Hey, everyone! Guess what— the podcast just turned four-years-old! Woo hoo! Alright, that’s enough exclamation points for one post. Well, maybe one more—because we want to say “Thank you!” for listening to the show.  Some of you have been with us from the very beginning.  And there are even a few of you diehards who have let us know that you listen to each episode more than once.  We’re not sure how much that has contributed to the three million-plus total downloads we’re up to right now, or the 150,000 downloads that we’re averaging each month, but we’re pretty sure our parents are only responsible for a few hundred of the total.  We’ve shared with some of you that when we were first talking about starting this project, we decided we’d do the Civil War podcast that we ourselves would want to listen to.  That meant beginning, not with the first shots at Fort Sumter in April 1861, but with some background to the war.  How much background to include was a matter of some debate, but we started out thinking we’d cover the background-stuff in ten episodes and then get to Fort Sumter with Episode #11.  Right.  We actually spent over thirty episodes on the background to the war and run-up to the first shots at Fort Sumter, so we were a bit off in our original calculations.  That’s why we think it’s kind of funny when people ask us how long we think it’ll take us to complete this series, through the Civil War and Reconstruction.  We always say: “We have no idea.”  But Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, we plan on seeing it through to the end.