I had this happen to me two days ago.
Very frustrating but I fixed it.
I do not think it's OS or HW related. I think it's due to a corrupted "library" database file.
In my case it was happening on my iPod touch 4th gen, which is capped at iOS 6 (thanks Obama!!).
This device is WIFI only, and putting it in "airplane" mode didn't change a thing, the sequence was always this:
Boot Podcasts, wait a few seconds and the "refresh" spiral arrow would turn into a spining segmented wheel of death and crash.
What I did was to try to get into a podcast, press "edit" and delete a few *before* it crashed...
Once I managed that (after many many tries), it still crashed, but upon relaunch, it finally gave me the "spining segmented wheel of death" but with the notification "Updating Library" and now it's fine...
This leads me to believe that it is a corrupted "library" file that causes the crash.
Hope this helps someone...!