An Evening with Sarah Koenig from Serial: Here’s What You Missed!

Oct 25th

Francesca Turauskis gives us the rundown from An Evening with Sarah Koenig at the Festival Hall, Southbank Centre as part of the International Women’s Podcast Festival 2024…


The London part of the International Women’s Podcast Festival 2024 was spread over two days, starting with an ‘Evening with Sarah Koenig’ on 3rd October. A co-production between the International Women’s Podcast Festival and the Southbank Centre, it was a beautiful celebration of the 10th Anniversary of the iconic podcast series, Serial, and it was an enlightening evening for listeners and podcasters alike.

We got to hear the Co-Creator of Serial, Sarah Koenig, in conversation with Samira Ahmed, the award-winning presenter, journalist and herself the host of the podcast How I Found My Voice. The conversation covered so many areas of Sarah’s podcast journey, and I wanted to share some of the things that stood out for me during the conversation that might be useful to podcasters, and interesting to listeners.

SERIAL INVESTIGATES ADNAN’S CONVICTION, NOT THE MURDER

The thing Sarah said that was most interesting to me personally was something that may seem like a small technicality, but actually changes the entire way I think about the first series of Serial. At the centre of that series is the murder of Hae Min Lee, a high-school student from Baltimore. Serial investigated whether her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was wrongly convicted of her murder and listeners might find themselves wondering if Adnan is guilty or innocent.

However, that wasn’t quite the line of investigation that Sarah and her team took – instead, they were interested in whether the conviction itself was unlawful, and if some aspects of the case were missed or ignored in the original police investigation. It is a small difference, but I think it differentiates Serial’s investigation style from other true crime podcasts that might be more interested in the human characters, and questions of innocence and guilt.

This interest in the criminal process is also something we see in Serial’s later series, and explains what may have seemed like a pivot away from the standard ‘true crime’ topics.

THE PRODUCTION TIMELINE

Sarah delved into some of the behind-the-scenes moments of producing Serial, including the production timeline for the first series. What was interesting to me was that she had been researching the case of Adnan Syed’s conviction for an episode of This American Life for months and it’s certainly a testament to how important development time and space is. (As a sidenote, this is one of the reasons I think initiatives like the Content is Queen Micro-grant are so important.)

Another thing that she shared was how close to the wire the final moments of production were. “I think we had made the first four episodes once we started,” Sarah said “But then we were really making them in real-time and that was horrible!”. So if you’re also someone who works towards deadlines a bit too tightly, you are in good company with the first podcast to win a Peabody Award!

JOURNALISTIC INTEGRITY

With two journalists speaking together, it’s unsurprising that the conversation covered aspects of journalistic integrity. Sarah tackled how it was a learning curve to protect her sources from public interest after the first series of Serial became so unexpectedly popular. Another aspect when it comes to sources is the idea that interviews should be approached differently depending on the interviewee and the reason for interviewing them. Sometimes, an interview in the person’s house would make sense, and at other times, the interview venue should be more neutral.

Sarah also addressed some of the misunderstanding that her work is purely for entertainment rather than being a form of investigative journalism. The idea that Serial is entertainment has been a way to dismiss issues raised by the podcast, particularly in the third series about problems with the criminal justice system in Cleveland. “It is both good reporting and entertaining!” Sarah says, and it has highlighted important issues over the years.

SERIAL’S SUCCESS COULD BE ABOUT GOOD TIMING

One thing Sarah mentioned briefly that could be really interesting when it comes to the conversation of podcast discoverability was the timing of Serial’s first series. The release of Serial coincided with the release of the iPhone 6, which was the first time Apple Podcasts was pre-installed with iOS. This boosted the popularity of podcasts in general, and as Serial was a featured podcast on the app around that time, it boosted its visibility at precisely the right time. It will not have been the only reason Serial was a success – for one thing, people wouldn’t have continued listening if the podcast wasn’t good. However, this makes me interested to know what other podcasts were featured on Apple Podcasts simultaneously and whether they succeeded and endured similarly…

THE TRUE LEGACY OF SERIAL

A final theme that arose more than once during the evening was that of legacy. In the ten years since Serial defined the serialised storytelling technique, it has created something of a podcast zeitgeist. Samira asked Sarah how she felt about how her work has been mirrored in that time, but Sarah wasn’t too keen to claim a connection to podcasts that have followed in the wake of Serial. Instead, she is most proud of the individuals she has reached out to and who have reached out to her. “What has been really, really gratifying” she said, “is hearing people say to me, ‘I became a lawyer because of you”, or, ‘I became a journalist because of you’ or, ‘I’m working at the Innocence Project because of you’.” That is the true legacy of Serial – and what is lovely about that is it is something every podcaster can aspire to.


‘An Evening with Sarah Koenig’ was made possible with the support of Spotify, and it takes a huge amount of work to put on events like this. We would like to thank everybody working on the event, including the captioning and BSL team who made the evening accessible, and Will Ireland for the photography. Make sure you are signed up to our newsletter via the bottom of the page to hear about opportunities or head to festival.contentisqueen.org/global-voices to find out more about the speakers and talks.