On the other hand, podcasts can be listened to in the background, while text must be actively read. There are pros and cons to each format as a consumer, not to mention differences in production workflow.
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.
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.
