“Radiolab,” the popular W.N.Y.C. audio program, has long explored big philosophical questions about the world through investigations about everything from eels to the legal foundation for the “war on terror.” But for its first serialized story, “The Other Latif,” the show will take listeners to the barbed-wire gates of the prison at Guantánamo Bay to explore legal and ethical quandaries about a detainee.

It’s a place that has been described as “the legal equivalent of outer space,” the show’s host, Latif Nasser, said in an interview.

The idea and the title for the show grew from a tweet that Nasser, the director of research at “Radiolab," saw in early 2017. At first glance, he thought it mentioned his name — he once went by Abdul Latif Nasser (trading one of his middle names for his first name).