Hello folks, hope you are well. Gordon here. I’m just here to give you a quick production update.
You may have noticed we’re publishing less frequently this summer. The team is taking some time off and going through a bit of a transition. Marc is on pat leave (congrats!), Ren got a cool new gig (congrats!). So that’s why we haven’t been able to keep it all together. We’ve got a couple more episodes left this summer. But they’re not going to be on an predicable schedule. Sorry for our tardiness, but I hope you understand.
But we’re also going to change things up a bit. Right now, we’re going through a bit of a wind down before we revamp the show. It’s good news and bad news thing.
Bad news: we’re not going to keep making this show as a regular bi-weekly program. I just do not think it’s really working in that format. Darts and Letters has been more than I thought it could be, but in other ways, it never really lived up to what I wanted it to be.
We had bigger guests – people like Noam Chomsky, and many popular streamers, podcasters, and public intellectuals. We made some amazing episodes, and cool documentaries. Our episodes got picked up by the CBC, the Harbinger Media Network, and the New Books Network.
But here’s how it never really worked. Behind the scenes, we were also experimenting with a unique model of fundraising and production. You may or may not know, we’re made with academic teams and academic grants. It’s a partnered project in academic journalism. Cited Media has done this for years, but generally on more documentary-based and infrequent podcasts.
It worked well to produce great content on Darts, but it just did not work on schedule as I hoped it might. It was hard to make the overall program current, responsive, routine, consistent, and cohesive. That’s just the nature of doing collaborative projects that are grant-funded–it was difficult to be nimble. So, the format and schedule of the show didn’t ultimately work easily with the structure of the funding and production. That’s why we’re changing.
The good news: This isn’t the end, but it’s a major retool. We are going to return in early 2024 in a season-based format, with more ambitious productions. We’ll make content around specific themes and topics, but it won’t be on a routine schedule. Stay subscribed to our RSS feed for updates, and follow us at @dartsandletters on Twitter (er, X).
And like I said: we still have a couple episodes left this summer, so look out for them, they’ll come out soon.
-Gordon