Serial podcast episode 9 genius
Syed is warm and appealing, as are Chaudry and her brother Saad, Syed’s good friend. It’s a thoughtful exploration of real, recognizable people-responsible, athletic teen-agers in a magnet program, who are close with their immigrant families, get good grades, have jobs (as an E.M.T., or at LensCrafters at the local mall), and fall in love at the junior prom to K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life.” Koenig interviews Syed extensively, as well as Syed and Lee’s friends, teachers, and relatives. Torey Malatia it doesn’t use pop songs as ironic segues between scenes. But it’s a bit more serious than “This American Life.” It’s not presented as an entertainment, in Acts I, II, and III it doesn’t take a quote from the episode and use it out of context at the end, in an amusing goof involving Mr. Like “This American Life,” “Serial” is patient in pacing and conversational in tone: it sounds like your smart friend is investigating a murder and telling you about it. He also can’t remember what, exactly, he was doing for an hour after school that January. He has always maintained his innocence-he says he didn’t do it, had no reason or desire to kill her, and doesn’t know who did. Now thirty-two, he has been in prison for fifteen years. But the jury made its decision swiftly, and Syed, then seventeen, was convicted and given a life sentence. Jay’s story had changed a few times, and there was no physical evidence linking Syed to the crime. Syed’s friend Jay testified that Syed had killed Lee, and that he had helped bury her body. Her body was found six weeks later in a wooded area, in nearby Leakin Park. In January of 1999, Lee, a senior at Woodlawn High School in Baltimore County, disappeared. She agreed, and that turned into the investigation that became “Serial.” Chaudry, who has always believed Syed to be innocent, thought that the attorney had mishandled the case-perhaps even thrown it-and asked Koenig to take a look. That attorney had represented Chaudry’s friend Adnan Syed, who in 1999 was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee. Last year, Koenig was contacted by a woman named Rabia Chaudry, who had read some articles that Koenig had written years ago in the Baltimore Sun, about a defense attorney who was disbarred in 2001 and who later died. Her objective is to find the truth behind a conviction whose evidence was scarce and which put a teen-ager in prison for life. “And I’m not a detective, or a private investigator, or even a crime reporter,” she adds.
At the beginning of episode one, Koenig says, “For the last year, I’ve spent every working day trying to figure out where a high-school kid was for an hour after school one day in 1999.” She says that she’s had to ask unsavory questions about a group of teens’ relationships, sex lives, and drug habits.