A gate can lower sound when the input falls below a chosen level. That can make pauses quieter, but it may also remove soft speech. The end of a word or a gentle answer can sit close to the room's background level.
Find the quietest useful speech
Choose a passage with a normal sentence, a soft phrase and a breath. Listen without the gate first. Then compare the processed version at the same listening volume. Pay attention to the last part of each word and the first sound after a pause.
If words fade out too early, the setting is not helping the conversation, even if the spaces between words look clean. Change the setting or use a focused edit on the distracting noise instead.
A gate does not remove noise while someone is speaking. If a fan is audible under every word, a cleaner room or microphone position may be more useful than stronger gating.
Check transitions, not only silence
Listen to a whole answer after changing the gate. A sudden open-and-close effect can make room noise pulse around the voice. That repeated change may be more distracting than a steady low background.
Keep an untreated source copy and a project version before a large cleanup pass. For interviews with several speakers, evaluate each track separately; the same threshold can treat a quiet guest differently from a strong host voice.
If the result is uncertain, leave a small amount of natural room sound and focus on intelligibility. A podcast does not need silent gaps to sound clear. It needs complete words, comfortable pauses and a consistent listening experience.