I have had this issue before. Unfortunately the only way I've found to fix it is by re-downloading the podcast. I believe it has something to do with iTunes and podcast feeds with too many downloads going on at once. So people are getting their podcasts from a big company, they can complain to get them to up the bandwidth. For smaller podcasts I subscribe to the RSS feed and usually wait a few hours before I download, and that seems to have fixed the problem.

I feel really dumb right now, but how do you redownload a podcast (in iTunes)? I can't find an option to download a particular episode if I already have it--and if I try to delete it and check for new episodes the old one doesn't show up as available.

I haven't had the problem yet and I have many podcasts that I listen to.

A question in my mind -- where do the podcasts get downloaded from? I would guess that iTunes only holds an RSS link to the podcasters' files. So is the problem really with iTunes, or is it with the podcaster?

Seems like the problem is with the podcaster, not iTunes. I have had it only a handful of times, and if there is a problem with an NPR or PRI podcast...I email the tech person and they take care of it right away. I love being able to get all my favorite radio programs via podcast and listen to them when it fits my schedule.

I would love to purchase an ipod or mp3 player for myself. Problem is that I do not have a computer at home to download music to the device. Is a computer a critical component to having an ipod/mp3 player?

I've only had this problem when I attempt to do something else in iTunes while the Podcast is downloading (eg. dragging and dropping another podcast onto my iPod during a download). For this reason, I have taken to double-checking the run-times of the podcasts I've loaded onto my iPod BEFORE I delete the Podcast from my iTunes. Of course, if the original Podcast in iTunes is truncated, I've had no problem re-downloading it--as long as a week hasn't passed (NPR tends to leave only a weeks-worth of their daily Podcasts on the iTunes store site)

To mcd -- it is very critical to have a computer if you want to put anything on your ipod! The make of computer does not matter. You do not have to pay for any of the programs from NPR, etc. so it is very nice. Also, with a computer you can put your cd's into your music library and then move the songs you like onto your ipod. You can store photos, calendar events, contacts on these types of devices like ipods, and use them to store information as you would on a flash drive. No, I'm not selling anything or working for anyone.

This has been happening to me frequently as well. I subscribe to about a dozen podcasts, and it happens to nearly all of them at some point. The most frequent occurrences happening with NPR's "This American Life." It's been getting progressively worse each passing month. Like one commenter said, iTunes doesn't make it easy to redownload a partial podcast. I too am looking for helpful suggestions.

I have had this problem occasionally so I now use Juice, which also seems to manage podcasts better for me.

I have a Palm TREO 700P. I use this just fine to download AND listen to podcasts without having to use a computer. the downside is I pay for a data plan with no limits. the upside is I don't pay for internet seperately for home and I have no 'I can't get software for my Mac' woes.

I never had this problem until about six weeks ago, when I was a late upgrader to iTunes 7. The problem began when I started using iTunes 7. NPR podcasts were the worst affected: they often seemed to cut out, and I'd only have 20 seconds of a one hour show. (If I remember right, BBC podcasts were NEVER affected, CBC [Canada] very seldom.)

The problem seems to have gone away. I don't think I did anything about it: maybe NPR fixed a problem, maybe iTunes 7.3.2 fixed it. It did seem to stop as soon as I started using 7.3.2.

Handling it was a major pain. First, erase the offending stub. You CANNOT just update the podcasts to get it back: iTunes doesn't show you the ones you've deleted. Instead, you have to - on my Apple notebook at least - use "Alt/Option + click" on the little arrow to the left of the podcast name: the arrow that points right when you're just looking at the name, and that you point down to show all the podcasts. Anyway, use Alt/Option Click to make the arrow point down (i.e. when opening the list). That will give you a list of all the podcasts currently available, INCLUDING ones you've deleted. Click on the ones you want and wait.

Unfortunately, there's no guarantee it'll work the second time. Or the third time.

I couldn't find any common source of the problem - no difference if I was downloading lots or just one, whether I had anything else running or not. Eventually things just worked.

As I said, however, I don't think I've had this problem at all since updating to the latest iTunes 7.

Good luck!

"Saludos" to all Washington Post readers. Just to give you the podcaster's point of view here. Our files are hosted by a company which claims to be one of the biggest podcast hosting services in the world. Sometimes things work perfectly, but occasionally when traffic is particularly high there are 'blips' in the service. Bandwidth is the main problem: on average files are requested from the back catalogue of Coffee Break Spanish around 30,000+ times a day. Since most files are mp3s, normally around 20-30mb in size, that equates to a huge amount of bandwidth every day. It fluctuates, of course, and you may find that certain times of the day are better than others. We are currently looking into other possibilities for hosting solutions to minimise the problem.

I hope Rob and other listeners are enjoying Coffee Break Spanish! Saludos a todos.

Mark
Coffee Break Spanish

I'm the person whose Money & Washington Week podcasts don't fully download about half the time. I figure with a failure rate like that, I've got more than one issue going on, which is one reason I haven't tackled any troubleshooting. That I can't EVER get re-downloads to work seems sketchy to me, though; any ideas on what I might be doing wrong? I usually R click + update, the little wheel spins orange, but it can't hit the same hiccup all the time. I click Get if its there, but that button isn't always there; no issues with Get. However, I've even tried deleting the URL, all podcasts and resubscribing (once!) - same issue.