I subscribe and listen to podcasts all the time.
You need 2 things:
- A portable MP3 player
- A podcast manager program
For the MP3 player, you can pretty much get these anywhere. I'd stick with a name brand such as Sansa, Creative, Samsung. One thing that is important to me (since I listen to long podcasts) is that the player will remember where I am in a podcast (or song, or whatever) when I turn it off. It is a pain to be in the middle of a 2-hour podcast and have to turn your player off because it's time for dinner or whatnot, and then have it start at the beginning when you get back to it. This feature is called bookmarking or something similar.
I use
Media Monkey to manage my podcasts. It allows you to subscribe (retrieving new podcasts automatically) and synchronize with your mp3 player. It may be a little daunting to initially set up, but once it is, it is quite easy to use.
There are both free and paid versions of Media Monkey, but I just use the free one. It does all I want and more.
Best of luck,
WallyH