Serial (podcast)

'Serial'
File:Serial (podcast) logo.png
Presentation
Hosted by	Sarah Koenig
Genre	Investigative journalism Serialized audio narrative
Language	English
Updates	Weekly, on Thursday morning
Production
Production	Sarah Koenig Julie Snyder Dana Chivvis Emily Condon
Audio format	Podcast (via streaming or downloadable MP3)
No. of episodes	13
Publication
Original release	October 3, 2014 – center
Cited for	2015 Peabody Award
Cited as	"an audio game-changer"
Provider	WBEZ
Related
Website	Serial

Serial host and producer Sarah Koenig

Serial is a podcast exploring a nonfiction story over multiple episodes. First released in October 2014, it is a spinoff of the radio program This American Life. Episodes vary in length and are available weekly. It ranked number one on iTunes even before its debut and remained there for several weeks. Serial won a Peabody Award, the first of its kind, in April 2015.

Sarah Koenig hosts the series, which was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder, both producers of This American Life.

Serial has been confirmed for two more seasons. Season two of Serial was released December 10, 2015, and season three will be released in the spring of 2016.

Series overview

Season		Episodes	Originally aired
			First aired	Last aired
	1	12	October 3, 2014 (2014-10-03)	December 18, 2014 (2014-12-18)
	2	TBA	December 10, 2015 (2015-12-10)	TBA

Koenig has said that Serial is "about the basics: love and death and justice and truth. All these big, big things." She also has noted, "this is not an original idea. Maybe in podcast form it is, and trying to do it as a documentary story is really, really hard. But trying to do it as a serial, this is as old as Dickens." Episodes are released weekly on Thursdays.

Serial was named a 2015 winner of a Peabody Award as radio/podcast, cited as "an audio game-changer." Dr. Jeffrey P. Jones, Director of the Peabody Awards, commented the podcast showed "how new avenues and approaches to storytelling can have a major impact on how we understand truth, reality, and events".

New York Magazine reported that Phil Lord and Chris Miller, producers of The Lego Movie and the film 21 Jump Street, will be producing a television program about the podcast that will take a "behind-the-scenes approach that details how Koenig went from virtual anonymity to creating one of 2014's biggest cultural phenomenons".

Internet radio streaming service, Pandora, will stream the second season of Serial. The first season is available beginning November 24, 2015.

Season 1 (2014)

See also: Murder of Hae Min Lee

Season 1 investigated the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee (Korean: 이해민), an 18-year-old student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore, Maryland. She was last seen about 3 p.m. on January 13, 1999. Her corpse was discovered on February 9 in Leakin Park and identified two days later. The case was immediately treated as a homicide. Lee's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Masud Syed was arrested on February 28 at 6 a.m. and charged with first-degree murder, which led to "some closure and some peace" for Lee's family. A memorial service for Lee was held on March 11 at Woodlawn High School. Syed's first trial ended in a mistrial, but after a six-week second trial, Syed was found guilty of Lee's murder on February 25, 2000 and given a life sentence, despite pleading his innocence. Syed did not speak in front of the jury.

In February 2015, three weeks after the end of Season 1, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals filed a decision allowing Syed to appeal his conviction on grounds his attorney Cristina Gutierrez had provided ineffective counsel for failing to seek a plea bargain during his trial. The Court also announced that another three-judge panel would address the question of whether new evidence from Asia McClain, providing an alibi for Syed, would be admitted.

On February 9, 2015, Scott Pelley of CBS News reported Serial's season one episodes had been downloaded more than 68 million times.

Persons involved

• Hae Min Lee - murder victim, 18 year old athlete
• Adnan Syed - former boyfriend of Hae who was convicted of killing her
• Jay Wilds - key witness at Syed's trial
• Stephanie McPherson - Jay's girlfriend and Syed's friend
• Don - Hae's boyfriend at the time of the murder
• Aisha Pittman - Hae's friend
• Jennifer (Jenn) Pusateri - Jay's friend
• Debbie - Hae's friend who said Hae told her she was meeting Don after school
• Krista Myers - Classmate who recalled Syed asked Hae for a ride after school the day she disappeared
• Becky - Classmate who remembered Hae and Syed had talked about a ride, who also said she saw Syed after school
• "Cathy" (not her real name) - A friend of Jenn and Jay
• Chris - Jay's friend
• Saad Chaudry - Syed's best friend
• Asia McClain - student at Woodlawn High School and friend of Syed
• Laura Estrada - Classmate who never believed Syed was guilty, but did not think Jay would lie about something serious
• Nisha - Student from Silver Spring, Maryland, who was called from Syed's phone at 3:32 when Syed said Jay had his phone
• Yaser - Syed's friend from the mosque
• Rabia Chaudry - friend of Syed's family and an attorney
• "Mr. S" - discoverer of Hae's body
• Kevin Urick and Kathleen "KC" Murphy - state prosecutors
• M. Cristina Gutierrez - Syed's defense attorney
• Detectives Ritz and MacGillivary - lead homicide investigators

Season 2 (2015-)

See also: Bowe Bergdahl

In September 2015, the New York Times reported the second season will focus on Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the soldier who was held for five years by the Taliban. A spokesperson for Serial only said, "Over the last few months they've been reporting on a variety of stories for both Seasons 2 and 3 of Serial, along with other podcast projects." The first episode of the season was released, without any previous release date announcement, on December 10, 2015.

For Season 2, Koenig teamed up with Mark Boal, the Academy Award winning screenwriter of The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, and his production company, Page 1. Boal had conducted a series of interviews with Bergdahl as part of a film production he was working on, and both Boal and Bergdahl gave Koenig permission to use those excerpts of those recorded interviews in episodes of Serial. As Koenig stated in Season 2's first epiosde: "They'd come to us saying 'hey, we've been doing all this reporting on the story, and we've also got this tape. Do you think you might want to listen?' And yes, we did, and we were kind of blown away, and so we began working with them. They shared their research with us, and also put us in touch with many of their sources... We don't have anything to do with their movie, but Mark and Page 1 are our partners for Season 2."

On December 14th, General Robert B. Abrams, head of United States Army Forces Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina ordered that Bergdahl face a court-martial on charges of desertion. This development in Bergdahl's case came only four days after the release of the first episode of the second serial of Serial.

Persons involved

• Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl - held for five years by Taliban, released in May 2014 in exchange for Taliban prisoners held in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. He was court-martialled on charges of desertion and misbehavior before the enemy in December 2015.
• Mark Boal - the Academy Award winning screenwriter of The Hurt Locker with whom Bergdahl held most of his interviews with

Episodes

Season 1 (2014)

#	Title	Length (minutes:seconds)	Original release date
1	"The Alibi"	53:28	October 3, 2014 (2014-10-03)
This episode explores the story of Adnan Syed, who may or may not have been wrongly convicted in 1999 of killing Hae Min Lee, Syed's ex-girlfriend who was a senior at Baltimore County's Woodlawn High School. She disappeared in January 1999. Serial's investigative team "follows up on long-dormant leads, rechecks alibis, and questions assumptions." Host Sarah Koenig reveals that the story is in process and that she doesn't know how it will end.
2	"The Breakup"	36:28	October 3, 2014 (2014-10-03)
Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee had a storybook romance, kept secret from their disapproving parents. When Hae broke it off, their friends had conflicting interpretations of Syed's behavior: he was either cool with it and sad, or in a rage and hatching a sinister plot to kill her. Syed consistently proclaims his innocence, but there are puzzling inconsistencies in the set of facts he tells.
3	"Leakin Park"	27:34	October 10, 2014 (2014-10-10)
Hae had been missing for three weeks when a man on his lunch break, referred to as "Mr. S", discovered her body. His account of how he found her body seems suspicious to detectives MacGillivary and Ritz, who questioned him, and his background check reveals some bizarre behaviors, including a series of streaking episodes.
4	"Inconsistencies"	33:44	October 16, 2014 (2014-10-16)
An anonymous caller leads detectives to subpoena Adnan Syed's cell phone records. As a result, the detectives discover calls to Jenn, who is a friend of one of Adnan's acquaintances, a weed dealer named Jay. Detectives interview Jenn and then Jay, who says Syed told him he killed Hae, and then forced him to help bury her body. Details of Jay's story shifted in some significant ways over four interviews, but the detectives said they were able to corroborate his story using cell phone records.
5	"Route Talk"	43:10	October 23, 2014 (2014-10-23)
Producers Koenig and Chivvis test drive the prosecution's route and timeline of Hae's murder between 2:15, when school let out at the high school, and 2:36, when Jay said Syed called him for pick up in the Best Buy parking lot and then showed Jay Hae's body in the trunk of her car. While that timeline seems possible, though just barely, evidence from the call logs and records of cell tower pings do not quite align with Jay's testimony about the rest of the afternoon.
6	"The Case Against Adnan Syed"	43:37	October 30, 2014 (2014-10-30)
In addition to Jay's testimony, evidence against Adnan Syed included a palm print on a map that could not be dated, and cell phone records. Did Syed ask Hae for a ride after school to get into her car? Koenig goes through all the evidence, including the prosecution's timeline and "some stray things" that don't add up, including a neighbor's story, the testimony of Jay's friend Jenn, and the sequence of cell phone calls after Hae disappeared.
7	"The Opposite of the Prosecution"	32:30	November 6, 2014 (2014-11-06)
Deirdre Enright, Director of Investigation for the Innocence Project at the University of Virginia School of Law, and a team of law students analyze the case against Adnan Syed. Deirdre thinks the evidence against him was "thin". She advises Koenig to keep revisiting all the evidence, allowing uncertainties to remain until there is a tipping point when her questions are resolved. They start with a presumption of Syed's innocence, and ask whether they can discover who really did kill Hae. They find some undeveloped forensic evidence, but Koenig is still uncertain.
8	"The Deal with Jay"	43:56	November 13, 2014 (2014-11-13)
How credible was Jay's story? Koenig interviews a jury member, who said Jay seemed like a nice young man, believable. A professional detective says the investigation of Hae's murder was better than average, and Jay had handed the police the case on a platter. Koenig and Snyder visit Jay, who declines an interview. Jay's friend Chris recalls what Jay told him about the murder, a story not consistent with Jay's courtroom version. Why did Jay agree to help Syed? Did Syed coerce Jay and threaten to hurt Jay's girlfriend Stephanie? His friends said Jay had a reputation for lying, but not about important things. Jay's friend Jenn says she could understand why Jay might lie about some details, but she believed his story. Back to the question: what was the jury thinking?
9	"To Be Suspected"	47:40	November 20, 2014 (2014-11-20)
Koenig reveals she has new information about the call at 2:36. First, Laura claims there were never any phones in front of the Best Buy, but Jay's drawing shows phone booth in front of the Best Buy, and he claimed Syed was standing by that phone booth with red gloves on. Second, Hae's friend Summer says that Hae could not have been dead by 2:36, because she had a conversation with Hae between 2:30 and 2:45. Others also saw Hae after school that day. Third, Asia also saw Syed at the library in that same time frame. Sarah Koenig explores Syed's perspective as he was questioned, arrested, tried, and sentenced, as well as his letters to friends about life in prison. She mentions that she has reasonable doubt, not in the legal sense, but in the "normal person" sense.
10	"The Best Defense is a Good Defense"	53:55	December 4, 2014 (2014-12-04)
Did anti-Muslim sentiment affect the prosecution? The prosecution argued that Syed's community would help him flee to Pakistan if it bail were granted, using stereotypes to make the case against Syed as an honor killing. His attorney Cristina Gutierrez argued that someone else did it, and police did not look beyond Syed. His first trial ended in a mistrial, and in the second trial she cast suspicion on Mr. S and Jay as involved in the crime, but she did not present a clear outline of these arguments or scrutinize discrepancies in the call log timeline. Gutierrez discovered the prosecutor had secured an attorney for Jay – arguably a "benefit" worth money – in connection with his pleading guilty as an accessory and agreeing to testify, but the judge did not agree that this tainted Jay's testimony. Koenig does not believe Cristina Gutierrez intentionally bungled his defense, but within a year after Syed's trial, Gutierrez became very ill, her career collapsed, and she was disbarred. Syed has a petition before a higher court which requires a response by January 14, on the narrow issue that Gutierrez did not seek a plea bargain, which Syed claims he had asked her to do. Because Syed has maintained his innocence, however, and shows no remorse, he is unlikely to be paroled.
11	"Rumors"	41:25	December 11, 2014 (2014-12-11)
Rumors about Syed do not directly connect him to Hae's murder, and Koenig cannot substantiate the most troubling rumors. People from his mosque were scared when he was arrested, some describing his story as a cautionary tale. Some believe Syed was duplicitous, capable of committing the crime. One rumor, that he stole money from the mosque, was partially confirmed by four people. Syed admitted taking some money when he was in eighth grade, but his mother found out, and he felt ashamed. Syed had a reputation as a peacemaker, "a good guy", helpful and caring. People who knew him in high school cannot believe he planned Hae's murder. Did Syed "lose it", and nurse feelings of rejection? Could Syed have committed murder in a dissociative state, not knowing he did it? Koenig explores whether Syed has true empathy or anti-social characteristics, and consults with psychologist Charles Ewing, who has interviewed many young murderers. Why does not Syed sound more angry about Jay or other people connected to his case? In an 18-page letter to Koenig, Syed reveals his concern about being perceived as manipulative, and says it doesn't matter how the podcast portrays him.
12	"What We Know"	55:37	December 18, 2014 (2014-12-18)
After over a year researching the case, Koenig still is uncertain what happened the day that Hae Min Lee disappeared. She reveals new information: that she spoke with Don, Hae's boyfriend of 13 days at the time of her disappearance, and with Jay's former co-worker, Josh. Koenig reviews the phone records again with her production team and determines that neither Jay's nor Syed's story of that day aligns with the evidence. Unresolved discrepancies also include Jenn and Jay's stories about how they disposed of Jay's clothes and boots. Reviewing possible motives for the murder, Koenig and her producers reason that logically, if Syed is innocent, he had extraordinarily bad luck because of circumstantial evidence involving him. Lawyers from the Innocence Project announce they will seek court approval to test the DNA found on Hae's body and bottles nearby, possibly pointing to another man, and Syed's petition in the court of appeals is still alive. Koenig expresses her desire to avoid unsubstantiated speculation and to focus on only the facts. She concludes that from a legal perspective, she would have voted to acquit Syed, although she still nurses doubts.

Season 2 (2015)

#	Title	Length (minutes:seconds)	Original release date
1	"DUSTWUN"	44:24	December 10, 2015 (2015-12-10)
In the middle of the night, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl grabs a notebook, snacks, water, some cash. Then he quietly slips off a remote U.S. Army outpost in eastern Afghanistan and into the dark, open desert. About 20 minutes later, it occurs to him: he’s in over his head.

Development and release

The concept for Serial originated with an experiment in Koenig's basement. Koenig and Snyder had pitched a different idea at a staff meeting for a weekly program on events during the previous seven days, which staff members received without enthusiasm. When Ira Glass asked Koenig if she had any other ideas, she mentioned podcasting a story that unfolded over time, a serialized narrative. In an interview with Mother Jones, she explained that each episode would return to the same story, telling the next chapter of a long, true narrative.

Episode one of the series was released on October 3, 2014, with additional episodes released weekly online. Glass introduced it as a spinoff of his popular radio program, This American Life, and aired episode one on his show. He explained, "We want to give you the same experience you get from a great HBO or Netflix series, where you get caught up with the characters and the thing unfolds week after week, but with a true story, and no pictures. Like House of Cards, but you can enjoy it while you're driving."

Music

Nicholas Thorburn released the soundtrack for Serial on October 17, 2014. It includes fifteen tracks, all short instrumentals, and is available at the Bandcamp site or streamed from several reviewing sites.

Mark Henry Phillips, who mixes the show, has also provided original scores.

Funding

Serial's launch was sponsored by MailChimp, a frequent podcast advertiser, and salaried staff positions were initially funded by WBEZ. Admitting the podcast was funded from This American Life's budget during the launch, producer Koenig noted that Serial would eventually need to generate its own funding. She said, "Everyone's saying 'It's podcasting! It's internet! Of course there'll be money somewhere.' We're not exactly sure yet." Dana Chivvis, another producer, observed that, since the industry is still in its infancy, a business model for podcasting has yet to be established.

Towards the end of the first season, producers asked for public donations to fund a second season. Within a week, the staff of Serial posted an announcement that a second season has been made possible by donations and sponsorship.

Reception

Host and Executive Producer Sarah Koenig accepts the Peabody Award for Serial. She is joined on stage by Julie Snyder, Dana Chivvis, Emily Condon, Cecily Strong and Ira Glass.

Serial has been both culturally popular and critically well received. Serial was ranked at No. 1 on iTunes even before it débuted, leading iTunes rankings for over three months, well after the first season ended. It also broke records as the fastest podcast ever to reach 5 million downloads at Apple's iTunes store. David Carr in The New York Times called Serial "Podcasting's first breakout hit." The Guardian characterized it as a "new genre of audio storytelling".

Introducing a PBS NewsHour segment about Serial, Judy Woodruff noted that it is "an unexpected phenomenon", and Hari Sreenivasan mentioned it has "five million downloads on iTunes, far more than any other podcast in history". In the interview that followed, David Haglund of Slate observed the solitary experience of listening with earphones adds to the intimacy of the podcast form.

Calling the characters "rich and intriguing", The Daily Californian noted similarities to the film The Thin Blue Line (1988), and described the podcast as "gripping" and the story as "thrilling", while applauding the series for giving "listeners a unique opportunity to humanize the players".

Slate's reviewer pointed out that Serial is not escapist and went on to note: "Someone in the show is not telling the truth about something very sinister. That's the narrative tension that makes Serial not only compelling but also unlike anything I can remember watching or reading before."

The Baltimore Sun commented on the inherently riveting subject matter: "We seemingly never tire of the everything was perfect until... narrative" of a crime-drama, and noted that the top-notch reporting and podcast format yield "a novel twist on the investigative long-form piece".

A critique from the journalism community was more qualified. First noting that some people believe there is a "podcast renaissance", the reviewer from Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab observed that even though podcasts are not new, they are not yet mainstream.

Not all critiques of the podcasting format have been as equivocal. PopMatters observed that podcasting is a new distribution model, very different from television as a distribution model because it gives users access to media and the freedom to listen to episodes of a long-form story while doing other things. The reviewer applauded the focus on long-form journalism and added, "Suddenly you feel like the full promise of podcasting has just been unleashed. That long-form narrative nonfiction is really the way to best leverage the potential of podcasting as a distribution model."

A Wall Street Journal critic observed: "podcasts have slipped marketers' minds. ZenithOptimedia, for example, put out a forecast predicting 0% growth for the medium after years of positive momentum," and went on to note that podcast advertising company Podtrac reports one million unique listeners for each Serial podcast. Discussing the economics of podcast advertising, New York Magazine noted that the personal nature of the podcast format allows higher advertising rates: "CPM (the cost to an advertiser per thousand impressions, a standard ad-industry unit) was between $20 and $45. Compare that to a typical radio CPM (roughly $1 to $18) or network TV ($5 to $20) or even a regular old web ad ($1 to $20), and the podcast wins."

Multiple reviews have commented on the addictive nature of Serial. Reddit hosts a Serial subreddit site, including discussions, transcripts, a link library, and podcasts about each Serial episode. Slate is also reported to be "following the story closely" and presents a podcast discussion of Serial every week following the latest release. A review in New York Magazine linked fans' feelings about the possibility of an ambiguous ending with their psychological need for closure.

In an interview with Jon Ronson for The Guardian, Syed's mother Shamim and younger brother Yusuf both said they listened to the podcast and that people sent transcripts to Syed in prison. Yusuf said the podcast had indirectly reconnected the family to his estranged brother Tanveer for the first time in the 15 years since the murder.

Several reviews have criticised the ethics of Serial, notably the decision to start broadcasting without the reporting having been finished. Critics said the "live investigation" format invited listeners to do their own sleuthing, which quickly led to the full names and even addresses of people who were questioned by the police at the time of the murder being exposed online. Another point of debate was whether it was legitimate to use the murder of Hae Min Lee as a subject for entertainment.

Sarah Koenig's reporting has also been criticized as being biased in favor of Adnan's innocence, and Katy Waldman's Slate blog noted that some felt Serial undercut Adnan's detractors. An Atlantic roundtable discussion noted that because Koenig was "a bit gushing and attached to Adnan" throughout the show and tended to annotate evidence against Adnan, the podcast forces the listener to consider Koenig's "verification bias", the tendency to seek answers that support her own biased assumptions, and that "even a well-meaning narrator isn't always credible".

One critic asserted that Koenig and her obsession were actually the subject of the show, and that she presented the story of a murder involving two minority teenagers and their cultures through a lens of white privilege, "a white interpreter 'stomping through communities that she does not understand' ". Another critic added that Koenig had employed the "model minority" trope in her descriptions of Syed and Hae Min Lee, and that Jay was then portrayed as a "stereotypical urban black youth". A rejoinder in The Atlantic pointed out, "Serial is a reflection on a murder case and the criminal-justice system reported over 'just' a year, which is to say, it is researched with more effort and depth than 99 percent of journalism produced on any beat in America... Most of all, the response to mistakes should never be to discourage white reporters from telling important stories."

Related podcasts

The popularity of Serial and the intrigue of the case it covered has spawned several companion podcasts, such as Crime Writers on Serial, The Serial Serial, and Undisclosed: The State vs. Adnan Syed, the latter produced by Rabia Chaudry.

Parodies

Parodies of Serial have targeted the show's style, its fans' obsessive tendencies, Koenig's curiosity and uncertainties, the charts and graphics posted on the show's website, and the podcast's sponsor MailChimp (especially the meme "MailKimp").

• The New Yorker ran a cartoon based on Serial.
• When Koenig appeared on The Colbert Report, Colbert noted that the finale of Serial would be released in competition with Colbert's last episode.
• Saturday Night Live spoofed Serial with a sketch investigating Kris Kringle, who for years has allegedly been leaving presents in people's homes.
• As part of the promotion for the upcoming video game Halo 5: Guardians, developer 343 Industries is putting out a multi-part, in-universe podcast called Hunt the Truth, investigating the history of the series protagonist, the Master Chief, John-117. Narrated by comedian Keegan-Michael Key as fictional reporter Benjamin Giraud, it is delivered in the style of the Serial podcast, including the narration delivery style of Sarah Koenig and audio style of her in-person and over-the-phone interviews.
• Funny or Die released a short video starring Michaela Watkins as a frantic Koenig—unsure of how she will end the series—recording the final episode of Serial. The video mimics Serial's style, including asides to the audience demarcated by the Serial theme music. The "Mail Kimp" and "Crab Crib" memes are referenced in the popular video, which had over 880,000 views as of October 2015, placing it in the website's "Immortal: Best of the Best" video category.

External links

• Official website