I mean, I freely admit that sometimes when I'm lazy it's like 15%, but that's higher than zero! If I focus on active listening and cognition and try to write down or discuss key points afterwards (driving with a partner is great for this) I can get a lot more information retention.
Back when I was commuting I would start my working day by summarizing the podcast that I had just listened to in a text document - good way to sort of boot up my brain in the morning, without coffee.
I actually find my favourite podcasts are the ones that take the fact I’m not retaining 100% of the content into account!
Adam Regusea’s podcast [0] I think is a great example. He’ll leave pauses in and (because of the listener-questions format) will reiterate context pretty often. (“So, [name], you asked if it’s good to [verb]… while when I [verb]…”)
Agreed, Adam Ragusea's podcast is great. I think it comes from his background in public radio production. To that end I like NPR podcasts a lot. They're good about using music, audio cues, different performers etc to separate information into digestible chunks.
On the other end of that scale are very information-dense podcasts that have transcripts. I like those a lot because I find I can read the transcript after listening (or vice versa) and I get more information retention than either just listening or just reading.
My example for this is Alie Ward's 'Ologies' wherein she interviews doctors and scientists about their work, there are many excellent transcripts available [0], including this one: [1]
