Nearly a decade ago, reporters Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivvis set out to tell a different kind of story about Guantánamo Bay, the prison and court created by the US shortly after 9/11, intended to detain people US forces had captured and suspected of being members of the Taliban or al-Qaida. In 2015, when Barack Obama was approaching his final year in office and pushing to close the Cuban detention facility, they started their reporting, traveling to Guantánamo themselves and interviewing people associated with the the prison camp. But no one would say anything compelling on the record. “We’d get these super-stiff interviews on tape, and then they would be like, ‘Can you turn that off for a second?’ Or, ‘Can you just pause for a second?’ And then they would tell you the real thing that was going on,” said Koenig.

They eventually killed the story.

But Koenig and Chivvis were determined to tell an inside account of Guantánamo Bay in some capacity, and even turned to fiction—writing a TV pilot about a version of the story based on what they’d learned in their reporting. “In 2019, we called up all these people, and we were just like, ‘Look, can you just tell us this stuff off the record? We’re going to fictionalize it all.’ And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got great stories to tell you,’” said Chivvis. A few years later, by which time they’d basically dropped the TV idea, they decided to reach back out to these people—more than 100 of them, including guards, interrogators, lawyers, translators, and former prisoners—to see if they’d move their stories on the record. “We were like, maybe now people will be ready. And a lot of people were like, ‘No, absolutely not. You’re out of your mind,’” said Koenig. “But enough people were like, ‘Okay.’”

The fourth season of Serial brings their years of reporting to fruition, an assemblage of personal stories providing an inside look at the prison camp. The new installment (the first two episodes of which are out Thursday) comes as the show nears its 10th anniversary. The series—whose first season raised questions about the case of Adnan Syed, who was serving a life sentence for the 1999 murder of his high school classmate Hae Min Lee—is remembered by many as the first podcast they listened to, and the impact of its debut season continues to reverberate. In September 2022, Syed, who had maintained his innocence, was freed from prison after a judge vacated his conviction. (However, a Maryland appeals court reinstated Syed’s conviction in March 2023; the Maryland Supreme Court is now reviewing the appellate court panel’s decision.)

In an interview with Vanity Fair, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, Koenig and Chivvis talk about their yearslong quest to do a series on Guantánamo, the challenges of recounting a recent history that is still unfolding, and the evolution of Serial as a show.

Vanity Fair: Tell me how you decided to pick this project back up. A lot of the stuff you were able to put on the record for this show, you initially got on background for the TV pilot you were writing about a fictionalized Guantánamo.

Dana Chivvis: I think it was October of 2021. Sarah called me up, and I was actually—to show you the depths of our obsession—at the time, I was producing a story about Guantánamo for This American Life. And she called me up and was like, “Do you want to try this again?” And I remember one of the first things we did that Julie [Snyder], our editor, asked us to do was, Can you call some of those people back you talked to for the TV pilot and just see if they’ll go on the record?

Well, I was going to ask you what prompted you to reach back out to people. It seemed like you just wanted to try it again, but I’m wondering what you think changed for them.

Chivvis: In a lot of instances, they had retired from the military, and so they felt more free to talk. And then I also think a lot of it was just distance from Guantánamo itself. Would you agree with me, Sarah? I would say the number one thing is that people in the military really can’t talk openly with reporters while they’re in the military.

Sarah Koenig: Not if they want to keep their career.

And can you talk about the process of reporting this? I know you took multiple trips down there. Were those spread out over a span of years? Did the story evolve, or did you know right away, as soon as you got there, what story you wanted to tell?

Koenig: So we went in 2015 for the tour of the prison complex—which you can’t do anymore; no reporters are allowed in there anymore. [As of last year, media access to anything besides the court is reportedly restricted and described as a “courtesy.”] And then we went back together in 2022 to watch what they call the military commissions, which is the court at Guantánamo. There are still some prosecutions going on there. So we went down to watch that, which is the only way reporters can go down now. And then I went again in 2023, last fall, again for the commissions, to watch a different case.

This was a very challenging podcast story to structure. And I feel like I almost didn’t understand this when we started—I don’t know if this happens to you as a reporter, but I’m always like, Oh, that’s what I’m doing, I had no idea what I was doing. So when we did season three, which was set in a felony courthouse in Cleveland, Ohio, it was sort of an investigation of how criminal justice works in a really average way in the United States of America. Let’s just spend a year, year and a half, inside this courthouse and just watch what happens. And so it was a system explained through personal stories in the most basic way. And I didn’t really get that that’s what we were doing with Guantánamo as well.

This one is more of a very loose history. We were just going for, like, Oh, this period seems really interesting, or I know during this year all these horrible events happened—let’s see if we can tell some stories, like who participated in those, who would’ve been made the decision-makers, who would’ve been affected by it or thoughtful about it. And just went in on those eras and then found the stories in there. We realized we actually turned out to have a rough chronology, but it’s just the history of it through the people who were struggling and scrapping through it in real time. And that’s what we were most interested in and most drawn to. So we didn’t figure that out until, I don’t know, seven months ago, Dana? Six months ago? I mean, we’ve been reporting this for a couple of years. So I think it just took us a while. We were like, Let’s just look at these areas, and then we’ll see what we have.

Chivvis: The trouble with it is there’s just so much stimulus to respond to as a reporter being there. You’re just like, That’s a story, and that’s a story, and that’s a story. I feel like my dog in the park…. It was almost like too many threads to pull. And a lot of them just ended up sort of being an interesting fact or an interesting anecdote, but not a full story. And so it was a lot of time just collecting all that stuff and then culling through it and being like, Okay, here’s the story. As Sarah said, the stories we ended up with line up nicely into a chronology of the place. And so I think we’re reticent to be like, “It’s a history of Guantánamo,” because who the fuck wants to see that? But it turns out that if you listen to it that way, it does give you that, but through these personal stories on the ground.

Koenig: I will say that I realize I wasn’t totally answering your question…When we went back down in 2022, it was like, well, we haven’t been there in seven years. We should go check it out. So it was a looser thing. One of the episodes turns out to be mostly based on what happened during that trip. And then the third time I went was very specifically for a story [in the series] I was already working on…By then, we knew what we were doing.

And it seems like you sort of watched the place change in real time, through reporting trips, in the same way that some of the characters talk about the way it changed.

Koenig: Yeah, I mean, you do see it. The thing is, when you are there as a reporter, and especially now…you’re very corralled, you’re very controlled, you’re very supervised. You don’t have a great view of it—of the bigger picture—because they keep you so reined in. So you get a certain view, but the real reporting is back here, really, for us. And then Dana went and did most of the reporting with people who had been in prison there…You’re like, “Well, you were at Guantánamo for four years, and surely you knew what was going on.” And they’re all like, “I didn’t understand it until I left. Because I couldn’t see.”

Well, to your point about listening to it as a kind of history of Guantánamo, it feels like in recent years, there’s been sort of a slew of podcasts about more contemporary history. There was Slow Burn on Whitewater and the road to Iraq, and The Atlantic’s series on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. It seems like there’s a whole generation of people who don’t know anything about the recent history of Guantánamo. I’m wondering if that has anything to do with your interest in telling this story.

Chivvis: One of the interesting writing and editing challenges we had with this was figuring out how much explaining we had to do. Obviously, there’s been a ton of reporting on Guantánamo over the years. There are a bunch of people who know a lot about it, but most people know nothing about Guantánamo and know very little about even the history that led to Guantánamo. So there’s this range that we’ve struggled with. Do we need to explain who the Taliban is, or can we just mention the Taliban and move on? And it’s a real question because our audience, I think, covers that range.

Koenig: We didn’t go in thinking, Guantánamo is important, and we need to explain it to the American people. That wasn’t our motivation. Our motivation was that this place is crazy and nobody knows about it, and so few people have been there because it’s impossible to get to and it’s so far away. And so, like all of our shows, if you’re working on something for this long, you have to actually personally find it interesting. So I think it definitely came from there.

But yes, another reason we’re interested is because it’s still there…We don’t really talk about this as a country anymore, and we have never had any truth and reconciliation. Not that our podcast is going to make that happen, but I’m just saying it does feel like this thing where everyone was like, Oh, that thing that’s over. We don’t talk about that…It is just such an important, crazy aberration in our history.

Chivvis: And it is crazy because we’ve been talking about it as a history, but it’s not a history yet, right? Because it’s still open. It’s a recent history, but you can go visit it, sort of. Theoretically, one could go visit it and see that it’s still open. There are still prisoners there. It’s a present-day thing.

Serial started by covering basically one murder case, and now it feels like over the multiple seasons—you mentioned the one in the Cleveland courtroom—it has taken on different, broader stories. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about Serial’s evolution and whether you feel like you could do a season-one-type thing now, in this landscape?

Koenig: I think after season one, we were so shocked by the response to it that we were genuinely spooked. Like, I don’t want to do another thing like this, definitely not now, and maybe not ever. Just because I know we were feeling so much angst about the attention we had brought to bear on these individual people who were part of that story. So I do think after season one, moving into season two, that was kind of deliberate, like, Let’s pull back a little and do a larger-scale thing. And even though the second one was about a particular case of Bowe Bergdahl, it was more about the war in Afghanistan, I think.

I’ll say now I’m just not as interested. I’m interested in judgment. I’m interested in how we judge each other individually and as a group. I’m not that interested in crime, in fact. And so I’m just drawn more to stories that are about the bigger systemic things and finding the individual and emotional stories inside of that as a way to understand those systems that I am interested in…I mean, I would never say never—maybe there’s an amazing case that I would go in on. And I do like reporting those kinds of stories, but I find myself less interested in listening to those kinds of stories.

Chivvis: I think there would have to be a reason to do it beyond the mystery of it, right? There would have to be some other interest in it.

Season one has been very much in the news, with the vacation of the conviction and then Adnan potentially getting sent back to prison. I don’t know if you initially set out to have an impact on that case, and this season is obviously very different, but what was the goal of doing a series on Guantánamo? Is it more like a passion project for you? Maybe you’re not making this to get it shut down, but are you hoping to redraw public attention to it?

Koenig: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I mean, passion project sounds embarrassing, and it sounds like, I don’t know.

Chivvis: Like we’re little weirdos.

Koenig: Yeah, I cringe a little at that description. I will say we are fascinated by the topic. Look, I just feel like the thing that I like about my job is I get to try to make people outraged about the stuff I’m outraged about. And I know that sounds bad—you’re not supposed to say that—but you get to be like, “Look! Look at this thing! Come on, people! What are we doing?” I just feel like that’s kind of all of my stories. I’m like, Shouldn’t we be talking about this? Let’s talk about this.

Chivvis: I do think it’s important to understand the consequences of your country doing something like this. And Guantánamo is because of the events of 9/11, the events that led up to 9/11, and how we responded in the aftermath. So it’s not just like this one prison in Cuba. And I think it’s important, certainly in a civic way, to understand those decisions that your leaders make.

But with Guantánamo, if you pay attention at all, you probably are reading headlines about it, and the discussion of it really takes place in more of a Washington and policy perspective kind of a way. But the place is so freaking weird. So then, when you talk to the people on the ground there, their stories are weird and interesting and devastating, and it’s rare that you engage with that particular place on an individual level like that.