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What Happens When You Make A Podcast About Podcasts About A Podcast?

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Serial, from the This American Life family, is a hit — to the point where it's now got spinoff podcasts at both Slate and The A.V. Club, the latter of which calls its Serial recap podcast the Serial Serial.

The air is getting pretty thin up here, no?

Against this background, NPR's Gene Demby and I sat down to talk about the phenomenon of meta-podcasts, and more generally about the spectator sport of Serial-watching (well, listening). We talked about how Serial fandom is and is not like True Detective or Boardwalk Empire fandom, the importance of red herrings, and the role of commentary in validating the importance of a narrative work, fictional or nonfictional.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Linda Holmes is a pop culture correspondent for NPR and the host of Pop Culture Happy Hour. She began her professional life as an attorney. In time, however, her affection for writing, popular culture, and the online universe eclipsed her legal ambitions. She shoved her law degree in the back of the closet, gave its living room space to DVD sets of The Wire, and never looked back.