Mehdi Yahyanejad, a post-doctoral fellow specializing in bioinformatics at Stanford, typically spends Thursday evenings with a microphone and a laptop computer. He and Ahmad Anvari, an engineer in Silicon Valley, record a weekly Farsi language news program on American culture, politics and technology called “Haftegi” (which means “weekly” in Farsi) from their living rooms.

Thanks to podcasting, a way to publish sound files to the Internet, anyone with a computer can become an audio news commentator from his or her own home. The technology allows listeners in Iran — and anywhere else in the world — to download Yahyanegad and Anvari’s show directly to their iPods (or any other MP3 player) and tune in.

Podcasting differs from broadcasting or webcasting because listeners subscribe to podcast feeds using aggregator software such as iPodder or RSSRadio. This software works much like TiVo does for recording TV shows: Users program the software to automatically record certain podcasts onto their computers, and when they plug in their iPods or MP3 players, the podcasts sync with the computer.

While the number of households that listen to podcasts is about 300,000, according to Forrester Research, a marketing research company, that number is expected to grow to 12.3 million by 2010. With this sort of scale, major radio networks, who may experience some competition, are taking notice.

Last month San Francisco radio station KYCY-AM, owned by radio industry giant Infinity Broadcasting Corp., decided to embrace the new media form, converting its syndicated talk show content to an all-podcast format. Billed as “KYOURadio,” podcasters are able to submit their programs on the radio station’s Web site for broadcast at 1550 AM or on the Internet.

“The idea came from our executives in the programming and marketing departments,” wrote Karen Mateo, Infinity’s vice president of communications, in an e-mail to The Daily. “We experiment with different formats all the time at our radio stations and are always looking for ways to integrate new technologies into our core business. We had an opportunity to take an underperforming station in the San Francisco market and experiment with a new idea to radio. ‘Podcasting’ is an interesting and compelling radio format, and we are thrilled with the early response and quality, including audio and content, of the podcasts.”

However, it still remains to be seen whether KYCY’s ratings will improve over the long term with the podcasting experiment. There are enough people interested in blasting their voices over the Web or on air — the challenge is finding quality content among the large quantity of podcasting shows submitted.

“Quality content [in podcasting] is pretty hard to find,” said Shannon Snow, a graduate student in communications, who is finishing a masters project on podcasting. “People are really confined by the technology. People really want to do ambitious things but are limited by the tools. A lot of people are hacking it together.”

But, for others, part of the appeal of podcasting is its raw, unfiltered content and its potential to become an alternative media source.

“What makes podcasting [unique] is the informal discussion,” Yahyanejad said. “It’s not very produced. The problem with [KYCY’s] work is that they are selecting what podcasts go through [on the air].”

Listeners who download podcasts directly from the Internet have the ability to pick and choose among special interest programs, from shows devoted to discussing Marilyn Monroe to Macintosh computers to wine making. KYCY’s producers will select the programs they will feature on the show, removing this aspect of choice.

Yahyanegad and Anvari have shown that there is something for everyone. Their show is the second podcast in Farsi in the world and have a special niche among Farsi-speakers. They said that they strive to give Iranians a “more accurate representation of what typical life is like in America and how things work here” through commentary and interviews.

“Iranians in Iran are getting information on the U.S. from the Iranian government or from Iranian opposition groups or U.S. government radio — Voice of America,” said Yahyanegad. “It’s obvious that all of these sources are not unbiased. The picture they get out of it is distorted.” As “citizen journalists,” Yahyanegad and Anvari maintain that their podcast offers some middle ground.

“There are a lot of people unhappy with big media,” said Yahyanegad. “What they are interested in is not covered, so citizen journalism can help.”

“When [people] listen to podcasts, they want to listen to something interesting that they can’t hear in big media,” he added.

Snow is more reluctant to call podcasting “citizen journalism.”

“The efforts are not quite there yet,” she said. “It has the potential but I still don’t think it has successfully become citizen journalism. But everything changes so fast, so it has the potential of becoming that.”