What do podcasts have to do with dolphins?

Nothing actually! But, now that I have your attention, for my 11th “thing”, I thought I would wax lyrical about the value of podcasts.

According to the slightly sus, but ever-helpful Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast

“A podcast is a series of digital-media files which are distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and computers. The term podcast, like broadcast, can refer either to the series of content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also called podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.
The term is a portmanteau of the words "iPod" and "broadcast",[1] the Apple iPod being the brand of portable media player for which the first podcasting scripts were developed (see history of podcasting). Such scripts allow podcasts to be automatically transferred to a mobile device after they are downloaded.[2] As more devices other than iPods became able to synchronize with podcast feeds, the term was redefined by some parties as an abbreviation for the backronym "Personal On Demand broadCASTING".[3][4][5]
Though podcasters' web sites may also offer direct download or streaming of their content, a podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS or Atom.”

I particularly like the way NZ Radio stations such as Radio New Zealand http://www.radionz.co.nz/podcasts and KiwiFM http://www.kiwifm.co.nz/Listen/tabid/53/Default.aspx now offer podcasts archiving some of their broadcasts.

Some podcasts are also cited on the relevant musicians webpages, and others are even cited within articles, e.g. this Scoop article publicising the weekly KiwFM interview with Helen Clark http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0807/S00310.htm