Agreed. IMHO, the best way to access their content is to use their podcast feeds and the podcast feeds of your local affiliates. They even post the hourly new updates every hour on the hour.
I also find that NPR One is a good way to discover NPR podcasts feeds worth subbing to. It’s also buggy, but it basically just plays the hourly news, then shuffles their podcast feeds from them and their affiliates over the 24 hours.