News for North Texas
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Three Things Michael Barbaro Learned As 'The Daily' Podcast Became A Radio Show

Janne Räkköläinen/Flickr
The New York Times building in New York City

The Daily, the hit podcast from The New York Times, makes its debut on the radio in North Texas on MondayHost Michael Barbaro sat down with KERA to talk about what he's learned since the podcast launched in January 2017.  

The Daily currently holds down the No. 2 spot on the Podtrac rankings. You can listen to the radio version weekdays at 7 p.m. on KERA 90.1. Here's the station's full radio schedule.

Interview Highlights

On the transition from podcast to public radio: "It's not that much of a leap, because I think we're all in the same business. We tell stories in front of microphones. I just happen to do it from the newsroom of The New York Times. We draw so much inspiration in the way we tell stories from the rich history of public radio storytelling.... There's a reason why our tote bags mean so much to people, why our brands have the kind of emotional bond with people. Because we stand for truth, we stand for integrity, we stand for wrestling with complicated issues."

On how The Daily approached Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward: "We actually enlisted one of our savviest colleagues, Michael Schmidt, who has broken almost every major story in the Russia-Trump investigation. ... And the two of them have a conversation about anonymous sourcing -- how we use them, how we trust them, why they're so valuable in this moment. And we spent days thinking through how to make that interview different from all the other interviews that Bob Woodward did." 

On his most surprising interview, with acoal miner who has black lung disease: "That became a very emotional conversation in which I cried. And I've spent a lot of time trying to understand why this conversation with that coal miner made me so emotional, and I think it had to do with the fact that many of us who covered politics in 2016, the presidential campaign, had to come to grips with the fact that we misunderstood what was happening. We had to reckon with what it meant that we had not quite understood the country we were reporting on."

Miguel Perez is an assistant producer at KERA. He produces local content for Morning Edition and KERA News. He also produces The Friday Conversation, a weekly interview series with North Texas newsmakers.
Rick Holter was KERA's vice president of news. He oversaw news coverage on all of KERA's platforms – radio, digital and television. Under his leadership, KERA News earned more than 200 local, regional and national awards, including the station's first two national Edward R. Murrow Awards. He and the KERA News staff were also part of NPR's Ebola-coverage team that won a George Foster Peabody Award, broadcasting's highest honor.