Plans and updates

Hi everyone, feedback on Substack versus www.realclearpodcast.com is mixed. I feel mixed about it also. So here's the run down. I'm going to give it a month to see if Substack delivers on the improvements they conveyed to me. I'm not terribly impressed at present because when I looked at their updated modeling, they presented a streamlined dispersement service, but now while I am using it, it is clear that they are basically trying to achieve the status of a new social media company that appears more similar to Instagram than a serious creator platform.

Immediately as I began to use Substack, I felt a bit demoralized. I am seeing other writers and podcasters behaving like dancing monkeys for the purpose of promoting Substack all while being duped with the illusion that Substack is promoting them. Notes, chats, social media-style posts....cringe. The other insidious feature that I thought was rather manipulative of Substack was found in the statistics that they present to creators. They most prominently highlight the "views" that you receive per episode. However, these "views" are based on what are essentially social media scrolling through their social media side of things. When you look closely, you see that there are breakdowns of those numbers, and that they list far down, and not as obviously the actual statistics as to who is engaged with your episode and who has downloaded it. This subtle sign indicates to me that they must know on some level that the deal is not a fair one; otherwise they would not have subtle manipulations embedded in there creator dashboards.

This just isn't gonna work for me. As I've mentioned, I want you and everyone who comes into this little bit growing tribe to feel a part of something distinct.

What I can say is that when I return to running everything through real clear natively, it will come with a redesign. I always have you in mind in terms of the ease of the user when I modify and rework things.

I am going to reactivate everything on Real Clear. People will have the option of listening through either Substack or Real Clear until I have everything redesigned and spruced up on Real Clear.

There are two technical issues that I am trying to resolve regarding the use of my real clear podcast website:

It can be frustrating for people to have to sign in with their email. You should be able to stay signed in for six months. If you find that you have to sign in more regularly, that might be because of opening the website in a browser, you are clicking the link inside of Gmail, which uses its own web browser, but which stores no cookies. In other words, the browser that often opens up inside of Gmail does not remember you or your information. When you go to sign in and click the link that my site sends you, when you have the option for opening that link, click the typical browser that you use rather than opening up directly through Gmail.
Podcast player. While you would think that because there are 100 trillion podcasts in the universe that there would be a range of options to embed episodes into a custom podcast website like mine, you would be surprised that there really aren't any. The options are extremely basic. I'm working on this, and it will only improve.
Please let me know if there is anything else about the real clear website that you feel needs updating and I will take your feedback very seriously.

THANK YOU

Lucas