I have downloaded podcasts for years. There are millions out there, but I mainly go to the BBC to keep up with what's going on in the UK. You can either go to www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts or if you know which programme you want to hear again, go straight to the website of that programme and click on the podcast tab.
You have a choice of downloading in low or high resolution. I've only ever bothered with low resolution because I assume it takes up less memory.
I then download the ones I want, then copy them all on to my phone, and archive the ones I've copied somewhere else on my computer hard drive(otherwise you end up listening to the same podcasts over and over again!)
When I've listened to one on my phone, I delete it, but I can always retrieve it from the computer if I want to hear it again.
Podcasts of radio programmes often have extra bits at the beginning and/or end, with just amusing chitchat where you can get to know the presenters better, or often with extra information about topics in the programme which there wasn't time for in the broadcast schedule. Some ramble on for ages.
Downloading them means you can listen anywhere where you don't have broadband or wifi (out walking or running), and you can listen as often as you want if you didn't catch something, or didn't understand everything, because it was too much to take in. Or, as is what happens to me mostly, if you fall asleep and miss chunks.
Also - no buffering!
I have archived over 10 years of podcasts, but still have so many I haven't listened to yet that I never get round to listening to any from the past a second time.
If you like music, this is cut short in the podcasts, so it is not good for that. A prime example is Desert Island Discs. You get all the conversation, but only a few bars each of the chosen records. Another example is Radio 3's In Tune podcast. So, for that, you would need to listen to the streamed version on the I Player.
So the key to downloading is:
- knowing how much space you have on your hard drive, and
- organising the files well as soon as you have 1. Downloaded and then again 2. Transferred them to whichever device you are going to listen on and again 3. When you have listened. (Unless you are only downloading and listening one at a time, then it's not quite so complicated)
