Serial Serial
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Serial returns with a history of Guantánamo told by people who lived through key moments in Guantánamo’s evolution, who know things the rest of us don’t about what it’s like to be caught inside an improvised justice system.
Serial Productions makes narrative podcasts whose quality and innovation transformed the medium. “Serial” began in 2014 as a spinoff of the public radio show “This American Life.” In 2020, we joined the New York Times Company. Our shows have reached many millions of listeners and have won nearly every major journalism award for audio, including the first-ever Peabody Award given to a podcast.
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S04 - Trailer
From Serial Productions and The New York Times, Serial Season 4 is a history of Guantánamo told by people who lived through key moments in Guantánamo’s evolution, who know things the rest of us don’t about what it’s like to be caught inside an improvised justice system. Episodes 1 and 2 arrive Thursday, March 28.
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S04 - Ep. 1: Poor Baby Raul
Maybe you have an idea in your head about what it was like to work at Guantánamo, one of the most notorious prisons in the world. Think again.
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S04 - Ep. 2: The Special Project
In 2002, an elite interrogation team secretly staged Guantánamo’s most elaborate intel operation — to try to get a single detainee to talk.
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S04 - Ep. 3: Ahmad the Iguana Feeder
An Arabic-speaking airman is sent to Guantánamo to translate, and soon finds himself at the center of a major scandal. Part 1: Suspicion swallows evidence.
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S04 - Ep. 4: The Honeymooners
The case against a young airman gets even weirder when the government pulls in two fresh investigators. Part 2: A bride, an FBI agent, and a polygraph machine.
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S04 - Ep. 5: The Big Chicken, Part 1
A new warden comes to Guantánamo and decides to make some changes. A prison’s a prison, he thinks. How hard could this be?
Customer Reviews
Good… maybe get more perspectives
It’s a fascinating topic and the reporting is top notch they do seem to take everything the detainees say as indisputable fact though….. also 9/11 is not an excuse for the black sites or wars
Top Rate Storytelling
Riveting, well-analyzed, honest, compelling storytelling and storyteller. Love ALL the seasons!!!!
Review of Season 4
I’ve just finished episode 8 of Season 4. In sum, Serial continues to be underwhelming.
The first season of Serial was a game changer. A masterpiece. A fascinating, captivating story that was a combination of perfectly balanced journalism and underlying mystery. Each episode slowly pulled back the onion leaving the listener desperate for more and spawning an entire genre of true crime podcasts.
Since then, Serial has been disappointing. A profile on a mentally unstable Bowe Bergdahl. A look at the dysfunctional criminal justice system that most lawyers are already very familiar with. And now Guantanamo Bay.
I’ll save you a few hours - there are no surprises here. The episodes are well researched, meticulously edited and produced. But ultimately, it’s a story of Guantanamo Bay that has mostly been told. There’s not much here that hasn’t been on the front page of the New York Times.
It feels tired and more than that, self indulgent. There are a couple of really jarring moments (the aside about forgives at the end of episode two and the entire rambling episode 7 come to mind).
Like a rock band touring years after the founding members have all died, Serial keeps going, but the crowd wants the hits and it’s playing it’s new material, seemingly oblivious as to why the audience bought their tickets.