They haven’t been associated for awhile, the company owning HowStuffWorks spun off the podcasting division in 2017 before selling it to iHeartMedia in 2018 https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/iheartmedia-stuff-media-howstuffworks-podcast-acquisition-1202939938/
The fact that they chose not to tie 3rd party app access that avoided ads to premium subscription accounts tells me that it’s not about the lost money from ads, it’s about the telemetry they’re getting from the official app premium or not which is disgusting to me
1Blocker was blocking it on my iPhone, maybe check anything like that?
Just a thing to note, if you’re considering virtualizing windows to play games that have anti-cheat software like BattleEye if they notice you’re virtualizing windows it might ban you. You’re almost better off using the other advice here and using proton with those that support it. For things that don’t you probably will have to flip the setup around and have the base os be windows and virtualize Linux :(