Who’s listening to Serial? Over 850,000 people, that’s who! If you haven’t heard of Serial, get out from under the rock that you’re living…download the podcasts…listen…join the obsession. Because I need people to talk to about it!

I knew that I was going to listen to Serial as soon as Ira told me to. As a lover of podcasts, I can be a fairweather fan. Some podcasts I leave piling up on my phone until I get around to listening. And some I’m listening to the morning that they are recently. This is how I know I love a podcast. It will motivate me to get up early and excited versus fighting the snooze button if a beloved podcast has a new episode that morning. Serial is such a podcast.

So what is it about?

Serial is a podcast where they unfold pieces of a true story every week. I read it described on Twitter as This American Life meets True Detective.

From the Serial website: “On January 13, 1999, a girl named Hae Min Lee, a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland, disappeared. A month later, her body turned up in a city park. She’d been strangled. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested for the crime, and within a year, he was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison. The case against him was largely based on the story of one witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he helped Adnan bury Hae’s body. But Adnan has always maintained he had nothing to do with Hae’s death. Some people believe he’s telling the truth. Many others don’t.

Sarah Koenig, who hosts Serial, first learned about this case more than a year ago. In the months since, she’s been sorting through box after box (after box) of legal documents and investigators’ notes, listening to trial testimony and police interrogations, and talking to everyone she can find who remembers what happened between Adnan Syed and Hae Min Lee fifteen years ago. What she realized is that the trial covered up a far more complicated story, which neither the jury nor the public got to hear. The high school scene, the shifting statements to police, the prejudices, the sketchy alibis, the scant forensic evidence – all of it leads back to the most basic questions: How can you know a person’s character? How can you tell what they’re capable of? In Season One of Serial, she looks for answers.”

I am hooked. I was almost hesitant to blog about this podcast as I was sure that my desire to Google the case to find the outcome would get the best of me, which it did. But there’s the interesting fresh twist on this podcast/story/investigation. They only produce each episode a week ahead of time. So we they are still investigating the case themselves. We are in it together. And I have to say–I don’t know if Adnan killed Hae. After one episode, I was pretty sure–yes, he did it. And after the next, I was thinking no way, he didn’t do it.

It does seem very plausible that this story will end with no real answer. Simply presenting as much information/facts as they can and we’ll just have to form opinions versus everything wrapped up in a nice bow. I’m along for the ride regardless.

Are you listening?? Did he kill her?? Does anyone else think Sarah has a slight weird prison crush on Adnan??