Becca: Sorry to hear of your problems with iTunes 8. My only suggestion would be to download iTunes installer again and reinstall. If you are successful there is a nice feature for podcast listeners in iTunes 8. You can set different download settings for each podcast. Downloading 30+ podcasts per day, I have found this feature very handy. I wouldn't be too concerned about letting iTunes send your list of music to Apple. It is all done anonymously and Apple doesn't even keep a record of what music you have. I don't know what they would do with that information even if they wanted to. Ken