Thursdays

If you had told me a year ago that every Thursday morning I would wake up early just to download a public radio production, I would have laughed at you. Snorted really. I am the opposite of a morning person. I’ve been known to stay up late even just to sleep through mornings so I don’t have to live through them.

So what’s changed? Serial. It’s my new obsession and it’s likely infiltrated your life in some way. It’s one story told week-by-week and a spin-off of This American Life (TAL). I was never that into TAL but I had just downloaded a new app for listening to podcasts and downloaded a new episode called “The Alibi” the first week of October. 53 minutes later and I was hooked. There was no turning back.

Serial comes out each Thursday morning. The first episode spells out the premise: in January 1999 a teenage girl named Hae Min Lee disappears. Six weeks later her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, is arrested. He’s convicted and sentenced to life in prison. It should seem open and shut but it isn’t thanks to issues like a witness changing stories, alibis not fleshed out, emerging technologies, confirmation bias, how our court systems work, and that sometimes the justice system isn’t about justice.

The host, Sarah Koenig, does a wonderful job of focusing each week on a niche of the investigation, the disappearance, teenage interactions, the trial, and the resulting prison sentence. This past week she had us focus on the victim, Hae, and what she was like. She wasn’t always a murder victim and she had so many people who loved her and cared about her. Then Koenig focused on Adnan and what he’s like now and I realized that I want justice for both of them, even if I don’t know what that is.

So today I’ll sit in my car and drive into work listening for another week and learning more about the case and myself. I’ll hear the haunting theme music that sends shivers down my spine and I’ll continue to let Koenig weave her story and maybe I’ll learn something more about the case or just myself.