I’m investigating Substack in an effort to fill the few remaining minutes of my waking day which aren’t already spent looking at a screen, and also finding that a lot of blogs I used to follow have moved over to the platform.
What are your favourites? My interests tend to pop culture, soft-left politics and humour but feel free to recommend anything that others might enjoy.
Trouble I find with Substack is that it holds literally scores of people whom I’d like to follow. Unfortunately, almost all of then now want, say, a “measly” £3.50 a month to read fully. Multiply £3.50 by 83 and , sorry, too much for me….
I’ve found that already, though understandably the professional writers tend to be keener to recoup their costs. David Hepworth’s is free though.
This bloke is usually interesting across a range of subjects.
https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/andy-burnham-is-going-to-be-yet-another
Jude Rogers’ 10 Gentle Spells is excellent – there’s always something I’ve never heard/read/seen before that I feel inspired to check out.
It’s a real delight on a Sunday
I bought her book off the back of it.
She’s a great writer, but you can spot her Folk Album of the Month, in the Graun, a mile off, always the least folkie one available, away with drones, distort and electronic mangling of vintage tapes aplenty. Rarely listenable.
Agreed. I think I attempted a few playlists she’d done…
I just checked and I have 49 subscriptions on Substack, mostly environmental, climate, politics, systems thinking, but also quite a lot on therapeutic practices, relationships that produce quite interesting reading. Often I like just browsing the front page for new writers to subscribe to, and when you do, they offer other subscriptions you may like.
I usually come away from a session browsing with one or two interesting articles to keep – like that one I posted here some time ago about morning rituals.
Here are a few that might interest:
* For introverts: https://introvertsintro.substack.com
* On death: https://hellomortal.substack.com
* Political satire: https://mrhenrymorris.substack.com
* On being old: https://oldster.substack.com
* ADHD: https://theadhdjournal.substack.com
My friend Garth is an excellent writer that I think many here will enjoy: https://garthcartwright.substack.com/
His mate Nick is great too, writing all about the former-Yugoslavian countries, an area I’ve never paid much attention to but am now fascinated by: https://substack.com/@nicknasev
I’m at https://substack.com/@mrchristopherjconder.
Empty Cities by David Allen Green is excellent on law/public policy. Incredibly well thought through, and very clearly articulated.
Joshua Rozenberg is similarly excellent on law
I subscribe to two. Jim Waterson’s Londoncentric as the name suggests is probably mainly of interest to people who live in London but does touch on issues which go beyond it. He has written recently about the vape/tourist tat shops which are everywhere and what is behind them (tax dodge not money laundering apparently), Waymo cars, and the teenager hacker who brought Transport for London down.
James O’Malley’s Odds and Ends of History is focused on technology and data issues, such as Palantir and HS2.
What I like about both of these is that they are proper, investigative journalism. I have looked at others, and some can be interesting, but there does seem to be a tendency, like Twitter, to be mainly opinions and then other people having opinions about those opinions.
Two I like
Hanif Kureishi – unfiltered ramblings, rants and reflections from his wheelchair
Beyond Bloomsbury – regular doses of art, writing and random stuff from the wider Bloomsbury group
Can I shamelessly plug my own Substack:
https://thecutlass.substack.com/
for when you want some weird fiction in your life.
I hate to shitpost but Substack’s owners are… interesting people
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-substack-makes-money-from-hosting-nazi-newsletters