Serial Season 2, Ep. 9: Slate's Spoiler Special
Slate's Spoiler Specials
Slate Podcasts
3.6 • 724 Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2016
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Gabe and Katy struggle with the ever-shifting frame of season 2’s narrative. What is the real story Koenig and company are driving at? Is there any other way to approach a situation as complicated as Bowe Bergdahl’s?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening, ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:03.3 | This episode is sponsored by Audible, which has more than 180,000 audio books and spoken word audio products. |
| 0:09.3 | Get a free 30-day trial at www.org.com slash serial spoiler. |
| 0:14.4 | We're also sponsored by Casper. |
| 0:16.5 | Get $50 toward any mattress purchase by visiting casper.com slash serial spoiler and using promo code |
| 0:22.5 | serial spoiler at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. The following podcast contains explicit |
| 0:28.5 | language. Hello and welcome to Slate's Serial Spoiler Special. I Slate's senior editor Gabriel Roth, joining me from our brand new DC studio is Slate's Words correspondent Katie Waldman. What's up, Katie? |
| 0:46.7 | Hey, how are you? I'm good. This is a beautiful studio over here. Is it very fancy? Is it way fancier than before? |
| 0:54.0 | Yes, I just want to confirm everything implied by your tone of voice when you introduced the DC studio. |
| 0:59.3 | I've heard other people talk about the studio, and I imagine now you being there in that studio in the sort of palatial glory of the new studio. |
| 1:07.3 | Anyway, no one wants to hear about your studios. |
| 1:09.8 | In case you're joining us for the |
| 1:10.9 | first time, this is the podcast where Katie and I discuss season two of serial, episode by |
| 1:15.4 | episode, going deeper into the show's themes, exploring its characters and situations, and looking |
| 1:20.0 | at the ways in which the podcast reverberates in the world. This week, we're diving into episode |
| 1:24.7 | nine of serial's second season, cleverly titled Trade Secrets. |
| 1:29.3 | Katie, we've zoomed back out two weeks ago. In a special two-part episode, we took a long look at Bo Bergdahl himself, the strange and sometimes difficult character of the man who is at the center of this whole situation. Now we have |
| 1:46.2 | zoomed out to the U.S. diplomatic efforts in Afghanistan. What did you think? Yeah, I mean, I thought |
| 1:52.8 | it was interesting, obviously, in a very different way than the prior episode was. Interesting and |
| 1:58.6 | frustrating. It was sort of like watching a chess match between |
| 2:03.7 | people who were terrible at chess, this sort of relentless stream of missteps and obstacles |
| 2:10.0 | and almost not quite moments that are explaining why Bo is not able to get out until five years after he's captured. |
... |
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