To understand Detroit's complex relationship with crime, you need to listen to its stories. And what better place to hear them than the insightful, in-depth hit podcast "Crimetown"?

The second season of "Crimetown" will focus its 20-episode run on the Motor City and several decades of its recent history, according to a Thursday morning announcement by Gimlet Media.

The first episode, premiering Oct. 1 exclusively on Spotify, takes listeners back to the early 1970s and the rise of the controversial police unit STRESS. That name was an acronym for "Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets," a slogan that belied the unit's violent, deadly reputation.

Subsequent episodes will cover personal stories from many different voices — criminals, crime victims, cops, drug dealers, drug addicts and more. The season wraps with the downfall of Kwame Kilpatrick, the once-promising young mayor who's now behind bars serving a 28-year corruption sentence.

More:Kwame Kilpatrick reveals divorce on Facebook: 'I lost my marriage'

Launched in 2016, "Crimetown" is one of the most successful podcasts in a genre that's expanded rapidly since 2014. That year marked the debut of "Serial," an investigative podcast that won a Peabody Award for its first season and was downloaded more than 300 million times.

"Crimetown" was co-created and is co-hosted by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier, who helped produce and write the HBO true-crime miniseries "The Jinx."

Coming Soon: Season 2

The first season took a deep dive into organized crime and political corruption in Providence, Rhode Island. "Crimetown" soared on the iTunes charts with its real-life tales of how politicians, police and mob figures co-existed in the East Coast city.

The New York Times called "Crimetown" one of the best new podcasts of 2016, describing it as "less 'Law & Order,' more 'The Wire' " in its narrative.

Work on the Detroit season has been underway for more than a year, according to "Crimetown" senior producer Drew Nelles.

This time, Nelles and several other producers will share duties as rotating hosts of the episodes. Smerling and Stuart-Pontier are serving as executive producers.

Nelles says Detroit was a timely subject for many reasons.

"As we started digging into the story, we realized it was really a story about a lot of issues that are in the forefront of people's minds right now: policing, the war on drugs, race, de-industrialization, corruption. There was just a lot swirling around that felt really resonant in a really exciting way."

Detroit made quite an impression on Nelles and the "Crimetown" team. He hopes it will intrigue listeners, too, and inform their view of the city as a strong, resilient place.

"I think the rest of the country has a very specific and kind of stereotypical idea of Detroit. Although this is a show about crime — which is certainly something a lot of people associate with Detroit — I think listeners will find that, ultimately, we're just using crime to tell people's stories, tell individual stories."

Says Nelles, "I fell in love with the city because of the richness of people's experiences from all walks of life, their gifts as storytellers and guides to the city. ... Reporting this story and talking to everyone really made this city feel alive to me."

Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds: 313-222-6427 or jhinds@freepress.com.

Editor's note: The Free Press is providing "Crimetown" with historical photos and pages to aid its promotion of the podcast. In return, the Free Press gets early access to the podcasts.