see what all the hoopla is about. See if these guys are as funny as the reviewers say that they are.

Oh boy. I smell another podcast war coming on. So this sounded like almost like a morning zoo. That's when you first started playing. I thought maybe it was a radio show, like a, you know, like terrestrial radio show. Well, that is the formula for morning zoos. Just get as many people on microphones as possible

because someone do a noise or something. And you know, we'll laugh at each other and people will think that it's funny because people are laughing. It seemed to have that type of formula to it. Right, right. That is really formula too. Like when you think about like morning morning's you radio, it is just a bunch of people squawking into microphones because I don't know what that is about people think that that's funny and some way or they feel like they're hanging out with a bunch of people. I don't understand why that works but... I don't either but it does make for some good W-A-T-P-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-F-S-F-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-F-S-F-S-F-S-F-F-S-F-S-F- you thought this was esthound go back and check out man cow man cow in the morning

episode of w a taboo um so yeah there's like I said there's lots of positive reviews um there's they're all five star reviews it's funny 90% of the time but then I can get tiresome when they get angry and ran about things. So this is what bothers me, Kevin, is that people hear us make one of their podcasts and they go on and they give us one star reviews. Can't you say that we suck and just give us five stars anyway? That wouldn't be the way to go.

I would love to see the criticism, but just give us five stars. So that when people are scrolling through, they don't think that it's all nonsense that we're doing. Well, it is kind of, but yeah, I like to see more five stars. That'd be awesome, but that's not the way the cookie crumbles, apparently, with our reviewers. But hey, whatever, we've got a few good five star reviews in there. We've got a few good five star reviews. I've got a few. Got a few of them there. The Comedy Buttons tagline is the best podcast ever created by human beings on Planet Earth.

Wow. Okay. You could tell how wacky these guys are. That's all right. That's going to be something else. That's the hackiest fucking tagline for a show ever. But all right Yeah, so please join us again next week because it might be the episode where we find out once and for all who are these podcasts?

sleep well every pony How to show these gold white cows. I You know who are these podcasts? I don't know I don't know. I don't get it. Makes no sense.