I’m a fan of John Derbyshire and listen to his podcast each week. I did not subscribe for the pay version at Taki because I could not get their pay service to work. My first rule of commerce is that if you make it hard for me to do business with you, I will not do business with you. The Taki pay model, at least from my experience, was designed to chase away customers.
But, John would post his transcripts and audio later in the week on his site so I could listen to it there. Now I see that Taki has this up claiming that Derb has gone dark. They have scrubbed their site of his content so it is reasonable to assume there has been a falling out between Derb and Taki. On John’s site he says he shall return in two weeks.
I have no idea how popular Radio Derb is as a podcast. I enjoy it a great deal. John has a great voice and a good eye for content that will play well as audio. I listen to a lot of podcasts and I count his as one of the better ones. But, I’m a fringe guy and my tastes are surely not mainstream. Still, Derb has to be one of the more popular contributors at Taki.
John is a good example of just how far left the Overton Window has moved in my lifetime. Not so long ago John would have been a typical conservative commenter. When he began writing for National Review, he was rather conventional in his opinions, but much more empirical in his presentation. Today he is considered a fringe weirdo, a man wearing a tinfoil cap. That’s what happens when the inmates take over the asylum.
Let us hope he has not permanently disappeared.
Good news everyone, he is back!
“Radio Derb is back on the air! Yes, this is your irrepressibly genial host John Derbyshire with a weekly round-up of news and opinion from a dissident conservative viewpoint.”
I wold give him a shout-out, any excuse to post this picture of his assistants, Mandy, Brandy & Candy wearing “talk derby to me” t-shirts!
The podcast/radio is free again and hosted on VDARE.
While I’m at it, i also recommend Reasonable Doubt, the brand new podcast with Adam Carolla and his lawyer buddy Mark Garages.
Hopefully Derb will fill us in . Maybe he saw he could get better pay elsewhere
According to his website, radio derb will resume August. 1 at vdare.com.
I see that. He must have updated it today as this morning it did not mention VDare. That’s good to hear. I thought he may be headed to Unz.
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I’m also a fan and a regular reader of Derb.
It does indeed look like he’s been kicked off the island.
The important question is what’s now going to happen to
Mandy, Brandy, & Candy?
Where will they now play beach volleyball?
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The strange thing is Taki scrubbed their site of Derb Radio. Derb’s last transmission said nothing about a hiatus. He was also absent on Thursday so I’m guessing there was some sort of disagreement. If it was just a vacation thing or a health issue then there would be no need for the site scrubbing.
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Derb’s not scrubbed from the Taki Mag contributors list however.
I think Taki Mag overpriced the radio service.
I think that making Radio Derb a paid service at $72/yr
cut the listenership by a huge amount.
I think if Taki would have charged a flat $10 or $12 bucks
many more people would have chipped in.
Besides, I was never sure who the money went to – Derb or Taki.
I have trouble sending money to people who own their own islands, live on yachts, and were born with the proverbial silver spoon stuck somewhere. (But that’s just me.)
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Yeah. That was in my head when I was struggling to sign up. I remembered that Taki blows more on socks than I’m worth and that ended my efforts.
I think that site is just a hobby to keep his daughter busy. I’ve always assumed she would get bored with it eventually and that would be the end of it.