By default, Podcasts sets the skip back button to 15 seconds, and the skip forward button to 30 seconds. If that isn’t your ideal setup, you can change it! Head to Settings > Podcasts, then scroll down to Skip Buttons. Here, you can choose how far you want to skip forward, as well as how far you want to skip back, from 10, 15, 30, 45, or 60 seconds.
In addition, you can choose to make externals controls from your headphones or car skip forward and back, rather than skip to the next episode. Unlike songs, you probably aren’t skipping past episodes as often as you’re fast-forwarding or rewinding them, so that option might be more useful for you.
If, after all of this, your experience is still less than stellar, the app just isn’t for you—at least until Apple gives Podcasts a proper update. In that case, you might be better served by one of the many third-party options on the App Store: We have a roundup of the best of those apps here.