I miss Talk of the Nation. Host Neal Conan was a massive fan and was friends with several classic creators.

Not as much lately, but I've been listening to NPR since college.

Love it and my whole family does as well.

Hmm, don't know what you've already tried, but I'd suggest checking out the Fire and Water podcast network and then click the shows link at the top and look for what interests you. My favorite shows there are the Treasury Cast and the Digest Cast (which focus on treasury editions and digests from the '70s and '80s) but there's a number of other good shows there as well - the Super Mates podcast in particular has some good comics-related shows, although the titular couple has pretty much stopped doing that show because they've started another. However, you can find some good stuff by doing a deep dive through their show's archives.
Another podcast network is Two True Freaks which has literally dozens of shows, many focused on comics - you have to do a little digging to find what you might like. One problem with a lot of those shows (and I've only sampled about 10 of them) is most of the podcasters who make them don't edit them very well. By that I mean they often just post entirely uncut conversations, so you get shows are 2 and half hours long for example.
Finally, I highly recommend a general pop culture podcast called Radio vs. the Martians. They discuss all kinds of stuff of geek interest, i.e., comics, movies, TV shows, individual actors or genres, etc. Just scroll down and you can see all of their past shows. They've done several that are directly comics related.

Totally correct, and yet, from the layman's perspective, you hear it on an NPR affiliate station (unless you are streaming).

Isn't that really due to how NPR organizes its affiliations, though? A station might purchase content from NPR, PRI, and APM, but they are an "NPR Affiliate" and primarily associate their identity with NPR. NPR even tells them when to run pledge drives. They are, for many intents and purposes, NPR stations. Thus the confusion when programming is on that is not NPR.

Well, the same is true for Public Broadcasting.  The Corporation for Public Broadcasting does produce a lot of content; but, member stations, like WGBH Boston produce a great deal of the high profile stuff, or help co-fund it.  They were instrumental in bringing over a lot of the British programming that Masterpiece Theater (or whatever they call it now) and Mystery were built upon.  The so-called "liberal bias" is also the same dynamic, as that has never been true, with McNeil-Lehrer News Hour being middle of the road, at best, with business reporting from the WSJ (same as NPR) and stuff like Louis Rukeyser and William F Buckley, over the years.


Thing is, a lot of affiliates for both PBS and NPR (and PRI/PRX) are based in universities, with a lot of public affairs and educational content, which means a (generally) more reasoned and analytical approach to subjects, often voicing opinions other than those presented in mainstream media (especially public affairs material).  You hardly get a deep Left viewpoint; more Center-Left; but, they still get tarred with that by the Right and the corporate media (dominated by conglomerates with major contributions to the Right and Centrist).  FAIR and other media watchdog groups routinely chastise NPR and PBS for corporate biases and a dearth of labor-issue reporting.  However, they are stronger on social issues, such as LGBT topics and racial dynamics.