podcasts disappearing from iTunes

[lrsk]

The crashes I'm referring to are the actual iPod crashing, not iTunes.

After a sync, I'll go to play the podcast on the iPod (unplugged), and it will freeze as I hit 'play'. I then reboot the iPod by holding the middle button and the Menu button (2nd Gen iPod Nano). This fixes the problem, just a little annoying.

[slonkak]

Have you upgraded to the newest version of iTunes? Or maybe just reinstalled whatever version you're running. It's always possible that iTunes is doing something bad to the iPod and a reinstall or uninstall/install could fix it.