A closer look
If a podcast starts with an out-of-context audio clip of someone sighing heavily before saying, 'I just don't know who to trust anymore,' you can blame Sarah Koenig. The smash-hit podcast 'Serial' cemented the true-crime cold open convention: aggressively withholding context to hook the listener's dopamine receptors before the theme music even drops. It’s a cheap but wildly effective narrative parlor trick that forces you to sit through a five-minute mattress ad just to find out why Susan was crying in a parking lot.
