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Way back in the mists of time, I blogged about the fact that I'd switched off from Dawn and Drew, and now only listened to Keith and The Girl - everybody's favorite pair of ignorant New York city hicks.

Seems like I'm not the only one. In their latest episode, Keith "Guesses" that the entirety of podshow.com records about 12,000 downloads per day.

The two site's Alexa rankings pretty much tell the story. KATG overtook podshow.com in November last year and hasn't looked back; the latest news seems to have dropped Podshow's ranking even further down.

Huzzah for my favorite podcast!

Please excuse me while I go back to listening to the latest episode.

I've committed podcast heresy.

Again.

I unsubbed from Adam Currey's Daily Source Code months ago, when I could no longer stand listening to Adam prattling about how magnificent he was and how his show was fantastic, and hearing all his grandiose plans for making millions off other peoples music and other people's podcasts.

I've now unsubbed from Dawn and Drew as well. They used to be funny, they used to be interesting.. but now they suck. Instead of the rambling ADD-fests they used to be, each of their shows is now cauterized at a nice neat 30 minutes, perfect for a slot on Sirius. I thought podcasting was all about getting away from those time limits, wasn't it?

D&D used to talk about their daily lives, and the insight into someone elses life - and the insight into how the two of them interact - was fascinating. Now that they've turned professional podcasters, their daily life is the show, so the spend their neat hygenic 30 minutes talking about the show.... and that's all. Nothing else happens to them any more, so there's nothing else to talk about.

Things went even further downhill when the minion army started up - there's nothing more annoying than hearing Dawn telling all her minions to check their mailboxes for secret shiznatches. I'm not a minion, I wanted to be, and knowing I'm missing things... well, let's just say it doesn't contribute to a pleasurable podcast-listening experience.

It's even *worse* now that they've accepted sponsorship from a casino. Actually, the fact that they've got sponsorship from a casino in itself isn't so bad - I have no objection to gambling, provided the games are played (by the house) fairly and the odds are a matter of public knowledge. What was *intolerable* was putting up with 20 minutes of prattle about how much fun gambling is, and even worse, how much money you could win from the casino!

Not fun.

Keith and the Girl, by contrast, continues to be funny and entertaining. A large part of the show is still KatG talking about the show (and about Keith's comedy career, which the podcast is just a small part of) - but I somehow find it more tolerable, probably because it's so openly acknowledged as what it is. Even better, KatG have regular guests - Patrice in particular is fantastic.

So... yeah, that's it. I know D&D are/were the most popular podcast on the net.. but sorry guys, no matter how much you claim you haven't changed and haven't sold out, it only takes a look at the length of your episodes to prove that you have.

Dear Lazyweb,

The holiday season is upon us, and I'm not prepared. I'm shortly going to have a lot more podcast-listening time than I'm used to, but I've only 20 hours of podcasts stored on my iPod.

This would barely last me through a normal week, let alone through a few weeks without net access to update.

I desperately need interesting content to add to my list now so I can start leeching in preparation for the time I'm going to be away from the net.

Please help!

Thanks, lazyweb.

Quirks & Quarks, Canada's equivalent to the ABC's Science Show has long been in my required-listening podcast list. Actually, the Science Show is as well, and NPR's Science Fridayis also.

For the big stories, there's often a lot of overlap between the three. It's often interesting hearing the different spin that Canadian, Australian, and American presenters put on the same topic.

One topic that's only been on Q&Q (so far) is: The search for a "gay gene".

You really should listen to this. If you just want to listen to the one segment from the show, you can browse to the show's audio page and choose from an mp3, ogg, or live streaming version of the audio.

If you have your own podcatcher, you can plug the feed straight into that.

If you have iTunes, you could subscribe to the podcast in iTunes as well.

Whichever you choose, you should do this, and soon.

Three simple reasons:

* Timeshifting. In essence, this means that you choose what content you listen to when - something traditional radio delivery can't give you. Right now, I'm in the middle of reading a book, so most of my discretionary time is taken up with that. I'm not listening to many podcasts.. but am I missing anything? no! When I'm ready, I can pick up Dawn and Drew right where I left them - or, if I'd prefer, I can skip a few episodes and just catch up with the latest.

* Choice: Podcasting leverages the "long tail" possibilites that the Internet has made possible: instead of being limited to the 5 or 6 choices I have on broadcast radio in this geographic location, I can pick from any podcast anyone creates in the world - none are any harder to listen to.

* There is no third reason.

This post is a followup to an earlier post in which I took the contrary position.