I did what some others suggested, turned off bluetooth. Be sure to NOT do it through the control panel, because if you go into your iPhone settings and pull up Bluetooth, you will see all of your BT devices disconnected EXCEPT for your watch!
I turned it off on the toggle switch, and went I went back to my Watch app, it said to turn BT on to connect to a device, but I hit cancel and kept both the Apple Watch and the iPhone on the wifi, now it and podcasts are syncing WAY faster!
Wifi synching for Music and podcasts should be default, not BT! It should also be able to keep items sync'd, locations in podcasts when it's NOT connected via BT to your phone or at least NOT on the charger. I have two AW's, and I wear them 24 hours for tracking health and sleep. With AUTO connect with wrist movement, the other Apple watch disconnected and it doesn't sync, because I put it on the charger, my fully charged watch connects to my phone, so not NEITHER watch is receiving podcast and smart playlist updates, because the connected device is not on the charger and the one on the charger is not connected to the phone.
I would be OK that first sync of the watch to the iPhone had to be on the charger to get the first full list, but after that, the iPhone should search for ALL Apple Watches on your network via wifi that the iPhone controls and do just deltas on the Wifi. Then all devices would use limited battery life, and all stay in sync much better!
I'll be putting a suggestion in Apples suggestion box for this new synching request.