At some point though, phones (and "mobile Internet devices") became powerful and programmable enough that it made sense to port gPodder to "Desktop Linux Userland"-based devices and phones (N800, N810, N900, N9, Jolla) and run it directly on the phone.
These days, my day-to-day podcast consumption happens with the built-in Podcasts app on the iPhone, but gPodder (on the Desktop) is still useful for downloading and archiving (hoarding) YouTube subscriptions (especially since there are so many ads on the web and TV versions of YouTube), mixes from Soundcloud and others and just interesting podcast episodes that might not be available in the future.
I even recently submitted a patch to re-introduce iPod support, so the current version can sync to iPod minis again if you want to have a distraction-free retro podcast listening experience on the go :)
Nowadays I'm using gPodder on a phone with Sailfish OS:
https://openrepos.net/content/keeperofthekeys/gpodder
The app is actually linked from the submitted page, but it's easy to miss there.
I also noticed that if I create list of shows to listen to later, I end up listening to more interesting stuff, as I filter out items which are not as useful few weeks later.
(This does not matter in terms of numbers, as that‘s at best a few thousand people, but still.)
Edison Research says that desktops/laptops account for 13% of listening in Q4'2021, having dropped 7% since the start of that year. I'd predict that it falls to under 10% by the end of 2022.
In the early days of podcasts I listened to them on my computer (downloaded over precious dial up time, where the time to download the episode was longer than the time required to listen to it), but as soon as I got an iPod they were a mobile thing for me.
Incidentally I had used JuiceReceiver for years until it stopped working (due to the SSL algos from 2005 finally giving in) and then wrote a replacement in C++/Qt with an online backend, just to track which episodes I listened to (and because it was fun, mostly).
I just discovered podverse from browsing f-droid a few days ago, has some similarities with pocket cast which I have been using since before they were sold the first time.
You can also use the news app for nextcloud to show podcasts along with rss news stories, if you are looking for something along those lines.
I actually just submitted the podverse link for discussion here just a few mins ago, so I am pasting a link:
It integrated with Panucci, which for me has an ideal (although a little unfinished) interface for playing podcasts/ebooks, I don't know what I'm going to do without Panucci when the N900 finally goes kaput. I heard its code is horrific, though, and that the qPodder guy hated it.
Panucci is still around and should be usable on the Desktop, but the last commit was several years ago: https://github.com/gpodder/panucci
Starting with the N9 and later Sailfish OS, the UI of the mobile app was re-done in Qt/QML (so don't name your project after the toolkit of the day...). There, audio playback was integrated into the main application, so there was no need for a separate app like Panucci (this also made it easier to sync fine-grained playback positions between devices using gpodder.net, although this also works with MPRIS2 and e.g. VLC on the Desktop these days).