RSS is a content syndication format. It is commonly used and produced by content management systems (e.g. Wordpress, Drupal). Many news organizations andsome search engines harvester use it too. Individuals you run news aggregetor software or “feed readers” often use the links to harvest article content for later reading.
The most recent RSS version is verion 2. That is the version this site produces. You can find out about the specification at RSS 2.0 at Harvard Law.
RSS provides metadata about articles or list of things. It has only a few required fields but often provides titles, descriptions and sometimes “enclosures”. The latter is how people get “podcasts”.
Some search engines use RSS feeds as a discover mechanism along with other website documents such as sitemap.xml.
RSS is useful if you are following the publications of a group and individual in your news aggregator/reader. It is also a convient format to inguest into content management systems like Wordpress and Drupal. Some search engines also use RSS feeds to discover content they might want to include in their search results.