Pocket Casts for Amazon Echo picks up where your phone left off

Pocket Casts, widely hailed as the best podcasts app around, is coming to Amazon's Echo smart speakers. An Alexa skill is a natural progression for the premium app, allowing users to pick up where they left off on their smartphone at home. Using a series of voice commands, you'll be able to continue listening on your Echo device, ask for a recommendation, request a random podcast, or play the latest episode of your favorite show. Of course, you can currently beam audio from Pocket Casts to smart speakers like Google Home (via Cast) and the HomePod (via AirPlay 2), but the Alexa skill lets you go hands-free. It follows a major update to the app in November -- just months after its acquisition by a collective of public radio stations, including NPR -- that brought with it Siri Shortcuts, enabling iPhone users to set up voice prompts.