In advance of the series finale, Marc Steiner talks with the show's creator and popular actors

Baltimore, Maryland - February 18, 2008

We went off on a tangent in the late 60's and never righted the ship. We just kept trying to put band-aids on things. What The Wire shows is the end results of all these band-aids. All these efforts to try and do something, but they are so scattered that nothing is being done. For the people who are disconnected from the main society it seems that one of their alternatives is the drug world, and that creates a whole culture. And what The Wire tries to do is show you that culture, and the reasons why that culture came about. I don't think it is anything more than a dramatically fair representation of what the world is.
-Ed Burns, talking with Marc Steiner

I'm not interested in labels of good and evil. Like, this guy's a drug dealer so he's evil. This guy's a cop, so he's good. Or this guy's a politician, so he's either good or evil. That whole dynamic is, this probably is hyperbole but I'm going to go for it anyway, that's the pornography of American entertainment. That's every cop show and every lawyer show. Every single drama that is offered up for popular entertainment is on some level a political or cultural form of pornography, and I'm tired of it.
-David Simon, talking with Marc Steiner

Baltimore, Maryland February 19th, 2008- The Center for Emerging Media (CEM) has announced that it will be releasing a series of interviews to coincide with the end of the television series, The Wire. A new installment of the podcast series will be released each day beginning Monday, March 3rd. The podcast series will be available at http://marcsteinerblog.wordpress.com

The first installment will feature an interview with Wire producer and writer Ed Burns, whose personal experiences as a Baltimore city police officer and public school teacher often showed up in the script. Marc Steiner interviewed Ed Burn by phone from his home in West Virginia. They discussed Ed's experiences in Vietnam, his thoughts on whether or not the show is nihilistic, and the ultimate message of The Wire.

Other installments to be released next week include a conversation with creator David Simon, and visits with the actors who portrayed some of the series' more popular characters, such as Proposition Joe, Detective Lester Freamon, and Bubbles.

For another installment of the podcast series, producers visited Viva House, a local soup kitchen that was featured in the final season.

The Wire has aired on HBO since 2002. The final episode of the fifth season, and the series finale, airs on March 9th.

The Center for Emerging Media is a 501(c)(3) private non-profit corporation. It was founded in 2001 by Marc Steiner. The website is www.centerforemergingmedia.com.

Marc Steiner's blog can be found at http://marcsteinerblog.wordpress.com

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