I don't really listen to podcasts, but I've heard a fair number of these-are-also-podcast radio shows from NPR that are such clones of each other that I can barely stand it anymore. Maybe not all podcasts sound like this. They have either a deadpan locution, learned at the foot of Ira Glass (I do like This American Life a lot of the time, but I don't want everything else in the whole world to sound like that!), or else a dewy eyed golly-gosh-whilikers tone as they explore science or sociology or the economy. Grah grah grah. And I think they **do** influence how people write.