this is bbc news. the headlines: imran khan has been removed as prime minister of pakistan after losing a confidence vote. mr khan said he wouldn't recognise a new opposition government, after claiming that there was a us—led conspiracy to remove him. an assembly will meet on monday to choose a new leader. the british prime minister, borisjohnson has pledged more support for ukraine after holding face to face talks with president zelensky in kyiv. mrjohnson praised what he called the "invincible heroism" of the ukrainian people. mr zelensky urged other western allies to intensify the pressure on moscow. campaigning has ended in the first round of france's

presidential election. president emmanuel macron�*s lead over his main challenger, the far—right leader marine le pen has fallen dramatically in recent weeks. the polls are due to open in a few hours�* time. analysts expect many voters to boycott the election. 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 guest 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. 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? the premise is, it's stories! 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 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 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 — only once you'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, "ok, 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 getting attacked by wild pigs. and somebody had set up a makeshift trap in the woods out of a dumpster that he'd turned upside 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 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 in 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 this 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." sarah koenig: 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 happened 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 — ifeel like we're mainstream journalism 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 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 i just 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 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 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'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, "0k, 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 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 more food, and 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. 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 a crazy story

about nfts where this guy called 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 it 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 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, or form. 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 there. clear skies are allowing those temperatures to fall away quite sharply as we speak. it means a frosty start to sunday morning. glorious with some early

sunshine but gradually clouding over as the day continues. so, the best of the sunshine certainly will be out to the east. we'll see that sunshine turning increasingly hazy from the west and outbreaks of light rain gradually moving into northern ireland by the end of the afternoon. northern ireland, england, and wales seeing temperatures of around ten to 13 degrees, a little bit cooler once again into the north—east of scotland along with the northern isles. now, as we move into monday, all eyes are focused on this area of low pressure, it is going to bring outbreaks of rain, some of it heavy, from the west. the isobars are squeezing together, the winds strengthening but at least the winds are coming from the south—easterly direction, a warmer source. so, a band of rain, some of it heavy, possibly thundery, moving its way across the west and steadily northwards as we go through the day. top temperatures in the sunshine, however, 17 celsius, a little milder.

good morning. welcome to breakfast with ben thompson and luxmy gopal. our headlines today... johnson meets zelensky in kyiv in a surprise visit. the prime minister promises armoured vehicles and new missiles in a "show of solidarity" with ukraine. the ukrainians have shown the courage — the ukrainians have shown the courage of a lion and you have given the roar_ courage of a lion and you have given the roar of— courage of a lion and you have given the roar of that lion. taxing times for the chancellor — rishi sunak demands an investigation into who leaked details about his wife's finances. france goes to the polls in their presidential election as macron fights a challenge from far—right candidate marine le pen.