Working on ways around this. Reason for lag right now is that iPhone requires that play events come from a UI event rather than any arbitrary javascript function call. To get one-click play on the homepage, you have to load all 40 players on page load. The alternative is 2-click play. 1 click to load player, 1 click to play. Opted for 1-click and laggy over 2 click and snappy.

Ah, I see. I didn't even notice you could click once to play (the play icon should have been obvious to me). Honestly, I would always click through to the description anyway to see what's up, unless it was a podcast that I regularly listen to.