Piracy, Penitentials, Comstock, and Flatware (with Jessica Cale)

In this, the penultimate episode of Season 7 of the PREVAIL podcast, Greg Olear discusses (for a solid 20 minutes, which is probably too long, if we’re being honest) the events of the week: Donald’s earsay, Joe’s departure, Kamala’s ascension. Then, he welcomes Jessica Cale, the host of the DIRTY SEXY HISTORY podcast, to talk about her background as a novelist and historian, the castles of Wales, piracy, syphilis, medieval penitentials, the Oneida colony, the Comstock Act vis a vis Project 2025, the history of abortion, and more. Plus: the safety is off. Jessica Cale is the host of Dirty Sexy History, a podcast that looks beyond the sanitized and the idealized to the dirty reality of human history. She’s the author of ten works of historical fiction, including the Southwark Saga, and numerous nonfiction pieces. She earned degrees in Ancient History, Medieval Studies, and Creative and Media Writing at Swansea University while climbing castles and photographing mines for BBC History magazine. She appears in Netflix’s The Lost Pirate Kingdom.