Hi everybody, this is Jen Matterese, and before I start the podcast, I just wanted to say a few things.

The first thing I wanted to do is say thank you again to everybody who's been listening.

We're really close to having 5,000 listens for the podcast, which is kind of staggering to me,

that anybody else is listening to the podcast, much less

that many people, that many times to that many episodes.

You know, we're not the biggest podcast in the world, but the fact that anybody else wants

to listen to me talk and ramble on for an hour, an hour and a half sometimes about,

sometimes even two and a half hours, about any disaster,

is something that I just am really appreciative of.

You know, I made the podcast at the beginning because I wanted a podcast about disasters and I wanted to listen to it.

And the unfortunate thing about making the podcast is that I can't listen

to my own voice, so I can't even listen to the podcast. But the fact that you guys are listening

is something that I really appreciate. It takes a lot of time for me to do all of the research

that I want to do for every single disaster to get it into these episodes, not the least of which because I try to cram

as much in and sometimes, you know, I have to do it around a full-time job and trying to write

the books that I'm working on. So, you know, the fact that people patiently wait two weeks,

sometimes longer, for a new episode, is something that I really appreciate and I'm very grateful for.

So I just wanted to say thank you once again for that.

The second thing I wanted to do was say that if you'd like to help support the podcast, there are several ways to do that.

The easiest and least expensive way is to tell your friends, tell your

enemies, tell whoever you think would be interested in listening to the podcast. I would love to

get more listeners on and I welcome everybody who wants to listen. You know, if you think that there

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