For me I don't like audiobooks because its very slow and spoken stories should have a different cadence, velocity, set of dynamics, and diction than a book should (check out "the moth" to see what I'm talking about). I hold nothing against people who don't like to read or people who like audiobooks, or people who like slow things - Suum cuique.
For nonfiction, I think the two mediums are virtually the same depending on the density of the book. Most differences come down to the fact that you’re more susceptible to distraction. Most nonfiction books are light and repetitive enough that I don’t think it’s a big deal
Many authors are poor readers of their own work.
They are certainly good while you are on a long drive etc, because they entertain you while doing some another task which you wouldn't be able to do while reading. During lockdown, I could not read due to the constant stress and fear mongering, but I had to walk a lot every day and the audiobooks were a good way to accompany that.
The best audiobook I’ve ever listened to is Stephen Kings On Writing: A memoir of the Craft, read by the author. One of our times best storytellers, both when it comes to writing them and telling them.
I have a measure for all content I consume, quality/hr of reading/listening. If it's just a long video that has 2-3 questions that has caught my attention I'd be listening only those. If it's a long text that I might find something interesting I'll ask the LLM to summarize the main ideas as a filter before I decide to dive in.
Books, and their audiobooks version have on average much more bang per hour than random podcasts, because they're structured, authors had spend more time on them and you can cherry pick from a structure.
I also have caught myself using sloppy content as excuse not working on planned tasks with excuses like "this might be useful", or watching "productivity porn" videos. I think LLMs are good as a pre-filter for that.
- AntennaPod (Android: https://antennapod.org/about/) doesn't specifically block ads, but does make skipping them fairly painless. I'm not familiar with the iOS app space.
- Seek out, and add a classification tag for ad-free podcasts. When you're not in the mood for dealing with ads, play these.
- Protip: if you learn, or want to learn, German, Deutschlandfunk (and a number of other German-language broadcasters) have a set of excellent, ad-free, podcasts. This includes a number of podcasts for learning German (generally through the Goethe Institute or Deutsche Welle).
- If your podcast app permits it, set your forward-skip to 30 or 60 seconds (the length of most ad beds), and backwards to 5 seconds. You'll be able to navigate past most ad blocks more easily. You can also set begin/end skip periods for start/end of episode advertising.
- I've thought of manually editing episodes from a desktop session using audio editing software (Audacity or similar). That's ... a bit of additional overhead, but as with other mise en place techniques, you incur the overhead once and don't have to worry about the interruptions when you're in the middle of listening to an episode. Audacity shows sound signatures and I'm expecting that most ad blocks will be readily apparent. I also suspect AI tools might be able to remove ads fairly reliably, though haven't looked into this yet.
I've definitely noticed that I deliberately avoid listening to podcasts which have ads when I don't have the bandwidth / freedom to deal with them (e.g., doing other tasks, walking etc.). And advertising has become more pervasive, longer, more intrusively inserted, and annoying with time.
Other ad-free English-language pods: Tech Can't Save Us, History of Philosophy (Without Any Gaps), and Philosophy Bites (and several affiliated podcasts). All are highly informative, well-produced, don't fixate on current events and politics (which ... I find maddening). And several of those would appreciate any support as well.
Scott Adams' podcasts were different. He inserted very few commericials, and they were short enough there was no reason to skip forward. I tried many other podcasts after he passed away, and they all were largely long, boring commercials. Yuck. I now listen to Pandora or Soma FM instead.
Fortunately this can be done much more easily now, with headphone-based controls and smartwatch-based controls. It takes maybe 1-3 seconds for me to get through an ad break and be back to listening.
There are podcasts which are just free-association rambling (or worse), others which are very closely scripted and edited.
I very much prefer the latter, and the best of those approach books in structure and/or value, if they don't directly produce books themselves (e.g., Peter Adamson's History of Philosophy, which is both a podcast and a book series).
As others have pointed out, libraries often have Libby access which can have pretty huge selections of audiobooks. There's a discovery feature that lets you search by vibe, which I am finding useful.
Your point is well taken and very reasonable though.
I actually think this is about quality. Podcasts that take real effort (Hardcore History, Fall of Civilizations, Gastropod) are absolutely worth my time, but they're basically mini-audiobooks in their own right.
Reading does force you to slow down to let more enter your brain.
Audiobooks can do the same in a different way.
Either way, longer form content helps the brain unpack and retain bigger/longer picture things which is the kind of focus that many want to improve.
Reading also helps one be more articulate.
Articulation is a helpful skill in using AI.