I am so glad that projects like this exist, and I'm impressed with the effort and commitment - including your apparently amazing marketing abilities in being able to network to good result and find pro bono talent. I also know that it's hard enough to generate revenue from podcasting, and audio drama podcast is harder still. I like though that these episodes are apparently build to age well (unlike most pop-culture podcast episodes), so hopefully it will build on itself over time. It's a hard thankless job to put significant creative effort into something that isn't profitable. I've been toying with an idea of a choose-your-own-adventure audio drama podcast - we have plenty of material written and it would mostly be a production challenge - but it feels overwhelming to figure out how to find pro bono voice talent, music/sound talent, not to mention the actual recording/editing.
If you ever have time, it would be interesting to read an in depth description of your production process - what you coordinate, what software you use, the editing steps, and what tricks you use to automate and save time (and save your sanity).
I think the trick is to find collaborators who are not approached too often and then pitch the project as something they are going to be proud of and ensure them you're going to be maximally respectful of their time. Simply being concise and organized is already a sign you are going to deliver on your promises to them.
I was thinking of delving deeper into the production process behind The Program, but so far my goal has been to keep these articles interesting to a casual reader. However, since I do get this type of question from time to time, I'll probably commit something to paper eventually!
If you ever have time, it would be interesting to read an in depth description of your production process - what you coordinate, what software you use, the editing steps, and what tricks you use to automate and save time (and save your sanity).