It's Talk Like A Pirate Day and that makes it the perfect time to invite pirate historians Jamie Goodall and Rebecca Simon to talk about pirate mythology, superstitions at sea, and our favorite books and movies about swashbucklers.

About our guests:
Jamie Goodall is a historian at the U.S. Army Center of Military History in Washington, D.C. She also teaches part-time at Southern New Hampshire University in their College of Online & Continuing Education. She is the author of Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2020), National Geographic’s Pirates: Shipwrecks, Conquests, and their Lasting Legacy (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2021), Pirates and Privateers from Long Island Sound to Delaware Bay (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2022), and The Daring Exploits of Black Sam Bellamy: From Cape Cod to the Caribbean (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2023).

Rebecca Simon is a historian of early modern piracy, Colonial America, the Atlantic World, and maritime history. She earned her PhD from King’s College London in 2017. My dissertation, entitled: “The Crimes of Piracy and its Punishment: The Performance of Maritime Supremacy in the British Atlantic World, 1670 – 1830,” examines British maritime and legal supremacy in its early American colonies in regards to maritime piracy. She uses the public executions of pirates in London and the Americas as my narrative to see how the colonists reacted to increased legal restrictions by British authorities, which ultimately led to new ideas of autonomy.

This week Zach Schonfeld drops in to talk about his new book detailing Nicolas Cage's origin story. We dive into how Nicolas Coppola grew up in the shadow of his famous uncle, his struggles to break into Hollywood, and the highs and lows of Nicolas Cage's filmography. This pod is the first of its kind and I think you're gonna dig it.

We lost James Earl Jones today. Thomas Lecaque joins me to remember the man and what he meant to all of us.