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The New York Times and Serial Productions have jointly announced the launch of “The Trojan Horse Affair,” a limited podcast series hosted by Brian Reed, known for the hit series “S-Town,” and Hamza Syed, a doctor-turned-reporter. Together they investigate a mystery at the heart of a scandal that rocked Britain.
When a strange letter kicked off a national panic in Britain, Hamza Syed was skeptical. The letter appeared to be a secret communique between Islamic extremists who’d been infiltrating the city schools in Birmingham - Hamza’s hometown - in a supposed plot called Operation Trojan Horse. The letter led to a crackdown on Muslim educators and harsh new British counterterrorism measures.
But Hamza suspected the public had been misled and the only way to prove it was to answer the one question that, remarkably, no official or investigator had bothered to look into: Who wrote the Trojan Horse letter — and why? When Hamza decided to go back to school for investigative journalism, he pitched this as his first story. To report it, he teamed up with Brian Reed and the creators of “Serial.”
Together, Hamza and Brian discover that who wrote the Trojan Horse letter was really only the first mystery to solve, as it started to seem like officials knew more than they were letting on. Had an entire country been duped?
Check out the trailer HERE. All episodes of this eight-part series will be available on Thursday, February 3.