I bought an ipad in order to download podcasts while at work without having to sync with itunes and then listen with my stereo bluetooth headset.

However, (when using the ipad) I will go to itunes store, and then go to podcasts section, and either click on the title, or on the "free" button, and either way it will do nothing, when it should show the description of the podcast, and the free button should turn into a download button. Finally, after clicking on stuff a couple times, instead of showing the description, or giving a download button, it will simply crash and go back to the home screen.

I have the ipad software up to date, and have done a full restore, and neither have helped. It doesn't do this with every podcast, but probably half of them. Anyone know what is up with this?

I have had the same problem. I tried closing down all apps running in the background and a hard reset. Niether worked. The only thing that has worked for me is clearing Safari's cache in Settings. I hope that works for you! Take care.