Listening to podcasts

I love podcasts. Actually, I love professional podcasts. Way back when, I listened to one Formula 1 podcast which sounded like two yokels with bad recording equipment who didn't seem to know anything about Formula 1 other than what they saw earlier that day on SpeedTV. Currently, I subscribe to one Apple podcast, three in German, four from CBC, one F1, four about digital photography, one from Gordon Ramsey, a short comedy video podcast, one from each of John Cleese and Stephen Fry, one in Chinese, one NHL, two from the Onion, one science video podcast, one from Sesame Street for Julie and Strong Bad Email. I found a solution to put all my audio podcasts into a playlist so that I don't have to select each of them individually. I just press "shuffle" and then I'm good for a bus ride downtown.
In order to have a playlist with all your audio podcasts and have them play in random order, you have to jump through a few hoops. You'll need to set up a smart playlist; a screenshot of mine is above. You'll need to match the following rules: first off, "podcast is true." No-brainer. My second rule was to exclude my Chinese podcasts 'cause I need to be in a certain frame of mind to feel like learning Chinese. The next three rules exclude videos, movies and pdfs from the playlist. On my iPod touch, video will play in audio mode but, if the Onion is trying to make a joke by telling me to "look at this shocking graph," I'll miss the punch line. I only match checked items so that I can save a podcast and not have to hear it everyday just by unchecking it and live updating is essential.
Jumping through hoops really comes when you're updating your iPod. Every time I open iTunes, it looks for new podcasts. Normally, I plug in my iPod and let it update. Old podcasts will now have a play count of 1 and new podcasts will be downloaded to iTunes. Once the update is finished, I delete podcasts I no longer need and uncheck ones I'd like to save. Once all downloads are finished, I need to do a quick Apple-A, Apple-I for "Select All" and "Get Info." At the bottom, I select "No" from both the "Remember Position" and "Skip When Shuffling" pop-up menus. I like to start at the beginning of each podcast and, if you skip when shuffling, your playlist will play one podcast and then return to your playlist menu. Annoying!
This technique works quite well for me except when podcasters use enhanced podcasts with a slide show. I have only two podcasts which do this and one announces every new picture so I know when to turn on my display and check the picture. The other, I tend to listen to once and then skip through the pictures later but I can miss why the picture is important.