The Trojan Horse Affair

In 2014, a letter emerged detailing an elaborate plot by Islamic extremists to infiltrate schools in Birmingham, England.  It became known as The Trojan Horse Affair. When journalism student Hamza Syed met podcaster Brian Reed, he told him about the scandal and the unexplored question of the author’s true motives.  They teamed up to investigate where the ham-fisted letter came from in the first place - and if there was no extremist plot, what was the writer actually hoping to achieve? From Serial Productions and The New York Times comes “The Trojan Horse Affair.” We follow Hamza and Brian’s frustrating journey to explore whether the letter was more about a labor dispute than an extremist conspiracy - and would proving its mundane origins upend the official narrative used as a pretext for a lasting, hardline government response?