So I have a very, very, very distant cousin who is a king, King Jeremiah of North Sudan.

I say cousin because his name is Jeremiah Heaton.

So I figure we probably share some common ancestor who got kicked out of England for stealing, eating, or marrying a horse.

I don't know why there just aren't very many heathens afoot.

Go to any major city, I don't know, Cleveland.

Look at the big fat phone book, and you'll find, at most, two or three heetons.

We're very bad at reproducing.

I know I sure am.

But anyway, this man, this bearded pseudo-kinsman

from Virginia, became a king of his very own country. Sort of. As it turns out, there are

tiny quirks on maps where for various reasons no one claims legal ownership of the territory.

They are no man's land, Tara Nullius.

And they have manifested in the Old West in William Gibson urban fever dreams as libertarian enclaves

in Eastern Europe, and of course, my very distant relative, King Jeremiah of House

Heaton, first of his name. No man's land, a weird, fascinating legal loophole that we will plumb the depths of today

right here on the political orphanage.

Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for plucky misfits and problem solvers.

I'm your host, Andrew Heath, and today is a geographic episode.

Stop, hold on, hold on, don't worry, it's not boring, it's actually fascinating, we're going to have

a lot of fun, I promise.

If you had learned what we're covering today, back when you were in high school, you would

have become so smitten with the subject of geography that you would have become a professional

...