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'Serial' was the podcast that launched all podcasts. It was the defining podcast. It isn't that it was hyper monetized or incredibly financially successful; simply it showed that the audience was there.

It has over 340 million listens as of 2018. With this eviction of conviction, I suspect that number will be over a billion.

It is fitting that it has come full circle and fulfilled the ultimate purpose of investigative journalism: to shine a light on a small part of the world that otherwise would be ignored... and maybe right a wrong.

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This assertion has always been strange to me. This American Life was releasing their episodes as podcasts for something like 7 years before they decided to do Serial. Shows like Adam Corolla, WTF with Marc Maron, the BS Report, Joe Rogan Experience, etc were all very successful before Serial. Major media companies like NPR, CBC, BBC were releasing podcasts and dedicated podcast companies like TWiT.tv had existed for years. I think you can kind of credit Serial for popularizing true crime podcasts but it gets way too much credit for the success for the medium.

In fairness I think Bill Simmons, Joe Rogan, Marc Maron and Adam Carolla have had their praise for moving podcasts along. Same with This American Life.

Serial was different, though in that it was a multi episode look at something. This American life had segments and still had to be designed with the radio listener in mind - who was probably only in the car for 30 min. I don't think Serial is that uniquely good - but it was different. We just are kinda dumb for having all of "podcasts" under one term instead of a bunch of genre terms.

You could also just call them “radio shows”. It’s a weird thing that the company that made iPods for a few years defined that term and we have gone with it since.

As for the earlier part of your comment - it’s there in the name, “serial”. That was the experiment. But there have been serialized radio shows back when radio was the leading medium. We just don’t remember that time.

What I think is key here is that these people had formal experience and mentorship in doing radio. Lots of it. To them it was just applying that expertise to something we call something different due to shifts in distribution tech.

Well, they're not really 'radio' either. 'Audio series' might be a better generic term, but for better or for worse, 'podcasts' has stuck.

> It’s a weird thing that the company that made iPods for a few years defined that term and we have gone with it since.

Apple didn't coin the term. People started using the word in 2004, but iTunes didn't have podcast support until 2005.

Oh this I did not know! I guess they absorbed the trend right when everyone was buying an iPod and it all merged for some like me.

Serial didn't create the demand for podcasts — that had already existed, as you say — but it proved out that demand, in a way that made advertisers take notice; made it possible to commercialize podcasting; and so led to an explosion in the number of podcasts, because it was now a predictable media business model that the stodgier kinds of investor could get behind.

I listened to at least one proto-podcast back in the pre-iPod era of the late 90s: Pointless Audio with Kevin Pereira. It's still available in some form: https://youtu.be/XXqxUAzt6u4

Maybe Serial launched the modern commerically produced crime podcast format, but I'd give a shout out to The History of Rome by Mike Duncan as the "defining podcast." It started quite a bit earlier (2007) and proved that there is a big audience (65 million downloads) for obscure topics covered in depth. Serial spun out of This American Life, so it had some audience to begin with, but THOR is truly "let me put this out there and see if anyone listens." It's also interesting to see how apologetic Mike Duncan was when he introduced monetization through direct to consumer ads, and this is now the standard monetization model.

An absolute gem. I’ve listened all the way through twice.

Have you listened to Revolutions, his more recent podcast? Also great — and there are ten seasons, each about a different revolution, in-depth.

> 'Serial' was the podcast that launched all podcasts

Sorry, but this statement is objectively wrong. Podcasts have existed for close to 20 years in the way we understand them today.

Serial may have helped to popularize podcasts, but in no way was original.

I think that commenter may have not been that literal and meant something more along the lines of "made podcasts more mainstream in an exponential manner." I know plenty of people in my life who weren't podcast people at that time but were constantly talking about it or walking around saying "mail... keemp?" as a joke. (A reference to Serial)

Serial is the first podcast I can recall being referenced in mainstream network TV pop culture. SNL did skits about it. It was mentioned in dialog on other shpws. BoJack's girlfriend used it as her ringtone.

It was everywhere in a way no other podcast had been previously.

Indeed you’re very right! Not the original, but Serial contained all the elements that made a podcast mainstream and proved it out as a real business. Prior to it they were indie.

They’re using hyperbole as a device. It’s not meant to be “literally” true.

> 'Serial' was the podcast that launched all podcasts.

It feels like we were listening to This American Life in podcast form in the car for at least five years before Serial even existed. And Serial was being marketed on TAL during what I'd describe as TAL's slow decline from popularity, with Ira personally shilling for Serial and teasing the first entire episode on TAL, IIRC.

If either of these were responsible for launching the modern podcast era, I'd point at TAL, not Serial.

The difference is that TAL is a radio show that was also distributed as podcast.

Serial was only a podcast.

Sure, except I never listened to TAL on the radio. We would download a bunch of the episodes into someone's mp3 player (later a phone) and listen to them in the car through a tape deck headphone adapter.

That's the era I lived through, the transition to mp3s and ipods becoming commonplace, and TLA was right there with us. They are called podcasts after all, this is pre-streaming parlance.

I don't think it's fair to be discredit TAL's role in the shift to podcasting just because they were a radio show first.

Serial basically arrived when everyone was streaming everything, that's pretty late in terms of podcasts. Serial didn't even exist in the era of iPods and Zens...

Serial is the original true crime podcast, and IMO, nobody since has done it as well as they did.

And holy shit. What an incredible piece of news. I think, though, that if the state vacates a conviction, then they lose the right to prosecute you again. Being let out and then having to relive your nightmare trial with the possibility of going back? That’s sadistic by any definition.

They haven't set aside the conviction - just released Adnan Syed from prison until the competent authority can decide whether they want to retry him or look elsewhere for the killers.

Basically, the equivalent of declaring a mistrial after the prisoner has been convicted and sent to prison. Adnan is out of prison but under GPS monitoring for now.

In the UK there is a limited Double Jeopardy. If they conclude that there's significant new evidence, they can re-try you for certain serious crimes, including murder, rape and armed robbery with their new evidence. There is an extraordinary case where somebody was tried, convicted, had the conviction quashed (for procedural reasons) then was tried again and convicted again twenty years later.

Serial definitely was an inflection point in the history of podcasts.

Karl Pilkington was eating a knob at night a decade prior.

Still the funniest "3 people just having a chat and being funny" podcast in existence. Cumtown doesn't hold a candle to it imo

I could eat a knob at night.

The Ricky Gervais Podcast, on the original iPod. The kids will never know how magical that was. Monkey news, Karl's inventions, "None of this now needed, baby dead".

Back in 2006 I wrote an "Internet Radio Recording" app: https://sourceforge.net/projects/radiorec/ based on the interface of DVRs on TVs at the time.

It's interesting that people thought to put live streamed radio online before just dumping the mp3s.

Podcasts have been a thing since the mid-2000s or so. The name comes from the fact that you were supposed to download them and listen to them on your iPod. It may be a popular, influential podcast that established norms for the true-crime podcast format, but calling it the podcast that launched all podcasts is like calling JavaScript the language that launched all languages.

C/C++ were the languages that launched all languages. Serial is like C. It’s not the first language, but it’s the most important modern language.

If interested, there was an HBO documentary that covered his case after Serial.

“The Case Against Adnan Syed 2019 ‧ Documentary ‧ 1 season” on HBO max

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