The Alex Krieger ’95 Memorial Lecture hosts Sarah Koenig, journalist, producer, and award-winning host and co-creator of the podcast Serial. Adjunct professor Paulina Bren will engage in an on-stage conversation with Koenig, asking questions about her journalism career, her acclaimed podcast, Serial, and insights about making a true crime podcast.

Sarah Koenig is the host and co-creator of the award-winning podcast Serial, which recently completed its fourth season. Launched in 2014, Serial is credited with bringing mainstream attention to podcasting. Episode downloads of the show number in the hundreds of millions, making Serial the most listened-to podcast in the history of the form. Among other honors, Serial won the 2014 Peabody Award, the first time the award was given to a podcast. In 2015, Koenig was named one of Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.”

Koenig began her career as a newspaper reporter—her first reporting job was at her weekly hometown paper. She lived in Moscow, Russia for several years, where she worked for The New York Times, and once she returned, went to work for the Concord Monitor in New Hampshire. She did stints as a crime reporter and then as a political reporter—the same beats she’d go on to cover at the Baltimore Sun.

In 2004, Sarah Koenig became a producer at the radio show This American Life. She has guest-hosted This American Life several times, most memorably for the “No Coincidence, No Story” show; she has also produced and reported some of the show’s most popular episodes, including “Switched at Birth,” “Dr. Gilmer and Mr. Hyde,” and “Habeas Schmabeas,” a Peabody Award-winning show about Guantanamo Bay.

In 2015, Koenig and Julie Snyder formed Serial Productions, which has released many critically acclaimed podcasts, including S-Town, Nice White Parents, and The Retrievals. Serial Productions was bought by the New York Times Co. in 2020.

This event is open to the public.