The podcasting part of iTunes seem to work rather well. It does sync podcasts with, I assume, any iPod. It might be kinda pointless to use it with the iPod Shuffle, but on anything else it seems to just act like a playlist titled "Podcasts". The software update for some of the newer iPods, although I have no way to test it, is described as adding podcast features to the iPod itself.
For finding podcasts, it accesses a part of the ITMS, which you can: submit podcasts to, search through them, browse the top 100, etc. I could probably get used to listening to news pretty easily, seeing how much I use my iPod normally - except it would actually be for something productive.
Most of the options seem pretty standard. (Default noted by an asterisk.) When to check (every hour, every day*, every week, manually), what to do when new episodes are available (download all, download most recent*, do nothing), how many episodes to keep (all*, all unplayed, most recent, last 2, last 3, last 4, last 5, last 10), and then an iPod option - which podcasts to sync (all is the default, or you can manually select which ones). It seems like a pretty good UI overall for the podcasts.
Now, my question to others is, what good podcasts are there out there? Suggestions would be great.
I don't know if you can subscribe to podcasts not in the directory, as I've never used a podcasting application before and don't know how it's normally handled, but it seems anyone can add a podcast to the directory.