Read this: The Daily's Michael Barbaro

BBC sounds music Radio podcasts hello, I'm Andrea catherwood, and this is the media show from BBC Radio 4 now the chances are that you're already familiar with what has become one of the most popular podcasts in the world the daily is produced by the New York Times and after just two years.

It's reported to know I make over 10 million dollars a year in advertising revenue a lot of cash from a very simple format each day the show's host Michael barbaro chats to a fellow New York Times reporter about a single Storey and each day the daily gets 2 million listeners around the world has been in the UK this month as the New York Times makes the push for more subscribers over here and he came by the media show studio mics that are lower because we have nearly IKEA the ones that off by asking you.

About the Beaker the premise of the show for people who haven't who don't download the Daily you haven't heard it yet.

What does it all about the daily is a kind of narrative treatment of the new it's it's an attempt to find character and suspense and Drama in the story of the days news in so everyday the daily takes one storyline and over the course of 20 or 25 minutes it tells their story in a narrative within those words that mean much to listeners.

We tell a very human story engrossed in the story of like.

It's like watching or listening to a drama almost for trying to make the newsletter of an abstract conformal thing and kind of distiller download adult in really really as which is something happens to someone so you'll often talk to it.

One of the people is actually involves one of the dance makers like for example today.

You're talking to a scientist who had a breakthrough drug that should prevent people getting h.

The incredits necessary not working so again.

It's a story that you get drawn into that end in the store.

We told about this drug trivago which which can be used to prevent HIV transmission if taking prevented we rely on texting to people to tell the story.

What is the Times reported Adama traore junior who's been covering HIV for decades knows it backwards and forwards and it's Doctor Who helped about the drug and the doctor took tells of her personal story of overseeing the clinical trials that get this drug through the approval process and then watching with a growing sense of frustration and and red and then horror as the drug remains too expensive but people need it because of the kind of patent system in the US and our and he's very emotional as he tells the story because he believes he is betrayed people who he promised that the struggle be made affordable is that personal narrative? What has given the show I hate you use the phrase the secret of its 6s beginner a lot of news and current affairs podcasts out there.

And more by the day.

It's a really busy market and so you need to have something that makes it stand out more than just having the winner.

I know it's great to have the New York Times branding behind a central but you need more than that.

Yeah, I think you need a bunch of elements, but I think that the discipline of taking a single story in obsessively figuring I had a turd in a highly produced by state emotional way that explores ideas and character that is what makes the show run quite rightly understand only attempt to turn multiple stories a day and we have it started off as a pretty audacious bad that people would trust us to tell one story really really well explain something very deeply illuminating idea they richly and I think we deliver on their promise, but that was that was kind of courageous and unusual because most new shows almost by definition stop with the series of headlines today and we say.

They put yourself in her hands the next 20 minutes.

I'm going to take you on a journey here and at the end of the show we might give you a little bit of headlines a sprinkling of of the news from the day before and so I think that the unconventional approach surprise people have first and then I'm in India dust of them.

You say that it is essential that you come under the banner of Angeles tell me about that we were the audio expression of the New York Times in this August 1300 reporter Newsroom that as reported in all over the world and for the most part the narrators of our stories on a show or journalist at the time so I'm in a conversation with or who are Disney writing directly to a listener and then frequently Mary that with an interview that what do with somebody that Finn made out in the world and it was a leap of Faith your your your journal damage unless you know that when you go out you do a story on you meet someone you interview them in Utah there a store.

The idea that when your colleague is going to come knock on the door and say can I call that person and interview them and and the usual instinctive territorial is there is no and what happened with the daily with that.

We've built a trust in partnership with our colleagues were they let us talk to people in that they told their stories and his roar interesting ways in front of a microphone and then we brought them back into tell the story along side them in so come up with his interesting innovative iterations of how to make a Prince story a uniquely audio partnership, because I think we all remember a few years ago online was very much Cena secondary and very often big journalist where to get big bylines.

You are one of them.

We wanted to be in the New York Times you didn't want to have at the very beginning when you started this This podcast with some of those big names a little bit razador hesitant to gonna to take the time out of there a very busy schedule.

Andy come on your podcast and I wanna know if it's changed in the queuing I bet you're here has changed.

I think the what your point into was the sense of fatigue that had existed by around the mean of the mid to late 2000 when Germans have been asked to try so many different kinds of storytelling and it was video it was Facebook live in the world.

Lot of ways that people being pulled in The Newsroom after they had already finished the job that they signed up for interview writing a story and I think by the time the daily came there was a healthy amount of scepticism about about whether or not it made sense to go into a studio for 90 minutes and tell a story and audio speakers, we asked people to do things that were very different from comfortable and you're getting the top journalist to do that.

You don't people who who really don't need or don't think they needed that they didn't mean it in that people after hurting and in somewhere.

Where was a humbling because we would say no no no don't want it that way we want to start it this way and so

Disabilities Middlesex surrendered to the daily process because from the very first episode which is with a cold name Adam liptak recovers the Supreme Court it was clear.

How much.

And production was going into the show and has spectacularly engaging it was two people and the amount of feedback that reporters now.

I just got an email this morning on my way over here from down the canal De Niro who did the episode about to the HIV treatment who said.

I know I've heard from people who do not know my mobile.

I'd didn't understand exactly what I do because he he was telling a story in people are hearing him tell the story and he's it is what Syrian student that are you actually reaching new listeners, but you reaching people who didn't buy or don't buy the New York Times regularly.

Yeah, you've got what about 2 million 2 million listeners.

Allow you to remind us of the audience for the daily is different from the times when we first star of the show the audience was of course help.

There's a heavy over and R dreaming was that that overlap with getting the smallest what we wanted to my new people and that the success but I think we had that were proud of that was young people who don't subscribe to The Times newspaper print paper they listen to The Daily the engage with a daily alright.

My boss same don't like at the New York Times who who helped oversee the creation of the show he caused the daily the new front page of the New York Times because it's amore.

Photo more human informal front door to this is pretty intimidating place.

That's a really big play my meanwhile the new front the new front door of the New York Times it's a bit very humbling is pretty surprising yeah.

Well.

It's a great honour actually I think about that you took just about the business model which and was a bit dull bilitis.

Do this quite quickly that's got his kind of interesting you.

Don't you you're talking about you've got a lot of new listeners, and I'm who don't subscribe to the New York Times New York Times subscription online right, so you've got to pay for it and just don't have to pay for your podcast free that must be business conversation that you've had yes, so you don't pay for the daily but

What we started the show people immediately began to email us and ask could they pay for the daily should they be ably and what we realise was that there was going to be a level of Engagement with the show that we were turning on people to the times in a way that we could then.

Convert the Amazon Echo business person for just a minute into subscribers and that would happen if you listen to the show carefully you will hear produces come on in ads on the show saying if you like the daily news for today Lisa private.

I attend we tell people that in the end to a remarkable degree.

They have subscribed and we know that they are we can follow through the beauty of Internet searching in the process.

We know that daily subscribers dahlias, are trying to your types of driving traffic to get me what time is in terms of numbers and money advertising on the she's going to talk about that because of Vanity Fair as quoted 8 figure song for advertising of that something like 10 million US Dollars is that accurate I think I I think what the numbers that we gave me and Lisa are accurate the show you know through advertising firms significant revenue that is pumped back into the news on how many people work on the program because it sounds very highly.

50 years old now yeah, it is very British daily with started immediately triggered some of our competitors in the newspaper reported to create daily news shows in the one piece of advice.

You gave them in my own.

Don't think that you can start this thing with two or three or even four people because we tried making the daily with four people for about a year and it in nearly killed us.

It's so now to know now.

It's in the it in the 15 years orange not I know that you're over here in the UK because you recording a live edition of the show in front of a live audience and that's all died.

Do you track how many people from outside of of the of North America are listening to your podcast? We do we do we have you know it's it's not exactly a map of hot spots turning red but we know we have it anything it listens to ship outside the US clearly here in the UK in in Europe in Canada in Asia and I think it speaks to the fact that the form of storytelling doing it is there any

Very powerful in in in in even when the issues are domestic that did the way you're telling them is interesting and only have to be honest and say that President Trump is an international story whose whose interest is compounded when you started around the same time as trump.

Do you think you've benefited from their trousers in terms of the number of people listening but?

The amount of Interest are wires in decoding this complicated new chapter of the United States to the world end and you can call the tramp and whatever you want to call it a I know I don't know that the daily would be the daily without the kind of energy and confusion that surrounded the election of President Trump he's not that keen on you personally.

I think he's single you like for a bit of criticism that probably doesn't doesn't do you any harm and podcast world us up before I became a pocket-sized.

I was in that state of local reporter and I found what I'm looking his relationship with women and that's a complicated subject.

It was never one that he was going to be keen on and he didn't like some of the reporting that I was involved in bed.

We have the number of episodes with members of the administration cabinet members and I think they believed and ini Di note with the case that we giving them really fair shake so do you have Republicans who subscribed to the day so no one of the things we promise ourselves with the electronic?

New president was that we were going to learn the lessons of the 2016 presidential campaign of which I was a prominent part of and in the lessons of that were that we didn't read and anticipate with happening.

We underestimated the follicle forces that were swirling in the country and we made too many assumptions and show is a bit of a corrective on that and so we actively seek out voices gas and subjects that I think people might not anticipate of the times and try to have really searching non-judgmental conversations with those people just finally you just explain that you went from being out at high-profile investigative journalist to taking on this road, and you couldn't imagine you didn't realise when you did it that it would lead to in are you getting recognized in the street? I know you've been on Saturday Night Live you might not like the idea that your voice has turned you into something of a celebrity, but it is quite a fair description of what happened.

Could you foresee that hardens up feel?

If you're strange move it feels strange you're not supposed to be the story right now and I'm not I'm a vessel through which the New York Times tales stories in audio your distinctive for its own distinctive nature of you.

You have to ignore that she is an art of yellow success of the daily.

Yes, yes nymn NI anime from about the back of my voice changed over time I got deeper than I needed to get on a more serious and bring them or gravity to the job and it's very interesting.

Are you so intimate? You know that sitting in front of each.

Other's the two of us in the studio, but when this comes out of the world people will consume within very private spaces and their cars in her arms and they getting no you in a way.

That's very unique and so I relished that I'd say it's a privilege to be in people's ears mites.

Look so privileged to talk to you.

Thank you very much enjoyed appreciate.