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.

This week Kellie Carter Jackson drops in to talk about The Help. We get into Black representations in film, white savior tropes, and what more nuanced discussions of the lived experiences of Black workers in the Civil Rights era look like. Kellie is a freaking powerhouse. Expect her to be back.

About our guest:
Kellie Carter Jackson is the Michael and Denise Kellen 68’ Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She studies the lived experiences of Black people with a focus on slavery, abolitionism, the Civil War, political violence, Black women’s history, and film. She is the author of the award-winning book, Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence, which won the SHEAR James H. Broussard Best First Book Prize. Force and Freedom was also a finalist for the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, a finalist for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Prize, and listed among 13 books to read on African American History by the Washington Post. Carter Jackson is also co-editor of Reconsidering Roots: Race, Politics, & Memory. Her essays have been featured in The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Los Angeles Times, NPR, and other outlets. She has also been interviewed for her expertise on Netflix, Apple TV, Good Morning America, CBS Mornings, MSNBC, PBS, Vox, CNN, the BBC, the History Channel, Al Jazeera, Slate, and a host of documentaries.

Carter Jackson is also a Historian-in-Residence for the Museum of African American History in Boston. She also serves as a commissioner for the Massachusetts Historical Commission, where she represents the Museum of African American History in Boston.

Carter Jackson's latest book, We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance (Seal Press), examines a radical reframing of the past and present of Black resistance—both nonviolent and violent—to white supremacy. She is also working on the story of the only Black passenger on the Titanic which examines the unexplored aspect of race, migration, and our obsession with one ship thought to be supreme.

Lastly, Carter Jackson loves a good podcast! She is the co-host of the podcast, “This Day in Esoteric Political History” with Jody Avirgan and Niki Hemmer and serves as the Executive Producer and host of "You Get a Podcast" formerly known as "Oprahdemics: The Study of the Queen of Talk" by Radiotopia with Leah Wright Rigeuer. You can follow her on Twitter @kcarterjackson. She currently resides in the suburbs of Boston with her husband and three children.

This week Nancy MacDonell makes her debut on HATM Podcast to talk about Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Anna Wintour, and her book, Empresses of Seventh Avenue, which tells the history of the women who built New York into a fashion powerhouse in the years after World War II. This is a blast, and for me, and eye opening conversation. Hope you enjoy.

About our guest:
Nancy MacDonell is a fashion journalist and fashion historian. She writes the Wall Street Journal column "Fashion with a Past," in which she explores the historic roots of current fashion trends. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Elle, Vogue, and many other publications. She is the author of five books, including The Classic Ten: The True Story of the Little Black Dress and Nine Other Fashion Favorites. Nancy is an adjunct lecturer in fashion history at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was born in Montréal and lives in Brooklyn with her family.

This week Kate Sheppard, John Wyatt Greenlee take a look at the newest edition of the Alien franchise to see what it has to say about capitalism, colonialism, and whether or not the series still has legs after 45 years. Jump in with us on this one.

About our guests:
Dr. Kathleen Sheppard earned her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. After a post-doctoral teaching fellowship at the American University in Cairo, she arrived at Missouri S&T in the fall of 2011. She teaches mainly survey courses on modern Western Civilizations, which is arguably one of the most important courses students in 21st century America can take. Her main focus is on the history of science from the ancient Near East to present day Europe, United States, and Latin America. She has taught courses on the history of European science and Latin American science, as well as a seminar on women in the history of science.

Dr. John Wyatt Greenlee is a medievalist and a cartographic historian, as well as a historian of roads and pathways and pilgrimage. But he is best well known for his work on the role of eels in pre-modern England from the tenth through the seventeenth centuries. He is heavily engaged in outreach and public engagement to make the eel history more widely known, and to raise awareness for the role of eels as an endangered species. His work with eels and eel history has been profiled in TIME, The Guardian, Atlas Obscura, Hakai Magazine, and The New Yorker (click here for a full list of earned media)

This week sociologist Jessica Calarco drops in to talk about the magificent 9 to 5, the changing and sometimes unchanging roles of women in the workplace, her work examining the role of women as America's social safety net, and the one and only Dolly Parton. Let's go.

About our guest:
A Sociologist and Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Jessica is an award-winning teacher, a leading expert on inequalities in family life and education, and the author of Holding it Together: How Women Became America’s Social Safety Net (Portfolio/Penguin, 2024). Her previous books include Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research (with Mario Small; University of California Press, 2022), Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School (Oxford University Press, 2018), and A Field Guide to Grad School: Uncovering the Hidden Curriculum (Princeton University Press, 2020).

This week we are joined by three historians of archaeology: Kate Sheppard, Julia Troche, and Leah Packard-Grams to talk about one of the most perfect films ever made: Raiders of the Lost Ark. We jump into the history of archaeology, Egypt, Hitler's fascination with the occult, and the perfect pair of Marion Ravenwood and Indiana Jones. Oh, and we drank the whole time. Get ready because this episode goes places.

About our guests:
Dr. Kathleen Sheppard earned her PhD in History of Science from the University of Oklahoma in 2010. After a post-doctoral teaching fellowship at the American University in Cairo, she arrived at Missouri S&T in the fall of 2011. She teaches mainly survey courses on modern Western Civilizations, which is arguably one of the most important courses students in 21st century America can take. Her main focus is on the history of science from the ancient Near East to present day Europe, United States, and Latin America. She has taught courses on the history of European science and Latin American science, as well as a seminar on women in the history of science.

Dr. Julia Troche (she/her) is an Egyptologist, public historian, and educator who is passionate about making history accessible across barriers. She holds a Ph.D. in Egyptology from Brown University and a B.A. in History from UCLA. Julia is currently Associate Professor at Missouri State University in Springfield, MO. She serves as a Governor for the Board of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) and is President, Past Two-Term Vice President, and co-founder of ARCE-Missouri. She is co-chair (since 2024) of the American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR)’s diversity, equity, and inclusion committee as well as the Session Chair (2023-2025) for the Archaeology of Egypt sessions at the ASOR annual meeting. Julia’s first book, "Death, Power, and Apotheosis in Ancient Egypt: The Old and Middle Kingdoms" was published in 2021 with Cornell University Press. She is currently working on a book about the god Ptah for Bloomsbury, a textbook (with B. Brinkman) for Routledge, and a series of articles on Egyptomania and Imhotep that she hopes to turn into a public-facing book.

Leah Packard-Grams is a doctoral candidate at the University of California-Berkeley whose primary interests include Greek, Demotic, and Coptic papyrology, the archaeology of Greco-Roman Egypt, the archaeology of papyrology, and the physicality of ancient texts. She is passionate about diversifying the fields of Archaeology and Greco-Roman Classics to include those accounts of the people who have been historically oppressed and underrepresented. She has worked on translating unpublished papyri in Coptic and Greek for Bryn Mawr College and her recent work has been focused on lexicographical papyrology and the usage of lexical papyri.