Have you tried reformatting it?
Podcasts don’t take much compute to run. You’ve probably got a bunch of unwanted background processes and various other crap running.
Delete everything back to factory settings and then add apps you use one by one. Stay away from the ones that track heavily like anything Google or facebook, etc. YMMV.
I doubt you can “add a chip” since tablets and phones are closed systems, hardware wise. But if you are willing to reset to factory default and clear your data and applications and start over, that will get rid of any cruft that is slowing the system down.
Of course, that is a pretty heavy-handed solution, there may be less heavy-handed ones suggested down thread.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/add-ram-android-device-microsd-card/
I hated Samsung for all the garbage apps they came pre installed with. They are very difficult to remove. The only thing you can do to make it faster, besides doing a factory reset, is to ‘root’ your device and uninstall all the Samsung ‘bloatware’. If you are comfortable tinkering, Google ‘how to root Samsung S2 tablet’ and follow instructions.
You may be overcome by events... mostly time, particularly since they’re now selling the S9 tablets. In fact, I’m having some difficulty in trying to figure out the chipset you’ve got, but it’s at LEAST 8 year old technology (possibly over a decade... congratulations in getting this much mileage out of it).
But as others have suggested, there is no ‘upgrade path’ available for a tablet... it is what it is (can’t even add memory easily at all, but certainly not a new processor).
I see that Samsung’s website is selling tablets beginning at $99 (Tab A7 Lite), but be wary: the chipset on these lower-scale offerings isn’t going much better. The high end of their lineup starts at $1100... something like an S7 is still in the 500-600ish range, but would at least run fast enough to be an improvement.
Not the answer you wanted, I’m afraid. It’s just a matter of whether you can tolerate the current performance (and since you are asking, I suspect you’ve reached that breaking point).
Make sure your podcast app is set to delete them as they age. Otherwise your memory may be completely full of old podcasts you’ve listened to. Short of that about all you can add is an SD card that probably won’t help with speed much
Just ground up a couple of Lays and shove them in the USB port. That should do it.
My phone shows usage by app in case something is running but it’s a different brand whose name shall remain nameless because it starts with an A