UPDATE: The camapign is over, and you can check the Updates for when the six episodes of The 9pm Edict podcast and two episodes of The 8pm Quiz video liveatream will happpen. If you still feel the urge to support my projects, feel free to throw me a tip.

Hello, I’m Stilgherrian. Remember me? 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.

This is especially important right now because I didn’t run a dedicated winter or spring crowdfunder, even though I’ve just pushed out a six-episode spring series. There was also a distinct gap over winter, when I was distracted by a small amount of client work and the urge to sleep much, much more than usual — don’t worry it’s just a known sleep problem. Anyway, here we are.

Target One $2700 ACHIEVED: Four special guest episodes in Dec–Jan

The core of this project 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 Spring Series 2023 that's wrapping up before the end of November. Warning: There’s often explicit content.

As an aside, the final two guests for the spring series were Snarky Platypus in The 9pm Hungry Like the Wolf in Bali (Virtually) with Snarky Platypus, and Yun Jiang, the China Matters Fellow at the Australian Institute of International Affairs, about all manner of things about China and Australia in The 9pm Australian Lobster in China with Yun Jiang.

I’ve started confirming some of the guests for summer. Once we’re funded you can look forward to hearing from:

• Writer and columnist John Birmingham, who’s been on the pod many times before. You all know JB, right?
• Infectious diseases physician Dr Trent Yarwood, who's also been on the pod several times. He’ll be giving us a pre-Christmas update on All The Infections you can look forward to and more.
• Dr Alice Gorman aka Dr Space Junk (previous appearances) and Rami Mandow (previous appearances) will be wrapping up the year in space.

If you have any futher suggestions, please let me know.

Previous guests have included satirist Mark Humphries. We’ve discussed climate change with comedian Dan Ilic and activist Ketan Joshi, antarctic geopolitics with Dr Elizabeth Buchanan, the horrors of cryptocurrency and NFTs with David Gerard, and various science topics with Upulie Divisekera.

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

Target Two $3500 ACHIEVED: Two more podcast episodes, so six in all

Get us to Target Two and there will be more of these excellent conversations. That’s six episodes over summer!

(If you’ve been looking at the fine print you’ll be wondering why this target has dropped from $4000 to $3500. Well, I’ve received some support via other payment channels, but Pozible doesn’t allow you to note that sort of thing, so I’ve just adjusted the target.

Target Three $4800 CLOSE ENOUGH: Two episodes of The 8pm Quiz livestream

Last year I did four episodes of The 8pm Quiz video livestreams. I’ve decided we can do at least two this year, and since they take about the same amount of time as the podcast to produce, I’ve added in this target.

Target Four $6100: Two more things, podcast or quiz?

We’re in the final hours of the campaign and I can’t decide, so how about I make this your choice? We’ll vote to decide whether it’s two more podcasts, two more quiz episodes, or one of each.

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 I’ll be email all previous supporters with an update on that very, very soon. 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.

Long-time supporters may notice that inflation has finally hit these figures, which have otherwise stayed the same for some years now.