Sarah Koenig
Image by Meredith Heuer/Courtesy of Serial
By late fall 2014, you could count on one thing coming up in every conversation with anyone who might ever have listened to NPR: Sarah Koenig’s podcast “Serial.” From hours-long debates over the possible guilt of Adnan Syed — the convicted murderer who was the podcast’s subject — to parodies of the ad for MailChimp, one of the show’s sponsors, that preceded every episode, the engrossing true-crime story seemed to be everywhere.
Koenig, 46, daughter of the legendary Jewish advertising copywriter Julian Koenig, has been a producer on “This American Life” since 2004 and produced the show’s 2006 Peabody-award winning episode “Habeas Schmabeas.” And she brought serious journalistic chops to her podcast’s first season. Koenig managed to strike a balance between intense investigative reporting and exceptional storytelling.
Speaking with NPR’s Terry Gross in December 2014, Koenig said the show’s producers “wanted it to feel like a living thing… a vital thing.” They succeeded; “Serial” shattered records for podcast downloads, bringing unprecedented celebrity to the podcast form. This year Fox 21 Television optioned “Serial” for TV, although the show in development reportedly will not concern the case of Adnan Syed.
The second season of “Serial” is due to arrive on iTunes and on a new platform — the audio streaming service Pandora — sometime before the close of this year. A third season is also in development. Koenig and her team have stayed close-lipped about the subject, although rumors are circling that the season will focus on Bowe Bergdahl, the GI kidnapped then released by the Taliban in Afghanistan. Regardless of where Koenig next fixes her gaze, we can trust her to deliver something challenging and fascinating.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Dive In
-
Fast Forward What Mahmoud Khalil says about Gaza and Israel in ‘The Encampments’ documentary
-
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
-
News Israelis flock to Keith Siegel’s Pancake House for the former hostage’s signature hotcakes
-
Fast Forward Jeffrey Goldberg, journalist included in Signal warchat, once worked for the Forward
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Cornell pro-Palestinian student leader opts to leave US, as Columbia ‘self-deportee’ makes her case to return
-
Fast Forward ‘Need a final solution’: Podcast host calls for mass deportation of U.S. Jews
-
Fast Forward Britain’s Tate to return Nazi-looted painting to heirs of Jewish art collector
-
Fast Forward 3 sentenced to death for murder of UAE Chabad rabbi
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.