This Week in Tech is a light and breezy podcasted tech-news chat show hosted by the affable Leo Laporte. It’s not a demanding listen, though its emphasis on Silicon Valley celebrity insiderism and its roster of not-especially savvy tech journalist guests can make it a bit trying at times. It’s also far too laddish (erm, dweeb-macho might be a better term), with the rare female guest needing to push a little too hard to get heard over the din. I don’t mind that the show’s chatty and digressive, but I would like to see more diversity of opinion.

Having said all that, at the moment I’m listening to “TWIT” episode 213 “The Dog in the Bookcase” and I’m finding it to be an improvement over last week’s bemusing effort. The gender balance is still skewing 100% male, but I think the show’s benefitting from finding guests outside the usual two or three jaded Valley journos. At least one of the guests, the UK’s John Graham-Cumming, is a real techie, having invented a major anti-spamming technology. He’s recently been in the news for starting a successful petition to force the UK Government to apologise for its horrifyingly homophobic treatment of the great computer scientist Alan Turing after the Second World War.

One of the other guests, Patrick Beja, is a tech journalist, but at least he’s French! He’s a pleasing counterpoint to the dreary libertarianism that pervades the guest list.

More episodes like this one, please!