Podcasts

I have been subscribing to podcasts for several years.  I have for many years enjoyed listening to American Bible teachers.  In the 1990s this involved recording off the radio onto audio tapes.  When podcasting became available, my favourite American preachers began to make podcasts available either on their websites or through iTunes.  I therefore purchased an iPod Nano and began subscribing through iTunes, as well as downloading direct from websites.  I listened to the podcasts on my iPod and also on my Palm computer.

In 2009 I received an iPod classic with a large harddrive as a birthday present.  I am able to plug this into my car stereo to listen while I am driving.  I have sermons from three different Bible teachers on it, as well as Bibles, Christian books, and music.  This means there is never a shortable of listening material when I am driving.  I can also enjoy it when using exercise equipment.

The podcasts I enjoy listening to are sermons from John Piper at Desiring God; John MacArthur at Grace To You and Chuck Swindoll at Insight for Living.

My frustration with podcasts on my Apple iPod is getting them to play in chronological order.  Preachers usually preach a series of sermons on a topic.  My iPod consistently plays them in reverse chronological order, with the most recent podcasts playing first.  I want the most recent to play last.  This means I have to manually select each podcast so that I can listen from the oldest first. 

The big advantage of podcasts over radio as a source of sermons is the ease with which sermons can be downloaded.  They are also free when downloaded from iTunes or from some websites, although you need to have a large enough download quota with your Internet Service Provider to be able to download large quantities of data.  The average sermon podcast is 30 minutes.