Serial Season 2, Ep. 1: Slate's Spoiler Special

Slate's Spoiler Specials

Slate Podcasts

Film Reviews,, Tv & Film

3.6 • 724 Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2015

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Slate's Gabriel Roth and Katy Waldman are joined by writer and Afghanistan war veteran Adrian Bonenberger to discuss the first episode of Serial's new season. Sarah Koenig and her team opened their new season by deploying a series of familiar narrative tricks, but the show's effect has the potential to be much more wide-ranging this time around. And what are we supposed to make of this Mark Boal guy - can we trust him? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Slate's Serial Spoiler Special is brought to you by Harries, the shaving company that offers German-engineered blades, well-designed handles, and shipping right to your door.
0:09.1	Visit Harries.com for $5 off your first purchase with the promo code, Serial Spoiler.
0:15.1	This episode is also sponsored by Audible, which has more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken word audio products.
0:21.7	Get a free 30-day trial at www.audible.com slash serial spoiler.
0:27.8	And by GE Podcast Theater.
0:30.4	Have you heard The Message, an original science fiction podcast from Panoply and GE Podcast Theater?
0:36.3	All of Season 1 is available now. So listen and find out
0:39.5	why a 70-year-old alien recording seems to be killing people. Search for The Message on iTunes.
0:48.0	Hello and welcome to Slate's serial spoiler special. I'm Slate's senior editor Gabriel Roth
0:53.4	here in New York, and in D.C. is Slate's
0:56.1	words correspondent Katie Waldman. Hi, Katie. Hi, Gabe. Every week, Katie and I and our guests are going to
1:02.0	be discussing season two of the Uber Popular Podcast Serial, going deeper into the show's themes,
1:08.4	exploring its characters and situations, and looking at the ways in which
1:12.7	the podcast reverberates in the world. A little later, will also be joined by Adrian Bonenberger,
1:18.7	who was twice deployed to Afghanistan as an infantry officer in the U.S. Army, and whose memoir,
1:23.1	Afghan Post, was published last year. But, Katie, let's start with first impressions. How does this
1:29.2	new season feel different from the serial that we all fell in love with? Well, I think one thing that
1:35.9	stood out to me is the central mystery is different. It's not so much a question of what are the
1:41.2	facts. Did Adnan Syed kill Heyman Lee? We know what happened. We know that
1:47.3	Beau Bergdell walked off his post and was imprisoned by the Taliban. What we want to understand is why.
1:55.9	And so I think there might be less role for the audience to participate and to do research and dig up sort of the clinching detail.
2:03.6	And it's going to be a little bit more of a psychological portrait, sort of competing narratives about what he was up to.
	...

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