What we need from Apple to make standalone Apple Watch podcast apps
I don't think Apple needs to be told where their APIs are lacking for podcasting, as evident through the absence of standalone playback in their own Podcasts app, let alone an app at all. Either Apple can't figure out how to take the podcast experience and make it a good one on the Watch, or more likely (I think), the way it would need to work would make the Watch experience bad. I imagine they've got the "just play" experience for music heavily optimized, but the callbacks Marco mentions probably do terrible things to the Watch's battery and processor. Either way, this is a known desired thing, and if it could be done in a reasonable way, I'm sure they would have - they did put the 'pod' in podcast, after all.