Why does Apple Podcasts do such a poor job syncing across devices?

I regularly move from using my iPhone to iPad to MacBook Air and regularly set up a list of podcasts to listen to starting in the morning through the work day. But when switching from one device to the next (eg, iPhone while working out, iPad in the shower, MacBook during work), where I am in a podcast doesn't hand off reliably, or even show that I was listening to something previously. The list of followed podcasts doesn't even seem to sync.

No problem with Mail, Calendar, Notes, etc handing off fine. Logged into the same iCloud account across all. Maybe with Messages there's some discrepancy that SMS text messages don't appear on non-cell devices, but we can deal with that.

Hopefully Apple is working to improve this syncing.