New Podcast Picks Up Where "Serial" Left Off

Serial fans shouldn’t count on Undisclosed being more of the same. The new podcast, which debuts on Monday, April 13, follows Adnan Syed‘s appeal of his 2000 conviction in the murder of Hae Min Lee.

“Serial is amazing, it’s an incredibly well-done production that changed podcasting for the better forever,” says Susan Simpson, one of the lawyers co-hosting Undisclosed. “We can’t compete with that, and we’re not trying,”

Related: “One Lawyer’s Trip Down the ‘Serial’ Rabbit Hole | “Rabia Chaudry: ‘Jay Is Close to Whoever Did It'”

Though Simpson says the show won’t be “Serial 2.0,” there are connections. One of Simpson’s co-hosts is Rabia Chaudry, who appeared throughout Serial and whose contact with host Sarah Koenig got that podcast rolling. And like Serial, each episode will discuss juicy tidbits about the case.

But unlike its predecessor, Undisclosed doesn’t have a set end date. It will appear biweekly and will also share new evidence Simpson and Chaudry, who both live in the DC area, and University of South Carolina School of Law professor Colin Miller have dug up.

Both Simpson and Miller have devoted exhaustive blogs to the case. Many Serial fans, though, don’t have the time to wade through the virtual piles of documents and analysis. According to Simpson, a main goal of the new podcast is making this work more accessible.

“The original podcast is such a good way of conveying information, we thought that we might try and make it available to people who are more casual listeners,” she said. “There’s a very diehard contingent that has very closely followed every aspect of the case … I’d like to make it available in a way that’s easy for them to listen to.”

The three will discuss a new theme each episode. On Monday the three focus on Syed’s disputed schedule on the day of Lee’s murder. Was he in the library? Was he at Best Buy? Does Asia McLean know anything?

The hosts will approach the case from the perspective of lawyers, not journalists. “Colin has focused a lot on the actual appeal and the ineffectiveness of council as well as issues related to the medical evidence. … I’ve been focusing more on general factual research,” Simpson said. “Rabia, of course, has personal knowledge of the events and knows Adnan, knows people involved, and saw it all unfold.”

Emma Foehringer Merchant