About Retro
Retro is a publication that embodies its name: a celebration of old wonders once again the subject of significant fascination and debate; innovative creations born of nostalgia; and hard-won words that reveal how we came to where we are today.
Retro is ranked the #20 History substack worldwide. To subscribe, click below:
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About Seth Abramson
Seth is an attorney, professor, New York Times-bestselling author, Newsweek columnist, editor, award-winning poet, cultural critic, and curatorial journalist who has authored eighteen books. He has been a culture columnist at Indiewire and the Huffington Post, teaches cultural theory at University of New Hampshire, and is one of the foremost American advocates of the cultural paradigm known as metamodernism—a subject on which he’s written popular and scholarly articles. His dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison was a disciplinary history of creative writing in the United States from 1880 to the present; this research, in revised form, was published by Bloomsbury in 2018 as The Insider’s Guide to Graduate Degrees in Creative Writing.
In 2017, Josh Meyer, then the Senior Investigative Reporter with Politico, called Seth “one hell of an investigative journalist.” Meyer’s assessment was shortly thereafter endorsed by the National Council for the Training of Journalists, which named Seth one of the ten “most respected” freelance journalists in the U.S. and United Kingdom. Other 2018 NCTJ honorees included Pulitzer Prize winners Ronan Farrow and Bob Woodward and Emmy- and Murrow Award-winning reporter Christiane Amanpour.
A graduate of Dartmouth, Harvard Law School, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as well as and the literary studies doctoral program at University of Wisconsin, Seth has taught literary history, the history of critical theory, and journalism at the University of New Hampshire since 2015, and been a working journalist since 1994—when he became a reporter, at 17, for America’s oldest college newspaper, The Daily Dartmouth.
You can read Seth’s long-form biography here.
Subscription Rates
Becoming an entry-level subscriber to Retro is free. To become a full subscriber to the site and gain unlimited access to the wide range of writing available on Retro, the cost is just $5/month—the lowest price on Substack. Readers can also subscribe on an annual basis for $50, or become a founding member of Retro for $100.
The History of Retro
October 19, 2021: Retro is founded.
October 20, 2021: Retro debuts as the #19 history substack in the United States, having welcomed more than 1,500 visitors in its first 24 hours.
October 20, 2021: The Retro email list hits triple digits as the publication rises to #17 in the substack history rankings.
October 21, 2021: As Retro crosses 2,500 visitors in its first 60 hours of operation, it reaches #16 in the substack history rankings.
October 22, 2021: Retro rises to #15 in the substack history rankings and reaches two hundred email-list subscribers as it releases its first-ever breaking news report, “Halloween Night Video Game Auction Set to Break Multiple World Records and Change Video Gaming Forever.”
October 23, 2021: Retro rises to #13 in the substack history rankings.
October 29, 2021: Ten days post-founding, having seen over 5,000 visitors and 300 new email-list subscribers, Retro rises to #12 in the substack history rankings from its starting position at #19.
November 13, 2021: In part on the strength of its first-ever subscription sale, Retro moves up from #12 to #11 in the Substack history rankings.
November 17, 2021: Retro establishes a November 2021 high for new daily website visitors (1,358).
November 19, 2021: On its one-month anniversary—having just launched a new Film section—Retro surpasses 500 email list subscribers and rises to #8 in the Substack history rankings.
December 1, 2021: Retro jumps to #7 in the Substack history rankings.
December 21, 2021: Retro establishes a December 2021 high for new daily website visitors (1,139).
January 4, 2022: Retro establishes a January 2022 high for new daily website visitors (2,835). This figure marks the second-highest daily website visitor count in Retro history.
February 6, 2022: Retro establishes a February 2022 high for new daily website visitors (904).
March 6, 2022: Retro establishes a March 2022 high for new daily website visitors (1,434).
April 2, 2022: Retro establishes an April 2022 high for new daily website visitors (1,237).
May 11, 2022: Retro establishes a May 2022 high for new daily website visitors (1,715).
June 7, 2022: Retro establishes a June 2022 high for new daily website visitors (107).
July 18, 2022: Retro establishes a July 2022 high for new daily website visitors (574).
August 22, 2022: Retro establishes an August 2022 high for new daily website visitors (1,930). This figure marks the fourth-highest daily website visitor count in Retro history.
September 7, 2022: The “Best Virtual Roller Coaster Rides” series launches in the Digital Culture section of Retro.
September 20, 2022: Retro establishes a September 2022 high for new daily website visitors (867).
October 29, 2022: Retro establishes an October 2022 high for new daily website visitors (994).
November 17, 2022: Retro establishes a November 2022 high for new daily website visitors (486).
December 15, 2022: Retro establishes a December 2022 high for new daily website visitors (3,632). This figure marks the highest daily website visitor count in Retro history.
January 21, 2023: Retro establishes a January 2023 high for new daily website visitors (218).
February 2023: Substack rearranges hundreds of existing substacks into new subject categories, swelling the size of the platform’s History section exponentially. The result of the rearrangement is a reranking of substacks by audience size, after which Retro’s ranking changes from #4 to #19 in the Substack history rankings.
February 5, 2023: The “Top 100 Twitter Alternatives” series launches as a full series in the Digital Culture of Retro (with the launch edition being called “Volume 3” due to the publication of the first two volumes at Post News.
February 27, 2023: Retro establishes a February 2023 high for new daily website visitors (2,192). This figure marks the third-highest daily website visitor count in Retro history.
March 20, 2023: Retro rises to #16 in the Substack history rankings.
March 26, 2023: Retro launches its Art section. The “Best AI Art in the World” series launches. The site also establishes a March 2023 high for new daily website visitors (462).
March 27, 2023: Retro rises to #14 in the Substack history rankings.
April 2, 2023: Retro rises to #13 in the Substack history rankings. The website also establishes a April 2023 high for new daily visitors (2,989).
April 3, 2023: Retro rises to #12 in the Substack history rankings.
April 7, 2023: Retro launches its digital presence on Substack Notes, the new social networking platform developed by Substack.
April 16, 2023: Retro rises to #11 in the Substack history rankings.
April 17, 2023: The “The Best Colorized Historical Photographs in the World” series launches in the Art section of Retro.
April 18, 2023: NHK, a leading Japanese television broadcaster, formally requests (and is granted) the right to feature on its air the first entry in Retro’s now wildly popular “The Best AI Art in the World” series (from the Art section of Retro). The featuring of Retro on Japanese media is part of the worldwide celebration of #NationalPetDay, as Retro had featured in its AI art–focused series a group of artworks called “Animal Selfies.”
April 23, 2023: Retro rises to #10 in the Substack history rankings. The Extras and Q&A sections of the publication are folded into the site’s Marginalia section, and the Podcast section is temporarily removed in anticipation of the future (as yet unset) date on which Retro’s podcast—for the moment titled Vintage—will be formally launched.
May 1, 2023: Retro establishes a May 2023 high for new daily website visitors (2,742).
May 12, 2023: The “Best Comic Books and Graphic Novels” launches in the Comics section of Retro as a full-fledged series, separate from 2021’s “Best of the Best” series.
