I like the podcast overall, the host is doing good work and is really well prepared for interviews. You can tell that he is a proper geek for the dry but vital stuff and really cares for the topic of the week.
Caring for the dry but vital stuff is a strength in many ways, but I also skip many episodes because they tend to be so in-depth on a particular, highly topical issue that they only offer archival value just a few weeks/months later and are too specific for me to care unless I'm already invested. I swing back and forth on this and I cant really tell what I find interesting at any given moment (sorry), so I dont think this is a bad thing, it just means that only some episodes are great for me. But when they are, they really are.
What I find strange is the tendency to invite rather entrenched political functionaries. Maybe others do, but I have pretty much never learned anything worthwhile from listening to someone making elaborate arguments in favor of a pretty straight-forward position I already know they hold. When I agree with the speaker it's a little boring, when I strongly disagree it comes off as dressing up a pig. Regardless of whether I agree or not, it often comes across as high-minded Washington-Ivy-League-babble of people who are very certain that they know how "the game is played". I could do with less of those episodes and more stories of people who managed to work with or around the political/monied class to help regular people, the environment, etc.
Related to the point above, I could also do with less platforming of people whose main interest is hurting others in order to gain the favor of xenophobes, preserve the US American Empire, or enrich themseves, just because they are perceived to be effective in it or to appease some strange notion of not being afraid to engage with them intellectually. I noticed that the main Intercept podcast has done this rather frequently in the past year and I am glad, that it has been pretty rare on this podcast. Its a tight line to walk between informing and platforming anyways, so I tend to give the benefit of the doubt with regards to the show-writers. I can acknowledge that this podcast doesnt exist to appease me and looking for common ground with political opposition is necessary, but listening becomes a lot more strenuous to me when it boils down to an hour of someone justifying their hate-campaigns or arguing for a supposedly necessary evil under the guise of political realism.
I think the best episodes are those where the host and his colleagues present their own original takes on political power-struggles or contextualize current events.
So, even in acknowledging that I dont like all episodes, I still think this podcast should exist the way it does and I still check out every episode to see if it is for me.
