What is it about the Serial podcast that has got everybody talking?

Date
19 November 2014

This week assistant editor Maisie Skidmore asks what it is about weekly podcast Serial that has got the whole world talking. As ever, we want to hear what you think! Add your two pennies in the comment thread below.

Words cannot describe how tentatively I googled the words Serial Podcast as I researched to write this article. My fellow listeners will sympathise with my not wanting to find out anything before I’m supposed to – and as yesterday it was announced that the This American Life-produced podcast has broken the iTunes record for the fastest podcast to reach five million downloads and streams I know I’m not alone.

If you’ve not yet come across it, the premise of the podcast is very simple: Serial tells one real-life story week by week. To summarise the story, fifteen years ago a senior at high school named Hae Min Lee went missing in Baltimore USA, and one month later her strangled body was found in a nearby park. Within the year her ex-boyfriend, 17-year-old Adnan Syed had been arrested, convicted, and sentenced for the crime, although the case was founded almost entirely upon the story of the only witness, Adnan’s friend Jay, who testified that he’d helped Adnan bury her body. Adnan continues to deny any involvement with the murder.

Nonetheless, Adnan was already 15 years into serving a life sentence in a Baltimore prison when journalist Sarah Koenig stumbled across the case and found herself wholly absorbed by it, spending more than a year rifling through boxes of legal documents while she tried to uncover what had really happened. Each week Sarah and her team investigate a new aspect of the case, using original evidence, court recordings and conversations with the suspects and witnesses.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this makes for incredibly compelling listening. Ostensibly, the story itself is of little importance; our concern is with human behaviour. There is a lot to be said for the audio format’s ability to engage an audience. Podcasts demand a listener’s undivided attention, forcibly removing us from the screens we connect ourselves to on a daily basis, and using music and other aural techniques to ensure we’re hanging on every word.

Divide this fascination out into weekly doses of 35 minutes or less and the effect is powerful. The truth is, we’re unused to spending more than 12 minutes waiting to find out a piece of information – just ask a commuter angrily tapping refresh on his wifi connection as his trains goes through a tunnel – let alone the 12 weeks that the series is currently expected to last.

Where once we got our fix of nervous anticipation from TV shows which aired weekly Netflix and streaming sites now reign supreme, so that even a series like Breaking Bad was viewed largely in day-long chunks box-set style, and avid fans dedicated full weekends to watching the entire season of House of Cards when it was dropped like a bomb onto the internet earlier this year.

In a digital age governed by speed and immediacy it’s not often we’re forced to exercise restraint, much less patience, and it seems like where TV has bowed out gracefully Serial and similar podcasts are set to step in. So we want know what you think it is about Serial that’s got everybody talking. Why is it so addictive? Can they keep up the suspense? Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to sit in a hole until the new episode lands tomorrow.

Share Article

Further Info

About the Author

Maisie Skidmore

Maisie joined It’s Nice That fresh out of university in the summer of 2013 as an intern before joining full time as an Assistant Editor. Maisie left It’s Nice That in July 2015.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.