First of all, I want you to write Ian Freeman:
Ian Freeman 34755-509
FMC Devens, Satellite Camp
P.O. Box 879
Ayer, MA 01432
Now, you may be wondering what the hell is going on with Free Talk Live and LRN.FM. There isn’t a simple answer to these questions, but let’s take them as we can and give the best overview we can.
Free Talk Live
When I was first incarcerated, Ian made the decision to began playing three shows pre-recorded and expanding Free Talk Live to be the Free Talk Live Network, thereby offloading a lot of his work onto other people to do the shows. We have further had no one doing Affiliate calls, because only myself and Ian were trained in that regard, and then our satellite provider GCN went out of business in early May.
To be honest, I haven’t been completely sure what role I would be needed to play in Free Talk Live, or what role Bonnie and Captain (who have done an amazing job over the last year keeping the show alive and well) foresaw me filling, and I’m not the type to come out and step on people’s toes.
Further, while in prison I had a growing number of epiphanies, which makes sense–in prison, all I really had to do, to occupy my time, was think about things. I thought about the missteps Free Talk Live has taken over the last few years, ideas that Ian and I had talked about a lot, and that we planned to fix–until those plans were derailed by the FBI raid that occurred on March 16, 2021 and the following 2 and a half years of torment within the system.
I’m happy to be back on Free Talk Live and back to doing the tech stuff for the show, and it seems to be a responsibility that Bonnie and I are sharing together, with each of us doing the things we’re best at. Meanwhile…
Free Talk Cast
I launched the Free Talk Cast on June 1, 2024 and it’s a project that I’m very excited to continue and to watch it grow over the next several months. We just released the third episode of the Free Talk Cast, so check it out! If you’re already subscribed to us on SoundCloud or Spotify or anywhere else, then you’re getting the podcast automatically, but I’d love it if you’d head over to the website and subscribe directly there.
But don’t we already have an audio archive?
Yeah, we do, and it isn’t going anywhere. We’ve been recording the radio show and putting it online and calling it a podcast, but, really, it isn’t a podcast. It’s a radio show being archived online. Well, now we have an actual podcast!
LRN.FM
With Ian’s blessing, I’ve taken over management of LRN.FM. This isn’t actually going to change the website or anything LRN.FM is currently doing; instead, LRN.FM is becoming a manager of Free Talk Live, basically to give us an overall entity that manages Free Talk Live, Free Talk Cast, the LRN.FM Youtube channel, and the various upcoming projects like the video series “Libertarians On…” and the Free Talk Blog.
Honestly, that just seemed easier.
Prison
I’m not going to talk any about prison here. It sucked, and several people recorded my speech yesterday at Porcfest, so when that is available, I’ll put the link here. For now, though, suffice it to say that prison sucked pretty much exactly as much as you would expect it to suck.
LRN.FM Patreon
I launched a new Patreon, this one specifically for LRN.FM, and it’s primarily because most of these projects don’t involve the huge amount of overhead involved with a radio show, and the Free Talk Live Patreon is still trying to break even on the studio costs. It isn’t meant to be a competitor to amps.freetalklive.com, so don’t unsubscribe from that patreon. If you want to sign up for both, great, but I wouldn’t necessarily ask that. But if you support the Free Talk Cast and the new video projects, then sign up for the new Patreon for unique perks.