How to Play Podcasts on Shuffle

[baixiwei]

Sorry if this question has already been asked - I've tried to find the answer online but so far only found oblique references.

I'm trying to do a very specific thing with my shuffle which seems, so far, to be impossible.

I want to store several episodes of two different podcasts on the shuffle, and (ideally) to somehow control manually the order in which they are played, or (failing that) to force them to play in chronological order from oldest to newest, or (failing even that) to get them to play randomly.

So far, I can't get any of the above to happen, because (1) when I manually set the order of the podcast episodes in the Content pane of the iPod in iTunes, it doesn't affect the order in which they are actually played on the iPod, even if I "copy to play order", (2) the default play order seems to start from the newest episodes rather than the oldest, and (3) they don't play at all in shuffle mode, presumably because the iPod seems to be broken with respect to random play of podcasts.

Any help would be much appreciated!

[Crusoe]

With regard to (3), check that the podcast files don't have the "skip while shuffling" option checked.

Your option (1) is the one that worked best for me.