Serial By Sarah Koening

Episode 1 from the collection of podcasts called “Serial” by Sarah Koening, I personally thought was thrilling and made me think hard. I was not expecting that at all when I pushed play! I enjoyed the pure sense of mystery that it provided for the audience, and the way that it made me think about who was actually guilty of committing the murder… because in my opinion, it was not the one who has been behind bars for half of his life.

Sarah Koening discusses, at the beginning of the podcast, the challenges people face with memory. Do you think you could remember exactly who you talked to, and everything you did on a particular day, if you were asked 3 months after that day? Well, that is what Adnan was asked to do, about a day when a very serious crime occurred. He is behind bars because he can’t clearly remember what he did and who he talked to on January 13th, 1999, the day  his ex-girlfriend was murdered. Sarah Koening interviews multiple people trying to get to the truth, and recorded each conversation she had, including them in the podcast. I believe that this is a really smart idea, because including other people’s perspectives and facts will help the audience consider both sides of the story.

This is actually my very first podcast that I have listened to, and I quite enjoyed it. Listening to a story rather than reading it is a very different experience. Being able to hear the  writer tell the story, using emotion and sometimes adding their own extra opinion, I find it easier to understand and follow. If you are the type of person that gets distracted easily when someone is talking to you, podcasts might not be a good recommendation for you.

This is also very similar to other mediums, such as televisions and radios. They all contain audio, giving the audience the opportunity to hear the emotion in the narrator’s voice, and they all tell stories. Overall, I would recommend podcasts as a useful medium.