The Pirates Don’t Eat The Tourists: Jurassic Park & Prehistoric Fiction

While I’m ensconced in the maintenance shed getting ready for the next few episodes I’m going to bring you my extended interview with Natalie Lawrence. In it we talk about her love for the Pangolin and Richard Owen’s fascination with the Aye-Aye.

Enchanted Creatures
https://amzn.to/4dQqtuK (affiliated link so I might earn commission on items bought)

Links 

Mark Witton: Unicorns, dragons, monsters and giants https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2018/04/unicorns-dragons-monsters-and-giants.html?m=1

Richard Owen and the Aye-Aye

https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/richard-owen-aye-aye

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

You're in a canoe, sweating in thick jungle heat, and something enormous stirs in the water ahead. That's the mood pulling us into Mokele-mbembe, the legendary "living dinosaur" of Central Africa, and the bigger question we can't stop circling: why do we keep needing monsters, especially when the world feels like it's running out of mysteries?

I'm joined by historian Eddie Guimont, whose research into dinosaur hunting, lost cities and conspiracy culture shows how cryptozoology ties into colonial exploration, museum prestige and the politics of who gets to call something a discovery. We talk about the okapi as a proof point for European audiences, Carl Hagenbeck's confidence in local reports, and the moment The Lost World lands in a culture already primed to believe extinct animals might still be out there.

From there we jump to Michael Crichton's Congo recycling Victorian "dark continent" tropes, the 1970s and 80s boom in monster expeditions (including Young Earth creationist funding for living-dinosaur searches), and the pull of reptiles in conspiracy thinking, from lizard people to the wider ecosystem of pseudoscience, flat earth belief and anti-expert politics.

Guest

Eddie Guimont

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eddieguimont?igsi=MWd0MnFhZGl0NDM3Ng==

Eddie's article

Hunting Dinosaurs in Africa, Contingent Magazine (2019)

https://contingentmagazine.org/2019/03/18/hunting-dinosaurs-africa/

Links

The Power of the Flat Earth Idea: History from the Marginalised

 (affiliate link)
https://amzn.eu/d/0gJkqRkk

When the Stars Are Right: H. P. Lovecraft and Astronomy

(affiliate link)
https://amzn.eu/d/0iKwNF3m

Further Reading

Beasts and Men, being Carl Hagenbeck's experiences for half a century among wild animals (1912) — free to read on the Internet Archive

https://archive.org/details/beastsmenbeingca00hage

Next episode will arrive on 16th September

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

How did a self-described character actor become the beating heart of the biggest film franchise on Earth? At the beginning of July we lost our dinosaur man, Dr Alan Grant himself, Sam Neill. This is an episode I never expected to make, but I could not let the moment pass without turning a very sad event into a celebration of a remarkable life and career.

I am joined by James Mottram, author of the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World Ultimate Visual Histories and the Jurassic Park script book. James interviewed Sam Neill a handful of times across 25 years, from a London press day for The Dish in 2000 to a long lockdown phone call during the making of Jurassic World Dominion, and he shares every one of those encounters here!

We go through the James Mason phone call that followed My Brilliant Career, the daredevil early years of Possession and Omen III, and the Dead Calm breakout that convinced Spielberg he had found his Alan Grant. We get into the extraordinary 1993 of The Piano and Jurassic Park, the Bond screen test that never was, the John Carpenter collaborations, the grumpy joys of Jurassic Park 3 and the late masterpiece of Hunt for the Wilderpeople. And we finish on Dominion and the reunion of the original trio, the future of the franchise, the essential Sam Neill films to seek out, and the lovely story of the signed cards he sent out to bookshops when he could not meet readers in person.

Stay to the end for a listener message and my reflections on the Celebrating Sam Neill moment at DinoCon.

Guest
James Mottram

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mottram101 

James’s books
Jurassic Park: The Ultimate Visual History (affiliate link)
https://amzn.to/4wL0BYY
Jurassic World: The Ultimate Visual History (affiliate link)
https://amzn.to/4wL0BYY
The World of The Odyssey: A Visual Journey (affiliate link)
https://amzn.to/3UEFKc8
Filming The Odyssey: Inside the Making of Christopher Nolan’s Modern Epic,(affiliate link)
https://amzn.to/4xaHyrU

The Essential Sam Neill Films, as chosen in this episode
My Brilliant Career (1979)
Possession (1981)
In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
Event Horizon (1997)
Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016)

Links
Sam Neill, Did I Ever Tell You This? His wonderful memoir, read by Sam himself on audiobook (affiliate link)
https://amzn.to/4zvljyC

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

Who should direct the next Jurassic film now that Gareth Edwards has walked away? In this free sample of Hey, Roland!, the monthly bonus show for subscribers, I work through the director shortlist name by name, report back from DinoCon 2026 in Birmingham, and set up next week's very special tribute to Sam Neill with James Mottram.

I also want your voice on that tribute episode. Tap the Fan Mail link at the bottom of these show notes and leave me your memories of Sam Neill, Jurassic or otherwise, and I will share them on the show.

Links from this episode

- Jurassic Outpost on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JurassicOutpost 
- The Hollywood Reporter on Gareth Edwards leaving the Rebirth sequel: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/jurassic-world-rebirth-sequel-loses-director-gareth-edwards-1236666236/
- DinoCon UK: https://www.dinocon.co.uk/
- Terrible Lizards with Dave Hone and Iszi Lawrence: https://terriblelizards.libsyn.com/
- The Lost Valley Podcast with Cian Gill: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-lost-valley-podcast/id1448284008

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

In 1912 Arthur Conan Doyle dragged four men to the far edge of the map and brought Dinosaurs back to reality! The Lost World is the first major work to put dinosaurs, rather than marine reptiles, at the centre of prehistoric fiction, and it remains the book that comes out on top whenever I ask a guest for their favourite.

I am joined by Richard Fallon, research associate in natural history humanities at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge, author of Contesting Earth’s History and currently editing a new scholarly edition of the novel. He has read it roughly twelve times, six of those in the last year alone!

Richard takes me through Edwardian palaeontology, the arrival of Dippy the Diplodocus, and the real men behind Challenger, Summerlee, Malone and Roxton. We get into the fake photographs and Doyle’s ambition to publish the whole thing as a hoax, the Piltdown Man connection, and what the manuscript gives away about Roxton’s voice. And we finish on the novel’s colonial logic, its homosocial heart, and the one illustration of Central Lake that Doyle cared about more than any other.

Guest

Richard Fallon

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/richardfallon.bsky.social

Cambridge profile: https://www.esc.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-richard-fallon

Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences: https://www.sedgwickmuseum.org

The Book: The Lost World (1912)

Project Gutenberg, free, and the text Richard reads from in this episode

https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/139

Richard’s books

Creatures of Another Age: Classic Visions of Prehistoric Monsters, Valancourt Books 2021 (affiliate link)

https://amzn.eu/d/07x8bkXX

Contesting Earth’s History in Transatlantic Literary Culture, 1860-1935, Oxford University Press 2025 (affiliate link)

https://amzn.to/4gbXuUD

Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature, Cambridge University Press 2021 (affiliate link)

https://amzn.to/4wysYdo

Richard’s writing, free online

Professor Megalow’s Dinosaur Bones: Richard Owen and Victorian Literature, The Public Domain Review.

https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/richard-owen-and-victorian-literature/

Seen through Deep Time: Occult Clairvoyance and Palaeoscientific Imagination, Journal of Victorian Culture

https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/28/2/143/6759198

Richard on his own book, Making Science Public blog

https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2025/04/03/contesting-earths-history/

Links

E. Ray Lankester, Extinct Animals (1905), Doyle’s key source and the book Challenger quotes at Malone. Free on Internet Archive

https://archive.org/details/extinctanimals1905lank

Allen A. Debus, Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction: A Thematic Survey (affiliate link)

https://amzn.to/4fCoPPH

The Lost World (1925) Free to watch on Internet Archive

https://archive.org/details/TheLostWorldCompleteVideoQualityUpgrade

Next time: a tribute to Sam Neill with James Mottram, 19 August.

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

Can searching the rocks for sea dragons bring you back from the worst day of your life? In this week's episode I swap the underground for the shoreline with fossil hunter Matthew Myerscough, whose story starts with an avalanche on Yr Wyddfa and leads to the ancient seas of the Severn shores. Along the way we talk about Mary Anning and the two kinds of time travel, a plesiosaur paddle rescued from a Somerset boulder in fifteen pieces, and the fifty million dollar T. rex that sold at auction the very day we recorded.

For the first time ever, you can also watch this conversation on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Guests

Matthew Myerscough

@severn.sea.fossils

The Book

In Search of Sea Dragons: A Fossil Hunter's Odyssey - buy direct from Seren Books

@serenbooks

Links

Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem (affiliate link) - the book that inspired Matthew to write his own

National Museum Cardiff - new home of the Lavernock pliosaur jaw

Guided fossil walks for beginners:

Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre 

Fossilwise guided walks, Lyme Regis - https://www.fossilwise.com/

Whitby fossil hunting guide - https://www.visitwhitby.com/blog/great-tips-finding-whitby-fossils/

Wight Coast Fossils (Isle of Wight) - https://wightcoastfossils.co.uk/fossilwalks/

The Fossil Collecting Code - https://charmouth.org/chcc/the-fossil-collecting-code/

Next time: The Lost World with Richard Fallon - Wednesday 5th August

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

In this weeks episode I head underground with The Lost Valley’s Cian Gill to trace how Jules Verne turns geology, ciphers and sheer wonder became the template for every lost world adventure. Along the way we talk about deep time dread, dodgy Victorian translations, and the sea-dragon spectacle that still makes modern monster stories work.

Guests

Cian Gill

@the.lost.valley

Congo Book Episode 

Congo Movie Episode

The Book

Journey to the Centre of the Earth

F.A. Malleson 1877 Translation

Oxford World Classics - William Butcher Translation (affiliate link)

Penguin Classics - Frank Wynne Translation (affiliate link)

The Ladybird Classics Edition (the one with the music!)

Links 

Richard Fallon’s ‘Creatures from Another Age’  (affiliate link)

Alan A. Debus’s ‘Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction’ (affiliate link)

Tales from the Hollow Earth with Dr. Eddie Guimont - Wide Atlantic Weird Podcast (Cian’s other show and well worth a listen!)

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

Dinosaurs are real, which is exactly why they are so hard to write. Humans never lived alongside them, so any prehistoric fiction that wants characters, conflict, and drama has to cheat time, bend geography, or invent new science. I’m joined by Adam Roberts, professor of nineteenth-century literature at Royal Holloway and a leading critic of science fiction, to unpack how writers solve that problem and what those solutions reveal about our fears and fantasies.

The Book List:

Jules Verne – Journey to the Centre of the Earth
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Lost World
Edgar Rice Burroughs – The Land That Time Forgot Trilogy
Ray Bradbury – A Sound of Thunder
Anne McCaffrey – Dinosaur Planet
Harry Adam Knight – Carnosaur
Michael Crichton – Jurassic Park / The Lost World
James Gurney – Dinotopia
Greg Bear – Dinosaur Summer
Robert T. Bakker – Raptor Red
Stephen Baxter – Evolution
Ethan Pettus – Primitive War
Lee Murray – Into the Mist

Guests

Adam Roberts
@adamroberts.bsky.social
https://profadamroberts.substack.com/

(Affiliate links below)

The History of Science Fiction - https://amzn.eu/d/0g4lGWhJ

Pre Order ‘Frankenstein Rex’ - https://amzn.eu/d/09joNsmM

Pre Order ‘An A-Z of J.R.R Tolkien’ - https://amzn.eu/d/0bjirGu0

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

The Natural History Museum is the most visited attraction in the UK, and almost nobody looks up.

In this episode I walk through the museum as two things at once: a beloved London landmark, and a working scientific institution with hundreds of researchers behind the galleries. We start in the cathedral-like main hall and work outward, taking in the terracotta animals hidden in the stonework, the Darwin myths that refuse to die, Hope the blue whale, and Dippy the Diplodocus, whose arrival in 1905 kicked off British dinosaur fever.
Along the way we get into Hans Sloane and the British Museum roots, Richard Owen’s ambition to build a temple to nature, and what the museum is planning for its 150th anniversary.

Guests
Alastair Hendry
Tom Luker

Links
Natural History Museum: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist

Plymouth, summer of 1841. Richard Owen stepped before the British Association for the Advancement of Science and coined a word that would reshape our understanding of the deep past: Dinosauria. This episode follows that word from Owen’s meeting hall to South London, where sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins turned fragmentary bones into life-size stone giants.
I am joined by palaeoartist and author Mark Witton for a conversation about the history of the site and then Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs trustee Andrew Brady, and Jurassic Outpost’s Caleb Burnett and I go for a walk through the world’s oldest surviving prehistoric animal park.
For the extended interview with Mark Witton, you can hear it by subscribing to the Plus version of the podcast in Apple Podcasts or clicking the ‘support the show’ link below.

Guests

Mark Witton
Palaeoartist, palaeontologist and author
Markwitton.co.uk

@mark_witton

Andrew Brady
Trustee of the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, the charity formed in 2013 to conserve and celebrate the geological court at Crystal Palace Park. Follow the ongoing restoration and find out how to support the project.

Cpdinosaurs.org

@CPDinosaurs

Facebook

Links
Report of the 11th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Plymouth 1841

https://archive.org/details/reportofeleventh42lond

The Art and Science of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs by Eleanor Michel and Mark Witton
All author proceeds go to the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.

https://cpdinosaurs.org/projects/the-art-and-science-crystal-palace-dinosaurs

The Dragon of St Paul’s by Reginald Bacchus and Cyril Ranger Gull
The 1899 story referenced in the episode, in which a prehistoric creature thaws from a block of ice and runs amok across London. It can be found in Richard Fallon’a brilliant prehistoric story collection here:
https://amzn.eu/d/0ceDiAs4 (this is an affiliate link so might earn commission when using)

Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs

Support the show

Enjoying the show? A quick rating and review on Apple Podcasts would mean the world, it’s one of the best ways to help fellow Jurassic fans discover us.

Presented and produced by Roland Squire

☕️Buy Me A Coffee:

https://buymeacoffee.com/roadtorebiq

🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/@jurassicpiratespod?si=DJOlBmPoF75YE8It

📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jurassicpiratespod?igsi=cmswOTFwM29pOWhl&utm_source=qr

🎵 Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed)

🎨 Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist