So before we get into the sort of colonial story, how did you end up writing about dinosaur hunters in Africa?

So my dissertation, it went through a very tangled route, but it was basically on exploring the trope of lost cities, lost civilizations, using Great Zimbabwe as a reference point.

It's kind of like a key way of looking at the trope of how various political cultures can kind of use the notion of lost civilizations, lost cities to build legitimacy for their own regimes.

And as I was looking through this, I mean, Again, like, you know, since I was a child, I've read a lot of these works and actually a children's version of Journey to the Center of the Earth was the first book I ever read on my own.

So to some extent, a lot of these, you know, these things, you know, I was a child when Jurassic Park came out.

So, you know.

big into that as well so always been interested in dinosaurs i'd been vaguely interested in like you know the idea of the mokele mbembe just as a vague idea you know legend of a dinosaur that had no survived in africa and you know growing up i was really into the loch ness monster not so much bigfoot you know which is i think a little rare for americans but nessie that was a big thing for me we have up in uh you know here in vermont or you know just north of where i am in vermont We have Champ, who's kind of often described as our version of Nessie, but really Champ comes first before Nessie.

I'm fascinated.