Moving iTunes music/podcasts from High Sierra to Ventura

My 2012 27" iMac graphics failed and I decided to get another iMac: a refurbished 2020 model with a similar but higher resolution screen. I'll spare you the details but briefly, because my original startup HD was 2TB and my new Intel iMac has a 256GB SSD, I found that it was impossible to get Music to import play counts and Last Played dates etc, although I could point it to my iTunes library on an external drive and restore playlists which were mostly empty.

The solution was to make a new external startup 2TB SSD drive using Carbon Copy Cloner (APFS format/make bootable) and then use Migration Assistant to restore my data. This worked very well. In fact it looks like the Assistant set-up a new music library file for me which is an identical size to the one I got when I (first enabled ½ star ratings then) used the option key when starting Music and imported the iTunes library file from the backup. I was so happy to see all my metadata and populated playlists. The album art was fine too - mostly embedded. I had not renamed the iTunes directory to Music! I'm syncing and scrobbling happily.

My question is… only music and music videos were imported. I have many GB of old podcasts: is the best option to try and import them to Books? Is there another app - can't see any with import. I can't run Overcast since I am on an Intel Mac. Or import them into iTunes with a genre=podcast and set them to remember playback position?