“It’s Baltimore, 1999. Hae Min Lee, a popular high-school senior, disappears after school one day. Six weeks later detectives arrest her classmate and ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, for her murder.”

Sounds the plot of the next 2015 blockbuster hit? Nope. Those are the opening lines of the first episode in the popular NPR podcast Serial. 2014 saw the rapid growth of podcast popularity as millennials became more interested in programs like Serial and This American Life. NPR has noticed exponential growth since it released its first series of podcasts in 2005. A large portion of the success the station has experienced can be attributed to the participation of smartphone users. Eric Nuzum, NPR’s vice president for programming, believes that 2015 will be the year of the podcast starting with the release of the new hit Invisibilia to be released on Jan. 9th.  Nuzum predicts that it will be millennial smartphone users leading the charge.

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