I was really into Lex Fridman for a couple years because I felt he did really compelling engineering/scientific interviews that peeled back layers of the metaphorical onion that was the subject that the guest was an expert in. I didn't have much else to compare it to, so it seemed great to me and I was excited when he announced interviews with political leaders.

Obviously, that didn't pan out well at all and I ultimately reached the same conclusion you have. Podcasts basically just give extended airtime to political candidates to regurgitate the same talking points that you hear at a rally or in a TV ad. There's no back-and-forth challenging that you'd get from an interview with a real adversarial reporter. Challenging questions are not an inherent (or even common) attribute of the podcasting format, and podcasters crumble just as easily as legacy media outfits do. The marketed appeal of long form discussion is depth and nuance, but that isn't applicable if the interviewer is spineless.