My favorite episodes of This American Life, because this is a question I sometimes get asked

And by “sometimes” I guess that shakes out to maybe just twice in the last few months? Once was Dave just now and I kind of brain-dumped on Twitter, then realized perhaps it would be helpful and /or benevolent to collect them all in one place. (I always assume everyone listens to the show already but obviously this isn’t true, but either anyway it’s basically just one of my favorite things, and has been very important for me as A Writer, so anytime you want to talk about it with me, just go for it.)

First, my favorites as of 2009, compiled in a list for Paste. Recordings for Someone (specifically, the insane Little Mermaid story) was the first episode I ever heard, in reruns sometime around 2006, so I like to suggest that as a starting place if you’ve somehow never listened. Oh and I think Notes on Camp was the first one that made me cry.

Recent favorites (which I’ve heard via the iPhone app, which is excellent and very much worth whatever few dollars it costs—you can stream every single episode ever for free once you buy it!) include Back to Penn State and The Incredible Case of the P.I. Moms. 

I also really love Georgia Rambler from 2010. And Trail of Tears, which is just an hour of Sarah Vowell tracing her Cherokee ancestors’ path on the Trail of Tears (including an amazingly hilarious and righteously angry stop in my hometown) and which aired in 1998, I just heard for the first time recently and may be my all-time favorite.

All this was prompted by my exhortation that if you own stuff, you should probably listen to the most recent episode, which is, frankly, gutting.