How come the Podcast app is hogging so much GPU? I have a 15 inch 2015 MacBook Pro with Catalina installed, and I was wondering why my fans go nuts when I play a podcast with the Podcasts app. Htop didn’t show any unusual CPU activity, but then I noticed from iStats that the GPU was blasting pretty high.

Just wondering is this how it should work? I was in the impression that it’s the CPU that handles audio playback. I don’t remember this happening in iTunes.

You see the sharp valley in the graph when I paused the pod:
Not an answer, but I was looking for an answer to the same question when I found switching workspaces away from the one with podcasts up dropped GPU utilization. So even with a podcast still playing, GPU usage goes back to ~0 if you aren't looking at the actual app. So it might be the app visualization is the real culprit. Hope this helps!