Apple Podcast app is not playing podcasts, or allowing search or save options

My Apple Podcaster/the default Apple Podcast player hasn't worked for 3 days.

Problems with the podcaster

• I can't play episodes
• I can't search for episodes - the app "freezes"
• I can't save episodes

I have tried the following

• Turning off/on the podcaster app
• Turning off/on the iphone
• I had 91 GB of saved podcasts and thought that was the problem so I deleted them
• I have deleted and reinstalled the app 3 times

But it still doesn't work

My short term fix is to listen to podcasts on Spotify instead but prefer Apple Podcaster. What should I do?

[Re-Titled by Moderator]