Comment by brudgers

For me, podcasts are useful for learning while I drive. They are also useful for refreshing my recollection.

Finally the are useful for synthesis…a podcast can talk about tenuously related topics that would not usually be appropriate for an academic paper; use analogies, metaphors, and similes; and simply go off topic and discuss other interesting ideas that turn out to be more applicable than the formal subject.

But again that’s for me, not someone else.