I actually had that problem a couple of days ago and was able to fix it myself by using the steam OS “main” channel instead of stable. The main channel is probably close to alpha. After that I could go back and it stayed fixed. So it seems that the new software indeed solved this problem.
Second this, I love Antenna Pod. Similarly, I too started with Podcast Addict and switched a year ago. Antenna Pod got a facelift quite recently and it looks and feels better than ever. You get all the stuff you want from a podcast app, plus you can customise it a little and its open source without ads. It really doesn’t get much better than that.
I was daunted by it at first as well when I got my hands on my deck. I didn’t want to break anything. But I tried it at some point and can’t recommend it enough! There are plenty of good tutorials on YouTube (that take just 5 minutes) and they also made the process of installing easier since when I did it. So if you’re on the fence, I’d recommend just to go for it, it’s not as techy as you might think.