246. Launching a Substack: The stories behind & between the podcasts

Time to take a punt this year! I've just launched a Substack. Essentially, after 25 years in international and community development, and nearly a decade creating TheRegenNarration podcast, I began to feel something missing – the stories between the stories. The ones that don’t get on the podcast. And the ones that connect it all up - the themes, the people, the places.

I started to wonder if writing some of these stories would be fun and useful. All the more after hearing Rebecca Solnit affirm how vital they continue to be in shaping our sense of reality, agency and possibility (out of the LA fires). So here’s a little introduction to the what, why and how of it. Including how subscriptions will work through the Substack, alongside Patreon and Buzzsprout. 

You can also read about it on my launch post on Substack. Where you can also find my first article – a sort of foundation piece - out yesterday, from the ancient Mayan cities in northern Guatemala. All will be embedded with a little latent love of photography, and some tunes from time to time. Putting thesocial back in media. 

So if you fancy some of that alongside your podcast, you can subscribe on Substack here - free or paid. I hope you’ll join me there!

And standby for the new series of The RegenNarration podcast next week.

For more from behind the scenes, become a supporting listener or Substack subscriber via the links below.

Recorded 29 January 2025 in Antigua, Guatemala. 

Title slide: AJ recording this episode (pic: Olivia Cheng).

With thanks to you early Substack subscribers, and of course you enduring Patreon and Substack subscribers, and other donating supporters. None of this could happen without you. 

Music:

By Jeremiah Johnson.

Chapters

• 0:00 Launching a New Substack
• 5:30 The coming series of the podcast
• 7:55 Supporter Options for Exclusive Content

Transcript

AJ: 0:04

G'day there, Anthony James, here for The RegenNarration, speaking to you from back in Antigua, Guatemala, with some lovely company. I'm sitting on a rooftop here and I'm surrounded by trees in classic Antigua fashion. These beautiful old Spanish colonial buildings and the best of the buildings have these courtyards in them, and that's the humble hotel we're staying in at the moment as well, and in the quieter end of town too, there's a little breeze going by, but not too much, so hopefully this will come out okay. As I look over one side, I see cathedrals, quite often, at least partly in ruins from the earthquakes that destroyed this place twice before they moved the capital to Guatemala City back in the 18th century, which makes this place really fascinating, because again it was. It was ruined and left, but lived on and has become well, a UNESCO site, today Heritage, and it is quite an incredible cultural meeting place, albeit with the dark shadow of the past a little bit, and at times just the starkest of inequalities, but a visual extravaganza for sure. Cobblestone streets, coloured buildings, they make sure that the advertising's not in the public space, all these basics that we should probably have everywhere. Anyway, maybe not the cobblestone streets, but certainly that absence of the propaganda in public space and behind me, the other way, I've got the volcanoes, the three huge volcanoes that are just a fraction of the volcanoes that line the west western side of Guatemala and surround this town, providing a hell of a backdrop. Fuego is often erupting, but it hasn't this time. It was erupting every day when we were here last, and the other ones sort of sit idle these days.

AJ: 2:01

So, anyway, I'm talking to you today because, well, a bit's been happening Come and gone from my old hometown. There was plenty of interest in the podcast, so if anyone happened to be trying to listen in English, then gracias, I'm gonna have more material in Spanish soon, but I'll have transcripts available, obviously, that they can be translated into English pretty quickly these days and vice versa through the substack for Spanish speakers. And that's mainly what I'm getting online to speak to you about today. On the podcast, the festive season series I just put out has just finished the clean state series and you can backpedal to have a listen to that if you haven't managed already. I do a little intro piece like this.

AJ: 2:47

Ahead of that, back at the start of January in my old hometown here in Guatemala, and what's also happened in that period of time is that I launched a sub stack experiment. For those who have no idea what that is, I scarcely did till not long ago. To tell you the truth, it's a wow. What do they call it? A publishing space. So I'm essentially a newspaper of sorts in old speak.

AJ: 3:14

But, like the podcast, I'm going to make it largely free, except for some exclusive paid subscriber stuff, trusting that in gifting that there'll be enough folk gifting back paid subscription to keep the thing going. If it's any good, I won't double dip. So if you're a patreon subscriber already from the podcast, you will get all the exclusive stuff that happens to get on substack as well. It's just, if you want more stories and the stories behind the stories and the stories between the stories, then subscribe for free to substack too and you can get all that. I'll apply some of my latent love of photography there too. So if you're interested in that, that'll be there and maybe a few other bits and pieces would be social media posts. In fact, in a sense this carries a bit of a subplot, an attempt to put the social back in media. It was really my hand was tipped to decide to do this in substack because I did feel this growing urge that there were more of these stories behind it, between what came out on the podcast to share, and when substack, just as I was stewing on this and said this is social media with property rights and traditional media with community. Well, that's good. And if it really is great, and the more I look the more it seemed to be, and there's a bunch of people I respect on it. So here we go.

AJ: 4:41

I put out a launch post I don't know a week or so ago and my first bona fide post, which, well, some of what's been bursting in me of late just put that out yesterday. I'll let you have a read of it rather than talk to it here, but suffice to say it felt like what had to come out first before I did anything else. So it's a bit of a longer read, but some of the foundational thinking behind why I'm doing this, through the lens of some of the experience here in Guatemala and some of what I've been listening to around the LA fires, some of the extraordinary stories of community and well, as Rebecca Solnit put it, a paradise built in hell. Listening to her in an interview was the trigger for this piece. So I'll leave you to have a look at that. But yeah, mainly wanted to announce that, that that's there and also that this coming week well, next week will be the resumption of the regeneration podcast, in real time, if you like.

AJ: 5:48

I have a bunch of stuff still from the states late last year, a bunch of stuff here from Guatemala. I'll do what I can as my humble single-person team to get this stuff out as soon as I can. They are all in the basket of. I wish you could hear them right now. They were that meaningful. Anyway, I will get them out as soon as I can and look forward to bringing you in through both means the podcast and the writing. You know. Pick your medium, I suppose both, if you like, to more of what I've been experiencing.

AJ: 6:23

That just can't make the podcast. It's too much production time as one person, as an indie outlet, to get it up. But also, not just because of that, because it really felt like there was something else to be said, to be shared, and sure I could do that in a hundred different conversations with everyone who wants to know and bless you for getting in touch through this journey and wanting to know. Um, so yeah, I've been thinking a lot about it over the last year in particular, but it was coming up before then too. So this will be a way where I don't have to produce a podcast for every story. I can just flip something out to you on occasion and then, on other occasions, go into a bit of depth, drawing some threads together. I hope it adds something because, yeah, after a quarter of a century in what I could broadly call international and community development, stemming back to the time of meeting my old mentor that you've heard a bit about on this podcast and and being here in guatemala the first time and nearly 10 years approaching a decade of the regeneration podcast, this is a bit of the sum of what feels like needs to come next for me anyway. And, yeah, I'm really looking forward to sharing it with you and, to those of you who want to come on that journey, I look forward to hanging out with you in that space too. I did do some writing a while back and, like the podcast, that writing unexpectedly made its way to audiences around the world, so now it feels like a good time for the two flanks to make their way in the world together.

AJ: 7:58

Oh, and just a little logistics. Patreon subscriptions the lowest tier has risen from three dollars to five dollars a month, partly because it probably needed to anyway, but also to match the sub stack baseline just five dollars a month. Those of you who've subscribed on Buzzsprout. That's just not set up to share stuff. So while I was trying to get around that and get you what I was putting on Patreon, as much to diversify income streams, to not have everything in one online basket basically won't be able to keep posts going to Buzzsprout or to you guys through other means. So if you're just happy with getting the podcast and even perhaps subscribing for free on Substack, then great and thank you as ever.

AJ: 8:43

If you would like to switch over to Substack or Patreon to get the exclusive paid subscriber stuff, then you can do that too. And for Patreon subscribers, the rise in the charge for the lowest tier doesn't apply to existing subscribers, only to new ones and to those of you who just donate or just donate, who blessedly donate and as much to avoid fees, potentially send direct transfers, even not even on PayPal. I mean, all these options are available and they all help. So there's no one that's better than the other, necessarily. It's just how you want to engage as well and what, um, what means suits you.

AJ: 9:21

But to donors, I can tell you, if you do want the paid subscription exclusive stuff as well on occasion, then some donors have just gone in at that baseline five dollars a month or fifty dollars a year in patreon or substack to just get those posts and donated the rest of what they wanted to donate directly. So feel free to do that. Or again, if you're just happy not receiving any more and just enjoying the podcast, stay as you are with my enormous gratitude, my enormous gratitude for you all. Really, all right, I'll leave you there with a new series of the regeneration to come and the Substack experiment underway. I look forward to sharing it all with you as the year goes on and we'll have more from here so on. Hope you're all well, see ya y.