Nope. See my downvoted comment below, begging for somebody to make a podcast player for Android Wear.

Google Play Music is (AFAIK) the only media player that works on AW. However, you're unable to sync podcasts to a watch, only music (even though podcasts via GPM work on the phone). So over the last 1.5 years with 2 AW watches (Moto360 sport, Polar M600) across 2 major Wear releases, I've had to listen to music on my runs, rather than the podcasts I'd have preferred. And I take my phone on walks / hikes to listen to podcasts, when I'd prefer to leave it home.

If the apple watch supported podcasts, I'd probably switch.

Why do you think it isn't there? Actually I bought Apple watch series 2 for exactly this reason, running without a phone. It has everything you need (GPS+heart rate monitor+music), and you can even have podcasts with third-party apps.

Wasn't the whole article about how standalone podcast apps on the watch aren't possible? What 3rd party apps allow playing podcasts on the Watch without iPhone?

There may be some half assed solutions, the article was why a good standalone podcast app isn't currently possible.

did you know about Watchcast[1]? It's been offering offline Watch podcast playback long before Marco failed at the feature and requested new APIs...

[1] https://brianmcburney.github.io/

Watchcast has the same issues Marco brought up. Developers should not condone Apple's overly-aggressive platform limitations by sacrificing good UX just to release a feature.

It's mostly there. Podcasts might have a UX issue, but works great for music on the go