fellow ridiculous historians, we are still riding the wave of Baja Mar.

We returned recently with a two-part series about pirates.

And in our conversation, we realized there was no better way to continue our piracy phase obsession

than by returning to a classic episode about that time pirates

had a government. Yeah, they were super egalitarian, those pirates. You think of them as bloodthirsty,

raping pillagers, but in fact, they were all about doing things by committee. Yeah, pretty often,

they seem to be quite progressive, especially considering the colonial

powers at the time are in comparison to those.

And less, you know, we did make the point in the episode that we did at Bahamara that we're

not trying to romanticize them too much because they definitely raped and pillaged a plenty.

They weren't just out there doing secret ballots.

But they did have a pretty robust system of government that they used in a kind of almost

pirate utopia situation.

Yeah, it's strange because it was sort of a marriage of convenience.

Like when a bunch of gangs will team up in a film

to fight against a larger threat,

whether it's aliens or the FBI.

Yes, sure.

This is the golden age of piracy.

It was thought to be a time of lawless, terrifying, ridiculous history.

But in this episode, from a few years back, while we were recording at Bahamas, we realized we were in the Bahamas the very same place where, according to some, pirates once upon a time had a government.

And we loved all this pirate talk so much that we did a bunch of research that didn't even make it into our contractually obligated pirate episode.

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