It looks like the builtin try is getting depreciated, so I'm not keen on using it long term. Having said that, swapping in use experimental 'try'; works (for most feeds; see above). Swapping in Try::Tiny gives me this new error:

syntax error at /home/ross/scripts/podcasts/podcasts.pl line 233, near
+ ")
                {"
Execution of /home/ross/scripts/podcasts/podcasts.pl aborted due to co
+mpilation errors.
[download]

This is the section it's complaining about:

        try
        {
            $curl->pushopt(CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, [$ua_string]);
            $curl->setopt(CURLOPT_PROGRESSFUNCTION, \&no_progress);
            $curl->setopt(CURLOPT_NOPROGRESS, 0);
            $curl->setopt(CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
            $curl->setopt(CURLOPT_CONNECT_ONLY, 0);
            $curl->setopt(CURLOPT_URL, $feedsrc);
            $curl->setopt(CURLOPT_WRITEDATA, \$feed);
            $curl->perform();
        }
        catch
        {
            $broken = 1; #putting next in here complains that it's exi
+ting a subroutine
        }
        if (!defined($feed))
        { # <--- Line 233
            $broken = 2;
        }
[download]

I can't see an error there, and it doesn't throw one without Try::Tiny, so that seems pretty weird.

EDIT

OK, I figured that out. The Try::Tiny try/catch blocks need a closing semicolon. So now I have a robust try that won't go away in future versions of perl, and isn't somehow messing up all the feeds, but some are still getting messed up in ways I don't understand.