Dr Johnson on the question of reading vs podcasts:

“[Johnson] then took occasion to enlarge on the advantages of reading, and combated the idle superficial notion, that knowledge enough may be acquired in conversation. 'The foundation (said he,) must be laid by reading. General principles must be had from books . . . In conversation you never get a system . . . The parts of a truth, which a man gets thus, are at such a distance from each other that he never attains to a full view.'“