Short Stuff: Emperor Norton

This episode tells the wild true story of Emperor Joshua Norton, a wealthy San Francisco businessman who went bankrupt after a disastrous rice speculation gamble in the 1850s and then reinvented himself as the self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States. What makes Norton's tale so remarkable is that San Francisco actually embraced him—he ate free at fancy restaurants, issued his own currency that people accepted, and had city officials giving him military regalia, all while he spent his days inspecting streets and advocating for infrastructure projects like connecting San Francisco and Oakland by bridge or tunnel. The guys dive into his eccentric proclamations, his beloved dogs Bummer and Lazarus, and how 30,000 San Franciscans showed up to his funeral nearly a century and a half ago, proving that sometimes the best eccentrics become the most beloved parts of a city's history.