Serial podcast

This American Life is trying a new podcast model - a weekly serial program. This year, the producer (and also lead investigator and narrator) Sarah Koenig decided to re-investigate a murder that occurred near Baltimore in 1999. 

So how did Serial do? IT BLEW UP! Nearly 40 million downloads of the entire first season (3.4 million per episode) making it the most downloaded podcast of all time. Definitely the content itself helped: Serial re-investigates an absolutely perplexing murder with tremendous detail and depth. Further, the week to week medium propagates a real-life mystery and engenders discussion, which builds momentum for the podcast. Given the right topic, I think this weekly podcast model can be incredible successful. 

You can download all 12 episodes of the podcast here. 

Spoiler alert. Stop reading if you havent listened to the entire podcast...

In addition to the sheer entertainment value, I think this podcast also introduced many people to how capricious and unjust our criminal justice system can be. Most people, including myself and my wife, feel that Adnan may be guilty but that there is absolutely no way he could be convicted beyond a reasonable doubt. Things we know with regard to the capriciousness and unfairness of the process in this case:

+ The police detectives very quickly honed in on one suspect at the expense of a thorough investigation 
+ The main evidence for the prosecution was the testimony of one individual, Jay. Jay changed his story several times. His testimony changes between the various police interrogations and continues to change across the first and second trials in significant ways. 
+ His initial account match very poorly with cell phone records and cell phone tower pings. His testimony changes slowly every time until it closely matches the cell phone records and tower pings in the second trial. There is evidence that police investigators coached him to change his story to better match those records. 
+ Now 15 years later he basically says he perjured himself (though he is still sticking with his overall story that Adnan was the killer). 
+ The prosecution yelled at Don (HML's boyfriend at the time of her death) for not presenting Adnan in a negative light during his testimony. 
+ The prosecution secured a very shady plea deal with Jay (Jay served zero time for his role in burying HML in exchange for testimony against Adnan) and provided him with a lawyer, which is unethical
+ Adnan was likely winning his first trial but then his lawyer got into a fight with the judge over something fairly trivial, leading to a mistrial. 
+ Though highly regarded, Adnan's lawyer made many mistakes and it was revealed that she was suffering from from a debilitating illness that lead to her death a few years later.  
+ The prosecution introduced false stereotyping of Muslims that tainted the jury's views of the case.