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I should probably start by confessing my deep, unabashed love for NPR’s This American Life. The weekly radio show hosted by Ira Glass is my go-to audio of choice, a brilliant cultural work that I have lauded before for this publication. That adoration, that love of great radio and great stories is really what’s at the root of my latest obsession.
From the moment I heard that TAL was coming out with a new spin-off podcast, I was all in. This is mostly because I’ve always viewed the public radio show as a cultural King Midas: Everything it touches turns to gold. Check out their old Showtime television series or the Mike Birbiglia movie Sleepwalk with Me to understand my reasoning. I’m obviously not alone in this thinking, as this new podcast was No. 1 on iTunes before the first episode dropped. For me, once I saw Ira Glass appear on The Tonight Show plugging this innovative, mysterious show, I was googling it as fast as possible. What I found was something that I had never seen (or heard) before and is undoubtedly my favorite piece of pop culture produced this year.
The show is called Serial. Hopefully, you’ve already heard of it, or better yet, you’ve reached the depths of addiction that I have. I have found that as I ask people about the show, many of them reply along the lines of “Oh no, but my friend said it’s great” or “I’ve been meaning to listen; my roommate is crazy about it.” Obviously, many of those who have given it a chance are in. They’re hooked and they want their friends to be hooked, too. Like any good TV show, it’s the kind of thing you want to discuss, so the more fans you find, the better.
I should probably explain the premise before I continue my textual round of applause. Serial is an episodic podcast that aims to tell one story over the course of 10 or 20 weekly episodes. The stories will all be true and will be told in the same investigative yet entertaining way as so many brilliant segments on This American Life. The listeners follow along as the show’s producers, led by host Sarah Koenig, a TAL veteran, follow the trail of that story looking for answers. Neither they nor we know what exactly is at the end of that trail, as the information is gathered not long before a show is produced.
Season one centers around a single crime that took place in 1999 at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County. Hae Min Lee, a senior at Woodlawn, disappeared one January day. She was pretty, popular and by all accounts a charming girl. A couple of weeks after her disappearance, she was found strangled to death in a nearby park. After an investigation centered around a couple of key witnesses, Adnan Sayed, another student at Woodlawn and Lee’s ex-boyfriend, was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison. Case closed — until now.
Producers of the show were first contacted about the case by a lawyer friend of Sayed’s who claimed that there were serious holes in the verdict and that Sayed was an innocent man. In each episode, Koenig goes through every aspect of the crime, the investigation and the evidence looking to see if what this lawyer says is true. She even talks to Sayed himself, as he calls her twice a week from a state correctional facility.
New episodes are released every Thursday on iTunes and the show’s site; today should see the release of the sixth episode. The first five were an exhilarating and fascinating ride, one that caused me to change my opinion on Sayed’s innocence or guilt many times.
Often times, I forget that the case is real, that the various characters’ complexity isn’t a byproduct of good writing. The emotions, good and bad, I started to feel toward a man in prison or a witness under fire or even a girl who’s been dead for 15 years are a true testament to the value of great reporting and program structure, values that this podcast has in spades.
Each episode is a symphony of information, entertainment and reporting, and it’s all anchored by Koenig. For me, when it comes to radio hosts, Ira Glass is the measuring stick. He is it. He is how you host any kind of audio-based show and all others who attempt to do this will simply be rated in comparison to him.
Koenig measures up very well. Her style perfectly moves among informational, conversational and surprisingly genuine. Each episode’s script is jam-packed with easily understandable facts and recordings, presented in an order that makes it exciting but still respects the viewers. And in the few instances where the host infuses her own opinion into the narrative through little asides about her skepticisms or observations, I completely trust her. By the second or third episode, I took everything Koenig had to say on the case into full consideration because it became extremely clear that she put her heart and soul into covering this murder.
And all of this work is done just for sound. I’ve always believed that radio programming is an overlooked source of entertainment. I’m constantly baffled by the amount of people who give me blank stares when I bring up This American Life in casual conversation. But, while Serial has the same tune-in-every-week style of storytelling as many old-school radio shows, it is still a podcast, and this freedom from a demanding higher power makes for some great creativity. For one, the length of each episode varies, usually between 20 and 50 minutes, so each installment is a straightforward, pared-down presentation of crucial information.
“For us, that it’s a podcast is so liberating,” Koenig told Nieman Journalism Lab earlier this month. “We can tell it as long as we need to tell it, and we don’t have to worry about it.”
The medium provides for an obvious opportunity for listeners to consume the material on the go — in the car, on a walk, etc. However, my addiction to the show has gone beyond listening when I have a long walk across the campus or I need something to listen to in the car. Instead, I wait until noon on Thursday when a new episode is released and, as soon as the opportunity arises, I just sit and listen. I suppose it’s kind of bizarre, a guy just sitting on a bench or on his bed just listening to his headphones or his iHome with giddy anticipation, reacting to developments as one would a pulse-pounding television show. But one thing my love for Serial has really taught me, something I started to realize as I fell in love with This American Life, is that great storytelling is great storytelling. Just enjoy it, no matter what form it comes in.
As far as an end game, using a radio show to prove that Sayed is innocent would be unprecedented and wildly impressive. But if it turns out they can’t come to that conclusion and he is, indeed, guilty, all of these suspicious details and inconsistencies, in addition to speech after speech on the phone by Sayed, become alarmingly strange, jarring in their coincidence or fabrication.
Either way, the roller coaster ride that Serial has taken listeners on so far is remarkable. Be sure to start tuning in now as the show slowly makes its ascent so that you’re on board for the big drop that is sure to come.
