The best of This American Life

There are almost 500 episodes of This American Life, from its first in 1995 to the most recent, which aired the week before last. You can listen to every episode for free on the show’s website. But where to start? Below is a highly subjective, unscientific sample of my favourites.

1. Origin Story: If you have a spare seven minutes and want to get a sense of whether you might enjoy This American Life, the prologue to this episode—in which Ira Glass investigates just why companies are obsessed with tracing their origins back to garages—is a good litmus test.

2. The Invention of Money: What is money? Three stories—about a pre-industrial island society on a Pacific island, the American Federal Reserve and how Brazil fixed its decades-long problem with inflation—seek to answer this deceptively simple question.

3. My Experimental Phase: A hasidic jew, Chaim, living in Brooklyn, New York, one day meets a punk musician named Vic Thrill. Until they meet, Chaim has never heard pop music or watched modern TV. After they meet, Chaim adopts the stage name Curly Oxide and forms a band. The episode plays like an improbable buddy movie, so it’s no surprise that a few years back a major studio bought the film rights to the story. Tina Fey was set to write the script and Sacha Baron Cohen was going to play the lead role. Sadly, the film seems to be stuck in development hell.

4. When Patents Attack!: An investigation into US patent law. A prime example of This American Life’s ability to make something which at first glance looks painfully dull into a thrilling hour of radio. This is a parable about unforeseen consequences, wrapped in an investigation into the mysterious world of “patent trolling.” So good was this episode that there is even a sequel, which will air for the first time next week.

5. DIY: The story of Carl King: a man who becomes a private investigator in order to exonerate a friend who has been jailed for murder. It would be an oversight not to include at least one episode which may, if listened to on your iPod, leave you in the embarrassing position of crying your eyes out on a packed rush hour tube. This story should do the trick.

Honourable mentions: The Convert, Telephone, Act V and Mind Games.

Read an interview with Ira Glass, the host of This American Life