That season sparked podcasts about the podcast and online communities to debate each episode. A US special operations team rescued Bergdahl from Afghanistan in May 2014. However, shortly after news broke of his release, soldiers from his unit labeled him a deserter, not an American hero.
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After what seemed like waiting forever, Koenig dropped the first episode of the second season Thursday, completely without warning. According to the soldier’s own admissions, he was taken by the insurgent group the Haqqani network after deliberately walking away from his post in order to give light to the several conditions in his unit that he found concerning.
Bergdahl is currently facing charges of desertion and misbehavior in front of an enemy from the U.S. Army, and hasn’t spoken out about the military’s investigation into his conduct until now.
Bergdahl’s story is an active case in military court.
This high-profile topic is a big change from the widely acclaimed first season which saw the creator and narrator, Sarah Koenig, pluck a story about a murder in a Baltimore suburb out of obscurity. What Bergdahl did made me wrestle with things I’d thought I more or less understood, but really didn’t: “what it means to be loyal, to be resilient, to be used, to be punished”.
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Serial and its production are also being adapted for television, with the directors of The LEGO MOVIE, Chris Miller and Phil Lord set to serialise how Serial’s journalists became world famous for their podcast.
