iOS is FULL of handy little things like that, but I'm not sure many of them are ever explained. You just have to stumble across it or read about it somewhere like reviews of the new versions of iOS.
Did you know in mail (and many other places) you can swipe table rows left or right for quick actions? Marco Arment recently changed Overcast to make features more visible because it seems many people, including power users, weren't even aware that gesture existed.
Now that I have an iPhone 7 re force-touch stuff can be very handy. But I forget it exists for weeks on end because I went so many years without it and it's totally hidden.
So that's what that was all about. I noticed the changes because for me they reduced the usability of Overcast massively. The features I used the most were resuming the current podcast, playing a different podcast, and setting a sleep timer. All of these things now take double the taps they did before, with much smaller controls that are hard to hit in the car. You tap a podcast and some miscellaneous options jump out. Ugh, when I tap a podcast I want it to open and start playing! The sleep timer durations move around, so it takes 7 presses and some squinting to set a 25-minute timer. By this time my retinas are seared because the UI for that is white even in night mode.
I know full well about swiping in tables and I'd love the old behaviour to be an option. The author could probably make some good coin by making it available as an IAP.
Plus it's a bit fiddly.
Also it's been there since iOS 1.0 so quite a while now.