I do subscribe to podcasts using Apple Podcasts but I use the "mark all as played" to regularly defeat the automatic queue in it.

I miss the days when podcasts were just posted like blog entries and you could conglomerate them all into one feed with a good RSS feed consolidation app. that was a way better approach than all the closed podcast ecosystems. Some podcasts I listen to are not available in Apple's podcasts app (and no wonder, they impose a lot of limitations for no good reason) but are available instead on other platforms which also suck (podomatic, mixcloud, etc.)