I hate all of those too, which is why a good podcast app is a must. I use Overcast and its ability to quickly skip forward and speed up is awesome.

I concur. Overcast took me from unable to listen to any podcasts on a relatively short commute to listening to several a week, now.

Marco Arment really does a great job with designing the player from the perspective of someone who consumes a ton of podcasts.

Overcast for Android is rubbish, though, anyone have any alternative recommendations?

Pocket Casts is the Android app I use and it's pretty good. It supports streaming or downloading podcasts and you can adjust playback speed, auto-skip silence, customize forward/backward skip button durations, etc.

I second Pocket Casts. It is good enough that I will probably keep using it instead of switching back to Overcast if/when I go back to iOS. (It has an account sync feature.) I paid $5 for it, similarly to the $5 I paid for Overcast.

There is no official Overcast for Android, you've found yourself a clone. (I don't use android that much so I don't have any recommendations, sorry).

I'm with you. And I'll add to that the horrible production quality and bored sounding hosts/guests that plague programming podcasts.

Not if it's something you're listening to while travelling, working on something else that doesn't need your full attention or while falling asleep when you aren't able to read instead. Along with your sentiment though, I've never understood the need for lectures for learning when you could just read about it.