I’d like to move from the always listening Echo to the alleged privacy of the Homepod. However, I don’t want my wife to kill me.
All she needs from it is timers and the ability to play podcasts ( and ideally some kind of morning briefing rundown of podcasts).
Are we there yet, or will I be filleted?
Why don’t you just ask her? Lol
Show her the benefits of the device… but be aware that there may be some functionality that the echo has that she really depends on.
I use my Siri on my HomePods to get weather, to make cooking/laundry timers, as my morning alarm, and occasionally for news. That’s it. (On occasion I’ll ask Siri to spell a word or do a length/weight/currency conversion.) Never used it to play podcasts unless I was casting one from my iPhone.
Worst case, you keep the Amazon device disconnected as a fall-back. It might be listening to you, but it will probably be preferable to your wife not listening to you 
I haven’t check recently, but are multiple timers still not a thing yet? I have the Echo devices and this is innate, so I’m hesitant to moving to HomePod because of the all the cooking and activity timers that I use.
They’re available but when cooking I still resort to MultiTimer, which I configured for each of my stove’s burners which makes things much clearer at a glance.
I’ll check it out, thanks 