What is the best episode of the podcast?

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/61/fiasco Holy smokes, I think my wife and I had actual wet-to-the-touch tears of laughter flowing down our cheeks as we drove and listened to this.

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/199/house-on-loon-lake. One of the best hours of radio I've heard in my life. It's utterly compelling.

The Radiolab episode about http://www.radiolab.org/story/211119-colors/ is my go-to "isn't Radiolab great?" episode.

Okay, first of all, THANK YOU all so much! There was a whole lot of good stuff here, and a few absolutely AMAZING ones, and a few that were so fucking wretched they had me literally shouting angrily into thin air. In the last case, this was because I did not allow myself to turn off episodes I hated, so I kept listening, my fury feeding back on itself, impotently making werewolf-faces alone in my basement to no one but the spiders and dustbunnies. If your recommendation managed to evoke such an intense emotional response, I salute you! SO here's how I did this thread: I listened to all the podcasts linked here, with the following exceptions: I didn't listen to most of the This American Lifes and RadioLabs, as I'd listened to nearly all those recommended episodes before. Also, if someone recommended multiple episodes of the same podcast, I generally only listened to one of them, picked at random. EXPLAINING MY BEST ANSWERS: The Truth's "http://www.thetruthapm.com/Story/Entries/2013/10/13_The_Talk.html" was a tight and brief fictional narrative that seemed to be a little perfect ball of roiling emotional energy with phenomenal sound design and voice acting. Totally compelling. I generally haven't enjoyed Judge John Hodgman, but I found "http://www.maximumfun.org/judge-john-hodgman/judge-john-hodgman-episode-134-right-remain-silent" to be a really powerful story about a father and child that hit all my emotional soft spots and had me crying by the end. Thank you! I thought Analyze Phish's "http://www.earwolf.com/episode/hollywood-bowl/" episode was a super-fun pretty-laid-back story about someone good-naturedly exploring something they hated, and I found it cheerfully charming, perhaps more so because I don't really like Phish either. How Did This Get Made's "http://www.earwolf.com/episode/punisher-war-zone/" episode was so so so good, and will likely lead to me trying out a lot more of the episodes and maybe re-watching the movie; I think I'd always expected this podcast to be smug piss-taking, but I was really delighted by the genuine excitement the hosts had. Wonderful. The http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/04/08/2011/connecting-science-and-art.html with Herzog and McCarthy should have been disqualified for unfairness from the fucking get-go, since it's one of my favorite filmmakers talking with one of my favorite authors, and yet I had no choice but to mark it Best Answer because Herzog is SO HERZOGY here. My only regret is that I could not have seen the other hosts' clearly-trying-to-be-diplomatic faces when Herzog quietly and offhandedly muses that humanity as a species will be ending soon. http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-83-heyoon/ was good, but we have already established by way of The Talk and The Right To Remain Silent that I am kind of a sucker for the emotional tension of loving parent/child relationships, and I feel like that's more or less what the host/Heydon talk kinda turned into. AND that also was a major theme with the http://www.npr.org/2014/07/25/335299301/tim-gunn-on-and-off-the-runway-life-is-a-big-collaboration in jazzbaby's comment, which made me love him even more than I already had. Also in that comment, the http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-41-thors-angels/ initially had me scoffing about how Shyeah Okay I was NOT going to listen to fucking FOUR HOURS of some guy talking about history. Four hours later, I was like, Wow. How About That! There was nothing particularly amazing about the http://qi.com/podcast/ specific episode, but I really liked how it was just a formless collection of interesting facts presented in a rapid-fire-enough way to keep me from ever feeling like they were belaboring their points, and I definitely foresee myself listening to more episodes! Similarly with the http://throwingshade.libsyn.com/ episode; the content itself was nothing groundbreaking, but the hosts' quickness of wit and TOTAL commitment to straight-facedness was compelling enough that I'd be interested in checking it out on the regular. And same deal with http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones, where I thought Justin McElroy was wonderfully funny and fast and po-faced at all the right points (and was incidentally the best part of My Brother My Brother And Me). http://www.kasperhauser.com/podcasts/ep-5-spicy-pony-head is only three minutes, a single sketch, and appealed to the part of my brain that delights in Vaudevillian broadness and patter. Likewise, while I felt some of the sketches in Superego were not that on-point, the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOrA9-2xnGY bit from 7m57s to 12m22s hit all the same buttons. I have listened to that probably seven times now. Again, thank you all!

99% Invisible - http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-83-heyoon/

I'll see your Fiasco, and raise you http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/306/seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time.

One my favorite old school TAL episodes is http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/80/running-after-antelope. The New Yorker Fiction podcast: three Denis Johnson stories have been read over the years, one by https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/tobias-wolff-reads-denis-johnson/id256945396?i=81149528&mt=2, one by https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/salvatore-scibona-reads-denis/id256945396?i=84830102&mt=2, and one by https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/donald-antrim-reads-denis/id256945396?i=163523305&mt=2. http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episodes/remembering_robin_williams

How Did This Get Made?'s episode on "Punisher: War Zone," featuring the movie's director and Patton Oswalt. Oh my gosh, it is unreal how good this is. I was sort of expecting funny piss-taking at the movie's expense, but the director is intelligent and interesting and talks a lot about her very carefully-considered artistic choice to make the movie as insanely over-the-top violent as possible. This is completely wonderful.

I loved the This American Life episode about the global financial crisis, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giant_Pool_of_Money. It was the first time I'd ever heard the crisis explained so clearly. It's incredibly well put together.