I appreciate the sentiment, but I think it's crucially missing what comes before "wherever you get your podcasts". Often, it's something to the tune of "Please

I appreciate the sentiment, but I think it's crucially missing what comes before "wherever you get your podcasts". Often, it's something to the tune of "Please rate and review [wherever you get your podcasts]". They're asking because they want to raise their visibility. The podcast itself can be delivered from anywhere, but they still need to be discovered, and that's a significant bottleneck. Many will specifically call out Apple Podcasts. I infer that it's the most prominent podcast source, and that's how many people discover new podcasts. The web has a similar phenomenon. Creating your own website is easy and inexpensive, and you don't need to rely on anyone because DNS will point to you. The problem is less about being hosted and more about being found. The people who control discovery control you.