iTunes and iPod Shuffle

It sure takes a lot of effort to download podcasts into iTunes and then to transfer them to the iPad Shuffle (I think that is its name). And it's hard to organize what you've listened to and what you have not. Maybe it just makes sense for music that you want to download once and leave there, but for news and podcasts, life evolves and so do the news and other items. There ought to be a orderly way in which to manage this, and there does not appear to be one.