Serial season 2: Podcast returns and premieres new story

The first episode is titled 'Dustwun'

Serial was the soundtrack to many of our icy walks last winter, a suitably chilling story about a Baltimore teenager being potentially wrongly-implicated for the murder of his ex-girlfriend.

The Peabody-winning This American Life spin-off returned this morning, with a new serialised case revolving around former POW and accused deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, again poured over by Sarah Koenig.

The first episode, titled ‘Dustwun’ (a military acronym for “duty status - whereabouts unknown"), is available now, though the Serial Podcast website seems to have crashed under the strain of listeners (Update: it seems to be back up, download the first ep here).

It is available through Pandora and other podcatchers however.

(Pic: U.S. Army)

Bergdahl was held captive by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in Afghanistan from June 2009 until May 2014, when he was released as part of a prisoner exchange for five Taliban members who were being held at Guantanamo Bay.

The matter became the subject of media scrutiny, with the US Army having charged Bergdahl with one count of desertion and one count of misbehavior before the enemy.

The attention Serial brought to last season’s case (Adnan Syed’s conviction for killing Hae Min Lee) eventually led to the case being reopened.

The directors of The Lego Movie are now working on a TV series based around the podcast.