Introducing ‘METRO with Sarah Koenig,’ a New Podcast From Serial Productions

The New York Times and Serial Productions today announced " METRO with Sarah Koenig ," a new narrative podcast bringing listeners stories about New York City and its most fascinating raw material: New Yorkers. The first two episodes are out today and new episodes drop every other week on Thursdays, wherever you get your podcasts.

Hosted by Sarah Koenig , host and co-creator of the award-winning podcast "Serial," the show harnesses the power of The New York Times Metro desk, combining one of the best storytellers in audio with the country's best newsroom.

Every other week, "METRO" mines a city packed with personality for investigations, personal stories, essays and interviews that take the bigness of New York and make it human-scale and relevant, no matter where you live. Episodes will feature stories reported by Koenig, the Serial Productions team and the Metro desk, which includes reporters covering City Hall, transportation, housing and more.

"This show has been almost too easy to produce, because - who knew? - New Yorkers are the best talkers and storytellers. After spending more than a decade working on investigative, multi-episode series, I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to be able to just run out the door and find a great story. I'm having an unseemly amount of fun," Koenig said.

Koenig is the executive producer of Serial Productions, and one of the most recognizable voices in audio as the host and co-creator of the "Serial" podcast. She was a print reporter for a decade before joining the staff of "This American Life" in 2004 and has won numerous journalism awards for her work at both "Serial" and "This American Life."

"METRO" is executive produced by Julie Snyder, the executive editor of Serial Productions and co-creator of "Serial."

Serial Productions, a New York Times company, creates narrative podcasts whose quality and innovation transformed the medium. Serial Productions is the maker of the award-winning blockbuster podcasts "Serial" and "S-Town," with more than 743 million total downloads. In previous seasons, "Serial" investigated a murder case, told the story of the court martial of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, spent a year inside Cleveland's criminal courts and went to the Guantánamo detention camp.

In July 2020, Serial Productions became part of The New York Times Company. Together they have launched several shows, including "Nice White Parents," a chart-topping series about the powerful forces shaping public schools; "The Improvement Association," a captivating true story about election fraud; "The Trojan Horse Affair," an investigative series about the mystery behind a scandal that rocked Britain; "We Were Three," an intimate look at how Covid affected one family; "The Coldest Case in Laramie," a limited series confronting conflicting stories behind a decades-old unsolved homicide case; "The Retrievals," a textured story about the treatment of women in medical settings and "The Retrievals, Season 2," an intimate, character-driven investigation on the widespread issue of severe pain felt during C-sections; "The Kids of Rutherford County," a narrative series produced in partnership with ProPublica and WPLN Nashville Public Radio that was a winner of a 2023 George Polk award for investigative reporting in podcasting; "The Good Whale," a genre-bending tale about the most famous orca in history; "The Preventionist," a series chronicling the investigation of a problematic doctor in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley; "The Idiot," an epic story of a crime that changed one family; and "The last 12 Weeks," a five-part series produced in collaboration with The Marshall Project.

The New York Times Metro desk has become a destination for deeply reported narrative storytelling and investigations, winning the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news for its coverage of the prostitution scandal that forced the resignation of then-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. In 2025, Metro's Jan Ransom won a George Polk Award for Justice Reporting for her investigation into inmate mistreatment in New York prisons. The desk's staff was named a 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist for Breaking News Reporting on a deadly fire in the Bronx.