In 2017, Brian Reed’s S-Town was the podcast phenomenon of the year. What started as an investigation into a reported murder in a small Alabama town became an investigation of the man who reported it, horologist John B. McLemore. Charismatic and fascinating, but deeply troubled, McLemore took his own life during the podcast’s run, and Reed then pivoted the show into a character study centered on him.
It was a wildly popular production, winning a plethora of awards and garnering Reed invitations all over the world to discuss it. Nevertheless, there was a small but significant contingent of critics who found the very existence of the show troubling. S-Town dug deep into the life of McLemore, and he died before he could give Reed and the team permission to cover the most intimate areas of his complicated psyche. He was not a celebrity; he was a regular man. What right did Reed have to expose his deepest secrets to the world?
While the cheering voices far outnumbered the critical ones, that criticism stayed with Reed. That this unfolded during the Trump era — the darkest time for journalism in living memory (and one that is not yet over) — added further fuel to the fire.
That’s the origin story for Reed’s new podcast, Question Everything, which is dedicated to exploring the wider state of journalism, why trust in journalists is at an all-time low, and what, if anything, can be done to rectify that.
So far, four episodes have been released. In the first, Reed talks with journalist Gay Alcorn, one of the most vociferous critics of S-Town, about what she thinks he did wrong. In the second, he assembles a panel of fellow reporters (including his old boss, Ira Glass) over cocktails, to discuss the state of their industry. In the third, he chats with acclaimed former investigative reporter Barton Gellman, who decided that in the magnitude of this current political moment, he had to leave his profession of several decades in order to make a real difference.
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It’s only in the fourth, where a married couple with opposing political views are interviewed about the sole news source they both trust, that Question Everything finally starts talking to people who aren’t journalists. And that’s a problem.
Obviously, in a podcast about journalism, it makes sense to talk to journalists. But — for the most part, at least — it isn’t journalists who have such a deep-seated, potentially democracy-ending distrust in their own profession. To have so much of the show focused on reporters interviewing each other seems like it’s missing the point.
Of course, there’s a risk that swinging too far in the other direction — putting too much stock, for example, in the opinions of a handful of MAGA voters in a small-town diner — could wind up just as unhelpful. But even in that fourth episode, the best so far, the takeaway for journalists — to evaluate the spurious sources believed by Trump voters seriously, so as to not make them feel silly — is not a profound revelation. Reed has woven himself a tricky tightrope with his new podcast, and it remains unclear whether he’ll be able to walk it successfully.
To attempt it at all, however, is certainly a worthwhile goal. Question Everything is a heartfelt endeavor, earnest in its desire to solve a very real problem. In a global news environment where facts are increasingly treated as “facts,” that growing lack of trust has already caused real societal damage, and has the potential to get a whole lot worse. As the US joins the many other countries barrelling down the road towards authoritarianism, not having the roadblock of respected journalism in the way leaves us all in a perilous place indeed.
If you’re drawn to the idea of Question Everything, you’ll likely get something out of it. Yet four episodes in, which is certainly early days, the show feels too inside baseball. Perhaps this is because Reed has envisioned it as a truly long-term project, and he is still at the stage of setting the scene. Regardless, it’s hard to imagine why people who completely distrust the news media would be attracted to a podcast so heavily focused on journalists swapping war stories. Whether Question Everything can reach them is still to be seen. Until then, Reed’s will be just another voice in the echo chamber.
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Chloe Walker is a writer based in the UK. You can find her work at Culturefly, the BFI, Paste, and her Letterboxd page.