There's a rich history in the preceding decade that's completely ignored (and would help explicate what's happened since).
By comparison, just about every podcast is produced better now than back then (though I doubt the necessity of 100MB file sizes for an hour of talk) and I can listen to 5 separate podcasts that have weekly content, all of which is more tightly tailored to me than my favorite 5 episodes of a year's worth of my favorite show in the old times. But that means there's too much stuff to meander through, plus I'll end up hearing the same person interviewed on all 5 shows.
And, advertising everywhere. Most podcasts aren't the handsfree experience they used to be, now that I have to seek past ads every 15 minutes.
In some comedy podcasts, I can find the ad reads to be entertaining enough to be worth a listen. In others my heart sinks every time I hear the same pre-recorded ad (that annoyed me the first time) popping up again.
Just how bad is it in general? Feels like there's an opportunity for good content in the ad breaks, even on non-silly podcasts - but that requires effort to generate something interesting / useful / fun that's not the same every time.
OTOH, for some products it seems like spamming out the same content to build recognition does seem to be a rational (or at least popular!) strategy, which is a shame.
Dynamic ads mean that ads get placed all through the whole show archive whenever they sign a contract. Sucks, right? Almost. The trick is to wait until a show's contract expires and before they've lined up a new one, download the whole show archive so you can enjoy it ad-free.
An hour of uncompressed audio at a standard 44.1 kHz sample rate and 16 bit depth is 317 MB. Opinions on what's acceptable compression obviously vary, but I don't think 100 MB is too outrageous.