New Season of Serial 2

‘Serial’ Season 2 Focuses on Bowe Bergdahl’s Story - Twenty minutes after Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl walked away from his remote Army outpost in Afghanistan in the middle of a summer night, carrying little more than vacuum-packed chicken, knives, water and a compass, he began to realize just how dire his predicament was.

“I’m going, ‘Good grief, I’m in over my head,’ ” Sergant Bergdahl said.

“Suddenly, it really starts to sink in that I really did something bad,” he continued. “Or, not bad, but I really did something serious.”

Sergeant Bergdahl recounted his experience publicly for the first time in the premiere episode of the second season of the podcast “Serial,” which was released at 6 a.m. Thursday. In interviews with the screenwriter Mark Boal, he explained in his own words why he had left his base in June 2009, an action that prompted a manhunt involving thousands of troops and led him to spend nearly five years in brutal captivity under the Taliban.

His odyssey ended in May 2014, when the Obama administration swapped him for five Taliban detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a deal that was heavily criticized by Republicans.