When she started investigating the peculiar homicide case at the center of Serial , Sarah Koenig never considered it might one day get her parodied on Saturday Night Live. Sure enough, though, last winter, Koenig went through the surreal experience of watching a bespectacled Cecily Strong portray her on SNL. By that point, though, such elite public tribute did not seem at all out of proportion with the phenomenon her podcast had become.

Sarah Koenig

Ordinarily, a podcast is considered a hit if it gets to 300,000 downloads total. Serial has been downloaded 90 million times, worldwide. Its regular listenership per episode is more than double the audience of a Mad Men season premiere. Despite what a league of evangelical late-adopters might think, Serial did not invent the podcast–but it did manage to eventize it. And now Koenig and co-creator Julie Snyder are gearing up to follow their first irresistible story. the mystery of whether Adnan Syed truly did murder Hae Min Lee, with more stories. As the pair just revealed during their panel at the Cannes Lions festival, where they teamed up with agency McKinney, they might have even more stories than expected.

“We came out here to talk with brands and marketers about the possibility of making relationships to support new shows and new ideas that we have for shows,” Snyder says over the phone before the panel. “We’re not making an announcement exactly–it’s more a matter of just saying we have a lot of ideas and we have a lot of plans.”

Adds Koenig, “We have other ambitions beyond just continuing Serial as a thing with seasons two and three.”





In addition to the previously announced continuation of Serial, the creators are considering launching other podcasts to accommodate more varieties of stories. Although the two immediately shoot down the idea that these potential other programs would be named CSI-style, a la Serial: Kentucky Nights, they’re certain that listeners will be aware the shows are brought to them by the creators of Serial, no matter the title.

“I think it’s hard to say before the shows exist, but we have a certain shared sensibility, and this sounds sort of obnoxious to say but we have very high standards for quality,” Koenig says. “We both recognize what those are without having to talk too much about it. So there will be something recognizable. But part of it I think is to just mess around and experiment and just try shit because it just feels like, why not?”