Well, yeah, of course if you're just sitting in your living room you'd rather read than listen; however that's not really the use case of a Podcast.
The value podcasts bring is you can consume them during times you can't read. During exercise, driving, walking to work, cleaning the house, cooking, and train/car rides (for people who get motion sick while reading in a moving vehicle). They turn tedious menial tasks into times when you're mildly entertained - that provides immense value.
They can also be used for a slightly more interesting white noise.
If you can pay attention while doing those things. I am not the OP, but if it isn't music, listening to anything while doing those things is a non-starter for me, especially driving.
It's true that it does not work for any task that you need to pay attention to. Folding laundry, cooking a known meal, cleaning anything and driving the standard commute, however? No problem at all. Maybe I need to rewind 15 seconds a few times (which is purposefully made easy) if something unexpected happens in the menial task, but most of the time those menial tasks leave more than enough attention for a podcast.
I'm roughly the same way. When driving the choice is that I either miss something on the road or miss something on what I'm listening to.
I usually take public transit to work, but the buses are too noisy for me to actually get anything out of a podcast. I could use noise canceling headphones, but I find those just make the bus sound weird instead of getting rid of the noise.
The value podcasts bring is you can consume them during times you can't read. During exercise, driving, walking to work, cleaning the house, cooking, and train/car rides (for people who get motion sick while reading in a moving vehicle). They turn tedious menial tasks into times when you're mildly entertained - that provides immense value.
They can also be used for a slightly more interesting white noise.