'Serial' Is The Greatest New Podcast Ever

The creators of "This American Life", the grandmama of all excellent radio-programming has birthed something wonderful. After ages of development and months of hype, their newest podcast, "Serial", has dropped. It is, as you might hope, completely awesome. If you're a fan of real-life mysteries, the smart, insightful but still digestible storytelling tone of "This American Life", and you've always secretly harbored the belief that you could be a private detective, this is totally a podcast that you ought to be adding to the listening device of your choosing.

The idea behind Serial is perfect in its simplicity: Over the course of the year, the show will explore only one story. This year is dedicated to the story of a then-teenager, sentenced to life in prison for murdering his girlfriend. From week to week, the show will explore the crime and the conviction, which went from merely compelling to fully controversial after the defense attorney involved was disbarred for basically being totally incompetent. It's hosted by "This American Life" veteran Sarah Koenig so it's already curried favor with die-hard fans. The New Yorker also wrote it up, so in case you think I am not cool enough to listen to (and you should, I have TWO shirts with cats on them – TWO), know that some very prestigious weekly printed periodical also shares my opinion.

Oh, and here's TAL host Ira Glass explaining how to listen to a podcast. You probably already know but, let's be honest, we'll listen to Ira tell us pretty much anything.

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