Podcasts are fine for entertainment, great for tuning out people or the traffic. I don’t expect to absorb information quickly, but try reading anything serious on the train when some guy is non-stop on his phone using his outside voice.

Ha! I used to

I had a 53 minute (each way) commute on the train, and I found it perfect for reading papers or learning skills - I was always amazed that the background noise would disappear and I could get lost in the text

Best study time ever.

Brittany Spears - Hit Me Baby One More Time.mp3

To paraphrase the overused 'ol Sapir-Whorf, if all you think about is information that can be best represented as text, all your examples will be ones text wins at.

Not sure, text wins hands down at sharing the ideas of one person, with many, across space and time.

I can read the thoughts of a philosopher who lived on literally the other side of the world, several thousand years ago.

I'm unsure of, but would love to know, any other medium capable of that

And what of histories great artists? You can take a walk through a gallery and see many things people wanted to express, reading the artists textual description of it won't invoke the same ideas in you.

You're right, and they do say a painting is worth a thousand words

My only counter would be - when you and I look at them do we get the same words (but I suppose you could also argue that for a book, poem, etc)