Hooked on Serial? 8 Reddit Threads to Read Immediately

The show Serial — a podcast about the 1999 murder of teenager Hae Min Lee and the prosecution of her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed — is still sweeping the nation after its finale aired now that the main witness, Jay, has spoken for the first time in an interview with The Intercept.

If you haven't started the 12-episode podcast yet, stop what you're doing and join the 1.5 million listeners tuning in to each episode narrated by reporter Sarah Koenig, who is putting the pieces of this crime together. You'll be hooked, guaranteed. Sarah even visited The Colbert Report to talk about her true crime show, and it was epic.

The series attempts to answer one question: did Adnan really do it? Turns out, the evidence swirling around the case isn't as concrete as the prosecutors made it out to be. It's a murder mystery with twists, turns, and plot holes (Jay's inconsistent testimony being one of them) — which means plenty of fodder for Reddit users to debate, discuss, and theorize. Partly thanks to the show, Adnan Syed will get an appeal hearing in January, which may even reopen the 15-year-old case. Below, check out the Reddit threads from /r/serialpodcast you absolutely can't miss. They'll take your Serial obsession to new heights. But beware. There are spoilers if you haven't caught up.

  • The Intercept's Exclusive Interview with Jay, Part 1 — Jay's new interview adds confusion to the timeline of events rather than clarification. Redditors have been quick to point out inconsistencies in his story, such as how he now says he saw Lee's body at his grandmother's house, not in the Best Buy parking lot.
  • Does anyone really buy the 'Jay killed Hae because she was going to rat him out for cheating on Stephanie' argument? — A look at the possible motive for why Jay might have framed Adnan and killed Hae. Redditor SmarchHare looks at the six reasons why Jay would go after Hae and offers his take on why the cheating angle doesn't work.
  • Why did Adnan want a ride? — The most confusing part of the story is why Adnan needed a ride in the first place, before track practice. If both of them were supposed to be back by 4:30 p.m., why would Adnan have tagged along with Hae while she drove her cousin home? Adnan told police he lied to Hae about his car being in the shop. Where were they planning to go?
  • Adnan is not the main character of this narrative and should not be the focus. — Koenig has it wrong, according to Redditor liveonethere. If Jay is the only person who truly knows what happens, then he should be at the center of the story, and all his movements that day should be accounted for. He should be the main character.
  • What do you **hope** happened on Jan. 13? — Redditor RuffReader asks his fellow Internet comrades: discounting all the evidence presented so far in the podcast, what do you personally hope happened that day? A girl was murdered for no good reason, so obviously there is no happy outcome. But what scenario would make you feel better about the world you live in?
  • There WAS a pay phone at Best Buy. — One of the case's burning questions is: was Adnan really by Best Buy's pay phone in the parking lot like Jay claimed? Redditor saxsolos, whose husband has worked at that very location for 11 years, said that there definitely were two pay phones in the lobby area that were removed. Koenig was unable to confirm that pay phones ever existed at the location.
  • Six weeks ago I got a pretty big promotion at work. — Did you murder someone six weeks ago and need a fall guy? Ask Redditor blissfully_happy who tries (and fails) to recount minute-by-minute the day he got a big promotion, which was approximately six weeks prior. That's the same amount of time Adnan and others were asked to recall the day Hae went missing to police officers. Try doing the same without looking at texts or Facebook.
  • Did anyone check Adnan's email? — Adnan's alibi was that he was in the library at the time Hae was killed, checking his email. Rabia Chaudry, whose email to Koenig started the whole podcast investigation, responded to Redditor superfarmer's inquiry. No, the letters from Asia, the woman who spotted Adnan at the library, were never shown to police. So detectives did not think to check email logins or security tapes at the library.