There is a good chance you have been encouraged by a radio presenter to get the ‘podcast’ of their show, although they have probably left it up to you to find out what that means.

In essence, a podcast is a regularly updated series of audio or video clips that are available online. They can be of any length, on any topic, of any frequency and are not necessarily based on existing radio shows. Instead of having to find the show every week, however, you can simply ‘subscribe’ to a show once and new episodes will automatically be downloaded to your computer.

However, to become a listener, you need a podcast player but these are easy to find.

Software
The most popular podcast player is iTunes, which can also be used to play any music you have on your computer. The software is free to download and has a dedicated podcast section, which you will find on the left-hand menu when you open it up.

Clicking on this section will bring you straight to your library. To start downloading a show, you can click on the ‘podcast directory’, which will bring you to a huge selection of programmes.

Plenty of choice
The iTunes podcast directory hosts countless shows from around the world. Most Irish radio shows have podcasts but, as podcasting is international, you can also tune in to American and British radio shows – or programmes that are made specifically for the internet.

You can select from the featured podcasts on the directory’s main page, search by category or even search by name to find what you want.

Just one click
Once you find a show you like, you can click on the ‘Subscribe’ button and it will start to download to your library. You can return to the directory and add another show if you like or, if you are finished, you can wait for your episodes to download.

Once that’s done, you can listen to it on your PC or even transfer it to an MP3 player. All new episodes of your shows will start to download automatically when you open iTunes. If you decide you do not want to listen to a particular show any more, you can simply click ‘unsubscribe’ and your computer will no longer fetch new episodes for you.

Trial and error
There are podcasts available to suit every taste and not just those that are regular radio shows. Just be aware, however, that some of the shows may not be of great quality – sometimes it’s just trial and error to find the ones you like.

To help you get started, however, here are a few hand-picked podcasts that are top quality and well worth a listen.

Mark Kermode & Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews (BBC Radio)
Both Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo really know their films and know what makes a good one.
If you want to listen to film reviews, news and witty banter, this is the podcast for you.

This American Life
This American Life is an award-winning show from US public radio. Each week’s show is based around a theme and features a number of stories connected to it, usually true stories from normal people.

The show is sometimes sad, sometimes hilarious but almost always inspirational and beautiful.

LibriVox
LibriVox is an audio-book service, making its readings of out-of-copyright books available as individual podcasts. Classics from Dracula to Sense and Sensibility are covered, with each book acting as a separate podcast to which you can subscribe. Best of all, each book is split into a number of episodes, so you can listen to it one piece at a time.

TedTalks
This podcast features talks from the TED conference in California, which are given by the world’s greatest minds on bizarre and mind-blowing topics such as ‘The intelligence of crows’ or ‘Six ways mushrooms can save the universe’.

The speakers are simply required to talk about something interesting and unique without notes and within a strict 18-minute time limit.

However, be careful when downloading these podcasts. The videos are also available as podcasts and are quite large. It is best to avoid them if you only want to listen to the talks.