Ira Glass is the host and creator of the public radio program This American Life. The show is consistently one of the top three most downloaded podcasts anywhere, with 3.6 million downloads per episode. Anothter 2.2 million listeners hear the show each week on more than 500 public radio stations.

The team that creates This American Life also created Serial, the most listened-to podcast in the history of the medium, with over 19 million downloads for each episode of its first season. Glass is an editor on the show. Serial is widely credited for changing the face of podcasting. As The New Yorker put it: “Serial was the first show to induce advertisers to take podcasting seriously. The creative and economic accomplishment of Serial has spawned countless imitators, and many have shamelessly echoed its tropes.”

The style of narrative journalism invented by This American Life and Serial – emotional story arcs, compelling characters, humor, surprising ideas, all delivered in a chatty conversational tone – have been copied by a generation of podcasts. The team’s programs (including S-Town) have won the highest honors for broadcasting and journalistic excellence, including ten Peabody awards. These shows win the same size audiences as binge-worthy television shows, because they deliver the same narrative satisfaction.

Glass will speak about how they achieve that, in his keynote.