I'm ready to fight. Oh, this is fighting worse. Okay, I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm

George M. Johnson, a bestselling author with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever,

we need to use our voices to fight back. Part of the power of black queer creativity is the fact

that we got us, you know? We are the greatest culture makers in world history.

Listen to Fighting Words on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with IHeartRadio.

Gentlemen thieves and rebel heiresses, highway men, land pirates, villains, road agents, or stagecoach robbers.

Whatever you choose to call them, most highway men were men. Most, but not all. Among these scoundrels were women such as Joan Bracey and Maul Cupphurst, whose real name was Mary Frith, and an English gentlewoman

and heiress named Lady Catherine Ferrer, who, as a highway woman known as the Wicked Lady,

terrorized England in the mid-1600s.

Her legend persists nearly 400 years after her death.

Welcome to a brand new season of criminalia.

I'm Maria Tremarky.

And I'm Holly Fry.

High women worked alone or in small gangs.

They rode horseback and they usually robbed people riding in carriages or people who were also on horseback.

Although stagecoaches, the male coach, and farmers returning from market, they were all targets, too.

The invention of the flintlocked pistol early in the 17th century made life a lot easier for highwaymen.

It was more nimble than its predecessors and it could be drawn quickly.

In addition, many of these gangs included or associated with a person known as the footpad,

whose job, you may guess, was that they robbed people

who were traveling on foot, and they were known to be violent.

...