Posts page isn't displaying posts

I’m creating my own theme, based on the Starkers starter theme. I have static home page and I want my posts to appear on the “episodes” page (this is for a podcast site).

I have created an “episodes.php” template, based on Starkers’ index.php file. On the edit page for “episodes” I have selected the “episodes” page template.

Under settings > reading, I have selected “front page displays” “a static page” and selected the home template for the static page. I also selected “episodes” for the posts page.

I have no idea why this isn’t working. The episodes page is not pulling in articles.

Here is the code for the episodes.php template;

<?php
/*
Template Name: Episodes
*/
?>
<?php Starkers_Utilities::get_template_parts( array( 'parts/shared/html-header') ); ?>
<section class="episodes">
	<div class="container clearfix episode-tile-container">

		<?php if ( have_posts() ): ?>
		<ol>

			<?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>
			<li>
				<article class="episode-tile clearfix">
					<div class="episode-image">
						<?php the_post_thumbnail(); ?>
					</div>
					<div class="episode-details">
						<span class="episode-number">Episode <?php echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'episode-number', true); ?></span>
						<time class="episode-date" datetime="<?php the_time( 'Y-m-d' ); ?>" pubdate><?php the_date(); ?></time>
						<h3><a href="<?php esc_url( the_permalink() ); ?>" title="Permalink to <?php the_title(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>
						<?php the_content('[...]'); ?>
					</div>
				</article>
			</li>
			<?php endwhile; ?>

		</ol>

		<?php else: ?>
		<h2>No posts to display</h2>
		<?php endif; ?>

	</div>
</section>

<?php Starkers_Utilities::get_template_parts( array('parts/shared/html-footer') ); ?>

The episode title should be displayed in the <h3> tag. However, the <h3> displays “Episodes”, which is the title of the page. It seems to be trying to display page content, rather than loop through articles.

I’ve tried a fresh install of WordPress, and creating a fresh database. Nothing seems to work. This is driving me a bit bonkers…

Can anyone help?

Thank you in advance.