'Serial' - Dickens for the podcast age

It's not your grandpa's radio show.

It's Serial, and it's something new.

Serial is a weekly 50-plus-minute audio podcast created by the staff of the syndicated radio show This American Life. Over 12 episodes in as many weeks, Serial tells a true story, unfolding as it goes, and even the producers and staff don't know how it will turn out.

Sarah Koenig, lead editor of Serial, was the one who "pitched the idea of a serialized nonfiction show doing one story over a series of episodes," says executive producer Julie Snyder. "Right away, we loved that idea and said, 'We should do that.' "

Launched Oct. 3, after a year of development, Serial is billed in old-school terms, as the first "spin-off" of This American Life, a new "show" all on its own. And it has caught on: It debuted as iTunes' top podcast and is, as of this writing, still the most downloaded podcast in the United States and Australia, and No. 2 in England.

Season One is a mystery/detective story, about the January 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a student at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore. In jail for that crime is Adnan Syed, who speaks at length to Koenig throughout the show. But something's fishy.

Serial joins the storytelling revolution all around us, in TV, radio, and film. Preparing the way have been TV shows like St. Elsewhere and The Sopranos, films such as The Usual Suspects and Memento, and the recent surge in anthology TV series such as Fargo and American Horror Story. And, of course, there's This American Life itself. All show that such storytelling works, and, more important, that audiences are ready, yea starving, for it.

You can listen to Serial at its own website (serialpodcast.org). You can also download it to your computer or listen to it on mobile apps. The choice of podcast as medium reflects this American listening. Ira Glass, host and producer of This American Life (and a coproducer of Serial) writes on the Life website that a podcast seemed "like a better place for a long story that you need to hear from the beginning. With podcasts, you can download everything and binge-listen." This is a show tailored to listeners who expect full control.

Many are calling it compelling and fresh. Sarah Larson of the New Yorker described it as "the podcast we've been waiting for."

The crackle of uncertainty runs through it all. "It's the most crazy-making aspect of this whole process," Snyder says. "We're constantly juggling an endless amount of possibilities of what could be happening next. There's always more to find out, always questions, and we don't know which we will and won't be able to answer."

Much of the scripting, recording, and editing is done by a woman working from home. Koenig lives in State College with her kids and spouse, and she's a veteran of working remotely. Much of Serial is recorded either at her office, "about a seven-minute walk from my house," or in her basement. Last week, she was pushing a hellacious deadline in that basement, "mostly dressed. Sometimes I haven't brushed my teeth."

When she came up with the nonfiction-serial idea, Koenig says, "I was thinking about books on tape. I'm a real old-fashioned consumer of entertainment. I have a horror of airplanes and drive a lot of places normal people would fly to. I drive a lot to Baltimore, where this season's story takes place, or to the This American Life office in New York.

"So I go to my public library, check out some audiobooks, and go. I love to be enveloped and submerged in a story for a long time. Which makes me no different from anyone else in the United States. That's the way we watch TV now. Because it's such a natural thing. . . . When the idea first arose, we said, 'But didn't Dickens do this? Is this even new? Why hasn't somebody done this?' "

This American Life, which Koenig joined in 2004, specializes in storytelling in which the teller is part of the story. Serial extends that to the long form. The story of Serial is how the teller finds out about the story.

We find out more and more about the case, the trial, and Syed as Serial progresses. We hear old tapes, bad cellphone calls, interviews. Letters and school photos appear on the Web page.

Koenig freely shares her feelings as she tells the story: "I talk to Adnan regularly, and he just doesn't seem like a murderer." . . . "Someone is lying, and I really want to find out." . . . "Why, oh, why was this person never heard from at trial?" She draws early conclusions and later changes her mind.

When she finds an especially elusive person, Koenig exclaims: "You don't know how excited we are to be talking to you!"

How does Koenig negotiate the tricky strait between supposedly objective journalism and involved participation?

"I feel like at This American Life, we've always done that," she says. "We don't want to pretend that 'I have no connection to this story,' that you stand apart when clearly you just don't. I feel like we're honest about that, but also we work to earn your trust, so you know we're being honest in what we report."

"We really, really want there to be a Season Two," Snyder says, "so we're looking for a way to make this financially viable." Right now, their sponsor is MailChimp, which has quietly become what Koenig calls "the savior of the podcast world," sponsoring many prominent podcasts, such as 99% Invisible and Startup. But Serial aims for more support. It hopes to become the audio equivalent of, say, HBO's True Detective.

"Only," as Koenig puts it, "for real."

215-854-4406 @jtimpane