[sudden_dystopia]

“ 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?

[MattDemers]

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.

[parpfish]

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.

[MattDemers]

It was to podcasting what House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and Arrested Development Season 4 were to Netflix.

[cschmidt]

https://serialpodcast.org/ from the This American Life (NPR) people

[latexr]

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.