For When You Need More Small-Town Secrets and Existential Dread
So you’ve finished S-Town and now you’re wandering around your own life wondering if you’ve been living in a boring reality show this whole time, desperately searching for the next audio experience that will make you question everything you thought you knew about rural America and human nature.
These S-Town spiritual successors specialize in that perfect cocktail of Southern Gothic weirdness, investigative journalism that makes you feel like a detective, and enough plot twists to make your head spin faster than a weather vane in an Alabama tornado. Let’s look at some podcasts that are similar to S-Town.
Intrigue
Ben Lewis untangles the complex tale of a wealthy Christian family, pilfered artifacts, counterfeit treasures, and the academic who became a detective to reveal the scandal of epic proportions.
Hunting Warhead
How does one dismantle a criminal organization operating in secrecy? How does one save child abuse victims who might be located anywhere globally? Hunting Warhead chronicles the journalists and law enforcement on an international quest to reveal the internet’s most sinister depths. Their discoveries astound them. Host Daemon Fairless locates the investigators, survivors, and perpetrators themselves.
Crimes of the Times
L.A. Times journalist Christopher Goffard from “Dirty John” returns with another captivating podcast from L.A. Times Studios. In “Crimes of the Times,” Goffard delves extensively behind the scenes of a fresh story weekly, dispelling prevalent myths and misunderstandings to reveal what truly occurred in the most fascinating cases from L.A. and elsewhere.
Up and Vanished
Host Payne Lindsey investigates cold case disappearances in each season of Up and Vanished. Season 1 covered missing teacher Tara Grinstead (resulting in two arrests), Season 2 featured Kristal Reisinger’s Colorado disappearance, Season 3 examined Ashley Loring HeavyRunner’s case from the Blackfeet Nation, and Season 4 explores two mysterious Nome, Alaska disappearances: Florence Okpealuk and Joseph Balderas.
Bear Brook
Bear Brook, hosted by Jason Moon, is the acclaimed true crime podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. Season 1 explores two barrels, four bodies, and a cold case revolutionizing murder investigations. Season 2 follows Jason Carroll’s life sentence for a murder he denies committing, with only his taped confession as evidence.
Bone Valley
In 1987, 18-year-old Michelle Schofield was found dead in a Florida phosphate pit. Her husband Leo was convicted, but fifteen years later, fingerprints matched Jeremy Scott, who confessed to the murder. In Bone Valley, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gilbert King reveals new evidence that Jeremy committed multiple murders, while Leo was wrongfully imprisoned.
In The Dark
In the Dark, hosted by Madeleine Baran, is an award-winning investigative podcast since 2016. Season 1 explored Jacob Wetterling’s abduction and sheriff accountability. Season 2 examined Curtis Flowers, tried six times for the same crime.
Thunder Bay
The nation’s highest homicide and hate crime statistics. Why do these incidents all occur in this location?
Truth & Justice with Bob Ruff
The Truth & Justice Podcast, hosted by Bob Ruff, investigates potential wrongful convictions and cold cases using crowdsourcing. Listeners participate as Bob examines cases in real time each season. Season 15 explores Jodi (Joseph) Hill’s potential wrongful conviction and the divide between Benton Harbor Michigan residents and their police force.
Crimetown
Welcome to Crimetown, produced by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier with Gimlet Media. Each season investigates crime culture in different cities. Season 2 explores Detroit, from Motor City to its rebirth, examining race, poverty, policing, industry loss, and the drug war. Detroit’s tough residents have weathered riots, epidemics, and scandals, and they have stories to tell.
Atlanta Monster
This true crime podcast explores The Atlanta Child Murders, one of the city’s darkest secrets. Nearly 40 years later, host Payne Lindsey reexamines the disappearance and murder of over 25 African American children and young adults, seeking truth and closure.
The Ballad of Billy Balls
It’s 1982, and a man bursts into an East Village storefront apartment and shoots punk musician Billy Balls. Author and activist iO Tillett Wright and Crimetown Producer Austin Mitchell unravel a mystery of love and loss, the tender bonds of family, and the stories people tell themselves just to survive. Created by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier.
In the Red Clay
Hidden deep within the history of a peaceful southern town rests the legend of Billy Sunday Birt, Georgia’s most dangerous man in history. A random encounter one spring day reveals the truth behind this infamous figure and exposes fresh secrets in the process.
Kill List
Every day, hundreds of people live unaware that someone has paid to have them killed. Tech journalist Carl Miller discovers a secret “kill list” on a murder-for-hire website targeting innocent people. When police are slow to act, Carl races against time to warn those in danger and uncover the truth. From Wondery and Novel comes a shocking true story about obsession, control, and the price of life and death.
Accused
Season 2: A prison minister was killed in Kentucky, and an ex-convict she’d counseled was convicted. Thirty years later, the conviction was overturned. Season 1: When Elizabeth Andes was murdered in 1978, police quickly closed the case, but two juries disagreed with the conviction.
The Coldest Case in Laramie
Kim Barker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times, revisits an unsolved murder that occurred while she was in high school in Laramie, Wyoming, nearly 40 years ago. She confronts the conflicting stories people have told themselves about the crime due to an unexpected development: the arrest of a former Laramie police officer accused in the murder.
Your Own Backyard
A documentary podcast series examining the 1996 disappearance of Cal Poly student, Kristin Smart.
The Other Latif
Radiolab reporter Latif Nasser discovers he shares his name with Detainee 244 at Guantanamo Bay. The government claims The Other Latif is Al-Qaeda’s top explosives expert, while his lawyer says he was wrongly detained. This leads Nasser into a years-long investigation to uncover the truth about his namesake, another nerdy, suburban Muslim kid who traveled a strikingly different path.
Black Hands – A family mass murder
This is the story of a mass-murder that divided New Zealand – five family members gunned down in 1994. Two suspects: one dead from a bullet to the head, the other the sole survivor, David Bain. The country asks: who killed the Bain family? David or his father Robin? Martin van Beynen explores the evidence, mysteries, and motives to finally answer: Who was the killer?
Someone Knows Something
Christine Harron, a book-loving teenager from Hanover, Ontario, disappears in 1993. A suspect confesses but the case falls apart, leaving her family without answers. In Season 9 of Someone Knows Something, David Ridgen and Christine’s mother reopen the investigation and confront the man who claimed he killed her.
The Shrink Next Door
Veteran journalist Joe Nocera’s neighbor in the Hamptons was a therapist named Ike. Ike treated celebrities and Manhattan elites as patients and hosted star-studded parties at his eccentric vacation house. But one summer, Joe discovered that Ike had vanished and everything he’d believed about his neighbor, and the house next door, was false.