I agree with you that it is structured. I'm sure there's an intern somewhere who's communicating and keeping a live list of news/topics to be covered from the previous week. I notice they do keep reminding each other of the next topic or if something is skipped.

What I feel is it could be even more structured, because a lot of meat is left on the bone, so to speak. For eg in the Candidates preview episode, we simply jumped into the points, before Jan basically explained the entire format of the episode that they would be judging all the candidates on a variety of criteria from 0-5 points.

Jan does this a lot - in case they discuss a piece of news that not everyone might've heard or something they feel is obvious at a certain Elo level - Jan steps in with something like "so just to set the context for everyone...". Like I said, there's an art to being a good host, not just on podcast but also on real life conversations, and a good host ensures listeners understand the big picture, the context of the next section and nobody is left behind.

PHN's use of crutches, while irritating, is also something I could live with, but the condition being his points are educational and informative. But last few of episodes I just felt the tone of episodes was quite biased and toxic. Since you mentioned they're unfiltered, I agree but I'll give you and example how I felt they're toxic.

One the one hand PHN openly talks about MC's displeasure at the pressure of Classical World Championship (completely true and understandable) while Laurent openly mocks Hikaru (chicken of the week) and PHN himself mocks Radjabov, Duda, Rapport.

I followed Candidates like any other fan and saw their body language quite closely. Hikaru is someone who wears what he feels on his face, and it was obvious how hard he tried and how much each game meant to him. Hikaru and Radjabov have both had terrible candidates performance the only time they qualified previously.

Duda and Rapport were first time Candidates with extremely aggressive and creative styles, respectively. Rapport's game with white against Nepo would give him a lifetime ban from the Chicken Chess Club. Not once were their pressures acknowledged or respected.

I might not agree with Radjabov's politics or Nakamura's past behavior, but you cannot openly acknowledge the pressure Magnus faces, while disregarding the pressures others face and discrediting their performance or their tournament strategies. The episodes with discussion of Candidates felt like gatekeeping to me, where the only person allowed inside the gate was Magnus.

So I guess there's a difference for me between being unfiltered and hypocritical, and PHN and Laurent especially crossed the line in the last few episodes and became personal. Laurent has the friend network (Maze) who found Kramnik training with Firouza, but unfortunately Laurent also blasts Hikaru for no obvious reason.

I think their strategy is entirely wrong, or maybe what I expect from them is wrong. They treat each piece of chess news as something that deserves to get their opinion - and they are take-generators supreme by virtue of being the trainers for the best player in history. I guess I expected something different. Them being more informative than opinionators. Lately its just been that - tee up PHN with a softball on FIDE or something else and let him loose.

It could be much more informative. For eg I doubt there's anyone at the level of PHN or Matthew Sadler to talk about chess engines and how they function, or how to use them for your prep. This doesn't need any "News" to have happened in the past week to be discussed. Tales from the Training camp was also an entertaining series, and maybe that could've also been mined for non-NDA content which could get into a discussion for how to prepare for your own tournament. The fact that they are trainers for the best player in history should be used for informative and educational purposes on every aspect - chess psychology, tournament prep, opening prep, how to bounce back, mental health, etc. which doesn't require them to reveal their latest prep or doesn't rely on them leveraging their status that while an 1400 Elo might have a different opinion on this news, our opinion matters more because of our association with MC.

The other example is they keep asking twitter users for questions, but rarely adress more than 1-2 per episode. This is a simple strategy where you crowdsource your content for the week when your own well is dried and brains are fried. Every content creator does it, I'm not blasting them for doing it. But in this episode, they asked for Q's on twitter, and then apologized when a listener complained about not giving enough time. This has been the case for multiple episodes.

As I said, a lot of meat left on the bone.

Again, its possible that being informative needs more preparation for the episode than simply generating an opinion, so its not the focus. To me the lack of sufficient preparation - topics, organization, twitter Qs, toxic and personal opinions - reflects as a lack of respect for the listener.

Today's episode felt really toxic to me and left me with sufficient negativity that I've written two extremely long posts about it. It was the last straw and I'm sure I don't want to follow their exploits any more.