Thoughts on The Talk Show

The Talk Show with John Gruber and Dan Benjamin is a weekly(ish) podcast that typically revolves around Apple but that is, at least ostensibly, about whatever the two hosts want to talk about that week. Benjamin may be familiar from his site Hivelogic or his work on Cork’d, A List Apart, and with the Ruby on Rails community. Gruber is the man behind Daring Fireball, a popular weblog amongst Mac aficionados.

This isn’t really a review since, well, I don’t think I’m really qualified to write a review of a podcast. And also I’m not even sure how you review a podcast (although I see Digg persists in trying). So instead it’s just a few criticisms I have after having listened to the past ten episodes (episode 9 has been lost to the mists of time).

I’ve come into contact with Benjamin’s work infrequently but I’m a regular reader of Daring Fireball and generally enjoy reading or listening to whatever Gruber has to say. Although I’m of the opinion that he lavishes Apple with a little too much praise from time to time, he’s hardly a cultist and even when he is praising Apple it’s usually in a way that’s significantly different from the way in which everyone else is doing it.

I put that out there just to make the point that I’m a fan. At least of Gruber. And yet having said that I find a few things continue to drive me crazy with the Talk Show. Benjamin and Gruber have made it clear on a few podcasts that there’s is a ‘different kind’ of podcast, one that eschews a more structured format for something more free form. More like a conversation one overhears at a restaurant than a lecture delivered by a panel. This is all well and good and I’m not necessarily against that. What I am against is the incessant navel-gazing that occurs. Almost every show so far has devoted a significant amount of time to Benjamin and Gruber talking about the show. This is fine for your first few episodes but it’s episode 11 now. It’s time to move beyond that. The fun conversations to overhear aren’t the ones where people consistently talk about the conversation they’re having.

The other problem I have is that Benjamin and Gruber are a little too close in point of view. Although they refer to having had disagreements and not always seeing eye-to-eye there’s precious little evidence from what we’ve heard that they’re anything but twins separated at birth (I exaggerate, slightly). The reason this is a problem is that occasionally one of the hosts says something which is ridiculous (like Gruber suggesting FairPlay DRM is reasonable) and no one calls him out on it and makes him defend that position. I don’t want two guys at each other’s throats but listening to people constantly agree with each other can get a little old.

Still, at the end of the day, that’s about all I have to really complain about. Sure, I could do without the mandatory reference to Stanley Kubrick every episode but I suppose that’s the sort of thing that builds the ‘character’ of the show. And it’s really not a bad show. If you’re interested in Apple, or you’re already a fan of either Benjamin or Gruber, you’re likely to find it an enjoyable way to pass a half hour.