A nice way to use Apple Podcasts

I do subscribe to podcasts using Apple Podcasts but I use the "mark all as played" to regularly defeat the automatic queue in it.

I miss the days when podcasts were just posted like blog entries and you could conglomerate them all into one feed with a good RSS feed consolidation app. that was a way better approach than all the closed podcast ecosystems. Some podcasts I listen to are not available in Apple's podcasts app (and no wonder, they impose a lot of limitations for no good reason) but are available instead on other platforms which also suck (podomatic, mixcloud, etc.)

I use the Apple Podcasts app frequently and have notified myself relying on the "Up Next" feature quite heavily. It seems to produce a steady flow of different, updated episodes from my subscriptions for me. I've never noticed "getting all of their episodes flooding your notifications", I guess I have notifications for the app muted?

I used to use the queue quite a lot, but got frustrated with e.g. political episodes that included current events which would no longer be super relevant after some time.