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Caillan Davenport, "Behind Caesar's Back: Rumor, Gossip, and the Making of the Roman Emperors" (Yale UP, 2026)
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Welcome to the New Books Network.
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Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased today to be speaking with Professor Kalyn Davenport about his book titled Behind Caesar's Rumor, Gossip and the Making of the Roman Emperors, published by Yale University Press in 2026. Now, this is a really cool book because, yes, we know a lot about Rome and its emperors, but we often know about it from particular sources and the sort of sources that we might expect to have survived. Though, of course, in the case of these sources, as many of us know from many other books, it wasn't a given that those sources survived. But we often think that that's kind of what we're limited to, that we're not really able to get a perspective on what sort of more everyday people thought. This book helps us understand that that is not actually true. We can get a sense of what sorts of rumors were flying around, how gossip worked and what that meant for so of everyday people's lives. Sure. And that's interesting in and of itself, but also what that meant in terms of politics. So we get to really dive into a whole world that maybe other listeners, certainly I thought going in wasn't really a world we could recover. So I'm quite looking forward to this conversation. Kin, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
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It's a pleasure to be here.
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B
Miranda, could you start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us why you decided to write this book?
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Yeah. So I'm Kalyn Davenport. I'm a Roman historian working at the Australian National University in Canberra, the capital of Australia. And I decided to write this book because I've always been fascinated by Roman emperors, the stories that have been told about them. I loved I, Claudius as a child, both the books and the BBC TV series as well. But I found some dissatisfaction with the way in which people were writing biographies of Roman emperors, and that's because they would often introduce salacious stories that are told about one particular emperor, whether they be Caligula or Nero. But then these same types of stories kept on coming up again and again, no matter who the emperor was. And that led me to think about how Romans thought about the emperor, the Roman emperor, their ruler, rather than just the individual who was wearing the purple at any particular point in time.
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B
Very helpful to have that sort of background. I think the other key thing we want to clarify early on in our discussion is obviously both rumour and gossip turn up in the subtitle of the book. But when, what actually is the difference between them?
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Yeah, that's a great question because often they're conflated. People talk about them as if they mean the same thing, but there is actually a real difference. So rumors are sense making the way we talk and we're trying to make sense of things when we don't have the full information about what is happening or when the information that we do get is not trusted. So rumors come into place when, for example, there might be political machinations going on, you know, 10 Downing street in the white House, and you know, no one quite knows whether, you know, the Prime Minister of the UK is about to be toppled or not. And so there's lots of rumors flying around as people try and make sense of what's going on and their own position. Or there could be rumors about other things, such as how diseases start. There are lots of stories about how the COVID pandemic started, and that's because people didn't necessarily trust the official sources that were talking about how it emerged organically. There's all this sort of talk about was it deliberately designed by the Chinese government? And a lot of these rumors, they don't just come out of nowhere. They actually conform to our own prejudices and preconceptions. So I think that's really important and that's why they can provide an insight into how people are thinking. Gossip, on the other hand, is what we call evaluative character talk. So it's about how we think about people's personal lives, their appearance, their, their bodies. And so, you know, we're talking about people's marriages, love affairs, you know, their latest haircut, things like that, whether people have put on weight or not. And all these things, you know, are often assumed to be very, very frivolous. And there is, you know, a sense of enjoyment in swapping gossip with your friends. But they actually evaluate people as we do it. So the way in which we gossip actually tells us about our own social mores. So if we gossip about someone who is having an extramarital affair, that shows our disapproval of their behavior, that we as a society or the gossipers that they believe that is inappropriate behavior. So there's actually, you know, that sense making and evaluation of character is what distinguishes rumour and gossip.
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B
Okay, that's really helpful to understand the difference so that we don't conflate them, as you mentioned earlier. Is there anything further we want to discuss about why both of these are important specifically in the Roman world?
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I think because they reveal how people are thinking, because rumours often fly in moments of, of panic, when people are really trying to scramble to evaluate whether a war is about to start, for example. And that is something that's really important. Wars can affect people's everyday lives. We're talking about a subsistence economy in the Roman world. There's a lot of people who are working their land. If armies are about to start marching through them, they're going to want to know, to try and take appropriate, appropriate measures there. So I think the insight it provides into individual mentalities is really important.
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B
Yeah, that's definitely helpful to get that inside sort of perspective. It's not just, however, about the individuals and kind of trying to make sense of the world. You also talk in the book that rumours and gossip can both be forms of political engagement when talking, for example, about the Roman Emperor. So can we discuss that aspect of it?
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Yes. So the Roman Emperor isn't any ordinary mortal. He is someone who holds the lives of essentially everyone in the empire in his hands. And we're talking about a monarchy. Rome used to be a republic when there was a lot more open debate. So there was, the people in the city of Rome used to get together to hear speeches and vote on laws, for example. All those sort of political decisions were often taken in the open. But that changes when we move to a monarchy. A lot of those discussions retreat behind the palace doors. So people are not quite sure of what is going on. And so in this world, people talking about the Emperor and what he might do is a form of politics because the emperor is making the laws, you know, he's issuing laws whether to increase taxes, to pay his army, for example, he's issuing decrees about what people can believe. Whether, you know, paganism is outlawed under the Christian emperors or even under the Christian emperors, you know, what type of Christianity is permissible throughout the empire. And so the fact that people are gathering in cities, in the streets, in amphitheaters, in horse raising arenas and talking about these things, they are passing judgment on the Emperor and his decisions. So that's why I think it very much constitutes a form of political communication.
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B
Yeah, I mean, passing judgment definitely sounds like politics. So good to have that clarified. Now we've covered then a lot of key aspects of what you are looking at and kind of why you're making, you know, why you're convincing us that it's important. But I do want to touch on this question of sources that I mentioned in the very beginning, because all of what you've described is great. But if we can't actually excavate what these rumors of gossip are, then we're sort of left with a bit of a gap, but we can excavate it. Can you tell us a bit about how?
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Yeah, this is a really important mythological point. So if I were a modern anthropologist of rumor and gossip, I would go to a community and listen, record, transcribe their actual conversations verbatim, and then I would write about them. Obviously, I don't have a time machine, so I can't travel back to ancient Rome or Constantinople. So we do have to depend on written sources that survive in terms of reconstructing what people were saying to each other. So how did I go about doing this? Well, there are some sources which are written forms of communication. There are letters that are preserved in manuscripts, but also on papyri from Egypt, there are graffiti. So what people write on walls is an indication of what people were thinking and talk. Talking about. A lot of graffiti actually is written almost like it's addressed to an individual, so it has that orality baked into it. Also, we have sermons, so my book covers the Christian period as well, up to the 7th century CE. So sermons, they were delivered orally by priests or bishops in churches to a listening audience, and very often they refer to current events, events of the day, and then also histories and biographies. These are the works by Suetonius Tacitus, Ammianus Marcellinus, which might be more familiar to your authors. I've worked hard to try and excavate nuggets of orality from them. So Suetonius reports things that he's heard from his grandfather, Tacitus talks about things that he's heard from the elders of the time. Or Ammianus Marcellinus was actually a soldier on the battlefield during Julian's campaign against the Persians in the fourth century. So he actually writes down things that he has heard, rumors that he's heard while serving in the army. And also these historians preserve chance that they have heard on the streets of major cities such as Rome, Constantinople and Antioch, chants, you know, that are generally. Sometimes they're approving, but mostly they're disapproving of the emperor and his policies. So what I've tried to do is weave all these different aspects together to make a case for being able to excavate oral discourse, rumor and gossip from the ancient Roman Empire.
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B
An important methodological point indeed, thinking then about these rumours. I mean, when you mentioned earlier about kind of political communication, the communication part, I think, is worth talking a bit more about, because obviously, if you're passing judgment on something that's kind of in and of itself interesting, perhaps to the people immediately around you, but that doesn't necessarily have the same sort of impact as if those judgments can kind of get transmitted or disseminated. So can we talk about how rumors, news, get moved around the empire? I mean, we're also talking about kind of official proclamations as well. So how does this information move around and interact?
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Yes, so the Roman emperor himself would issue laws, or he would sometimes write letters in response to governors or officials, and they would be disseminated either by road through what's known as the cursus publicus, the imperial curia system. So the idea is that you change horses every day at a special station and then keep going. So the news spreads as rapidly as possible or by sea across the Mediterranean, particularly from Rome to Carthage and Alexandria in. In Egypt. And then the laws would be read out. And this is again, that aspect of orality. They had to be officially proclaimed in a public place. And then they were usually displayed in a public place on a whiteboard that isn't like a modern whiteboard. It's wood painted white. And then the letters would either be written in black or red. And you might think, of course, you know, low levels of literacy, people would stand by these boards and read them out to passersby as well, so that they could be interpreted. Now, communication didn't always go smoothly. We know that sometimes it can take a long while for news to reach different areas, depending on the sailing season. So, you know, news didn't travel, for example, across the Mediterranean as well in winter as it did in summer. And news of imperial deaths and accessions going to Egypt can be recorded on papyri. So that can help us to date how long that takes. So it's certainly not as instantaneous as today with the Internet. Sometimes it could really be slowed down. So you might not hear about an Emperor's deposition until 100 days days later, for example, particularly if you're not in those major capitals. And the news has to travel out through towns and villages as well. Now, rumor tended to flow the same way. So ships, groups of travelers moving together, people that are writing to each other. We have wonderful anecdotes about people stepping off ships. They all come together waiting for news from Rome, for example. Or there'll be people in Cappadocia, in modern day Turkey, that receive news from their correspondents who are living in Constantinople. But very often there's a chain of letters or a chain of messengers that travels around But I don't want to give the impression that the entire empire is very well connected like today. There are certainly black spots. The more you travel from those major cities, the more difficult it is to get both news and also to get the rumors that are traveling around as well.
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Yeah, that's important to make sure we understand that things do travel, but we don't assume that they travel exactly the way that we might be used to. Now, thinking then about the content of some of these rumors, I was really intrigued. That kind of a frequent topic of conversation amongst them was debates about an emperor using or wanting to use or thinking about using violence. That seemed to be something that I kind of expected to turn up maybe in places that were known to be on kind of the top list of emperor's priorities. You know, if you're near the place, then it would make sense to talk about it. But you discuss in the book that that happened. But also rumours about the emperor using violence were topics of conversation even far away from where that might be enacted. So why was this such a kind of high priority list in terms of what people were gossiping and rumours flying around about?
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Yes, this is a fascinating point, isn't it? You could definitely have it in the major cities, Rome and Constantinople, or where the emperor is visiting. But even out in more rural region, the idea that the emperor could punish his people, that he would do so violently through massacres or would engage in sacrificing unborn babies is surprisingly prevalent. And I think there's a couple of different reasons for this. I said before that rumours are shaped by our preconceptions, our prejudices, also by the stories that we tell each other. And so most people in the Roman world wouldn't have seen the emperor in person. They might have seen his face on a coin. That was probably the most prevalent way they would see him. If they were in a major city, they might see lots of his statues. But it's not like today we can just go on the Internet, we can hear Keir Starmer or Anthony Albanese or Donald Trump speaking verbatim. People didn't really have that sort of sense of what the emperor was like as an individual. So the emperor was in many ways assimilated to the gods, the gods of the Greco Roman pantheon, particularly Zeus or Jupiter, as the Romans called him. And of course the stories that are told about the gods, they do terrible things, you know, even to members of their own family. And you even get this sense in other sort of stories, in folktales that circulate and Also in the Christian Bible as well, there's plenty of stories there about wrathful rulers. So all these sort of preconceptions that were then enforced by statues and coins of the emperor as a military figure, very often shown subjugating foreigners. But there's always that sort of tension that if the emperor is unhappy with his own people, that force could be turned against him as well. And so I think that's why the idea that the Roman emperor can use force, violence, and that he can do so at his whim is so prevalent in the rumours.
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B
Okay, that definitely makes sense as why everyone would be concerned about it, regardless of how rural they may or may not be. Do those fears then about what could happen ever rise sort of beyond just rumors? Do we see, for instance, rumours building into anything larger, like protests?
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A
Definitely. So this is one of the key aspects of political engagement, is that when people spread rumors, they come together as a community because they're sharing the same ideas. And it builds up this sort of frenzy if people are panicking in these periods about whether this new tax is going to be very harsh, whether there's going to be levies of troops, whether a new war is going to be declared, whether an emperor has been murdered and the new emperor might be excessively vengeful, for example. And so we do see protests, particularly in major cities, about financial affairs, about the emperor's policies. And if the emperor is resident there, he would often have to take action. We do actually have stories of emperors like Caracalla in Alexandria, for example, actually massacring the inhabitants because he's unhappy about the way that they are gathering together and that they are talking about him. And so there's always this real tension and this is feared by the emperors, that that rumor can boil over into something more concrete.
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B
That's really interesting. Right. That definitely speaks to the way in which it's not just us thinking that this is political engagement, but at the time, emperors thought it was too. Right. That's a really clear piece of evidence there. In addition to thinking then about war, violence, obviously taxes, unsurprisingly, comes up in rumors. You also discuss that discussing the kind of, of personal aspects of emperors lives, their sexual politics, what they looked like was also something that was talked about, which is really interesting given the point you made earlier, that the people talking about this, like, wouldn't have seen the emperor necessarily, Right. Today those are topics of discussion because we can see it on tv. Right. It's like visible in a way that, as you mentioned, it wasn't then. So Given that it was really far away and there probably wasn't a lot of information to actually be going off of, why were there rumors on these topics?
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Yes. So we're living in a monarchical society. And so although there is this idea that the emperor could inflict violence on people, there's also the sense that there being an emperor and there's going to be the stability of the succession is a good thing, because Rome's had many civil wars throughout its history and this really does impact people throughout the empire. If armies rival, Roman armies are marching left and right. So there was this real interest in smooth succession. And of course, for a smooth succession, you need a son to carry on as emperor. The first empress regnant, Irene, would not be until the circa 800 CE, actually. So they were only conceiving that men could rule the empire. And so interest in the emperor's sexual behavior was very much about whether he would produce a son to rule after him. But it wasn't just the emperors, it was also his wives, his daughters as well. The idea of that their sexual mores reflected on the imperial house. Again, this could be gossip in the sense that people enjoy gossiping about public figures, about celebrities. It sort of brings people together, it enlivens their lives, gives them something to laugh and joke about. But there's also this sort of serious side that if the empress or one of the emperor's daughters is having an affair with someone else, this might compromise the succession, might lead to a war between rival family members, for example. So I think there's two things there about the emperor's sex life. It is partially, it's something that it's fun to cut a ruler down to size. On the one hand they're godlike, but on the other hand they're really human. And this sort of tension dominated how Romans thought about emperors. And a lot of these rumors, they generally actually circulated first at the court around the emperor himself, and then they would flow out into the cities and could be exchanged by letter between elites. But you're right, this kind of discussion is less well attested in rural areas, for example. So a lot of it seems to be located in the cities. And then they're also talking about the emperor's appearance, his behaviour, whether he's. He has an excessively long beard, as happens with the Emperor Julian, or whether he's going bald on top, but has a very hairy chest. And there is this sense of we want to laugh at physical imperfections, because emperors are supposed to be like gods, they're supposed to be physically perfect. So there's this sort of fun element in cutting them down to size. But also, in the Roman world, what people looked like was thought to reveal their character as well. So if someone had lots of spots, it might mean they're like, you know, that they might be deceptive. If they had thin legs and a protruding tummy, that might mean that they were cowardly. And so if an emperor was going bald but had a hairy chest, he was seen to be like a goat, for example. And goats were regarded as especially funny, sexually deviant kind of animals. And so this was a way of evaluating the emperor's character and the type of things that people talked about. When you're evaluating the emperor's character, that is passing judgment on his rule, because if someone doesn't have the right character, then he's not going to be a good leader.
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B
Very interesting indeed to see how these things that might seem sort of trivial were not seen as trivial and very much linked to politics at this point. But taking up the point that succession was kind of always a relevant concern, it's therefore interesting to me that rumors kind of doubting the succession about, oh, wait, that emperor that died, have they actually died? Maybe they've come back? Or, oh, what about this other person over here that might actually be the true emperor? If succession is kind of always a concern, it would sort of seem like those kinds of rumors would be kind of constant. And yet you talk about in the book that they're not actually that constant. They pop up at certain times more than others. So how can we understand that?
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A
Yeah, this is one of my. Probably my favourite chapter of the book is, you know, these ideas that, you know, an emperor or his son didn't in fact die and, you know, can re. Emerge on the other side of the empire in Greece or some of the islands or even at the Persian court. But, yeah, it doesn't happen all the time. In fact, there are clusters of these sort of stories. So there's a big cluster in the Julio Claudian period, for example, with a group of posthumus, who is the grandson of Augustus. There's a false Drusus, one of the. One of the princes of the Julio Claudian household. And then we have three false Neros. And I think a lot of these stories come up in the early empire because this is a period of real uncertainty. We've moved from the republic into a monarchical system. And this is now the only family that the Romans have known as the ruling house. And so when Nero, the last of Julio Cordian dies. It's sort of like what's happening, what's happening now? There's a period of civil war, there's the year of the four emperors. And so we do get these sort of impersonators who want to be Nero, but they appear far from Rome, they appear in the east, where they're almost less likely to be challenged. And you get the sense that if they can play the lyre and comb their hair the right way, then the local people think, yeah, yes, Nero's back, it's a sign of stability. But thereafter there's a really long hiatus until the 5th and then the early 2nd century. And I think this is because after Judo Claudians, the Roman succession became really unstable in the sense that anyone with an army at their back could claim to claim the purple, essentially. They could march on Rome, they could take control of the Praetorian Guard, and then they could set themselves up as a new emperor, wanting to found their own dynasty. And because civil war usurpation was really quite endemic, emperors just kept being made in this way, rather than we have lots of impersonators claiming to be linked to the one dynasty. There also has to be certain circumstances that give rise to rumours that the emperor didn't actually die. So there has to be a sense that his death was covered up or it wasn't seen by people. For example, in the early 7th century, there's a rumor that Theodosius, one of the sons of Maurus, actually survives the execution of his family. And that's because he wasn't there at the same time and only came back later. And we're told this rumor spread throughout all of Constantinople. And the reason that appears is because he was a young man, he was this symbol of hope and promise and he wasn't in the city at the same time. So there needs to be specific circumstances that emerge to explain. People say, hey, no, I'm actually the lost Nero or the lost Theodosius. But it shows that there's this real tension between claiming a new emperor with an army and loyalty to previous dynasties as well. So I think that's something we see throughout the. Of the period, from the early period into late antiquity in Byzantium.
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B
Yeah, that's really interesting. Again, this point that the rumours aren't just of interest to the people talking about them, but that the emperors are paying attention too. Is there anything further we want to discuss on that in terms of how emperors reacted to all of this?
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A
Yeah, so it's really interesting that many emperors remained dignified and, And Silent. But we know that there are laws that are passed in Constantinople that people. That normal houses shouldn't be built too close to the palace walls. There's people here. What is going on, this sort of sense that people should be kept away so they're not going to hear about the gossip coming from the court. But there are some emperors who also respond to things that are being said about them. And Augustus really sets the tone for this. You know, when people strew pamphlets in the Senate House and in the streets, you know, attacking his character, he actually answers them and circulates his own pamphlets. The Emperor Claudius is known to have given a speech addressing gossip that he was particularly stupid. So, you know, he defends himself from stupidity. He also delivers another speech, apparently defending himself from being too angry. So there are some emperors that really actually try to respond and get the record straight, while others sort of just try and rise above it. The sense that if you don't respond to. Would actually go away. So there's different kind of responses, but it does show that they actually cared what people said to them in late antiquity. The Emperor Constantine, ruling the 4th century CE, he actually asks for the voices of provincials to be recorded and taken to his court as well. And he says that because, oh, I want to know if any of my officials are doing the wrong, wrong thing, so I could punish them. But you can bet he also wants to know what they're saying about him as well. And there's also sort of fear that if the emperor is the wrong sort of emperor who isn't prepared to just take things on the chin, then he will retaliate violently. Then that feeds, of course, into the other rumours about them acting violently.
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B
Yeah, it's all sort of relating to each other. Right. You're taking us into a whole ecosystem, really. One thing I was surprised. Well, I think I've mentioned a few things I was surprised about in learning about this, which is great. Right. That's what's so fascinating. But one thing we haven't mentioned yet that I found a bit surprising was that the period you cover, as you mentioned, it's quite a big period in many ways, and there's a lot of things that change. So we end up, you know, obviously with Rome, we go from Republic to imperium. There's obviously Christianity, as you mentioned, different aspects of Christianity that kind of come to the fore at different times. But what you've been telling us about in terms of rumours and gossip sounds like those sorts of networks and the political importance of them aren't really impacted by kind of whether or not we're in the Christian period or whether or not, you know, it's this emperor, that emperor. Is that sort of right?
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A
Yeah. So there's this, you know, it's not a period of rapid technological change in the sense, you know, you don't go from radio to TV to you know, Internet to phones and TikTok. So the way in which news travels is still word of mouth by ship, by travelers on the imperial post. So that remains the same. And a lot of the conceptions of the emperor remain the same. The idea that he should be merciful and not take out his anger on the people, that's reinforced both by what we might call traditional pagan philosophy we find in Seneca, as well as the writings of the Christian fathers. So there are clear continuities there, but there are some changes as well. And that's why I've tried to map out in the last chapter of the book, as we move from republic to empire, there is this focus on, on one figure and his family. And I was actually really surprised while researching the book that a lot of rumors that show attachment to the monarchy, show attachment to the imperial family, emerge really early on because we've just gone from 44 BCE Julius Caesar's murdered a lot of resistance to monarchy. And within two decades Augustus has set himself up as imperator. His family is elevated above all families both in image and language. And this real sort of attachment that, yes, this is the kind of government that we want now. And I think that's related to the idea that Augustus, his rule does bring an end to civil wars for that period. For the decades beforehand, there had been these wars between great men that were destroying Italy and the provinces. And so we see rumors, panic about the succession, about not having a son to continue the line emerge really, really early. So that really struck me. I was also struck by the way in which people talking about religious decisions of the emperor do change over time, particularly from the third century CE onwards when we do get state sponsored persecution of Christians as opposed to at the most local level by the governors. You do start to see these panicking rumors that the emperor is going to issue a new edict of persecution. Stories reach North Africa that this is going to happen. And the Bishop of Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, sorry, Cyprian, he sends a little embassy to Rome to find out if these stories are true. So the idea that the emperor will punish you for your religious beliefs really becomes an important issue. And that doesn't really change with Christianity. Because there are lots of different Christian sects, Christian beliefs, and the emperor's adherence to various of these theological beliefs changes over time. So, you know, one moment your belief might be imperially sanctioned, the next moment you might be outlawed as heretics. So this sort of led to increasing punishment as well. And also, of course, we get Christian morality coming in as well. So earlier on there's this talk about imperial sex lives, but now you get the sense that the Church, through the Bishop of Constantinople and other bishops, can actually censure the emperor for his behavior, acting as the mouthpiece of God. So we get changes in the way people evaluate the character and behavior of the emperor and his family. So I think there's some really nice continuities there as well as being able to track these significant changes.
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B
Yeah. Which is absolutely fascinating and interesting to hear as well, about kind of which bits struck you as you were putting all of this together. So thank you for sharing that sort of behind the scenes part, I suppose, of the book. And of course you've done all of that. Right. The book is off your desk, it's out in the world. So can I ask as a final question what you might be working on now, whether or not it's a book, whether or not it's related to what we've been discussing. Anything you want to give us a sneak preview of?
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A
Yes, I'm still sticking with monarchy, actually. So my current project is on different forms of monarchies all across the ancient Mediterranean world, from the Bronze Age all the way through to the early medieval period. And I'm looking at the different types of monarchies, how they came into existence and also why they eventually triumphed. So we often think of the Roman Republic or Athenian democracy as the shining achievements of ancient Greece and Rome. But in their own time, they were really quite strange forms of government that actually competed with lots of other different forms of government, whether that be oligarchy, for example, the rule of of the few. You also sometimes have tyrants who sort of set them up like monarchs, but then get brought down to earth very quickly. So it's a really rich period of constitutional experimentation. And I sort of want to trace a thread about why monarchy remains so predominant and how this influences our view of monarchy today. We often think of monarchy as old hat, but more than 40 countries actually still retain a monarch as head of state. And there are many countries which are ruled by monarchs and all but name or their democratic systems might be sliding towards that. So a new history of monarchy and authoritarian rule is currently what I'LL be working on for the next few years.
- [42:23]
B
Well, that certainly sounds historically and politically interesting. So best of luck with that project. And of course, while you are pursuing it, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Behind Caesar's Rumour, Gossip and the Making of the Roman Emperors, published by Yale University Press in 2026. Kalyn, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [42:43]
A
Thanks for having me.
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B
It's been a real pleasure. Sam.