S-Town Reflection

The life of John B. McLemore was truly unfortunate. From listening to S-Town, I could tell that John had great potential to change the world in a significant way. Unfortunately, he was born and raised in the wrong place and never took the steps needed to escape.

Brian Reed depicted John as a brilliant man who was living amongst uneducated people and failing to utilize his brain to its fullest. Rather than working in a laboratory or protesting in DC, John spent his days ranting in a tattoo parlor. His life was wasted away with little to show for.

I personally felt that John grew too attached to his home and found comfort living with his mother and avoiding major change. Had he been more willing to venture out of S-Town, he surely would have created more opportunities for himself.

Ultimately, John’s pessimism about the future of humanity was too much for him to bear and he took his life. Had he left the comfort of his town, stayed in school, and worked to change the world, his life and those around him would’ve been much better. Instead, he surrounded himself with people that were not on his level; they were far below it and only brought him down.

In closing, I felt that the podcast did a superb job in showing the strengths and weaknesses of John as a person. The testimonies from friends, family, and acquaintances served to bolster John’s portrait as a genius while also highlighting his many oddities and flaws as a human being.