Selecting an episode in the Episodes View will start playing it in the Podcast Player. The Podcast player maintains "Now Playing" playlist of episodes. By default played podcasts remain in the playlist, but you can control what happens when a podcast finishes playing (nothing, play next, delete and play next) using the Settings (Menu > Settings > Player Settings from the Feeds View).
During playback, you can use the transport buttons to skip forth and back a predetermined amount of time within the current podcast. You can configure the skip intervals using the Player Settings. There is also a convenient command that lets you skip directly to the end of the podcast from any point in the podcast.
You can also manually add podcasts to the playlist by picking individual podcasts across your feeds. To manually add a podcast to the playlist, while in the Podcasts list, "tap and hold" on the podcast and select "Add to Playlist" from the menu.
Another way to fill your playlist with episodes is to use "SmartPlay". SmartPlay
lets you define a set of simple rules that automatically add episodes to your playlist.
You can define rules like: "First play the newest 2 episodes for feed A, Then play
the oldest 1 episode of feed B, Then play newest 3 episodes of category X, etc.".
To set your rules, use the SmartPlay editor accessible using Menu
> More > Settings > Playlist and Widget Settings > Configure SmartPlay.
Once the rules are set, at any time, you can build a fresh playlist using Menu
> Play > Start SmartPlay - this will clear your current playlist and generate a
fresh one using the latest available episodes on the device.