Q: How to deal with podcast playlist no longer synching

I have a manually created playlist of podcasts in the order I want to hear them. Recently that playlist stopped appearing on my iPhone although it still appears in iTunes. I've tried everything I can think of, including a complete restore. At this point I'm wondering if there's a third party app that can access the podcasts already on my iPhone and in iTunes and create a playlist in that app. Is there any such app? I'm also open to hearing things that might work on the Podcast app, although I'm really discouraged by years of periodic breaking and doing unexpected things and kind of want to give up on it.

BTW, the podcasts I subscribe to are synching just fine. It's my manually created playlist that has disappeared.