The second season of Serial, the wildly popular This American Life spin-off, surprisingly launched this morning.
Just before 7:30 this morning, the show’s official Twitter page simply announced, “Hi again.”
Serial host Sarah Koenig and her team turn their attention to the case of Bowe Bergdahl in season two. Bergdahl was serving in Afghanistan in 2009 when he walked off his base and was captured by the Taliban. He was their prisoner for five years, until President Barack Obama made the controversial decision to trade five Taliban members being held in Guantanamo Bay for Bergdahl’s freedom.
After the trade, Bergdahl was called a traitor and deserter by some. Serial will look into the case, with the help of Zero Dark Thirty writer Mark Boal and his Page 1 media company.
Season two is very different from season one, which focused on the 1999 murder of Hae Min Lee, a much more local story.
“Unlike our story in Season One, this one extends far out into the world. It reaches into swaths of the military, the peace talks to end the war, attempts to rescue other hostages, our Guantanamo policy,” Koenig wrote in a statement. “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.”
The first season of Serial became so popular that it was even parodied by Saturday Night Live. NPR has even ordered a third season and a TV series under the brand is in the works.
You can listen to the new episode of Serial right here.