Sarah Koenig's SERIAL Made the Whole World Obsessed With Podcasts

A public radio producer picked up a fifteen-year-old murder case. She accidentally launched a global obsession.

Sarah Koenig was a former newspaper reporter turned producer at This American Life.

In 2013, a lawyer asked her to look into an old Baltimore conviction.

A teenager named Adnan Syed was serving life for a murder he insisted he didn't commit.

The evidence was a tangle of shaky memories, phone records, and contradictions.

Nobody knew if an audio series built on genuine doubt could hold an audience.

In October 2014, she released Serial, unfolding the mystery one episode at a time.

The world became detectives overnight, arguing timelines and suspects around every water cooler.

Serial was the fastest podcast ever to hit five million downloads, and the first to win a Peabody.

She didn't just tell a story. She dragged podcasting into the mainstream for good.

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