Who is the Emperor of the United States of America?

Liam Heffernan: 00:00:01

On this day in: 1869

So this week we're going to unpack one of the more bizarre and lesser talked about individuals in America and why he still to this day, has left an indelible mark on the country's history. As I ask, who was the Emperor of the United States? Welcome to America a history Podcast.

I'm Niamh Heffernan and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places and the events that make the USA a what it is today. To discuss this, I am joined by the founder of the Emperor Norton Trust, who describes himself as a champion of beautiful losers.

He studies philosophy and religion at St. Andrews in Scotland, or he did study because he now resides in Boston.

Today he's a writer and activist and his work has been covered in major publications including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the LA Times and loads more. So a big, big welcome to the podcast. John Lumiere.

John Lumea: 00:01:24

Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:26

Really great to have you. Do you know what? I didn't even check before we started if I was going to pronounce your surname correctly there. So I took a gamble.

I hope I got it right.

John Lumea: 00:01:33

It's Lumia. You've got it very Lumia.

Liam Heffernan: 00:01:35

There we go. Great. I'll just blame the British accent if I get it wrong.

So yeah, it's really great to have you on the podcast and for something that I didn't even know existed when we first started this podcast. So I'm very, very intrigued to know more. So I like to just start off by doing some quick fire facts, just to lay the groundwork here.

First of all, what was his name?

John Lumea: 00:01:57

His born name was Joshua Abraham Norton.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:01

And where was he born?

John Lumea: 00:02:02

He was born in Deptford, which now is sort of part of Greater London, but at the time was just sort of part of Kent, just outside the city.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:09

Oh, not too far from me. And where did he or when did.

John Lumea: 00:02:13

for Liverpool in February of: 1846

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:26

And did he always live in Boston?

John Lumea: 00:02:28

You know, the trail sort of goes dark.

You know, we have the information of his sort of being on that ship and the passenger list and all that, but there's a big gap of about three and a half years between there and and when he arrives in San Francisco. So it's sort of one of the great mysteries.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:47

So we know that he was in Boston and we know that he was in San Francisco, but not an awful lot of the bit in between.

John Lumea: 00:02:52

Not a lot. Not a lot.

Liam Heffernan: 00:02:54

So at what point then did he declare himself emperor?

John Lumea: 00:02:58

,: 1859

This is when he sort of walked sort of proclamation, basically a very sort of formal letter to the editor into the offices of the San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin that morning. They printed it that night and that's how it all got started.

Liam Heffernan: 00:03:20

And so I'm going to assume from that that this probably wasn't an officially recognized title.

John Lumea: 00:03:28

No, I mean he eventually was recognized by officials in an unofficial way, but no, there was no established emperor role in the United States and there remains none.

Liam Heffernan: 00:03:42

Yeah. So I think there's a lot to unpack here. So let's talk first about his childhood. I wonder if you could just tell us more about his upbringing.

John Lumea: 00:03:53

,: 1818

Christmas became known as the: 1820

o South Africa in February of: 1820

the Eastern Cape about May of: 1820

And within the first year, and this was sort of land that John Norton had been given, provided with as part of his agreement to participate. The land was not arable, it wasn't worth farming. And so they very quickly moved to Grahamstown, which is sort of a larger town in Eastern Cape.

And John Norton sort of set up a business as a ship's chandler, which basically sort of meant he sort of sold ships, supplies. And all through those early years in Grahamstown, that's where Josh Norton was raised.

ca until he, he reaches about: 2122

And so in: 1839

By: 1843

And by that point the family, you know, his parents had moved to Cape Town and so that seems to have gone on for a very brief time. And that gets us pretty close to, to when he decides to leave Cape Town.

Liam Heffernan: 00:06:42

You mentioned a couple of siblings there and a brother in law. Was he part of a big family?

John Lumea: 00:06:47

In addition to his older brother Louis and his younger brother Philip, he had another nine siblings. So there were 12 kids in all. And I believe that at least 10 or 11 of them survived into adulthood, as was common during that period.

Kids didn't always survive, but. Yeah, so it was a big family.

Liam Heffernan: 00:07:12

But presumably even though it was more common for children to die younger back then, it still must have left a bit of a mark on him. Not a good thing to experience, right?

John Lumea: 00:07:25

You would think so. You would think so. We don't have really a lot of evidence about his relationships with his brothers.

of letters from his father in: 1844

And apparently from the letters laying some of the blame at Joshua's feet. And so there's some at least anecdotal suggestion that perhaps the relationship between Joshua and his father was not going very well.

His father in: 1846

Liam Heffernan: 00:08:22

Yeah, I mean, but do you think that that kind of strained relationship that he had with his, with his dad and you know, some of those kind of business and financial troubles that he had, would that have contributed to him deciding to just, just go because it didn't seem like he had a very stable life at that point in South Africa.

John Lumea: 00:08:41

Right, yeah, you can, you can definitely speculate. I mean his, his, his younger, he had two younger sisters, Selena, Jane and Louisa.

One I think born in: 1824

was in England by January of: 1844

So there already was a move, it seems, in other quarters of the family, sort of away from the underpinnings, even before Joshua sort of made his, made his move.

Liam Heffernan: 00:09:30

So tell me about that journey from England to Boston. What do we know about that?

John Lumea: 00:09:37

left Liverpool in February of: 1846

e left Cape Town by very late: 1845

We just don't know. But we know that he was the only passenger sort of above board. There were many, many passengers below board.

He was the only one in a private berth above board. You know, he arrived, he arrived in Boston and then as I say, at that point, the trail sort of goes cold later on when he arrived in San Francisco.

And we'll get all the history sort of in the right sequence, but it's just worth knowing that he always told the story that he had arrived in San Francisco on a ship from Rio, from Rio de Janeiro.

And so that has led to a lot of speculation that very possibly, you know, a good part of that, of that three year shadowy period might have been spent doing business there. And in fact, that that could have been sort of where he learned sort of how to be a merchant on his own.

Liam Heffernan: 00:11:08

But you also said that there's a lot of unknowns around that period from him getting to Boston to them being in California as well. It just feels like we really don't know an awful lot about this guy. This guy's live or journey.

John Lumea: 00:11:21

No, no, there's been a lot of speculation that he was working for other business interests. And we just simply don't know. We know that by the time he got to San Francisco, he very quickly set himself up as a commodities trader.

And that was really not work that he had been doing in South Africa. So then you sort of have to ask, well, how did he get into that business?

And so I think that's kind of what sort of leads to the speculation that maybe during that South America period there might have been some business dealings and including business dealings that would have given him the money to even start out because his father actually dies bankrupt and even Though there are a lot of apocryphal stories about how, oh, Josh's father died and he got $40,000 from his father's estate and, and all of that, the facts on the ground don't really support that. So it seems like he must have gotten his own money from somewhere.

Liam Heffernan: 00:12:21

Do you think that all this mystery and kind of unknowns that surround his life does that kind of all serve this ultimate, you know, him declaring himself emperor? Because it just, it feels like you have to be a special kind of person to do that.

But there also has to be this element of sort of mystery around you. And there's. There's this kind of like Gatsby esque, like, oh, where is he from? Who is this guy? You know, why does he have money?

You know, he's a very mysterious figure, isn't he?

John Lumea: 00:12:52

Yes, yes. And certainly, I mean, you know, there are records of sort of interviews with him, San Francisco newspapers during his lifetime.

And there's never a lot of detail about early years, family, childhood, what he was doing right before he arrived in San Francisco. So he seems to have been somewhat invested himself in keeping a lot of that behind him.

Liam Heffernan: 00:13:18

And there's benefits to that, Right. As a businessman.

And as we'll discuss, you know, his foray into politics, you know, when people don't already know your life story, you can spin that narrative however you want, right?

John Lumea: 00:13:28

Oh, that's right. That's right. That's right. And it does seem that he.

That he sort of very quickly was able to sort of find his feat, you know, once he got to San Francisco.

ness, you know, by very early: 1850

Liam Heffernan: 00:14:01

Yeah. So tell me then about his business successes and. Or failures in California.

John Lumea: 00:14:07

Yeah, I mean, it just seems like in that first couple of years, like I said, he was doing a lot of commodities trading.

So he wasn't out there panning for gold, but he was selling usually like foodstuffs, so rice and flour and chili beans and linseed oil and all these kinds of things.

And so there's a pretty detailed newspaper record because all these ships would come out in, and then people like Josh Norton would run ads, what they had from the ship. And so we know that that's kind of what he was doing. He was also doing a lot of buying and selling of real estate.

And so he seemed to own a fairly significant amount of property. And so even though he was not, it seemed like he was not considered someone who was old money or from an established family or anything like that.

He was, he was a bit of an arivist.

He was sort of, you know, he was a new money guy, but he definitely, he definitely had money and he definitely was sort of set up in the best hotels in town and knew all the right people and so on and so forth. So.

Liam Heffernan: 00:15:13

But I guess California at that time as well, you probably had a lot more new money and probably a lot of people that didn't have any money looking for it, moving west at that time, right?

John Lumea: 00:15:25

Yes, yes, whatever. However much money it was you start out with, he definitely was able to parlay it.

You know, he definitely was able to kind of keep himself going for, for a good couple, three years until, until he made some bad decisions.

Liam Heffernan: 00:15:39

I mean, what were those bad decisions?

John Lumea: 00:15:42

here was a, you know, in late: 1852

And that was a problem because there are many Chinese people living in San Francisco, and so rice is a big part of their diet. And so rice was a very sort of important commodity.

And so somebody comes to him with word that there is a shipload of rice sitting in the harbor and he can have it, the whole shipload, 200,000 pounds for $25,000. And so, you know, he puts down $2,000 as a guarantee for this shipload of rice.

. Of course, in the summer of: 1852

He doesn't know, you know, communications are, you know, really like any kind of a risk like that is a real risk because you don't know what's coming in until it actually comes in. And so the bottom falls out of the market. And so he's really sort of on the skids.

The business partners that had gone in with him to sort of buy this shipload all literally jump ship, leaving him holding the bag. And so.

And so then he sues the consignment for firm who he's bought this rice from on the grounds that the rice was inferior, it wasn't what they said it was, etc. Etc. Etc. But that seems not to be the case because he did actually take the first £2,000 of rice and didn't say anything about it.

So they countersued for breach of contract. And this is a court case that went on for about a year and a half. Joshua initially winning and then not winning.

nst him finally in October of: 1854

What the news records make pretty clear is that although there are legends about how wealthy he was and had all this money, he certainly was not very liquid. It seems he was highly leveraged. And so all of his properties were foreclosed bond. He was sued right and left.

And then finally in October: 1854

lares bankruptcy in August of: 1856

But I think his reputation had really taken a hit. And he was doing sort of less and less and less. And his public profile was going sort of down and down.

Liam Heffernan: 00:19:06

In my mind, there's two reasons why people decide to pivot and go into politics. The first is because everyone around them tells them that they're awesome and they should, and they get a bit of a God complex.

And the second is that they have nothing to lose from trying. I feel at this point in Joshua's life, it was probably the latter.

John Lumea: 00:19:26

I think there's no question about that.

I mean, I think his political commitments and his ideas were real, and they were born out later by his continued disillusion with the main parties and his alignment with independent or, quote, no party politics.

has to pay comes down in May: 1855

I think there's really no other interpretation you can have on that.

Liam Heffernan: 00:20:16

Yeah. So how many times did he try and run for office? What did he try and run for? And how successful was he?

John Lumea: 00:20:23

Yeah, I mean, not successful at all, it seems, but there is. Part of the legend is that, oh, he went bankrupt and then he left San Francisco. No one didn't know where he went.

e back in a blaze of glory in: 1850

body thought he was crazy. In: 1857

I mean, there is that ad, that's there, but whether there was anything resembling an actual campaign seems unclear.

And then In July of: 1859

ve got to remember In July of: 1859

So that manifesto in July: 1859

Liam Heffernan: 00:22:08

There's, there's parallels here though to, you know, modern day when you think about, and I'm going to use a UK example, you know, when you think about the rise of politicians like Nigel Farage, who, you know, they don't really say an awful lot, but what they say is very loaded and antagonistic in the way it's delivered. And the goal is to galvanize and to stir up emotion without really actually saying anything.

And we're finding now the climate is just about right to get some momentum going on that because people want change, they want something different. I mean, you mentioned that the US had the backdrop of the Civil War looming.

Do you think that's why people actually paid attention to him declaring himself Emperor?

John Lumea: 00:22:52

Well, it's interesting because it seems likely that the paper that ran it, the Bulletin, what's interesting is that the paper ran the proclamation with a little one or two sentence, paragraph over the top of it, basically saying, you know, this morning a well dressed gentleman came into our office and gave us this paper as if, you know, and often the story that trails this is that no one ever seen him before where he came from, but he had been in that very paper running paid ads for the few months before. So they knew who he was. Right.

Liam Heffernan: 00:23:29

I mean, what was the wider public reaction to it?

John Lumea: 00:23:32

Yeah, I sort of didn't quite. I kind of forgot your question there. But yes, I think initially that proclamation probably was run as a joke, as a bit of a lark.

They had some extra column space to take up. And here's this thing, it's interesting. People are going to love it. We got to sell papers and that was it.

uring that period in the late: 1850

So there were these oddball eccentric characters that kind of came and went and they were there for six months or a year or two years or whatever got written up in the papers. But here was someone who eventually declared himself in this role and lived out the role for 20 years.

And so I think it really is the passage of time and the fact that he continued to seemingly demonstrate that he really did have the public good at heart that sort of got him the respect that he might have not exactly had at the very, very beginning.

Liam Heffernan: 00:24:54

Because there is a big difference between someone actually, you know, preaching to an audience versus someone, you know, walking down the street just shouting nonsense and everyone looking the other way. So, you know, how much of a following did he really build after that?

John Lumea: 00:25:06

It's hard to know. I mean, I mean, it seems like there were people who definitely were. Were very fond of him and knew about him and followed his doings.

I mean, certainly in the early days, there is some anecdotal evidence. You know, he had been a Mason and probably a mason coming from South Africa. His father was a mason.

Francisco Occidental, number: 2022

But over the next several years, there were individuals of them who looked out for him. They would make sure his rent was paid if it seems like.

So they provided kind of an unofficial safety net and the same for bar owners, saloon owners, who had these what were called sort of free lunch tables where you could sort of go, and for the price of a drink, you could go take a pass at a table. They had a whole spread, the better saloons, salmon, roast beef, potatoes, vegetables, tomatoes, bread, butter, the whole sort of shebang.

And it wasn't like the Quote, free lunch table wasn't something that only that indigence like Emperor Norton would patronize. You know, Mark Twain, the highest, best paid and best known lawyers of the day and newspaper people were frequent in these places for lunch.

And it was a place where deals were made and social networks were sort of forged.

And so it sort of a certain point, it became good for business to have Emperor Norton, you know, seen in your saloon and seen as being a court of respect and all of that. So. But I think, I think you don't really, you don't, you don't really get a full sense of how beloved he was until the very end.

Liam Heffernan: 00:27:12

It's strange because it feels like it was just sheer persistence. He walked around telling everyone on the emperor and there's almost this like sense of like insincerity about it. Like it is a big joke.

But then people just start just kind of buying into it and being like, okay, you know, and then he becomes, he becomes something just from kind of saying it enough.

John Lumea: 00:27:31

Yes.

And I think, and I think he also did sort of become sort of a part of the furniture, you know, I mean, he would send proclamations to the Board of Supervisors, which is basically the City Council of San Francisco, making certain requests about what should happen policy wise. He would visit Sacramento, the state capitol every year and go and hang out in the galleries above the chambers and watch the proceedings.

And this would be covered in the papers.

They were sort of laughing at him a little bit, but at the same time they seemed to understand that he really genuinely meant well and he knew his place, he knew what his influence was, and he knew not to overstay his welcome and how not to overstay his welcome. And so, so he always kind of was able to strike kind of just the right balance somehow.

Liam Heffernan: 00:28:28

It does very much strike me like he was a smart guy because he knew that actually straying into the area of sort of antagonism or even anarchism would get you nowhere, but probably sent to jail. But what he very smartly seemed to do was build some sort of influence.

And so off the back of this bit of a joke of saying he's the emperor, which then gave him that social gravitas and those ins to actually be heard by the state government.

John Lumea: 00:28:58

Right.

And he actually was, you know, a very, very well read, very astute person who hung out in the libraries and talked to all these people, you know, all the time.

He kept himself apprised of what was happening at the local, state and national level, politically, culturally, and commented in A very topical way on those things. So he definitely sort of had his finger on the pulse. And I think that was really respected by people.

It's very interesting, at a certain point, you know, the newspapers for the first couple or three years, 59, 60, 61, 62, would run these proclamations. And then. And then the Bulletin, which would run them first, sort of got tired of it.

And then another paper called the Daily Alta started printing these proclamations that were. That were fakes. They were, they were just simply. They were just simply writing things and putting his name on them.

And it was just simply to sell papers. And it was just a. It was a big joke. And so he gets tired of this. He gets tired of the fact that his name is going under things that he never said.

up a friendship, at least by: 1869

y have struck a friendship by: 1818

And he makes it very clear, you know, as long as the paper is true to our colors. That's his quote. In other words, as long as you publish what we say and not what we don't say. Right.

And so the Appeal published his proclamations for almost five years. Often, and this is a weekly paper, and often they would publish these proclamations, two or three in the same paper, almost always on the front page.

One of the questions that I've not really quite been able to answer is, well, who outside the black community was reading that paper? Because it was a, quote, black paper. It was for the black audience. It was, it was for. That was the audience.

But this is the paper where he is issuing all these proclamations saying, you know what? The Chinese need to have their testimony heard in court and being treated equally under law.

You know, what if African Americans, not by that term, that term hadn't been invented yet, but if black people, you know, are truly free, as has been stated in the Emancipation Proclamation, well, you have to let them attend public schools.

You have to let them ride public streetcars, Native Americans stop stealing their land, you know, political corruption, wheeling and dealing money in politics, all of that. He's talking about using this black owned and operated paper as his pulpit, which is very interesting.

Liam Heffernan: 00:32:31

I mean, for someone who could be considered by many to be a little bit crazy. He was Actually quite a progressive guy.

John Lumea: 00:32:40

He very much was.

And I think what you often will read is that it's only when anyone questioned whether he actually was the emperor and had the right to be treated with that respect that he got a little angry. But otherwise in conversation. And you see his proclamations, they are very well written, very well composed.

You know, he was a completely reasonable, affable, and by all accounts charming, kind person, you know, so, yeah, it's interesting.

Liam Heffernan: 00:33:20

And you know, I mean, I mentioned at the start of this episode that he's probably one of the most under acknowledged characters in American history and not someone I'd ever heard about until very recently. So tell me a little bit about his legacy and what you're doing at the Norton Trust to preserve that.

John Lumea: 00:33:36

Right. I mean, I, you know, I started, I was like you, you know, I grew up in Kentucky.

ow, moved to San Francisco in: 2010

In California, especially in San Francisco, you know, there are people going back two, three, four, five generations. It's just one of the childhood stories they hear they grew up knowing about this character. It's very much part of the, it's part of the soil.

o me one day in the summer of: 2013

Tell me about this proposal to name the western side of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge For Willie Brown, Very, very well known, still around in his late 80s, longtime speaker of the state assembly, mayor of San Francisco, public political fixture. There was a proposal to name, honorarily to name the bridge is sort of in two sections.

There's kind of an Oakland section and a San Francisco section with an island in the middle. And the proposal was to name the San Francisco section after him. So this friend of mine wrote to me, he says, oh no, he says, that just can't happen.

We want the bridge named after our emperor. So I had no idea who our emperor was.

But it turns out when: 1869

And so for San Francisco, this is a problem because they know that if Oakland is the Terminus, then, well, economically they're really going to suffer. And so it's really at that point that there is a very highly accelerated conversation about, well, we got to do something to bridge this bay.

You know, they have ferries, you know, but in terms of getting supplies in and out, you know, they were going to need. They're gonna need the rails. And so that really is when the conversation starts in earnest to sort of get a bridge across the bay.

And in: 1872

And so it's for that reason that for many, many decades and generations, there have been various efforts to try to sort of get the Emperor's name on his bridge. But that was my introduction to this character. I learned about him, just became totally enchanted and charmed by the story.

I started this petition, this online change.org petition to sort of name the bridge for Amber Norton. We got ultimately almost 7,000 signatures. And that became sort of a real.

That was sort of the impetus for a larger project that became known as the Emperor's Bridge Campaign and, you know, now known as the Emperor Norton Trust.

And so the bridge thing, you know, was always going to be, you know, the bridge is a state owned structure, so the legislators have to say yes, and that's a very, very big political hurdle. So what was very, very clear early on was, well, it.

If there ever was to become that opportunity, probably people are going to have to know who this is.

And so really our pivot very early on was to really lean into the history and the research and really sort of trying to document who this character was. And that really has been a big part of my own efforts for the last 12 years is to really sort of get at the documentation.

ry long time, starting in the: 1920

s and: 2000

And so my whole tack has been to try to sort of accentuate the documentation and de. Accentuate the stuff. Speculation.

Liam Heffernan: 00:38:34

Yeah, yeah.

And I think with a character like Emperor Norton, it's, it's so important to to separate the myth from the reality, because it's often actually quite hard to distinguish, even for someone like you who knows an awful lot about him.

John Lumea: 00:38:49

Well, and what you. What I often have been.

Have been very interested to find is that sometimes the documented history is even more wonderful and more interesting than the myths that have been, that have been kind of sort of built up around this character.

So, for example, you know, one of the myths that gets told is that at some point there was an anti Chinese riot happening in the street, and there were mobsters on one side and Chinese on the other side.

Emperor Norton shows up, stands in the middle of the street, plants himself and recites the Lord's Prayer over and over and over and over again until everyone disperses and goes home. Well, it's a lovely story, but there's no documentation apparently of that ever having taken place.

ake place is that in April of: 1878

Emperor Norton shows up, gets up on a little stand, gets right in eyesight of Kearney, catches Kearney's eye, catches attention and says to him, nothing good is going to come of this, you know, you need to go home. All your people need to go home. You know. And of course, they laughed him off and kept on and did their business.

But I always felt like that incident displayed real mettle and real courage to do that, you know, as probably sort of the lone, you know, sort of Chinese defender in that crowd to sort of stand up to the very guy who was the one that was whipping him up and say, you know, don't do that.

Liam Heffernan: 00:40:56

Yeah, yeah. So what do you think then that Emperor Norton's lasting legacy is? And what should it be if they're not the same thing?

John Lumea: 00:41:06

Well, I hope that this is what it is, that it's. I mean, because I think that there is.

I mean, part of the myth is, is that he is this sort of lovable, harrumphing kook in a funny suit and a funny hat who walked around. And so he gets held up as the icon of San Francisco, sort of marching to your own drummer, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

fact is here was a guy in the: 1860

And so I think in a lot of ways he really is the herald of what really are seen as San Francisco values, progressive values, liberal values, whatever word you want to use.

But he really was sort of a forerunner of, of saying, you know, this is sort of, this is the world that is better to live in and it'll be better if you did that.

Liam Heffernan: 00:42:37

Yeah, yeah.

So I mean, for anyone that's listened to all of this and is equally as fascinated as I am now in Emperor Norton, what resources could you recommend people to go check out if they want to learn more?

John Lumea: 00:42:50

Well, I think our own website is the best place.

Not surprising to you say that, but if they go to Emperor Norton Trust, all one word, emperornortontrust.org they will find more than 200 articles about various aspects of Emperor Norton's life and legacy.

There's an interactive map that has more than 100 different sort of sites where either Emperor Norton or before his declaration, Josh Norton is documented to have lived, worked, visited. There's an archive of Emperor Norton in art.

very earliest days, the early: 1860

spired by him starting in the: 1860

Liam Heffernan: 00:43:58

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll, we'll put links to that in the show notes for anyone that wants to check it out.

So I mean, man, we could do a whole nother episode on this, I'm sure. But I think, I think we'll, we'll wrap up there.

And I can't thank you enough, John, for joining me to talk about Emperor Norton and to introduce most of our listeners to such an interesting figure in American history. John, if anyone wants to connect with you, where can they do that?

John Lumea: 00:44:27

They can write to me. My email is on the website. It's just johnfernortontrust.org Very easy.

Liam Heffernan: 00:44:34

Awesome. Thank you very much.

And yeah if anyone cares to connect with me you can do on social media just search for my name and I'll and I'll pop up somewhere.

And if you enjoy listening to this podcast as well please do leave us a rating and a review wherever you're listening to this and give us a follow as well so that all future episodes of the podcast just appear in your feed. And if you really love what we do there are some links in the show notes to support us from as little as $1.

It helps us keep the lights on and makes everyone involved really really happy. So but thank you so much for listening.

I'm going to hang on with the on to do a quick bonus episode and if you do support the show you'll get that early as well. So until then goodbye.