Serial’s Sarah Koenig on how to do great audio storytelling

When people talk about the podcast boom, one name always comes up: Sarah Koenig. As the co-creator and host of Serial, she showed that podcasts could be narrative, suspenseful, and binge-worthy. She was the inspiration for many. The first season, released in 2014, broke download records, won a Peabody, and pushed podcasting into the mainstream.

Sarah, 46, started her career as a print reporter before moving into radio, eventually joining This American Life, where she sharpened the storytelling skills that defined her later work. 

Today, she’s still one of the most influential voices in audio. Her approach—honesty with sources, curiosity, and a great ear for good tape—continues to inspire podcasters worldwide. She shared with the PodCircle a few principles that guide her work and the challenges she wrestles with in a changing audio landscape.

DW Akademie: Many of the people in our community are relatively new to podcasting. Those interested in narrative audio often ask: "where do I start," or "how do I know what a good story is?" Can you share a few principles or approaches you’ve adopted in thinking about and building a compelling audio story?

Sarah Koenig: I think a surefire way to start is with your own curiosity. Those are always the best stories, I think—when you can really hear and feel the reporter or narrator having moments of discovery or joy or just working something out. Maybe coming to a new idea or solving a problem that’s bugged them. (The negative version of this answer would be: Don't make a story you don’t actually have any questions about.) 

Generally, the best way to make a compelling audio story is to have good tape. Maybe it seems silly to spell that out, but I think we’ve probably all heard audio stories with mediocre or even bad tape – and…oof. You want to tape that makes you sit up and pay attention, that conveys a person’s personality. You want tape where something’s happening, in real time. I don’t mean a big flashy scene, necessarily. But at least tape where there’s some kind of exchange or build-up of emotion or ideas. You’re going to end up building your audio story around these moments or surprise or revelation. 

A good thing to do after you've reported in the field or taped an interview: Tell someone about it, just in a casual, dinner-party way. What details did you include? What was the thing you couldn't wait to tell the other person? How’d you build up to that moment? What context did you need to explain, for the other person to "get it"? If you got the response you wanted from your audience of one…you've just created an outline for your audio story.  

You have a reputation for getting people to speak openly and vulnerably on mic. How do you build that trust and honesty, especially with people who may be hesitant, nervous or even scared about speaking out?

I don’t always succeed at getting people to talk—much less openly. But to the extent I have a method, I'd say what tends to work for me is relentless honesty on my part. When I approach someone for an interview, or during interviews, I’m honest about what my interest is in their story—why I’m coming to them—and where they fit into the larger project I'm doing. I don’t pretend I know more than I do. I ask people to explain when I don't understand. I acknowledge when a question I ask might be dumb or inadvertently offend. I recognize when the other person seems upset or irritated. I let people go off the record if they need to (and I make sure we’re both clear about what’s on and off the record).

Treating the interview as a "conversation" is key. Think of it as an exchange of information and feelings and ideas—not as a list of questions to tick through. If you’re surprised in the interview, say so! If the other person is surprised by a question you ask, ask them why they’re surprised! All the things you’d do in a normal conversation. I find that an interview becomes animated (i.e., good) in direct proportion to how honest I am and how closely I listen.

Assuming it’s not an "accountability" interview (i.e., a regular person, not a public official or someone answering on behalf of a larger system or organization), I also make it clear that I don’t want to force them into talking about something they don’t want to talk about. That’d be a bad interview anyway. So often, I’ll give them my pitch for why I’d like to talk to them and then let them think about it. I tell them I don’t want them to feel pressured; that if they have any questions in the meantime, I’m happy to answer them, etc. I’m very golden rule that way. If they seem worried, I will ask them what’s worrying them – because often it’s something I can solve, or at least I can work out a solution that makes them comfortable. 

In this era of short-form content, how do you see the future of longer-form, narrative-driven audio? Are there strategies (or even a need) for adapting or reaching new audiences without compromising what makes it special?

I’m not good at this question, I’m afraid. We probably do need new strategies for reaching new audiences, but I don’t know of good ones so far. And I don’t have a good sense of what the future is for long-form audio. I operate as if there’ll always be a hunger for good stories, whatever their length. (I often think longform stories are... too long. My own stories top that list.) So I’m not against making shorter audio stories, by any means. I think the trick to making audio stories uncompromisingly special is to keep experimenting with form and structure, so that they don't feel formulaic. Sometimes you find that you can do that in one episode just as well as you can in, say, six or ten episodes. But yeah – overall, I don’t have a good answer to this question.