Podcasting is the creation and dissemination of a series (episodes) of files (known as podcasts) for people to listen to on their computer or on a portable player. These files can be talk shows, music shows, recordings of talks and speeches and maybe people reading the texts of books. The genre has a wide variety of formats but podcasts are similar to a radio show (talk, music, variety) that can be played on demand. The name is a derivative of the one for Apple's iPod.