Entertaining Spotify teardown by Remy Sharp. He did it to get rid of the recommended podcasts shelf.
He wrote this in the wrap-up:
Ultimately though, I'd like Spotify to keep doing a good job of music and just leave podcasts alone - stay in their lane as a friend put it to me. Or certainly provide a UI option to turn this off, since it's clearly baked into the API in the first place.
He would be disappointed if he read about their overall strategy. They desperately want to get out of their lane because it doesn't have enough growth potential (according to the executives).