Phantom podcasts after restore that won't stay deleted I recently lost my iPhone 5 and had to restore to an old iPhone 4S until the iPhone 6 is released.  My iCloud backup was current so I lost very little.  My podcast subscriptions were maintained through the backup/restore and were available again in the Podcasts app after they downloaded the episodes I previously had downloaded and queued.  All of this worked as expected.

A day or 2 after the restore was complete, I noticed 3 stuck downloads.  They wouldn't complete and if I cancelled them they kept coming back and failing to download.  I didn't recognize the naming scheme of the episodes so I started looking further and found 3 new podcasts were listed in the application.  These podcasts were completely new to me and nothing I would have ever subscribed to or tried to download.  They are all on topics I have never podcasted on so I have full confidence they aren't renamed versions of other podcasts I've listened to before.  My suspicion is they are the result of either data corruption in the podcasts feed configuration from my backup/restore, or from data corruption in how Apple handles the sync.  Specifically they are:


TWIMA: This Week In Martial Arts
Edward Daniel Podcast
Cape First Podcast


I've tried everything that I can think of and everything I can find online short of removing the Podcasts application.  From recollection, this is what I've tried:


Edit the podcast list, and delete the offending podcasts - when I do this they do disappear but come back after the application is closed and reopened
Edit each podcast to remove the offending episode that keeps trying to download - when I do this the episode disappears but comes back after the application is closed and reopened
Subscribe to the podcast, wait, then unsubscribe to the podcast - no effect
Mark the episode as played and allow it to be auto-deleted - no effect
Turn on podcast sync in Settings - no effect
Turn off podcast sync in Settings - no effect
View my podcasts in iTunes - these podcasts aren't listed
Turn on podcast syncing in iTunes, find the podcasts, I can only find TWIMA and Edward Daniel, subscribe to them, then unsubscribe and delete them - no effect
Turn off podcast syncing in iTunes - no effect
Download other episodes of the podcast and delete those episodes and then the offending podcast - the podcasts disappear but come back after the app is closed and reopened, and the successfully downloaded episode is not shown, only the download that fails
(I'm sure I've forgotten other options)


I don't want to delete all my podcast subscriptions and delete the application if I can avoid that.  I have a lot of played history on some very long running podcasts that would take a lot of effort to store in text and rebuild afterwards.  If I uninstall the Podcasts app, will it remember my played history?  I would be willing to try that if it should keep my play history (after I've dumped my history to text JIC).  I'm also curious if another backup/restore would have some chance of success.

FWIW: I don't have any other podcasts applications tied to my iCloud/iTunes account that would be causing this injection.

Any help or advice on how to permanently deleted these episodes and podcasts would be greatly appreciated.
I am having a similar problem: I had 18 podcast eposodes that were stuck attempting to download. I was able to get rid of 17 of them by manually downloading each one by searching the name in the podcast app. After manually downloading them, a restart of the phone would remove the stuck downloads. That might fix your issue, if you haven't solved it.
My further problem is that the 18th stuck episode is no longer available.

I am going to attempt a restore but I expect to have the same issue afterward.