In a somewhat similar vein to the OP, some of the details associated with publishing a new podcast can be rather manual and error-prone. This is especially annoying in the context of simple interview/discussion podcasts that don't really take all that much time to edit/post.

A fairly simple Python script can automate the fiddly things like creating XML for a new podcast and uploading things to wherever you're hosting. (I used to use a script to add intro and outro audio too but I now do that as part of the audio leveling process with Auphonic.)