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I'll provide a counterpoint: I really love listening to podcasts (quick plug for the "Keepin' It 1600" podcast as my favorite recently) and often in the crime and justice genre. I mostly got to listening to Serial because I've been listening to This American Life for a decade; I consider TAL to have about 70% good content with occasional really good ones (ex: the one explaining the financial crisis) and occasionally truly terrible ones (ex: the one with the guy trying to find the origin of a particular hold music tune). Just stating this so you know where I'm coming from, a background of my tastes.

I found Serial to be grating and and not very good at keeping my attention. I really didn't understand the hype at all and I really had to force myself to sit through the last couple episodes just so I could say I finished (I got a similar feeling when approaching the last episode of the second season of True Detective). I didn't find the story compelling at all.

It must get better, but I couldn't get through the first episode, which is odd, since I generally enjoy documentaries and dramatizations of true crime or investigative journalism.

I agree, but I give them credit for attempting to do what they ultimately did not pull off: to find a smoking gun that changes a murder case, in near-real-time, for an audience of millions.

As a listener, this meant I honestly felt like I had wasted a huge amount of time on the show.

But I was rooting for them right up to the point at which I began cursing them.

The fact that he now has a new trial should be enough to make up for that. The "smoking gun" was that there was no real case against him, but he was convicted and in jail.

>As a listener, this meant I honestly felt like I had wasted a huge amount of time on the show.

That seems like such a weird conclusion to me.

The show was packaged up and delivered as titillating entertainment. A first-person radio whodunnit for the post-radio age.

So, many weeks later, when the final word was "gosh maybe we'll never know!", I felt like I'd clicked on a series of those "What happened next will shock you!" headlines.

A compelling story reaching the same conclusion probably could have been handled in a single episode.

> So, many weeks later, when the final word was "gosh maybe we'll never know!"

But... that's the point. The finally episode spells this out very explicitly - although they can't say either way whether he did it or not, they found they don't have sufficient proof they he did commit the crime he was convicted for, and therefore does not deserve to be in jail.

What both series were good at pointing out was the nature of a fair trial, and how each case fell short.

You have a higher tolerance for grating. I find TAL impossible to listen to weekly.

It embodies the elements of NPR that drive me nuts, without the pledge drive to give me a time out period. :)

Mostly off-topic, but if you haven't heard it before, you'd probably enjoy giving Criminal[0] a listen.

  [0]: http://thisiscriminal.com/

The new podcast More Perfect from Radiolab seems to quite good in this genre as well. It is stories based the US supreme court cases.

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolabmoreperfect

I also will act as a recommendation engine and suggest you listen to Detective (the first season is really really good).

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/detective/id1029038371

Personally I enjoyed the hold music tone episode. I think I like the investigative quality and the back and forth questioning that slowly reveals the layers of a situation.

The ones I have a hard time listening to are the ones where they have an actor read an excerpt a book. Sometimes it's interesting, and sometimes, it's just a guy reading a book.

Considering the weekend content of HN, I'd bet that there's been a conversation over that segment at some point.

Why is it good to listen to a show you dislike just to say you finished it?

Social skills?

Sunk cost fallacy. I find myself doing that with TV series too. I'll binge watch a few seasons and then it gets bad. I also know that sometimes better writers come on during different seasons so I'll slog through the bad ones in the hope that a good season will appear. I could just look up episode ratings on IMDB and skip around, but then there is the problem of missing pieces of large story arcs.

Well, in addition to what others had said, I was hoping there would be a conclusion in this case. I felt a bit invested in the story and didn't know there would essentially be no conclusion at the end. If I had known, I probably would not have finished it.

When the A team took a break from TAL to ship Serial, TAL really suffered and it hasn't come back.

I think the only real genius of Serial was using a slick style and conversational tone as a gloss for what was quite poor (and arguably irresponsible) reporting. As an example, the whole Best Buy charade was only reenacted either out of their unfamiliarity with the facts of the case (the court transcripts reveal the exact location of the phone), or with more cynical intentions, depending on how generous you want to be.

See update at the bottom:

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/evidenceprof/2015/01/ive-po...

Interesting. Following serial there was an interview with Jay by The Intercept where he talks about incosistencies in his story, and how lied about some details because he was drug dealing from his grandmothers house and he wanted to protect her from any fallout. https://theintercept.com/2014/12/29/exclusive-interview-jay-... https://theintercept.com/2014/12/30/exclusive-jay-part-2/

I find his response to this question compelling when talking about Sarah Koenig and Serial:

" Was the name ‘Serial’ ever used?

No. Not to my recollection. She kept saying ‘This American Life,’ ‘the radio,’ and ‘a documentary.’ There was no talk of ‘Serial’ or a podcast. Then I asked her outright, ‘Are you an advocate for Adnan?’ She said ‘No,’ that she wasn’t his advocate. But she said that she had talked to Adnan, and she wanted to get more information about the case. She said there was new evidence, and I said there’s no new evidence that’s gonna change what I saw: I saw Hae dead in the trunk of the car. If Adnan wants to take the stand now and explain that away, let him. But there’s no evidence that’s gonna change what I saw. I don’t know how she was murdered, I don’t know exactly how she got put in that trunk, and I told the cops that. If Koenig wants to get into how that all happened she can go there. But that doesn’t change what I saw. And that’s the only time I commented directly on the case to her. "

He does say that but it seems clear that if Adnan didn't kill her, Jay did so he has ever reason to lie. Just as Adnan does.

I totally agree, but I find it funny that you started by decrying the hype the series has received, and then almost immediately after claimed it to be one of the best pieces of journalism you've heard recently. :)

Ah I think it deserves the hype. But I got on the bandwagon just as it started...from my experience, the people who didn't catch it early on eagerly participated in the backlash...but that's just in media circles, where there's pressure to be either the first adopter or "too cool for school". To be fair, the number of podcasts that arose exclusively to cover meta-Serial was pretty obscene...imagine "The Walking Dead", except with "Talking Dead"-type shows on five different networks.

They opened with the whole memory thing and I found it sort of leading. Not to post spoilers but obviously I don't know exactly what I did 6 weeks ago. I can guess. Maybe even think of a few specific things. However, 6 weeks ago my first love and someone I was very close to didn't disappear one day. Further, I haven't spent the next 6 weeks as a teenager in a high school, which, if things haven't changed since my time, are dramatic rumor mills.

I just know that if someone that close to me disappeared, I'd be reliving and remembering that day and the days after to the point it'd be burned in my mind.

Yeah, but he didn't find out (assuming you believe he's innocent, like I do) until days later. What's seared into your mind is that point forward, not the past. Forget six weeks ago, I have trouble remembering what happened a few days ago often, without scrolling through emails or other things of that nature to jog my memory. He has since relived it in his mind over and over, but the detail is already gone.

I believe he did it. Firmly.

Not to get in to the details, but her family called him looking for her that night. And like I said, if I get a weird phone call from a friends family looking for them and the next day they don't show up to school, you better believe it is ALL me and my friends are going to be talking about. It's just not something people, let alone high school kids, ignore.

>I believe he did it. Firmly.

I don't understand the 'firmly' bit. The state's case was flimsy and the state's timeline was a total mess. The cell tower evidence was flaky and one of the state's expert witnesses rescinded his testimony. Jay is a terrible witness who changed his story multiple times. The state needs Jay AND the cell tower evidence to stick and I don't think it does.

In my opinion, the state's case was flimsy because they didn't really know what happened or how. Jay was involved drastically more than he let on, which explains his consistently changing story and the fact that his story doesn't match the cell phone records. Adnan knows Jay is lying, but obviously can't expose him without confessing his own role.

As I said, I firmly believe he's innocent, but based on your comment, I checked the timeline, and it is interesting to me that an officer apparently called Adnan the same night she disappeared. I have to admit, that would probably crystallize the relevant afternoon a bit in my memory.

That said, as other sibling comments are saying, one's memory is surprisingly poor. This is sort of tangential, but for example, I've sat in a classroom, where as an experiment on eyewitness testimony, someone comes in (without the class knowing what's happening) and in a very exaggerated manner steals something from the professor and then leaves. Literally a minute later, when asked, much of the class misidentifies major physical attributed of the 'perpetrator' (height, hair color, etc.), even when they are confident they are correct.

>I have to admit, that would probably crystallize the relevant afternoon a bit in my memory.

He was high. I think that part was corroborated by multiple people. Everybody reacts differently. How Adnan reacted when he heard she disappeared shouldn't be the backbone of deciding whether or not he is innocent or guilty.

All the other kids didn't think murder when she disappeared either. There was a rumour going around that she ran away to Cali to see her father. It took a few days before the realization sunk in.

You can remember what you had for lunch? Lucky~

Isn't it pretty well accepted that, psychologically, your memories are severely distorted and sometimes entirely lost in times of extreme emotional distress?

I can buy that. But his defense wasn't "my memories are distorted" it was "How could I remember?, it was soo long ago"

Plus you'd have to believe some pretty wild conspiracies for any other explanation to be plausible.

> any other explanation

He may be convicted again. I didn't think they established motive all that strongly, and something was odd about the guy who claimed to have helped bury the body.

>However, 6 weeks ago my first love and someone I was very close to didn't disappear one day.

None of the kids really remembered what happened - including (close) friends of Hae, so what does that tell you?

It seems like you're trying to say "if it happened to me, my memory would be better, and it's their fault if their memory is poor".

That's insulting at best to the many, many people in the criminal justice system who have suffered from the general mutability of memory.

The point of the podcast wasn't to convince you that he's innocent, though. The main reason they led with that was to prepare you for a series where 90% of the interviewees don't really remember most of what happened. It's not just about Adnan, it's about everyone involved, and how they can all have such conflicting accounts. It wasn't everyone vs. Adnan, it was everyone vs. everyone else.

That's a good point, but I think things were more nuanced than that (at least IIRC ;)...I haven't re-listened to it since the original broadcast)...the victim's disappearance was not thought of as a disappearance until at least a week or so later -- her body wasn't found until a month later. Even though her family reported her as missing the day of her actual disappearance...I believe Adnan claimed that he thought she had just gone on some crazy trip, as teenagers are wont to do. Sure, the victim's family would argue that she was the kind of good girl who would never do such a thing, but she was also someone who carried out a sexual relation with Adnan without her family's knowledge or acceptance...so, your typical -- but complicated -- teenage drama, except that it ended in a tragic and mysterious murder case. But if Adnan is innocent, his excuse makes sense to me -- he knew what a rebellious girl Hae Min Lee was, and there was no reason to keep frozen in mind the day of her initial disappearance.

That said, it did bother me how he apparently never thought to call on her during the time of her disappearance, even though they were no longer a couple. That was probably one of the strongest pieces of circumstantial evidence against him, in my eyes.

One of the most compelling aspects of the case for me is that while I can see why Adnan garnered the sympathy of advocates and the interest of Serial's producers, at least enough to warrant a full season of coverage...I still couldn't quite shake the feeling that even if he isn't guilty beyond a reasonable doubt...that he might still be guilty of the actual murder. I can't remember the last time a story so full of ambiguity so completely captured my attention.

"That said, it did bother me how he apparently never thought to call on her during the time of her disappearance, even though they were no longer a couple. That was probably one of the strongest pieces of circumstantial evidence against him, in my eyes."

I don't know about you, but like most people, I'm not on speaking terms with most of my ex-es.

That was a point of contention on the show, IIRC. The prosecution argued that Adnan was jealous. Adnan claimed to be on OK terms with Lee, even giving her his new phone number shortly before her disappearance. IIRC, this was an angle of suspicion for the Serial producers, who found it strange that he didn't bother to call her after her disappearance.

(I'm on speaking terms with my exes. Even am still Facebook friends)

You say you would remember better if you were in that situation, but how do you know? Some evidence[0] suggests that memories are more distorted the more they are remembered, so "reliving and remembering that day" may actually make things worse. Note that this may not affect your confidence in the memories. Since we're talking about podcasts, I should mention that there's a Radiolab episode[1] that discusses this.

[0] http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2012/09/your-...

[1] http://www.radiolab.org/story/91569-memory-and-forgetting/

It's really weird that a comment pointing out scientific evidence is downvoted here.

Memory is bad, period. And we don't even realize it. It's extremely common to be absolutely certain you've observed something, which never ever happened.

My theory is that rather than popularizing the podcast industry, the first season of Serial ruined it, because both the underlying story and the multi-episode presentation are so compelling that basically nothing else can live up to it. It's a Romeo and Juliet tale about a secret relationship between a Muslim boy and a Korean girl, and we both hear excerpts from her diary and also listen to the guy from prison 15 years later (so you can judge whether you think he's lying). It's just some of the best 10 hours of content you'll ever hear.

While compelling, the most frustrating thing about "Serial" was the narrative manipulation. Audience manipulation is the hallmark of any documentary, but in the type of chronological style that "Serial" and Netflix's "Making a Murderer" chose, it is much more deceptive. "Serial" didn't pay off--the central enlightenment is tepid observations that "memory is faulty" and/or "it's hard for journalists to ferret out truth". "Making a Murderer" at least sounded a ringing indictment against the criminal justice system as a whole, and corruption of petty incompetents holding power. "Serial" seemed like disjointed TAL thinkpieces strung together.

I wanted to write a comment to this effect but you put it into words better than I could hope to.

There was something special about Serial. With regards to the topic itself, how lucky she was to find a story with so many angles and so many holes and so many things to investigate. With regards to the medium, it was something entirely new to me to have something dictated to me through audio in a format that somewhat resembles a documentary, and to have everything visualized only in my imagination. I can visualize Best Buy, and the school, and Leakin park. And for whatever reason, that visualization is especially vivid in my mind, even in comparison to books that I've read a dozen times. I think a big part of it has to do with a feeling of everything occurring in real-time and the stream-of-consciousness that Koenig speaks with. It's a strange feeling to be visualizing the entire context of these events while not being in control of the speed, like you would when reading.

Coupled with the fact that you're making judgements about his innocence and thinking about what-ifs at the same time, and it really pulls you in.

and after listening to 'serial', give 'undisclosed' a listen - they dive much much deeper into the details of the court case, police records, evidence, etc.

It's a very different experience, and clearly incredibly biased, but I agree that it's a good listen if you got into the case and are curious to learn more about the facts and players. Some of the wild theories they come up with though are simply incredible to me - they seem like level headed people much of the time, but the lengths they will go to suggest a conspiracy (where simple incompetence is a much more probable reality) can truly blow my mind.

There's a shrimp sale at the Crab Crib

I just finished season 2 and was surprised by the similar lack of strong conclusion, though still an incredibly interesting and deep look at the Bergdahl case. Now, time to go back and listen to season 1.

It's also been widely regarded by lawyers as a great popular case study on the concept of Reasonable Doubt. Source: Friend in Big Law

>(including for its purported role in single-handedly revitalizing the podcast industry)

Did they really though? I'm a podcast whore, but I also happen to be in the demographic of someone who'd probably listen to podcasts already-and yet I know plenty of people outside of that demographic who consume podcasts just as much. Heck, the last person I'd ever expect to be a podcast consumer-someone who struggles to even click through a hand-held software update started her own fashion podcast years before Serial was even announced.

Oh yea they did. I don't listen to podcasts, never saw the appeal, yet somehow today I find myself producing one and seeing new ones pop up all the time now.

I believe they were implying with the use of the word purportedly that it actually did not. As you mention, podcasting was already fairly large and growing quickly when Serial hit the spotlight. I get the impression that a lot of established podcasters/listeners got pretty frustrated with the notion that Serial was kickstarting this "cool, new podcasting craze".

Ah gotcha. I sped my reading right through that operative.