So what can we expect with the summer Olympics in Paris?

Let's ask the US ambassador...

Hello there!

Oliver here. Welcome to The Earful Tower’s weekly newsletter, but with a new haircut. I’m experimenting with Substack now. The old platform I was using (MailChimp) wasn’t doing it for me anymore, so I thought I’d try this place. Let’s see what happens.

The Olympics

This week on The Earful Tower podcast, the topic was the Olympic Games. Paris will host the games in July and August, for the first time in 100 years.

Given it’s still quite a while away, I hadn’t touched on the topic yet, but as we’re up to O in the A to Z alphabet season, this week seemed like the perfect chance.

So, I took a gentle dive into the whole thing, and who better to chat with than the US ambassador to France, Denise Campbell Bauer? I visited her in the US embassy to hear her thoughts on the upcoming games and her tips for US travellers for the Olympics and in general.

And yes, it was about time I had the US ambassador on the show, given something like 75 percent of listeners to The Earful Tower are in the US.

Incidentally, it was the first episode I’ve recorded in a VERY serious and professional international media room. Big lights, cameras, flags… Goodness me, I’ve gotta say I prefer the out-on-the-street interviews! But always fun to try something new.

Another Olympic view

The episode also featured a chat with Tom Clark, the Australian behind the hit cafe chain Coutume. He gave us the early Olympic perspective from a business owner (and sports fan). As always, I recommend Coutume heartily - their flagship cafe in the 7th arrondissement is an all-time favourite of mine, and their newer places in the Marais and Galeries Lafayette are lovely too.

You can listen to it anywhere you get podcasts, here’s a link to iTunes and Spotify.

Members meet-up next week

I’m really excited to say that the event for Patreon members next week is over capacity. I can’t quite believe it actually. I remember in the very early days when I did online Patreon events and only one person would show up. Now we have a full venue for an in-person event. The location is pretty special, I’m looking forward to sharing pictures with everyone after!

Sign up as a Patreon member to get future invites like this one, plus loads more bonus Paris content.

So what’s going on with Substack?

I have a strong feeling most people won’t care or notice, in fact, you might just be reading this in your inbox as you always do…. but in case you are intrigued: Substack is a fairly new platform that lots of writers like to use. My MailChimp subscribers grew to about 10,000, which was awesome, but MailChimp just kept charging me more to use their platform, and it was very off-putting. Substack is free, easier to use, and if you click to read this in the app then you can even leave comments (something that was missing from the previous newsletter).

There are also options for readers to sign up for paid extras. Now, while you are already able to sign up for these Substack extras, the actual extras don’t exist yet and I’m still finding my feet here, so I won’t push it. Feel free to find your feet too. This site looks cool, and quite interactive, and I’m excited to see what I can do with it.

What’s coming up?

Next week on the channel we’re focusing on something beginning with the letter P and it isn’t Paris. That’d be too obvious. Here’s a clue: We’re travelling outside the capital for this one… A tougher clue: the picture above was taken there. Hmmm.

Lastly, Earful Tower Tours are in full swing, it has been incredibly lovely to share Paris with so many of you lately. Take a look at what’s on offer here, and, if you’re in Paris on Monday morning, get in touch to join my semi-famous semi-private tour of the Marais!

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