I'd focus on just recording yourself, pausing an hour, then playing it back and seeing if you regret anything you said.

Do that for five minutes every day for a year.

Then you're ready for podcasting. It's like the radio, but truly forever since people WILL almost CERTAINLY archive podcasts, whereas the radio is more liminal.

I am creating a podcast on mac and used Audacity before switching to record on a portable recorder.

I still edit in Audacity, which works fine but I would pay good money for something that could remove my breath sounds from the input. Audacity handles most other noise well enough.

I use the Samsung Q2U microphone.

TASCAM Podcast Editor https://tascam.com/us/product/tascam_podcast_editor/top

Generally, I recommend Reaper reaper.fm for any audio related tasks. I've used it for personal and professional projects for years now. If you can be more specific about what doesn't seem to be "that good" about the software you've been testing maybe I can give some more targeted recommendations.

I just checked it out, and they only sell licenses if you can send them a check drawn on a US bank. I assume this is possible for people in the US, but if you are not, don't even bother checking out this software.

Garage Band or Audacity and a USB mic (generally better sound + less background noise for non-audiophiles). You can upgrade later if/when you care to.

You don't need to take that advice commenter dontbenebby gave, unless you want to get discouraged and quit.

PS: Reaper is good, too, but has more of a learning curve.

You haven’t mentioned whether you have a proper mic. If you don’t it should be the first thing you spend money on. There are many options at many different price points. Lots of people use a Blue Yeti which is around $100. Shure MV7 is a good option for a bigger budget.

I have a nice mic.

Descript.com is great if you don’t like DAWs and want an easy way to make edits to your recordings.

If you think GarageBand might work, you're ready to make a podcast.

The only road to "best and easiest" runs through crappy and hard.

You don't need to go shopping. You need a script.

Good luck.

Anchor.fm These folks have a whole integrated platform that handles everything, even publishing, editing, recording, etc..

I would recommend taking a look at Audition. It's paid, but fantastic software for audio editing.