I miss the RadioLab of 5+ years ago, when most of their episodes would try to cover some concept in science, medicine, technology, mathematics, etc. and find an interesting way to present it using interviews and fanciful audio production. Fastforward to the past 2 or 3 years of RadioLab, and while they still do that...some of the time, sooooo many episodes are either just some obscure historical account of some weird situation that happened somewhere in the world, or some present day human interest story they just kinda like, which they lazily tie together into some broad philosophical theme for the episode. Don't get me wrong, they're still well made segments, but instead of making me really think about the fundamental way our world/our bodies work, it feels like I'm just listening to This American Life Gaiden.
Following the link you included and looking through the archive, there are definitely a few episodes in seasons 10-12 that I can recall really disliking because I either really didn't agree with the viewpoint they took on a segment, or I thought the episode "theme" was just BS and they were basically 3 unrelated segments that weren't about the natural world in really any way. Again, for the most part they're still well made, but for a podcast that prominently mentions in every episode that they receive funding from various science education foundations, how do they get to spend a whole episode talking about the origin of American football?
Not trying to sound like the No Fun Police, it's their show and they can do what they want, but it's been letting me down the past couple years.
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