I use the Apple Podcasts app frequently and have notified myself relying on the "Up Next" feature quite heavily. It seems to produce a steady flow of different, updated episodes from my subscriptions for me. I've never noticed "getting all of their episodes flooding your notifications", I guess I have notifications for the app muted?

I used to use the queue quite a lot, but got frustrated with e.g. political episodes that included current events which would no longer be super relevant after some time.