I listen to a lot of MP3s, some of them overt podcasts and others productions that don't quite fit into the 'podcast' rubric as it's been developed in a year of experimentation. Generally I am most moved, inspired, and informed by audio that has the freshness of conversation, and only occasionally do readings get to me in the same way. When I do succumb to a reading, the charm is largely a matter of the skill in the voice. Case in recent point: Gardner Campbell has a simply glorious version of an EDUCAUSE piece, There's Something in the Air: Podcasting in Education, published in the Nov/Dec EDUCAUSE Review --not a wasted word in 47:30 golden minutes. I can think of a score of people whom I'd love to nail down and insist that they listen, because if they did, they'd finally get it about the utility and importance of the medium.
But 47 minuteses are difficult to command. The best inducement I can think of is to ask that score of folks to invest 2:30 in an excerpt, in which Gardner is deliciously eloquent on Magic in the human voice, on the Theatre of the Mind, and on the Explaining Voice: "when we hear someone read with understanding, we participate in that understanding, almost as if the voice is enacting our own comprehension..."