AntennaPod is very slow ... refreshing, loading thumbnails, and starting episodes

AntennaPod started acting strange over the past week or so. Essentially its like everything is very slow.

First, it would take an extremely long time to refresh all my podcasts. I have a ton, but this was much much slower than its ever been before. It seemed it would never stop trying to refresh, so I ended up restarting the phone.

Then it would also take a very long time to start streaming or downloading an episode. Also, the thumbnails for each episode often don’t load for a very long time.

Once an episode starts playing, it works fine, though.

I’ve restarted the phone several times. I went in and deleted a bunch of podcasts (thinking maybe I have too many for the app to handle). I deleted all downloaded episodes, cleared the queue, and deleted a massive playback history. The problem is marginally improved.

My other devices using wifi are not having any problems.

App version: 3.5.0f (I don’t remember where I downloaded it from)

Android version: 17 (I am using GrapheneOS)

Device model: pixel 6a

running on home wifi (no cell service available on this phone)