this is bbc news, the headlines... ukraine says at least 50 people are dead and dozens wounded after a rocket hit a train station in the eastern city of kramatorsk. kramatorsk had become a major hub in the war for civilian evacuations from the donbas region. it's now the focal point of vladimir putin's war effort. the head of the european commission says ukraine is marching towards a european future as russia descends into economic, financial and technological decay. speaking alongside president zelensky in kyiv, ursula von der leyen promised

to speed up the early stages of ukraine's bid tojoin the eu. the body that hands out the oscars has banned the actor will smith from all its events for ten years, after he slapped the presenter chris rock. but the academy stopped short of revoking his best actor award. it described his behaviour at the oscars ceremony as "unacceptable and harmful". now on bbc news — the media show. hello. have you listened to a podcast series recently, or tuned into radio 4 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 first journalism 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 narrative journalism. 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 here. nice to be here. great to have you — for those people who've never listened to this american life, just describe it. what is the premise? it's stories, like, 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 we'll go on the border and try to document what's happening, you know, with immigration policy. but when we do it, basically what we do is we zoom in on 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 a plot kicks in 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, often very funny stuff, depending on the 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 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 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 audience is about five million people — about half of that over the radio in the united states, in canada and australia. and then, 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. 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, and we do stories outside the us. like honestly, 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... 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 revered national institution, right? and npr is not like that. npr only began as a national institution in the 1970s. and it's much smaller, much scrappier, much less well—funded, and basically grew up as a network of 5—600 individual stations across the country that 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 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 3—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, i didn't have to get permission from anybody, 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, 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 — once only once he'd done a deal! exactly. well, let's unpick the appeal of this american life. 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, the name of this show is your radio playhouse. i'm your emcee. 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 journalism, but it would be unashamedly out for fun in an unembarrassed way. we wanted it to be something that would, like... i don't know, just grab you at the beginning and just be out to entertain, and entertain in the biggest way where we wanted to just be both funny, and you'd get caught up in people and feelings, and ideas, you know? and so, i mean... presumably 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, it hasn't been a criticism. like, like nobody�*s said like, "oh, the problem with this is that it's entertaining" — and at this point, like, 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 want to pull people in. and ifeel like there are all kinds of topics where you almost have to trick people into listening. like what? i remember, like, years ago 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 over to greece and wanted to just document how this poor country was dealing with this influx of refugees. and we were very aware that nobody in america or europe — like, 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, 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? 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 they're being attacked by wild pigs. and somebody had set up a makeshift trap down in a rope, and like, you know, it wasjust 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" — and 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. 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, i remember when i was first hosting the show, i really tried 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, because, you know, i'm talking to quotes, and so you really have to set up the quotes. and so, 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 voice? yeah — and that was actually a problem in getting talking stations into picking us up because they would say, like, "well, you know, ira's a good reporter and all like, and he was a good reporterfor npr. but 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 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 try to just talk like themselves as much as possible. yeah, absolutely. let's move onto the business side of this. you know, there's podcasts, radio shows, audio, whatever you want to call these formats — they are, of course, now massive business. how does this american life fit into that? you know, i'm sure you could sign a deal with apple or spotify, oraudible for your back catalogue to become exclusive on their service. but certainly in the uk, it's all up on your website for free — why? erm... i mean, we're public broadcasters, you know? like, we just want it 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. 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, at the end of the show, go to 15—second ad reads, and that's plenty of money... i mean, one question — sorry, one question i'd like to ask you just more broadly about podcasting is it's been so successful and proving to be so successful. i wonder what you think it means for public radio. 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 they want to just get in their carand turn on the radio. and you can't underestimate the human force of that, right? and so, there'sjust only so much programming you can do for yourself. 0k, well, let's have a look at your 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 — this was a producer julie snyder and sarah koenig, the host, they created the show where basically, sarah had this idea.

the story was basically 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 — 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 goingl on and it wasn't good. i mean, it wasjust strange behaviour for anybody. - did it feel like a real change of direction? 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 you could say, "ok, this will continue next week," in the way you would do with like a piece of fiction on netflix or something. 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, it's called serial because we just thought — the thing about this that's new is that it will be a serialised story that will roll out week—by—week. was there something unsatisfying, i guess, about, "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 partlyjust 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, it feels good. and then as journalism, obviously like she's an incredible investigative reporter. in subsequent seasons, we tried to take on things that were very different from that — we had we lost all interest in murder mysteries and let 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 courthouse. and i was going to say, 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, that was run byjulie snyder. but i am involved in editing stories, like all the stories in our most recent podcast, the trojan horse affair, like, i did multiple edits on every episode. ok, because of course, i was going to come on to 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, an awful lot of news reporting now. 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 about — 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. 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 this journalism 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 cosy liberalness of all the people who work in the media. 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, ifeel like we're very like... no, i mean, we're very mainstream journalism,

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, 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, 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 war" 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. but you haven't found it yet, or are you looking for it?

i mean, that particular one. you know, we haven't found and we weren't looking for... but there are other stories that we do, which go inside the world of conservatives in a way where we are trying to document what they're seeing, as much as we try to document anybody else. you know, we did an early story on the proud boys, which was just completely inside their world. you know, we've done stories inside militia groups — like, we did a story of the election where we went, 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. you know, i think 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 standard that that you can meet in normal reporting. and i feel like we go out of our way to be fair. like, ifeel, 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 of finding the extremes. and ijust wondered what this american life's role in that? i mean, do you do you bring people together? do you think, or do 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 documentary show where we're trying to get inside people's

worlds and show their points of view. and so, the degree to which we're trying to give a complete sense of things... it's like, we're not pulling people apart, and we're not trying to pull them together either, it's just 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." and often, that's the more radical thing to be doing. like, here's the way that this here's the way this argument is talked about, but here's what's really here's the reality on the ground. here's what's really happening. you know, there was a point early in the trump administration where... one of the things that was talked about all 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'sjust like go to a place and see if that's true. and at the time, attorney generaljeff 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 so, we're like, actually, 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, 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 is the 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, "ok, what did it do to this town? did they steal jobs?" and we really like went in and spent months, and hired an economist to look at what it did to wages, what it did jobs, who had whatjobs? but also, 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? and i feel 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 people selling selling more food, and just like it actually boosted the overall economy of the town.

so 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, it did affect wages in a way that you could measure, if i remember correctly. i was just going to say that — oh, sorry. i was just going to ask, you know, whether there are topics that you would avoid for fear of offending or dividing — 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 on our staff where we talked about, like, "should we do this?" and there was a feeling of like, "no, let's stay away from that." 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... 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 itjust unspools from there to a point where he thinks he's getting ripped off by this guy — but he also makes millions of dollars. it's just 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. 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 nettles, today's studio engineer. the media show will be back at the same time next week. thanks for listening and goodbye. hello. today wasn't as windy

as yesterday, but we still ended the week on a relatively chilly note. and we take cold weather into the start of the weekend because skies will be largely clear overnight, the showers tending to fade. still some continuing through the night in northern scotland, bringing the risk of ice. temperatures widely at or below freezing, down to “i! in parts northern england. tomorrow, then, a cold, frosty but bright and sunny start to the day. towards the north and the east, we will see some showers at times. it'll stay breezy here. further south and west, lighter winds, fewer showers, more sunshine. temperatures still, if anything, a little below average, between 7—12 celsius. now, as we get into sunday, again, it'll be a cold, frosty but mostly sunny start. however, through the day, we'll bring more cloud in from the west, a little bit of rain into northern ireland, perhaps, later in the day. the winds starting to come up from the south, so temperatures will begin to climb. and it certainly will feel warmer during next week.

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hello, you're watching bbc news, i'm rich preston. our top stories: there's outrage after another atrocity in ukraine — at least fifty people are dead and hundreds more injured in a rocket attack on a train station. as you can see the station outside is empty, but this morning it was packed with people. many of them women and children trying to flee the city to safety. more help is on the way, with countries sending weapons including, for the first time, an air defence system. after hitting the comedian chris rock, the actor will smith is banned from the oscars for ten years. at least 12 people are killed following torrential rains and a landslide in a mining area of north—west colombia.

he can still pull a crowd, but will he get enough votes?