Contact & FAQ

Every post, every issue, and every series is available to free subscribers. Free subscribers also have access to the podcast and all YouTube and Facebook content. Paid subscribers receive the Resource Library, which includes all Essential Research Series guides and issue companion documents; subscriber-only chat for record-specific questions and brick wall problems; and the Ancestor Deep Dive, a once-per-year benefit where an ancestor is researched through primary sources and the findings published as a dedicated post. The paid tier is $15 per month or $144 per year.

The Newsletter page shows recently published issues pulled directly from Substack. For the full archive going back to the beginning, visit appalachiangenealogy.substack.com and browse by date or topic.

New issues are published on a regular schedule throughout the year. Subscribing on Substack is the best way to be notified the moment a new issue goes out.

The Resource Library includes two types of content: Essential Research Series guides, which are standalone deep-dive PDF guides published by Appalachian Press, and issue companion documents, which are research reference sheets tied to specific newsletter issues. All content is exclusive to paid subscribers.

Not every issue has a companion. Companion documents are created for issues where a reference sheet, worksheet, or record guide adds genuine research value. When a companion exists, it is listed in the Resource Library.

The Resource Library lives on Substack. Make sure you are logged into your Substack account with the same email address tied to your paid subscription. If you are logged in and still cannot access the content, use the contact form on this page and include your Substack email address so the issue can be looked into.

The Appalachian Historical Review podcast is available on Spotify, on Substack, and on the YouTube podcast playlist.

Topic suggestions are always welcome. Use the contact form on this page and select "Newsletter" or "Podcast" as the topic. Not every suggestion will result in an episode or issue, but all suggestions are read and considered.

All currently available titles are listed on The Press page with direct links to purchase on Amazon. Titles are available in paperback and, where noted, as ebooks.

The Essential Research Series guides are published by Appalachian Press and are included exclusively with a paid Substack subscription. They are separate from the titles listed for sale on The Press page, which are available for individual purchase on Amazon.

No. Standard AI tools draw heavy power because they run massive, bloated networks trying to memorize the entire internet just to answer a single prompt.

My audio tools run on a leaner setup called Retrieval-Augmented Generation, or RAG. When I paste my script in, the tool does not search some giant power-hungry brain. It reads only the text I gave it, so the carbon footprint stays small.

Not at all. Standard AI works like someone trying to write a script from everything they have ever read in their entire life, and that takes a massive amount of brainpower while still leaving room for hallucinated or wrong facts.

My tool works more like an open-book test. I hand it the script, and it processes only the exact text in front of it, so I get accurate, localized results without the energy bill a giant model demands.

Every time someone runs a prompt on a standard massive AI model, data centers fire up thousands of specialized chips, drawing heavy electricity and water for cooling.

My tools focus only on the script I upload, so they run on a much smaller, optimized framework. That gives me the processing my audio projects need at a fraction of the electricity per request.

Generating brand-new video or images from a text prompt demands immense data center power, since the AI has to build pixels out of thin air. Most of my images and videos are purchased or drawn by me using digital tools.

My tools never do that kind of generation. I upload a finished video, and the tool reads it to overlay text captions, a targeted, analytical process rather than a heavy creative one. Processing a file I already made uses a fraction of the energy that generating AI visuals from scratch would require.

Yes. I provide my own audio scripts, videos, and finished content, so the heavy lifting is mine. The AI acts only as an efficient assistant to format, caption, and polish what I have already made, which keeps the data usage local, the processing fast, and the environmental impact minimal.