An episode of the popular weekly radio program "This American Life" that painted a damaging picture of life for employees at factories that make Apple products in China contained "significant fabrications," the show said Friday.

"We're horrified to have let something like this onto public radio," Ira Glass, the public radio show's executive producer and host, said in a blog post. "Our program adheres to the same journalistic standards as the other national shows, and in this case, we did not live up to those standards."

The program retracted the Jan. 6 piece that is believed to have started the recent spate of articles examining Apple manufacturer Foxconn.