Big news momentarily, but first, some housekeeping from the late summer: We were astonished and honored that Season 1 of the show was one of this year’s winners of the Independent Media Initiative award, “the first prestige prizes awarded specifically to independent creators.” The email letting us know helpfully included “this is not a trick or spam” in the subject line, or we might have indeed treated it as such. Our whole team will be heading to Austin in mid-November for the IMI Festival; if anyone has the time and means to come, it’s going to be a lot of fun. And then, in one of the highest compliments we could imagine receiving, the legendary Latif Nasser of Radiolab dropped Shell Game into his list of the five greatest podcasts… of all time. In fairness he may have felt he couldn’t put Radiolab on there, thus opening a slot, but we’ll absolutely take it. Check the other lists up there too, you’ll have enough listening for months.
Now, for the main event: Get your cups and ball out, it’s time to play… another season of Shell Game. We have been hinting at it here and various other places, but now are now close enough to officially say: The shenanigans will commence the second week in November! Well, the shenanigans have been going on for many months—a year and change in the making, but who’s counting? In November you’ll get the chance to finally hear them. We are equal parts excited and apprehensive about it finally being out in the world, which is about what we felt a month out from Season 1.
Season 2 has the same team behind it: myself, Sophie Bridges, and Samantha Henig. But this time we’re thrilled to be partnered up with the podcast geniuses at Kaleidoscope to help us make and distribute something even more ambitious than last go-round. The show will be accessible in the same places, in the same podcast feed, so if you’ve subscribed to it on Apple, or Spotify, or wherever, you’re set. The new episodes will come right to you. (Or if you haven’t, head somewhere and subscribe!)
One thing that is changing: This season will, in fact, have some ads. Real ads, not our joke ones like last time. Because of that, I wanted to lay out a couple of things vis a vis this Substack:
If you are a paid subscriber here, or become one, you’ll have access to an ad-free feed. Some of you really dug the no-ads experience in Season 1, so we wanted to make sure to keep that available. We’ll also have some bonus fun stuff we’ll give to paid subscribers, like last time. If you’re down to stay (or become) a paid supporter for all that, as always we appreciate it.*
Meanwhile the newsletter here will keep going apace. Apace in this case meaning that there’s always more time for regular posting after the season is released than when we’re trying to put it together.
And with that, we’ll return to setting mics and tweaking dials. For now, some contrails from last season: As some of you will recall, we kept a line open and staffed by AI Evan for paid subscribers to chat with. Over the course of the year it’s gotten dozens of calls, some of them truly wonderful. (Also a few unsettling ones, but we welcomed those too—AI is unsettling after all.) Among those that brought me the greatest joy were the kids who called the line, both to chat earnestly with AI Evan and to ruthlessly prank it. The mere idea of a bunch of kids giggling in the background, while their friend goofs on a clueless AI, gave me an unexpected confidence in the future.
They did call back, but they wanted that one kept private.
“Koi fish or chi energy,”
Evan
*If, on the other hand, you are an annual subscriber whose subscription re-upped in the last month or two and you don’t want the ad-free experience and bonus stuff, just hit us up at shellgameshow@gmail.com and we’ll refund you, no hard feelings. I know what it’s like to lose track of an annual subscription.