this is bbc news, the headlines. ukraine says at least 50 people are dead and dozens of others have been wounded after rockets hit a train station in the city of kramatorsk in eastern ukraine. russia has denied any involvement in the strike. the uk chancellor rishi sunak�*s wife, akshata murty, volunteers to pay uk taxes on her overseas income, following questions over her non—domicile status. the hollywood actor will smith has been banned from all academy events or programmes for 10 years after he slapped chris rock. the academy said the 94th oscars had been "overshadowed by unacceptable and harmful behaviour. " judge ketanji brown jackson has been celebrating her historic confirmation as the first black woman to serve on the u.s. supreme court. in a speech at the white house,

she said "anything is possible" in america. at ten o'clock reeta chakrabarti will be here with a full round—up of the days news. first, the media show. hello. have you listened to a podcast series recently or tuned in to radio four to a series like intrigue tunnel 29 or this coming storm in so many ways, they owe a huge debt to our guests today? ira glass is the man behind the long running this american life, the firstjournalism podcast to win a pulitzer prize. he also launched serial, the series that went viral in 2014, kicking off a huge demand for long form narrativejournalism. glass sold serial productions to the new york times recently, reportedly for $25 million. and as we debate the role of media

in our divided world, where does a programme like this american life fit in? ira glass, welcome to the media show. we're delighted to have you for those be here. great to have you. for those people who've never listened to this american life, just describe it. what is the present premise? the premise is it's stories. it's stories like it's it's it's true stories where people come on and tell true stories. sometimes the stories are small and personal. sometimes they're big journalistic things like will go on the border and tried to document what's happening, you know, with with immigration policy. but when we do it, like basically what we do is we zoom in on like individual people and tell what hopefully are surprising narratives where like, the thing that makes the show different is that it's is that it's really traditional storytelling where like a plot kicks in at the beginning from the very beginning and hopefully pulls you in and you want to find out what's going to happen to the people. and we choose very surprising kind

of often very funny stuff, depending on the week. this week on this american life, we replay one of the most popular stories that we've ever put on the air about a brother and sister who want to escape a fantastically overprotective mum, and to do that, they invent an entire family. the mccrory�*s who they say they're baby—sitting for. the mum didn't get suspicious. that's this week, and you're the main host. you do most of the interviews, all the interviews, you introduce other reporters. sometimes i do probably a fourth of the stories on the show, so a lot of it is other people for sure. and give us, you know, for people who don't know much about it, can't believe there are people out there who don't because it is such a big deal. but, you know, give us some facts and figures. how long has it been going? what's the size of its audience, that sort of thing. we've been on the air since 1995, and so and we started as a show on the american version of the bbc,

npr and we're on all the public radio stations in the united states and our weekly audiences, about five million people, about half of that over the radio in the united states and canada and australia. and then half of that is a little more than half of it is people listening, downloading the podcast to the show. so there is an appetite outside the us because obviously you are quite us focused. it's called this american life for a reason. yes, but you know, there are people who tune in. lots of people are there who want to know about what's going on in the states. yeah, yeah, and we do stories outside the us like honestly, when we when we started the show, like we didn't anticipate that we would ever be distributed outside of the united states. if we had, we might have given it a different name. we do stories from all over. so, so yeah. and you mentioned npr national public radio, which you've basically spent your entire career in what role? just for background, for people listening here. what role does npr play in the us consciousness? you know, it's public radio, but it's very different to the public perception, for example, of the bbc in the uk. yeah, like the bbc is like a is a revered

national institution, right? and npr is not like that. npr only began as a national institution in the 1970s. and so and it's much smaller, much scrappier, much less well funded and and basically grew up as a as a network of individual 1100 individual stations across the country that kind of banded together and started producing national shows. because how is it funded? it's obviously not like the bbc, it's not the licence fee, as we have at the moment here. no, like like all the stations and all the shows have to raise money on their own. and so there's a small amount of money that comes from the federal government, but i think it's less than three or 5% of the total budget of the stations. i have to say, like, i've always been jealous of the british model and canadian model and australian model where there's like strong public broadcasting, idealistic and state funded. but there are advantages to our system, and one of them is that anybody can start a show like when i wanted to start a show, there was nobody. i didn't have to get permission from anybody like there was no bbc

board or something. there's no npr like anything, just anybody at a public radio station. we did the show out of the chicago public radio station and we got together, i don't know a couple of hundred thousand dollars in grant money and hired a staff and basicallyjust started making a weekly show. and then we would send out cassettes to stations and try to talk them into picking us up. and each station you had, like, you know, if we could talk them into picking us up, we would be on the air there and if they would pick us up, i remember in the early days our promotion was if they picked us up, we sent the programme director a snickers bar and bribery of sorts. 0nce only once he'd done the deal. exactly. well, let's unpick the appeal of this american life, you know, go. let's go back to the very first episode, as you said from 1995, when it wasn't actually called this american life, i think it was called your radio playhouse. from wbez in the glorious city of chicago, illinois, naming this show is your radio playhouse. i'm your emcee.

ira glass. what were you setting out to do back then? i mean, what i wanted was a show that would be like first and foremost, we thought of it as an entertainment, but we also thought it would be it would bejournalism, but it would be unashamedly out for fun. but it is in an unembarrassed way. we wanted it to be something that would like. kind of. i don't know, just grab you at the beginning and just like be out to entertain and entertain in the biggest way where we want to just be both like funny and you'd get caught up in like people and feelings and and and ideas, you know? and so i mean, there were people who were saying, journalism shouldn't be fun, it shouldn't be entertainment. were you being criticised at that point? we weren't. nobody noticed. nobody noticed at that point. no. and honestly, that's never been. it hasn't been a criticism. like, like nobody�*s said like, oh, the problem with this is that it's entertaining, like and you know, and at this point, like, you know,

like we, you know, we do as much investigative journalism as anybody and spend months on stories and break stories and things like that. but even those stories, we really do try to adhere to the feeling of like we we want to pull people in. and i feel like there are all kinds of topics where you almost have to trick people into listening. like i remember, i remember like years ago when when there was the flood of refugees into into europe and into greece, from syria and elsewhere, like we wanted to come over, we went we went over to greece and wanted to just document like how this poor country was dealing with this with this influx of refugees. and we were very aware that nobody in america or europe, like if you if you were to start a show by saying like, 0k, the refugee situation in greece, like, nobody�*s like, yes, i really want to hear that. and we had meetings before we came over to talk about like, what could we possibly open the show with that would make you want to hear this show? i remember i was in a camp

in greece, and everybody was showing me pictures on their phones of these wild boars that would come into the camp at night and you'd want to take your kid to pee. and like, there would be these huge wild boars would come in from the woods to like, roam the camps. and these are people who like, came from aleppo, like their homes were destroyed, right? like their people had died, you know, and they made this treacherous crossing over the water like they'd risked their lives to get there. and then they get there and like, everything's ok, it's all calm. they're being attacked by wild pigs. and somebody had set up like a makeshift trap in the woods out of a dumpster that had turned upside down in a rope and like. and it wasjust like, you know, it was just like both very sad and very funny. and also, everybody was very excited. they would just show you on the phone like, look, i got a picture of, they're like, you know, everybody has their own cameras as i go. this is the opening of the show. and i suppose, you know, it is quite a stylised style. it is quite produced while sounding obviously natural and chatty. i suppose that might not be to everyone�*s taste. i don't know, it seems very popular, like i have to say, like another thing that we were doing consciously

when we started the show was to sound different than the way presenters sounded on the radio here in the states or in britain or anywhere else. like, like i remember when i was first hosting the show, i really try to talk on the radio exactly the way i talk in real life. and so i would have a script, but i would try to ad—lib from the script. and just because, you know, i'm talking to quotes and so you really have to set up the quotes. and so, you know, you really need to go on with a very firm idea of like, here's what i'm going to say, but i would try to i would try to talk as much like myself in the kind of rushed, not radio voice or the tv or the radio voice. yeah, and that was actually a problem in getting talking stations into picking us up because they would say, like, well, you know, i was a good reporter and all like, and he was a good reporterfor npr. but like, when are you going to get a real presenter in there? like, when are you going to get a real host like somebody who really knows what they're doing? and we'd be like, sorry, this is this is the plan. and then one of the things that's been interesting to see is that other people heard us do it this way.

and then, you know, now it's a very common thing in podcasts for somebody to just kind of try to just talk like themselves as much as possible. absolutely. let's move on to the business side of this. you know, there's podcast radio shows, audio, whatever you want to call these formats. there are, of course, now massive business. how does this american life fit into that? you know, you could probably sign i'm sure you could sign a deal with apple or spotify or audible for your back catalogue to become exclusive on their service. but you know, certainly in the uk, it's all up on your website for free. why? i mean, we're public broadcasters, you know, like we just wanted to be out there. we're doing these shows, we want it to be out there. we make enough money like everything's going fine. there's like right now, you know, the business model that we have is that we make our money from advertising and, you know, advertisers like we do these little spots, you know? you know, during this, you know, at the end of the show, go to 15 second like ad reads and that that's plenty of money. i mean, one question one sorry. one question i'd like to ask you just more broadly about podcasting is, you know, it's been so successful and proving

to be so successful. i wonder what you think it means for public radio. is it, will it kill off public radio? what's the future for public radio and the world of podcasting? i mean, somehow public radio does seem to survive because people are lazy and like they want to just get in their car and turn on the radio, and you can't underestimate the human force of that, right? like and so and so there's just only so much like programming you can do for yourself. 0k, well, let's have a look at your, you know, incredibly popular podcast serial, which was, of course, a spin off from this american life. just remind us what the original serial was, the original serial like, and and this was a producerjulie snyder and sarah koenig, the host. they created the show where basically sarah had this idea. the story was basically it was a case that she thought was, was this a wrongful conviction case? this teenager who was accused of killing his girlfriend ten years before and had been sitting in prison over it,

and when she started the story, she thought like, oh, maybe this is a wrongful conviction. and then as time went on, she became very uncertain about what it was like maybe it wasn't a wrongful conviction. and honestly, as she was doing the reporting, she would kind of flip back and forth. and we're just like, well, let's put that in the show as you kind of like, decide one way or another suspect one thing and another. coming up this season on serial, i think that there are other people involved, like maybe i think maybe he was setup. i think he was set up somehow. clearly, you could tell. something was going on. it wasn't good. i mean, it wasjust strange behaviour for anybody. - did it feel like a real change of direction? you know, in the sense, it felt like a huge change of direction. honestly, like, it's really hard to remember this because it's such an accepted thing now. we had never heard of anyone doing a true story that lasted more than one episode. we didn't know that you could do a piece of reporting that that you could say, 0k, 0k, there will continue next week and the way you would do

with like a piece of fiction on netflix or something like like nobody had done it. and then later we heard about a documentary, the staircase, but we didn't even know about that when we started making serial. we really thought we were just inventing a thing, and we had no idea if people would stay with it. like, like, it's called serial because we just thought the thing about this is new is that it will be a serialised story that will roll out week by week and to ensure that satisfying, i guess, about, you know, we like stories with a beginning, middle and an end in a sense. and then, you know, for serial, there is no ending. there's no dramatic change. you follow the twists and turns, but in the end, without being a plot spoiler, you know it is different from what we're used to as listeners. i think the things that make a story like that satisfying are partly just the dynamics of the people in it. i mean, partly in that show, what makes it go is, you know, sarah koenig's relationship with him as she tries to figure him out. like, it's just very intense and very personal, and you really get to know him and then you really are trying to answer a question.

you're trying to solve a mystery that keeps you going forward. and so, yeah, i think it's very like like it, it feels good. and then as journalism, obviously like she's an incredible investigative reporter in subsequent seasons, like we tried to take on things that were very different from that we had we lost all interest in murder mysteries and got the rest of the internet and the rest of podcasting. take that up. and you know, the season after it was on the us military and the season after that, we basically tried to diagnose what's wrong with the american court system and, you know, camped out in one in one courthouse. and yeah, and i was going to say, i mean that that first one was such a huge success, you know, went viral, led you to co—founding, you know, an entire production company, serial productions, which you then sold to the new york times for a reported $25 million. are you still involved in the day to day running of the company now? i am not involved in the day to day running of the company, but i never was like that was run by byjulie snyder, but i am involved in editing stories like, like all the stories

in our most recent podcast, the trojan horse affair, like i did multiple edits on every episode. because of course, i was going to come onto that because, you know, it investigates a story much closer to home for us in the uk. it looks at the source of a mysterious letter later established most likely to be a hoax, but sent anonymously to birmingham city council nearly a decade ago. it was a huge deal here at the time it kicked off, you know, a series of government investigations into extremism, with teachers and others losing theirjobs, an awful lot of claim and counter—claim and awful lot of news reporting now. your series has also proved very controversial. you know, some of the people you interviewed say they were misled or misquoted, and you've since reedited one of the episodes and issued a correction. what do you think went wrong? wait, i don't know, but i literally do not know about people saying they were misled and misquoted, so i don't actually know the facts of that.

from serial productions and the new york times, i'm brian reed and i'm holmes. it's the trojan horse affair. so at this point in our interview, it became clear that ira glass didn't know the specifics of any complaints about his company's latest blockbuster podcast. some of the contributors to the trojan horse affair, according to recent news stories in the british press like the times and the daily telegraph, have made some pretty serious allegations about the journalists involved. i happen to be in birmingham, england, one night when thisjournalism student came up. ira was happy to try and answer these questions and even offered to do another interview after getting a briefing from his team. but instead, we approached the new york times and serial productions directly. they say that the podcast is the culmination of years of reporting and that it underwent extensive fact—checking and legal review. more broadly, you know, do you see this american life and the serial productions as campaigning journalism? no, no. i feel like we're mainstream journalism where where we go

into situations and and we're reporting the facts because i suppose, you know, there could be criticism that, you know, we've heard a lot, haven't we people saying, particularly in america, but it happens here as well about the sort of liberal media and the sort of cosy liberal ness of all the people who work in the media. you know, ijust wondered, you know, you've got a recent episode about gambling, for example, which presented the case of a woman who'd sued a big us casino firm chain. it sort of felt like a david and goliath story her against the big capitalist beast, quite understandably. but you know, do you see your programmes as having a political stance? no. no, i don't at all. no, i feel like we're very like no, i mean, we're very mainstream journalism like like things come up where we think like, wow, that's that's something new, that's something somebody should talk about. like, for example, the trump policy at the border were just like, somebody should put this together and do a story. and just like, you know, like it, like where where we see something

and we think like. that seems bad. but then we go in and then like, honestly, like we follow the facts where they go. i can see that i totally understand that i totally buy into that everything at the moment feels more frenetic in a sense this, you know, terms like culture, wars thrown around. you know, you had a programme recently about women who was pro—life and a conservative christian, but she's become pro—choice, and it feels like quite a natural story for this american life. and ijust wondered whether you do a story in the reverse, you know, a person moving from a liberal position to a more right wing conservative position. yeah, we would love to do a story like that. yeah, of course. or are you looking for it? i mean, that particular one. you know, we haven't found and we weren't looking for like. but there are other stories that we do, which which go inside the world of conservatives in a way where we are trying

to document what they're seeing, as much as as much as we try to document anybody else, you know, we did an early story on the proud boys, which wasjust completely inside their world. you know, we've done stories inside militia groups like we did a story of the election where we went, when we ran around with these militia groups that were supposedly like patrolling, you know, polling stations. and there was all this fear that they were going to be intimidating voters and it really was just trying to document. here is how these guys see this. here's what they're about. here's what this is and i don't know, like i feel like i feel like you know, ithink there's no objectivity in journalism, i think like journalists who talk about like shooting for objectivity, that's shooting for something that's not real. and ifind it to be always a kind of annoying construct. i don't think you can be objective. i think you can be fair. you know, i think fairness

is a kind of like standard that that you can meet in normal reporting. and i feel like we go out of our way to be fair. like, i feel like like to all parties in any story, in any dispute that we're reporting on. and i suppose, you know, the media are seen as pretty polarising at the moment have accused we're all accused of highlighting divisions and sort of finding the extremes. and i just wondered what what this american life's role in that? i mean, do you do you bring people together? do you think would you push them further apart? i mean, it's funny, like i don't think about it that way, i don't think, are we trying to bring people together or are we trying to push them apart? ifeel like, you know, we're a very particular kind of documentary show where we're trying to get inside people's worlds and and show their points of view. and so the degree to which we're we're trying to give a complete sense of things. it's like we're not pulling people apart, ifeel like i'm not trying to pull them

together, either, it's it'sjust like we're trying to say here's what this person is, here's the picture you might have of them in your head. and here's who they really are. then it's like often that's the more radical thing to be doing. like, here's the way that this here's the way this argument is, is talked about. but here's what's really here's the reality on the ground. here's here's what's really happening. you know, there was a point early in the trump administration where. where one of the things that was talked about all the time was how immigrants were coming in and stealing jobs. that's problem with immigration. like, they're coming in and stealing usjobs, and we did two episodes, we were like, is like, all right, let's just like go to a place and see if that's true. and at the time, attorney general jeff sessions was one of the people who had been like saying this for years, former senator in the united states, and he'd been saying this for years. this is why he's anti—immigration. before trump, he was the big

anti—immigration person in washington, dc and then became the attorney general. and and and so, well, like actually like, let's actually look at this. so let's go to a town. let's go to a place and see ifjobs are still on. and we actually chose, he's from alabama and we're just like, let's what's the town in alabama, which had like a flood of immigrants where somebody could make this claim? and there was a town in alabama that was sort of famous for this. and we went to that town because there were chicken plants there that at some point just started bringing in mexican workers to work in the chicken plants until the town, which had been like all white albertville as a town had been all white, you know, was between was between a third and a fourth mexican—american or mexican, not mexican—american, mexican. and i wasjust like, 0k, what did it do to this town? did they steal jobs? and and we really like went in and spent months and like hired an economist to like, look at what it did to wages, what it did jobs, who had whatjobs and but also,

like, what did it do to the culture of the town, what it do to the politics of the town? and i feel like we went in like not knowing, you know what i mean? like, ifeel like it's like it's and it's and ifeel like at its best, that kind of reporting what it does, it says, here's all these people yelling at this thing. let's just go to a place and see what really happens. and what did happen? what was the answer? in that town, it's funny, it's been so many years since we've done this. i remember like what it did is that the overall number ofjobs grew because when you have that many workers coming in, there's all this construction for housing and like, you know, people selling more food and just like it actually boosted the overall economy of the town. so it did not. there were overall more jobs, there was not more unemployment among workers. but if i remember right, it did keep wages depressed, like, you know, like like wages like it did affect wages in a way that you could measure if i remember correctly. yeah.

so yeah, all that. yeah, yeah. i was just going to say that. oh, sorry. so, yeah, you done. go ahead. yeah, i was just going to ask, you know, whether there are topics that you would avoid for fear of offending or dividing, you know, everything feels quite tense at the moment in a sense over certain topics. i just wonder, are there are there areas that you would just avoid on this american life? or is everything up for discussion and revelations? everything's up for discussion. like, i can't think of anything that's come up like on our staff where we talked about, like, should we do this? and there was a feeling of like you, let's stay away from that. no, i can't. i can't think of anything. what are you working on right now? what's the next one? i mean, right now we're scrambling to get together a show responding to what's happening in ukraine, but me personally, like i stumbled into this story about nfts, where this guy called up, convinced that i took like, just like a crazy story about nfts where this guy caught up

and basically, he said that a man called him out of the blue and said, like, hey, did you start this website? and he's like, i did start that website like years ago, and then i took it down because, like, went nowhere. he's like, i think you invented nfts. i think you made the first nft or one of the first anyway. and if that's true, you should start selling it again because you'll be rich and the guy's like, you're crazy. and then like, itjust unspools from there to a point where, like, he thinks he's getting ripped off by this guy, but he also makes millions of dollars he doesn't like it'sjust like, it'sjust like a crazy story that takes you into that world. sounds great. anything that takes us into nfts is useful because most people still don't understand what they are. i didn't understand it before this story. well, there you go. you know, ira glass, you've been a dominant force in speech radio for some time now. you've had a huge impact on the types of radio and podcasts that many people listen to. so tell me, tell us what is next? what kind of audio will we be listening to in ten years time? can you make a prediction?

i have no idea. i would think it would be a mix of things we have now. there's some narrative podcasts that people like people doing journalism. i think there'll be a bunch of interviews shows that people will enjoy, and there'll be a loudmouths likejoe rogan out there too. i'm sure it'll all still be going. maybe somehow there'll be an nft of ira glass in some way, shape orform. thank you so much, ira glass forjoining me today. thank you as well to bob nestles, today's studio engineer. the media show will be back at the same time next week. thanks for listening and goodbye.

good afternoon. it isn't as windy out there as it was yesterday, but it does still feel rather chilly for the time of year with this cold arctic air in place. that's how we start the weekend, but things are set to change. later in the weekend and particularly next week, light winds if you wish i was, my sunshine, temperatures still are if anything a little below average between 70 and 12 degrees. as we get into sunday again it would be a cold, frosty but sunny start. we will bring crowding from the last with some raining into northern ireland later in the day winds will start to come up from the south and temperatures will begin to climb and it is feeling warmer during next week.