Just to counter your anecdote, I (almost) only listen to podcasts when I’m in an idle waiting situation, or doing routine tasks that require insignificant mental energy. I love to listen to things that make me think, so my mind is as far away from the tedious routines as possible.
That said, the content here is “designed” to be read, not listened to. Content that tends to provoke a lot of going back and forth for references and rereading crucial bits multiple times isn’t going to work in direct text to audio conversion because of the differences of the media.
But forcing the listener to think isn’t a problem to me—and I do think (even after trying to compensate for possible cognitive biases) that I represent a significant base of listeners.
Just to counter your anecdote, I (almost) only listen to podcasts when I’m in an idle waiting situation, or doing routine tasks that require insignificant mental energy. I love to listen to things that make me think, so my mind is as far away from the tedious routines as possible.
That said, the content here is “designed” to be read, not listened to. Content that tends to provoke a lot of going back and forth for references and rereading crucial bits multiple times isn’t going to work in direct text to audio conversion because of the differences of the media.
But forcing the listener to think isn’t a problem to me—and I do think (even after trying to compensate for possible cognitive biases) that I represent a significant base of listeners.