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PEL Goes up to Eleven (Million Downloads, That Is)

November 26, 2015 by Mark Linsenmayer 10 Comments

After posting when we hit the one million, two million, and five million marks, I totally spaced out during the late spring (I think) when we hit ten million, so here's my announcement that I've just noticed that we're past eleven now, so you can consider this post as we head into the holiday season a reflection on what's going on and where we're headed.

We've made the transition, for the moment at least, to recording consistently every other week, whereas for most of our existence it was every three weeks. We need to keep doing this if we want to adhere to our every-week release schedule, absent the insertion of the occasional bonus offering of some sort to allow us a week's respite from our regular programming.

Speaking of bonus offerings, keep a watch out for our listener survey within the next month, as we're curious whether people badly want us to bring back the Aftershows, or Precogs, or any other ideas we've drifted away from, whether people like our guests, topics you all still want us to cover, etc. We are still intensely concerned with trying to make this thing the best it can be given the constraints of our time and cosmic injustices.

We have a couple of big-name philosophy people à la our previous Chalmers and Churchland episodes in the queue, though I prefer not to announce anything until it's actually recorded. We've been less lucky in securing more non-philosophy celebrities, and found that bringing on less-than-world-famous rock stars and comedians and authors doesn't actually bring us even a slight bump in ratings, though we've enjoyed all the guests we've had. So we're still trolling sites like this for potential guests but are not holding our collective breath for a call from Ricky Gervais.

However, with a new music podcast planned to begin in 2016 I will be mining further my small-but-expanding network of musical luminaries, so keep your eye out for more specific news about that. This would be the first in a long-discussed network of Partially Examined Life podcasts, the other one we've been in negotiations with being a launch as its own podcast of our Philosophical Fiction group's discussions (listen to clips here). If you have a philosophy-related podcast or were thinking seriously about starting one, feel free to reach out to us to see how we can help you gain an audience, advertisers, etc.

One advantage for our new junior partners and their listeners is being able to make use of our now-vast Citizen network, with over 2,000 members currently and a steady increase in numbers. We appreciate all of your support, and have no doubt that most folks just want to help us keep making these podcasts and get access to current, ad-free episodes and the back catalog of episodes that now exist in iTunes-land only as "PREVIEW," but we will soldier on in trying to increase the experience, offerings, and participation in our innovative Not School infrastructure, and to continue to post bonus content on our Citizen feed to enrich your PEL experience.

Despite Seth's absence from the past couple of episodes, he is still engaged behind the scenes with our network and advertising and all that, and will reappear hopefully by episode 130. Wes is currently adding more options to our merch (which we were happy to launch on our store this year), and Dylan as our IT guy along with his brother Josh will be helping us to launch new portions of our website related to podcasts in this new, probably-going-to-happen network. All of our energy levels are still high, and we're gratified to now be making as much money off of this thing as we did TAing back in 1995…. In other words, still not enough to quit our day jobs, but enough to enable us to plan more in-person trips, produce more projects like my soon-to-be-released-on-our-store Songs from the Partially Examined Life album, extend production help to these other podcasts, keep trying to push forward with a PEL book (we've had some troubles this year agreeing on something we can all actually accomplish, but we do have an interested publisher, so we're crossing our fingers re: 2016), and most importantly, not feel like this very time-consuming though joyful activity is unsustainable.

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for listening and keeping philosophical!

–Mark Linsenmayer

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Filed Under: General Announcements

Comments

  1. Christopher Frederick says

    November 26, 2015 at 10:20 am

    Congratulations!! Keep on keepin’ on!

    Cheers,
    Fredbo

    Reply
  2. SkepticismIsAHumanism says

    November 26, 2015 at 8:02 pm

    Congratulations! Hongera! Cheers! You guys are a source of great joy and learning and my life! Thanks for doing what you do!

    Reply
  3. jSully says

    November 26, 2015 at 10:06 pm

    Nice work fellas.

    Reply
  4. Filipe says

    November 27, 2015 at 4:49 pm

    This podcast enhanced my life. Thanks. **

    Reply
  5. Fritz D. says

    November 28, 2015 at 3:16 am

    Huzzah! ELEVEN million. Like I don’t even comprehend what that means, man. I mean millions.. 11 is a good number. “If you can’t get even get odd.” Somebody told me that once. An old friend of mine. We’d discuss philosophy (poorly) on my parent’s front porch. Today I got an ad on this site for Sonobello “Advanced Micro Laser Lipo. Get Your Free Consultation”. It has those before and after pics of a woman in a bikini, her fat body riddled with cellulite ripples. Gross. Hmm, I’m not fat. Anyway. Apollo smiles upon you brothers! Your work will live on for many years, for as long as there is an Internet at least I would imagine!

    Reply
  6. Nick Joll says

    December 30, 2015 at 2:07 pm

    Good stuff – but . . couldn’t you just have made ten bigger? (Sorry, but your headline was asking for that joke.)

    Reply
  7. Ferix says

    January 8, 2016 at 1:12 am

    “… not feel like this very time-consuming though joyful activity is unsustainable.”. This is the most important thing for me. The only way this whole enterprise works is if the folks doing it can continue enjoying it. Even if it meant paring back your guys’ amazing suite of life services 😉 I’m still all in favor of keeping you four happy and engaged in it.

    By the way, I really like the Precogs, so while I’m sure they don’t receive the numbers of downloads as your guys’ normal episodes, I hope there’s enough others like me to warrant them.

    Reply
  8. Evan says

    January 17, 2016 at 4:30 am

    Any news on the book?

    Reply
    • Mark Linsenmayer says

      January 17, 2016 at 10:48 am

      No good news, I’m afraid. We reached an impasse in being able to produce essays in a format that we all could agree we were capable of writing. No progress since October.

      Reply
      • Evan says

        January 17, 2016 at 4:26 pm

        That’s a shame. Thanks for letting us know.

        Reply

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