"Podcasts" running in the background(?)

Something I've encountered that doesn't seem to be an "every time" thing, but has certainly happened more than once or twice... I'll start out with the "technical details"

Late 2012 MacMini, Intel 2.5Ghz i5, running Catalina (10.15.7), 16 GB RAM, and an SSD.

I'll restart it from time to time, but I generally leave it running. Here's the point of my post. Every so often, I'll find that something doesn't appear to be responding, or is acting "oddly", and I'll do a (CMD-Option-ESC) to look at the "Force Quit" pop-up. As I said, not every time, but often enough to be considered "regular" or "frequent", I'll notice that the "Podcasts" app is showing on the list of running applications. I know I haven't used, or started that app since before the last time I restarted the machine, and the dock doesn't have the "dot" below it, showing that it's running, but yet there it is, on my task list. So I'm wondering, does the Podcast app launch on its own, in the background every so often, to check/update its list of podcasts, or something? It just seemed odd to me that, as I said, it isn't showing on the dock that it's running. If I CMD-TAB through my open applications, it isn't showing up there, but yet it is showing on the "Force Quit" pop-up. The activity monitor shows it is using 8.7 MB of memory and isn't using any CPU, so it's not something I'm particularly "worried" about, I was just wondering if this is "supposed to" be happening. Is anyone else experiencing this?