Episode 12: Sarah Koenig on "Serial," and a Resilient Poet

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2016

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sarah Koenig, the host of “Serial,” talks with David Remnick about why her podcast’s success caught her by surprise. Robin Coste Lewis, who recently won a National Book Award, explains how a devastating injury damaged her brain, but aided her poetry. And Jelani Cobb goes back to his high school.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:11.0	He's very excited to be having a conversation with someone when they have that revelation right in mind.
0:16.0	He's really smart.
0:17.0	He's actually someone who's kind of savvy, you know, every parent.
0:20.0	Maybe looking at this case, it could be an interesting process piece.
0:24.8	Okay.
0:28.0	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:30.0	I'm David Remnick.
0:31.5	Now, for many years, I've been reporting from Russia, living there in the late 80s and early 90s as a reporter for the Washington Post, and returning for reporting trips ever since.
0:42.3	In the 90s, when Big Boris Yeltsin was in power, I was hanging out with some friends, and I met a funny, smart young woman in the New York Times Bureau named Sarah Kahnick.
0:53.7	She wasn't long out of school, but it was very, very clear that she had everything it
0:57.7	takes to become a first class reporter.
1:00.3	But who knew what kind?
1:03.4	Sarah Kainig became the co-creator and the host of Serial.
1:07.9	I think you know the rest.
1:08.9	It was downloaded about a gazillion times and changed radio
1:12.6	and podcasting completely. Now cereal is into its second season with a story about a young man
1:18.9	named Bo Bergdahl, who wanders off his base in Afghanistan and ends up captured by the Taliban.
1:25.9	He was a prisoner for five years
1:28.2	until the U.S. government finally worked out
1:30.6	a prisoner exchange deal.
1:32.8	Joining me is Sarah Kahnick.
	...

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