Female Pirates

It's been estimated that between eight and twelve percent of soldiers in contracted a venereal disease during the American Civil War. What on earth were they up to?Kathryn Olivarius is a Professor at Stanford. She joins Kate to discuss syphilis, why it spread so far during the wa ...  Show more

If there's one sure way to irritate an historian of the Medieval period, it's to ask why the people of the Middle Ages didn't wash.In this episode, we did just that with Dr Eleanor Janega. Kate and Eleanor get into whether there really was poo everywhere, how the Victorians ruine ...  Show more

Anne Bonny and Mary Read were pirates who sailed the Caribbean in the early 18th century. For both of them, piracy offered a chance at a freedom otherwise disallowed to women.

In this episode of Not Just the Tudors, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb learns more ab ...

Throughout the late 17th and early 18th Century, the waters of the Caribbean were crawling with pirates. Stories about swash-buckling buccaneers, and insatiable treasure-seekers haunted the tropical islands, as navies tried in vain to put a stop to their reign of terror. But who ...  Show more

The Golden Age of Pirates didn’t have just men floating on the high seas. Some women became very successful pirates and today you’ll learn about two of them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. 

Anne Bonny and Mary Read may have been the two most famous lady pirates, but they certainly weren't the only ones. History is full of women taking to the sea and ruthlessly taking what they want. Jeanne de Clisson, Sayyida al Hurra, and Grace O'Malley are three more successful wo ...  Show more