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The Alien Tavern News Podcast: How to Listen on Any Device

The daily Alien Tavern News broadcast is a podcast: one episode a day, about three minutes, published minutes after the show airs. Nothing to sign up for. Here is the feed address, one-tap buttons for the apps that take it, and a good podcast app for every operating system.

The podcast feed

Paste this address into any podcast app’s “add by URL” box, or use one of the buttons below. Listings on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and the other directories are being submitted; their links will appear here as each one is approved.

Subscribe in one tap

Each tile hands the feed straight to that app. If a tile does nothing, the app is not installed on this device: copy the feed address above instead.

iPhone and iPad (iOS, iPadOS)

Apple Podcasts is already installed and follows any feed by address. Overcast and Castro are the classic independent choices; Pocket Casts is the one that also runs everywhere else.

  • Apple Podcasts (built in): Library → the ⋯ menu → Follow a Show by URL, paste the feed address.
  • Overcast: free, made by one developer, with Smart Speed and Voice Boost that suit a spoken bulletin. The + button → Add URL.
  • Pocket Casts: paste the feed address into the Discover search box.
  • Castro: an inbox-and-queue model; Add by URL in Discover.
  • Podverse: open source and built on the open Podcast Index; also on Android and the web.

Android

Android has the best open-source podcast app there is, and no built-in one, so pick freely.

  • AntennaPod: open source, no account, no tracking. The + button → Add podcast by RSS address, or use the one-tap button above.
  • Pocket Casts: paste the feed address into the Discover search box.
  • Podcast Addict: the long-running power-user app; + → RSS feed.
  • Podverse: open source, Podcast Index based.

Mac (macOS)

The built-in Podcasts app follows a feed by address from its File menu.

  • Apple Podcasts (built in): File → Follow a Show by URL. Subscriptions sync to your iPhone through iCloud.
  • Pocket Casts: a desktop app, and the same account as the phone app.
  • gPodder: open source, minimal, downloads episodes as files you keep.
  • VLC: no podcast app needed. Playlist → Internet → Podcasts, then + and the feed address.

Windows

Windows ships no podcast app, but the web players are good, and two open-source desktop tools cover it.

  • Pocket Casts: a Windows desktop app; paste the feed address into Discover.
  • Apple Podcasts on the web at podcasts.apple.com: plays in the browser once the directory listing is live.
  • gPodder: open source, downloads episodes as files.
  • VLC: Playlist → Internet → Podcasts, then + and the feed address.
  • Thunderbird: subscribe to the podcast feed as a news feed; every episode arrives with its audio file attached.

Linux

Every Linux desktop has a native podcast player, all open source.

  • gPodder: the veteran, in every distribution’s repositories.
  • Kasts (KDE) and GNOME Podcasts: native apps for each desktop, both on Flathub.
  • VLC: Playlist → Internet → Podcasts, then + and the feed address.

Chromebook (ChromeOS)

A Chromebook runs Android apps and web apps, so both routes work. The shortest paths:

  • AntennaPod or Pocket Casts from Google Play, then the one-tap button above or paste the feed address.
  • Pocket Casts or Podverse in the browser, no install.
  • This site: the 🎧 button on the show page plays the episode in the browser.

In a browser, on anything

  • The show page plays today’s broadcast in the 3D studio, with every line captioned and every source listed, and offers the episode audio behind the 🎧 button. The archive keeps the last two weeks.
  • Pocket Casts, Apple Podcasts and Podverse all have web players; the first and last take a feed address directly.

Adding the feed to an app, step by step

The steps are the same in every app; only the name of the button changes.

  1. Copy the feed address:
  2. In the app, find the control for adding a show by hand. It is called Follow a Show by URL (Apple Podcasts), Add URL (Overcast), Add podcast by RSS address (AntennaPod), Add by URL (Castro), or simply the search box (Pocket Casts: paste the address there).
  3. Paste, confirm, done. New episodes arrive on their own from then on.

Spotify, Amazon Music and YouTube Music do not accept feed addresses from listeners; they only play shows in their own directories. Those listings are in progress and will be linked from this page.

What you get

  • One episode per aired show since 24 August 2026, each a plain MP3 (44.1 kHz mono, 96 kbps, about 2.5 MB) with cover art and standard tags, normalised to −16 LUFS so it sits at the same volume as everything else in your queue.
  • Every episode links to its show page, where each line is captioned and every source is listed.
  • A standard RSS 2.0 feed with the Apple Podcasts tags that meets the Podcast Standards Project’s PSP-1 profile.
  • No tracking and no lock-in: the audio is served straight from a file bucket with no analytics prefix and no inserted ads. Unsubscribing is deleting the show from your app.

Prefer reading? The headlines the show is built from are an RSS feed, and the broadcast can also arrive by email. Curious how the episode is made? How the broadcast is made walks through the whole pipeline, including the podcast mix.