Requirements

• mpd & mpc
• a list of podcast RSS feed links

Example podcast RSS feed links

Here’s list of my favourite English & Polish podcasts in an OPML format.

You can extract RSS feed links from it with:

awk -F '"' '{print $6}' podcasts.opml | sed '/^$/d'

Load podcast into MPD

Given that you’ve saved your podcast feed list in ~/Music/podcasts.rss.
Then with a simple while loop you can load your podcast episodes into mpd.

Add this to your ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile:

alias podcasts=fetch_last_n_episodes

function fetch_last_n_episodes() {
    N="${1:-5}"  # defaults to 5 most recent episodes
    mpc --quiet clear
    while read rss; do
        mpc load --quiet --wait --range=0:${N} ${rss}
    done <~/Music/podcasts.rss
    mpc --quiet random
    mpc --quiet play
}

Then run podcasts, wait a bit and enjoy your fav podcasts.

Notes

• If you get rid of --range=0:${N} then all episodes from all feeds will be loaded
• --wait is optional, and should make things lil bit more stable