It depends on the format. For a produced show with narration and excerpted segments of interviews, I agree with you. However, there are many good podcasts that are basically a conversation/interview and, while there's some degree of prepping and editing required, you can largely wing these with the right guests. This format is quite a bit easier than writing an equivalent length document from scratch.
Re:Podcasts are my new Wikipedia
by LudwigNagasena on Friday May 15, 2020 @04:52PM
(#23197243)
It depends. A lot of podcasts are just conversations with “script” being a set of interesting topics.
So get two people to text-chat over WhatsApp on a subject for an hour, and clean it up after the fact. It's still easier to produce than a conversation podcast.
A text chat would be full of misunderstandings and needless clarifications that wouldn't have to be there if spoken with inflections hinting at how something was to be taken, or facial cues for in-person interviews.
[1] Never mind that in order to produce quality audio, you need to have written... Your script. Which is a lot harder than writing something readable.