Serial Productions makes narrative podcasts whose quality and innovation transformed the medium.
We launched the “Serial” podcast in 2014 as a spinoff of the revered public radio show “This American Life.” The series was an instant, unprecedented hit and set a new standard for investigative audio reporting and storytelling. We followed that up with “S-Town,” another blockbuster, and Serial Productions was born.
In 2020, after releasing two more seasons of the “Serial” podcast, we joined The New York Times Company. Together with The Times, we launched “Nice White Parents,” a provocative series about the powerful forces shaping public schools; “The Improvement Association,” a true story about election fraud in North Carolina; and “The Trojan Horse Affair,” an investigation into the mystery at the heart of a scandal that rocked Britain.
Our shows have reached many millions of listeners, and have won nearly every major journalism award for audio, including the first-ever Peabody Award given to a podcast.
We continue to experiment with the podcast form, making deeply reported stories that feel surprising, emotional and personal. We're currently at work on a slate of new shows, releasing throughout the year.
The Good Whale
After the movie “Free Willy” became a hit, word got out that the star of the film, a killer whale named Keiko, was sick and living in a tiny pool at a Mexican amusement park. Fans were outraged and pleaded for his release. “The Good Whale” tells the story of the wildly ambitious science experiment to return Keiko to the ocean — while the world watched. An epic tale that starts in Mexico and ends in Norway, the six-episode series follows Keiko as he’s transported from country to country, each time landing in the hands of well-intentioned people who believe they know what’s best for him – people who still disagree, decades later, about whether they did the right thing.
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Serial
Season 4
“Serial” returns with a history of Guantánamo told by people who lived through key moments in Guantánamo’s evolution, who know things the rest of us don’t about what it’s like to be caught inside an improvised justice system.
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The Kids of Rutherford County
For over a decade, one Tennessee county arrested and illegally jailed hundreds, maybe thousands, of children. A four-part narrative series reveals how this came to be, the adults responsible for it, and the two lawyers, former juvenile delinquents themselves, who try to do something about it. Hosted by Nashville Public Radio reporter Meribah Knight. Produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times, in partnership with Nashville Public radio and ProPublica.
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The Retrievals
Hundreds of women underwent egg retrieval procedures at the Yale Fertility Center. For months they complained of severe pain. But nobody caught on to exactly what was wrong. A five-part series about the patients who say their pain was dismissed, a nurse who was hiding something, and the institution that failed to protect its patients. Hosted by veteran This American Life producer Susan Burton. Produced by Serial Productions and The New York Times.
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The Coldest
Case In Laramie
Kim Barker, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for The New York Times, revisits an unsolved murder that took place while she was in high school in Laramie, Wyoming, nearly 40 years ago. She confronts the conflicting stories people have told themselves about the crime because of an unexpected development: the arrest of a former Laramie police officer accused in the murder.
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We Were Three
When Rachel McKibbens’s father and brother died suddenly last fall, two weeks apart, from Covid, she’d had no idea her father was sick, and no idea her brother was dying. They were unvaccinated, but the story of what happened started long before that. Hosted by Nancy Updike, We Were Three is a story of lies, family, America, and what Covid revealed, as well as what it destroyed.
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The Trojan
Horse Affair
A strange letter explodes in the British press in 2014, outlining a supposed Islamist plot to infiltrate public schools in Britain. A national panic ensues, resulting in new national policies, multiple investigations, banned educators and revamped schools. But despite the chaos the letter caused, no one ever discovered its author. Brian Reed and Hamza Syed team up to figure out who wrote the letter, and the stunning reason why.
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The Improvement
Association
The leader of a powerful African-American voting bloc in rural North Carolina invites political reporter Zoe Chace to come down to Bladen County to investigate the power of election fraud allegations — even when they’re not substantiated.
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Nice White
Parents
We know American public schools do not guarantee each child an equal education; two decades of school reform initiatives have not changed that. But most of those reforms have focused on the population that schools are failing — Black and brown kids. So reporter Chana Joffe-Walt decides to ask a different question: Who, then, are public schools catering to?
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S-Town
Reporter Brian Reed gets an email out of the blue from a man named John who despises his Alabama town. He says the son of a wealthy local family allegedly had been bragging that he got away with murder, and John wants the reporter to investigate. But then someone else dies, leading to a nasty feud, a hunt for hidden treasure and an examination into the mysteries of one man’s life.
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Serial
Season 3
Sarah Koenig and Emmanuel Dzotsi spent a year inside a typical felony courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio. They reported on cases of every size, from marijuana cookies to assault to homicide. They ended up with extraordinary stories of ordinary American justice.
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Serial
Season 2
In 2009, a young soldier from Idaho, Bowe Bergdahl, walked off his remote outpost in Afghanistan and disappeared into the mountains. Captured by the Taliban, Bergdahl would be held in harsh conditions for nearly five years — our sole prisoner of war. Why did he decide to walk away? And how did the consequences of that one idiosyncratic decision spin out? Hosted by Sarah Koenig.
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Serial
Season 1
A reinvestigation of a 1999 murder case in Baltimore, in which a young man named Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for killing his former girlfriend, a fellow high school senior named Hae Min Lee. But it’s not at all clear he’s actually guilty. Hosted by Sarah Koenig, the show became a cultural phenomenon, launching podcasts into the mainstream. Adnan Syed was freed from prison eight years later.
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Team
Julie Snyder
Executive EditorSarah Koenig
Executive ProducerNdeye Thioubou
Supervising ProducerJen Guerra
Senior EditorAnita Badejo
Senior Development EditorJessica Weisberg
Senior ProducerAlvin Melathe
Senior ProducerKatie Mingle
Senior ProducerJenelle Pifer
Senior ProducerDaniel Guillemette
Senior ProducerAlissa Shipp
Executive Producer, FictionPhoebe Wang
Senior Sound Designer & MixerBen Phelan
Audio ResearcherElizabeth Davis-Moorer
Operations ManagerMack Miller
Executive AssistantAwards
Serial Productions shows have won almost every major broadcasting award, including the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, the Edward R. Murrow Award, and several Peabody Awards, including the first-ever Peabody given to a podcast.