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Sarah Koenig talks about popularity of 'Serial,' promises a fun Dallas event

If you're a fan of public radio, you've likely heard Sarah Koenig's voice.

You may have heard her fill in as host for Ira Glass on This American Life. Or, more likely, you listened to Serial, a podcast that gained an obsessive following last year.

Now you can match a face to that voice when Koenig comes to Dallas as part of the ThinkSpeak series Monday Aug. 3 at the Winspear Opera House. Tickets are still available.

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And despite the heaviness of the first season of Serial, which detailed the 1999 murder of a Maryland high school student, Koenig wants to assure her audience she'll be fun.

"It's not like me standing up there for an hour and just, like, hand-wringing," she said.

Over the course of 12 episodes, Serial told the story of Hae Min Lee's murder and the conviction of her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed. Fans' interest turned into obsession. Koenig appeared on The Colbert Report. Serial was even spoofed on Saturday Night Live.

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Koenig has announced that she and her producers are working on a second and third season of the podcast. Season 2 will be released in the fall. But Koenig won't reveal what the subject will be.

"We've learned the hard way to not make any predictions about things," she said.

Koenig worked for 10 years on This American Life before launching the spinoff podcast. She, executive producer Julie Snyder and producer Dana Chivvis worried that listeners might not stick with what was essentially a 10-hour radio documentary.

"The nicest lesson for us is 'Oh people stayed with it. People listened,' " Koenig said. "If we do it right, we can do this kind of reporting at this pace and we can be OK."

The team behind Serial never expected the story to become so popular after it first aired in October 2014 on public radio mainstay This American Life.

But the story of Syed's conviction took on a life of its own. Listeners took to social media sites to try to solve the murder. In May, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals sent Syed's case back to a lower court, giving him the chance to ask for a new trial.

A collage of photographs of Hae Min Lee and her friends
A collage of photographs of Hae Min Lee and her friends(Elizabeth Malby / Baltimore Sun)

Serial pointed out holes in the case and suggested that Syed's defense attorney may have mishandled his case. Koenig also interviewed one of Syed's peers who says she saw him at the public library at the time prosecutors said he killed his ex-girlfriend. That person wasn't asked to testify.

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But during the course of telling the story, Koenig experienced a first in her years of reporting. People started naming her sources in online forums. Internet commenters said nasty things about subjects of the story.

"There was just a lot of speculating going on, you know, about real people who have real lives and posting of private information of people who we were trying to protect or had made agreements with," Koenig said. "That was just very upsetting."

To some extent, Koenig and the show's producers are approaching the second and third seasons with a bit more caution.

"I'm much more aware that I could be setting someone up for a ton of outside attention and scrutiny that they're not signing up for or don't think that they're signing up for," she said.

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That attention is still new for Koenig herself. Though she has been a well-known name among regular This American Life listeners for years, a larger segment of the general population knows who she is now.

Koenig says she's lucky to be at the point in her career where she gets to report on pretty much any story she wants. And people seem to enjoy listening to her reporting.

"I'm someone who just has a lot of questions I think about our country and about our world. There's much I don't understand," she said. "I'm learning actual information about how the world works, like every time I talk to someone and do an interview. I just love that. I don't think that's true of every job. ... I feel like I'm constantly surprised and confused and shocked. And I like that."