16px seems to be somewhat of an industry average [0]. Depends on the communication needs of the item. Personally I find smaller text and longer line lengths set the tone for how I should be consuming the article. Smaller and longer, more thoughtful reading. Big and short, bit sized scanning of text.
It's fine. Whether or not you like it is a matter of preference[1], but design-wise it works well. If you couldn't change the size in your browser then it'd be a problem, but you can, and the page still flows well even if you crank the type size up to 2 or 3 times the size.
[1] Design being how it works, not what it looks like. Your comment is really about aesthetics rather than design per se.
A design that consciously chooses to go outside these guidelines can still be good design, same with your fine-dining and hobbit architecture examples. Context and the goals of the brief are key.
Thanks for the feedback! This is something I've been constantly working on, and this comment is totally fair :) Also, the contrast mention below has come up a time or two before so it sounds like something I should fix up.
Aesthetics aside, I hope that the podcast sounds interesting! We're very excited to get things started.
Is it just me?