I don't use podcasts, but I always found it strange that people speak of podcasting as this open thing (because of RSS) while the audio files are usually hosted inside walled gardens (?). The RSS file is nothing but a link to the audio file, right? Or am I missing something?
There's metadata as well, title, episode description. Everything is just a standard RSS item except for the podcast specific stuff. You can read it with a standard RSS reader.
Regardless of who is hosting the audio, if you can get the free, the audio files are publicly available without an account.
The podcaster can put those files on any server. You can host yourself (e.g., with WordPress) or pay someone else to do it for you. The apps you listen with pretty much don't host the audio, though there are technical exceptions.
There’s nothing walled garden about the file storage IME. You could use an IPFS link if you wanted too…though without a proxy I doubt most clients would be able to download it.
