Touch not playing podcasts in playlist

[stutes]

Here is an odd thing I just discovered:

I recently created a playlist, for the sake of detail the name was "Test 1", and on it I put four hours of podcasts and one, just one, music track, which was for the sake of detail "Green" by Peter Mayer. All the podcasts were under ten minutes in length, so there were quite a few of them. I then transferred the "Test 1" playlist onto my ipod touch.

This morning I went to play "Test 1" and I hit shuffle. The first thing to play was "Green" by Peter Mayer. And it was the second thing. And the third thing. It NEVER played ANY of the podcasts.

The odd thing is this: it will play the podcasts if I play the "Test 1" podcast in order and not in shuffle. But if I shuffle, the podcasts never get played.

What gives?

It's as if my ipod is telling me "Yeah, I know those podcasts are on there, but you didn't really want to listen to them. You just want to listen to music."

Well no, actually the podcasts are on there for a reason. I do want them in the mix, and I do want to shuffle and still here them.

So WHAT GIVES?

Is this a settings thing? Do I have something set wrong?
Has this happened to anyone else?

[Sparkee]

Podcasts are set to "Skip when shuffling" by default. Since they are mostly longer radio show type programs. This keeps them from playing when you play an iPod using the shuffle all songs or similar method.

If you have some podcasts you wish to play like songs and/or shuffle them you will need to change this setting on these episodes in iTunes. Select all episodes then right click, choose Get Info and remove the check or set it to No beside "Skip when shuffling" in the Options tab. Re-sync the iPod for the changes to transfer. Since this is the default setting for iTunes it will need to be set for newly downloaded episodes.

[stutes]

Sparkee, thanks so much for the reply.

Gotta say, though, disappointing to hear. Becomes ANOTHER thing I have to manually maintain in iTunes. Ridiculous. Once again Apple makes assumptions about what the end user does with their product. Not all podcasts are long. MANY are short, barely longer than a track of music, several only a minute long. I'm getting tired of Apple "simplifying" things for the end user. I'm finding this mentality all over the ilife suite. Yeah, for many users skipping the podcasts in shuffle will be nice, but at least give the option to turn this feature off! I'm a noob to iTunes and my ipod touch, and I'm starting to think a different music manager would be better suited for me. I'm starting to think sticking with my media player on my palm zire 72 would have been a better choice. For all the bells and whistles that come with my touch and itunes, I'm finding an equal number of frustrations.

But again, thank you for the reply.

[Sparkee]

You might want to look at Juice (http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/). I used it to add podcasts to iTunes before Apple added support for podcasts. It's been awhile since I used it but I was able to subscribe to podcasts with it and have them added to iTunes. They were added as music files and a playlist is created for them. It would be easy for it to automatically download, add the episodes to iTunes with the playlist or use a smartplay list to gather them up. Since they will be added as music they will not show up in the Podcasts section or be marked with the associated settings.

I am more than happy with the way iTunes manages my music, video and mostly podcasts. But I prefer long shows typically 1/2 to 1 hour or longer weekly shows, much like radio talk shows so I want to listen to them once and delete them. I found no software capable of even coming close to podcast management than what iTunes does. When podcasting was in it's infancy I tried them all and none came close.

Please post your solutions since there are others like yourself who may benefit from your solution.