or the world is going to run out of trees. The publisher can just keep doing new print runs forever. If I were the author I would love this. Besides you can't really get better PR then this.

You are right that his education was paid for by taxes. However since not everyone in his country goes to college other people have subsidized his education through their taxes.

Some podcasters might have their shows available on their website. But you shouldn't confuse podcasting with a website linking to mp3s.

A podcast is a RSS feed with enclosures linking to the show. You use an aggregator to subscribe to the shows. The aggregator will automagically download the shows you subscribe to your harddrive. The aggregator will also automaticaly copy the shows over to your mp3 player (assuming you have one).