> I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
Is there a good discovery mechanism for people looking to go past the first 3 episodes? Is there anyone trying to do curation of any sort? I wonder if AI that knows you super well could be used to find the right podcast for you.
I'd love to explore more political, science and other types of podcasts but it is too easy to set one up nowadays which results in so much garbage and I have wasted enough time with Rogan, Friedman and their ilk to realize that I'm forced to do curation. For one bit of gold there is so much trash and time is the most valuable thing you have.
I run a small podcast startup. I've been doing it ten years.
Podcasting is drying up because the money left. Everyone went all in on podcasts on 2020. Spotify bet the farm on podcasts. Money poured in. Marketing bros realized there's only so many mattresses and underwear you can sell through the format and left.
You really can't serve personalized ads through podcasts. The relevance of what you advertise can be about the topic of the show (that is, marketing to the type of people who would listen) or the location of the listener. Pretty much every other signal gives you nothing interesting you'd be about to decide "yeah they're a potential good customer". Spray and pray.
The money left. People realized they couldn't justify the time and money they pour into podcasting. It turns out, even if you weren't expecting to make money, you really hoped people would listen. Not enough, because podcasts faded and people discovered TikTok. No more waiting for your favorite show to drop: everything is your favorite show. If you get bored just scroll up.
Lots of folks are still making it work. But a lot more people are going into podcasting with a more deliberate approach. People are doing it because they think it's important, not because they think people will listen or because they want to get rich. I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
This article mentions the podcast Serial several times, then later says this:
> He says the genre focuses on outlier situations — cases that feature the "unresolved nature of the crime," the "grisly or more so shocking nature of the criminal conduct" and "extensive media coverage."
The first season of Serial, which I assume is what they mean since that's the famous one everyone listened to, is about an unsolved and reasonably grisly murder case. (Never mind the fact that it's a really story about the legal proceedings surrounding the case and our criminal justice system as a whole, not a voyeuristic slasherfest like so many true crime stories are.)
But there have been several more seasons of Serial since then, including the third season, which focuses on a number of completely ordinary, mundane cases from a single courthouse in Ohio—except what turns out to be shocking is how even these ordinary cases, run-of-the-mill trials and sentencings that never would've been on anyone's radar, are subject to the whims of random judges and cops with no oversight.
It's not that the original murder story is remarkable for having a questionable trial with so many unanswered questions; so many people's experiences with our justice system are equally arbitrary and confusing, and for much smaller charges. What's remarkable about the season one case is its degree, not its kind.
(As an aside, people who are REALLY into the "is he innocent/guilty" posturing for the season one case, and are otherwise a fan of those voyeuristic slasherfest-type stories, didn't seem to like season three. Which is a shame since I thought it was fascinating, and arguably more horrifying, since your odds of being arrested under dubious charges and sentenced by an untouchable judge seem a lot higher than your odds of being randomly murdered in the woods.)
> I honestly felt like it did a terrible job of establishing much reasonable doubt and it just sort of... ends?
The goal of Serial wasn't to establish reasonable doubt. She was asked to look into the case, and she's reporting what she found. There was hope that there would be some conclusion, but it wasn't the expectation when she began the story.
As for the ending, what exactly would you want? I thought it was clear from the outset that it would be an open ended investigation, and the early episodes were released before she was done with all the interviews, etc. That it may end without a conclusion was kind of the default expectation. That a reporter would be able to dig deep and either exonerate or damn him is closer to the realm of fantasy. His case was not a slam dunk in either direction.
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...
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.
Background: Adnan Syed was convicted of killing Hae Min Lee in 2016. The case was the subject of an in-depth investigation in the popular podcast Serial (Season 1).[1]
Yes, judges have a lot of leeway, and that's how you get things like brock turner's "good kid" sentence while a black teenager gets years for a minor drug offense.
The US legal system also thrives on plea deals. Prosecutors charge people with WAYY more than is fair, so the risk of going to court is too high (years in jail) and defendants are bullied into plea deals that suck.
If you'd like to learn more about how messed up this system is, season 3 of the podcast Serial is a pretty good starting place.
I guess having two existing words mashed together also cuts down on the pronunciation confession - although Serial season one still managed to mis-pronounce Mailchimp
This was covered in popular culture most famously by The Wire, written by retired police beat reporter David Simon, it's called "juking the stats", each police district is judged by different crime stats, and promotions are based on those stats, so naturally everything evolves to optimized for better stats. Not only that, on the judicial side in America over the past 50 years, funding has not kept up with the increase in population so there is an extreme pressure on prosecutors to not go to trial, add to this the political nature of the office and American prosecutors are under pressure to keep up their 95% conviction rate, this is done by going hard after those least able to afford an adequate defense and "laddering", adding on every single conceivable charge so that defendants will plead guilty to a smaller number of charges in exchange for some charges being dropped and not inconvenience the state with an expensive trial by jury. This is covered pretty well by season 3 of the Serial podcast.
Ira Glass is the creator and host of a long running radio show called This American Life on National Public Radio. The show runs weekly and tells stories of Americana and other things. I suspect part of what makes the show famous is that it coined not just a particular kind of show, but a particular kind of sound, editing and production, that, I’d say set the standard for modern audio programs.
Several of the shows producers (and Ira’s mentees) have gone on to create other famous shows:
- Sarah Koenig created Serial, one of the first truly mainstream podcasts (1M listeners in its first week) for telling, in the first season, the story of a murder of Haymen Lee and investigating whether the man convicted, Adnan Syed, was likely innocent.
- Alex Blumberg created Planet Money, a short radio show that explores economics and explains it by looking at what’s happening, culturally, around the world. Later, Blumberg founded Gimlet, a podcast company that recently sold to Spotify for $100M, ostensibly to create content with that, now famous, NPR _sound_. Some of the bigger/more famous work from Gimlet is Startup (now also a TV show in the US), Homecoming (now also a show on Amazon Prime Video), Reply All, and Conviction.
Anyway, Ira Glass has hosted This American Life since the beginning, and Blumberg recently interviewed him for a show Gimlet produces called Without Fail. If you’re looking to understand his impact in this space, I think that’s a wonderful place to start.
*edited to correct where the Homecoming TV show airs.
There's a podcast, by the name: 'Serial', in season two they go into regular courtrooms with non-fancy cases - fights, etc.
In one episode after the defendant has been found not guilty, the judge presiding over the case berated them for not accepting a plea deal, and wasting the court time. This is after the person has been found not guilty.
Not having grown up in the US, I listened in fascination to the first episodes of Serial season 3, “... Cleveland. Not for one extraordinary case; instead, Serial wanted to tackle the whole criminal justice system. To do that we figured we’d need to look at something different: ordinary cases.”
After a few episodes I had to take a break. It is so upsetting. Justice is not a reality.
““Charge stacking” is a process by which police and prosecutors create a case with numerous charges or numerous instances of the same charge to convince the defendant that the risk of not pleading guilty is intolerable. The defendant may be convinced to plead guilty to a few of the charges in return for not being prosecuted for the remaining charges.“
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtroom_Workgroup
Have you ever listened to the Serial podcast? There is an interesting episode in season 3 where they touch on this. He reached for his pants is police speak for "I used violence against a person and I need an excuse".
Reaching for your pants isn't a crime worthy of an immediate death sentence.
Ive just listened to the first two episodes of the new Serial season which tackles the justice system from inside a courthouse. Coming from another justice system, it sounds absolutely insane to me.
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 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. "
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.
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.
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.
Maybe premature to think about this, but once the full story can be told, this seems like the perfect candidate for Serial Season 3...I'm really fascinated to know what jurors, detectives, and prosecutors were thinking.
It looks like the artist's Tumblr, with the GIFs attributed to him. There's a note on the 2nd or 3rd post that, up top, is a collection of work he did for Serial Season 2.
>But neither “Serial” (which is otherwise notable for its thoroughness) nor “Making a Murderer” ever addresses the question of what rights and considerations should be extended to victims of violent crime, and under what circumstances those might justifiably be suspended. Instead, both creators and viewers tacitly dismiss the pain caused by such shows as collateral damage, unfortunate but unavoidable. Here, too, the end is taken to justify the means; someone else’s anguish comes to seem like a trifling price to pay for the greater cause a documentary claims to serve.
Aww come the hell on! The public has a very strong interest in monitoring the criminal justice system. We cannot do that without knowledge of the crimes and the victims. Yes, it sucks for them. Crime is bad. But the public cannot hope to establish and direct a justice system capable of deterring crime without learning facts about actual prosecutions, which unfortunately includes information about the victim and what was done to them.
Besides, the vast majority (possibly all, IIRC) of the footage of Hallbach's family consisted of public interviews of her brother. You can't repeatedly and voluntarily thrust yourself into the media spotlight and then cry foul when people use that footage.
What serious journalist really thinks this is a reasonable argument to make? Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to police corruption and inadequate due process because it makes one person and their family uncomfortable?
Yes, Serial first season engaged by laying out a larger and deeper story as it progressed, and was driven by the audience's curiosity to see what new evidence comes up that may change their view on previously presented evidence. Making a Murderer seems to (I'm only 6 episodes through) feed off the audience's impotent rage at injustice.
Well, the point of the article is that the documentary is structured to ensure that's the attitude you come away from it with.
If you've listened to Serial too, the comparison is pretty stark. In every episode, Koenig nurtures doubts about Syed's innocence, and continually returns to the most difficult challenges to the case for his innocence.
Koenig does this for reasons beyond integrity: it's also the reason Serial is a more effective true crime story (you really want to hear the next episode because you have no idea where the story might go, which is just not the case for the Avery case).
For me, the facts that Ricciardi and Demos left out are damning in pretty much the same way as the facts they reveal about misconduct in the Avery case:
* Avery is forensically tied to Halbach's car in ways that do withstand scrutiny
* Avery had repeatedly contacted Halbach, sometimes with caller ID blocked, and, despite Halbach's discomfort with him, had specifically requested that she come out to his place the day of the murder
* There is physical evidence that corroborates specific, idiosyncratic details of the story Dassey told investigators
Spoiler: Probably not, Berghdal is still active duty in Texas.
One of the functions and outcomes of great investigative reporting is to find facts that aren't already visible. The first series of Serial apparently resulted in Syed being granted a new hearing—his post-conviction hearings were re-opened by the appeals court last month, and he will get a new day in court some time soon.
There's a chance that the reporting in this new series of episodes might result in a similar change in outcome or circumstance.
This is Serial. They devote a full season to each issue and it's supposed to be something controversial that people can discuss and theorize about between episodes. Season 1 was about a murder in Baltimore, and whether the convicted person actually committed this murder or not (still an open question for listeners (not necessarily the justice system), by the way; there wasn't a big reveal of proof one way or the other at the end of the season).
I would expect that Bergdahl's narrative will be examined more critically in subsequent episodes.
Serial only has one season on which to base its reputation, but thus far it seems exceptionally adept at not picking sides. The case in season one was polarizing, but Serial did an admirable job of presenting all sides and not making overt attempts to push audience opinion in any particular direction. I'm hoping this season has the same balance.
I found serial interesting for a few episodes, then she started spending hours analyzing the memories and text messages of high school students and it quickly became exhausting to listen to. I hope the guy gets a fair trial but it was simply a slog to listen to.
I have to say, though, I don't enjoy Serial very much. I'm the only person, it seems. :-) Listening to a reporter (not an investigator) guess and gab about a murder just seems like a waste of time. The constant teasers throughout each episode (maybe he did it? but then, maybe he didn't? and maybe this happened, but then maybe it didn't happen?) are infuriating.
This is to say nothing Sarah Koenig. She's obviously done fine work in her career and is a big part of This American Life, and I'm happy to see any podcast get some attention. I just don't enjoy the show, personally.
To be fair, Serial hasn't really taken a side on the matter, at least not yet. It's really been more about figuring out as much as possible, and doing it in an engaging way. Serial feels very much "about the story" to me.
As for just distracting yourself without learning anything, I feel you there, but at the same time most of us do it in numerous other ways such as reading fiction, or watching movies, so I don't feel for you too much.
A quick plug: for those who enjoy Serial, there's an incredible amount of high-quality discussion about it on the serialpodcast subreddit [1].
The very high level of engagement the show has with some listeners is surprising. I don't think it's typical, but many posters talk about dedicating hours to reading case documents, re-listening to episodes, doing independent research, etc.
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> I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
Is there a good discovery mechanism for people looking to go past the first 3 episodes? Is there anyone trying to do curation of any sort? I wonder if AI that knows you super well could be used to find the right podcast for you.
I'd love to explore more political, science and other types of podcasts but it is too easy to set one up nowadays which results in so much garbage and I have wasted enough time with Rogan, Friedman and their ilk to realize that I'm forced to do curation. For one bit of gold there is so much trash and time is the most valuable thing you have.
I run a small podcast startup. I've been doing it ten years.
Podcasting is drying up because the money left. Everyone went all in on podcasts on 2020. Spotify bet the farm on podcasts. Money poured in. Marketing bros realized there's only so many mattresses and underwear you can sell through the format and left.
You really can't serve personalized ads through podcasts. The relevance of what you advertise can be about the topic of the show (that is, marketing to the type of people who would listen) or the location of the listener. Pretty much every other signal gives you nothing interesting you'd be about to decide "yeah they're a potential good customer". Spray and pray.
The money left. People realized they couldn't justify the time and money they pour into podcasting. It turns out, even if you weren't expecting to make money, you really hoped people would listen. Not enough, because podcasts faded and people discovered TikTok. No more waiting for your favorite show to drop: everything is your favorite show. If you get bored just scroll up.
Lots of folks are still making it work. But a lot more people are going into podcasting with a more deliberate approach. People are doing it because they think it's important, not because they think people will listen or because they want to get rich. I'd argue that some of the best podcasts ever made have come out in the past 2-3 years, but if you're not giving the median listener the thrill of the first season of Serial, they don't listen past the first episode or two.
This article mentions the podcast Serial several times, then later says this:
> He says the genre focuses on outlier situations — cases that feature the "unresolved nature of the crime," the "grisly or more so shocking nature of the criminal conduct" and "extensive media coverage."
The first season of Serial, which I assume is what they mean since that's the famous one everyone listened to, is about an unsolved and reasonably grisly murder case. (Never mind the fact that it's a really story about the legal proceedings surrounding the case and our criminal justice system as a whole, not a voyeuristic slasherfest like so many true crime stories are.)
But there have been several more seasons of Serial since then, including the third season, which focuses on a number of completely ordinary, mundane cases from a single courthouse in Ohio—except what turns out to be shocking is how even these ordinary cases, run-of-the-mill trials and sentencings that never would've been on anyone's radar, are subject to the whims of random judges and cops with no oversight.
It's not that the original murder story is remarkable for having a questionable trial with so many unanswered questions; so many people's experiences with our justice system are equally arbitrary and confusing, and for much smaller charges. What's remarkable about the season one case is its degree, not its kind.
(As an aside, people who are REALLY into the "is he innocent/guilty" posturing for the season one case, and are otherwise a fan of those voyeuristic slasherfest-type stories, didn't seem to like season three. Which is a shame since I thought it was fascinating, and arguably more horrifying, since your odds of being arrested under dubious charges and sentenced by an untouchable judge seem a lot higher than your odds of being randomly murdered in the woods.)
> I honestly felt like it did a terrible job of establishing much reasonable doubt and it just sort of... ends?
The goal of Serial wasn't to establish reasonable doubt. She was asked to look into the case, and she's reporting what she found. There was hope that there would be some conclusion, but it wasn't the expectation when she began the story.
As for the ending, what exactly would you want? I thought it was clear from the outset that it would be an open ended investigation, and the early episodes were released before she was done with all the interviews, etc. That it may end without a conclusion was kind of the default expectation. That a reporter would be able to dig deep and either exonerate or damn him is closer to the realm of fantasy. His case was not a slam dunk in either direction.
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...
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.
Background: Adnan Syed was convicted of killing Hae Min Lee in 2016. The case was the subject of an in-depth investigation in the popular podcast Serial (Season 1).[1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_(podcast)#Season_1_(2014)
Yes, judges have a lot of leeway, and that's how you get things like brock turner's "good kid" sentence while a black teenager gets years for a minor drug offense.
The US legal system also thrives on plea deals. Prosecutors charge people with WAYY more than is fair, so the risk of going to court is too high (years in jail) and defendants are bullied into plea deals that suck.
If you'd like to learn more about how messed up this system is, season 3 of the podcast Serial is a pretty good starting place.
I did not know that!
I guess having two existing words mashed together also cuts down on the pronunciation confession - although Serial season one still managed to mis-pronounce Mailchimp
This was covered in popular culture most famously by The Wire, written by retired police beat reporter David Simon, it's called "juking the stats", each police district is judged by different crime stats, and promotions are based on those stats, so naturally everything evolves to optimized for better stats. Not only that, on the judicial side in America over the past 50 years, funding has not kept up with the increase in population so there is an extreme pressure on prosecutors to not go to trial, add to this the political nature of the office and American prosecutors are under pressure to keep up their 95% conviction rate, this is done by going hard after those least able to afford an adequate defense and "laddering", adding on every single conceivable charge so that defendants will plead guilty to a smaller number of charges in exchange for some charges being dropped and not inconvenience the state with an expensive trial by jury. This is covered pretty well by season 3 of the Serial podcast.
Ira Glass is the creator and host of a long running radio show called This American Life on National Public Radio. The show runs weekly and tells stories of Americana and other things. I suspect part of what makes the show famous is that it coined not just a particular kind of show, but a particular kind of sound, editing and production, that, I’d say set the standard for modern audio programs.
Several of the shows producers (and Ira’s mentees) have gone on to create other famous shows:
- Sarah Koenig created Serial, one of the first truly mainstream podcasts (1M listeners in its first week) for telling, in the first season, the story of a murder of Haymen Lee and investigating whether the man convicted, Adnan Syed, was likely innocent.
- Alex Blumberg created Planet Money, a short radio show that explores economics and explains it by looking at what’s happening, culturally, around the world. Later, Blumberg founded Gimlet, a podcast company that recently sold to Spotify for $100M, ostensibly to create content with that, now famous, NPR _sound_. Some of the bigger/more famous work from Gimlet is Startup (now also a TV show in the US), Homecoming (now also a show on Amazon Prime Video), Reply All, and Conviction.
Anyway, Ira Glass has hosted This American Life since the beginning, and Blumberg recently interviewed him for a show Gimlet produces called Without Fail. If you’re looking to understand his impact in this space, I think that’s a wonderful place to start.
*edited to correct where the Homecoming TV show airs.
There's a podcast, by the name: 'Serial', in season two they go into regular courtrooms with non-fancy cases - fights, etc.
In one episode after the defendant has been found not guilty, the judge presiding over the case berated them for not accepting a plea deal, and wasting the court time. This is after the person has been found not guilty.
Not having grown up in the US, I listened in fascination to the first episodes of Serial season 3, “... Cleveland. Not for one extraordinary case; instead, Serial wanted to tackle the whole criminal justice system. To do that we figured we’d need to look at something different: ordinary cases.”
After a few episodes I had to take a break. It is so upsetting. Justice is not a reality.
https://serialpodcast.org/season-three/about
““Charge stacking” is a process by which police and prosecutors create a case with numerous charges or numerous instances of the same charge to convince the defendant that the risk of not pleading guilty is intolerable. The defendant may be convinced to plead guilty to a few of the charges in return for not being prosecuted for the remaining charges.“ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courtroom_Workgroup
Have you ever listened to the Serial podcast? There is an interesting episode in season 3 where they touch on this. He reached for his pants is police speak for "I used violence against a person and I need an excuse".
Reaching for your pants isn't a crime worthy of an immediate death sentence.
Ive just listened to the first two episodes of the new Serial season which tackles the justice system from inside a courthouse. Coming from another justice system, it sounds absolutely insane to me.
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.
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-wilds-star-witness-adnan-syed-serial-case-pt-1/ 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. "
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.
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.
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.
Maybe premature to think about this, but once the full story can be told, this seems like the perfect candidate for Serial Season 3...I'm really fascinated to know what jurors, detectives, and prosecutors were thinking.
(Coincidentally, the accused murderer who was the focus of Serial's first season, has just been granted a new trial, according to an announcement just 5 minutes ago http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/us/serial-adnan-syed-new-trial.html)
It looks like the artist's Tumblr, with the GIFs attributed to him. There's a note on the 2nd or 3rd post that, up top, is a collection of work he did for Serial Season 2.
For more info and background on the Bergdahl story, check out season 2 of the Serial podcast:
https://serialpodcast.org/
>But neither “Serial” (which is otherwise notable for its thoroughness) nor “Making a Murderer” ever addresses the question of what rights and considerations should be extended to victims of violent crime, and under what circumstances those might justifiably be suspended. Instead, both creators and viewers tacitly dismiss the pain caused by such shows as collateral damage, unfortunate but unavoidable. Here, too, the end is taken to justify the means; someone else’s anguish comes to seem like a trifling price to pay for the greater cause a documentary claims to serve.
Aww come the hell on! The public has a very strong interest in monitoring the criminal justice system. We cannot do that without knowledge of the crimes and the victims. Yes, it sucks for them. Crime is bad. But the public cannot hope to establish and direct a justice system capable of deterring crime without learning facts about actual prosecutions, which unfortunately includes information about the victim and what was done to them.
Besides, the vast majority (possibly all, IIRC) of the footage of Hallbach's family consisted of public interviews of her brother. You can't repeatedly and voluntarily thrust yourself into the media spotlight and then cry foul when people use that footage.
What serious journalist really thinks this is a reasonable argument to make? Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to police corruption and inadequate due process because it makes one person and their family uncomfortable?
Yes, Serial first season engaged by laying out a larger and deeper story as it progressed, and was driven by the audience's curiosity to see what new evidence comes up that may change their view on previously presented evidence. Making a Murderer seems to (I'm only 6 episodes through) feed off the audience's impotent rage at injustice.
Well, the point of the article is that the documentary is structured to ensure that's the attitude you come away from it with.
If you've listened to Serial too, the comparison is pretty stark. In every episode, Koenig nurtures doubts about Syed's innocence, and continually returns to the most difficult challenges to the case for his innocence.
Koenig does this for reasons beyond integrity: it's also the reason Serial is a more effective true crime story (you really want to hear the next episode because you have no idea where the story might go, which is just not the case for the Avery case).
For me, the facts that Ricciardi and Demos left out are damning in pretty much the same way as the facts they reveal about misconduct in the Avery case:
* Avery is forensically tied to Halbach's car in ways that do withstand scrutiny
* Avery had repeatedly contacted Halbach, sometimes with caller ID blocked, and, despite Halbach's discomfort with him, had specifically requested that she come out to his place the day of the murder
* There is physical evidence that corroborates specific, idiosyncratic details of the story Dassey told investigators
It's not a cold case like in Serial, it's an expose of an allegedly fraudulent prosecution.
The documentary makes a new case that the criminal convictions are maliciously incorrect and relied on misconduct by police and prosecutors.
Spoiler: Probably not, Berghdal is still active duty in Texas.
One of the functions and outcomes of great investigative reporting is to find facts that aren't already visible. The first series of Serial apparently resulted in Syed being granted a new hearing—his post-conviction hearings were re-opened by the appeals court last month, and he will get a new day in court some time soon.
There's a chance that the reporting in this new series of episodes might result in a similar change in outcome or circumstance.
This is Serial. They devote a full season to each issue and it's supposed to be something controversial that people can discuss and theorize about between episodes. Season 1 was about a murder in Baltimore, and whether the convicted person actually committed this murder or not (still an open question for listeners (not necessarily the justice system), by the way; there wasn't a big reveal of proof one way or the other at the end of the season).
I would expect that Bergdahl's narrative will be examined more critically in subsequent episodes.
Serial only has one season on which to base its reputation, but thus far it seems exceptionally adept at not picking sides. The case in season one was polarizing, but Serial did an admirable job of presenting all sides and not making overt attempts to push audience opinion in any particular direction. I'm hoping this season has the same balance.
I found serial interesting for a few episodes, then she started spending hours analyzing the memories and text messages of high school students and it quickly became exhausting to listen to. I hope the guy gets a fair trial but it was simply a slog to listen to.
I loved the original episode this series was born out of: the story of a doctor in North Carolina who takes over the practice of a convicted murderer [http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/492/transcript].
I have to say, though, I don't enjoy Serial very much. I'm the only person, it seems. :-) Listening to a reporter (not an investigator) guess and gab about a murder just seems like a waste of time. The constant teasers throughout each episode (maybe he did it? but then, maybe he didn't? and maybe this happened, but then maybe it didn't happen?) are infuriating.
This is to say nothing Sarah Koenig. She's obviously done fine work in her career and is a big part of This American Life, and I'm happy to see any podcast get some attention. I just don't enjoy the show, personally.
To be fair, Serial hasn't really taken a side on the matter, at least not yet. It's really been more about figuring out as much as possible, and doing it in an engaging way. Serial feels very much "about the story" to me.
As for just distracting yourself without learning anything, I feel you there, but at the same time most of us do it in numerous other ways such as reading fiction, or watching movies, so I don't feel for you too much.
A quick plug: for those who enjoy Serial, there's an incredible amount of high-quality discussion about it on the serialpodcast subreddit [1].
The very high level of engagement the show has with some listeners is surprising. I don't think it's typical, but many posters talk about dedicating hours to reading case documents, re-listening to episodes, doing independent research, etc.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast