I use iTunes to subscribe to podcasts that I listen to on an iPod classic. New podcasts stay in iTunes forever, or until I delete them manually, this is OK. However, when a new podcast is synced to the iPod, and I listen to it once, upon the next iPod-iTunes sync it is removed from the iPod.

This happens even if I listen to the first 20 seconds of a podcast. More annoyingly, it happens even if you start to listen to a podcast by mistake (for example some WSJ podcasts that do not identify the week's subject or content in their title, some don't even have the date listed, ... the WSJ is slipping).

As a result, I'm constantly syncing twice. Once to get the new podcasts onto the iPod, and then a second time, after carefully looking at podcasts view in iTunes to see which ones got removed from the iPod that I want to keep, (the ones I started but didn't finish or, started by mistake).

Is there a way (configuration setting?) to remove only podcasts from your iPod if you listen to X% or more of them? Or something related? I suspect this is by podcast in iTunes, where you right click and get some options by Podcast (not by Podcast episode), but I've yet to get the right combination of options figured out and setup.