Welcome (Back) to The Dirt!

Hello, and welcome to the new and improving Dirt Podcast! If you’re a longtime listener, welcome back and thank you so much for sticking with us. If you’re new to The Dirt, welcome! On normal episodes, we explore stories from archaeology and anthropology in a way that is hopefully accessible and entertaining for anyone, regardless of educational background. If you’re fascinated by the lives of people in the past, then this is a show for you! That said, this particular episode is a much more casual, unscripted one than we usually put out. We wanted to provide an update on our move from the Archaeology Podcast Network, our reasons for moving, and our upcoming plans for the show and beyond. So for anyone who’s less interested in a hang with your host pals, here’s the TC;DL (too chatty; didn’t listen).We’re moving our entire catalog of episodes from Soundcloud and APN to Captivate. This shouldn’t mean anything different for you, the listener–episodes should still go to the same RSS feed, so they’ll show up in your podcast player as usual. Anna is going to finish that process ASAP. It involves converting over 150 files from WAV to MP3, woof. The episodes will then all be on Captivate, and available for your listening pleasure. After that, it’s just a matter of making sure all the show notes are correct.You won’t hear ads, since we’re no longer on the APN feed, but you’ll hear the “whoosh” effect where the ads used to be. We’re going to gradually phase out our Patreon account, where we get most of our financial support, and switch over to Ghost. This is an open-source subscription platform that does not take a cut of patron money, unlike Patreon. This way, all of your support goes directly to us. We’ll also be changing some of the tiers so that more of the bonus content is available to those at some of the lower subscription tiers.  We had a great time at the AAA conference in November, and had some substantial success with a podcast library booth! We’ve got some big plans for the future of The Dirt, but the quality of our research and our episodes won’t change (except for the better)Lastly, a few life updates, tangents, goofs, etc. So if that summary does it for you, we’ll see you back here soon with new content! If you want to listen in for the whole meandering conversation, just keep listening. Thank you again, friends–we’re excited for a fresh start!