Ohhh! Yes!

Yeah, Shore.

I think some guy called Token wrote a novelization of the fan-edit that's supposed to be pretty decent, aside from a couple of unnecessary musical numbers.

As you wish.

So, this isn't quite a full-length commentary, but it's enough of one that it totally counts. It's also one of my most favourite episodes of any podcast I've heard, and it's been part of my Christmas tradition for the past few years.

My friends asked their listeners which Christmas movie they wanted them to review, and the winner was The Muppet Christmas Carol. And I assure you, even if you don't think you're a fan of The Muppet Christmas Carol (or even if you hate it), I have absolutely no doubt that you'll consider listening to this as an hour well-spent. Trust me

(3/4 time is better.)

But it was an in-depth analysis though, wasn't it?
Compared to the simple narrative the prosecution presented, Serial was a labyrinthine, er... labyrinth of facts and contradiction. There's something more fundamentally important about this than just "hey, here's more facts, turns out this guy did/didn't do it". It's really a character piece, where the central character is the "truth" as filtered though the legal process and the people close to the case. And it's scary and unsettling.
Doesn't the fact that you're disappointed by the ending kinda validate the whole show?

Having heard I Feel More Like A Leonard, and Insidious Communist Propaganda of Steve, I await this eagerly.

Holy crap. Good discussion, thanks! Which is great, 'cause I know there's aspects I haven't thought about it in depth.

Re: dumbing down, I know that's a concern. Dry, impenetrable articles are one extreme. The other extreme is bullshit popscience. However, I really think that most researchers are capable of writing more openly, but are limited by the tone/style-guide of journals.

I do think there's a happy middleground (or at the very least, a more accessible one). I will try and clarify this later (I am currently busy simulating evolutionary trees and species traits on those trees, so I'm pressed for time), but for now, what I'm talking about is not second-hand interpretation. There's plenty of that already.

What I meant (sorry, should have been clearer) is if a person or group of people write an article, they themselves would have the additional option of also submitting a "layman" version, which could be accessed for free.
I know it seems like a drag on researcher time (thus making it optional), but, really, given how much time they already spend on papers (there's usually about 6-months between submitting an article and getting notes back and redrafting and resubmitting and getting published), writing a layman version is a tiny fraction of that.

Quick points, in bulletpoints:
*physics (and chemistry) have a lot of math and fine, fine detail, so I think that would be super-difficult to do. I'm mainly focused on Biology, which we can express in words, and even though there's a lot of math, there's a way to express it in words without needing math, and also without losing the point or misleading anybody
*we'd need to solve the problem of where to draw the line, because obviously, the layman version should reference other papers, which would be traditionally written academic articles.
*and then there's the "turtles all the way down" problem, because of math.

I have more to say, will try to say it more clearly later.

Paulou, yes, I agree, that's a big difficulty! And I really do not want to go in that direction.

I've been batting this around the past week at the office, and people have suggested that American Scientist and Nature already do that, with their articles about new papers, condensed into 3 pages for a wider public. But I'm bothered by that in the sense that you describe, because much of that is about making it "sexy" and giving it a spin it really doesn't need (also, in my opinion, they dumb it down, despite claims to the contrary).

What I was thinking of was more along the lines of, for any given scientific journal, as well as the full paper (because, fair enough, for academics in that field, having a "standard" format, of dry passive language, probably makes it easier to repeat somebody else's experiment), there could additionally be the option of reading a "laymans" version without need for subscription (after all, a lot of research is funded by taxpayer money). I don't mean dumbing it down to pointlessness or buzzwords, or, as you quite accurately described it, "redditification", but the public should have at least the option of accessibility.

And I agree, you shouldn't expect to become an expert without time and a concerted effort, but I think there's ways to effectively communicate ideas that we can't do with the current format. Most journals have a word count, and a limit to the number of figures and tables you can use, each with their own limitations. What if this layman's version could have as many diagrams as is necessary to get the point across? Or could include embedded gifs, or videos? (a colleague presented her work on friday about predicting disease patterns, and instead of trying to explain cellular automata [it's awesome, look it up!], she had an 8-second gif that made it super-clear).
We've got all this technology and mediums available with which to present novel ideas and concepts, and we're sticking with "10,000 words max, no more than 6 figures, with a limit of up to 2 tables"?

I mean, basically, our way of presenting stuff is like the way Euclid presented his proofs, because, hey, that's the way it's always been done e.g. Pythagoras Theorem:

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I truly believe anyone can understand anything, given enough time and with the right flow of logic. I'm not talking about a shortcut, but I am talking about showing non-specialists the path, which, if they're willing to spend their time on, they can surely follow.