Podcasts. What are they and how to get them.

Podcasts from the BBC

There are some things that the BBC do really well, and podcasts is one of them! 

If like me, you enjoy radio, you will like podcasts.

What is a Podcast?

A podcast lets you automatically receive the latest episode of your chosen programme as soon as it's available.  With the BBC’s current range of audio podcasts, you can download your favourite radio programmes onto your computer and listen anytime.  You could also put them on your Smartphone and take them with you listen wherever and whenever you like.

You can subscribe to receive a podcast, rather like you might subscribe to a magazine and get it delivered each week.  All of the BBC's podcasts are free, and you can stop receiving the files at any time.

The majority of podcasts are available for either 30 days or indefinitely.   Once you have subscribed though, you can download them and keep them forever.  If you missed an episode and didn’t download it you will miss it.

 If you have a favourite radio show, and it’s a popular one, there is doubtless a podcast associated with it.  I am a big fan of Radio 4, and 2 of my favourite programmes are “Desert Island Discs” and Claire Balding’s “Ramblings”.  These are aired each week, and if I don’t hear them on the day, I could catch up using iPlayer but each programme is only available for 7 days, and if I forget to listen on iPlayer, I will miss the programme altogether, so I subscribe to the podcast.  This downloads to my phone and I listen whenever I want to.

The length of time it takes to download will depend on your Internet speed.  Podcasts don’t take up much space, but if you subscribe to lots of them and keep every episode you may use up the available storage space on your computer or phone.

To get a podcast go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts.  Take a look around the page, scroll down and find the big black box, which has a list of stations and genres.  There is a huge choice but if it is Radio 4 that you want, you will need to click it.  You then have a list of the 147 available podcasts that you can subscribe to.  When you have found one that you like, you click it and then click “subscribe for free”.  You then have to choose how you would like it to arrive on your computer.  If you have iTunes, then choose iTunes.  I find this is the easiest way!

Your next task is to open iTunes and click on the menu at the side which says Podcasts.  A list of the ones you have subscribed to will appear here.  Double click folder and a list of all the available items will appear and you can choose which ones to download.  You can listen to them using iTunes.

To get them on your phone, you connect it to the computer and choose what you put on it via iTunes or subscribe using your phone. 

My mother in law has been having trouble sleeping recently and I bought a little iPod Nano- a tiny little MP3 player which has room to put hundreds of episodes of Desert Island Discs (The entire archive is available to download – going back to the 50’s with Roy Plomley).  She also has Claire Balding and many other wonderful Podcasts to enjoy and relax to.  She is 87 and is loving her new technology and amazed it all fits in such a small machine!