Yesterday I finally got a chance to listen to the latest episode of ‘The Talk Show’ with your host John Gruber - this being the first episode on Mule radio, without Dan Benjamin.

Overall I thought the episode was pretty good. There were a couple of rough patches in there, one that stood out was when John was reading the sponsors. You could tell he wasn’t comfortable doing it and came off pretty stilted. Another was where he repeated a story that’s been told before (I already know about John’s HBO cable card issues) - honestly these are minor quibbles.

The biggest worry for many, was whether or not John could keep the conversation flowing and take on the role that Dan had in the old show - that is being an effective show runner and getting things out of your ‘guest’. In this regard I thought John did a decent job, much better than I thought he could.

There is a single president for this type of dynamic, which was in episode 57, which had Merlin Mann filling in for Dan (during Dan’s paternity leave). At the time I definitely felt John’s enthusiasm levels higher, but I thought that was the Merlin Mann factor. As it turns out John can lift it up, if he wants to (or in this case needs to).

The truth of the matter is that I didn’t feel Dan’s presence missing, but that’s only because my brain hasn’t really processed the fact that Dan won’t be on the show again. In my mind, he’s just away for an episode and will be back soon - except we know that’s not going to happen.

I think it will feel a lot stranger in the coming episodes and it really does depend on whether John can keep this level of conversation up. Will he eventually settle on a single person to do the Talk Show with him? I would imagine that would be the case….which leads me to my next point.

###Rotating Guest Gruber held his own and John Moltz was actually a very good guest. Wouldn’t mind hearing his thoughts on a more regular basis to be honest. Having Moltz in there changed the dynamics of the show because there were different angles to tackle on familiar topics.

The question I have is how many other similar types of guests can John have - before he runs out of interesting cats to talk to? Dan did something similar with the Pipeline show but then stopped it. Can he do a Zeldman and basically run the show whenever he’s got interesting guests or will he look for a permanent replacement?

All interesting questions to see how they pan out in practice, because clearly he’s not going to say how he intends to do this - not really his style.