In the middle of the night, Pfc Bowe Bergdahl grabs a notebook, snacks, water, some cash.
Then he quietly slips off a remote US Army outpost in eastern Afghanistan and into the dark, open desert. About 20 minutes later, it occurs to him: he’s in over his head.
And so it begins.
Season two of the podcast that changed absolutely everything has landed – and you can now listen to the first episode here.
It tells the story of Bowe Bergdahl, a US soldier who was held captive by the Taliban for five years while serving in Afghanistan, but whose triumphant release quickly turned sour when he was accused of desertion. He's since been charged by the US military, and is facing the prospect of a life sentence – but has stayed silent about what happened on the night he was kidnapped.
Until now.
According to producer Sarah Koenig:
This story—it spins out in so many unexpected directions. Because, yes, it’s about Bowe Bergdahl and about one strange decision he made, to leave his post. (And Bergdahl, by the way, is such an interesting and unusual guy, not like anyone I’ve encountered before.)
But it’s also about all of the people affected by that decision, and the choices they made. Unlike our story in Season One, this one extends far out into the world. It reaches into swaths of the military, the peace talks to end the war, attempts to rescue other hostages, our Guantanamo policy.
What Bergdahl did made me wrestle with things I’d thought I more or less understood, but really didn’t: what it means to be loyal, to be resilient, to be used, to be punished.
We'll leave the rest of the storytelling to Koenig and her team – the team who brought us the incredible story of Adnan Syed and the murder of Hae Min Lee, and whose reporting has led to the case being re-examined by Maryland authorities.
Hi again https://t.co/Z6ywel9wqV pic.twitter.com/wGOrsqFTQO
— Serial (@serial) December 10, 2015
If you haven't listened to season one, it's well worth a spin – but for those of us who experienced severe withdrawals when that wrapped up last year, today is a happy day.
Welcome back you guyyyys.
