Podcasts
The term "Podcast" was first described as way attaching sound and video files to a RSS feeds, but the term is now more generally applied to any spoken word audio format regardless of the original meaning.
Contents
Ripping Podcasts
RSS
This requires youtube-dl and Python. If you're using Linux or macOS, you will need to run the command with sudo.
Install youtube-dl:
pip3 install --upgrade youtube_dlDownload all episodes:
youtube-dl http://feeds.example.com -x --audio-format mp3If you don't have the RSS feed for a podcast, you can often find it in the Google search results.
Spotify
Ripping podcasts off of Spotify is quite a manual process, however most of Spotify's podcasts don't contain DRM. That being said, some of the more popular Spotify Exclusive podcasts (such as the "Joe Rogan Experience") use DRM.
1. Bring up the Developer Console.
Firefox: Hamburger Menu > Web Developer > Network
Chrome: Control + Shift + C
2. Press play on the episode
3. Look for Media in the "Cause" row under the Network view, and make sure it is an audio or video file.
4. Right Click > Open in New Tab
5. Save as
Apple Podcasts (formerly iTunes)
http://getrssfeed.com/ allows you to find the RSS feed for a given Apple Podcast link. You can then follow the steps for RSS above.
Recovering Dead Podcasts
Re-branding
Look for other podcasts by the same publisher. Often, old podcasts don't die and are merely re-branded by their publishers. For example, the cult classic podcast "Foreign Police ER" was re-branded as FP's "First Person." All the old MP3s from the podcast remain on the RSS feed.
Wayback Machine
In all likelihood, at least some of the the MP3 files will already be archived on the Wayback Machine.
Stitcher and other similar podcast hosting websites
Because Stitcher and other podcast hosts create a copy of the files instead of linking directly to them, old podcasts can remain on Stitcher many years after they have disappeared from other podcast providers.
For example: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/nyt-magazine-the-ethicists
Downloading podcasts from Stitcher follows the same process as Spotify in the above section. If you find a podcast is only available on Stitcher, please upload it to the Internet Archive.
