This. Gruber's flippant attitude has been bringing the Talk Show down for the past few months. Dan is what holds it together. These days, Hypercritical is by far the best podcast I listen to.

It's not worth listening to without Dan Benjamin.

Hypercritical is an awesome podcast. I love that Dan mostly sits back and lets John go on his long rants.

Agreed on Hypercritical being the stronger show now. It's also something that ages better, so that old episodes are still informative.

Absolutely. After months of being constantly busy, finally I had a few days to myself and listened to first episodes of Hypercritical (I got on aboard from episode 30) and they are really informative. Even those that are about really old events (like iPhone 5 predictions) are really insightful.

I was gonna say this, you nailed it. I find myself going back to 2011 to catch up on some current follow up

I'd be really really sad if hypercritical gets cancelled. I hope John Siracusa never leaves 5by5 - Dan Benjamin doesn't contribute that much to the show, but is still a great host.

Hypercritical is excellent.

That's what makes the shows good. Dan, like most hosts that own networks (like Leo) don't really know a lot and don't really contribute to the conversation. Their job is to get the best cohorts and let them do their thing. As far as I'm concerned, the less Dan talks, the better. That's more time that people like Siracusa and Marco get to talk.

That's out of order. Dan is a coder, a writer, something of a designer, and has founded or been involved with several startups. He shows he knows a thing or two.

Put another way, I very much doubt any of these co-hosts you admire share your view that Dan is clueless.

Yes, he is a coder (Ruby on Rails), has had talks on Ruby, is familiar with iOS development, Perl, PHP (he said PHP was the language he used daily for a couple years) and is not clueless at all. He has also done a few PeepCode screencasts (Ruby, Sinatra, jQuery, Mercurial, Command Line, vi, ...).

The problem is John Siracusa, who basically knows too much.

Dan does know a lot about development. But compared to people like Marco and John Siracusa, who know about everything, Dan seems to take a back seat to the other co-hosts.

Dan is a smart guy; however, he doesn't have the in-depth tactical knowledge about how Apple works. Some of his questions and assertions about Apple are naive, which can be frustrating to listen to at times.

Hypercritical is a GREAT show. So is Back to Work

Agreed... I tried listening to the new format and it is basically background noise. Dan added a lot to the show.

F*ck! You stole my words. I feel exactly the same.

>It's not worth listening to without Dan Benjamin.

Totally agreed. I know views are split on Gruber and I fell on the side of genuinely liking his blog and The Talk Show, but I think I'm done with both.

I can't imagine how someone could do this to Dan.

Hypercritical is the new hotness anyway.

Yeah, Dan seems like the kind of nice guy you just cant help but like. Seems to me like he's been stabbed in the back on this one.

Shame on Gruber.

Disagree that he's been stabbed in the back. He was stabbed in the front.

I'm absolutely disgusted right now. I shouldn't feel like it, but I think Gruber has screwed me personally. Shame on him (though I understand that he has a family and needs to make a living), but I just can't imagine how anyone could do it to Dan Benjamin...

I was never a talk show fan and prefer the excellent Hypercritical (with John Siracusa). For those who haven't listened to hypercritical: give it a shot, you won't regret it -- http://5by5.tv/hypercritical

Speaking of 'asshole', name and logo of the Ass, ehmm, Mule Radio Network are certainly a match! ;)

Let's make mistakes was an odd fit anyway, a bit like The Incomparable (which is very good but would belong more to a macworld network obviously).

Listening right now to the mule version of The Talk Show, it feels dull and way worse than when cohosted by Dan. It would actually be way funnier with a cohost like Mike Monteiro.

Agreed. It's not the same. Shame on @gruber.