Texting may be asynchronous, but many people report tensions from being 'left on read' — when you know someone has read your message, but they don't, or won't, reply.
One benefit, for instance, concerns the fact that the asynchronous nature of email as a communication medium provides conflict parties with time to cool down, to think more deeply about the best way to get their message across.
Yeah, something that is asynchronous work that goes beyond just touching the database, I think you already are at the point where it's starting to become useful.
I don't know if that translates to a spoken podcast, if that makes any sense, but look up semaphores and abortable semaphores for a good example of like how those kind of work into a more general async await workflow.