This American Life

Ira Glass has been hosting This American Life since 1995, and somehow it still feels fresh every single week. The format is deceptively simple: pick a theme, tell a few true stories that connect to it. But the execution is anything but simple. The show won the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a podcast, and it regularly lands stories that bounce around in your head for days. Each episode runs about an hour, broken into acts, which makes it perfect for long stretches of highway. You can jump in anywhere. There is no required listening order across its massive archive of nearly 500 episodes. One week you might hear about a guy who accidentally became a Chinese pop star. The next, a harrowing account of what happens inside a school during a lockdown drill. The emotional range is staggering. Glass and his team at WBEZ Chicago have a specific talent for finding ordinary people in extraordinary situations and letting them talk. The production values are meticulous without being fussy. You hear real silences, real laughter, real fumbling for words. Contributors over the years have included David Sedaris, Sarah Vowell, and a rotating cast of reporters who have gone on to start their own acclaimed shows. It is the most popular weekly podcast in the world, and that popularity has not dulled its ambition one bit. If you have somehow never listened, a long drive is the perfect place to start.