Serial

See, I just don't buy that argument.

His girlfriend who just broke up with him disappears. By all accounts it was wildly out of character for her. He learns the same night that police are looking to talk to him about it, and it appears the "what am I going to say?" conversation on the phone at Cathy's (?) house was in regards to a conversation he knew he was about to have with a police officer searching for Hae.

That's a day that "wasn't important until months later"? With the knowledge that police want to talk to you about your girlfriend's disappearance, you don't even have a fleeting thought that maybe you should try to nail down what you were doing that day -- like, whether you saw her that afternoon? Even if you don't have a full itinerary, it seems to me you'd have something. Adnan doesn't. That doesn't pass the sniff test to me.

 

You're saying that, though, with the benefit of hindsight. You know Hae was murdered, neither Adnan (allegedly) nor the cops knew she was murdered or even dead at that point. And Adnan doesn't have nothing. He has the the library, track practice, etc. You're essentially saying "if he's innocent, then he'd be able to account for some of that afternoon." I think the opposite would be true. If he's guilty, he'd know exactly what happened that afternoon and at the very least have some plausible lie he could sell. Even that evening at the stranger's house where he gets the phone calls has contradicting accounts. The one girl (who wanted her voice altered) says he was clearly freaking out about being a murder suspect. But we learned in the next episode that he could just as easily been worried about seeing his parents while high (a very normal teenage worry).

It seems clear Jay was involved, and the cops and prosecutor not care to what degree. How many different stories has he told about that day? And now we learn a payphone never existed at that Best Buy? And he knew where Hae's car was? And they body? C'mon. There is just no way Jay's telling the truth about any of this.

 

I'm saying if I was forewarned the police were about to call me to ask me if I knew anything about the disappearance of the girl who just broke up with me, that day would stick out to me and would not be just another day lost in the mist of time. I'm saying anyone in that position, guilty or innocent, would likely have a much better recollection of that day than Adnan -- particularly since police spoke with him that very day.

There's no question to me that Jay is lying about a lot of this. I also do not believe Adnan's story. Jay looks worse, in part, because he has a lengthy story. Adnan's alleged lack of memory makes it infinitely harder to poke holes in his story, but I believe the holes are still there.

 

David Carr:

On Thursday, people will gather around tables everywhere and, well, talk about how bummed they are that “Serial,” the wildly popular podcast, is taking Thanksgiving off.

“Serial,” by producers of public radio’s “This American Life,” is nine episodes deep in its re-examination of the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a Maryland teenager, that resulted in the conviction of Adnan Syed, her former boyfriend. With listeners over her shoulder, the reporter Sarah Koenig has anthologized the case, pulling apart old evidence, uncovering new facts and alibis, and raising questions about whether a young man belongs in prison for the rest of his life.

There has been a rabid debate all over the web about the murder and the show, along with parodies on YouTube and recaps on Slate. “Serial” has quickly become the most popular podcast in the history of the form.

To call something the most popular podcast might seem a little like identifying the tallest leprechaun, but the numbers are impressive for any media platform. “Serial” has been downloaded or streamed on iTunes more than five million times — at a cost of nothing — and averages over 1.5 million listeners an episode. That is as many people as watch an episode of “Louie,” the buzzed-about comedy on FX. Ira Glass, the host of “This American Life,” told me his show took four years to reach one million listeners. “Serial” raced past that in a month.

But other than a debut episode on “This American Life,” “Serial” is not a creature of radio, but podcasting.

“When I saw the numbers, my jaw just dropped,” Ms. Koenig said a few weeks ago. “It feels like we are doing exactly the same thing, making radio, except it’s not on the radio, at least not yet.”

Podcasting used to be a novel way of distributing audio programming over the Internet, but it is up 25 percent year-over-year and almost 40 million people listen to some form of podcast. It gained traction with the introduction of the iPod, hence the name. “Serial” is arguably the medium’s first breakout hit.

nyti.ms/1qXdUnp

 

Three, I believe. I haven't had time to take a peek, but apparently the woman who approached Koenig about this runs a blog and posts all kinds of information, like transcripts and other court records. I think I read that she dedicated one post entirely to Jay's inconsistent stories.

 

FWIW, PC and DoubleDown, Sarah spent the first 15 minutes on the very first episode discussing how hard it is to remember your whereabouts; she nonscientifically queried a bunch of high school teens, and they were terrible at remembering where they were just a few days before. Sometimes they couldn't remember, sometimes they were flat wrong.

 

I'm so hooked on Serial for a bunch of reasons, but there are two in particular:

1. Late in my sophomore year of high school, a female classmate went missing. Her body wasn't found for a few months. Another classmate was eventually arrested, tried and found guilty of her murder (she was beaten to death). It was very different circumstances than the Serial case. They weren't in a relationship, although apparently he killed her because she rebuffed his advances, they were both in sort of the stoner crowd ("dirtbags" in the parlance of my high school), although she was a star softball player and he kept coming to school until he was arrested. So even though they haven't talked too much about the effect of Hae's death on the school in general (outside of her friends), I'm kind of looking at it that way because that was my experience. I knew the girl who was murdered better than my friends did and the whole thing was just surreal and shocking. I remember we could not believe that we had been going to school every day with a murderer. I didn't know the guy well, but I would see him in the halls and stuff and he always acted very normally.

2. The whole issue of memory. I have a really good memory. Specifically, my long-term memory is really, really good. I'm not one of those people, like Marilu Henner who can tell you everything that happened on a particular day, but I'm close, especially when it comes to stuff in my own life. My best friend likes to say that I remember everything anyone has ever told me, and while that's not true, it's close. So I find it so interesting that Adnan in particular can't remember what he did on the day Hae went missing. I understand that that's the way for most people, but still.

As for who did it, I don't know. I don't really find any of them credible, but you know, because Adnan seems nice, I want to believe him. The fact that Adnan didn't try to reach Hae once he got the call she was missing really stands out for me, though. Why would he not try to call her/find her/do something?

I'm also wondering why we haven't heard much about or anything from Hae's family yet.

 

Koenig said in the most recent episode she tried harder to get ahold of Hae's family harder than anything she's tried to do anything in her professional life. They don't want to talk.

 

Aha! I haven't listened to most recent episode yet. I've been saving it so the break until the next one doesn't seem so long. Thanks.

 

I have yet to listen to a single podcast but Serial is making me rethink that.

Anyway, reading some of the hot takez is particularly fascinating. Podcaster spends a year doing reporting and, it seems, is still reporting on the case.

Hot takerz question validity of reporting based on 10 minutes of googling.

 

6 mins of Googling, 2 minutes of smoke breaks, 2 minutes of crafting snarky tweets.

 

One thing I found interesting in my brief plunge down the wormhole that is the Serial subreddit: Hae's little brother has contacted Koenig and let her know the family isn't talking, and his mother doesn't know about the podcast. He appears to be legit -- the moderator confirmed his identity, and he threw out some unreported details about the case that seemed to back up his story.

Long story short, he's impressed with the reporting of the podcast but is fairly pissed that it exists.

Thought it was odd that Koenig talked about her efforts to contact the family but didn't make reference to the fact that she actually talked with Hae's brother.