Serial: A Real-Life Murder Mystery
- Melissa Darby
- Oct 5, 2016
- 3 min read
For this post I will be discussing the podcast "Serial Episode 1" hosted by Sarah Koenig. This podcast is about a Hae Min Lee's disappearance one day in 1999, in Maryland. A month later, she was found it a park, strangled. Her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested and sentenced to life in prison. The case against him was based on the story given by Jay, Adnan's friends, who said he helped bury Hae's body. The podcast leads us through the case, showing us the evidence, the trial testimony, police interrogations, this leads to her finding out if Adnan really killed her.
Listening to this podcast interested me a lot, it made me feel involved with this case. With each fact I would think of the older facts and see if it meant he was guilty or not. I liked it because it was looking at this case, that has been finished for a long time and they are seeing if maybe the verdict was wrong and he is really innocent. Another aspect I liked about this podcast was the format, with the podcast format it felt like we were in the police station in 1999. It had sound effects and made it more real, making the experience of a podcast that much better.
The negative side of this popularity could be disappointment from the victims project for running the podcast in the first place. I personally think that there is nothing to be mad at, that all this podcast does is shine the light on Hae's case. When I first say this girl I had no clue who she was, but know I feel like I know her just from her posts here. Listening to this podcast had both benefits and drawbacks, with the benefit being it was easier to just listen to it, and you the podcast gave you other sounds to indicate the story better. The drawbacks were, it reads at a different pace than most people meaning you either have to slow down or speed up to keep up with the podcast. What I had to do was stop and play, I would pause it every time I thought a fact was important and should be written down. The drawbacks and positive aspects to reading are similar, like I think that it would take longer to read the whole paragraph and understand it than it would be to just listen to the 50 minute podcast. But a positive aspect of reading would be that you have the text right in front of you, you do not have to rewind, you can just reread. I personally would not mind either opinion.
Looking at the main topic discussed in this podcast, the challenges of memory, I agree with what Koenig said about it being hard to remember events from a certain day. I personally think that it would be really hard for me to remember what I did on a certain day, let's say it was a Wednesday then I would know I have a ____ meeting but I would not know the specific details of that day. Since she begins by discussing the challenges of memory, it makes me question how good Jay's memory could be to remember that exact day. But that being said when you do something as bad as bury a body you will remember what you did that day. I think if you go through a traumatic experience you are more likely to remember what you did that given day. This podcast was well done on how it tried to expose the back side of this case, the stuff that the public is not shown. I would recommend people to listen to this podcast if they like mysteries!
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