To add, I think we should leave it to the machines to start indexing podcasts automatically. They're some of the easiest mediums for speech recognition and Google has been indexing YouTube transcripts for a few years now.

They have been doing it badly for a few years know yes, it’s not solved by any stretch of the imagination.

Sure, they keep getting some words wrong all the time, but it is likely good enough to get the general subject of what a podcast is about.

This is why most of the stuff I listen to as a podcast are just random factoids and trivia. (No Such Thing as A Fish, Cautionary Tales, 99pi, etc)

If it's something I actually want to learn and retain, I prefer text so that I can go back, pause, skip etc as I please with an intuitive interface - my eyes =)

The same thing with interviews of interesting people I may want to store quotes from. With text it's just C-c C-v to copy stuff to my notes. With audio I need to transcribe it by hand, which is tedious work.

Exactly