Serial Season 4

Guantánamo

Out now: Episodes 1 & 2    Coming April 4: Episode 3
An illustration depicting life for workers and detainees at Guantánamo
Swipe to see the full illustration by Max Guther →
Illustration by Max Guther

“Serial” returns with a history of Guantánamo told by people who lived through key moments in Guantánamo’s evolution, who know things the rest of us don’t about what it’s like to be caught inside an improvised justice system.

Published March 21, 2024

Listen to and follow Serial Season 4

  • Trailer

    Listen to the trailer for Serial Season 4: Guantánamo.

    Trailer

    Serial Season 4: Guantánamo. One prison camp, told week by week.

  • Episode 1 Illustration of an American soldier barbecuing meat and holding a beer

    “So, it felt very like college-like… Without it being… Obviously the next day wasn’t classes, it was Gitmo… ”

    Poor Baby Raul

    Episode 1 — Poor Baby Raul

    Maybe you have an idea in your head about what it was like to work at Guantánamo, one of the most notorious prisons in the world. Think again.

  • Episode 2 Illustration of a person standing on a beach in a blue uniform wearing a red head covering and sunglasses.

    “I wanted to create a persona, a thing that was not human.”

    The Special Project

    Episode 2 — The Special Project

    In 2002, an elite interrogation team secretly staged Guantánamo’s most elaborate intel operation — to try to get a single detainee to talk.

  • Episode 3 arrives April 4

About Serial Season 4

Right after Sept. 11, the United States created a brand-new criminal justice system at Guantánamo Bay. It was a prison and a court designed to deal with the people we had captured whom we suspected of being members of the Taliban or al Qaeda.

But to do what we wanted to do at Guantánamo — to interrogate detainees the way we wanted, to hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime — we had to push aside the old, time-tested rules for detaining prisoners of war. And the consequences of that fell on ordinary people: thousands of military personnel, hundreds of prisoners, everybody scrambling through the same experiment.

There has been great journalism about the legal maneuvering to justify Guantánamo, and about the detainee abuse and the politics and policy. But “Serial” reporters Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis were after the inside stories, a picture of Guantánamo you could get only from the people who went through it. For years, though, all the best stories they heard about Guantánamo were off the record. But they stuck with it, figuring maybe once enough people were back in civilian life they’d be willing to tell those stories on the record. A couple of years ago, the “Serial” team started contacting people again: guards, interrogators, commanders, lawyers, chaplains, translators and former prisoners. More than a hundred people. And a remarkable number of them said: Okay, I’m ready. Here’s what happened.

“Serial” Season 4 is a history of Guantánamo told by people who lived through key moments in its evolution, who know things the rest of us don’t about what it’s like to be caught inside an improvised justice system.

  • headshot Sarah Koenig is the host and co-creator of the “Serial” podcast. The first story she produced about Guantánamo, “Habeas Schmabeas,” aired on “This American Life” in 2006. (Photograph by Sandy Honig)
  • headshot Dana Chivvis is the co-host of “Serial” Season 4. She’s also a producer at “Serial” and “This American Life,” where she has reported on everything from monkey selfies to the military. (Photograph by Nico Schinco)
  • Sofia degli Alessandri is an Italian composer based in London. Her music combines field recordings, synths, chamber instruments and electronic beats. She composes for film, television, dance and other media.
  • Hosts
    Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis
    Producer
    Jessica Weisberg
    Editor
    Julie Snyder
    Additional Reporting
    Cora Currier
    Fact Checking and Research
    Ben Phelan
    Additional Fact Checking
    Jessica Suriano
    Music supervision, sound design, and mixing
    Phoebe Wang
    Original score
    Sofia degli Alessandri
    Additional Editing
    David Kestenbaum, Jen Guerra, Alvin Melathe, Ellen Weiss and Ira Glass
    Contributing Editors
    Rozina Ali and Carol Rosenberg
    Assistant Producer
    Emma Grillo
    Translators and Interpreters
    Raza Sayibzada, Nael Hijjo, Atiq Rahin, Dana El-Issa, Bachar Alhalabi, and Omama Osman
    Art Direction
    Pablo Delcan
    Art
    Max Guther
    Standards Editor
    Susan Wessling
    Legal Review
    Al-Amyn Sumar and Maya Gandhi
    Reporting and Research
    Amir Khafagy and Sami Yousafazai
    Additional Production
    Daniel Guillemette and Katie Mingle
    Executive Assistant
    Mack Miller
    Supervising Producer
    Ndeye Thioubou
    Deputy Managing Editor
    Sam Dolnick
  • At the New York Times, thanks to
    Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Nina Lassam, Susan Beachy, Kitty Bennett, Alain Delaquérière, Sheelagh McNeill, Kirsten Noyes, Jack Begg, Jeffrey Miranda, Colleen Wormsley, Peter Rentz, John-Michael Murphy, Jordan Cohen, Zoe Murphy, Pierre-Antoine Louis, Mahima Chablani, Kelly Doe, Anisha Muni, Kimmy Tsai, Victoria Kim, Ashka Gami, Brad Fisher, Maddy Masiello, Daniel Powell, Marion Lozano, Tug Wilson and Aisha Khan
  • Special thanks
    Katie Mingle, Jenelle Pifer, Alissa Shipp, Nadia Reiman, Anita Badejo, Katie Fuchs, Alison Beckman at the Center for Victims of Torture, Clive Stafford Smith, Alisa Dogramadzieva, Shuaib Almosawa, Mohamed Elfaki, Freshta Taeb, Edgar August, Esther Whitfield, Lauren Myerscough-Mueller, Mark Fallon, Pardiss Kebriaei, Steve Vladeck, Charlie Savage, Michelle Shephard, Bastian Berbner, John Goetz, Sarah Mirk and everyone involved in “Guantánamo Voices,” Peter Jan Honigsberg, Tim Golden, John Ryan, Stuart Couch, Shayana Kadidal, Ray Rivera, Steven Kleinman, Steve Wood and Lee Riffaterre
serial

Serial is a podcast from the creators of This American Life, hosted by Sarah Koenig. Serial tells one story — a true story — over the course of a season.

  1. Season 1

    A high-school senior named Hae Min Lee disappeared one day after school in 1999, in Baltimore County, Maryland. A month later, her body was found in a city park. She'd been strangled. Her 17-year-old ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, was arrested for the crime, and within a year, he was sentenced to life in prison.

  2. Season 2

    In May 2014, a U.S. Special Operations team in a Black Hawk helicopter landed in the hills of Afghanistan. Waiting for them were more than a dozen Taliban fighters and a tall American, who looked pale and out of sorts: Bowe Bergdahl. Bergdahl, a U.S. soldier, had been a prisoner of the Taliban for nearly five years, and now he was going home. Learn more

  3. Season 3

    “Serial” is heading back to court. This time, in Cleveland. Not for one extraordinary case; instead, Serial wanted to tackle the whole criminal justice system. To do that we figured we’d need to look at something different: ordinary cases. So we did. Inside these ordinary cases we found the troubling machinery of the criminal justice system on full display. Learn more

serial productions

Serial Productions makes narrative podcasts that have transformed the medium. From the powerful forces shaping our public schools to a mystery at the heart of a scandal that rocked Britain, Serial expands the boundaries of audio investigative storytelling. Learn more

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