Thanks for the feedback. Personally I've got nothing against commercial developers, and if Canola2 (or a successor) is available as a paid app for the N900 I'd be happy to buy it. I feel I owe the developers a little something as Canola2 is certainly the most used program on my N800 over the last few years.

I did end up downloading Gpodder, and I have to say it's great to just be able to search for a podcast in the directory and add it that way, and there are certainly a lot more fine tuning you can do in the settings as compared to Canola...but I can't figure out how I'd download some new episodes before leaving for work and have them play all (without some convoluted process like adding them to a playlist). I saw some older commentary asking about this, and some talk from the developer that this would be addressed in a future version, but if it has been I haven't been able to figure out how to use it.