It's pretty good, I listen from time to time, even when they talk about something I am already familiar with. There's coincidentally a recent article in the New York Time magazine that says, for the reasons you mention, that they are awesome.
I like it, though sometimes I think it's overproduced. While interesting, compositionally speaking, I'm not sure it always does justice to the stories.
Overproducing is FUN. I loved overproducing when I was in college and in the student radio station.
I used to have wildly overproduced shows declaring the greatness of countries I don't live in or the evils of long since dead dictators.
I do mean the funky sound effects and such, yes. It's often okay, but sometimes it feels purely ornamental and doesn't add anything to the story for me.
I just ran into this program. It has very interesting subject matter, but besides that, they use interesting editing and design I've never heard in radio before. Does anyone else listen to this program?
[1] This facsimile operated in part by synAC.