Two new high-profile podcasts

The first fruits of our partnership with Substack

Substack + Voltage

Late last year, I reached out to Hamish McKenzie with a strongly worded email.

Listen, I says, Substack should be a bigger deal in podcasting, I says. And listen here, my friend, Voltage would be more than happy to help you do it.

That’s real interesting, Hamish told me, he says hows about I introduce you to some people…

(I’m paraphrasing.)

Fast forward to today

Today marked the launch of two new, high-profile podcasts:

• American Crisis with Margaret Sullivan
  A show about American democracy and journalism’s role in it. Margaret draws a line from Watergate to January 6th, and discusses modern politics and media with really smart people, including people like Carl Bernstein, who was one of the two original journalists who reported on the Watergate scandal.

• Courtside with Neal Katyal
  A show about the Supreme Court and the law, aimed at translating the law for nonlawyers. Every week, Neal discusses a single Supreme Court case with a famous person, like John Legend and Katie Couric, and unpacks why it matters to regular people.

It was a true honor to work on these shows, and both of them turned out great.

Why Substack?

One of the biggest problems independent podcasters face is that their options for engaging their listeners are incredibly limited. Classically, creators have had to direct their audiences to third-party platforms like Discord and Facebook if they hope to foster a community around their show. But a very small percentage of listeners will ever do this, even among the ones who don’t hate Facebook.

And then of course there’s the issue of monetization. Outside of advertising, which only becomes lucrative with very large audiences, and annoys pretty much everyone anyway, the only way for podcasters to actually make money is by asking for it from their biggest fans. But the options for this have also been pretty limited, in terms of effectiveness.

Let’s review: Two of the biggest obstacles facing independent podcasters are audience engagement and monetization.

I’m trying to find a clever way to state the obvious, here, but it’s not coming, so I’ll just say it outright —

Substack is fantastic at both things.

This is the reason I reached out. I love this place. Building an audience around some of my personal projects here has been one of the most creatively satisfying pursuits of my life.

And while not every writer would make a great podcaster, every podcaster would make a great Substacker.

What about you?

If you’re curious about starting a podcast on Substack, or what advantages there might be in starting a new publication for an existing show…

We’d be happy to help.