Podcast help
to subscribe to programs on the Media page

What are podcasts and podcast subscriptions?
Podcasting is a new way of delivering audio and video files to people via their computers. Bascially, a podcast is a series of programs, either audio or video. What makes a podcast different than just a collection of programs—often called episodes—is the way you get them.

To receive episodes, users can subscribe to a podcast, which is sort of like subscribing to a newspaper, except that you do it with your computer. By subscribing to a podcast, you're telling the producer (well, the producer's computer) that you want their Web site to send new episodes to you, in the form of mp3 files, whenever there are created. When the producer has a new program to offer, they will put it on their server.

Once you've subscribed, their server will know to deliver the new program to you the next time you log onto the internet. You can listen to it using any mp3 player.

Here's how to subscribe to our podcasts:

Once you've subscribed to our Faultline podcasts, new episodes will automatically download to your iTunes or podcatcher whenever we post them. The files will be mp3's, which will play in iTunes, RealPlayer, Windows Media Player, and some other players. New Faultline episodes will be released on April 4, April 11, and on the earthquake centennial, April 18, 2006.

It's easy to subscribe! There are two ways to do it:

• Subcribe using iTunes

Podcasts are free, even though you get them from the iTunes store. You can go to the podcast section of the store and search for "Exploratorium" (with a capital "E," it's case sensitive). Or visit our page in the iTunes store. Clicking this link will open a browser window that will ask permission to open another application—iTunes. You'll see our page there when iTunes opens.

You can download a free version of iTunes if you don't have it.

• Subcribe using "podcatcher" software

There are many other programs, called "podcatchers" that you can use to subscribe to podcasts. Juice, transistr (formerly called iPodderX) and Happy Fish are popular podcatchers.

To subscribe via a podcatcher, you need the URL of the file with information about where the podcast is, called an RSS file.

1. Click here, and you'll get a new browser window with a page of code. DON'T PANIC! It's just the RSS file.

2. Open your podcatcher application.

3. Copy the URL you see in the new browser window.

4. Your podcatcher will have some menu item titled something like "subscribe to podcast" or "subscribe to feed." Open that, and a window should appear with a place to paste a URL.

5. Paste the URL you copied into the window.

Now just wait for the new episodes!