This is a great podcast. It's thoughtful and especially well narrated/hosted. Sometimes it is heavy on the academic side, with items on the fringe of popular culture - but that might be a plus if you know much already. What I generally like less is side observations on the japanese history "industry" and how speakers are viewed in an academic context, but that again might be valuable for you, too. The show would benefit from audio improvement. Usually the host has excellent audio quality, but the guests sound like a bad internet call too frequently. Clipping makes the audio somewhat of a chore to listen too and has caused me to skip otherwise great issues.

Maybe there is some software for recording podcasts with switching master or somesuch ?