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    Serial

    I know this has been mentioned briefly on a couple of other threads but I feel like it deserves one of its own (link here for the uninitiated.

    So who else is a fan? I first delved in early last week, and was instantly hooked. It’s incredibly good storytelling - gripping from the very first minute, and taking you first one way then the next, with convictions changing, firming up and then wavering with each new revelation. I’m not sure how it’s going to end, and I’m not sure what I’m going to think about it all once it does end, but I’m looking forward to finding out.

    #2
    Serial

    I'm behind (currently on Ep. 3), but like it quite a bit.

    I've always like Sarah Koenig on This American Life, and this story is very much in her wheelhouse.

    That said, I do think that this piece on Koenig's treatment of the immigrant kids as "exotic" makes a number of good points.

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      #3
      Serial

      As I think I mentioned on your facebook thread Hof, I have mixed feelings. I really want to like it, I love This American Life, and I like Koenig's journalism. But the first 6 episodes started to drive me crazy with the way she seemingly packaged up little pieces of information and went over and over the same old ground in order to drop them in at intervals. We are supposed to be, as I understand it, feeling like we're going over the case with Koenig and learning the twists as she does. But I haven't actually felt that way. I have felt all along that all the investigation has been done and she's just feeding us pieces of it as she goes.

      However episodes 7 and 8 were better I felt, precisely because we did sort of get to be with her as she talked to that lawyer and that ex-cop investigator and most crucially, Jay.

      So I haven't given up yet, though the indefinite length of it doesn't appeal to me. It could go on for years, as I understand it. I'd like a rough estimate of how long she's going to pursue it before she either gives up or passes it on to the legal system for some form of appeal.

      The thing that is slightly troubling about it, frankly, is the fact that it's gripped people and this being the internet age, there are now an army of people out there digging into it, and possibly opening a lot of old wounds and even throwing out unfounded allegations. This Guardian piece is good on all of that http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/nov/07/serial-listeners-detectives-troubling-results

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        #4
        Serial

        Just coming to the end of episode 2. I'm definitely hooked and I think I'm enjoying it.

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          #5
          Serial

          So I haven't given up yet, though the indefinite length of it doesn't appeal to me. It could go on for years, as I understand it. I'd like a rough estimate of how long she's going to pursue it before she either gives up or passes it on to the legal system for some form of appeal
          Huh? There's going to be 12 episodes, roughly. They're talking about doing more seasons of the podcast in future, but those would be different stories. And for all I know they've already turned everything they know over to Adnan's defence team. They've certainly got the Innocence Project on board, which is more than most people get.

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            #6
            Serial

            Ooh, I claim to have Hofzinsered this, since I first mentioned it on here.

            I'm still a fan, but the fanaticism some have is kind of troubling.

            Some spoiler stuff below, talking about the last episode:

            [spoiler]I'm curious to know how the rest of it plays out, since in the last episode Koenig made her first clear comments on talking about reactions to the show, with the comments from Hae's friend that was the wresting team manager, and the woman who shoplifted CDs from Best Buy. But I was kind of skeptical of those recollections, because they were reactions to what has been said on the show, so now clearly the people involved in the situation at the time are now reacting to the show. Are they being completely truthful? Are their memories being molded by what they listen to others saying? The show is now changing the way the story is being told.

            It all has me in the mood to read some Janet Malcolm.[/spoiler]

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              #7
              Serial

              I'm still a fan, but the fanaticism some have is kind of troubling.
              I heard someone expressing annoyance at all these people discovering podcasts again because of Serial, when some of us have been listening to them all along. I can kind of sympathise with that, but more I'm just glad that people are recognising the medium (and for that matter long-form journalism). I'm baffled that some people will listen to factual radio but not podcasts. Podcasts are radio, but you get to choose when you want to listen to what.

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                #8
                Serial

                Ginger Yellow wrote:
                So I haven't given up yet, though the indefinite length of it doesn't appeal to me. It could go on for years, as I understand it. I'd like a rough estimate of how long she's going to pursue it before she either gives up or passes it on to the legal system for some form of appeal
                Huh? There's going to be 12 episodes, roughly. They're talking about doing more seasons of the podcast in future, but those would be different stories. And for all I know they've already turned everything they know over to Adnan's defence team. They've certainly got the Innocence Project on board, which is more than most people get.
                That's good to know. I was under the impression that it was a sort of indefinite series of episodes.

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                  #9
                  Serial

                  What GY said

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                    #10
                    Serial

                    Finally up to date. This is so damn good.

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                      #11
                      Serial

                      Jon Ronson interviews Adnan's family

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                        #12
                        Serial

                        This is very interesting

                        http://viewfromll2.com/2014/12/02/serial-more-details-about-jays-transcripts-than-you-could-possibly-need/

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                          #13
                          Serial

                          Last two episodes have dropped off significantly.

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                            #14
                            Serial

                            Haven't finished today's yet. I hear that it's been officially announced that next week is the finale.

                            Best Buy deleted this:

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                              #15
                              Serial

                              What a terrible thing to tweet in the first place. Speechless.

                              So if one thing's clear, it's that there will be no clear answers.

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                                #16
                                Serial

                                This has been the most publicity that Best Buy has gotten on years. A bad attempt at cashing in on all of this talk of them.

                                Sesame Street handled it much better:



                                Mike Pesca of Slate interviewed Koenig back in October, and said something in the beginning along the lines of "I really hope that when all is said and done, we aren't left with a conclusion like 'how much can anyone really know about what happened' and it being a meditation on the nature of truth." Sure seems like that's where this last episode is pointing us towards.

                                Which I wouldn't necessarily think is a bad thing. It's unrealistic to think that they'd be able to reach some conclusion where all loose ends are tied up and a grand declaration is made on truth or innocence. I think this prediction from NPR would be a satisfying ending.

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                                  #17
                                  Serial

                                  During the Soham murder case, while the two little girls were still missing, I overheard a conversation between two people on the bus and I was struck by the excited way they were discussing the events, which to me was similar to the manner in which people would talk about a detective series on TV. I kind of congratulated myself that I didn't know anyone who would have such a blurred moral sense and then a day or so later I was asked by a friend if I thought the girls were still alive. Then the Madeleine McCann case seemed to take this refusal by many people to see the difference between fiction and reality in order to gratify their lust for thrills to another level. I do know that this is nothing really new, as evidenced by contemporary reactions to the Jack the Ripper Case, the sensibility analysed in Orwell's Decline of the English Murder etc.
                                  Is the excited reaction to Serial just the latest manifestation of what to me is a very base impulse in humans? Because of its This American Life parentage and the fact that it is consumed by consumers who are from a different demographic from Sun or Mail readers, isn't it get a freer pass from a moral perspective? I'm not saying I'm above those base impulses but there's been the thought in my mind from the beginning that surely there'd be a proper acknowledgement that a young woman's life was taken from her, and that what it means. A couple of episodes ago there was a nod by Koenig in that direction when she spoke of her team's attempts to 'reach out' to the murdered woman's family to get their version of events. I've continued to listen to the latest episodes to see not how it concludes but rather to find out if or how it justifies itself.
                                  There other people I've read on a couple of sites who have moral qualms about the enterprise but their voices seem to me to be drowned out by the excitement and the "I think he did it because..." vs "He can't be guilty because..." he said-she saids.
                                  I'm not a moral exemplar. Among many other things, I've read a lot of crime fiction in my time and more often than not, the peg on which the cases in those works are hung is the murder of a young woman. You have to ask why I and other people have such an appetite for murder mysteries. But it is different to seeking vicarious thrills from real-life death and violence.

                                  Isn't it?

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                                    #18
                                    Serial

                                    I don't understand the agonized moralizing over Serial. I don't think that anyone forgets that a real murdered girl is at the heart of it. But it's not a glorification of that murder: it's the real possibility that the wrong person is in jail for it that's so compelling. And it's the ambiguity of so much of the information that drives it even harder.

                                    I find 'exciting' a troubling word. That makes it seem superficial. It's compelling and it's interesting, and if people are all "Ooo...next episode today!", so what? God forbid people get interested in a case of possible injustice and a crime that may not be as 'solved' as it seemed.

                                    Vicarious thrills? Not at all. More 'there but for the grace...', etc.

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                                      #19
                                      Serial

                                      Okay, poll:

                                      if you had to guess, who is it that you think says "Mail Kimp"?

                                      My wife thinks it is a kid. I think it is an older woman who didn't learn English as her first language.

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                                        #20
                                        Serial

                                        A kid.

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                                          #21
                                          Serial

                                          A kid whose first language isn't English

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                                            #22
                                            Serial

                                            Is there a subreddit devoted to answering this question by the way? I feel there ought to be.

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                                              #23
                                              Serial

                                              Older woman. Indian or Asian.

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                                                #24
                                                Serial

                                                It's been kind of weird watching "Mail Ximp" (using the Russian x) become an in-joke in the podcast world, where people just assume you know what it's referring to. Helped, presumably, by the fact that Mail Chimp is a sponsor of a lot of podcasts. I assumed it was a Hispanic person.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Serial

                                                  Speaking of constant podcast advertisers, Alex Blumberg (formerly of NPR and This American Life) started a new podcast network. He had a woman interviewed about her son's Minecraft website. The woman assumed it was going to be used in a story, because she was approached by a reporter...it turned out to be used in a commercial.

                                                  http://www.sundrymourning.com/2014/12/09/confusion-podcasts-kerfuffle-alls-well-that-ends-well/

                                                  He apologized, the woman is satisfied now, and it all seems settled. But I read that after I had read a story about the MailChimp ad at the start of Serial--it was recorded all by people involved with Serial, and I believe that they were involved in writing the script...having journalists/podcast hosts involved in creating the ads for their sponsors seems like a huge red flag to me.

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