Kyra Maya Phillips wrote a book trying to understand illicit economies with Alexa Clay, the Misfit Economy. But in this episode she’s geeking out about pirates. Get the lowdown on how pirates did things, from pirate voters in eighteenth-century Atlantic, through to the pirates with letterheads in twenty-first century Somalia.

Links from this Episode: The book mentioned in the intro was Marcus Rediker’s Villains of All Nations; how Somali fishermen became pirates; yes really, there are pirate letterheads.

Songs in this Episode:
The Drake Equation — Kim Boekbinder
Got Glint — The Chemical Brothers
Nights — Totally Mild
World Love — The Magnetic Fields
Art of Revolution — Bassnectar

 

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