Welcome to "Afterlives After Party"

Wait... wheres the party?!

Welcome to my Substack! Or rather, our Substack, because I can’t do this alone (more on this later). The inspiration for this Substack was born out of the conversations on my podcast Afterlives with Kara Cooney (find it wherever you get your podcasts!), in which my co-host Jordan and I take the kind of deep dives into Egyptology and history in general that aren’t possible in academic settings. We found that our conversations didn’t end when the podcast mic was turned off, but often continued over a glass of wine and pizza long after we were done recording—hence the “after party” reference in our title. This Substack is not only the answer to where we can continue the conversations prompted by our podcast discussions, but also the answer to my own conflicted thoughts about how I can best reach online audiences interested in them.  

For over a decade now my primary way of sharing and interacting with those audiences has been my Facebook page, Twitter, and Instagram. With over 320,000 followers on Facebook, I have invested a lot of time over the years posting there and engaging with people all over the world on a host of topics from history and archaeology to current events. But recent years have made clear just how problematic Facebook and its policies (or lack thereof) are when it comes to creating an online space that actually reaches people who want to read it, not to mention the amplification of endless toxicity and misinformation that spills over into real world lives, society, and politics. Twitter and Instagram are not much better on this score. It also became very clear that, especially on Facebook, algorithms and systems of paying to “boost” posts meant that my posts only reached the tiniest fraction of my audience.  

This isn’t to say that I’m torching my Facebook page or fleeing Twitter and Instagram. I am still there! But I’m putting less energy into them, in order to create content I can control. And so now I find myself here on Substack, hoping to develop an audience away from the more problematic pay-to-play socials to support a platform that provides a space for content I read and value. Here I can also invite other contributors who can provide unexpected and fresh content for the historically curious, which brings me to my earlier point--I can’t do this alone. I hope to invite a variety of contributors to Afterlives After Party, but the core team will be myself, Jordan Galczynski, and Amber Myers Wells. You can get to know Jordan and Amber in their introductory posts, where they tell you a little bit about themselves and how they came to be mixed up in Egyptology (gods help them). 

I hope you’ll stick around, subscribe so you’ll never miss an update, and join the conversation. 

-Kara