Podcasts won't play after update to ios 27

I can't even get to the point where I can choose something to play since I updated to MacOS 27 - clicking on anything but "home" in the sidebar results in a totally blank screen with an eternally spinning loading animation in the middle.

Since updating to v27.0.1 apple podcasts won't play downloaded episodes or stream episodes on either of my iphones. What I've tried:

toggling airplane mode

toggling sync library from settings -> apps -> podcasts

deleting apple podcasts and redownloading/installaing it

hard reset of iphone

signing out of apple account and back in: settings -> my name -> sign out

I did these steps simultaneously on both my iphones to assure that it wasn't one login influencing the other. Never had this issue before with apple podcasts.