All I can do is "bump" your question. I am wondering myself what smart means.
For podcasts that I know the schedule, I just request a "refresh" if the episode isn't available.
If you haven't upgraded the Blackberry podcast app, RIM no longer maintains a directory of podcasts. To be honest, I ended up loading my own rss feeds anyway. What I didn't like was for the new podcast program to force you to delete ther podcasts that RIM had in their durectory, only to have to find the same links again.