The podcast is dead ... long live the podcast!

All things must end: The Collinsport Historical Society podcast is officially dead.

After more than a year of trying to breathe life back into slowly cooling form, letting go seemed like the right thing to do. After a point my attempts at mercy had become a form of torture, not just for the podcast but for its listeners. "It's coming back!" I've promised more than once. "Soon!"

Then the bird said “Nevermore.”

We launched the podcast on Dec. 13, 2012 with an episode devoted to House of Dark Shadows and an interview with the always gracious Kathryn Leigh Scott. She's been a great friend to the website over the years and has never declined a request from us. That the podcast exists at all can be credited to the support of two people, Kathryn and Will McKinley, who got me into this whole podcast thing in the first place.



In the years following, The Collinsport Historical Society shared 93 additional episodes, adding contributions from the producers at Big Finish in the UK and, most recently, the Bodice Tipplers podcast. All told, these 94 episodes have racked up almost 50,000 downloads.

Now, a few of you are probably in a panic over this ... especially the folks who have kindly loaned me their time and talent in the last few weeks to help revive the podcast. And here's where things come into focus: The Collinsport Historical Society podcast is returning ... in one week!

So, why all the talk about death? When the podcast returns it's going to knock your socks off ... and I want to maximize that impact. In order to do that I'm going to have to take down the previous 94 episodes of the series. When things began, I didn't entirely know what I was doing and violated a few copyright laws by including pop songs. It seemed clever at the time to include "Abraham Lincoln" by Clutch in my interview with David Selby, but I'd like to be able to share the podcast with a wider audience ... and that means having to re-edit five years of work to extract those songs. Many of these episodes will come back at a later date sans copyright infringements, but for the time being they're going into the vault.

Which means: If you want our previous episodes, you'd better download them soon. (Note: Bodice Tipplers may or may not be moving to its own dedicated feed. It hasn't been decided yet.)

I'm going to spend the next week sharing daily highlights of the CHS podcast. It will be a time to reflect on where we've been, and to remind people to get these episodes before they're gone. After the vault doors close it's going to up to you good people to share these episodes with each other.

I'll have more to say about the new podcast on Monday ... if you're one of the people contributing to the new series, though, feel free to start telling people about it now.

Stay tuned!