The past few days I haven’t been doing much because of Serial – the crime thriller podcast that has taken over my life. I love radio dramas. Audiobooks, I hate but radio dramas are my thing. I noticed the Internet obsessing over it but I brushed it off as some new-age, hipster-ish vortex that I did want to be sucked in to. But a few weeks in and I couldn’t contain my curiosity any longer. And, OHMYGOD its the best decision I’ve made all year.

Serial follows the real life murder of Hae Min Lee, a high school girl. Adnan Syed, her ex boyfriend was convicted for her murder. Sarah Koeing (the narrator) explores the possibility that maybe Adnan is innocent, maybe someone else killed Hae or maybe Adnan is just an A-class sociopath.

I love Sarah Koenig. Her voice, the way she narrates the story, the question she asks without coming across as harsh is just.. everything. I managed to listen to all the episodes (there are nine so far) in 48 hours. It helped that I was working on something that required 10% of my concentration and I was free to donate the rest of my energy to Serial.

I was obsessed with the story. I perused Twitter looking at reviews, trolled websites that listed the possible theories and then.. it hit me. This was someone’s real life I found interesting. Hae’s family live this reality every day, Adnan is strongly pursuing his innocence and I.. was on Twitter reading theories and memes, scanning articles that displayed web-like pictorials trying to find the missing link (but lets just agree that “Mail.. Krimp?”, is probably the best thing that’s been said on the internet).

 Sometimes these stories are cloaked in so much sensationalism that we forget they are real life. Sarah Koenig delves deep in to the narration and she repeats off and on that she isn’t a detective. So maybe its okay for us to have our opinions about the “characters” but its equally important that we remember they are real people and not take the show out of context.

That being said, I am so psyched for December 6th. Like, I’m literally crossing the dates off on my calendar.