What is a Podcast?

A podcast is a "radio show" delivered to your computer or MP3 player automatically.

Before podcasting, to hear an audio show on a Web site you had to visit the Web site, find the item you wanted to hear, and then listen to it by clicking a link. If you listened to a show regularly you had to visit the site over and over again--and hope you didn't miss the latest show.

Today, with podcasting, a program on your computer, like iTunes, automatically connects to a Web site, finds the most recent audio show, and downloads it automatically to your computer. Then, you can listen to the show anytime you want--on your computer or on a portable MP3 player like an iPod.

Podcast XML feeds, to which you subscribe with a program like iTunes, are marked with an RSS podcast icon and an iTunes link (to open the podcast directly in iTunes).

This is a sample podcast icon: or