The Pirates Don’t Eat The Tourists: Jurassic Park & Prehistoric Fiction

Roland Squire
  • 5.0 (2)
  • Film History
  • Biweekly Series

From Jurassic Park to Jules Verne, Roland Squire explores how dinosaurs captured human imagination across 200 years of fiction. Season 2 — Stones to Stories — traces prehistoric literature from Victorian fossil hunters to Cold War science fiction, taking in Michael Crichton, Arthur Conan Doyle, and beyond. For fans of Jurassic Park, dinosaurs, natural history, and the books that put teeth into deep time.

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  1. Episode 1

    Stones To Stories: The Book List

    Thirteen books, two hundred years, and one question: how did we get from fossils in the rock to dinosaurs on the page? This is the opening episode of Season 2 of The Pirates Don’t Eat The Tourists. The season is called Stones to Stories, and it traces prehistoric fiction from Victorian fossil folklore through pulp adventure to alien planets full of dinosaurs. Here is the reading list the season is built on: Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth Arthur Conan Doyle, The Lost World Edgar Rice Burroughs, The Land That Time Forgot trilogy Ray Bradbury, A Sound of Thunder Anne McCaffrey, Dinosaur Planet Harry Adam Knight, Carnosaur Michael Crichton, Jurassic Park and The Lost World James Gurney, Dinotopia Greg Bear, Dinosaur Summer Robert T. Bakker, Raptor Red Stephen Baxter, Evolution Ethan Pettus, Primitive War Lee Murray, Into the Mist If you are new to the show, this is the best place to start. Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  2. Episode 2

    Before the Word “Dinosaur” with Natalie Lawrence (author of Enchanted Creatures)

    Charles Dickens opened Bleak House with a megalosaurus waddling up Holborn Hill. This episode traces the stories we told about the bones in the rock before we knew what they were. I’m joined by Bexhill Museum curator Julian Porter and author Natalie Lawrence. For the extended interview with Natalie Lawrence, you can hear it by subscribing to the Plus version of the podcast in Apple Podcasts or clicking the ‘support the show’ link below. A huge thank you to Guy Adams for the opening narration! Guests Julian Porter Curator at Bexhill Museum and author of Bexhill on Sea: A History https://amzn.to/4wL8eQ6 (affiliated link so I might earn commission on items bought) https://www.instagram.com/bexhill_museum?igsh=ZXh5Mm12c2R6Z2pu Natalie Lawrence Author of Enchanted Creatures, a history of the monsters we have made from the natural world https://amzn.to/4dQqtuK (affiliated link so I might earn commission on items bought) https://www.nataliejlawrence.com/ https://www.instagram.com/natalie.j.lawrence Links Mark Witton: Unicorns, dragons, monsters and giants Natalie references Mark’s work in this episode, picking apart the arguments for mythological creatures being derived from fossil discoveries. https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2018/04/unicorns-dragons-monsters-and-giants.html?m=1 Bexhill Museum: Dinosaurs and Geology https://www.bexhillmuseum.org.uk/access-centre/museum-exhibitions-displays/dinosaurs-geology/ Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  3. Episode 3

    The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs with Mark Witton

    Plymouth, summer of 1841. Richard Owen stepped before the British Association for the Advancement of Science and coined a word that would reshape our understanding of the deep past: Dinosauria. This episode follows that word from Owen’s meeting hall to South London, where sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins turned fragmentary bones into life-size stone giants. I am joined by palaeoartist and author Mark Witton for a conversation about the history of the site and then Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs trustee Andrew Brady, and Jurassic Outpost’s Caleb Burnett and I go for a walk through the world’s oldest surviving prehistoric animal park. For the extended interview with Mark Witton, you can hear it by subscribing to the Plus version of the podcast in Apple Podcasts or clicking the ‘support the show’ link below. Guests Mark Witton Palaeoartist, palaeontologist and author Markwitton.co.uk @mark_witton Andrew Brady Trustee of the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, the charity formed in 2013 to conserve and celebrate the geological court at Crystal Palace Park. Follow the ongoing restoration and find out how to support the project. Cpdinosaurs.org @CPDinosaurs Facebook Links Report of the 11th Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Plymouth 1841 https://archive.org/details/reportofeleventh42lond The Art and Science of the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs by Eleanor Michel and Mark Witton All author proceeds go to the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs. https://cpdinosaurs.org/projects/the-art-and-science-crystal-palace-dinosaurs The Dragon of St Paul’s by Reginald Bacchus and Cyril Ranger Gull The 1899 story referenced in the episode, in which a prehistoric creature thaws from a block of ice and runs amok across London. It can be found in Richard Fallon’a brilliant prehistoric story collection here: https://amzn.eu/d/0ceDiAs4 (this is an affiliate link so might earn commission when using) Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  4. Episode 4

    Inside London’s Natural History Museum

    The Natural History Museum is the most visited attraction in the UK, and almost nobody looks up. In this episode I walk through the museum as two things at once: a beloved London landmark, and a working scientific institution with hundreds of researchers behind the galleries. We start in the cathedral-like main hall and work outward, taking in the terracotta animals hidden in the stonework, the Darwin myths that refuse to die, Hope the blue whale, and Dippy the Diplodocus, whose arrival in 1905 kicked off British dinosaur fever. Along the way we get into Hans Sloane and the British Museum roots, Richard Owen’s ambition to build a temple to nature, and what the museum is planning for its 150th anniversary. Guests Alastair Hendry Tom Luker Links Natural History Museum: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/ Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  5. Episode 5

    The History of Science Fiction with professor and author Adam Roberts

    Dinosaurs are real, which is exactly why they are so hard to write. Humans never lived alongside them, so any prehistoric fiction that wants characters, conflict, and drama has to cheat time, bend geography, or invent new science. I’m joined by Adam Roberts, professor of nineteenth-century literature at Royal Holloway and a leading critic of science fiction, to unpack how writers solve that problem and what those solutions reveal about our fears and fantasies. The Book List: Jules Verne – Journey to the Centre of the Earth Arthur Conan Doyle – The Lost World Edgar Rice Burroughs – The Land That Time Forgot Trilogy Ray Bradbury – A Sound of Thunder Anne McCaffrey – Dinosaur Planet Harry Adam Knight – Carnosaur Michael Crichton – Jurassic Park / The Lost World James Gurney – Dinotopia Greg Bear – Dinosaur Summer Robert T. Bakker – Raptor Red Stephen Baxter – Evolution Ethan Pettus – Primitive War Lee Murray – Into the Mist Guests Adam Roberts @adamroberts.bsky.social https://profadamroberts.substack.com/ (Affiliate links below) The History of Science Fiction - https://amzn.eu/d/0g4lGWhJ Pre Order ‘Frankenstein Rex’ - https://amzn.eu/d/09joNsmM Pre Order ‘An A-Z of J.R.R Tolkien’ - https://amzn.eu/d/0bjirGu0 Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  6. Episode 6

    Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864) by Jules Verne with Cian Gill

    In this weeks episode I head underground with The Lost Valley’s Cian Gill to trace how Jules Verne turns geology, ciphers and sheer wonder became the template for every lost world adventure. Along the way we talk about deep time dread, dodgy Victorian translations, and the sea-dragon spectacle that still makes modern monster stories work. Guests Cian Gill @the.lost.valley Congo Book Episode  Congo Movie Episode The Book Journey to the Centre of the Earth F.A. Malleson 1877 Translation Oxford World Classics - William Butcher Translation (affiliate link) Penguin Classics - Frank Wynne Translation (affiliate link) The Ladybird Classics Edition (the one with the music!) Links  Richard Fallon’s ‘Creatures from Another Age’  (affiliate link) Alan A. Debus’s ‘Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction’ (affiliate link) Tales from the Hollow Earth with Dr. Eddie Guimont - Wide Atlantic Weird Podcast (Cian’s other show and well worth a listen!) Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  7. Episode 7 ·  Video

    Sea Dragons And Second Chances with Matthew Myerscough

    Can searching the rocks for sea dragons bring you back from the worst day of your life? In this week's episode I swap the underground for the shoreline with fossil hunter Matthew Myerscough, whose story starts with an avalanche on Yr Wyddfa and leads to the ancient seas of the Severn shores. Along the way we talk about Mary Anning and the two kinds of time travel, a plesiosaur paddle rescued from a Somerset boulder in fifteen pieces, and the fifty million dollar T. rex that sold at auction the very day we recorded. For the first time ever, you can also watch this conversation on YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Guests Matthew Myerscough @severn.sea.fossils The Book In Search of Sea Dragons: A Fossil Hunter's Odyssey - buy direct from Seren Books @serenbooks Links Mudlarking by Lara Maiklem (affiliate link) - the book that inspired Matthew to write his own National Museum Cardiff - new home of the Lavernock pliosaur jaw Guided fossil walks for beginners: Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre  Fossilwise guided walks, Lyme Regis - https://www.fossilwise.com/ Whitby fossil hunting guide - https://www.visitwhitby.com/blog/great-tips-finding-whitby-fossils/ Wight Coast Fossils (Isle of Wight) - https://wightcoastfossils.co.uk/fossilwalks/ The Fossil Collecting Code - https://charmouth.org/chcc/the-fossil-collecting-code/ Next time: The Lost World with Richard Fallon - Wednesday 5th August Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  8. Episode 8

    The Lost World (1912) by Arthur Conan Doyle with Richard Fallon

    In 1912 Arthur Conan Doyle dragged four men to the far edge of the map and brought Dinosaurs back to reality! The Lost World is the first major work to put dinosaurs, rather than marine reptiles, at the centre of prehistoric fiction, and it remains the book that comes out on top whenever I ask a guest for their favourite. I am joined by Richard Fallon, research associate in natural history humanities at the Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences in Cambridge, author of Contesting Earth’s History and currently editing a new scholarly edition of the novel. He has read it roughly twelve times, six of those in the last year alone! Richard takes me through Edwardian palaeontology, the arrival of Dippy the Diplodocus, and the real men behind Challenger, Summerlee, Malone and Roxton. We get into the fake photographs and Doyle’s ambition to publish the whole thing as a hoax, the Piltdown Man connection, and what the manuscript gives away about Roxton’s voice. And we finish on the novel’s colonial logic, its homosocial heart, and the one illustration of Central Lake that Doyle cared about more than any other. Guest Richard Fallon Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/richardfallon.bsky.social Cambridge profile: https://www.esc.cam.ac.uk/staff/dr-richard-fallon Sedgwick Museum of Earth Sciences: https://www.sedgwickmuseum.org The Book: The Lost World (1912) Project Gutenberg, free, and the text Richard reads from in this episode https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/139 Richard’s books Creatures of Another Age: Classic Visions of Prehistoric Monsters, Valancourt Books 2021 (affiliate link) https://amzn.eu/d/07x8bkXX Contesting Earth’s History in Transatlantic Literary Culture, 1860-1935, Oxford University Press 2025 (affiliate link) https://amzn.to/4gbXuUD Reimagining Dinosaurs in Late Victorian and Edwardian Literature, Cambridge University Press 2021 (affiliate link) https://amzn.to/4wysYdo Richard’s writing, free online Professor Megalow’s Dinosaur Bones: Richard Owen and Victorian Literature, The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/richard-owen-and-victorian-literature/ Seen through Deep Time: Occult Clairvoyance and Palaeoscientific Imagination, Journal of Victorian Culture https://academic.oup.com/jvc/article/28/2/143/6759198 Richard on his own book, Making Science Public blog https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2025/04/03/contesting-earths-history/ Links E. Ray Lankester, Extinct Animals (1905), Doyle’s key source and the book Challenger quotes at Malone. Free on Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/extinctanimals1905lank Allen A. Debus, Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction: A Thematic Survey (affiliate link) https://amzn.to/4fCoPPH The Lost World (1925) Free to watch on Internet Archive https://archive.org/details/TheLostWorldCompleteVideoQualityUpgrade Next time: a tribute to Sam Neill with James Mottram, 19 August. Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  9. Bonus

    Road To Rebirth: The Film Episodes

    Before Season 2 begins, here’s every film episode from Season 1 in one place! Season 1 of The Pirates Don’t Eat The Tourists was called Road to Rebirth. Over the course of the season, we worked our way through all seven Jurassic films, from Spielberg’s original in 1993 to Jurassic World Rebirth in 2025.  This compilation brings together all seven film episodes as a single listen. Perfect for catching up before Stones to Stories begins on 3rd June, or for new listeners wanting to understand where the show came from. Episodes included: Jurassic Park (1993) with Derrick Davis · The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997) with Caleb Burnett · Jurassic Park III (2001) with Daniel Stephen · Jurassic World (2015) with Brad Jost · Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) with Samantha Endres · Jurassic World: Dominion (2022) with Sam Phillips and Jack Ewins · Jurassic World Rebirth (2025) with James Mottram and Derrick Davis Send a message to the show. Questions, corrections, favourite dinosaurs Support the show If you enjoy the show then it would mean a lot to me if you could rate & review on Apple Podcasts. It really helps this show find more Jurassic fans like you! Presented and produced by Roland Squire Theme music: Caleb Burnett (@calebcomposed) Cover artwork: @thejurassicartist Find us: @JurassicPiratesPod on Instagram

  10. Bonus • Subscribers Only

    Extended Interview: Dinosaurs, Dragons and Godzilla with Natalie Lawrence (author of Enchanted Creatures)

    In this extended interview Natalie and I talk about her love for the Pangolin and Richard Owen’s fascination with the Aye-Aye.  Enchanted Creatureshttps://amzn.to/4dQqtuK (affiliated link so I might earn commission on items bought) Links  Mark Witton: Unicorns, dragons, monsters and giants https://markwitton-com.blogspot.com/2018/04/unicorns-dragons-monsters-and-giants.html?m=1 Richard Owen and the Aye-Aye https://www.amnh.org/explore/news-blogs/richard-owen-aye-aye

    Extended Interview: Dinosaurs, Dragons and Godzilla with Natalie Lawrence (author of Enchanted Creatures)

  11. Bonus • Subscribers Only

    Extended Interview: The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs with Paleoartist Mark Witton

    I’m joined by palaeontologist, palaeoartist and author Mark Witton to explore the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs in Crystal Palace Park: what they are, why they were built, and how they turned fragments of fossil evidence into full-bodied animals that shaped public imagination for decades. We talk about the Crystal Palace as a 1850s experiment in spectacle and learning, where geology, industry and empire sat right alongside “primordial reptiles”. Mark explains why the public loved the models, how the New Year’s Eve banquet inside an Iguanodon became a masterclass in Victorian publicity, and why the usual story about Richard Owen directing everything does not match the surviving letters. Subscribe, share the show, and leave a review if you want more deep dives into dinosaur history and palaeontology. When you picture a dinosaur, how much of it is science and how much is inherited culture? GuestsMark WittonPalaeoartist, palaeontologist and authorMarkwitton.co.uk @mark_witton

    Extended Interview: The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs with Paleoartist Mark Witton
See All Season 2 (11)

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From Jurassic Park to Jules Verne, Roland Squire explores how dinosaurs captured human imagination across 200 years of fiction. Season 2 — Stones to Stories — traces prehistoric literature from Victorian fossil hunters to Cold War science fiction, taking in Michael Crichton, Arthur Conan Doyle, and beyond. For fans of Jurassic Park, dinosaurs, natural history, and the books that put teeth into deep time.

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