Favorite Favorite Lists

Ira writes:

As we put out our 500th episode, a few lists of other people's favorite shows popped up around the web--at Slate, at Flavorwire, at Chicagoist (all Chicago-related eps of course), at The Airship, the Hazlitt blog, and at BuzzFeed. It’s interesting that there’s consensus about certain episodes across various lists, even old ones like this Onion AV Club list or Paste magazine’s list or on this Metafilter discussion.

You may not know that we have several favorites pages at our own website, including a short list for people who’ve never heard us before. Then because we couldn’t leave well enough alone, we made a list of other favorites with, like, 60 other shows. Then a list of early shows from our first two years on the air. Yes, we’ve shown lots of discipline in picking favorites.

We do hope that the lists are helpful for people looking for a good show to listen to.

The favorites on the 500th episode were staff picks. And there were lots of shows and stories we were sorry not to include in the 500th episode. The McCrearies story from the Babysitting show, which is probably – because the interviewee was so great – the best interview I’ve ever done. David Sedaris’s story about his mom dying, from episode 82. The House on Loon Lake. Shalom Auslander’s The Blessing Bee. Alix Spiegel’s 81 Words or her story about the couple adopting the boy from Romania. Scott Carrier’s episode The Friendly Man. The Ed Sullivan story in My Big Break. The Golden Apple show. The John Smith episode of our TV show. Picking things for the 500th episode was hard partly because a lot of the best stories – like the Switched at Birth show or the McCrearies – don’t excerpt well. I’m glad we won’t have to pick again for a very long time.

- Ira

photo by Adrianne Mathiowetz