We already knew that Adnan Syed’s family listens to “Serial,†and now, thanks to a long interview in The Guardian, we know how they feel about the podcast that made millions of people obsessed with Baltimore-area cell towers. On the whole, they’re pretty pleased with it. “Sarah [Koenig] is so thorough and clean,†Adnan’s brother Yusuf tells the British paper. “She’s doing a better job investigating than the police did.†The family split apart after Adnan’s conviction, with older brother Tanveer cutting all ties and Adnan’s father sinking into a deep depression. Now, they say, the podcast is helping them connect again. Tanveer has even started visiting. “When he heard my brother’s voice,†Yusuf says, “it brought back all the memories.â€
As the Syeds tell it, Adnan doesn’t quite understand how popular the podcast is — he gets transcripts, they say, but something gets lost on paper. Yusuf himself follows the rampant speculation around Adnan’s case on Reddit, even though he thinks it’s “toxic†at times: “People flip-flop back and forth — that’s understandable. But there’s this group of people on Reddit who are 100% ‘Adnan did it.’†The podcast will end in a few weeks, but those “Serial†obsessives will likely continue to follow Adnan’s real-world court case, which will have a fateful hearing in January.