Serial is a podcast from the creators of This American Life, dedicated to telling a single, true story in about a dozen weekly episodes. It debuted this fall and has been the no. 1 podcast on iTunes virtually ever since. The Wall Street Journal's Caroline O'Donovan said Serial told her it's averaging 1 million weekly downloads — about as many as This American Life, the most popular podcast in the US. That's also roughly as many people as watched the most recent Mad Men season premiere.
The podcast's first season is a true crime story about the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, Maryland. Hae's ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, a 17-year-old Woodlawn student, was arrested, convicted of strangling Hae, and is serving a life sentence in a Maryland prison.Adnan's conviction was based largely on the testimony of one man: an acquaintance named Jay, who described how he helped Adnan carry out the logistics of his murderous plot and later bury Hae's body.
But Adnan's family is convinced he didn't do it. And Sarah Koenig, the host of Serial, is exploring what really happened 15 years ago when Hae Min Lee died.
Koenig is still reporting and recording new episodes. She says she's not sure where the narrative will take her and has never said exactly how many episodes the story will take, though it will likely be about a dozen. New developments are still unfolding: just a couple of days ago,
Koenig told Rolling Stone, she stumbled on something that shifts her entire perception of the story.