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by sudden_dystopia 1213 days ago
“ and Joe Rogan, whose rambling, hours-long podcasts had somewhat confoundingly become the biggest hit in podcasting since Serial.”

WTF is “Serial”? And how can Rogan be the biggest thing since something I have never heard of? And how can it even be since “Serial” when he has been doing this for over a decade, before podcasting was a legit thing?

2 comments

Serial was probably the first "killer app" of podcasting, with an episodic look at a crime that they (arguably) had a hand in reversing the decision for. Every bit of True Crime podcasting owes something to Serial, and it was a normie-friendly product that wasn't being published anywhere else, in any other formats. Journalists also bigged it up, which meant it got a lot of hype, as well.
For those who weren’t around when it came out, Serial was a genuine media phenomenon. I’d say it was on par with a big Netflix series (like squid game or Wednesday) in the sense that you would see it parodied in popular culture and could have “water cooler chats” with coworkers about it. I think it’s hard to understate how much this show did to introduce podcasts to the general population.
It was to podcasting what House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and Arrested Development Season 4 were to Netflix.
https://serialpodcast.org/ from the This American Life (NPR) people
There’s also S-Town¹, from Serial (and This American Life). If you’re on the fence regarding its runtime², I recommend listening to the first two chapters in full and reevaluate then. So far, everyone I gave that recommendation to gladly stuck with it.

¹ https://stownpodcast.org/

² About seven hours, one per episode.