Vulgar History - Author Interview： Ella McLeod (The Map that Led to You)

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00:00:30.000 hello and welcome to vulgar history a feminist women's history comedy podcast my name is ann

00:00:44.700 foster and today we're talking pirates now we've talked about various pirates on this podcast before

00:00:51.400 it has pirates and also bush rangers who are kind of like land pirates in australia have always been

00:00:58.740 of great interest to me I think especially in this post our flag means death era a lot of people are 0.59

00:01:04.940 sort of re-evaluating pirates and all the interesting they weren't just like cis white

00:01:10.840 dudes is the thing then more and more people coming to realize there were lady pirates there

00:01:15.940 were queer pirates there were trans pirates there were pirates of various different cultural

00:01:20.920 backgrounds pirates of color and so I came across uh Instagram Reel actually I came across it

00:01:27.960 because I was following Avery Cunningham, who we had on the podcast before talking about her book

00:01:32.460 a while ago. And Avery Cunningham had reposted this one by Ella McLeod, who has just come out

00:01:37.900 with a book called The Map That Led to You. And so I was like, oh man. So Ella's post was about

00:01:45.800 her reel on Instagram, which I'll share also when this episode comes out, was talking about all the

00:01:50.860 research that she's done on pirates and kind of just her understanding and how she's coming to

00:01:56.920 realize there's sorts of gray areas of history, like whose stories get told and whose stories

00:02:00.880 don't. And what does that mean about who is left out of the historical record? And it's all the

00:02:04.760 sort of stuff that I really vibe with, that I like to dive into on this podcast. I was like,

00:02:10.040 man, that was a great Instagram reel. I'm going to share it. And then I did. And so then through

00:02:15.260 that, Ella and I connected to the point that now she's on the podcast to basically what I told her.

00:02:21.240 I forget if it's in what we recorded or just chatting before. It was just like what she's

00:02:24.700 saying in that reel like let's just turn that into an episode because it's also interesting

00:02:28.120 she talks about this in the episode but just in the process of preparing for her book

00:02:32.580 the map that led to you she did so much researching about like nautical history and pirate history but

00:02:38.680 also about sort of um legends about mermaids a lot of caribbean folklore there's so much

00:02:45.620 information and i just wanted to bring her on to talk about all that stuff so please enjoy this chat

00:02:50.200 with ella mcleod

00:02:52.000 so ella mcleod welcome to the vulgar history podcast thank you so much for having me i'm

00:03:02.640 really excited to talk to you number one because i read your book and i love it and number two

00:03:06.940 because you're so into you have so much information about pirates and pirates people

00:03:12.920 don't talk about and we've done a couple episodes about that but i never get tired of learning about

00:03:17.160 it so number one most importantly first tell everybody about your book so uh my book is called

00:03:22.920 the map that led to you uh it came out uh last week thursday and it is a romance fantasy young

00:03:31.360 adult novel about pirates and mermaids and falling in love and home and also just trying to understand

00:03:41.220 what history is like how how the stories that get told are influenced by the people that are

00:03:48.820 telling them influence the future but also why certain stories get told and why others don't I

00:03:55.460 guess over the kind of course of writing it and researching it I went down many rabbit holes but

00:04:02.520 also just sort of just did a lot of general thinking about what what exists in the margins

00:04:10.080 of stories um and what exists in the margins of history and what um assumptions we can make about

00:04:17.420 about those gaps so yeah i you know the story centers um a boy called levi whose dad is a

00:04:27.200 fictional pirate captain um and he lives aboard uh his dad's ship uh which is called the sea dragon

00:04:34.040 uh with his sister his adopted sister vega and they are yeah the children of pirates so that

00:04:41.180 was a really fun world for me to get to kind of temporarily inhabit i spent a lot of time at the

00:04:47.660 uh royal maritime museum in london in greenwich which luckily is really near where i live it was

00:04:53.100 just like such a fun place to be researching and reading and so yeah they live aboard a pirate ship

00:04:57.900 and a baby buccaneers you know really kind of keen to follow in their dad's footsteps of piracy

00:05:03.740 and then through uh various events that i'm not going to spoil they end up on a pirate republic

00:05:09.960 and i was very much inspired by the pirate republic i'm doing that in quotation marks it

00:05:15.720 was never an official republic um by the pirate republic on um in nassau in uh on the island of

00:05:22.400 new providence that existed during the golden age of piracy it just it's such a like a cool idea

00:05:29.540 this idea of a place where pirates sought to live outside of empire and in doing reading about that

00:05:39.120 I feel like I had a lot of questions about what being a pirate even meant and and was so that was

00:05:48.000 really at the heart of why I wanted to write what I write and then there's also a mermaid because

00:05:53.880 mermaid mythology you can't really have pirate mythology without having a mermaid somewhere so

00:05:57.860 that was important to me so the mermaid in my story is called the river mama and she's based on

00:06:03.060 a mermaid in jamaican mythology and even that story is kind of quite closely tied to empire

00:06:09.940 and colonization and the colonization of the caribbean so it all sort of felt quite organic

00:06:16.560 you know the forming of this of this world that is fictitious but based in in reality and then

00:06:22.660 there's a kind of other story of in the modern day, a girl called Reggie is living on what was

00:06:28.420 once the Pirate Republic and is learning about its history and coming to terms with, yeah, what

00:06:33.600 history is, what it means to try and unpick the past and how that impacts her as somebody that

00:06:40.160 is descended from these people and lives in the future of this world. So yeah, it's swashbuckling

00:06:45.640 and it's romantic and it's fun, but it took me down some really interesting lines of historical

00:06:50.740 inquiry i guess so what sorts of information is there at the at this museum you're going to because

00:06:56.980 like part of what what we were saying is that like there's not that much information about who

00:07:01.160 were the pirates and what were they doing so like what records actually exist yeah so oh my god if

00:07:06.740 anyone is listening and is a londoner and hasn't been to the uh maritime museum at greenwich it's

00:07:11.560 the it's like one of my favorite places it's so great so first of all it's like right on the river

00:07:15.820 right next to the cutty sark which is a ship so you can walk around this old like i think it's a

00:07:22.120 man of war i might be wrong it might be a brigantine but it's like an enormous naval ship and it's kind

00:07:28.640 of been it's it's moored inland and it's been hollowed out and the bottom part of it has been

00:07:32.700 turned into a museum so you get all of the particulars about how many people would you

00:07:38.580 would need to man different crews um on kind of different kinds of pirate ships all of the

00:07:44.200 different kinds of ships so from your smaller sloops to your much bigger man of wars how many

00:07:49.620 cannons how many guns so all of that stuff was what I loved because I feel like it really gave

00:07:56.040 the world that I was creating which is a world of fantasy so there is magic but I feel like

00:08:02.520 having all of that kind of information really rooted the world in something that felt textured

00:08:07.260 and real so um you know having Levi and Vega being able to reel off like how many guns they would

00:08:12.780 need and how many people they would need um as crew and things so that's a big part of what you

00:08:18.200 learn if you go to the maritime museum there's a lot of um art there are a lot of historical

00:08:23.420 artifacts um from old navigation tools to old uniforms of naval medals you have old captain's

00:08:31.860 logs it's it's just it's so cool um i learned a huge amount from just the volunteers that work

00:08:40.120 there like the the volunteers they have that work there for free are a the loveliest people but also

00:08:45.540 just like an amazing resource like they all know so much because they're really passionate about

00:08:49.940 the subject so in particular I found the the during the the crossover between piracy and the

00:08:58.720 transatlantic slave trade the relationship between pirates and slavers just fascinated me I think the

00:09:07.360 But the thing that I really took away from the time that I spent now is that while our understanding of what a pirate is, is partially rooted in fact, this idea of a lawless group of mercenaries who would butcher and assault and steal, there was also a kind of democracy amongst pirates.

00:09:32.500 they did actually have a pirate code um they did actually uphold values of of kind of like

00:09:40.140 egalitarianism so everything in a crew was voted on democratically that's not to say that there

00:09:45.620 weren't tyrannical pirate captains obviously there would have been but it was quite standard for

00:09:50.000 things to be made as a collective um all plunder was divided equally and i just i i found this idea

00:09:57.820 that the we've been sold this idea of pirates being one thing but actually it being thorny

00:10:03.780 or more nuanced than that really compelling there were also accounts in my that i found in my

00:10:08.940 research of pirates running interference during the slave trade now it's hard to say for sure

00:10:16.320 whether that was because it was more profitable for pirates to disrupt the slave trade than it

00:10:21.920 was for them to enable it sometimes but i don't think it's i don't think it's surprising to or i

00:10:29.440 don't think it's untenable to imagine if what we know about pirates is a lot of them were heavily

00:10:34.020 opposed to empire to also assume that some of them are running into interference on these slave ships

00:10:40.360 in order to disrupt the slave trade and there is evidence of them doing that so i found that really

00:10:45.420 really fascinating as well and then just the sort of the rise of pirates becoming privateers so as

00:10:52.880 anti-piracy laws became more strongly enacted and became more kind of and policies around piracy

00:11:00.760 got pushed further through parliament and the british empire in particular um worked to really

00:11:07.360 expel piracy from its colonies in the caribbean a lot of pirates sold out their fellow pirates

00:11:13.960 and became privateers for navies and the the republic of pirates so the the base of this kind

00:11:20.840 of loose confederacy i suppose you could call it in the bahamas was a place where some where that

00:11:28.140 happened basically so there was a um a group of men who would flip-flop between being pirates

00:11:34.840 and privateers so out for themselves out for a navy selling their their labor and ships to the

00:11:42.000 who did form a kind of a brief democracy for i think it was something like 15 years no it was

00:11:51.200 1706 to 1718 so what's that 12 years so and predominant among them were the flying gang who

00:11:58.640 if you are familiar with pirate stories are probably the names that you're most familiar

00:12:02.920 with so mary bonnie and teach and uh calico jack and all of um all of these kind of famous pirate

00:12:12.220 names so it was just it's a really interesting period of history and the maritime museum

00:12:17.940 is rife with stories and then next the maritime museum you have the royal observatory which is

00:12:23.440 all about the relationship between the sea and the stars which is a theme that features really

00:12:28.640 heavily in my book and also just something I find really interesting the way that old the way that

00:12:33.320 people had to use stars as a tool of navigation and I had a really interesting conversation

00:12:39.740 while I was researching with a professor at Oxford University about the standardization of

00:12:46.320 cartography and how actually like maps weren't standardized in the way that they are now

00:12:52.820 and they were a hugely profitable industry so um it was quite hard to regulate and so often it would

00:13:00.040 be more reliable to use the stars because they didn't change basically um so yeah god i rambled

00:13:07.220 on there haven't i no that's fine that's fine that's why i love to have you here because i saw

00:13:11.060 you did this um reel on instagram talking about pirates and pirate history and i was just like i'd

00:13:16.580 love to have her on the podcast and just like expand on that whole like two minute thing but

00:13:21.660 just going back to so like in terms of slavery but also in terms of who became pirates in terms 0.95

00:13:28.520 of like people who maybe escaped slavery or um women and other marginalized people like what

00:13:34.520 have you come across about that or is that are those sort of the corners where you're sort of

00:13:38.380 thinking about you know why isn't this recorded yeah so i mean we do know that i say no no is

00:13:47.280 tricky uh i guess we can it's been estimated that at least a third of pirates during the golden age

00:13:54.060 were former enslaved people and again like it would really depend captain to captain how these

00:13:59.960 people were treated of course there were some there there still would have existed horribly

00:14:05.540 racist pro-slavery pirate captains but there are examples of equality amongst pirate crews

00:14:12.580 and that equality existed regardless of race one example is black caesar who uh subbed board

00:14:20.260 the queen anne's revenge um so he was under blackbeard and he was a very well respected

00:14:27.360 revered terrifying pirate who was ostensibly from what i have seen afforded the same level

00:14:34.780 of respect as any other pirate aboard in his crew so yeah there was a huge there was a huge

00:14:41.020 formerly enslaved population amongst pirates because of the relationship because of the

00:14:45.980 naval relationship and the kind of maritime relationship between slave ships and pirates

00:14:50.900 um there are accounts of pirates you know coming about on cargo ships those cargo ships would not

00:14:59.940 just have contained tea and sugar and rice they would have contained human cargo so people enslaved

00:15:06.700 people and often while there were some I mean it would have been I guess it would have been up to

00:15:12.300 the captain's discretion um whether or not he sold those people back into slavery or whether

00:15:18.240 it would have been more profitable or more in keeping with their own sense of equality say

00:15:23.980 to liberate those people and help them join their crews etc so it it it would it was so dependent

00:15:32.040 on the captain but i think that it's it's it's it's significant that it was dependent upon the

00:15:37.300 captain because it it suggests that while i think it's easy to paint the 18th century very much in

00:15:46.320 a kind of binary of like people that were pro-slavery and abolitionists actually it was

00:15:51.600 murkier than that it was far more nuanced than that um and there were far more kind of ideal

00:15:56.500 there's a far wider variety of ideology at play and a lot of that did just come down to

00:16:01.900 capital like would it have benefited you more to have um to gain crew members you know so and

00:16:10.000 equally if you were an enslaved person who had somehow liberated themselves you would have better

00:16:15.460 chance of being treated equally fairly and surviving as a member of a pirate crew than you

00:16:20.480 did if you i don't know tried to in some way find a place for yourself in a in a incredibly racist

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00:19:34.900 Yeah, this is, I love just the thinking about this whole world where there's the Pirate Republic

00:19:39.320 and, you know, within Cruz people, there's this sort of equality, these kind of pirate unions,

00:19:44.340 and it's just yeah it's really it's such a great area of history in general like you just said

00:19:49.800 and even just in terms of like practically thinking about like literacy like you know

00:19:56.240 we have to remember that a lot of the information we have and a lot of the stories that make up

00:20:02.940 history are told by people that would have had access to not only the materials through which

00:20:08.880 to like record those stories but even just like the knowledge you know like literacy levels were

00:20:13.340 incredibly low amongst formerly enslaved turned pirates you know so I always like to bear that

00:20:19.420 in mind when I'm when I'm thinking about these things I know exactly in the sort of history that

00:20:24.060 I look at for this podcast often it it's rare and exciting for me when I find a record from somebody 0.71

00:20:30.360 who who is like an enslaved person or like a lower class working person like there's just

00:20:36.080 it's so rare to get those examples of people but that was such a huge proportion of who was out in

00:20:41.700 the world and we only know about like well henry the eighth was doing this or whatever where it's

00:20:45.480 like yeah but who are the other millions of people and were they interesting i don't know

00:20:49.380 exactly it's so true it's so true and what about female pirates yeah so again loads of gaps

00:20:58.880 very thorny we know of anne bonnie we know of mary reed um we have evidence of a few women of 0.66

00:21:08.560 color pirates um sayida al-harar is like my personal favorite to read about she was a

00:21:14.480 barbary pirate so she was from morocco um and she was like incredibly powerful incredibly 0.98

00:21:21.440 well i was gonna say well respected feared i mean feared um so and she would have been um sailing

00:21:29.860 in some time in the kind of mid early to mid 16th century but we have like very little evidence of

00:21:37.260 of women pirates and i don't think that that's because they didn't exist i just think obviously

00:21:43.320 there was a huge amount of prejudice and superstition around women at sea at the time

00:21:47.640 um women aboard ships were considered unlucky um i think that that's because of the i mean a

00:21:55.580 the patriarchy but also um in in the mythology of so many cultures the sea itself is considered

00:22:05.440 like a very like divinely feminine force a lot of the um mythological creatures that exist at sea

00:22:13.840 are feminized and were feminized by men in the navies and male pirates so sirens and mermaids

00:22:20.980 and uh other creatures that were considered to want to you know sing men to their deaths at sea

00:22:27.100 and so there was this real kind of pervasive sense that women at sea would only bring about

00:22:31.800 the doom of the men on board um i don't think that that means that anne bonnie and mary reed

00:22:39.380 um and saeed and the few others that we know about were the only women pirates i just think

00:22:44.840 it means that the others uh didn't get caught you know um women aboard ships in this in the

00:22:53.200 particularly the golden age of piracy would have often dressed in male attire or typically male

00:22:59.140 attire um so i think it's fair to assume that there was a a wider variety of female pirates

00:23:06.980 than we know about um but yeah like sayida al-hara is a great one jacotte de la haye is another one 1.00

00:23:13.500 that's really fascinating she was haitian she's another example of a woman that we think was a 0.67

00:23:17.800 woman of color because she was of kind of haitian descent and as many did dressed as a man took on

00:23:25.560 male aliases faked her death a couple of times and yeah she was sailing in the kind of mid-17th 0.99

00:23:32.120 century so kind of 1650s so they existed I think that we I personally think and it's edgy it would

00:23:42.200 be not a leap to say that there are more of them than we than we know of well and then also that

00:23:46.840 gets into like in a time period where it's like men dress like this and women dress like this

00:23:51.340 so for a woman to to wear trousers like that's just like oh she's disguising herself as a man

00:23:56.860 where it gets into like well maybe gender stuff maybe like trans stuff like and who knows because 0.64

00:24:01.680 people didn't have that language then they didn't have the language absolutely yeah so I yeah I so

00:24:08.860 agree with that and um you know the I just the world of the world of piracy because it's so

00:24:17.340 because the writing around it and the literature around it is so heavily influenced and so

00:24:22.160 dominated by the people that were persecuting them so like naval logs and records from like

00:24:29.820 you know arms of empire um the i think a huge like there are just so few first-hand accounts

00:24:38.260 and even less of those written by women or women of color um so yeah there's just this big like

00:24:44.020 dearth of knowledge and I find it a really interesting space to kind of play in with

00:24:48.560 fiction but also um yeah I guess sort of trying to fill the gaps of history with stuff that we

00:24:56.200 do know to be true well and that's where I find I mean your book obviously takes place if there's

00:25:01.000 like fantasy elements and stuff in it too but I think that's that's the best place for us to play

00:25:05.600 around is fiction and exploring what really happened where it's like well you know people

00:25:10.940 can't write a academic book being like well here's the facts but it's like well let's just imagine

00:25:16.000 and I think that's the best way there I know there's a book coming out or maybe it has come

00:25:20.060 out about Jekot Delahaye that I plan to read as well yeah yes there is I think it's not it's not

00:25:25.180 out on the UK yet I don't think but um I've heard from friends who've read it I've heard very good

00:25:29.920 things and I just like know it's going to be right on my alley so yeah exactly I love I love this um

00:25:35.400 I don't know do you have thoughts about what is it our flag means death the tv show did you watch

00:25:40.780 any of that oh so so good I love it I love it so much I feel like that is kind of what's a bit

00:25:47.600 ushered in a new pirate enthusiasm but also when I was watching it I was thinking like you know

00:25:54.440 it's it's silly and it's fun and everything but I was like this is kind of correct like this is

00:25:58.900 the variety of just like the ethnicities of the people on the ship and why they're there

00:26:03.620 and like queer people I'm just like this is kind of accurate actually yeah totally I mean I'm

00:26:08.720 watching Black Sails at the moment I don't know if you've watched Black Sails it's like I've heard 0.97

00:26:12.640 of it yeah it's quite old and I didn't I didn't watch it while I was writing because I was like

00:26:18.680 oh I feel like it it sounds so perfect that I'm worried I'm gonna like low-key rip off the vibe

00:26:25.100 so I decided to wait till after and like reward myself with it and it is it's so good and I I

00:26:31.540 feel the same way I think that the the exploration of like queerness and and blackness um in this

00:26:39.500 world feels um it feels it feels truer to life because it's it reflects the world as I see it

00:26:47.440 and as I know it which is that people aren't just straight and white and it is really interesting

00:26:52.380 to me when we have conversations about um historical storytelling where people say well

00:26:57.720 that's simply not accurate and it's like babe did you think that gay people didn't exist before the

00:27:02.840 70s like is that really like is that really is that what i do here um because of course queerness

00:27:09.920 has existed like forever there's things like um just because you're in england i know that there's

00:27:15.800 been some criticism about some historical dramas when they put black people in and it's like well

00:27:19.780 there were black people where they're like oh it's just like you're you're changing the history

00:27:24.300 it's like no it's just that the old tv shows were made in the 60s and they didn't have black actors 0.56

00:27:29.240 allowed to have lead roles then it's like they're they're black people didn't the same thing it's

00:27:34.180 like they didn't just appear in england in like 1985 like no totally yeah so it's actually

00:27:39.480 correcting for sure and i think that like what is interesting with piracy in particular is like

00:27:46.560 so much of it takes place in the caribbean and i'm just like wow it's it's wild how we've been

00:27:52.280 I've been watching this film or this tv show that's set in the Caribbean and we're like five

00:27:56.440 episodes in and I've not seen a single brown person because that is not accurate believe me

00:28:01.600 so um I think that that's the other thing that's just like important about trying to re-understand

00:28:10.060 history as a an indicator of things that have been and a version of things that have been but

00:28:17.340 in no way the full story and really remembering like why I think that's also it's important to

00:28:23.620 interrogate like you were saying so many of the records come from the naval officers it's like

00:28:27.260 who wrote down this history and what were their goals and what how did they want to present it

00:28:31.880 and we don't take that at face value yeah because they obviously had an agenda yeah so it's not just

00:28:38.140 like well that was true because he wrote it it's like yeah but he was he had reasons for writing

00:28:42.540 it that way yeah yeah totally totally can you just tell everybody about your book it's now out

00:28:48.580 i was able to get it so i believe it's out of north america as well as in the uk yeah i think

00:28:53.980 you can i mean you can order it online can't you know what it's like so yeah um yeah so yeah it's

00:29:00.640 out uh yeah online and everywhere that you would normally get a book yeah it's called the map that

00:29:07.040 led to you pirates mermaids mermaids were another thing I really felt very passionately about about

00:29:13.540 looking at particularly I sort of started conceptualizing this story in the aftermath

00:29:20.280 of Halle Bailey being like announced as Ariel or in the sort of the the moment where like everybody

00:29:25.860 was really cross that there was a black mermaid was when I had started writing and I was like

00:29:30.080 oh hilarious that people think that mermaids only exist in Caucasian mythology like really

00:29:35.140 really funny though yeah yeah well no exactly because yeah like in terms of like the caribbean

00:29:40.580 and like places that are on the ocean like of course they have mythology as well of course

00:29:44.920 like i mean the the river mama who's the sort of the mermaid in my story comes from caribbean

00:29:52.680 folklore and i think she's a sort of composite of of like west african mammy water stories um

00:30:01.060 um and european mermaid stories because of the way that colonization in the caribbean worked

00:30:07.180 and she very specifically um guards in the stories my grandmother told me when i was growing up she

00:30:14.380 guards like the treasure that the spanish left behind when they left the caribbean after i think

00:30:21.120 it was a battle with the english so like that's her origin story like so closely tied to the land

00:30:27.520 and the colonization of the land and like the like trying to defense trying to defend um something

00:30:34.400 about a place while knowing that every that so much of what makes up that place is intrinsically

00:30:41.080 linked with violence I think I thought I find I find that compelling and I find that really central

00:30:46.300 to like the heart of how we understand mermaid stories and how mermaid stories kind of inform us

00:30:52.660 about you know misogyny at sea and just like both the the fertilization and the fear of powerful

00:31:01.420 dangerous women but mermaids exist in basically every culture they're one of the few I think it's

00:31:07.000 mermaids and dragons that have that in common where like you could you can go to sort of 1.00

00:31:12.180 any it's weird like there are there are cultures that would never have met that's that have really

00:31:18.920 similar stories about mermaids and dragons and I um I don't know maybe that means it existed at one

00:31:24.040 point or maybe it just speaks to a shared anxiety but yeah I hope so true no exactly so your book

00:31:31.160 is available all over the place I saw like you've you've launched it already but I saw some pictures

00:31:35.320 people coming dressed up as pirates to your events and stuff it looks yeah it was really cool it was

00:31:40.040 a really good time yeah it's been great yeah that's wonderful so people can pick up this book

00:31:44.640 or ever um and how can they keep up with you on you have a podcast i'll run about your podcast

00:31:49.700 yes i do i have a podcast on the maximum fun network called comfort creatures it's me and

00:31:54.900 the wonderful alexis b preston and we just have cool people on to talk about animals and pets

00:32:00.460 um we're both big animal lovers also big fans of mythological creatures so we say that all

00:32:07.680 animals welcome both the real and the fictitious so if yeah that sounds like something you're

00:32:13.080 interested in um feel free to join us there and then i am available everywhere at mcleod mouth

00:32:19.380 so m-c-l-e-o-d underscore mouth and that's on instagram and tiktok and twitter all the usual

00:32:26.400 places which is very clever i have to say mcleod mouth thank you very much

00:32:29.820 i love it so much thank you so much for for taking the time to join us today like again i saw

00:32:38.440 i saw you talking about the pirate and the pirate history and i was just like oh man this is so great

00:32:42.500 and then your publicist was like, do you want to have Ella on your show? I'm like, yes.

00:32:47.060 I'm so glad. I mean, any excuse just to talk about like, just like history and then also

00:32:53.640 like the stuff we don't know. That's the thing that I'm so compelled by is what don't we know?

00:33:00.120 Why don't we know it? Whose agenda does it serve for us not to know it? All of those,

00:33:05.140 all of that good stuff. That's fabulous. Well, thank you so much and best of luck with,

00:33:08.960 with your book and connecting with readers and all that exciting stuff.

00:33:12.500 thank you so much so again you can pick up ella's book the map that led to you

00:33:21.500 basically anywhere it's such an interesting combination of everything she just talked

00:33:27.060 about like the pirate history but also like folklore and also the caribbean and african

00:33:32.100 folklore there's also poetry in it there's queer stuff in the book as well so i really think it's

00:33:38.200 really up everyone's alley who's a fan of this podcast and as well as her podcast comfort

00:33:44.740 creatures i mean i'm recording this heparin is literally two inches below this microphone you

00:33:50.860 can probably hear her purring right now like what a great podcast everyone should listen to that as

00:33:56.460 well and maybe i'll be on it one day what a dream anyway vulgar history this podcast you're listening

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00:36:00.120 It's an odd movie and we had a very interesting discussion about it.

00:36:03.660 The next episode of this we're going to be talking about,

00:36:05.660 we're going to be talking about the first two episodes

00:36:07.860 of the 1970s BBC miniseries, I, Claudius, a.k.a. I, Clavdevs.

00:36:15.100 Anyway, if you want to listen to that,

00:36:16.980 that's on patreon.com slash anfusterwriter.

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00:36:20.540 you get access to all the old episodes of Book of Peace Theatre

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00:36:53.580 slash Anne Foster writer. I also want to mention our brand partner, Common Era Jewelry. So this

00:37:00.220 is a beautiful jewelry making company. It's a small women owned business. Literally it is owned 0.90

00:37:05.480 and run by two women based out of New York City. And what they do is they make beautiful jewelry

00:37:11.640 inspired by women from mythology connection to today's episode, talking about women from

00:37:16.400 mythology as well as women from mostly classical history so um the designs are include people we've

00:37:24.260 talked about on the podcast before like bodica cleopatra agrippina and boleyn is there like

00:37:29.720 it's mostly people from classical history and mythology but you can't not include anne boleyn

00:37:34.240 especially when you have this collection like tori has right now called the difficult women

00:37:38.360 collection and oh there's also a necklace of hatchepsut who we've talked about um medusa

00:37:44.940 Aphrodite Sappho is there and so the pieces from Common Era jewelry are available in solid gold

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00:38:29.920 Transcripts of recent episodes are available at vulgarhistory.com.

00:38:33.360 Thank you to Aveline Malik for providing these transcripts.

00:38:36.420 Next week, we're going to be revisiting an era that we talked about last, I think two

00:38:41.800 years ago which is chosen dynasty like oldie times korea and i'm really excited about who i get to

00:38:49.500 talk about that with with you next week news is coming out soon about the upcoming new season of

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00:39:04.240 going to be getting into that all in mid-may so stay tuned for all that information and until next 0.96

00:39:09.920 time my friends keep your pants on and your tits out vulgar history is researched written and hosted 0.98

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00:39:24.460 history show image is by deborah wong transcripts are written by avilene malik find transcripts of

00:39:30.060 recent episodes at vulgarhistory.com.

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Vulgar History - April 30, 2024

Author Interview： Ella McLeod (The Map that Led to You)

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Transcript