Rare are those whose voice carries the weight of experience, the breadth of knowledge, and the depth of a truly human worldview like this television adventurer. Not only he creates reports, but also builds bridges between worlds and cultures. Whether interviewing global power brokers or everyday citizens, he unearths daily truths in search of universal values. His stories travel far beyond the screen, connecting people, places, and ideas—from the global epicenters of power to the world’s forgotten corners.
Goran Milić stands as one of the most prominent journalists in Croatia and the region, with a career spanning nearly half a century in broadcast and documentary journalism. Along the way, he has edited and hosted over a thousand programs, filmed hundreds of documentaries and travel reports, and interviewed heads of state, leading intellectuals, and key public figures of his era. Even after his formal “retirement,” his voice has not faded. On the contrary, he continues to produce documentary series that take viewers on journeys through contemporary social phenomena and the world’s cultural diversities. His series What’s Up… explores stories from America, Europe, Israel, and Japan, examining the North-South divide, while his latest episodes bring nuanced, timely dispatches from China.
“A high-profile interview doesn’t necessarily yield high-level wisdom. I’ve had the chance to conduct interviews that sounded monumental but were utterly hollow—protocol-driven sentences and pre-packaged messages devoid of real substance. Those conversations look great on paper, but they rarely say anything new.”
This interview is more than a conversation. It is an encounter with a life told through the personal reflections of a man whose voice brings the world closer to us every day, allowing us to experience it firsthand.
A man who is about to turn eighty. Which automatically means that, as I like to say, I’m just a few years younger than a mammoth. It’s that age where you start contemplating about the exit. Not dramatically, not every single day, but realistically.
Until a few years ago, I didn’t think about it at all. Now, as I approach that number, I realized I’m no longer “a young old man”—I’m just old. When the headline says “Car Strikes Elderly Man,” at eighty, you lose the right to complain. At seventy-eight, you might still say they were exaggerating.
You can interpret that however it suits you. On one hand, I could claim to be the ultimate Croat—parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, all Croatian; I was born in Zagreb, my son was born in Zagreb. Yet, I can just as convincingly say I’m a Dalmatian. My mother was from Dubrovnik, born in a house beneath the Minčeta Tower, the highest house in the Old City. In some cities, that would imply wealth; in Dubrovnik, it meant poverty. There was no running water up there; everything had to be carried up the stone stairs. Down on the Stradun, life was better. So, on one side, the family was average; on the other, distinctly artistic. On my mother’s side, the Boglićs—poets, literary critics, people of the word. We didn’t exactly excel in sports, but we’ve gravitated around them our entire lives.
Experience. From what I’ve seen, remembered, and asked.
Of course, I had to read, converse, and listen to people smarter than myself. I absorbed a great deal from qualified individuals—and not just those with titles.
For instance, I’ll be sitting at the barber’s, and within an hour, I get ten answers to questions I’m curious about—about business sustainability, the market, or why it’s smarter to groom dogs than cut human hair. I could write a journalistic piece based on that which people would actually read. I don’t waste time.
Because one question leads to another.
I was in China recently and asked Vitomira Lončar how often she visits Chinese families. She told me—in nine years, not once.
And then you dig deeper: Why? Is it the cost? The culture? The family structure? And then you discover that often three generations live together, that the grandparents run the household, and that people work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. One question opens up an entire world.
I’ve learned that a big interview doesn’t necessarily yield big wisdom.
Take, for instance, my interview with Jimmy Carter following the death of Tito. I was a U.S. correspondent at the time. The White House estimated it wouldn’t be wise for Carter to attend the funeral because Brezhnev would be there, and relations were icy. They didn’t want to aggravate things or be forced into a dialogue. So, Carter sent his mother to the funeral instead, but simultaneously granted an interview where he spoke very highly of the late President Tito. That interview was offered to me. But there is little wisdom in such an exchange. It’s purely protocol—rehearsed lines about how our two nations will continue to develop relations, a few sentences on the Non-Aligned Movement, and so on. It’s all scripted; everything has already been said.
These “big” interviews sound important, but in reality, they rarely break new ground.
“For years, I’ve been asking people what they’d do at nine tomorrow morning if they won twenty million euros tonight. In Southern countries, showing up for work the next day would be seen as insane—people would talk about celebrating and spending the money. But in the North, people simply said they’d be at their desks at nine, just like any other day. Those differences aren’t accidental.”
My interview with Noam Chomsky.
He had been accused of denying the Srebrenica genocide, and he wanted to clarify that he wasn’t defending the content, but the right to write. He chose Croatia—and me—because he understood the context.
During the interview, he made a comment about the Holocaust that was absolutely shocking. Nobody reacted. A week later, I aired it again—still, silence.
That’s when you realize that just saying something isn’t enough. The world has to be ready to hear it.
Today, we’ve become insufferably polarized. You’re either this or that. If you belong to one camp, you’re expected to adopt the entire package that comes with it. It’s like sports fandom—you’re either for Dinamo or Hajduk, there is no middle ground.
I can’t find that in myself. I lived in Uruguay, a country with a century of democracy, free speech, no military, and no police. There, within a single group, you could find elements of both the left and the right if it worked pragmatically. In our neck of the woods today, that is almost impossible.
The values are known to everyone. The contentious issue is labor.
You have America, where you work primarily for yourself. You have Scandinavia, where you work mostly for society and the state. Then you have Canada and Australia, where it’s roughly a fifty-fifty split. To me, those latter two environments are the most reasonable.
The problem arises with social welfare—do you help people by pulling them out of powerlessness, or do you keep them trapped in it? Assistance must exist, but only for those who truly cannot provide for themselves. And it must be real, dignified.
If you provide a blind man in Finland with a decent life and then offer him a job for extra income, 99 percent will take it. Because there, people believe work is a virtue.
In our society, 80 percent would say “no.” Because for years, they were taught that it pays more not to work. These aren’t minor differences; these are deeply ingrained ethics.
Full interview
There are profound differences in human ethics. And I’m not just speculating.
I’ve spent the last twenty years literally studying this. I’ve conducted interviews in nearly every European country except Malta and Moldova, including Russia—roughly a hundred countries in total.
I asked everyone the same question: What would you do tomorrow at 9 a.m. if you won 20 million euros in the lottery tonight?
In Catholic countries—Spain, Portugal, Italy—almost no one answered what they’d be doing at 9 a.m. Instead, they wrote about how they’d blow the money that night, what they’d buy, where they’d party, and what they’d give their children. Interestingly, no one mentioned their parents. Only when I’d prompt them—What about your parents?—would they suddenly remember and quickly add them in.
In our region, the reaction was often: You don’t seriously think I’d show up for work tomorrow? Or: I’d stroll in around noon, and when the boss looked at me, I’d finally tell him everything I’ve wanted to say for the last twenty years. That is us.
In the North, the response was entirely different. People would calmly say: I’d be at work at 9, just like any other day. I’d share the news with my closest colleagues, buy them coffee, put the money in the bank, and think it over. They might eventually negotiate an unpaid leave of absence to travel. They wouldn’t buy their kids a Rolls-Royce; they wouldn’t overhaul their lives. And they genuinely mean it.
AI will take a lot. There’s no doubt about it.
It’ll seize at least 90 percent of the field—everything from writing headlines to performing the role of editor-in-chief. Today, AI can generate twenty headlines in a second: you want aggressive, sensationalist, mild, or neutral? You choose, but realistically—the system is doing the heavy lifting. You see it on social media already. Those headlines like: He attacked her with a knife, but then something happened that no one expected…
The dreaded ellipsis. You click, fight your way through a hundred thousand ads, and in the end, you get nothing. There is no news, no substance, but objectively—it serves its purpose. Someone made a profit. It’s also important to note that Croatia has at least three times as many journalists today as it did before the war. Journalism hasn’t collapsed; it has undergone a profound transformation. The only question is who is doing what, and with what level of responsibility.
That work is something normal and good. That there is no shame in starting from zero, and that the goal isn’t to “get out” of work, but to build yourself through it. And that no one owes them anything simply because they exist. If they understand that, they’ll survive wherever they are. The biggest problem with how we teach youth today is that we offer them shortcuts. We tell them everything can be solved by picking a side or a label, but life doesn’t work that way. The things that matter most require effort, time, and reflection.
To keep questioning.
The question is what keeps a man alive. Perhaps I was tedious at times, maybe even unpleasant, but I have never regretted asking. Without the question, there is neither journalism nor a free society.
Perhaps people could read what Denis Kuljiš once wrote about me.
Going into an interview with him was the worst thing in the world—because he’d insert half the things you never said. He’d dig up something from your biography to smear you that wasn’t even true. And then he’d smear you for the things that were true, as well. I picked up that piece to read with absolute dread.
And yet—I read it twice. I was just happy to have survived the edge of his critical blade. I don’t know… maybe one day I’ll put together a compilation of everything I’ve done and host it in a public space. Whoever wants to know who I was can just click there and get a cross-section of my life’s journey.
Video Shorts
“Artificial intelligence is going to take over a huge chunk of journalism—there’s no doubt about that. Headlines, structure, form; it’s all changing already. But journalism hasn’t collapsed. It has undergone a profound transformation. The question isn’t whether it will survive, but who will manage to hold onto the responsibility, the meaning, and the core question behind every story.”