2. There's really very little audience for the show as it is, ergo there's really no way to profit.
There's a vast potential audience for paranormal/ufo content - Art Bell had a devoted audience of millions, and his show was broadcast in the middle of the night. The problem with The Paracast is that it craps all over its own subject matter constantly, and people don't want to hear that. The "ufo cynics" audience is probably about .01% of the "ufo enthusiasts" audience, so Gene has carved out the smallest possible niche in a gigantic market.
Take the AATIP story, for example: it's been the biggest story in ufology in decades, and people want to hear more about it. But I don't think The Paracast has done a single show about it in the 8 months since the story broke, and when they do mention it, it's to attack it as some kind of con or disinformation campaign - without providing any evidence whatsoever to support that allegation. And they even had Lue Elizondo join up to post on the forums on a couple of occasions, but he was so viciously attacked by the little cult of pathologically cynical freaks over there that I doubt he'll ever make that mistake again.
I've thought about doing several different podcasts on various topics, but I haven't been able to rationalize the investment of money for equipment and hosting and the time investment. If I did all three of the podcasts I've been wanting to do for the last few years (a fandom/comedic podcast, an organized crime podcast, and a political podcast) I would have no time left to actually WORK between research, writing out the scripts for the scripted 'casts, editing, and social media to get the word out, not to mention the extras I'd have to put out for Patreon.
Well, it's one thing to do a podcast with the intent to make money at it, and it's another thing to do a podcast to have fun and offer something informative or at least entertaining to people who share your interests. We've been doing
Physics Frontiers for nearly two years now (and
PhysicsFM for about a year before that), because Jim and I love to talk about theoretical physics and the show gives us a good excuse to stay current with the field. We started making podcasts because people would gather around our table at the coffee shop when we were talking about that stuff, so we figured that it would be cool to offer those kinds of chats to a larger audience online.
We haven't invested in any of the bells and whistles like you hear on professional podcasts, like a nice opening sequence and closing sequence, so it's been really inexpensive. We each bought
a $35 Sennheiser headset from Amazon and downloaded some freeware to record the audio. Jim has to edit the audio files a bit, adjust the levels, and apply a compression filter to the finished audio file, so that part takes some time, a few hours per show, I assume. And there's a small charge each month for bandwidth because we're getting thousands of downloads for each episode at this point (which I still find somewhat shocking, given how raw and highly specialized our podcasts are). We'll be happy if we break even at some point, which may happen someday since Jim started a Patreon for us.
You don't have to (and shouldn't) script anything for a podcast - reading a script really sucks the life out of the listening experience - it's best to just wing it; you can always edit out something you don't like in post-production. It's a really fun hobby, the way we do it - we spend a few hours reading a paper or two, take some notes along the way that we can glance at during the show to make important points or to raise any interesting questions that come to mind, and then talk about our favorite subject for an hour so - it's an investment of time, but a worthwhile one, imo.
We'll go back and edit in a nice opening sequence (called a "title card") when we get around to making one, but in the meantime we're at least doing it, and some people are listening and giving us some great feedback. We even heard from a brilliant Italian researcher in our comments section on Podomatic (our hosting service website) one time - that was a real treat. So that kind of encouragement is very rewarding.
IMO opinion, sharing matters of public record is not doxing, although with some people I will go the extra mile and keep it to myself.
As I understand bankruptcy, it necessarily involves relinquishing some privacy in exchange for being shielded from creditors.
Well he doesn't live at that address anymore, so I don't see that as doxxing.