What’s bad about it? OP has voluntarily turned ads on on ddg (to support ddg I guess). DDG has been working great for me, so care to enlighten me please?

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/linux_user_at_best_buy.png

I don’t personally listen to podcasts often, but a Spotify client called Spotube can play the same Spotify podcasts ad-free.

On Android you can get Spotube from its official Git site, or just from the F-Droid app store. iOS/macOS guides are also in the website.