In any event, some unknown author at Digital Podcasting has written a pretty decent article on how to create a podcast for free. He suggests using Audacity to record and edit the show, the Internet Archive to host it, and Blogger to provide the show blog.
In the past I've used all three of these tools to varying degrees for my shows and they're all OK, but I can't let the Internet Archive recommendation go by.
The Internet Archive is a great organization that is dedicated to the preservation of Grassroots media. They host pretty much any lawful media created by citizens and they'll host it forever for free.
Beware that while the IA is a great outfit, their hosting is really bad. As Mr. Nameless Author states, it can take up to 24 hours for a show you've uploaded to even appear on the IA and that's just the beginning of your troubles.
I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that hosting a show on the IA will cost you listeners. The download speed is so slow that it will take at least an hour to download normal-length podcast in most cases. In other cases, the download will just fail over and over again. The IA ia a great place to 'archive' stuff (see that in the name?) it's not good for a live production service.
Podcasting takes a LOT of bandwidth and diskspace which is why there are very few free hosts out there. Do yourself a favour and pay Libsyn $5 a month for your hosting. It will be a much better experience for you and your listeners.
And hey, if your show is so unimportant to you that you don't want to spend $5 to host it, then please don't make the show.
