When journalist Hamza Syed had a chance encounter with S-Town producer Brian Reed the night before he began journalism school, he urgently told Reed about his first story idea–which would soon become the basis of The Trojan Horse Affair. From The New York Times and Serial Productions, The Trojan Horse Affair investigates the origins of a mysterious letter sent to a councilor in Birmingham, England, describing an elaborate plan for Islamic extremists to infiltrate the Birmingham school system. City officials immediately scrambled to figure out how they could eliminate this threat, but, years later, Syed and Reed set out to ask the question that arguably should have come first: Who actually wrote the letter?—E.C.