Is it impossible to listen to podcasts on iOS 6 now?

I'm on iOS 6 on my iPhone, and I don't like iOS 7. When I try to listen to a podcast on the iTunes app, it tells me to download the Podcasts app. When I try to download the Podcasts app, it tells me iOS 7 is required to download the app. So how can I listen to podcasts, short of upgrading to iOS 7?

I have an iPod Touch 4 with IOS 6.1.6. I followed the instructions on the link https://sites.google.com/site/appleclubfhs/support/advice-and-articles/app-store-downloading-older-versions-of-apps-ios and now have a fully functional version of 'Podcasts'.

In my case when I initially tried to download Podcasts from the App Store with iPod Touch, it advised that I needed IOS 7 and there was no option to install an older version. However as outlined in link above, I downloaded the Podcasts app in iTunes and then synced my iPod with iTunes. Then I went back into the iPod App Store and tried to download it. This time it still advised that I needed IOS 7, however it also gave me an option to download a version compatible with IOS 6.

So, the bottom line here is that Podcasts has a compatible version for IOS 6 in App Store, but Apple does not advert this to users (unless you already have it installed on your iPod) and make it very hard to get. In my case it’s taken me 2 hours of time to solve this problem.

Podcasts are my main use of this perfectly functional device and so getting support for this App was personally very important to me. I hope this helps other users.

If you had downloaded the podcasts app while iOS6 was the most recent, then you would have a version of the podcasts app that was compatible with it. Unfortunately the current version of the podcasts app is written using iOS7 APIs, including ones to automatically download content for you without you having to manually open the app etc, which are not backwards compatible.

As such, you will have to use a 3rd party app to listen to podcasts, or upgrade to iOS7.

You can listen to podcasts with the Music app, if you do not want to conform by running iOS7 or run a third party app.