Fixing podcast syncing in iTunes

Just a quick iPod Touch/iPhone tip: if iTunes seems to ignore the preferences in the Podcasts tab and apparently syncs at random all or some of the available podcast episodes, do not hurry and blame Apple for it but check if there is some smart playlist that lists those episodes. In my case there is that Forgotten tracks smart playlist that shows all tracks never played, including those podcast episodes that I don’t want to sync for one reason or another. Deselecting it in the list of playlists on the Music tab brought balance to the Force and now podcasts syncing works as expected.