This actually annoys me, if I mark a new podcast read in reader it never downloads and queues on the phone if it hasn't already polled and seen the new item. I end up marking them unread over and over until I check to see if my phone has actually downloaded them.
I use the Android interface most of the time and only occasionally use embedded player via reader. I do subscribe and manage my subscriptions a lot via the reader interface, however.
I am not surprised if you've had trouble with the Listen app, however. It's really languished. Podcasts seem to me one of the still killer content features of our smart phones, yet we're still waiting for a rev on this app. For a while I was reading that the dev team behind it was focusing on the next gen "Listen and Watch" app, but who knows where that is.
Love android, but some core apps are really half finished.
