The Kids of Rutherford County - Ep. 1
Serial
Serial Productions & The New York Times
4.5 • 82.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 November 2023
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
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| 0:00.0 | These first two episodes of the kids of Rutherford County are free. |
| 0:06.6 | But to hear the whole series, you'll need to subscribe to the New York Times, |
| 0:10.3 | where you'll get access to all serial production shows and all the New York Times podcasts. |
| 0:15.1 | And it's super easy. |
| 0:16.6 | You can sign up through Apple Podcasts or Spotify. |
| 0:19.1 | And if you're already a time subscriber, |
| 0:22.4 | just link your account and you're done. |
| 0:34.8 | It was a March afternoon in Rutherford County, Tennessee, a growing community, about 30 miles southeast of Nashville. |
| 0:36.5 | School was out for the day, and a dozen or so little kids were playing a game of pickup basketball in someone's backyard. |
| 0:42.3 | And then, as kids do, one said something about another kid's mom. |
| 0:47.3 | This insult led to some shoving. |
| 0:49.3 | And then as kids also do, one of them pulled out a cell phone and started filming. |
| 0:56.6 | There's some kind of heavy neon filter over the whole video, so it's hard to make out any faces. |
| 1:02.0 | But here's what you can see. |
| 1:04.0 | An eight-year-old boy, hands shoved into the pockets of his oversized parka, is trying to walk away from everyone when a smaller boy, about five or six, |
| 1:13.2 | runs up behind him and smacks him in the back a few times. Then another little kid runs up and takes |
| 1:18.8 | his turn, throws a couple feeble punches to the back of the kid walking away. Some of the older boys |
| 1:25.5 | are egging them on. |
| 1:33.7 | Meantime, off camera, you can hear one girl try to break it up. |
| 1:41.2 | Other kids just stand around, watching, and a few of them are also filming on their phones. |
| 1:43.9 | And then the video just ends. |
| 1:49.1 | It's the type of fight that barely seems worth posting online. |
... |
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