The Alibi - Serial

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What were you doing six weeks ago last Friday around 2:00 pm? If you are unable to answer, you could be going to jail for a long time.

The podcast "Serial" follows one real murder case throughout 12 episodes. The story starts in 1999 in Baltimore after school gets out. Hae Min Lee, a high school student disappears, and was later found strangled to death. The suspect is her boyfriend and homecoming king Adnan Syed. Throughout the trial, he claims he's innocent.

After the lengthy trial, Adnan was found guilty. It was later discovered that the lawyer representing Adnan didn't follow through with a potential witness named Asia McClain. This witness could have proven his innocence. A letter written by Asia claims that Adnan was at the library at the time of the murder.

Woven throughout the first episode of this story are interviews from Asia, Adnan's friends, and Adnan himself from prison. He still maintains his innocence. The host of the show, along with Asia don't know what to believe.

Future episodes of the show will explore the story further, featuring background information on those involved and examinations on the evidence. Telling one story throughout many episodes is unique for a podcast, and audiences took notice. It quickly became one of the most popular podcasts ever, with 68 million downloads. Listeners get to keep track of characters, hear their stories, and piece together the puzzle to decide for themselves if Adnan was guilty. Because this is a real story, it makes it more interesting for the audience.

The opening of the episode was interesting, in that the host asked teenagers what they were doing last Friday in order to understand the difficulty Adnan had remembering what he was doing. Some could not answer, and some gave conflicting reports.