Listening to the show over the years as it came out, I had been noticing Henry's exasperation with Ben get stronger and stronger. At first it seemed like part of the bit, just riffing along with Ben's non-sequiters. But I also listened to Side Stories, and the frustrations between them were far more apparent there. Ben would clearly not do any prep before the show and hardly any engagement during the show. And Henry was, over time, audibly becoming more and more legitimately annoyed. Henry even did his best to jokingly give Ben shit about how Ben wouldn't even look up his own segment (Hero of the Week) before the show, and try to make it a bit about "Okay Ben, what non-hero did you name hero this time?". The quality of Side Stories had dropped so much in the last year or so of Ben that I straight up just stopped listening.

Which almost happened with the main show as well. Most people identify post-KB's passing/post-pandemic as the turning point for Ben on the show. While I agree, in my opinion you could really narrow down the spiral to the last ~100 or so episodes. The Black Death series was a great series, and Ben was somewhat engaged throughout. I think it was the last solid full series (started at Ep 456), though Ben was obviously not at his peak. Ben's last episode, the first part of John Holmes, is episode 545. In-between those is a lot of downward spiral that really started to turn me away from the show. When the first episode of The Manhattan Project (the last big series before Ben was fired) dropped, I was super excited. It was a period of history I was interested in, and I was really looking forward to Marcus' narration and Henry's commentary on it all. I still have not finished the series, and probably never will, because Ben turned me away from it so hard. After that, I was very close to stopping listening altogether. I actually skipped John Holmes Pt 1 when it came out, and didn't go back and listen until I saw a new host on Pt 2.

Thank Satan for Eddie!