Check out spicetify cli[0]! It patches the Spotify (desktop) client and makes it better. It also adds support for extensions, one of which[1] disables the podcast features. I haven't used the extension so I'm not sure how well it works.

Heads up though, the original developer is MIA at the moment and the latest few versions of the client are incompatible. There's an effort by someone to fix the issues and there are other maintainers who mostly just seem to address PRs. Personally I just downgraded the client and it works perfectly.

[0] https://github.com/khanhas/spicetify-cli

[1] https://github.com/3raxton/spicetify-custom-apps-and-extensi...