Hello, I’m Stilgherrian, and it’s time yet again to organise more special episodes of my inappropriate podcast The 9pm Edict before everything grinds to a halt.

Target One $2300 ACHIEVED: Four podcast episodes in Oct–Nov 2021

Thanks for getting us there! The core of this project is a batch of four podcasts to take us through to the end of spring. They’ll feature special  to discuss what’s on their mind, current events, and whatever topics you choose for them — just like these episodes from the

Late Winter Series 2021 that’s just wrapped up.

At this stage the planned guests are:

• Space archaeologist Dr Alice Gorman (@drspacejunk) who’s been on the pod before in 2018 and 2020.
• Author and columnist John Birmingham (@JohnBirmingham) who's been on the pod several times before.
• Justin Warren (@jpwarren), consultant, freedom of information tragic, hexagon enthusiast, and creator of the CyberRating™ labelling scheme.
• Fr Karl Sinclair (@FrKarlSinclair), a Catholic priest now based in Orange, who's been on in 2015 and 2020. I’ll catch the train to Orange and explore his current town.
• NEWLY ADDED: Satirist Mark Humphries, who’s been on the pod in 2016, 2020, and June 2021.

Further guests will be announced in due course. There’s some fabulous people pencilled in.

Previous guests have included investigative humourist Dan Ilic, cartoonists Cathy Wilcox and Jon Kudelka, disinformation analyst Ariel Bogle, anthropologist Dr Genevieve Bell, and journalist and commentator Andrew P Street.

Target Two $3500 CLOSE ENOUGH: Two more episodes, so six in all

We finished up with 97.2% of Target Two so I’ll calling it close enough.

Get us to Target Two and there will be more of these excellent conversations, making it one episode per week through to the end of spring,

Target Three $4600: Add a December panel show

It's been ages since we’ve done a Public House Forum episode, livestreamed fron a pub with a live audience. With Sydney coming out of lockdown before Christmas, and summer and the end of 2021 upon us, it’ll certainly be time for another one. It’ll sound a bit like this one from 2018.

(OK, if we go back into lockdown then we’ll livestream it from somewhere else with a pretend audience.)

Target Four: TBA

Yeah let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but it’d be great to get some Summer Series episodes locked in before the start of the silly season.

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.

Your contributions will provide me with an income of $1920 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 Two to $2300.

The figures for Target Two are calculated the same way, with my net income being $2880 from the gross target of $3500. 

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 $960 per episode. As a casual rate, that includes allowances for superannuation, leave, and the like, as well as equipment costs.

I discount it by 30% to $650 per episode because some of the work involves copying and uploading files and other mechanical tasks. I can do other things at the same time. And because I love you all, I discount it another 20% down to $480 per episode.

A Public House Forum episode takes quite a bit more effort overall, roughly two days, so with the same discount applied that's that's $960 per episode.

If you want to see my working, check the numbers (PDF).