Hello folks,

Thank you once again for joining me on Series Two of The Family Histories Podcast. I really appreciate all of you who have listened, shared, liked, subscribed, sent messages, and those of you who have rated or reviewed the show. It has been phenomenal, and wonderfully warming to see the response to it.

Series Two was a lot of fun to record, but it would have been nothing without the kindness, willingness, and brilliance of my guests; Ruth Bramley, True Lewis, Nathan Dylan Goodwin, Justin Cascio, Marina Brizhatova, Steve Jackson, and Emma Jolly. My job as the host is to ask my guest a few questions and then let them do the talking – and therefore it’s to their credit that Series Two has strode ahead with some of most downloaded episodes so far, and a fascinatingly broader set of topics.

I’d like to thank Justin Cascio for his patience – not just in our dual attempts to fix our audio issues when we went to record his episode, but also as he was first to record all the way back in August 2021 and waited until late November to hear it. I’d particularly like to thank Ruth Bramley and True Lewis for stepping outside of their comfort zones to record a podcast with me. You survived it, and you were awesome!

Once again, author John Spike expertly brought more life to the ‘missing’ poet and revolutionary Sándor Petőfi (what does he do all day in my garage?), Eliot Lees for some wonderful extra bits of foley (‘it’s a dog toy!’), and thank you to JP Wright for his hard work in helping to align recording schedules with Father Christmas.

As of writing this, the podcast has been heard in 37 countries/regions. We’d reached 18 by the end of Series One, so this has been a really fascinating and heartwarming thing to know that even more listeners around the world are tuning in for at least one episode! We have also smashed through some big download milestones (downloads rather than plays are the industry standard) and our top 3 audience share countries remain as United Kingdom (45%), United States of America (32%), and Australia (9%).

Alongside this podcast, I’d also like to thank; Carolynn ni Lochlainn for including me in the Hallowe’en episode of the From Paper To People podcast, the team at the Family History Federation’s Really Useful Podcast for letting me on the mic to talk about social media, and the team at The Genealogy Show for letting me do a talk on time travel in family history research – it was fun to record for other shows amongst recording this series. Thank you also to the Society of Genealogists for mentioning me in their member newsletter, and Daniel Smith-Ramos (‘The Tyrant’) for continuing to amuse me on WhatsApp with his barrage of episode guest guesses.

Last but not least, thank you very much for listening to Series Two, for continuing to listen to Series One, and for making the podcast a success.

Until next time, stay wise and well, and keep researching.

Andrew Martin