The "radio stuff" isn't nearly as much of an irritant if you're listening to a podcast while commuting.

It's still kind of grating when you listen to a whole bunch of episodes of something in a row, though. There needs to be markers in the files and software that can cut off the intro/ending of the "internal" episodes in a playlist. Like a much more drastic version of gapless playback.

Chapter markers are a potential solution IF podcast producers use them and mark them accurately and IF your podcast player of choice supports Chapter markers.

Overcast[0], the iOS app that Marco makes supports chapters and he usually adds them when he encodes his podcast and it's pretty nice. Hopefully he releases his personal podcast production tool soon so that it can be more widely used.

[0] https://appsto.re/us/jhe90.i

2x playback speed helps a lot I find.

Some are better than others in those regards. Most of the ones I listen to, I listen to for entertainment - so I don't mind some meandering. And decent podcast apps will give you reasonable skip options - I will frequently skip intros and outros (I'm looking at you, 99% invisible; I have never cared what your boy has to say.)

Yeah, but it's the intro and outro that makes the money.

Not always. I've stopped listening to Marc Maron's podcast because the last one I listened to started off with a 20 minute monologue about his cat. 99% Invisible used to always end the podcast with a quote from his kid about something; maybe it still does, but once the "main show" is over, I just skip to the end and mark it as read.

I do agree there is too much noise, but in the end of the day they are not the pure way to learn, though on the higher end of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_entertainment