Help with podcast episode selection.

[ankhseeker]

I am in need of a wake up call.
The specs:

Itunes 11.4 on a Mac Mini 1.1 os 10.6.8 with ios 8.4.1

The problem that I am having is that I am not sure what to do. Itunes goes out and downloads the podcast episodes from the topic I subscribed to. Lets say that it has 20 but I only want to listen to 5 of them. What are the blue dots on the left column and what are the check marks for? Do I check them to listen to the ones I want or uncheck them and then sync? It seems to play all of them sequentially if I just hit play and let it go for hours. Can someone please shed some wisdom? Also , can I delete them after I listen to them? I listen to them via the podcast app that came with this ios. (Hopefully the picture made it as well.) What is the difference between shaded (faint) and not shaded ones? Can't seem to change these.
Is there a manual?
Thank you!

 

[Slydude]

Try checking the ones you want and uncheck the others. I believe the grayed out ones are not currently in the library and will have to be re-downloaded. I could be wrong about this so I am looking for confirmation.

 

[ankhseeker]

Hello Sly. Thanks. I can't see a difference with or w/o the check marks. Apparently deleting them on my phone doesn't work either as it just redownloads them to the phone with the next sync. I came up with a work around and that is to mark each as played. Not the best, but it works until I figure it out.