iOS 18 and 26 - queued podcasts skip to the very end, never playing.

this has been happening at least since iOS18. and it seems to only happen when i have a podcast queued up to play next. when the initial podcast ends, the next podcast immediately skips all the way to the end. no audio is ever actually played.

i have experimented with whether it matters if the podcasts are downloaded / saved or not, but that doesn't seem to impact it. it seems completely arbitrary.