Podcasts are a very significant medium, and Dwarkesh is probably comfortably in the top 1% of podcasts. Isn't that exactly what O-1 is for?
I don't think so, personally, because I see that podcast as entertainment rather than education, and I don't think entertainers should ever receive O-1 visas.
At the time he barely had 10k subscribers. The merits of the "genius" VISA should be for research and engineering endeavors.