NEW WAYS TO LISTEN TO PODCASTS

If you’re an Alexa household, add the TuneIn skill to your devices to get access to a vast library of podcasts

Podcasts first came to prominence when Apple gave them shelf space in iTunes. Nowadays, there are all manner of different ways to get your podcast fix.

The smart speaker makers rarely trumpet the ability to listen to podcasts on their devices, but they’re getting increasingly better at it. If you’re an Amazon Alexa household, add the TuneIn skill to your devices to get access to a vast library of podcasts. Simply ask Alexa to, say, “play the Freakonomics

Radio podcast” and she will ferret off and find the latest episode.

If you can’t get Alexa to understand which podcast you want (it happens), search through TuneIn’s podcast directory from within the Alexa app and commence playback from there. In the app, go to Music, Video & Books, select TuneIn from the Music apps and then click Podcasts to locate the search engine and podcast directory.

Alexa will resume podcasts from where you left off, but only from the last listened-to show. You can’t start

Freakonomics, dip into the PC Pro podcast, and then resume where you left off in Freakonomics later.

Google has really polished its podcast game of late. Its Google Home devices provide native support for podcast listening – just ask for the show you wish to listen to. Google has also recently launched a new Podcasts app for Android. Within itself, it’s pretty basic. You can subscribe to shows, download episodes for offline listening and that’s about it.

However, it does let you resume listening from where you left off on your Google Home speaker, and vice versa. So if you’re listening to a show at home over breakfast and then shoot off for the commute to work, you don’t need to shuffle the episode timeline forward manually on your Android phone.