Serial, yes Serial. No, not like breakfast cereal. It is, however a new podcast from Sarah Koenig and the producers of the National Public Radio weekly radio show This American Life. The word serial refers to an event or story occurring in a series of installments. And that’s exactly what Serial is.

As said best in the description of the show on iTunes, “Serial unfolds one story – a true story – over the course of a whole season.” A lot of TV shows do this, but Serial has no visual aspect, making it possible for people to form their own thoughts and opinions on each character as the true story moves along, and until the end of each twelve episode season, there is no right or wrong answer to the mystery of the story.

Like her audience, Koenig doesn’t know what the ending to this story will be. She reports on the story on a weekly basis, the listener finds out information as she does and all the different twists and turns of the story, which makes it important to start from episode one.

This season on Serial follows the story of Adnan Syed, a teenager from Baltimore in 1999, when he was arrested for the murder of his ex-girlfriend and good friend Hae Min Lee. Serial is reopening the case, and finds all sorts of eyebrow raising information. Whether this helps to prove Syed innocent or guilty will not be revealed until the final installment of the podcast.

As the listener finds out more and more about the day of the murder, the opinions and observations of both Syed and the people around him expand, because just like the listener, the actual witnesses are just as confused. Although the witnesses are also confused, they are able to tell us about what really happened the days leading up to the murder. Then they are able to hypothesize what could have happened next, because they were there.

Syed may just be hoodwinking Koenig into reopening the case on a public platform. Or maybe Jay, Syed’s dark troubled friend, framed Syed with the murder of Hae Min Lee. That is something that Serial will let the listener wonder about for a while. The podcast gives you the facts and the inconsistencies or observations from witnesses.

For now Syed sits in a jail cell, claiming his innocence. Koenig, meanwhile, teams up with anyone who may know anything about the murder as she tries to find the missing pieces to this fifteen year long puzzle. Will she succeed? Has the wrong man been behind bars for the last fifteen years? “Next time, on Serial.”