Meet a pirate from the Strait of Malacca

A former farmer turned to a life of crime as he looks for easy money, presented by Marketplace.org from American Public Media here.

From the reporter who found the pirate she interviewed:

From the moment I saw them, I could tell these guys were different from the other ex-pirates I'd met. They were scruffy and sunburned; they chain-smoked and spoke in gravelly voices. There was no artifice in the way they talked, no guile.

I told them I wanted to do a story about what it's really like to be a pirate. "Americans have the wrong view," I said. "They either think you are Johnny Depp or you are helping terrorists."

This latter claim is commonly made by American and Japanese officials when they propose to send their own patrols to the Strait of Malacca. The Indonesian government has fiercely resisted such outside involvement. Instead, they prefer to work with the navies of neighboring Singapore and Malaysia.