Earlier this year, This American Life producer and Serial creator Sarah Koenig announced that the second season of her award-winning true crime podcast would probably drop in November. November came and went, and we were left without any of those blue iPhone app dots that signify a hot new podcast episode available.
That all changed on Thursday morning, when Koenig surprise released Serial‘s first new episode since 2014, called “DUSTWUN.”
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Unlike the first season of Serial, which focused on the largely underreported case of a Baltimore inmate named Adnan Syed serving time for the 1999 murder of his high school girlfriend, the second season examines a wholly different story, one that has already received worldwide coverage from nearly every major news outlet: The alleged desertion of Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. After leaving his post in Afghanistan one night, Bergdahl was taken by the Taliban and held in captivity for five years. A widespread military manhunt to find him was launched, and he was finally freed during a controversial prisoner exchange last year.
Serial received permission to use interviews Bergdahl gave to the screenwriter Mark Boal, who is working on a film about Bergdahl’s life, marking the first time the sergeant has publicly recounted his side of the story.
Listen to the “DUSTWUN” episode over at the Serial website right now. If the roll-out of this season is anything like the first, we should be waking up on Thursdays for the next ten to 12 weeks with a new piece of the Bergdahl story.
