Double podcasts folder

Do you mean that new episodes are appearing as if they are part of a different podcast? Does this new podcast have exactly the same name as the older version? - if the producer had changed the title you would presumably get the result you describe.

It might be useful if you could post a screenshot of your Podcasts list with the podcasts expanded to show the episodes; also if you could post the feed URL of one podcast in which you see this phenomenon (right-click on the line for the podcast itself - not an episode - and choose 'Copy feed URL).

... i think what is happening is that the url's have changed.

There is a mechanism in place for handling changed feed URLs but possibly this might cause your iTunes application to think the feed is a new one.

Not sure why this happens, looks as though the URL is the same. One is the 60 minutes podcast for iPod as it has now split. Another of my podcasts did the same thing about a year ago, I haven't been able to merge them.

As has been suggested iTunes "splits" the listing for a podcast if & when the feed URL changes. For example I'm currently subscribed to one called The Pod Delusion. Up until episode 72 the feed URL was:

http://www.ipadio.com/phlog_rss.asp?phlogid=9216

From episode 73 a couple of weeks ago it has changed to:

http://www.ipadio.com/ipadio_rss.aspx?phlogid=9216

I've "repaired" broken series in the past using Mp3tag, by editing the PODCASTURL field in the extended tags view of all earlier episodes to merge the series back together. In fact, prompted by this thread I just made the edit outside iTunes with Mp3Tag and then used my script UpdateTagInfo to make iTunes notice the changes. (Playing the tracks briefly one by one should also achieve this end.)
The series is all merged together again. 🙂

Unfortunately I don't know offhand of a Mac tag editor that can change the PODCASTURL field but I'm sure there must be one.

If a podcast series changes its name but stays at the same URL then the series should be linked as one in iTunes, but can occupy two or more sub-folders of the Podcasts folder. I'm pretty sure this can be repaired by changing the album title of earlier episodes to match the current one, but as I manually manage my files & folders I would need to create a test library and experiment to be certain.

tt2