Founded by the most famous naval mutineers in history, the smallest democracy on Earth sounds like a romantic off-the-grid paradise. But this remote Pacific volcanic rock became a soundproof incubator for one of the modern world's darkest secrets.

This episode is a case study in extreme human isolation, tracing Pitcairn from a navigational mapping error that hid it from the Royal Navy, to its violent founding, to the abuse scandal that shattered its utopian myth. We explore what happens when a tiny society is severed from the rest of the world for centuries.

• How a 330-kilometer charting error by Captain Carteret made Pitcairn the perfect hideout for the Bounty mutineers, who burned their ship
• The brutal early years of violence, and how survivors used the ship's Bible to forcibly stabilize the dying community
• Opera ...