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“(I didn’t realise it still mattered Mr Gruber.)
The conclusion I've come to is simply that the new "Talk Show with John Gruber" is never going to become the old "Talk Show" which featured Dan Benjamin as Mr Gruber's sideman. It may become, over time, something as interesting, but for those of us who found in the older show something as subtle and disturbing as absinthe and water, it's unlikely we'll ever get quite the same experience, anytime, anywhere. That's both sad, yet somehow close to inevitable.
One source of this now-vanished quality is that Mr Benjamin manages to be simultaneously uniquely talented and almost unnoticeable. He does things in his discourse with the nominal hosts of the 5x5 podcasts that are at times breathtaking. It's not just his ability to be near egoless; it's also that he can, in small and intricate ways, manage to save some of his hosts from their own egotism. He might, for example, overstate the importance of something the host did, which enables the host to modestly retract from that overstatement. From a grab-bag of images and ideas, he'll help a host pick the two or three that are worth going on with. It's the talent of helping people be themselves, only more so.
Mr Gruber, while very talented himself, is one of those people who benefit more than most from Mr Benjamin's abilities. Alongside Mr Benjamin, Mr Gruber was free to be the rebel, the liar, the exaggerator, the aggressor. He threw the ball high, he threw it low, in sliders and cut-backs — and Mr Benjamin quietly and calmly moved his glove, jumped high, rolled on the ground, and, on rare occasions, having missed, went and found the ball in the tall weeds that grow around the lonely suburban diamond of their discourse. And just as in a good baseball game you come away with a subtle feeling that something has changed, that somewhere out there a lesson has been repeated, and another fraction of it learnt, you came away from most editions of the Talk Show feeling that you gripped things a little differently, even that gravity was not quite what it had been an hour or two hours earlier.
Mr Gruber is, inevitably, a man of heroes. Johnny Carson is one, Steve Jobs is another. It is interesting to hear Mr Gruber speak of Jobs and Apple not because he is always right, or that he has particular insights, but because he understands them in the way that they understand themselves. That is a unique gift, though it is not be mistaken with other forms of insight and analysis.
Yet men who follow and to some extent live through their heroes are themselves frequently subject to curious drives of their own. There's a certain frustration about being so close, mentally and emotionally, to greatness, yet distant materially. It's tempting, in those circumstances, to see others as the source of one's own limitations.
For all of this, though, in truth what I am going to miss the most about their interactions are the silences. Mr Gruber and Mr Benjamin managed to produce silences of rare depth, sometimes pleasant, sometimes sad. They reminded me of that moment on a boat, when you are approaching a berth, the engine just cut, and the vessel drifting with the rudder's last direction toward its nest of ropes and bollards, those final seconds of a quiet, attentive freedom, leave-taking and return. Only Johnny Carson did the silences better.
John Gruber will within a year make The Talk Show into something fine, a true four-star podcast. Dan Benjamin continues his good, solid work. What's lost is that together they could have come to virtually define what a five-star podcast is and should be - something that now is never going to happen.”Read full review »
tslewis4 via Apple Podcasts ·
Australia ·
10/18/21
More reviews of The Talk Show With John Gruber
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“While John sounds much more excited (even giddy) on this new network, this new iteration did not excite me. I tried a few times to keep listening but it just kept becoming background noise. Hard to follow, unfocused, uninteresting, and seemed to lack sincerity and self-awareness. The great...”Read full review »
freetyler via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
05/20/12
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“This should not be called the Talk Show. Oh well. It rambles a bit. Hopefully it gets better.”
Don711 via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
05/21/12
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“While the Dan and John show was great to listen to, clearly with professional-level production values thanks to Dan's work, this is like two frat guys just recording a Skype call on a Saturday night. It was painful to listen to. Like others on here, I question John's decision to stop...”Read full review »
Baron397D via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
05/20/12
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