I started The Outrider Podcast in 2013. Back then, podcasting was dominated by DIYers and a few celebrities like Marc Maron. It was Marc’s monologues and interviews that inspired me to try doing the same thing with the writers I knew. It was great fun, and I got to talk to a lot of fantastic writers like Laird Hunt, Pauls Toutonghi, and Emily St. John Mandel right before Station Eleven came out.

For the longest time, it was a one-man operation, even when I cohosted with people like Stephen McClurg and Delia Tramontina. A few years ago, I started working with Heather Eden, who started doing the audio editing for me. She has been immensely helpful and steady over the years. I wish her the best for her in the future, and since she’s moved to New York state, I’ve missed our occasional meet-ups for coffee and chatting.

Not long after hiring Heather, I began co-hosting with Jenn Zuko. We had big plans for the show when she started but they never quite panned out. Day jobs, a lack of money and equipment, and assorted hurdles that come from trying to do a show independently and across three time zones kept us limited. I’m sorry it didn’t work out.

Eleven years, off and on, isn’t a bad run, I suppose. However, since I’m not part of a network, not receiving ad revenue, and not popular enough to draw many listeners the idea of retiring the show was always haunting me. That specter became very solid after the disaster of the 2024 election. I’ve been spreading my finances pretty thin to maintain the show, and my own equipment is getting dated, and in need of replacement in the not too distant future. Add that to the uncertainty of the future right now, and retiring seems like the best thing to do. The Podbean feed will remain active until May 2025, and I’ll be looking into places where I can store the show archive. You can always find out what I’m up to and where I’ll deposit the archive by visiting my website jquinnmalott.com.

To Jenn, Delia, Stephen, and Heather who all put in time cohosting and working on various iterations of the show over the last decade, thank you. I enjoyed every show we did together, and I’m deeply grateful for the time you made in your lives to chat with me and especially for putting up with my mercurial moods and rants. I love you all very much.

To the small handful of listeners we have: even though y’all never commented on shows, we saw you there in the feed data. Thank you for listening. Maybe we’ll see each other on the other side of all this. Stay safe, keep the faith, and always be just ahead of the mainstream, paving the way and finding the truth.

We fawn over the new kittens, and kitten nuts, then discuss the launching of the Substack experiment, and our usual wander through the frustration and mystery of publishing, including genre, and the things.

You can read more from Jenn Zuko at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack

You can follow Jason Quinn Malott at https://www.jquinnmalott.com and read my Substack, too.

In this episode we talk about the so-called MFA conspiracy and how it’s not a conspiracy at all. As usual, Jason talks too much because he’s alone most of the time.

Much Ado About MFAs by Lincoln Michel https://countercraft.substack.com/p/much-ado-about-mfas-1eb?r=1fslzq&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

You can read more from Jenn Zuko at https://jennzuko.wordpress.com and on her Substack

You can follow Jason Quinn Malott at https://www.jquinnmalott.com

This show’s audio is cleaned up and trimmed by Heather Eden.