Came here to say this. I have a few of these. They are rock solid and easily flashed with Tasmota

I picked up on one of these and it’s been pretty solid for the most part https://a.co/d/gaLPokJ I tried fully kiosk but had similar issues to yours so now I just run the home assistant app with a dashboard I created using the wallpanel addon https://github.com/j-a-n/lovelace-wallpanel and am very pleased! If you sprung for a slightly nicer android tablet, your experience would likely be even better

I used to use Overcast but the UI refresh that happened last year caused me to switch to Pocket Casts, which I’ve been very happy with