Ipod used to work with Itunes but now cause Itunes to crash!

Thank you so much for reading my question!!
Here's the situation ...
I've got a 1 year old 2nd gen Ipod 4GB
It works completely well on it's own.
For ages, it worked fantastically with iTunes (on my about-3-years-old emac).

A couple of months ago, the following started happening ....
When I plug the ipod into the computer, the ipod icon appears in itunes.
If I click on the ipod icon, the ipod page opens but after about 3 seconds, itunes crashes (and I get that message about itunes 'unexpectedly closing' and am given the option to send a report to apple (which I've done!))
I can drag songs over to the ipod icon and that works well. Everything goes pear shaped only when I try to click on the ipod icon.
I've updated the itunes software (via software updates) but the problem is still happening.

The problem with it all is that it means that I can put things onto my ipod (by dragging them to the ipod icon) but I can't take anything off the ipod!
As someone who gets lots of podcasts, it's driving me around the twist having so many podcasts that I've listened to but that I can't take off the ipod.

Can anyone help???