While watching Cosmos on DVD it occurred to me that it would translate fairly well to a podcast format. Having spent tens of hours editing periodic announcements out of DJ sets recorded off the radio, it presented an interesting challenge.
I listened through the episodes multiple times and anything that didn't work like long passages of music, or where Carl refers to something on-screen (eg. "shown here" or "this photo") were edited out. Most of the edits are seamless but some noticeable ones were unavoidable without access to the master tapes.
The only content of note that didn't work "for radio" was a sequence in episode 7 where Carl shows some pictures and planetary models to primary school students, and another in episode 12 where he translates some Egyptian Hieroglyphics from Greek.
For anyone wondering, I chose 32khz because it is close to 44kHz in quality, and surprisingly, 48kbps CBR was indistinguishable from 56k CBR and 48-56kbps ABR.
Source: Region 4 PAL DVD
AC3 files extracted with DVD Decrypter
Converted to WAV with AC3filter and Winamp
Downmixed and edited with with Sony Sound Forge 8.0d
Encoded with LAME 3.98 and Lame-Front-End
Frequency: 32kHz
Bitrate: 48kbps CBR
Channels: Mono
Episode info available at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage
Good accompaniments to Cosmos: Podcast Edition in my opinion are the TTC Big History lectures (http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/4162163/) and A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson (http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/3964818/).