In fairness I think Bill Simmons, Joe Rogan, Marc Maron and Adam Carolla have had their praise for moving podcasts along. Same with This American Life.

Serial was different, though in that it was a multi episode look at something. This American life had segments and still had to be designed with the radio listener in mind - who was probably only in the car for 30 min. I don't think Serial is that uniquely good - but it was different. We just are kinda dumb for having all of "podcasts" under one term instead of a bunch of genre terms.