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Serial

Serial Productions & The New York Times

Our newest podcast, “The Last 12 Weeks” is out now. Search for it wherever you get your podcasts.

Serial Productions makes narrative podcasts that have transformed the medium. Sign up for our newsletter at nytimes.com/serialnewsletter to find out about new shows, get behind the scenes stories, and see photos and videos you can’t see on a podcast.

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"Serial" began in 2014 as a spinoff of the public radio show "This American Life." In 2017, we formed Serial Productions when we launched the podcast “S-Town.” Since then, Serial Productions has produced every season of “Serial” along with shows like “Nice White Parents,” “The Trojan Horse Affair,” “The Coldest Case in Laramie,” “The Retrievals” and more. In 2020, we joined the New York Times Company. Our shows have reached many millions of listeners and have won nearly every major journalism award for audio, including the first-ever Peabody Award given to a podcast.

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27 episodes
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S17 · E5
June 18 · 39 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 5
Days before the execution, the defense team scrambles to respond to an unexpected ruling, while the lead lawyer makes what may be his final visit to David Wood on death row. Everyone waits to find out Wood’s fate.
S17 · E4
June 18 · 30 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 4
To justify sentencing David Wood to death, prosecutors argued that he was a convicted rapist turned serial killer. And yet, Wood has insisted all along that isn’t true. We head to death row to hear him tell us why. But not before a victim of his earlier crimes has her say about the kind of person she believes he is.
S17 · E3
June 18 · 43 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 3
In the final weeks before the execution date, the defense team has to decide just how far it’s willing to push people to save David Wood’s life. The team’s deliberations lead to a key witness on his deathbed … and the mother of one of the Desert Killer’s victims.
S17 · E2
June 18 · 45 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 2
The way the state constructed the case, there’s no one big shiny piece of evidence for the defense to knock down. Instead, there are a million little threads to pull at. With less than two months until the execution, the lawyers comb through the evidence one last time, and a new witness offers unexpected revelations.
S17 · E1
June 18 · 41 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 1
In 1992, David Wood became El Paso’s most notorious convicted serial killer. He has been on death row ever since. More than 30 years later, his lawyers have just a few months to argue his innocence and stop his execution.
June 16 · 2 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Trailer
In 1992, David Wood was convicted of murdering young women and girls and burying them in the desert outside El Paso. He has been on death row ever since. “The Last 12 Weeks” takes you behind the scenes as a capital defense team races against the clock to stop an execution 30 years in the making.
S16 · E5
March 26 · 28 min
The Idiot - Chapter 5
Allen will almost certainly be released in a few years. What should M.’s family do with a guy who refuses to own up to his own crime? Can he be re-integrated into the family? Should he be? While M. has grown increasingly compassionate toward Allen, they learn their family has been moving in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, Priscilla has been trying to make a life without Allen. But Allen’s mom has other plans.
S16 · E4
March 26 · 1 hr 2 min
The Idiot - Chapter 4
Allen finally agrees to talk … and talk and talk, for 35 hours of interviews. M. wants to understand Allen on his own terms, to try and figure out how this scion of bohemian intellectuals ended up hiring someone to kill his ex. It’s hard for M. to believe everything Allen says, but over the course of their conversations, M. comes to feel for their cousin. And they think they understand what drove him to go so far.
S16 · E3
March 26 · 50 min
The Idiot - Chapter 3
M. attends Allen’s trial in San Francisco. The FBI’s star witness, an agent who went by “David," plays his undercover recordings of Allen. They reveal how Allen’s scheme to deport Priscilla turned into a murder-for-hire plot. Allen is his own star witness, but his attempts to defend himself fall flat in court. M. begins to wonder why they loved seeing Allen humiliated on the stand.
S16 · E2
March 26 · 49 min
The Idiot - Chapter 2
M. seeks out Allen’s ex-wife, Priscilla, who tells her side of the story. It begins with a whirlwind romance but quickly turns to chart Allen’s betrayal: taking her son from Russia and stranding Priscilla and her daughter in Moscow. What follows is Priscilla’s two-year odyssey, a journey that includes surviving a brutal attack and shocking arrests in Zimbabwe, only to reach the U.S. and have Allen take the boy again.
S16 · E1
March 26 · 21 min
The Idiot - Chapter 1
For decades, M. simply disliked Allen. They saw him as a fool, a pompous “international businessman” who bragged about shady deals and drove fancy cars while living in Eastern Europe and Africa. But one day Allen suddenly shows up at their father’s home in Cape Cod with his mother and 5-year-old son. He says he has separated from his wife, whom he has left behind in Moscow. M. suspects this could be a kidnapping, but their family seems to disagree. But finally Allen does something so bad, even
March 19 · 1 min
The Idiot - Trailer
The New York Times writer M. Gessen is widely known for their award-winning writing about totalitarianism, terrorism and the erosion of human rights. Now, M. is examining a more personal target: their least favorite cousin, Allen. For decades, they saw Allen as a fool, a pompous ‘international businessman’ who bragged about shady deals. But then Allen is arrested for trying to put a hit out on his ex-wife, and M. cannot wrap their head around the news. He’s just an idiot, right? Not a would-be
S15 · E1
Oct 30, 2025 · 40 min
The Preventionist - Ep. 1
The story of how this extraordinary situation in the Lehigh Valley came to light — because it almost didn’t.
Oct 16, 2025 · 3 min
The Preventionist - Trailer
In the summer of 2023, reporter Dyan Neary received a tip about a problematic doctor in Pennsylvania. Families were claiming that when they sought medical care for their children, this pediatrician falsely accused them of abuse, and their children were taken away from them. The Preventionist traces this doctor’s decades-long career across multiple states, and explores the rise of a new and powerful kind of specialist, the “child abuse pediatrician” — whose decisions can be incredibly difficult t
S14 · E4
Aug 7, 2025 · 44 min
The Retrievals S02 - Ep. 4
Sometimes you can’t wait for research to tell you what to do — you just have to go ahead and do it. We get back on L&D with Clara, Mindy and Heather.
S14 · E3
Aug 7, 2025 · 54 min
The Retrievals S02 - Ep. 3
Pain during a cesarean section isn’t a new problem. But for a long time, it’s been a hidden one. In England, a patient named Susanna not only brings the problem to doctors’ attention, but also tries to solve it.
S14 · E2
Aug 7, 2025 · 44 min
The Retrievals S02 - Ep. 2
What went wrong with Clara’s delivery? And can Heather get doctors to talk about it?
S14 · E1
Aug 7, 2025 · 47 min
The Retrievals S02 - Ep. 1
Clara is a labor and delivery nurse, so she has a pretty good idea of what to expect when she delivers her own twins at the same hospital where she works. But she wasn’t prepared for this.
Jul 10, 2025 · 4 min
The Retrievals S02 - Trailer
C-sections are the most frequently performed major surgeries in the world. So why do so many patients feel severe pain during them? Season 2 of the award-winning podcast “The Retrievals” is an investigation into this underreported problem — and the new effort to solve it. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
S13 · E1
Jan 2, 2025 · 47 min
The Good Whale - Ep. 1
When the movie “Free Willy” is released, word gets out that the star, a killer whale named Keiko, is sick and living in a tiny pool at a Mexican amusement park. An environmentalist sets out to give the fans what they want: their favorite celebrity orca back in the sea.

Showing 1–20 of 27 episodes