How to move podcasts from iTunes to iPod...nano 2nd gen with iTunes 8.2.1,
...that don't have the little blue dot indicating that they've not been listened to? These podcasts aren't sync'ed to iPod bec iPod thinks that they have been listed to and they haven't. How to 'restore' these podcasts to their original 'unheard' status? The solution appears to manually manage podcasts, but I couldn't follow directions which I think were intended for iTunes 9 --such as find the Source and go from there (no "Source" on my iTunes).
Right click on the podcast and then you can pick "Mark as Unwatched" (even if it is an audio only podcast). This will restore the blue dot of newness. Cheers, Patrick
You can also change your settings from iTunes under the 'podcasts' tab of your ipod. If you set it to sync all episodes instead of all unplayed episodes it should work just fine.
If you wanted to pick which podcasts sync but don't want to manually manage, you could also create a smart playlist that chooses all 'checked' podcasts and sync that playlist instead. Then only the podcasts you check will be synced, regardless of whether or not they've been played.