How do I make Pocket Casts work without a Google Play Store account?

If you are correct, if Pocket Casts enabled this feature, why would they make their app available on their GitHub?

Because I had not updated Pocket Casts since last month, I don’t think this is a feature they recently enabled. If it was, the app would have stopped working a while back. It’s been literally less than 24 hours. Less than 24 hours ago, the app was working fine.