Serial Podcast

I don’t think there’s been an episode 3 yet, has there? My itunes subscription hasn’t downloaded anything.

They’ll need to step things up to keep my interest, too – so far I’m just not interested.

Episode 4 was this week. They only took one week off, between Christmas and New Year’s day. Try jiggling the handle in iTunes.

Goddamnit.

I’m really glad you piped up. Looks like iTunes unsubscribed me from 2/3 of my podcast feeds over the holiday. It still shows up in my list of podcasts, but it wasn’t updating.

Holy cow I have a lot of podcasts to catch up on!

ITunes absolutely loves stopping subscriptions arbitrarily. It’s infuriating. I am still enjoying this season of Serial but it certainly doesn’t have the hook of season 1. I had so many questions during that season. This one seems mostly about context for this bizarre episode in recent history. And I think that’s interesting but I don’t feel like there’s much to discuss or any shocking revelations to be had.

I stopped using the iOS podcasts app years ago. iCatcher is amazing and I’ve never looked back.

Yeah, there’s no reason to be on iTunes for podcasts any more. You can even export your list of subscriptions to something like Pocket Casts.

As far as I can tell there is no good alternative for the iPod classic, which between the physical controls and vastly larger capacity is much preferable to the Touch for my purposes. There are a few other programs that handle both podcasts and connecting with iPods but they’re all lacking in some way for what I want. One wouldn’t save my location in the podcast file, another had no practical way to import my existing subscriptions without manually readding each one and then downloading hundreds of episodes I already had or had listened to and subsequently deleted, etc.

Any recommendations on Windows apps for podcasts? I’d love to ditch iTunes for something less bloated but still functional. Last time I looked, people were recommending Media Monkey, which was just as bloated but more functional.

This is pretty much my exact feelings. The first season had so much the wife and I could ruminate on but this season just seems to be a straight-forward story. I’m enjoying hearing the story, it’s interesting and Serial does a good job of presenting a story but there’s no great hook.

Effective immediately they’re moving to bi-weekly release schedule, so no new episode this week.

Julie Snyder, an executive producer of “Serial,” said in an interview Tuesday that a 14-day window between episodes was needed to accommodate additional reporting and a longer season than she anticipated.

“There are more paths we need to go down,” Ms. Snyder said. “Since we started broadcasting the show, we have gotten more people willing to talk, and because of that, it has opened up more avenues of reporting.”

She declined to comment on whom those interviews were with, or what additional reporting the show needed to pursue.

“We have narrative developments,” she said. “I hesitate on calling them news developments.”

So yeah, dead to me unless months from now everyone’s talking about how good it got.

Such a disappointing faceplant after an amazing first season.

I think we all had to expect a regression after the first season. I’d call it more of a sophomore slump than a faceplant. I’m still listening and I think it is still more interesting than a lot of other podcasts out there (although not as good as last season naturally).

How much of the disinterest in season 2 has to do with the fact that Adnan was a sympathetic character (if you believed he didn’t commit the murder), whereas even if you accept the innocence of Bergdahl’s intentions, what he did was idiotic?

I’m enjoying this season and am surprised people are disappointed. It’s exactly This American Life, but with more time to breath and more original reporting which I what I want. I think people are missing the ‘whodunnit’ aspect but I wasn’t tied to that. I loved hearing the crazy questions and misconception the Taliban have about America.

Yeah, it’s more of the whodunit thing along with the journey of uncovering the stories in a long-past case. Here, there’s not really any of that. We have an ongoing case. We have some agreed on facts. Bergdahl admits what he did. The only place the story diverges is the degree to which you sympathize with his stated intent.

Yeah I’m really liking this season too. Real-life mysteries rarely have the “aha moment” of a fictional mystery, which is why many people were left disappointed with Season 1. With Season 2 there isn’t the pretense of a mystery they’ll solve by the end. It’s just a thoroughly interesting story of the shit one guy had to go through. It’s not about exonerating him or trying to show what he did wasn’t stupid or illegal, it’s incredible to me regardless of the consequences of what he did.

I haven’t checked out season 2 yet, but there was an episode downloaded to my phone this morning that was a season 1 update! So I listened to it on the way to work. Very interesting. It’ll be nice to get daily updates from Sarah on the court proceedings over the next few days.

So, updates on the Adnan Syed hearing this week. Interesting, and things look muddy and mixed.

If you really need your Adnan fix, the Undisclosed podcast is your huckleberry, much moreso than Serial or Sarah Koenig at this point.

I am not sure that’s the case. Sarah Koenig sure seems to get hung up on little stuff that seems easily dismissed to me. During the first season it was the “Neesha call” that never made sense to me as an interaction by Adnan but could easily have been accidental, during these hearings it’s secondhand reports of a classmate testifying that Adnan wrote a letter to a girl. Not particularly damning even if it were specifically Asia but without even that much detail (much less coming directly from the classmate instead of notes on an unrecorded interview) it seems hilariously irrelevant to me.

Undisclosed is also doing hearing episodes, BTW. Although obviously they’re thoroughly biased in their take.