I can’t speak for the original topic author, but I can give answers in my case:
I hacked together quite a few plugins on WordPress that allows me to have a podcast player with interactive transcripts (the words highlight as the audio plays and one can click to jump to that part of the audio), interactive chapter/show notes, and a searchable/sortable/filterable playlist.
So to just embed them here without an iframe, I wouldn’t be able to access the javascript and all the styling that I’ve put into it.
Oh, and I find it much easier for me to hack together those things on WordPress than on Discourse, I really struggle with doing javascript and plugins here.
To host the podcast episodes, I’ll need the WordPress site regardless. But to whether I want users to consume content there, I’m not sure. Since I’ve been using Discourse for comments on WordPress, interactivity has dropped off. I used to have people post on WordPress comments, but Discourse requires them to cross a domain threshold, and then they’re interacting in a separate place. If Discourse made it easier for people to post in an embedded way on a WordPress forum, I’d probably focus on that.
I’m not sure if it’s needed, I just get the feeling that I want to have one main place for people to gather, and before thought it’d be WordPress with embedded Discourse comments/posting but now I’m thinking Discourse with embedded WordPress posts might be easier and more likely to inspire people to interact with each other.