I also have the same problem in LMDE. When you open the program typically a podcast episode will start to download. When the download is complete the program will then crash without a warning. The next time you start the program the previously downloaded program will start downloading again. In order to listen to a podcast you have to halt the new download and anything else gpodder may be trying to download in the background. Otherwise, when it reaches 100% it will crash again.
So, you can work around the problem but it is a huge pain. I have also tried reinstalling gpodder, limiting the program to one download at a time but have yet to find a solution to the problem.
I also run gpodder on Salix, which is a slackware based distro on my same machine and there it works flawlessly. So, it appears to me, that the problem lies with gpodder when working within the LMDE enviroment.
If anybody has Is anybody running this program successfully using LMDE?

I am running the current version of LMDE on a recent Sony vaio laptop, with the intel dual core processor