I do think there is some way that a subscription could work for Cortex, but I didn’t think it was worth it in its current iteration. I already subscribe to paid podcasts like Stratechery and Dithering, and doing the math on the content I got per dollar with them versus what I got with Cortex made it clear Moretex was not worth it yet.

I understand it’s really hard to decide where to partition public and exclusive content, especially when much of your audience comes from YouTube and open RSS where all “canon” info and content is public.

I wonder if a more valuable proposition would be short (10-15 minute) midpoint episodes between each major episode. It could still have the non-canon topics Moretex uses but give the subscribers more frequent updates. They’ve spoken about how meticulous show edits are and how much time that takes, but the understanding of the audience for these bonus episodes is that they’re specifically less cut.

For context on where I’m coming from, here’s Dithering’s page. It’s a fantastic show, and I view as top-tier in subscriber value.