Hello, I’m Stilgherrian. As winter approaches, it’s time yet again to organise more special guest episodes of my inappropriate podcast The 9pm Edict for the coming season.

Target One ACHIEVED $2300 : Four special guest episodes in Jun–Aug

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 episodes from The 9pm Autumn Series 2022 that's now coming to a close.

(I've also been doing The 9pm Election Unhinging mini-series as we approach polling day, but that's another thing.)

Guests lined up so far include:

• Yun Jiang, the new China Matters Fellow at the Australian Institute of International Affairs. We'll be talking about China, Australia, and the Pacific Nations. Yeah, she's been on the pod previously.
• Economist Umair Haque, author of The New Capitalist Manifesto and Betterness: Economics for Humans, and chronicler of the decline of America. We'll also talk about disco.
• Dr Trent Yarwood will join us for another update on the wonderful world of the plague and other medical news.
• Scottish author, social researcher, and podcaster David F Porteous, who was on the pod earlier this year.

Further guests will be announced in the coming days. If you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Previous guests have included author and columnist John Birmingham, satirists Alex Lee and Mark Humphries, and journalist Andrew P Street. We’ve discussed climate change with comedian Dan Ilic and activist Ketan Joshi, antarctic geopolitics with Dr Elizabeth Buchanan, and neo-Nazis with analyst Ariel Bogle.

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

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

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

Target Three NOT QUITE $4600 : Add a panel show

[Update 28 May 2022: We got half-way from Target Two to Target Three, so that's more or less one extra episode. So we'll do seven episodes in all for the season.]

It's been ages since we’ve done a Public House Forum episode, livestreamed from a pub with a live audience. With Sydney no longer in lockdown, at least at the time of writing, it’ll certainly be time for another one. It’ll sound a bit like this one from 2018.

Target Four: TBA

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, but it’d be great to lock in the funding for a few more episodes before the end of the season. I’ll add some more details here when it becomes relevant.

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.

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 One 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).