[Post-campaign update: This season’s crowdsfunder has ended, But if you still wish to support my podcasts and other work you may like to support the current cerowdfunder, The 9pm Summer Series 2024. Cheers.]

Hello, I’m Stilgherrian. Guess what? It’s time yet again to organise more special-guest episodes of my inappropriate and often disturbing podcast for grown-ups The 9pm Edict and other projects.

I’m determined that the podcast should never have those terrible, badly-placed adverts. But that means I need income while I produce them. Thanks to you generous supporters, I’ve been able to do that for several years now. Let’s continue, shall we?

Target One $2700 ACHIEVED: Four special guest episodes in Sep–Nov

The core of this campaign is a minimum batch of four podcasts. They’ll feature special guests to discuss what’s on their mind, current events, and whatever topics you choose for them — just like these sample episodes from The 9pm Winter Series 2024. Warning: There’s often explicit content.

I’ve already started contacting potential guests. I’ve started to pencil them in here. More will be added. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

• David Gerard from the wonderfully amusing newsletter Pivot to AI. (David has been on the pod before being sceptical about cryptocurrency and blockchain.)
• Friend of the pod, Scottish author and social researcher David F Porteous with an update on everything British and beyond.
• Space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman with a look at her work on how people live on the International Space Station. Not all archaeology is ancient!

Previous guests have included writer and columnist John Birmingham, satirists Mark Humphries and Dan Ilic, astrophysicist Rami Mandow, climate communicator Ketan Joshi, cartoonists Cathy Wilcox and Jon Kudelka, AI researcher Professor Toby Walsh, and science communicator Upulie Divisekera.

Just check out The 9pm Edict in your usual podcast app to see more.

Target Two $4000 ACHIEVED: Two more podcast episodes, so six in all

Get us to Target Two and there will be two more of these excellent conversations. That’s six episodes between now and the end of November! As usual, I will slot in a pro rata fifth episode if we split the difference.

Target Three $5300: Another two episodes, so eight in all? Alas, no

I think this is self-explanatory, right? I’ve opted for more podcasts because they’ll please more people, despite the fun of producing The 8pm Quiz video livestream. And so on for further targets.

A Note on the Rewards

These are the standard rewards I offer for podcast projects. Further rewards may be added as the campaign progresses. Suggestions are welcome.

Everyone who pledges to support the project will also get access to a secret stash of photographs and other treats. The set-up of this trove is long overdue, but we’ll get there. Sure.

Your contributions will provide me with a net income of $2200 while producing those first four podcasts. Pozible’s fees, bank fees, and other administration costs take about 9% of any total funds raised. On top of that there’s 10% GST, which brings the total for Target One to $2700, rounded up.

The figures for Target Two are calculated the same way, with my net income being $3300 from the gross total of $4000. 

The Fine Print

All up, each regular episode of The 9pm Edict takes a little over a day to research, prepare, record, edit, and post. Based on the MEAA award rate for casual freelance journalists that's about $1100 per episode. As a casual rate, that includes allowances for superannuation, leave, and the like, as well as equipment costs.

I discount this figure by 30% to $770 per episode because some of the work involves copying and uploading files and other mechanical tasks, so I can do other things at the same time. And because I love you all, I discount it another 20% down to $550 per episode. Maybe I should stop doing that.

If you want to see my working, check version 2 of the numbers (PDF). I’ll update this as we add more targets.