The on-demand feature changes the nature of the medium. With radio you are often joining mid-stream, whereas with a podcast you always get to hear the whole thing. Plus the live callers, as others have pointed out.
Yes! I wish people would take car safety as seriously as they take high tech profits. Tens of thousands killed every year. Surely if lidar is a big boost to self-driving car safety it could also help human driven cars with the right interface.