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iTunes offers a
podcast of thousands

SOMETIMES, to lead a popular movement you must compromise on the very virtues your cause represents.

Freedom-fighter George Washington, for instance, spent most of the American Revolution in retreat, just to live to fight another day.

The Karate Kid was taught violence is a last resort, yet he became a hero by voluntarily slapping Johnny of the Cobra Kai dojo down hard with his one good foot.

And as a Digital Slob, I've preached patience in the face of new technology, to wait until the path of least resistance beats a path to our door.

Nevertheless, I've ventured into the thorny world of podcast creation, even though every Slob fiber in my being (not that there's a wealth of fiber in my being even on a good day) told me to wait until someone automates it down to push-button simplicity, likely sometime after dinner tonight.

But since the omnipresent iTunes bridged the podcasting moat in late June, I couldn't let my fellow Slobs surge into Hell's Kitchen on an empty stomach. So I moved in.

Since a "podcaster" sounds like a fisherman who baits his hooks with MP3 players, here's the gist in 20 words or less: Audio is recorded (by shock jocks, ministers, Belgians, even one Amish guy on the down-low), it is then posted on the Net and software automatically downloads it episode-at-a-time into iPods, almost always for free.

OK, that was 38 words, twice as long as it needed to be -- just like every podcast ever created, including my "digitalslobpod," now on iTunes .

The "podcast community," (podcastalley.com, etc.), is understandably a bit on edge since pied piper Steve Jobs used his magic music player to lead a horde of newbies into their once-peaceful shire.

During my first podcasting attempt, I ran into concepts that would fill my nightmares for nights to come: feeds, enclosures, RSS, XML and former MTV host Adam Curry (though he's been spooking my dream time off and on since 1987).

Curry steers a flagship podcast, The Daily Source Code, which features podsafe tunes (indie music sprayed with copyright-lawyer repellent) and mashups, a kind of rich "roadkill gumbo" mix of songs.

Last week I heard an '80s mashup while on a treadmill, and I thought I was having a heart attack and my life was passing before my ears.

iTunes makes podcast listening a breeze. But for a would-be Slob podcaster, getting the right URL in the right box at the right time is still too much like trying to solve an online, text-only Rubik's Cube.

Yet skim iTunes and you'll realize plenty of people have figured it out.

Picture the Star Wars bar scene from Episode IV on Tatooine -- now imagine everyone in there hosting their own radio show.

But the process could be easier. An 11-year-old can podcast all day about not only how much he loves pistachios, but on how much he enjoys the sound of the word "pistachio." But his nemesis, the denser eighth-grade quarterback, is not yet turning to the medium to discuss how "pistachio boy is such a dork."

For him, for now, locker-room wedgies will remain the appropriate retort du jour.

Still, if the Internet is an insane asylum, podcasting is art therapy -- so go ahead and try this at home. Just take your meds first.