Serial Season 2 Drops Outta Nowhere In The Dead Of Night...Just Like Bowe Bergdahl's Disappearance
Serial pulls a Beyonce! Drops that shit in the middle of the night without any promotion. Just like Bowe Bergdahl disappeared from his unit back in 2009. Sarah Koenig’s sexy ass voice is back. New piano keys tapping away with the Season 2 REMIXXXXX:
And more Mail KaHimp for everybody! Christmas come early for podcast fans.
If you dont know the story, Bowe Bergdahl was captured by the Taliban in 2009, but the circumstances in which he was taken were very controversial. Members of his unit said he willingly deserted and was a traitor to his country. There were communications from Bergdahl in which he stated he had grown sick of the war and the treatment of the people of Afghanistan. 6 soldiers were directly killed during the search for Bergdahl, a lot of other resources were diverted to try to find him. And eventually the United States traded 5 Taliban members for his release in 2014. In 2015 he was officially charged with desertion. (Shout out to Wikipedia)
So a lot of people were pissed at this dude, and a lot of people were pissed about how the negotiations were handled by the US. A lot of blame being thrown around, and a lot of controversy regarding what actually happened when Bergdahl disappeared. A lot of material for Koenig and her crew to dig into.
According to this little blurb Koenig wrote on her blog, this should be pretty different from Season 1:
This story—it spins out in so many unexpected directions. Because, yes, it’s about Bowe Bergdahl and about one strange decision he made, to leave his post. (And Bergdahl, by the way, is such an interesting and unusual guy, not like anyone I’ve encountered before.) But it’s also about all of the people affected by that decision, and the choices they made. 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. 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.
Its also the first time Bergdahl has spoken to the press since his return. So, some pretty intriguing stuff. I dont expect it to be the “Whodunit??” sensation that Season 1 was. But tackling military loyalty and policy, the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban, Guantanamo, the American press and all that shit is a lot of deep dense material that should make for a pretty interesting week by week show. If Season 2 is even half as popular as Season 1, we’ll do some weekly talk every Thursday or Friday after the new episodes drop.