These first two episodes of S-Town are free,

but to hear the whole series,

you'll need to subscribe to the New York Times,

where you'll get access to all the serial productions

and New York Times shows.

And it's super easy.

You can sign up through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

And if you're already a time subscriber,

just link your account and you're done.

Chapter 1. When an antique clock breaks, a clock that's been telling time for 200 or 300 years,

fixing it can be a real puzzle. An old clock like that was handmade by someone. It might take away

the time with a pendulum, with a spring, with a pulley system.

It might have bells that are supposed to strike the hour, or a bird that's meant to pop out and cuckoo at you.

There can be hundreds of tiny individual pieces, each of which needs to interact with the others precisely.

To make the job even trickier, you often can't tell what's been done to a clock over

hundreds of years. Maybe there's damage that was never fixed, or fixed badly. Sometimes entire

portions of the original clockwork are missing, but you can't know for sure because there

are rarely diagrams of what the clock's supposed to look like. A clock that old doesn't come

with a manual.

So instead, the few people left in the world who know to do this kind of thing

rely on what are often called witness marks to guide their way.

A witness mark could be a small dent, a hole that once held a screw.

...