Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

In the summer of 1715 a hurricane destroyed the Spanish treasure fleet off the coast of Florida, scattering silver and opportunity across the Bahamas. Within months unemployed privateers and desperate sailors gathered at Nassau, turning New Providence into the nearest thing the Atlantic had to a pirate republic. This long-form documentary follows the rise of the Flying Gang, the careers of Samuel Bellamy and Blackbeard, the blockade of Charleston, the arrival of Woodes Rogers with the King’s pardon, the deaths at Ocracoke and the trials of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, and the 1724 book that transformed real outlaws into enduring legend. A calm, deeply researched history of how a brief window of lawlessness opened on the sea—and was closed.

The war is over, thousands of armed sailors are suddenly unemployed, and the Atlantic is carrying more wealth than ever before. Between 1715 and 1721, the Caribbean became the center of the Golden Age of Piracy. Nassau emerged as a pirate haven, Benjamin Hornigold helped build a community beyond the easy reach of British authority, and Edward Teach transformed himself into the terrifying figure history remembers as Blackbeard.

Follow Blackbeard from the decks of Queen Anne’s Revenge to his blockade of Charleston and his final battle near Ocracoke Island. Then cross the Atlantic to London and Paris, where another kind of danger was growing. John Law’s Mississippi Company and Britain’s South Sea Company promised extraordinary riches, sending investors into speculative frenzies before two of history’s most famous financial bubbles collapsed.

Along the way, explore the expanding Atlantic economy, the rise of modern credit and insurance, the transatlantic slave trade, colonial growth, Indigenous power, and the increasingly sophisticated governments and navies that brought the great pirate era under control.