Born out of the public radio show This American Life, the Serial podcast began in 2014 as an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Sarah Koenig.
The series was co-created and is co-produced by Koenig and Julie Snyder. The idea began when the attorney Rabia Chaudry asked Koenig to investigate the case of her friend, Adnan Syed.
Syed was convicted in 1999 of ending the life of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in Baltimore, but Chaudry believed that Syed was innocent and that his attorney had mishandled the case.
“Our expectations were really low. I hadn’t listened to any podcasts. Like, at all. We were trying to make a radio show but then Julie suggested making it as a podcast. The idea was that the pressure would be off. If it flops, it would be, like, who cares?” Koenig said.
Reaching the fifth episode, Serial became the first podcast to reach five million downloads and the first to win a Peabody Award.
At that time Apple said that it’s the fastest podcast to reach this number of downloads and streams in iTunes. It was also featured one of the top in the US, Canada, UK and Australia charts and among the top 10 in Germany, South Africa and India.
In the podcast, Koenig talked about her suspicion that Syed’s conviction was based on problematic evidence: “I think something went wrong with this case,” she told NPR.
The season put Syed’s original trial back on, and previously undisclosed evidence led to Syed’s conviction being overturned in 2016.
The case was appealed by the Maryland Attorney General and the state Court of Appeals reinstated the conviction in 2019. In 2022, a judge vacated the conviction and Syed was released from prison.
After that, Koenig released a bonus Serial episode, going through the chain of events that led to his release.
“The Last 12 Weeks,” is the latest five-part podcast from Serial Productions. This series goes back to 1992, when David Wood was convicted of ending the life of multiple young women and girls and burying them in the desert outside of El Paso. The series is hosted by Maurice Chammah, a journalist for The Marshall Project and leading authority on the penalty.
“We’re used to the last-minute scramble before an execution, with lawyers arguing the system got it wrong this time. But is it a cynical ploy, or does an impending execution finally force the attention a case deserves? We’re finally seeing the scramble from the inside, and it’s absolutely fascinating.” said Julie Snyder.
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