You hear them mentioned on news shows, by political candidates, and even on standard television shows, but what is a podcast?

The short and simple version is that a podcast is an audio or video recording that can be delivered to your computer or mobile device.  The longer explanation is that they are like radio shows or cable access television in that people can record on just about any subject you can think of, do it for next to no money, and gain an audience of a few to thousands.

So the question is how do you start finding all of these podcasts, or at least ones that may interest you?  The best place to start is probably the iTunes Store which has a selection of thousands of podcasts (link will open iTunes on your system) is easy to search, will sync to your iPod automatically and makes them easy to subscribe to.  (In case you were curious, the word “podcast” is a mixture of “iPod” and “broadcast”.)  Will there be of anything of interest to you?  Of course there will be!  Comedy, religion, technology, educational… there’s a podcast for everything.

In the future we will bring you more entries about the terminology of podcasts, how to make one, how to host them and more.  And if you’re looking for one to add to your subscriptions, make sure to check out Scattercast, my personal weekly podcast!