Podcasts aren't meant for you to get upto speed on some high end technical concept. It's a lay person's perspective in most cases. So I'm fine if Joe Rogan interviews a scientist since unlike a lecture from susskind, I don't need to pay full attention and take notes. Similarly with finance podcasts, where I'm a professional, I don't need to find one which discusses a full economics paper. I prefer one where highly technical people get together and have a high level conversation since I know the basics and I can follow their train of thought.
For a long time, I agreed with this sentiment. But as someone who spends not a small amount of time commuting, jogging, going to the gym and cooking, I've replaced a lot of passive consumption of online resources with podcasts.
I like to stay on top of the open-source and Linux adjacent news, and reading LWN while working out can be tough. I've found a few podcasts from members of those communities and listen to them. I keep short notes on my phone for topics that I want to revisit later, and find the show notes the hosts themselves curate to be treasure troves of content I might otherwise pass by. My signal to noise ratio in passive consumption has definitely gone up.
Podcasts like the Longform podcast and Current Affairs allow me to delve into content I'd otherwise have to read about.
I do not find podcasts to be a good substitute for heavy technical content, in the same way I would find YouTube videos or audiobooks to be frustrating formats to consume O'Reilly books.
For example, these days I have trouble reading books because it's so sedentary. I can only do it for 30min before I switch to a podcast or audiobook so I can run or cook or do pushups while I listen.
For me the efficiency is its main perk.
Walking, cooking, commuting, doing chores are the most common examples. Past that, I also listen to podcasts when I am doing boring work or writing some boiler plate code.
(Edit: These are other examples of billion dollar industries that equate to low quality experiences you can choose to give yourself, but which will have longer term implications.)
First of all, life isn't something that I must squeeze all "productivity" out of possible, humans need rest and downtime. They also need socialization even though that's not "productive."
Secondly, podcasts help one accomplish productive work as they turn boring mundane (yet productive) tasks like cooking, cleaning, working out, gardening, folding laundry, woodworking, etc. into slight entertainment. For example, I feel much more motivated to clean the house when I have a podcasts I want to listen to vs before I started listening to podcasts (I don't really enjoy listening to music much). Almost nobody sits on the couch idly listening to podcasts.
Literally, multiplies the value of those activities.
Try this episode of "The Memory Palace": http://thememorypalace.us/2012/12/dreamland/
That's four minutes twenty-five seconds you might find not wasted. And none of the information in it is likely to be useful to you whatsoever.
I listen to podcasts while I'm doing the dishes, cleaning the floor, cooking, tidying the house, sewing patches, reseating the heatsink onto a GPU. No need to be driving.
Pop songs are usually an incredibly inefficient way to consume information too, but I listen to those a lot. I wonder if you do.
The benefit of podcasts is that they work when other forms of media don't work. I agree that they don't make good competitors to books and other more dense mediums.