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In this episode, we are joined by Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a bestselling author, journalist, and adjunct professor at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. 

A member of the Explorers Club, her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and The New York Times. She is the author of The Stowaway, the true story of a teenager who stowed away on a ship bound for Antarctica during the Jazz Age, and The Aviator and the Showman: Amelia Earhart, George Putnam, and the Marriage that Made an American Icon, a New York Times Editors' Choice and one of the best books of the year by NPR, The New Yorker, and Smithsonian Magazine.

But before our conversation with Laurie, we set the stage, because the Amelia Earhart story is deeply a Pan Am story.

On January 9, 1929, three defining figures of the aviation age stood on the tarmac of Pan Am's new Miami terminal, Juan Trippe, Charles Lindbergh, and Amelia Earhart. Trippe invited Earhart aboard Pan Am's Fokker F-10A, captained by Edwin Musick, for the inaugural flight to Havana.

At the center of that relationship was Fred Noonan, Pan Am's greatest navigator, who charted the transpacific routes. 

When Earhart assembled her team in 1937, Noonan was the navigator every conversation kept returning to. Trippe extended Pan Am's full cooperation, and Pan Am mechanics spent a week on her Lockheed Electra in Miami. On July 2, 1937, Earhart and Noonan departed Lae, New Guinea, bound for Howland Island - 2,556 miles of open ocean...and vanished.

This episode also features rare archival audio from the Elgen and Marie Long oral history collection...aired publicly for the first time. Their 220-plus hours of recordings are preserved at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum as the Amelia Earhart Project Recordings. Among those voices is Pan Am's Harry Canaday, recorded in 1985 at age 76, reflecting on Noonan, the Pacific survey flights, and the world that produced the Earhart flight.

These recordings are presented courtesy of David Jourdan of Nauticos and the Smithsonian Institution's Amelia Earhart Project.

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A very special thanks to Mr. Adam Aron, Chairman and CEO of AMC and president of the Pan Am Historical Foundation and  Pan Am Brands for their continued and unwavering support!