Treasure Hunt
On the trail of Jean Lafitte and his as-yet undiscovered stashes of gold, silver, and jewels pirated from Spanish galleons in the early 1800s. Each episode follows a documented lead — a contemporary account, a surveyor’s note, a deathbed confession — and tests it against what the record can support.
Lafitte’s Wagons and the Barrow Triangle
Three Louisiana brothers crossed into Texas in 1824 and triangulated the western shore of Trinity Bay — pointing straight at Jean Lafitte’s stronghold across the water. The geography is no accident.
A Whale Hunting Pirates
Lafitte’s contemporaries, the privateer fleets that drained Spain’s collapsing empire, and the strange parallel rise of the whaling industry that operated from the same bays.
A Pirate Hunting Whales
Yul Brynner played both Jean Lafitte and the King of Siam. He cultivated the obscurity of his own origins. The trail follows him from Vladivostok to Wrangel Island and out into open speculation.
Biomarkers and Phytomining
How buried metal speaks through the plants growing above it — biogeochemical prospecting, the Galveston sunflower as possible marker, and the burn pile as artisanal recovery system.
Mums the Word
Flowers concentrate metals more than leaves. Marigolds and chrysanthemums are documented hyperaccumulators. The Texas homecoming mum tradition is the right shape and the right scale to be more than what it looks like.
The Power of Words and Flowers
Two folk phrases that encode what they appear to deny — and the darker side of phytomining, where the same biology that concentrates gold also concentrates poison.
Pirate Lord
Conestoga wagons on shell middens, Sam Houston and Ashbel Smith on Trinity Bay, the Goose Creek Field built on Smith’s old plantation, and a final move past the documented record into the speculative.