Happy Birthday to The Epicurean Vagabonds!
Help Us Celebrate Our One Year Anniversary and Kick Off Season Two of Our Aesthetic Arrest Podcast!
It’s the one year anniversary of The Epicurean Vagabonds . . . Cheers to You!
Exactly one year ago, at the behest of our family and friends, we launched The Epicurean Vagabonds to share our travels and our cultural adventures. We ambitiously set out to create one in-depth article, a mid-week splash of inspiration and an Aesthetic Arrest (which soon morphed into our podcast) each week. And for the past year, we have consistently delivered our content, without fail, EVERY single week.
We felt a calling to this project, that this was somehow the culmination of our life’s experiences — traveling the world, studying, teaching, exploring, immersing ourselves in art and culture. But so many of our experiences were ours and ours alone and we felt like it was time to share them — like seeds dispersed into the wind, germinating new thought, rising above the noise of the world and illuminating beauty in a time when things can feel like they are falling apart.
We envisioned the construction of a curated space — a sacred space if you will — dedicated to art and culture, beauty and wisdom, inspiration and joy. A place with no borders, no walls and no barriers to divide our carefully chosen and intentionally diverse array of artistic genres, styles, and creators from across the centuries and across the globe.
And what an incredible year it’s been! We listened to the wise words of our beloved Joseph Campbell and we followed our bliss. And along the way, our lives were transformed by the overflowing amount of love, support and encouragement we’ve received from our family, friends and even complete strangers, all of whom subscribed and began reading our posts, listening to our podcasts and sending us genuinely heartfelt messages about the content we’ve been creating. In one year, we quickly went from just a few subscribers to dozens and now to well over a hundred!
Our Goals for the Future of The Epicurean Vagabonds:
And now it’s time to announce . . . Season Two! We have so many exciting plans we can’t wait to share with you. Our primary goal is to spread our wings, take this operation to the next level, and to expand our audience so we can reach more people and share more art and beauty and inspiration with the world.
We want to create podcasts with professional sound quality. We want to feature special podcast guests (including some of the artists we’ve already raved about!), as well as full-length artist interviews, “live” podcasts out in the world, and seamlessly embedded audio clips of the music and poetry we discuss. We also want more interactivity and more community building, including featured guest writers, content swaps with other writers in the Substack network, artist roundtables and even online aftershow cocktail parties with our guest artists and our listeners.
But to do all of this, we need your help.
Invest in Aesthetic Arrest!
Creating The Epicurean Vagabonds and the Aesthetic Arrest Podcast each week already requires a great deal of our time, energy and financial resources. Right now, we literally do not have (and cannot afford to purchase) the technological resources we require to make our goals a reality. Here’s what will change everything for us:
Podcast Recording Equipment — Two new Scarlett Focusrite USB Microphones designed for podcasting, as well as extension USB cords and splitters. $500 USD
Professional Sound Engineering for our Weekly Podcast — Our phenomenal sound engineer has to get paid and we can’t afford to keep doing it. He charges virtually nothing and we don’t want to lose him! $1,500 USD a year
A Galaxy Tablet — This will allow us to record our podcast without any fan noise from a laptop. $200 USD
A New Laptop with a High Quality Sound Card — One of our laptops is six years old (and has no recording abilities) and the other one is now 12 years old and on its last leg! $500 USD
RSS Feed Yearly Subscription to Buzzsprout.com — This will allow us to upload 12 hours of podcast content per month (to Spotify, Apple, etc.) as well as use of their built-in mastering program. $432 USD a year
Paid Advertising on Social Media Platforms — This will help us boost our posts via our official Epicurean Vagabonds Facebook page and reach a much wider audience of potential subscribers. $1,800 USD a year
An Android Phone with a Good Camera for all of our Photos — We own only one phone between the two of us and it's likewise in need of an upgrade! $1000 USD
Here are two things you can do that will have an immediate impact to help us effectuate those goals:
$5 per month. Upgrade your Free Subscription to a monthly Paid Subscription. It’s only $5 per month!
$50 per year. You can do one of the following:
Upgrade your Free Subscription to a Yearly Subscription.
Give a Gift Subscription. Bring a friend to the party!
Gift a Free Subscriber. Gift one of our dedicated free subscribers with a paid subscription. Pass it forward!
But that’s not all! We now have FOUR BIG WAYS you can support The Epicurean Vagabonds! Below, we’ve laid out Four Tiers filled with benefits, perks and gifts we’d like to offer you in return for your generous support.
Tier 1. Diogenes in the Bathtub! For $100 or more, you will receive:
Exclusive Invitations to our Aesthetic Arrest Aftershow Cocktail Parties! For season two, we are planning some exciting online aftershow cocktail parties, where our listeners can join us (plus special guests) to discuss the week’s show!
Podcast Shout-Out & Thank You! We will thank you by name at the end of one of our podcasts!
Donate via PAYPAL
Donate via ZELLE (delphic78@yahoo.com)
Donate via WISE
Tier 2. Socrates in the Agora! For $200 or more, you will receive ALL of the above plus:
Curated Content Created Just for You! At this level, you can choose any one of the following personalized options:
§ A Personalized Playlist created by Ryan & Ryan! Tell us some of your favorite musicians/bands/composers/genres and we will create a 90-minute personalized playlist just for you!
§ A Personalized Reading Shelf created by Ryan & Ryan! Tell us some of your favorite books/writers/genres and we will create a personalized bookshelf of recommended reading just for you. (We can even include a list of nearby bookstores and libraries where you can order these books).
§ A Personalized Online Art Gallery created by Ryan & Ryan! Tell us some of your favorite artists, past or present, and we will create a curated online art gallery/museum of images featuring artworks and artists, personalized just for you.
§ A Personalized Film/TV Viewing Queue created by Ryan & Ryan! Tell us some of your favorite films, documentaries and/or TV series, as well as any streaming services you currently subscribe to, and we will create a curated viewing queue of streaming content personalized just for you!
§ A Personalized Recipe from Ryan Wildstar! Tell us about any dietary restrictions or personal foodie preferences, and Ryan will send you one of his favorite recipes. He’ll even throw in a wine/cocktail pairing!
Donate via PAYPAL
Donate via ZELLE (delphic78@yahoo.com)
Donate via WISE
Tier 3. Hypatia in the Library! For $350 or more, you will receive ALL of the above plus:
Curated Content Created Just for You! At this level, you can choose any three of the personalized options listed in Tier 2.
Our Podcast will Feature One of YOUR Recommendations! Give us YOUR reading, listening, looking, viewing and tasting recommendations. We will then choose one of your recommendations to discuss on a future podcast and we will thank you by name for your recommendation.
Online Culture Chat with Ryan & Ryan! Join R&R for a private 40 minute online session discussing art, wine, food, music, books, travel or a cultural topic of your choice.
One-On-One Consultation Session with Andrea Engstrom from Lil’ Habit! Our Substack exists because of the tools and techniques we learned from Lil’ Habit. Master Certified Life Coach Andrea Engstrom can help you learn simple strategies to consistently step outside of your comfort zone and live the life you've daydreamed about.
Podcast Shout-Out & Thank You! We will thank you by name in the credits of every future podcast.
A Lifetime Paid Subscription to The Epicurean Vagabonds!
Donate via PAYPAL
Donate via ZELLE (delphic78@yahoo.com)
Donate via WISE
Tier 4. Epicurus in the Garden! For $500 or more, you will receive ALL of the above plus:
Curated Content Created Just for You! At this level, you can choose all five of the personalized options listed in Tier 2.
A Mid-Week Libation Dedicated to You! Tell us about some of your cultural interests, and we will dedicate an entire Mid-Week Libation article to YOU!
Travel Agent Services! Ryan and Ryan owned a travel agency and spent over a decade organizing wine/food/art/cultural tours of Europe and North America. At this level, we will offer those travel agent services to you. We will help you book an entire vacation, along with your flights, lodging, transport, restaurant reservations, tour guides, and restaurant/museum/cultural recommendations!
Donate via PAYPAL
Donate via ZELLE (delphic78@yahoo.com)
Donate via WISE
And if you can’t afford to donate or upgrade right now, here are some other ways you can help:
Purchase books via The Epicurean Vagabonds Bookshop at Bookshop.org.
Purchase Ryan Wildstar’s music via Bandcamp.
Tell a friend about The Epicurean Vagabonds.
Click the “Share” button and share our posts via your social media accounts.
Click the “Heart” button and like our posts and podcasts.
If you’re a paid subscriber, leave comments on our posts and podcasts.
We sincerely appreciate every like, comment and share our posts receive. Your clicks also significantly help to elevate our popular posts in search engine algorithms and the wider Substack network.
We want to end with a heartfelt thank you to all of our subscribers and supporters. We couldn’t do it without you! Cheers to that!
Happy birthday! What a year of discoveries!!! Can’t wait for Season 2.
Happy Birthday!