Again I should probably note that I prefer the SGU's advertising model to many others, being that you're offering it as either ads or membership. The only better way (that I can think of atm) would be to make the ad feed the special feed that people could opt in to, because they for one reason or another want to listen to hem. That's targeted advertising.
But I don't like the inherent dishonesty of advertising, so I'm not going to like ads, regardless. However carefully someone selects what makes it through, their opinions are irrelevant when they're being paid to have them. There's no discussion, no legitimate comparisons, just various ways of framing that everyone agrees that the product/service is nice.
I much prefer sponsorship, where it's "This week's episode paid for [in part] by <company name>", maybe with a few details about where you can find them and what they do, without adding opinions.
It is frankly naive to think that we can maintain the incredible amount of work and liability that the SGU entails indefinitely without any resources except our own blood and sweat.
Also going to note that I'm not saying that it should be ads or nothing (or that it should be anything).
But if the advertising industry somehow collapsed and ceased to exist, as much as that would change current social media platforms and the entertainment industry, I don't see how it would stop people from getting together and creating content, or creating demand that others can meet. I see it stopping some of the unnecessary consumption, unnecessary travel, and maybe it would make people feel a little better about themselves in general, when they're not being targeted by companies that want them to feel as if they should've been spending more of the money that they might not even have, etc. Which could put some people out of business, and that should be fine, as long as we still have societies that are made up of people who care about each other, or at least care enough about themselves to want for there to be social safety nets.
What the world needs is to cut back on consumption and emissions. Cutting down on advertising seems as good a place as any to start, when the point of advertising is to motivate people to do something they otherwise wouldn't.
Of course they've started cutting themselves off more from the typical listener, by having a pay-only forum system that they give more attention to.
Quoting myself to say to say that I shouldn't have said that. I should've said that that's what it sometimes feels like, in part because of how the Discord is presented on the podcast. I'm not on social media, maybe if I were I would have a different impression.