From Witch Hunts to Hollywood: The Horrifying History of Witches
If you're like me, you've watched witches in movies and TV Shows, grown up reading stories about witches, and maybe even dressed up as a Witch for Halloween.
But where does the witch come from? What's the history that forms the image of the witch in our mind's eye?
Today, we get into all of that.
We dive into the European Witch Hunts, often overshadowed by the Salem trials in popular culture, but vastly more deadly, where over 100,000 people were put on trial and tens of thousands executed.
We get into the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches, a book that warned your neighbors could be working for the Devil, laid out how to prosecute them, and was a massive catalyst for the Witch Trials. My wife, a scientist (and my cohost on this episode) who mixes mysterious liquids and isn’t afraid to speak her mind, would've been a prime witch candidate by this book's standards.
Then, from the earliest witch persecutions in Europe through Salem and the Witch Hunts of colonial America, we explore infamous witch hunters like Matthew Hopkins, prominent accused witches like Catherine Monvoisin, and how torture became a source of "proof." We end off looking at witches through the lens of cinema, with more upbeat portrayals like Practical Magic and darker takes like The Witch by Robert Eggers.
Although the barbaric witch trials of the past are long gone, modern-day witch hunts still infect our society. Accusations without evidence, good intentions as fuel for destructive actions, needing victims to be "likeable" or "compliant," these are all harmful parts of human nature amplified by the witch trials that still sink their hooks into how we treat each other today.
And the only way to unlatch is to learn where that comes from.
Top Takeaways
European Witch Hunts vs. Salem: The Scale Behind the Horror
The Salem witch trials dominate American popular culture, but our conversation puts them alongside the much larger European persecutions. We discuss estimates of approximately 100,000 formal witchcraft prosecutions and 40,000–60,000 executions in Europe between 1450 and 1750. Salem’s concentrated outbreak was devastating, but Europe’s hunts unfolded across centuries and many jurisdictions. Julie reflects on remembering witches more through childhood stories and entertainment than through lessons about those prosecutions. The contrast raises a question that runs throughout the episode: how did something responsible for so much suffering become primarily associated with Halloween costumes, fictional villains, and a single Massachusetts town?
Where Witches Come From: How Fear Turned Neighbors into Enemies
We explore how the familiar Western witch emerged from overlapping religious beliefs, folklore, prejudice, and everyday misfortune. Failed harvests, disease, and a child’s unexplained illness could become reasons to suspect a neighbor of supernatural harm. Religious authorities and demonological writings helped transform local suspicions into the idea of a larger conspiracy serving the devil. Julie argues that blaming witches could offer a comforting explanation for suffering: the world’s troubles came from an identifiable enemy rather than forces people could not understand or control. The conversation shows how an ordinary disagreement could acquire a terrifying new meaning once people believed their neighbors possessed hidden powers.
The Malleus Maleficarum: Heinrich Kramer and the Witch-Hunting Handbook
A central discussion examines the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Hammer of Witches, and its author, Heinrich Kramer. We describe the opposition his prosecutions encountered in Innsbruck before exploring how the book organized claims about witchcraft alongside guidance on investigation and prosecution. Its treatment of women, sexuality, and supposed supernatural crimes produces some of the episode’s most incredulous exchanges. We also discuss how printing helped circulate demonological ideas and give written claims an appearance of authority. The book was one influential contribution to a broader culture of persecution, rather than a complete explanation for witch hunts across Europe.
Why Women Were Accused of Witchcraft: Vulnerability, Suspicion, and Social Control
Julie and I examine why women bore the majority of accusations and executions, while acknowledging that men were also targeted. The discussion considers how poverty, widowhood, conflict with neighbors, and behavior seen as socially unacceptable could leave someone vulnerable. Julie connects these accusations to a broader concern about finding reasons to punish women who speak their minds or resist expectations. We also complicate the idea of a simple conflict between men and women: women participated in accusations against other women, too. Julie’s comparison with school bullying highlights how joining the accusing group can feel safer than risking becoming its next target.
Witch Tests and Torture: When the Search for Proof Produced More Accusations
The episode examines swimming tests, searches for bodily marks, prayer recitation, and judgments about whether an accused person cried. What emerges is a disturbing pattern: behavior that might appear innocent could be reinterpreted as evidence of guilt. We then discuss coercive methods, including sleep deprivation and physical torture, and the incentives they created to confess or name other people. Julie emphasizes that someone desperate for suffering to stop may give an interrogator an answer regardless of whether it is true. The resulting accusations could spread through communities, allowing a process supposedly designed to discover wrongdoing to generate further suspicion instead.
Matthew Hopkins: The Witchfinder General and the Business of Fear
Matthew Hopkins becomes a case study in how someone could turn public anxiety into authority and income. We discuss his self-appointed title of Witchfinder General, his activities during the English Civil War, and his use of methods such as sleep deprivation and bodily examinations. The conversation then turns to the incentives behind paid investigations: discovering more supposed witches could make a community more frightened and more dependent on the investigator. I connect that pattern to businesses that sell certainty to people facing frightening, poorly understood problems. The broader concern is how easily confidence and a persuasive title can be mistaken for expertise.
La Voisin and the Affair of the Poisons: Witchcraft, Scandal, and the French Court
We explore Catherine Monvoisin, better known as La Voisin, whose activities became entangled with fortune-telling, alleged poisoning, and the Affair of the Poisons in seventeenth-century France. The discussion follows allegations reaching the court of Louis XIV and distinguishes sensational claims from what the conversation can establish. We return to the difficulty of interpreting testimony shaped by coercion, gossip, and political interests. An account of La Voisin drinking and singing before her execution prompts a more personal exchange about facing death. Julie admires the apparent defiance while admitting she cannot know whether she would have responded with celebration or fear.
The Salem Witch Trials: Spectral Evidence and the Pressure to Confess
Our discussion of Salem focuses on the unsettling logic of spectral evidence: an accusation could involve someone’s supposed spirit rather than their physical presence. That made ordinary ideas about an alibi difficult to apply. We also explore how confessing and implicating others could improve an accused person’s chances of surviving, while maintaining innocence could leave them in danger. These incentives illustrate how a prosecution can reward the answers it wants instead of reliably discovering the truth. Throughout the discussion, we distinguish Salem’s particular circumstances from the varied European persecutions rather than treating all witch trials as one identical process.
Practical Magic and The Witch: How Cinema Reimagines Witchcraft
We finish the historical discussion by examining two very different films. Practical Magic inspires a lively disagreement with its reputation: we appreciate its ingredients but question whether its darker themes and lighter tone work together. Robert Eggers’s The Witch leads to a discussion about family suspicion, religious fear, and the search for belonging. I focus on how ordinary behavior becomes threatening when a family already believes witchcraft could explain its troubles. Julie interprets the ending through the protagonist’s rejection by her family and attraction to another community. Together, the films show how witch stories can express both persecution and the desire for freedom.
What Witch Hunts Teach Us Today: Good Intentions, Likability, and Moral Courage
The closing conversation asks which habits behind historical persecution remain recognizable today. We discuss how people can cause terrible harm while believing they are helping, and why accusations require careful examination rather than automatic acceptance. I argue that a person’s likability should not determine whether we take their mistreatment seriously. We also compare the printing press with modern communication technologies, which can circulate valuable knowledge alongside misinformation. Finally, I question the comforting assumption that I would have defended an accused person centuries ago. Hoping we would act courageously is different from knowing what we would do when defending someone could put us at risk.
Top Quotes
European Witch Hunts vs. Salem: A Darkly Comic Culture Clash
“That's the difference between American and European education, because you guys were like, ‘We killed 20 witches. We need to talk about it in books.’ And we were like, ‘20 witches? That's a Tuesday for us.’”
— Julie
Witchcraft and Scapegoating: An Explanation for Suffering
“Finding a scapegoat is a way to be just like, ‘No, God is good. God is there. It's just that there are these parasites trying to make it harder for us.’ It's just an easier thing to come to than either God doesn't exist or God wants us to suffer.”
— Julie
Heinrich Kramer: Too Far Even for a Fifteenth-Century Bishop
“When a 15th-century bishop says that's too far, you know you're being misogynistic.”
— Zach
Witch Accusations and Bullying: The Safety of Joining the Crowd
“You join the bully and you are, in a way, protected from their attack by being with them. But at the same time, then you have to attack the one poor person. It is a way to protect yourself, to go with the side of the bullies.”
— Julie
Torture and False Confessions: Saying Anything to Make It Stop
“When you're getting tortured and they're like, ‘I just need an answer,’ and you just want it to stop, you're like, ‘Sure, I'll give you an answer,’ even though it's not the truth. But I just want this to stop.”
— Julie
Matthew Hopkins and the Business of Fear
“Like a lot of sketchy businesses today, they prey on paranoia. They prey on the lack of knowledge of people at the time to say, ‘I'm providing a definite answer for an uncertain problem.’”
— Zach
The Witch: Rejection and the Search for Belonging
“Her entire family ended up rejecting her, and she's looking for that community that she can find in other witches.”
— Julie
Beyond Witch Hunts: Victims Don’t Have to Be Likable
“I think we need to stop needing victims to be likable. People that are extremely unlikable could have bad things happen to them. And we shouldn't color our perception of what they deserve as judgment based on how much we like a person.”
— Zach
The Printing Press and Misinformation: Progress Has a Price
“The printing press spread scientific knowledge. It also spread witch hysteria. And it happens throughout history: social media, the internet. It spreads a lot of good information. It also spreads different types of hysteria, different types of rumors, false information.”
— Zach
Defending the Accused: Would You Really Have Been the Hero?
“It is very easy to assume that you would have been the hero in all the stories that you tell yourself. Whatever century you lived in, people like picturing themselves as super important and these superheroes.”
— Zach
Full Transcript
Julie: That's the difference between American and European education. You guys were like, ‘We killed 20 witches. We need to talk about it in books.’ And we were like, ‘20 witches? That's a Tuesday for us.’ [laughter]
Zach: I'm Zach, host of the Zach Show and today I will be co-hosting an episode with my wife Dr. Julie Labau on witches. If you're like me, you've watched witches in movies and TV shows. You grew up reading stories about witches. You may have even dressed up like a witch once or twice on Halloween. But where does the witch come from? What's the history that forms the image of the witch in our mind's eye? Today, we get into all of that. We dive into the European witch hunts, often overshadowed by the Salem trials in popular culture, but vastly more deadly, where over 100,000 people were put on trial and tens of thousands [music] executed. We get into the Malleus Maleficarum or the Hammer of Witches, a book that warns your neighbors could be working for the devil, laid out how to prosecute them, and was a massive catalyst for the witch trials. My wife, a scientist who mixes mysterious liquids, and a woman who isn't afraid to speak her mind, would have been a prime witch candidate by this book's standards. Yeah. What do you think is the witchiest thing about you?
Julie: I mean, what is a witchy trait outside of being able to cast spells?
Zach: Being a scientist that plays with beakers and potions.
Julie: That's true. [laughter]
Zach: That's what I would have said for you.
Julie: Back in the day, I would have definitely been considered a witch: ‘She has a brain and uses it.’
Zach: Then from the earliest witch persecutions in Europe through the Salem witch hunts of colonial America, we explore infamous witch hunters like Matthew Hopkins, prominent accused witches like Catherine Monvoisin, and how torture became a source of proof. We end off by looking at witches through the lens of cinema from more upbeat portrayals like Practical Magic and darker takes like The Witch by Robert Eggers. Although the barbaric witch trials of our past are long gone, modern witch hunts still infect our society. Accusations without evidence, good intentions as fuel for destructive actions, needing victims to be likable or compliant. These are all harmful parts of human nature [music] amplified by the witch trials that still sink their hooks into how we treat each other today. And the only way to unlatch is to learn where that comes from. Here's our conversation on the history [music] of witches. But first, a quick message. If you're not a premium subscriber, I have news for you. You can now subscribe to The Zach Show 2.0 for bonus episodes, early access, the ability to get your questions on the show, and much more. Head to thezachshow.supercast.com to subscribe today. That's thezachshow.supercast.com. Okay, on to the episode. Welcome to the Zach Show 2026 Halloween Extravaganza witch edition.
Julie: Now my turn.
Zach: My god. How long have you been holding this one in?
Julie: Five to six years at least. It's been a lot of tension. I felt like at the end I kind of pressed a little bit on my vocal cords and as a result some air came out of both ends at the same time. I had like a little laugh out the bottom and the top. I felt it and now I also feel it.
Zach: In honor of the witch episode, would you like to do the honors of casting a spell for the vibe, for the viewers, and for what the outcome of the episode will be? Set the tone. If you don't have it, I can also suggest something.
Julie: Abracadabra, turn this bottle of wine so that it never ends.
Zach: All right, we'll see if it works. If we keep pouring and it keeps refilling. Maybe. Yeah.
Julie: Call me Jesus.
Zach: You turn wine into wine. [laughter] Jesus turns water into wine. Witches turn—I'm going to try to cast a spell.
Julie: Hang on. Because this is this Voldemort's wand?
Zach: That is a wand from Disney.
Julie: Yeah, but it is one of the wands. I think that's Voldemort's wand, because everybody holds their wand like this, and Voldemort is like—breaking his wrist.
Zach: Yeah. I don't know if they have all the grips like that.
Julie: Maybe it's Dumbledore. I'm not sure.
Zach: Double toil and trouble. May we drink so much wine we fart wine bubbles.
Julie: Amazing. That sounded like a real spell. I have to say I just basically put on a wish, but you actually cast a spell.
Zach: I think between the two of us, we should have more than enough wine to last us for this entire episode. Let's hope. To get started with the 2026 Halloween Extravaganza, witch edition, I want to ask you: when was the first time you heard of a witch?
Julie: When did I know I was a witch?
Zach: Yeah. When did you know?
Julie: Well, when I turned 11, I got a letter. No, I didn't. Waited for it.
Zach: I know you did. [laughter] We should say, for people tuning in who may not have tuned into any of the past episodes with Julie, we are husband and wife. We are married. If you are a witch, you've gone five-plus years without allowing me to figure it out.
Julie: Well, you're here, aren't you?
Zach: I'm still here. I could be under a spell right now.
Julie: A very powerful love spell.
Zach: You could have told me many times and just wipe my memory.
Julie: Yeah, I could have.
Zach: But when is the first time you heard of a witch, or the concept of a witch? What was your first memory of that even being a thing?
Julie: I mean, I probably heard of them before, but I would say my first definite memory might be tied to Harry Potter. Like, I grew up with the Harry Potter books. My mom would read to me and my brother Harry Potter. Like, we started I can't remember exactly when the first book came out, but probably like as soon as it was translated into French, we read this. So, like I grew up with Harry Potter as being a thing. I also was really into the show Charmed growing up, which are three sister witches, and I would pretend to be one of them in the playground, and my friends would be one of the other sisters, and we would like cast spells and try to make potions and things like that. So, I was really into witches when I was, I don't know, seven, eight years old. So, like I don't know exactly when I first learned about them, but I know I was really into it pretty right away.
Zach: Yeah. I want to say that my first deep dive into witches was Harry Potter. People don't necessarily think of that as witches and wizards. One of the quotes from Harry Potter is, ‘You're a wizard, Harry,’ but I don't think anyone ever calls a female in Harry Potter a witch.
Julie: No they do.
Zach: Do they?
Julie: Oh absolutely.
Zach: Like is Hermione called a witch?
Julie: Yeah I remember that there's a sentence.
Zach: I thought they just called them female wizards.
Julie: No, they definitely say, ‘Hermione is a great witch,’ or something. That's the difference in Harry Potter: females are witches and males are wizards. I think it might be interchangeable, but I know what you mean. When you think of a witch, it's more that creepy old woman. Actually, maybe my first introduction to a witch was from Snow White. She's the witch you picture: horrendous, disgusting, crooked nose, a big pustule on the nose, an old lady with a hunchback and a cape, being like, ‘Will you take a bite of that apple?’
Zach: Yeah, that was good.
Julie: Don't worry, nothing weird about that.
Zach: I thought you were going to say goodbye. I thought you were going to say, ‘Don't worry, be happy.’ Witch Bob Marley.
Julie: And then she's like, "Oh, an apple from an old lady. How kind. I will eat it right away."
Zach: Yeah. Not in 2026.
Julie: No. But I mean, complete segue, but like I'm only thinking about this because we're talking about Halloween and Halloween candies. And so a few years ago, so growing up during Halloween, I did go trick-or-treating because it was like a short wave of Halloween propaganda happening in France, but I grew up in a really small town, not even a town, like a small village. So most people, there were not that many kids and most people didn't even really have candy. So either they had some candy or they'd be like, "Here, take a fruit or here's five bucks or whatever." but a few years ago when we decided to have kids stop by our apartments to give them candy, I originally bought a big bag of candy and you were like, "No, no, no, no. It has to be individually wrapped." And some of the origin of that was like in the I don't know, maybe started in the 80s, early 2000s, I don't know exactly, but they were like razor blades in apples or whatever, but like.
Zach: That used to be a myth in New York, too.
Julie: Yes, so I think—
Zach: Which you grew up in France, by the way, for listeners, and I grew up in New York where we're recording.
Julie: I don't know how much of this, but I know there was something with Halloween and individually wrapped packages: hidden weapons or bad stuff inside the candy being given out to kids.
Zach: Wow. And so, that was a global myth. It made it all the way to France.
Julie: No, I actually learned about this on a podcast, and this is very American.
Zach: You didn't have it when you were growing up. Okay. The razor and the candy.
Julie: We were like, ‘Sure, take whatever.’ My parents were like, ‘Go off, kids. You don't need me there.’ We'd wander around the village by ourselves and ask, ‘Do you have any candy?’ And they'd be like, ‘Here's a bunch of random crap.’ Anyway, that made me think of strangers giving you an apple, and going back to the cycle of fearing strangers trying to kill us by giving us candy or apples.
Zach: Yeah. Well, I would be immune to the apple razor blade because I was a very fat kid and apples were not appetizing to me if they put razor blades in. I would have turned it down just for pure fatness of like this is not satiating for me.
Julie: If they put blades in the candy bar, you'd be—
Zach: I would have been [expletive] if they put it in a Reese's or a Twix bar. Oh my God.
Julie: You'd be eating it being like, "Oh, I'm bleeding out. Let me eat another one."
Zach: I feel the razor blade nick my gum and then the blood starts gushing and I'm like, "This is a weird flavor. Delicious."
Julie: I like it. Oh my god. I'm a vampire.
Zach: As long as there was chocolate in my mouth, you could get me to do anything. Maybe I shouldn't have said that, because now you can manipulate me much more easily, as long as you have chocolate.
Julie: When you were a kid.
Zach: I would say part of that still applies. Sure. But I had the razor blade myth. I heard that was scary and you heard that when you started listening to American podcasts. I heard of the witch I guess. Yeah. Through to go back to that through Harry Potter. That was my first introduction. But my first because for whatever reason, I don't associate Harry Potter with like witchy things. It's kind of like it's a separate world. And we'll go into the different kinds of witches. But the first time I remember thinking of like, ooh, like this is a spooky witch vibe is hearing about the Salem witch trials when I was younger because we would learn about history in school. I grew up in New York. We're close to Boston. It's northeast. My older brother went to Boston University. So, we would visit areas around Boston. And my brother's eight years older than me, so I dropped him off at college. I didn't drop him off at college, but my parents did, and I was there. And so, we would go visit things close by. And I remember some of it had to do with the witch trials or things that happened in the area around Boston and like a lot of spooky [expletive] And so that made its way into my consciousness and I started thinking about witches more around then.
Julie: See, that's the difference between American and European education. You guys were like, ‘We killed 20 witches. We need to talk about it in books.’ And we were like, ‘20 witches? That's a Tuesday for us.’ [laughter]
Zach: Yeah. And we'll get into that. You guys really got after it when it came to hunting and executing witches.
Julie: In fairness, you guys moved to America—it was like 1800 or something—and you're like, ‘We must kill some women.’ And we were like, ‘We've been doing this since the early ages.’
Zach: Everything Americans learned from the Europeans—whether it came to witch hunting, colonization, or how to make good food—we learned from you guys. You have an entire history, and we take it and make it better.
Julie: Yeah. Because you are us guys technically but in a different country.
Zach: Yeah, we're an extension. A lot of people who live in America, especially colonial times, we're an extension.
Julie: Well, you are expats.
Zach: Yeah, we're expats that did it better. We learned to do it better. We didn't need to kill thousands of witches like you guys in Europe to make a point. We did 20, and then we got out. We did it good and we got out.
Julie: Here's the thing: we did not discriminate, per se, against witches. We killed our politicians. We killed witches. We killed people that did not do the—
Zach: You accused your politicians of being witches. That's how you killed them.
Julie: Well, not even. We just accused them of using all the money when we're broke and then we chop their heads off. Yeah.
Zach: And there are protests going on now in France. Not witch-related, not yet, but history comes in cycles. So, we'll see. We'll see what happens.
Julie: You could say that we are very good at witch hunts.
Zach: Yeah. Literally and figuratively, you guys do it well. For sure. The idea of a witch. Like when you think of the image, the emotion or like the color like what image gets painted in your mind when you hear the word witch? What do you think about first when you hear witch?
Julie: I would say, at first, it's the witch painted by the civilians doing those witch hunts: ‘This is a horrible person who looks horrible.’ But part of the witch trials was also, ‘This woman is too good-looking. She's using her charms. She's like a siren, using her beauty to tempt you.’ She's [unclear]. We'll fix that word.
Zach: Baiting you? Painting?
Julie: I'm thinking of a word that's French, and I think it's English. What's one of the words that you said?
Zach: If it has to do with tricking you—manipulating, tricking.
Julie: By using this different shape. The first thing that pops into my mind is that other movie we just watched with Anya Taylor-Joy, The Witch. Or the one with the kids that run funny.
Zach: The kids that run funny? Weapons.
Julie: Weapons. When she takes off her wig, it's this old lady with long gray hair. Maybe she's balding. She's not a good-looking lady, but she sometimes pretends to be this beautiful creature to entice younglings.
Zach: And she fed off the energy of children. She had a weird kind of vibe.
Julie: Or like Nanny McPhee Hocus Pocus, you know, these kind of like not really pretty older women.
Zach: It is funny, the way they ran in Weapons. I'm assuming the spell the witch casts affected how they ran to her. There had to be something about the ceremony that caused all the kids to run in upside-down Ys. The witch made a conscious decision to have all the kids run towards her in sync, because she controls the spell. She could have made them all run normally.
Julie: I think it's to distinguish the fact that the run was unconscious versus conscious because the thing is you do not technically need your arms to run, but it helps you run better to use your arm. So, it's like swinging your arms back and forth like this helps you in your run in your endurance and all this. So, like if you kind of just let your arms go and the reason why they were kind of going back is because they're running forward so they're just following along. But I think that was this choice to be just like they're unconsciously running.
Zach: But when people sleepwalk, they still swing their arms. I've seen videos of people sleepwalking and they don't just they don't just walk around their house stiff arm. They swing their arms normally. So I think if you were sleep running, you would still run normally.
Julie: But I think your arms do swing somewhat. Even if you try to walk without swinging your arms, your arms do swing. But when you run, when you do this, you're consciously choosing to do this. If you decided to just let your arms go, they would maybe swing somewhat, but they would not do this. You're choosing to do this.
Zach: Yeah, but either way, you wouldn't go with your arms straight back behind you. That's conscious—
Julie: I think it's like it's floating around. Honestly, I think if you're like if I ask you to go run in the corridor in a in a hallway and actively do not use your arms, it will do that. I think the idea is like they're not using their arms.
Zach: I'll agree to disagree with that. We'll have to test it out.
Julie: And we can post a video on this just to do the test.
Zach: All right, fine.
Julie: I'll film you running in the hallway.
Zach: I'll have to remember this in the edit: film me running through the apartment without using my arms.
Julie: Film it in the hallway, like a long run.
Zach: Okay, this is the Weapons running test where me and Julie will run without using our arms consciously and just let them flop around or do whatever they do to settle this argument. If you run without thinking about doing anything with your arms, will it just kind of create that upside-down Y for Weapons or will they flop? Will they do something else? We'll see. One. All right. Now, come back. All right. Let's get into what makes someone a witch. Okay. Because there are different categories of witches. Not all witches are created equal.
Julie: That's right.
Zach: You have the accused witch, which is someone blamed for supernatural harm, right? Often against their own understanding of themselves. An example of the accused witch would be the Rebecca Nurse and Elizabeth Proctor from the Salem Trials. If you've seen The Crucible about the Salem Witch Trials, there is the movie, which I haven't seen, but is on my list called I Am Not a Witch, which is a young girl in Zambia that's branded as a witch and sent to witch camp. So, it's someone who does not recognize themselves as a witch that is then accused and seen as a witch by others. Then you have the magical practitioner. This is someone who performs spells, charms, divination, or other ritual work who may accept or reject the word witch. It's up to them, but they do magic. This could be like Hermione in Harry Potter. This would be like Kiki in Kiki's Delivery Service. What?
Julie: I [expletive] love Kiki.
Zach: Yeah, go on. So she'd be a magical practitioner from Studio Ghibli movie based on the novel by Eiko Kadono, Kiki from Kiki's Delivery Service. Then you have the folkloric witch who is a character in stories, a shape shifter, child eater, nightflyer, dangerous neighbor, or ambiguous helper. Think the witch from Hansel and Gretel. She eats.
Julie: Yeah, that might actually be even earlier knowledge for me.
Zach: She eats the children in the forest.
Julie: Yes, she fattens them up first. [clears throat]
Zach: And then another one from Studio Ghibli that you may know is Yubaba from Spirited Away. Of course, your mom. She's a folkloric witch. She steals names and controls others through the magical contracts with other characters. Then you have the religious or spiritual witch who is someone who deliberately adopts witchcraft as an identity or practice. Many are devil associated and draw power from Satan. So the witch in the woods from the witch. You also have I would make this a subcategory under religious or spiritual witch which is Wiccans. So Wiccans are duotheistic. They recognize two gods which is a mother goddess and a horned god. It symbolizes the balance of nature, fertility and life cycles. The mother goddess and then the horned god represents the wilderness and animals not the Christian devil. So Wiccans are religious but they don't believe in or draw their power from Satan unlike the other type of witch which is like the I guess you'd call them like the satanic witches or not all religious witches draw their power from Satan.
Julie: Right? Because for example in Harry Potter there's no mention of that like they're just born as a wizard.
Zach: They wouldn't be a religious witch. They would be a magical practitioner because there's no spiritual thing ever recognized in Harry Potter. So like a religious or spiritual witch is someone that views their powers as coming from a higher power.
Julie: I see.
Zach: So Wiccans don't like being associated with satanic witches because they don't worship Satan.
Julie: But so who do they worship? Animals.
Zach: They worship the mother goddess and a horned god, which represents—
Julie: The horned god by the way sounds like satan.
Zach: It does, but it represents wilderness and animals.
Julie: I do appreciate that they agree that it's like we don't know if it's good or bad, but it definitely has horns.
Zach: Yeah, it does make it confusing to worship something that's not the devil that also has horns.
Julie: If you read about every religion we have, obviously there are some major differences, but a lot of them have some kind of messiah, messenger, or someone sent from God. There are a lot of things in common. Some are a bit more different: there's not one god, there are multiple gods. The Greeks and the Romans had basically the same ones, but with different names. So I think it's interesting, but not that far from regular religion.
Zach: Yeah. I mean there's definitely a lot of crossover with the religious witch which is that I'm going to say witches witch about 74 more times during this episode—witch, which but there is a lot of crossover to where you have the good and the bad. You have witches that draw their power from Satan or the devil, whatever you want to call it, some dark lord or power. And then you also have Wiccans who are not witches, but they draw their powers from a higher power, the horn god, and the mother goddess. So, that is just kind of like a subtext of the religious or spiritual witch. Okay? But when most people think about witches, they think of the witches that draw their power from Satan. [snorts] kind of like Sabrina or the witch from the movie The Witch. Mm-hmm. Then you have last the outsiders witch which is a healer, a priest or a medium or other religious specialist who outsiders label as a witch sometimes inaccurately or out of hostility. So this could be like Melisandre from Game of Thrones, right? She's the high priestess, but outsiders call her the red witch. Mm-hmm. Some people would even throw Joan of Arc in this category because she called upon a divine guidance, but her enemies saw that as a sinister influence. They didn't call her that name.
Julie: And her allies too eventually, by the way.
Zach: There you go. But she wasn't called the word witch, but she was outcasted and eventually killed for what she was doing and calling upon. And it was viewed in a very sinister manner. Mm-hmm. Having heard all of these categories now, what would you say is the witchiest thing about you? And do you also vibe with like one category over another?
Julie: Okay. I definitely don't worship Satan. I'll put that out there. Check. I don't think I'm an isolated entity either. I don't think I'm a folkloric witch either. I mean, I'd love to be part of an old story, but I think if anything, I would see myself more I mean, again, going bringing back to Harry Potter and growing up with it, like, let's be honest, so many kids were like, we know it's not real, but what if it were? And low-key being like a little bit hoping at 11 years old that maybe a letter will come. So, and also like I love Kiki. I think it's such a sweet story. So if I were to have powers, I would definitely see myself more as a magical practitioner.
Zach: Yeah. So, kind of like a Hermione Granger along those lines.
Julie: I don't want to be like an old creepy lady that eats babies.
Zach: Well, you wouldn't be if you ate enough babies. It would help bring the youth back to your skin.
Julie: Fair enough.
Zach: Which people already do today supposedly. People you know they get blamed which I don't believe actually happens but there's like the theory of people like drinking baby's blood or whatever.
Julie: Or putting it on their face, or the placenta. We were talking about this with some friends—people being like, ‘I'll take the placenta to go, please,’ after giving birth.
Zach: Do they actually do that?
Julie: Yeah, we were talking about it with friends. It's not that common, but some women do it. I don't know if they'll eat it or put it on their skin, but they'll keep the placenta because it's full of stem cells and stuff.
Zach: They just throw it in the crock pot.
Julie: I can imagine women bringing Tupperware to the hospital and being like, ‘I'll take this one to go. Can you get me a doggy bag of my placenta? Thank you.’
Zach: Yeah, [snorts] that I mean that brings, you know, another level to takeout. I feel like hospitals have to start monetizing that with a little drive-thru window where after the women get, you know, they give birth. Yeah. As they're leaving the hospital, their husbands drive around and pick up the placenta on the way out.
Julie: Yeah, exactly.
Zach: Or you get it delivered to the house. I feel like there's a placenta delivery app space that we could take advantage of.
Julie: Maybe.
Zach: If I can speak for you—you didn't say what the witchiest thing about you is.
Julie: Oh the witchiest thing.
Zach: Yeah. What do you think is the witchiest thing about you?
Julie: I mean what is a witchy trait outside of being able to cast spells?
Zach: Being a scientist that plays with beakers and potions. That's what I would have said for you.
Julie: Back in the day, I would have definitely been considered a witch: ‘She has a brain and uses it.’
Zach: Well, that, but also—and we'll get into what causes people to get accused of being a witch—you're a neuroscientist by trade. You've done disease ecology, and you've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in labs with little—
Julie: That's true.
Zach: What are they? Droppers and beakers? If someone from the 17th century saw you with your goggles, potions, and smoke coming up, they'd be like, ‘Light that person on fire. Matter of fact, light that [expletive] on fire. She's a witch.’
Julie: I was a counselor at a science-y, wizard-y camp, and I was the potion teacher.
Zach: A science wizard camp?
Julie: Yes. So, it took place in the UK and it was French kids, but we took them to the UK and half of the staff was British and half the staff was French and we're supposed to talk to them in English during the day. We all had wizard witches names.
Zach: And what was your name?
Julie: I was Professor Amanda Whitefield. I thought that was very witchy. What was cool was that we each had fake wizard names, but we also had our real names, and the staff knew each other's names. We had walkie-talkies and had to make sure to call each other by the right name. The kids were trying to find out what our names were. I was the potion master. I had a science experiments class where we made lava lamps and slime. I would explain the science behind it, and I called it a potion class. So that's something very witchy I've been doing for a long time.
Zach: Yeah, that is very witchy.
Julie: And I train future witches and wizards.
Zach: You did. They're now walking around.
Julie: I am now, too. That's basically what I'm doing with [unclear organization name]: doing science experiments with kids.
Zach: Yeah, you are.
Julie: I'm training the next generation of wizards.
Zach: What do they say?
Julie: Beware, mortals.
Zach: What do they say? Magic is just science we don't understand yet?
Julie: Pretty much. I like that. I don't know who said that, but I like that a lot.
Zach: I definitely didn't come up with that. If you want to cast a spell on our viewers and make them think I did, that'll make me seem way smarter than I actually am. I'm smart.
Julie: Yeah, the cameras believe you now.
Zach: I have a nine-inch penis.
Julie: I think that did it.
Zach: Oh, no. Nothing happened. You might have to cast that one. I don't have the special powers. I know you get very uncomfortable with sexual things, so I'll move on. You have a public profile. Let's move on to Cut that out. [laughter] Let's move on to something else. Well, first, what do you think is the witchiest thing about me?
Julie: Oh, to be fair.
Zach: To be fair, what is the witchiest thing about me?
Julie: Wait, what do you think the witchiest thing about you is? I'll see if I agree.
Zach: Probably podcasting because I talk all the time.
Julie: And you talk to yourself.
Zach: I talk to myself.
Julie: Wait, it's so funny. [laughter] I forgot to tell you this. I have these kids I teach, obviously, and there's one who's probably five. That's a very normal age to have an imaginary friend. I was teaching my class and helping her with something, and she turned away and started talking to someone who wasn't there. I was like, ‘Okay.’
Zach: Did you say who are you talking to?
Julie: I mean I knew like I know that kids that age have imaginary friends and that's totally fine but watching it in person when you don't have kids yourself that's [expletive] weird.
Zach: Sure, it's bizarre, but also, be inquisitive. Ask her who she's talking to.
Julie: Yeah. Maybe next time if that happens again I'll be like who's your friend?
Zach: For your own safety, wouldn't you want to know who she's talking to?
Julie: She's five. What's she gonna do?
Zach: Yeah but she'll be six. The friend the friend could be like a 40-year-old man.
Julie: There's actually a bit in Stranger Things. [laughter]
Zach: I feel like that could be a bit: a pedophile ghost.
Julie: There's actually something in Stranger Things in the last season, spoiler alert, where the this character is talking to kids and like enrolling them in his world and basically it's like he's much older. He's like probably 35 and he's talking to these like 10-year-old kids, but nobody sees them. So they're all like, "Oh, it's probably like an imaginary friend, but it's like a 35-year-old man talking to 10-year-olds."
Zach: Yeah, like I said—
Julie: Like, ‘Come play in my house.’
Zach: Yeah, like I said, that is a that is something. There's a lot of attention on pedos, but not enough attention on pedo ghosts. You can't just stop fighting them when they're alive. When they when their spirits come back, they masquerade as imaginary friends for children. I want to see a Ghost Hunters pedo edition [laughter] where they where they purposely just try to catch pedophile ghosts. I would watch the [expletive] out of that. [laughter] The guys, Ooh, I'm six years old. Ooh, I'm just like you.
Julie: Just catfishing ghosts. [laughter]
Zach: Yeah, catfishing pedo ghosts. [laughter] [gasps] It's hilarious.
Julie: The detector is like, ‘Oh no, it's a pedo one.’
Zach: Yeah, you've got a special pedo sensor. We've got to send that idea in. I don't know who makes the ghost shows—AMC or—
Julie: TNT-P-E-D-O.
Zach: There you go. [laughter] The channel. I think the witchiest thing about me is that I talk a lot, and I occasionally talk to myself. But let me clarify: talking to myself or talking a lot?
Julie: He's talking a lot.
Zach: Sure. I would say podcasting is more male-tilted, for sure. But talking to myself—I have a lot of ideas for podcasts, and I write.
Julie: Wait, I know what the witchiest thing about you is.
Zach: What?
Julie: [laughter] You think you're the funniest. You are your own biggest fan in terms of your jokes. You'll just be standing around, think of something funny, and laugh to yourself like you just told yourself an amazing joke. You're like, ‘You're so funny.’
Zach: Well, I laugh. I don't say the second part. I don't say you're so funny.
Julie: You say it in your head.
Zach: Sure. [laughter] Obviously, I don't say it out loud. That would be crazy. You hear it. You hear my thoughts. So, you might be a witch.
Julie: Yes.
Zach: But I do talk a lot. But when I talk to myself, I come up with a lot of video ideas. Like I was saying, I write for podcast, like I write out a lot of ideas. I also do writing for videos and stuff. So like a lot of times when you hear me talking, I'm more just like saying things out loud to make sure they feel natural on camera. So I'm like talking to myself, but I'm not like, "How are you doing today, Zach?" "Oh yes, I'm doing fine."
Julie: Something witchy about you is that you're weirdly good at cooking. You don't have a lot of cooking experience, but you'll just be like, ‘If I put—’
Zach: My cooking experience is less than 15 hours on earth.
Julie: Exactly, and you make really good stuff. You're like, ‘These things would go great together.’ It's kind of potion-adjacent.
Zach: Yeah. You better watch out or I might make you something good. Oh, [screaming] [gasps]
Julie: Cast me.
Zach: I'll cast you something later. All right. So, okay. Let's get into the idea of the witch. And where it comes from. So I want to preface this before we get into the overall idea. We are going to be focusing on the European/colonial idea of the witch. If we went into all of the global different types of witchery, we'd be doing a five-hour podcast. But I just want to make clear to people that are listening or watching, we're going to be focusing on the European and American colonial version of the witch. There's also many types of witchcraft and witches in Africa. Azande witchcraft is a big African tradition. There's the mākutu from the Māori tradition. There's the goo, the gu practices in China that people associate as like witchcraft-adjacent and there's sihr, which is sorcery. It comes from like the Islamic tradition of witchcraft but we are going to be focusing on essentially the western witch for again brevity of time. Maybe in future Halloweens we'll cover more aspects of it.
Julie: Even in the US, because it is such a big melting pot, there are so many different types. When I think of the American witch, it's the Salem trials.
Zach: It's essentially an extension of the European witch.
Julie: No, no, no. Yeah, there's that, but then there's also the New Orleans style witch like Marie Laveau, which are like voodoo. And so that's also very much witchcraft.
Zach: Voodoo is different than witchcraft.
Julie: But she was considered a witch, I'm pretty sure.
Zach: I would have to look more into it. I don't know her specifically. In my research, I do know that I saw that voodoo comes from Haiti and a lot of people got unfairly condemned as quote unquote witches because voodoo would be associated as witchcraft. And so it's kind of like a demeaning label. So I can't speak for voodoo. I don't know a lot about it. But I do know that it has been unfairly categorized as witchcraft.
Julie: Is it though? Because if you like put pricks into a voodoo doll and someone feels pain or maybe die, I'm sorry. That's freaking witchcraft.
Zach: I agree, if that's voodoo. But my superficial understanding of voodoo is the dolls. I know two things about voodoo.
Julie: So in Pirates of the Caribbean, she was a witch. She was also the goddess of the sea.
Zach: Again, I know two things about voodoo. I know it comes from Haiti and I know they have dolls. Yeah, that literally that's all I know. So, I can't make any judgments about that. Where does the witch come from? The idea of the witch, again, the western witch we're focusing on. Let me paint a picture for you.
Julie: Oh, please.
Zach: Picture a failed harvest, a sick child, a neighbor accused of witchcraft. During the late Middle Ages, theologians portrayed witches more and more as members of a conspiracy serving the devil, transforming localized fears into a wide-scale threat to Christianity.
Julie: So, it's as old as religion, basically. Like, when we're like, God is here looking after us. There's also witches trying to mess it up for us.
Zach: Witchcraft was widely seen as a threat to classic Christianity. It was seen as an inverse.
Julie: From the moment we're like, ‘Christianity is a cool religion; let's spread the word,’ to ‘There are witches among us that we need to destroy’—what was the time difference?
Zach: So the main timeline we're going to be talking about is the late 15th 16th and 17th century. So like late 1400s into the Salem witch trials were 1692 to 1693. All right. There were other witch trials around the world. I think the last one was around like the 1780s outside of America. I forget exactly where that was, but think like late 1400s to late 1600s. That's like the sweet spot of witchcraft. Okay. During the late Middle Ages, theologians portrayed witches more and more as members of a conspiracy serving the devil, transforming localized fears into wide-scale threats to Christianity. Church authorities sought to define legitimate contact with the supernatural, distinguishing approved prayers and miracles from forbidden practices. Witchcraft became entangled with heresy, a direct betrayal of the church. Older prejudices also fed the idea of the witch. Accusations against witches echoed anti-semitic stories about Jews secretly attacking Christian society. Even the hooked nose of the witch overlaps with anti-semitic caricatures. Then there was sex. Elite men of the church became obsessed with women supposedly sleeping with demons and that sexual fixation shaped the majority of accusations being aimed at women. Also, expanding witchcraft laws and judicial powers allowed authorities to investigate suspects and across much of continental Europe extract confessions through torture. Those confessions generated more and more accusations. Religious conflict, warfare, disease, hardship of the times only made the idea of the witch more frightening throughout Europe. English settlers would carry witchcraft beliefs and laws to colonial America where Puritan fears of Satan combined with local rivalries, frontier battles, and political upheaval helped to fuel Salem's 1692 trials. So essentially, you have all these things. You have the trope of women being devious sexual beings and clashing with the church, sleeping with devils. You have anti-semitic tropes. You have a bunch of conflicts going on. Don't like don't forget this. Whatever we want to put the blame on, this is this is a particularly tumultuous time in history. Again, disease is spreading like wildfire. People are warring.
Julie: It's trying to find an explanation about why the world is collapsing around them.
Zach: Yeah. There's war, there's disease, there's everything you could think of. Then you have stereotypes of women.
Julie: I think it's also a demonstration that people are looking for a scapegoat, because it's so much harder to ask, ‘Is our God actually not here? Or does our God willingly want us to go through this?’ Finding a scapegoat—witches and whatnot—is a way to say, ‘No, God is good. God is there. It's just these parasites trying to make it harder for us.’ That's easier to come to than either God doesn't exist or God wants us to suffer.
Zach: Yeah. I think also like with Christianity, part of being a Christian, and I was raised Catholic, which is a part of Christianity, God puts people through trials and tribulations. Sure. He tests you. So, but to some extent, so witches are in a way seen they're first of all, they're seen as coming from the devil. They're associated with satanic rituals, calling upon Satan for their power. And at the same time, God is also known to put people through challenges. Sure. To get through the suffering of life. And especially in colonial America, most people were Puritans. The suffering was considered the only way of life. That was all those people knew. So witches were part of that.
Julie: No, I hear you. But at the same time, I think God is supposed to put you through challenges. But it's just like if it's like everyone's dying, whether it's war, diseases, and all that. It's just sometimes may feel like what's the point of God putting us on this earth if it's to then wipe us all out. Yeah, I feel like it's it was a way I mean I totally agree with you and like I think that's the way that a lot of people you know deal with you know that person who only did good around her got cancer and died. It's just like everything she did was always to helping others and she died of this horrible disease and that's just like why would God do that? And it's just like this is a challenge. This is for us to grow. Like it's finding reasons into that but at the same time I think when you have like a globalized phenomenon where like whether it's diseases or war or all of the above like sometimes like today with like climate change and the political climate it does feel that there's so much going on that it's like I mean I feel as an atheist that the world is somewhat closing up around us. I don't think there's an external force doing that. I think we're doing this fully. But at the same time, like I can see how redirecting that fear, that anxiety towards something else can help you deal with it.
Zach: People were living through extremely difficult times, and with the existence of witches and witchcraft, they're suddenly given a reason for their suffering and their fears. Let me finish. People suffered a lot during that time period. Not that every time period doesn't have its own difficulties, but I'm glad I'm alive in 2026 and not living through the late 1400s to the late 1600s. That was a time of terrible disease, terrible war, and expansion.
Julie: And to be in this country, because obviously some people in some countries are going through hell as well.
Zach: And also being born white would have helped a lot. Who if you spun the dial and you came back as indigenous in America, you would kind of be [expletive] during that time period.
Julie: But arguably today, you are still somewhat [expletive]
Zach: But you're [expletive] with a casino.
Julie: Well, some of them. No, it's still not great.
Zach: Yeah, I'm certainly not going to advocate for the way that we treat indigenous people now is perfect and good. And there's more things we could do obviously, but not to get sidetracked.
Julie: Yes, sure.
Zach: What I was saying is that people are living through extremely difficult times and they're suddenly given a reason for their fear and suffering. And you said two things which are cancer and climate change. If you were going through those things in let's say the mid-1500s in Europe and your daughter let's say got cancer. Cancer—you know, there was no like microbiology no biopsies going on. So, cancer, it was just a thing that was making your daughter very sick. And you might think something like because there's so much witch stuff going on. Your husband might say, "Have you gotten in a quarrel with anyone recently?" And you might say, "Oh, I was walking to the store and John gave me the stink eye last year." And the husband would go, "John gave you the stink eye?" Like John's wife Claire also was accused of being a witch last year. Maybe John doesn't like you and asked his wife Claire to cast a spell on our daughter. And then you go, "Oh, that's it." Like I think Claire might be a witch. She casts a spell on our daughter and in reality she's dying from cancer, but to you she's just getting sicker and paler and skinnier. Dwindling health every single day. And then same thing for climate change. Crops were a huge thing during that time period. Let's say the earth, you know, it's getting we're in a warming trend, but let's say and we didn't have the technology. Sure. But let's say it's a particularly bad crop year. Let's say you grow corn and one year your corn just doesn't grow. Same thing. You go, "My corn's not growing. The past five years I've had an abundance of corn. What is going on in reality? It could just be that your soil is overused and you haven't been rotating your fields properly. It could just be it's a particularly hot year and terrible for corn, but you go oh like let's say Patrick didn't have a corn yield the year previously and he got you know Sarah hung as a witch the year before. You might be thinking, "Yeah, someone cast a spell or someone did something or someone there's some sort of dark magic in the air that's causing my crops to be terrible that's causing my daughter to be sick." That's the mentality back then.
Julie: Here's something I really want us to talk about. Both times, you've mentioned husbands having an issue and their wives being the ones to cast the spell. Why is it always women casting the spells, doing the malice? I think it's important to point out that it was a war on women. If a woman is too educated, she's a witch. If a woman talks a little too much, she's a witch. If a woman looks a little weird—again, I feel like it was another way to discriminate against women and be violent against them. ‘She's a witch. Now I finally have an excuse to kill that woman, to be violent against her, to drag her through the mud.’ Correct me if I'm wrong, but were men ever accused of being witches?
Zach: We'll get into the numbers, but in Europe, around 100,000 people were accused of being witches. Forty to sixty thousand were killed, and about 20% were men, 80% women.
Julie: How about in the states?
Zach: In the States, it was much less. We'll get into the Salem witch trials. Twenty people in total were killed. I have to check the stats on the women.
Julie: In all of the US, only 20?
Zach: No, I'm talking about Salem witch trial. It was still not a lot. Europe, we'll get into it.
Julie: I mean the East Coast in general, not just Salem—the area where people came on the Mayflower, before people moved all over.
Zach: I'll double-check to make sure, since we're talking about it. In colonial America, it was 36 to 40 people, so about half of those were Salem: 14 women, five men. We'll get into this.
Julie: And were these men straight? Because I feel like that's probably also a thing. ‘He likes men—he's a witch.’
Zach: For sure, if you were an outed gay man in the 1500s—
Julie: I don't think you were trying to be outed. I think someone might—
Zach: If someone found if you came home and your husband was, you know, bending over a [expletive] like the another male shopkeeper in town, you might be like, "My husband's been bewitched or something." but let me address what you said, which is that women were the ones bearing the brunt of witch accusations and executions, which is true. 80% of the people killed were women. A lot of that had to do with what you alluded to, which is that women were executed, especially the ones who were seen as outsiders in society in some way. So older women, particularly without children, were a lot of the accusations. There were.
Julie: What was considered an older woman without children?
Zach: Forty. Thirty or forty, I'm sure.
Julie: Yeah. If you didn't have your kids at 15, you were a witch.
Zach: I'm sure it would fit the bill. Let me get into Okay, so yeah, if you are a woman without kids, a woman who speaks her mind, you know, a mouthy woman, a woman who curses, you could be accused of witchcraft, a woman who's poor, a woman who's widowed, essentially a woman who doesn't conform to society in some way.
Julie: That sucks. It's just like my husband died. Now I have no way to make money because I'm a woman. I'm not supposed to be the one working. I'm taking care of the kids. And now I'm a witch.
Zach: Yeah, and now you're a witch. How does that make you feel as a scientist who's also a woman—
Julie: And speaks loudly?
Zach: And speaks her mind. For sure.
Julie: I mean, I'm glad.
Zach: What comes to mind when you hear of like all of these, you know, women being accused of witchcraft?
Julie: I mean, like you said, you know, like I'm glad to be from this century or at least yeah, this century and at a time where it's a lot more okay for women to speak their mind and be scientists and all that. It's still not a perfect world for women. Far from that. But it's definitely been at the very least I can ask my husband to do something for me without being burnt at the stake. So, I'm grateful for that. Yeah.
Zach: And as of now, I have not thrown any accusations of witchcraft.
Julie: It makes me very angry and sad that this was part of the trope—what excuses we can use for violence against women. Who knows? Maybe there are actual witches out there, but those women who were hanged or burned probably weren't. They were just different, and they didn't blindly obey. I think it ties in with the whole hysteria thing. I don't know if you've read about this, but especially in the '50s, there was this whole thing about hysteria, specifically women being mad. They used this fake disease as an excuse to do a bunch of trepanation and all this to make women—
Zach: What's trepanation?
Julie: It's digging a hole into the skull. This guy was doing it behind the eye as well. I can't remember his name, but he was doing dozens a day.
Zach: So it's like a lobotomy almost.
Julie: Basically, yeah. He lobotomized women and made them extremely docile. Husbands would be like, ‘My woman is acting up. Send her to the doctor.’
Zach: My wife is speaking. Can you drill a hole in her skull, please?
Julie: She's unhappy because being a wife and a mother isn't enough. They would send her to the doctor for a quick lobotomy, and then she'd be super docile because her prefrontal cortex was essentially dead. It would be brain-dead women doing basic tasks for the household, and they'd be like, ‘Great, she's cured. She's doing everything I want. She's not complaining about sex and cleaning up the kitchen.’
Zach: There's this woman in my town. She's 34 with no kids. Can you drill a hole in the back of her skull, please?
Julie: But I think it goes back to it, which is like as soon as a woman decides to have a mind of her own, not just exists to please a man, she's crazy. Hysteria, she's a witch. Further back, I guess at some point they were like, we can't just keep burning women every time. We think they're crazy. So then we just call them crazy and be like, well, we just we'll just do a little quick lobotomy and call it a day. And now it's we're like, okay, I guess we can't do that either. But it's like, how are you gonna be judged by society? Are you gonna lose your job? Are you gonna like find a man? Because you're like actually talking your mind. And luckily, there's a lot of men like you who are not [expletive] But there's also some men that still.
Zach: Well, I was also born in the '90s—the 1990s. Who knows what I would have been like back in the 1500s?
Julie: Of course, but you'd be surprised how many guys, consciously or subconsciously, still carry those ideas. I'm going to be honest: I feel like some baggage you carried when we started dating has been shaped as we dated and you learned more about the experience of being a younger woman. Obviously, you grew up with a really cool mom who had her own company, so I think that shaped you in a positive way as well. But there are a lot of guys who say, ‘I'm progressive. I think women should have the same rights,’ while subconsciously—it's not even me taking a hit at these guys. A lot of people, even women, grow up with preconceived notions about what a woman should be or do, or how she should act. It's very hard to dissociate from notions that have been building for centuries and generations. It ties back to finding excuses to shut women up, keep them under control, and keep them docile. Either they're a witch or they're crazy. There's always something, and it's upsetting. You can see by the numbers: if men acted this way, most of them would be fine. I'd love to know more about the men who did get killed as witches. Were they homosexuals? Were they of color? What was it about them that led to them being killed? Most men would skate by and be fine.
Zach: Yeah. So I didn't do as much digging into the men who were killed for witchcraft because again the majority were women. I do know that Giles Corey was one of the men who was killed in the Salem witch trials and he was pressed to death.
Julie: Oh gosh.
Zach: Yeah. He was pressed to death in the Salem witch trials.
Julie: What did they use for that?
Zach: I think they used heavy wood and stones. Giles Corey pressed to death.
Julie: They dug a hole and threw stones at him until he was crushed to death?
Zach: He was crushed to death. He endured crushing weight of stones for days without entering a plea.
Julie: Oh my god.
Zach: According to historical accounts, Giles Corey's only words during the ordeal were more weight.
Julie: That is nuts.
Zach: Yeah.
Julie: Is there any reason why he was suspected of being a witch? Because he was a masochist?
Zach: Let me search: why were most men accused?
Julie: I mean, actually, I think this is a good point as well to kind of like tie even more back to what I said where when I said like women either were witches or they were crazy. There's also this big phenomenon and I think that's kind of like what may have happened with Joan of Arc as well where mental health is a very new thing and understanding like even like I remember sitting at the society for neuroscience conference a few years back. It was the 50th anniversary of the society which you know it was like in 2021 or 22. Sure. And it only been 50 years since the society for neuroscience which is the biggest society for brain science that exists. So imagine that means that like up to the 50s60s we knew essentially nothing about brain and neuroscience which seems crazy like it's so recent that we've actually learned about the brain and neuroscience and there's still so much to learn. But a big thing was that you know like this is where we're like poking holes in the brain being like what happens when I do this or let me lobotomize someone and see what happens. And I think for a really long time people did not know what was going on with people that were mentally ill that schizophrenia or things like that.
Zach: I mean that was for sure part of the witch trials as well exhibiting signs of mental illness.
Julie: For the case of Joan of Arc, there have been several discussions in the neuroscience community about what could have gone on. Sure, there's a possibility—let's put it out there—that she was actually magic and talking to God. But from a purely biological neuroscience perspective, where we don't think God was involved, some people have mentioned epilepsy. When we think of epilepsy, we think of the big shakes and everything, but there are a lot of—
Zach: Grand mal.
Julie: Exactly. Very good, thank you. But there are a lot of different forms of epilepsy. Sometimes you're zoning out for a while; that's still an episode. Some people thought it was schizophrenia, or manic episodes where she felt she was talking to God—hallucinations. Some have talked about—I'm blanking on it now—but basically, different forms of mental illness that could have caused her to see these things and truly believe they happened, because in her head they did. Obviously, we didn't know what to do. I have a real-life example: one of my great-aunts, whom I've never met, was definitely schizophrenic and had some other stuff going on. You've met my other great-aunt, who was born in 1926.
Zach: Suzanne, 100 years old.
Julie: Her sister was the one who was sick. Being born in the 1920s, growing up in the '30s, '40s, and '50s, living through World War II and the Nazi campaign in very rural France—they didn't know what to do with her. She was locked up in a room a lot, and it's horrific. A lot of it was, ‘There's this crazy person. I don't know what's going on with her. Nobody understands. She's possessed. There's something wrong with her. Maybe she signed her name in the Book of the Dead, but there's something wicked wrong with her.’ Some of it could be mental illness that you don't understand. You don't know what's going on in their head. They're behaving oddly; they're a witch.
Zach: People having fits.
Julie: Maybe that was a big part of it: people with mental illnesses that we didn't understand must have been witches. Then that evolved to hysteria, which sometimes wasn't even mental illness. It was just a woman being a woman and expressing herself.
Zach: It was a wide spectrum of accused. Let me get into why some of the men were accused, since you've asked. Men were a small percentage of people accused and executed. They were typically accused for association with knowledge and literacy, because literacy was very rare during that time; roots in heresy or the Inquisition trials; being seen as a heretic, someone who went against religion. Was Galileo burned?
Julie: I don't think so.
Zach: What happened to Galileo?
Julie: They were like, "Wait, you were actually right."
Zach: I'll look that up after.
Julie: I don't know if they realized he was right when he was—
Zach: Vagrancy—being homeless during that time period, on the margins of society. Social disruption. Similar to women in that way.
Julie: The homeless thing is crazy to me, because—
Zach: Beggars and outsiders.
Julie: Why would you choose to be in this position if you had powers to not be in?
Zach: That would have been my argument in court: why would I be living on the street if I had special powers? I probably would have been hanged the next day, because it didn't really matter. Or political scapegoating: high-ranking officials were accused of witchcraft. Essentially, two people running for prime minister, and one says, ‘You're a witch,’ and the other says, ‘No, you're a witch.’ It's a tactic to win an election.
Julie: Wait, I'm curious now like when did magicians kind of started? Because I feel like it would be like a really crazy thing where they would be like hunting for witches and be like, I can do magic, but I'm a man.
Zach: I don't know when magicians started, but before we move on—sorry. It's good; we're getting on some interesting tangents. Okay, Galileo was tried and found guilty of heresy for saying the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.
Julie: Was he killed for it?
Zach: He spent the rest of his life under house arrest. [gasps] Was not killed, but he would be like an archetype of a male witch. Someone who went against the Catholic Church teachings.
Julie: Wow. I mean, that makes sense. Darwin probably went for something like that.
Zach: Do you want to hear about the book that lit the fire of witchcraft? That sparked—not the entire thing, but a significant portion of witchcraft accusations?
Julie: So, is it the Bible? [laughter]
Zach: No. It is Malleus Maleficarum. Have you ever heard of this before?
Julie: No. Sounds like a spell.
Zach: It does. I was about to pick this up and say it, but I don't want to do that.
Julie: I mean, I know ‘mal.’ [laughter]
Zach: I don't want to tempt anything.
Julie: ‘Mal’ comes from—it's bad. Like, ‘mal’ is bad.
Zach: So, Malleus Maleficarum, let me tell you about it. Imagine a book that tells you that your neighbors could be working for the devil and then lays out how to prosecute them.
Julie: Is it the Nazi handbook?
Zach: No, it's the Malleus Maleficarum, which means the hammer of witches, published in 1486 and written by Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican friar and inquisitor, which is a Catholic judge. Kramer wrote Malleus Maleficarum after his witchcraft prosecutions in Innsbruck, Austria, collapsed amid opposition from the local bishop. Kramer accuses a woman of being a witch. She says she's an aggressive independent woman who is not afraid to speak her mind. The bishop of the town says, "You don't have enough proof." Quote, "You presume too much that has not yet been proved." Kramer then goes away, writes the Malleus Maleficarum in response, and in the book, Kramer defends his belief that witches were real people that allied themselves with the devil and were causing real world harm. He urged authorities to take the witch threat seriously. Malleus Maleficarum became a massive catalyst for the modern witch trials in Europe and later America by taking the scattered witch folklore and codifying it into one how-to guide for mass prosecuting suspected witches. Witches were among us. They called upon Satan and women were more likely to be witches because of their moral weakness and sexual appetite is what Kramer wanted everyone to believe. The books combined explanations of witchcraft with practical guidance on accusations, interrogations, torture, and sentencing. It gave readers a framework for transforming suspicion into prosecution and treating coerced confessions as fact. The Malleus Maleficarum and other demonological texts began to spread around the world like wildfire in the mid to late 15th century with the advent of the printing press. From the late 1400s through the 17th century, the printing press created a consistency of the witch in the western world from Scandinavia to Boston.
Julie: Aka social media at the time.
Zach: It was the social media of the time. It was a lot slower—the Twitter of the time. The printing press created a consistency of the witch in the Western world, from Scandinavia all the way to Boston. Around the same time as the Malleus Maleficarum, Pope Innocent VIII made an official decree confirming the existence of witches and approving imprisoning and punishing them. This guy was rejected by the bishop. He had this witch theory and said, ‘This person in town is a woman who speaks her mind.’ The bishop goes, ‘Not enough proof.’ So he goes away.
Julie: At least, thank God for that. It was like, ‘You can't just [expletive] burn at the stake any woman who speaks up.’
Zach: When a 15th-century bishop says that's too far, you know you're being misogynistic, right?
Julie: How progressive that bishop was.
Zach: So the bishop goes away—or no, sorry, Kramer goes away. He was told by the bishop, ‘Not enough proof. Try again. Keep looking.’ He goes off and writes a 200,000-word book.
Julie: Oh my god.
Zach: The book spreads around, and everyone goes, ‘It's in a book.’
Julie: You hate the [expletive] without telling me you hate the [expletive], right?
Zach: You write a 200,000-word book to get her executed.
Julie: Did she turn him down? It sounds like the guy was like, ‘Hey, do you want to hook up?’ And she was like—
Zach: All I know is it was apparently—and these are his words, not mine—a mouthy, aggressive woman who spoke her mind.
Julie: Sounds like she turned him down, honestly.
Zach: Aggressive in the 1500s was probably just rejecting another dude.
Julie: May I rape you? No. That [expletive] we need to burn her. She crazy.
Zach: No rape. Witch. A witch. So yeah, he writes this 200,000-word book. It spreads around Europe because of the printing press.
Julie: It needs to be in a dictionary under petty.
Zach: Yeah. [laughter] He spent hundreds and hundreds of hours to get this woman accused of being a witch.
Julie: What's his name again?
Zach: Heinrich Kramer.
Julie: Heinrich Kramer. Use petty in a sentence. He blew my car up after I said hello to his friend. Just like Heinrich Kramer.
Zach: Let's get that put in the dictionary. Let's petition for it.
Julie: Wait, we need to reach out to one of my favorite podcasts, Petty Crimes, and have a shirt made: ‘Petty like Heinrich Kramer.’
Zach: Petty like Heinrich Kramer. That's the ultimate form of petty.
Julie: I mean, writing a whole-ass book.
Zach: I don't know if I know a pettier example than getting rejected by the town bishop and being like, ‘Bitch, I'm going to go away for two years.’
Julie: I will not stop until you burn.
Zach: ‘I'm going to go away for a couple of years and come back with 200,000 words.’
Julie: Not stopping until there's a noose around thy head.
Zach: And don't forget, the printing press was new at that time. Books were a shiny new tool. It was like the way people looked at social media: ‘What is this? You can have a thing in your hands to read?’
Julie: Witchery. What is this witchery?
Zach: Heinrich Kramer should have been accused of witchery for what—
Julie: The guy who made the printer should have, maybe.
Zach: Gutenberg, Johannes Gutenberg. But either way, people see this in a book and they go like, "Oh my god, it's printed. It must be true. This is crazy. It's like the next new thing. It spreads around Europe. Again, I don't I don't want to overstate this like there were other causes to the witch trials in Europe for sure, but the Malleus Maleficarum was a huge catalyst along with other factors like the printing press that when he wrote this, it happened to be with the time that books were coming more widely available. They were becoming much cheaper to produce. And so you were having people read about witches all over the continent. And so people ask like in the 1500s, how did people know witches in Austria and then also in Ireland and also in London and then eventually in America? It's because of the printing press. The printing press was circulating all these stories. So people forget that there was a time when we didn't have Twitter. You couldn't just send something out in two seconds. You had to like go make a book or read a book and figure out what the hell was going on or like your local town gazette, whatever was getting distributed. Hearing the account of Heinrich Kramer also confirms to me that you would definitely be a witch during the time because his description independent woman not afraid to speak her mind. Which.
Julie: I mean I'm the witchiest of them all.
Zach: Scientist speaks her mind which is a quality that I love about you. We speak our mind to each other.
Julie: Seduces men to do things for her like cook delicious dinners.
Zach: Yeah, I do that. And I seduce you to cook dinner for me 90% of the time. I could be a witch. But during this time, it would 100% be you.
Julie: I would have 100% been the witch. I mean, like with my long hair now, too. Like it's I mean, I'm wearing the hat. I scream witch for sure.
Zach: You're in your witchy era. Would you would you like to hear about some of the claims about witches and women and the Malleus Maleficarum? Because again, this was like a guide book for how to prosecute witches.
Julie: Oh my god, I love and hate how petty this must be. So, yes, please hit me with some quotes.
Zach: So, one of the things is that witches keep collections of penises that feed on grain. So, think of penises like eating oats and grain.
Julie: Chickens.
Zach: Chicken penises, essentially. That was legitimately—
Julie: Wait, human penises that—?
Zach: Human penises that feed on grain. Witches keep these. A quote from the Malleus Maleficarum: ‘They move themselves like living members, eating oats and corn.’
Julie: So we have dildos eating corn.
Zach: No real penises.
Julie: Oh human penis.
Zach: These are witches. Don't forget they've chopped off the penises of men.
Julie: Do they sometime fly up the fence? The penises.
Zach: So, it's funny that you say that. Funny you'd ask. So, we recently watched The Witch, right? The film by Robert Eggers. One of the things that witches were said to do was to grind up human parts, specifically young humans, like babies, where in the witch the what they're alluding to is she cuts off the baby's member. Yeah. Grinds it up with the mortar and pestle.
Julie: I thought that was a whole baby.
Zach: It might have been, but the insinuation was that she was going for the member. But either way.
Julie: I saw that. That was honestly the most disrupting fact of it all. It was just like, "Are you trying to wank off a baby? That's crazy."
Zach: Well, she was holding a knife, so—
Julie: I didn't see the knife. I just saw her touching the baby in weird ways.
Zach: She had she had a knife. So, the insinuation is that she chopped off the baby's dangling.
Julie: Let me tell you that based on the grinding scene, it was not just a baby's penis because I would have just been like, then it would have been in a little cup.
Zach: Again, it was probably multiple parts of the baby because again, a baby penis, you know, is not going to take up an entire mortar and pestle. You want to you want to, you know, throw other things in there. But witches were said to take human parts specifically of young people and babies, mortar and pestle them, pester them, grind them up, and then rub them on themselves for the ability to fly. That's how witches supposedly were able to fly. It was like a bond with Satan. It was like an offering of I'm killing this young person or baby. I'm grinding them up. I'm rubbing their blood all over my face and body.
Julie: Now I can fly.
Zach: I'm showing you. I'm making a pact with the devil. And now I have the ability to fly.
Julie: What about other powers? Is it specific to flying, and the rest you just have?
Zach: I don't know about the other powers. I know the spells—
Julie: Because they get younger too when they do that in theory based on those.
Zach: Yeah, I think it also depends on which.
Julie: It might just be that they get all their power from grinding the baby and putting it on themselves. Then they can fly and cast spells.
Zach: I know that the flying comes from the mortar and pestle with grinding up the baby parts, but I don't know if it's also the spells. Another thing that is in the Malleus Maleficarum is that a man could retrieve a replacement penis from the witch.
Julie: Or you can go to the shop and be like, I'll take a bigger dick, please.
Zach: But the biggest penis belonged to the priest. That's in the Malleus Maleficarum. It says, "You must not take the largest one. It belongs to the priest."
Julie: If you ever doubted that a man wrote this book, there you have it.
Zach: Yeah. [laughter] This might be my favorite part of the book. Heinrich Kramer says even the Latin word for woman supposedly proved women had less faith and were less than men. He says that ‘femina’ comes from ‘fe’ and ‘minus.’ So ‘femina’—‘fe minus’—means women are less than men. That was his reasoning.
Julie: Dick.
Zach: I bet he didn't have a big one. For sure. He's compensating for something.
Julie: It's always the Chihuahua that bark the loudest.
Zach: He would have owned a Hummer if they were around at this time. Another thing he wrote is that women's sexual lust causes witchcraft. There's a huge connection throughout the history of witches: the dark lust and sexual deviancy of women doing weird, dark things behind closed doors. Women sleeping with devils, women sleeping with each other, women sleeping with other people's husbands—adultery would get used against them.
Julie: Not awakening, but sexual—when you like sex, basically. What's the word for it?
Zach: Someone who likes sex?
Julie: Likes sex, has a lot of sex, has sex with a bunch of different partners. Sexual—
Zach: Like polygamist.
Julie: Promiscuous.
Zach: Yeah. Like a [expletive] essentially. But not in a negative connotation.
Julie: It's interesting how it evolves. Today, depending on who you ask, if a woman has a lot of sex, she's a slut. If she doesn't, she's a prude. But there are also people who might think, ‘That's cool, that she's so open.’
Zach: Some other things from the Malleus Maleficarum: women are more sexual than men and have sex with demons. ‘It's common that all of them practice carnal copulation with devils.’ Children's remains supposedly become magical ointments. Like we said, ‘Witches make certain unguents from the bones and limbs of children.’ That's seen in The Witch, where she cuts off the baby dick.
Julie: Yep. Well, to me, she cut off the whole thing.
Zach: The whole thing, whatever it is. Grinds it up and flies. Another good one: if a baby is constantly crying, the mom is a witch.
Julie: How much did this man affect the way we view witches in folklore stories? Did this guy essentially—
Zach: People used this book—
Julie: Yeah, as the basis of every—
Zach: Witch story, and as the basis of European witch hunts.
Julie: This guy decided, ‘This is how you know she's a witch, and this is what witches do,’ and then every story after that—
Zach: That's what I'm saying. There were other factors involved, but the Malleus Maleficarum was a huge catalyst in driving the narrative of the European and eventually the colonial witch. This one guy who was slighted by a woman.
Julie: Isn't it kind of like low-key always the case? Like there's just like one dude that just like I know the truth and then everyone's just like that guy.
Zach: Yeah. But yeah, so that was the last thing. I mean, there's a lot of things, but the last thing that I took from the Malleus Maleficarum was that if a baby is constantly crying, the mom is a witch. And he specifically says it is because the quote, "The baby is tormented by the witch's curse of the mother."
Julie: If you're unlucky and your baby is just—I've seen this with friends and growing up. You don't know what cards you're going to be dealt when you have your baby. Funny fact: I was a nightmare baby, but I grew up a good child. My brother was such a chill baby, and then he had something, wouldn't stop crying, and had loads of difficulties growing up. Some women have a perfect pregnancy and a nightmare baby. For some, it's the opposite. You don't know what cards you're going to be dealt. It doesn't mean you're a bad parent or your child is messed up. It just means your child might be going through more difficulty at this point: struggling to sleep, digest, burp, pee, poop, whatever. There could be so many reasons. It's the luck of the draw. Your child has difficulties.
Zach: If your mom if your mom was carrying you around town and everyone was like, "Damn, Julie keeps crying in Sylvian's arms." Your mom might have been accused of being a witch.
Julie: Apparently, I was projectile vomiting everything my mom tried to put in my mouth.
Zach: You would have gotten your mom accused of being a witch, for sure. Imagine being a mom in 1620 whose baby is constantly crying. No wonder moms fed their babies hard liquor. They're like, ‘Shut the [expletive] up. You're going to make me be a witch.’
Julie: Isn't that in Shrek 2 where so Shrek has babies and one just like projectile vomits onto him and the other one just like climbs on the wall and then its head turns 360. I think that might be from The Exorcist or something like this. I feel like that was me as a baby.
Zach: Let's get into the witch trials in Europe.
Julie: Yes, let's go.
Zach: This is just the European continent. We'll talk about the Salem witch trials afterward. Europe's witch trials took widespread fears about curses and the devil and escalated them into prosecutions on a crazy scale. Between 1450 and 1750, historians estimate that around 100,000 people in Europe were tried for witchcraft.
Julie: That's nuts.
Zach: And 40,000 to 60,000 were executed. These are estimates of formal—
Julie: What happened to the other ones? Were they just like, ‘You're free to go’?
Zach: So, we'll get into that. There's trials.
Julie: I guess they got tried.
Zach: Yeah, there were trials. These are estimates of formal prosecutions. The total number of accused informally is unknown. 80% of the accused were women, although some men and children were also targeted. The fiercest prosecutions occurred during the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire, which is modern-day Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Mm-hmm. Religious tensions, local feuds, disease, failed harvests fueled accusations. In many courts, torture produced confessions and named accomplices, which would then snowball into entire communities being accused. So a lot of times you'd have one person get accused, they get the [expletive] tortured out of them. They would essentially say anything to get the torture to stop. They would name, I don't know, [expletive] neighbor or someone else that popped into their head. Then that person would get tortured. So you'd have like a snowball effect in communities that would skyrocket this number from torture because that's how a lot of people were given they got confessions through that. A question I had for you, because this is all news to me for the European witch trials because again growing up I mostly heard about the Salem witch trials being in America with you know it still matters that 20 people were killed but it's nowhere near the 40 to 60,000 being killed in Europe. Were you taught the witch trials go growing up in France because the scale is [expletive] insane.
Julie: No. If we were, I don't remember. Even watching Monty Python and stuff, I feel like during medieval times there was so much death.
Zach: This isn't medieval times, to be clear. This is post-medieval times.
Julie: Okay. I don't know how it is for you, but the way we're taught history is chronological. It's going from really vague to less vague as we go along, because we're kids. We start with prehistoric times, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, and all of that. The older you get, the more detail and accuracy you can handle because you're better able to grasp what everything entails. When we learned about medieval and slightly post-medieval times, we were probably preteens, maybe a little before ten. I don't remember anything about witches. I remember witches being a joke: watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and weighing a witch—‘Is she heavier than bread? Does she float?’ That's how we perceived it. With teachers, it was jokey. It wasn't seen as this disgrace—what we did to women or people at that time by accusing them of witchcraft. It wasn't really talked about. There's work to be done, and that was true when I was a kid. I don't know how it's evolved since. But there are still so many tales about how Christopher Columbus discovered America and that's why we're all here today, which is deeply untrue. That needs to be corrected. So much history needs to be rectified and told properly. Witches were not a big part of our history lessons.
Zach: So, so you weren't taught about witches and the European witch trials in any sort of official history capacity that you can remember. It was more pop culturally that you remember.
Julie: I feel like if you wanted to learn about witches at the time, you had to do it on your own. Like I don't remember this being taught, per se, but I could be wrong. Like I just don't remember.
Zach: We talked about some of this before, but do you want to get into how you would be accused of being a witch?
Julie: I'd love to hear that.
Zach: Here are the main ways you'd be accused of being a witch. This applies to European witch trials, but a lot of it applies to Salem and colonial witch trials as well. Number one: get into an argument with a neighbor, mixed with some bad luck.
Julie: Again, it applies to the KGB, Nazis. The whole neighbor thing is reminiscent of that.
Zach: There's a lot of cycles of history that have repeated before and after throughout the witch trials.
Julie: What you say to your neighbors is the ultimate lesson.
Zach: An example: a neighbor's son gets sick. They say, ‘I got into an argument with John about the property lines last year. His wife did it. John's wife gave me the stink eye last year. She's a witch, and that's why my son is sick.’ Another reason, which we spoke about before, is a woman who doesn't conform to society in some way: a woman without kids, who speaks her mind, who's mouthy and curses, who's poor, who's widowed. She'd have a high chance of getting accused.
Julie: The widow one is the one that pisses me off the most because this is like what did you even do? Yeah. And to be fair, probably the ones that were not married at the time, like as much as like today it's like I have I get to choose if I want to marry and I get to choose whether to have children. I feel like at the time it wasn't much of a choice. It was just like Yeah. It didn't happen for you.
Zach: This would be another one that would definitely get you accused of being a witch. Spending too much time around animals because as you know witches have familiars. Yes. Supernatural helpers in the form of animals. So if you are a woman who let's say love to pet goats.
Julie: And alas I love goats.
Zach: Talk to talk to little piggies.
Julie: Goats are the most underrated farm animal. They are so cuddly. They're so friendly. They're so cute. They have weird looking eyes. Like I have to say the side like having eyes on both sides of their face is a little weird, but they are so cute and they're so cuddly and so lovely.
Zach: If there was a farmer who had a bad year of crops and was looking for a reason, he'd be like, ‘Julie spends a lot of time petting my goats when she walks through my yard.’ He might be like, ‘Witch!’ If her familiar is a goat—
Julie: If me today—the exact same person—were to appear in a different time, I definitely would have been burned at the stake or hanged. But I also feel like you live with your time. I'm an advocate for women's rights and conservation, and I get involved in protests. I'd like to believe I would have been out on the streets during the Vietnam War. But you don't know how you would have behaved in a different time. Maybe I would have been a good little wifey.
Zach: Maybe.
Julie: But today I would have definitely burned.
Zach: So another thing is that a lot of witches were accused of being witches by other women, right?
Julie: Because jealousy.
Zach: Not necessarily. Jealousy could be part of it if you perceived another woman as more attractive than you, or saw your husband look at a woman walking by. But it was also safer to be on the accuser's side than the accused.
Julie: It comes back to bullying. I've experienced both ends of the spectrum you're describing. When I was in middle school, there was an instance where the whole class rallied against specific people. Not everyone in the class is a bully or bullied, but eventually you get into a position where you join the bully and are protected from their attack by being with them. At the same time, you have to attack the one poor person being targeted. It feels like a way to protect yourself: go with the bullies.
Zach: I don't want people to leave with the wrong impression that the witch hunts were a women-versus-men thing. Women received the overwhelming brunt of the accusations and executions. Let me finish. Women were very willing to participate in accusations against other women.
Julie: I will also say part of that as someone who did get bullied at school, the women were the most horrific. Like I have heard later on of my male friends about the kind of bullying practices that would go against them growing up. And it's definitely like very physical and like definitely very traumatizing in its own way. But I feel like women definitely go a lot more psychological and all this and like can be way more hurtful on the long term. But ultimately like I do feel and like I've also experienced you know going into a space and don't worry like I'm would never ever claim that like everybody should love me or hate me or whatever like I think everyone will find things they like and dislike about a person and they can build their own opinion of that person especially over time. I do strongly believe that you should give everybody a shot to prove themsel to you, not get stuck on the first impression and like give them at least a few tries. And this is what I used to do with dates where I would like give it at least a few days to decide whether or not like someone am I disliking them because I'm anxious about it or is it because of something where they did like give everybody a fair shot. And I've definitely felt like I've be I've experienced being around women for a really short amount of time and them deciding the second they saw me, I'm not going to like her and I'm not going to do anything to try to like her or show her that I like her. And that's something I've experienced a lot of other women. I know I've experienced that. And again, like I think not trying to pin these women down and just be like, "You're a piece of [expletive] for doing this." I think it comes from their own insecurities or from their own like past behaviors that they've learned from. But ultimately, it's that it's just like there's women that will feel insecure or threatened by other women and will do everything they can to pull them down so that they can raise themselves even though that's not the way to do it.
Zach: We just finished watching the Carrie Amazon series. Carrie, I read the book Carrie, but in the Amazon series specifically that takes place in 2026. Yeah. And so women posting about Carrie on social media or girls really. They're high schoolers.
Julie: Pretty girl. She's insecure, but she's a very pretty girl.
Zach: The girl, the girls are the drivers of Carrie’s ostracism in the high school by posting about her locker room situation, her period, igniting the social media fires that eventually spurred on to affect the entire town. And guys participated in that, too. But it was ignited by other women who were just jealous or decided the second they saw Carrie that they just did not like her and were not going to make any effort to.
Julie: No, absolutely. And while from what I've read, I've not read the book you have, but from what I've read on like forums etc like Carrie is supposed to be this like ugly fallen teenager like chubby acne and all this and that's not the way she's been depicted in the movies or in the TV show. But I feel in particular in the TV show which we have just watched, she's definitely not an ugo. She's cute. She's just very like untouched, you know, like she's been living in this house her entire life without ever being exposed to the outside world. So, she's just it's just kind of like this Amish girl going into the world for the first time where she doesn't know how to dress, what to do with makeup, what a period is or whatever. And it comes to jealousy, especially as she's rising up for the ranks and gaining popularity, the girl who's kind of like driving this movement against her is definitely feeling threatened. And so, I can see how, you know, women that do feel that way, and again, it comes from a place of hurt that you need to bring someone down to lift yourself up. But it is unfortunately the case where a lot of girls and women will feel the need to conduct a witch hunt to bring someone down that they feel threatened by.
Zach: Yeah. And that's what happened. And again, yeah, just to cap that off, women were the majority of the victims with the witch hunts, but it was not a women versus men thing. Women were more than ready to hurl accusations at other women. Yeah. It wasn't just men hurling the accusations and we're gonna take a quick intermission and we're back from a quick pee-and-refill break. Would you like to get into now that we've been into how you get accused of being a witch. The witch testing, how people were tested for being a witch.
Julie: I'd love to.
Zach: So, one of the most infamous tests which we spoke about before is the swimming and ducking test, right? This is where suspects were bound and lowered into water. Floating supposedly indicated witchcraft. Sinking suggested innocence. And the idea was that if you weren't baptized, which you know, non-Christian, more likely to be associated with Satan, the water would reject you. So it like spit you up and if you sank, you weren't a witch.
Julie: But then you died.
Zach: You didn't always survive. If you sank, people might try to get you, but not everyone was—
Julie: Would be like, "Well, that's too bad."
Zach: Not everyone was equally invested. Yeah. Exactly. So if you if you floated, you were a witch, and if you sank, you were dead.
Julie: So you died either way if you if you did the test.
Zach: Some people were saved, but there was a chance that the test was your sentence. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing was the devil's mark or a witch’s teat, as they called it. Examiners would strip and search people suspected of witchcraft for unusual growths, scars, moles, or additional nipples.
Julie: Harry Styles would not have made it.
Zach: Is he a third-nipple guy?
Julie: He has two extra nipples.
Zach: Okay. It is a thing where you're born with an extra nipple. He probably would have been executed for witchcraft—one of the rare men. Also, singing was probably seen as spellcasting back in the day.
Julie: Effeminate.
Zach: Yeah. Yeah. Metrosexual singer witch for sure. A devil's mark supposedly signified a demonic pact and a witch’s teat would be used to feed an animal familiar. That scene from the witch where.
Julie: So the extra nipples would be to feed the animals.
Zach: Yeah. And also that scene from the witch where the mom was hallucinating and kind of like the crow was sucking on her teat. Not exactly the same thing, but like similar idea where like you'd use it to feed a familiar. You would prick these suspicious marks. So investigators would push pins into the skin looking for a spot that supposedly didn't hurt or bleed. So you'd drive a needle into the birth mark or witch's mark, whatever. If it didn't bleed, you were a witch. And there were a lot of witch hunters who had trick needles. So it was a retractable needle where to accuse someone of being a witch, they would press the needle into the birthmark. The needle would retract. It wouldn't actually prick them, but to onlookers, it would look like the needle was going inside. And when the and they pull the needle back, it wouldn't bleed and boom, they're a witch.
Julie: Ugh. That's terrible.
Zach: Reciting the Lord's Prayer was another one. People believed that witches couldn't recite it perfectly. So, our father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Julie: So if you had a speech impediment, you were [expletive]. [laughter]
Zach: Even if you stumbled, but then said it correctly, you could still be accused. And then lastly, the tears test. The Malleus Maleficarum recommended watching whether a suspected witch would cry during examination or torture. If they didn't weep, they were a witch. Many times, even if they wept, the tears were dismissed as saliva smeared on the face. So, you could cry and then someone could be like, "Well, I saw her smear saliva on her eyes, so she's faking she's a witch." So like a lot of these tests either way.
Julie: So, actors—all witches.
Zach: So one of the questions I wanted to ask you is which test for being a witch would you be most afraid of failing? [gasps]
Julie: Oh gosh. Well maybe reciting a prayer because I don't know most of those.
Zach: I was going to say the same thing. Apart from the tears test, the other things either happen or they don't. If they're going to tie me up and throw me in a lake, I'm going to float or sink.
Julie: Well, especially if they tie something to you that makes you sink.
Zach: I'm not in control of the trickery. If someone tries to prick a birthmark with a needle, either I'm going to bleed or I'm not. It would make me so anxious if I got wheeled into a courtroom and they were like, ‘Say the Lord's Prayer.’ And I'm just like, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.’ The pressure of that situation: ‘Don't [expletive] it up.’ I could be a teenager or a kid at that point. If you stumble, you're [expletive], essentially. I'd hate a test being in my control. I'd rather get tested in a way where I'm either going to do it or I won't. I don't want it to be my fault; I want it to be someone else's. The torture tactics for a witch—would you like to know how witches were tortured for confessions?
Julie: Well, it sounds like the sinking test is pretty much torture.
Zach: The sinking would have been a form of torture for sure.
Julie: You mentioned the crushing test.
Zach: The crushing was one of them. Absolutely. I also have some visuals to go along with this and I'll throw these up on the video version of the podcast for people who are checking out the YouTube. Let me just bring up the witch torture devices. So, I'll get into these. So, number one, sleep deprivation. This was used mostly in Scotland or England. Mm-hmm. Guards prevented suspects from sleeping, sometimes keeping them moving, so walking around for nights on end so you couldn't fall asleep. Although people did occasionally just fall asleep standing up and collapse.
Julie: Witches.
Zach: Exactly. [laughter] Walking for 72 hours and stumbles—‘Witch!’ Exhaustion, confusion, and hallucinations helped produce confessions.
Julie: We've seen this in other shows and movies as well. When you're being tortured and they're like, ‘I just need an answer,’ and you just want it to stop, you're like, ‘Sure, I'll give you an answer,’ even though it's not the truth. I just want this to stop.
Zach: You'll say anything if you're being tortured. And this is why torture to modern day. Any diligent research on torture shows that it's not worth a damn because people will truly say anything to get something to stop. Yeah. So the information that you're getting cannot be relied upon for any sort of accurate prosecution. Yeah. Another thing is the thumb screws and finger crushing devices was used mostly in Germany. So these were metal devices clamped down and crushed the fingers, fingertips or thumbs causing severe pain and injury.
Julie: I know of a torture technique. I learned a little bit about torture growing up. That looks horrible. This could be untrue, but I learned about a Chinese torture where they would put—
Zach: Chinese finger trap. Yeah, I've gotten some.
Julie: Not talking about that. I'm talking about what they would they would put like a piece of wood under your nails like as far deep as they can and create obviously crazy pain because this is why we have nails because we have like raw skin.
Zach: Fingers have crazy amount of nerve endings.
Julie: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Zach: I don't need to tell you that because you're a neuroscientist but yeah like it's a very painful.
Julie: The technique was to shove pieces of wood under your nail beds. Awful.
Zach: So another very common one that was used all over Europe to get confessions was called strappado which is suspension by the arms. This is when prisoners were suspended with their arms restrained behind them causing extreme strain and eventually dislocating your joints.
Julie: Oh god that sounds awful. Yeah. Yeah. I can picture it. Oh gosh. Yeah. That's terrible.
Zach: So that's not good.
Julie: No.
Zach: And then we have the rack. German territories, England and Ireland was where the rack was used mostly. This is a notorious torture device consisting of a rectangular wooden frame with rollers at both ends. The victim's wrists and ankles were tied to these rollers using ropes. As torturers turn the rollers with levers or winches, the ropes tightened, stretching the victim's body.
Julie: Yeah. Yeah, I'm familiar with that.
Zach: The severe tension dislocated joints, tore muscles, ruptured ligaments, and often separated limbs from their sockets to extract confessions.
Julie: Again, I'm familiar. That's absolutely awful. Another torture technique—
Zach: I love how familiar my wife is with torture techniques.
Julie: I guess I thought I thought it was interesting growing up, even though it's really messed up, but another one that I thought was absolutely awful. I don't know if they ever use it for witches was the drop. Have you ever heard of that? So, they're like standing up in a box and there's just like a droplet of water falling onto their forehead for unlimited amount of times. Just like drop.
Zach: I've heard about that. Yeah, like a water. Isn't that called Chinese water torture?
Julie: Maybe I'm just very familiar with Chinese torture techniques.
Zach: I thought that was what it's called. I could be wrong.
Julie: So, I mean, I don't know if it's how it's called, but like it's absolutely awful and it drives you madness and then you're crazy and they're like, "Well, there's a witch."
Zach: Again, these are designed—
Julie: Can you imagine a drop of water hitting your forehead every second for hours, days, weeks on end? You'd be driven crazy.
Zach: Absolutely. And then the last one is the witch’s bridle. This is an iron cage locked around the head with a metal plate inserted into the mouth to press down and lacerate the tongue. It was designed to physically prevent speaking, eating or drinking, causing extreme mouth fatigue, excessive salivation, and severe public humiliation.
Julie: And dehydration.
Zach: Yeah. So, this was unique because this was meant to be worn and walked around in public and so people would know that if you were wearing this, you were condemned of being a witch or something else.
Julie: That's another thing that was interesting.
Zach: This is a witch’s bridle.
Julie: Oh, that's awful. See, that's another thing that I think is very interesting at the time is how public everything was. Like the execution, the tortures, and all is like this is all for all eyes to see. I think it's so interesting how public everything was.
Zach: Do you want to hear about some famous witches and witch hunters?
Julie: I would love to.
Zach: So, let's do witch hunters first. Matthew Hopkins. Okay. You see a man arriving in your town calling himself the witchfinder general. And he's a witch hunter.
Julie: He's a witch hunter. All right.
Zach: And charging your community to investigate its neighbors. That was Matthew Hopkins and nobody in Parliament had appointed him to that position. His campaign emerged in Essex in 1645 during the English Civil War when religious anxiety and disrupted authority created fertile ground for accusations. Working with John Stearne and other assistants, Hopkins turned local suspicions into a traveling witch hunt across Eastern England. One early target was Elizabeth Clark. Kept awake for days, she eventually confessed and implicated other women as witches. That became Hopkins pattern. Pressure one suspect, obtain names, investigate the next. His methods included sleep deprivation, searches for bodily marks supposedly used to feed demonic familiars, and his favorite, the swimming test. The scale of Hopkins witch hunt tear was extraordinary. Historian James Sharpe identifies roughly 240 accused people brought before authorities during the 1645 to 1647 East England campaign. The London Museum links Hopkins activities to at least a hundred women's deaths. He did face criticism and in 1647 published the discovery of witches to defend himself. He died that same year. His career lasted barely two years. What are your thoughts on Matthew Hopkins, the Witchfinder General?
Julie: Well, it's just a great example of a man that has essentially no experience and calling himself an expert.
Zach: Yeah. He essentially arrived into town and was like, I'm going to be I'm going to be the witch finder.
Julie: I know what I'm doing.
Zach: But—
Julie: Just like that guy who wrote the [expletive] book, by the way.
Zach: For sure. It was kind of a genius business model, because Hopkins—
Julie: That's been adopted ever since.
Zach: But I mean it changes through the ages but essentially when Hopkins defended himself he said I didn't do it for the money but he charged 20 shillings per visit to town which was a month's pay at the time. So he was he was raking it in.
Julie: He was preying on people that were scared.
Zach: So yeah he would scare the town. He would hunt a witch and then right before he left he'd be like, "I hope there aren't any more witches." And then the town would be like, "What do you mean come back?" And [laughter] then he'd come back and he just had like this repetitious business model. Yeah. Of people paying. And the more witches he caught, the more paranoid people became. So it fed into himself. And like a lot of sketchy businesses today, they prey on paranoia. They prey on the lack of knowledge of people at the time to say like I'm providing a definite answer for an uncertain problem and they charge people and they take advantage of people that are scared and want an answer. So yeah, Matthew Hopkins two years the guy put up numbers. M he accused 250 women in two years, killed a hundred. He wasn't active for long, but he made a lot of damage. He made he performed a lot of damage.
Julie: You know, someone who wasn't active for long and made a crazy amount of damage that comes to mind. Who? Pol Pot.
Zach: He's the Cambodian president or like the dictator?
Julie: Yes. Four years killed a third of the Cambodian population.
Zach: That's insane.
Julie: And was targeting especially people with education and knowledge. So I think it is interesting to see that.
Zach: I mean again the tactics of witch hunters.
Julie: I mean when you think of the Nazi was also a bit that like attacking the Jewish population that was tending to have like higher paying jobs and all this. It kind of feels like a lot of the witch hunts is targeting people that are knowledgeable and know how to make society work. They're just like they're a threat.
Zach: Yeah. No, I mean there's a lot of overlap of not just witch hunts throughout h history, but taking advantage of people in precarious situations that want answers and they're willing to pay anything to have them solved. There are definitely things that, you know, everything goes in cycles and there's always going to be a way to monetize hysteria and the misfortune of others. I mean, something that I think of today that has to do with monetizing the hysteria or misinformation is like people selling sketchy supplements. Yes. Like people that believe that, oh, if I take this, it's going to cure my cancer. If I go this special vegan diet, it's going to cure my cancer.
Julie: I hate that so much because you do have like some example where like people like say changed their diets, took supplements and sometime it went away which as a scientist I believe is not so much of a phenomenal of the supplement doing their job but rather that sometimes your body is able to cure itself. Yeah. And solve like when we get a cold there's no like if it's a virus there's there is no actual medication to cure it. Is just time your immune system doing its thing. And sometimes that happens for more serious diseases. Yeah. And then those people go online and be like, "Don't trust the doctors. Just take this like plants and stuff." And like some plants, again, I want to be careful here where like some plants can be helpful again like maybe witchery or whatever, but like there are more natural routes that can help you out. But it can be extremely dangerous when those people come online because there is also a lot of stories of people say with cancer that listen up to that stop doing their more aggressive biomedical treatments and went the plant route and died.
Zach: Sure. Yeah. And I think it even comes down to polit political elections where you have like the very public ICE raids or immigration hysteria which look any country the size of the US needs to have rigid immigration policies to keep the country running. But you also don't have to persecute groups of people and publicly humiliate and harm them on social media to make a point that is crossing a line there. There have been so many posts on the current administration's social media about like, you know, making a show out of how we're barging into people's apartments and deporting people, a lot of whom have been here legally or haven't committed any violent crimes that have children here that are citizens. And there's there have been there's been the monetization of again misfortune and hysteria throughout the centuries in different forms and witch hunting was one of them and it was a very deadly form of that especially in Europe. Let's get into one of the most famous accused witches. Okay. And I picked a woman from France especially.
Julie: Is it Joan of Arc?
Zach: No, it is Catherine Monvoisin.
Julie: Okay, go on.
Zach: Am I pronouncing that right? Catherine Monvoisin?
Julie: Oh my God, that's spelled so weird. Monvoisin.
Zach: Catherine Monvoisin. There once lived a fortune teller whose customers didn't just want to know their future, they wanted someone else removed from it. Oh, Catherine Monvoisin, better known as La Voisin, became notorious in the 17th century Paris for a business that allegedly mixed fortune-telling, love potions, abortion services, and poison. Needed a lover's attention, there was a potion for that. A husband or rival standing in your way? Monvoisin and the woman she trained offered more permanent solutions. Hm. Her arrest.
Julie: Did they just kill them?
Zach: Let me finish.
Julie: Sorry. Go on.
Zach: Her arrest in 1679 helped turn the affair of the poisons into a scandal reaching the court of Louis the 14th. The most explosive name connected.
Julie: The Sun King.
Zach: Yeah, the Sun King. The most explosive name connected to Catherine Monvoisin was Madame de Montespan, the king's mistress. Witnesses alleged that Montespan sought magical help to secure the king's affection, participated in black masses—a mass where you call upon Satan instead of God—and became involved in plots against her romantic rival. Catherine—
Julie: Let's also take a quick pause here to say that the Sun King was the last king before the actual last king of France.
Zach: Yeah, that is true. So yeah, Monvoisin helped this woman apparently take out her romantic rival. However, the most sensational accusations were never established. The investigation relied on testimony that came from torture and allegations of satanic rituals that became entangled with gossip and court politics. As a result, Monvoisin’s judges met in a secret torchlit chamber draped in black. Louis the 14th established a special tribunal, the Chambre Ardente, to investigate the poison network and secret.
Julie: Chambre Ardente could be called ‘flaming-hot chamber.’
Zach: I'll take your word for that, since you're French. The Chambre Ardente was used to investigate the poison network in secret. In a letter dated February 23, 1680, Madame de Sévigné, a French aristocrat, reported that La Voisin drank with her guards and sang 20 drinking songs after learning her sentence.
Julie: That's crazy. That [expletive] got drunk and sang with her soldiers.
Zach: She got she got drunk and sang with the guards after learning her sentence to be burned at the stake.
Julie: Of course.
Zach: She described ordinary and extraordinary torture the following day, followed by more drinking and singing. La Voisin was burned at the stake on February 22nd, 1680.
Julie: I mean, here's the thing. You're like, I'm going to get burned no matter what. Might as well have a fun last night out. You know what I mean?
Zach: I respect getting shitfaced in the face of it. Essentially, she was accused of helping to poison her customers' rivals, and one of those customers wanted to take out the mistress of Louis XIV and replace her.
Julie: I thought the mistress was the one asking for it.
Zach: No, no, it was a woman who wanted to take out the mistress of Louis the 14.
Julie: I can't remember her actual name, but I know that they I mean he had multiple mistresses, but there was one that was really involved in the court. And that was at a time that his actual wife was no longer in the picture. As far as I know, if she was, she was really unimportant because from what I remember, there was no queen at that time. But there was a mistress that was really important and struggling to kind of like be become seen as part of the court and not just as a mistress. And there was like a lot of you know joking around from the dauphine who became who was Marie Antoinette and become the future queen of France before becoming the last queen of France. So at first I was just like that there was suspicion that his mistress used a witch to gain affection from the king, which would not have looked good on the king if it was just like, oh, like the mistress I really like used witchery to get me in.
Zach: Yeah, let me go. So, okay, the most explosive name connected to her was Madame de Montespan, the king's mistress. Witnesses alleged that the Montespan sought magical help to secure the king's affection, participated in black mass, and became involved in plots against romantic rival. So, I guess, yeah, the king's mistress did try to take out her romantic rival.
Julie: Yes. Oh, okay. Okay, I see that.
Zach: But again, Catherine Monvoisin, the person who was burned at the stake, she was running a business essentially where she was making potions and allegedly poisons and helping people take out their rivals. At least that's what she was accused of. Yeah. There was no hard evidence. Nothing was ever securely established. She was tortured. People did come forward and make allegations of satanic rituals, but there was again nothing ever set in stone. Right. And the part I respect the most is what you said, which is when she found out that she was going to be burned at the stake, she got together with the guards and said, "Let's get [expletive] up." And sang into the morning. Yeah. And then got [expletive] up again. And then she got burned at the stake in February of 1680 the following day. So she went out like a boss either way.
Julie: And I respect it. Like I feel like I wish I was this kind of person that would just be like, you know what, if I'm going to die, then I might as well make it the best [expletive] night of my life. I don't know if I wouldn't be just like in bed crying about my fate instead. But I appreciate and recognize the fact to be just like, you know what, it's happening no matter what I do. And I could choose to be sad and cry about it, or I could choose to have the best night of my life before it passed.
Zach: For sure. Do you want to hear about what it would feel like to sit through a trial?
Julie: Oh my god. I thought you were going to say to sit through burning at the stake.
Zach: Not quite that.
Julie: A description of having your flesh burn before you actually die.
Zach: I'm sure there's something to read in detail.
Julie: I'm sure you could, but I don't want to hear about that. I do want to hear about the trial.
Zach: You'd have to burn someone at the stake and mic them up with something that couldn't melt so you could get the audio of them describing it in real time: ‘My flesh is burning.’
Julie: We have had accounts of people like almost burning to death and it sounds like an extremely painful and horrible experience. So, let's just move on to the trial.
Zach: Let's go to the trial. We'll, you know, stay posted if we do a podcast on the first person account of someone being burned at the stake. I'm sure it's not a great experience.
Julie: No, but.
Zach: This is what a trial would look like again in Europe.
Julie: Oh, in Europe. Okay.
Zach: Picture yourself watching an English witch trial in the 17th century. Before you stand someone from the community, often a poor older woman. Around her are judges, jurors, and neighbors explaining why their misfortunes are her fault. A child fell sick. A cow died. An argument from a decade ago. Suddenly, an angry insult to your neighbor threw your way now sounds like a curse. The process usually began with accusations and questioning by a local magistrate. Serious cases could reach the criminal court where visiting judges heard criminal trials and juries decided guilt. Across much of Europe, accused witches were legally permitted defense lawyers, although most had zero representation. As a spectator, you might hear stories of animal familiars, see accusers performing fits, which would be sudden shaking, stiffening, collapsing, or watch a child testify against their own parent. Jesus. At the Pendle trials in 1612, the published account describes 9-year-old Jennet Device standing on a table to testify against her mother, who was removed for shouting at her. Before court, suspects would face intimate searches for witches’ marks. Torture was not part of the ordinary English criminal procedure, but during the 1640s witch hunts, Matthew Hopkins and his associates use sleep deprivation to extract confessions. Conviction wasn't inevitable. Juries did acquit, but a death sentence for witchcraft meant hanging, usually in public. Again, around 100,000 people were prosecuted for witchcraft in Europe with 40 to 60,000 people executed, making the death rate for witch accusation in Europe around 50%.
Julie: That's crazy.
Zach: Yeah. I mean, imagine seeing your own neighbor that you've known for years on trial for witchcraft and knowing that if you stand up for them, you're probably going to be accused.
Julie: I love my parents. They're perfect and they did the best they could. I know that. And they did the best to be loving and give me good treatment. And I feel very blessed about all that. Even though they were not actually perfect. They were just people trying to be parent for the first time in their lives, which is true of every parent. But like I can't imagine standing on a table to give a witness account of my mom yelling at me because I was being a dick and a brat and potentially getting her killed because of it.
Zach: It was also a product of the times.
Julie: I know, but that's crazy. Can you imagine actually giving an account on your mom that could actually lead her to being killed? Like even if my mom was abusive as [expletive] like actually beaning me off my entire childhood, which she did not. But even if she was, I don't think there's anything my mom could ever do that would lead me to give an account that would get her killed. I would just be like, I'd rather have an abusive mom than no mom.
Zach: Well, one of the words that people use to describe this time is hysteria.
Julie: Surprise.
Zach: But one of the things that Let me go make sure I have her name correct because I watched her talk on witches. I think her name was Mikki Brock. I'll go back and confirm that. But she was the woman I told you about where she studied the witch history, the history of the times. She spoke about how hysteria is thrown around as a word that people use to describe the reaction of the witch hunts and the witch trials. But it's not totally accurate because people were told over and over by their peers, by their elders, by the priests in town, by their superiors that witches are a totally valid explanation for what's going on in your life. That is a misfortune or something terrible happening to you or someone you know, it wasn't considered a hysterical thing. And if you're a kid that's raised in that environment, you might think that if something weird was going on in your house, your mom might legitimately be a witch.
Julie: But that's almost—
Zach: And it's not abnormal to think that.
Julie: No, no, I know. That's almost what's the most [expletive] up thing about all of it is like you could be like, "Oh yeah, I'm just giving this honest witnessing about what my dad told me to say and then your mom's dead." And I think that's so sad because I think not any child, like listen, don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are some moms out there that are truly mistrating their children and maybe would deserve that. I wouldn't say who deserves it or not, but like I could see a child being very resentful of how their mom treated them if they treated them really badly. But I do think the majority, even if the mom was not the greatest mom and maybe even treated them a little bit badly, I think most kids, if they knew, would do everything in their power to protect their parent. Mm-hmm. They don't want to see their mom dead.
Zach: I agree.
Julie: I think it's really twisted to get a kid to witness against their parent.
Zach: It was a terrible, terrible, twisted thing. Yeah. As we start to end off, I do want to get into the Salem witch trials.
Julie: Let's do it.
Zach: I want to preface this with saying that there's so much on the Salem Witch Trials. Thank you for finishing that sip.
Julie: Yeah, you're so welcome.
Zach: I did an episode on the Salem Witch Trials with Daniel Gagnon on the Zach Show podcast.
Julie: Check it out. Check it out.
Zach: Where this will be posted. This episode focused a lot on what I learned from the European witch trials because so much of the carnage was in Europe and the Salem witch trials are 100% important especially to the history of America. But I thought it would be interesting to sort of like dig into the depths of what was going on in Europe. Okay. The entire continent. So that was why a lot of the things we're talking about before this were going on in Europe. We're not going to spend a ton of time on the Salem Witch Trials because we'd be here for 4 hours for real. But I think it's important to get into the differences between Europe and America as we end off. Sure. And I view a lot of the Salem witch trials as an extension of what was happening in Europe on a much smaller scale. Sure. The Salem witch trials in America. You've just been accused of attacking someone while you were nowhere near them and being told that your invisible spirit did it. That was the terrifying logic of quote spectral evidence at Salem. In early 1692, 9-year-old Betty Parris and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams began experiencing strange fits in Reverend Samuel Parris's household. Accusations followed, spreading through neighboring communities, ignited by religious fears, local disputes, and warfare. More than 200 people were accused. 19 were hanged. Giles Corey was pressed to death for refusing to plead, and others died in jail. Salem's darkest twist was that confessing could improve your chances of survival. That was the difference. Admit you serve the devil, implicate others, and you might escape the gallows.
Julie: I feel like this is a theme we see so much in oppressive countries, like with the Nazis: tell on your neighbors and you'll be safer.
Zach: But that was one of the differences from Europe, which is that if you confessed, you had a much higher chance of being sentenced to death.
Julie: Oh, really?
Zach: Yeah. In Salem, it was the opposite.
Julie: It's interesting because, when you watch crime shows in the US, it's ‘If you confess, or help us figure out who did this, you'll have a reduced sentence.’
Zach: That's a trick cops use all the time.
Julie: I would have assumed that was true everywhere.
Zach: So, again. Admit you serve the devil, implicate others, and you might escape the gallows in Salem.
Julie: How often did that actually happen?
Zach: It did happen.
Julie: Okay.
Zach: Again, 200 people were accused; 20 were killed.
Julie: Okay. So, most people did get grace. Okay.
Zach: In Europe, it was 100,000 were accused, 40 to 60,000 were killed. So, much higher.
Julie: Is it? I mean, I guess it is.
Zach: You're talking 20 out of 200. You're talking 10% in America, at least in Salem.
Julie: Wait, 20 out of 200.
Zach: Yes, 10%.
Julie: And then we said—
Zach: Forty to sixty thousand out of 100,000 accused.
Julie: Okay. So 50%.
Zach: 40 to 60%.
Julie: Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Fair enough. Fair enough.
Zach: Maintain your innocence and you could hang in many European prosecutions.
Julie: That's crazy to me. If you keep saying you're innocent, even though you probably are, we'll hang you. Just denounce people, even if you're wrong.
Zach: Well, it's an interesting contrast. Admit you serve the devil.
Julie: It goes back to the torture thing. Sorry. Say you're innocent and you're [expletive]; denounce people and maybe you live.
Zach: 100%. Admit you serve the devil, implicate others and you might escape the gallows. Maintain your innocence and you could hang. In many European prosecutions, by contrast, a confession would increase your chances of a death sentence. Right. Right. Salem inherited the English legal traditions. Juries did hear the cases, and those executed for witchcraft were hanged. Salem was also a concentrated explosion of witchcraft accusations, lasting from 1692 into 1693, while Europe's persecutions stretched across centuries and killed tens of thousands.
Julie: Was Salem the deadliest town in the US?
Zach: The most prominent.
Julie: Okay. Okay.
Zach: Salem is unique because the trials erupted after the worst European witch hunts had passed during the time of enlightenment where in when intellectuals like Isaac Newton and René Descartes walked the earth. Eventually, Massachusetts's Governor, William Phips, dissolved the special court, rejecting the spectral evidence, and the prosecutions unraveled. Out of the few remaining trials that continued, almost all the defendants were acquitted, and by May 1693, Governor Phips pardoned and released everyone still in custody. So that was one of the main differences of the Salem witch trials versus the European trials was that you had spectral accusations, ghost accusations. I saw the ghost of Abigail in my room or the ghost of someone else. It had to be them.
Julie: So that and if you denounce people, you would be more likely to leave.
Zach: Yeah, and if you admitted it, you'd—
Julie: So it was the opposite.
Zach: If you if you admitted it, you'd be more likely to live. If you said, "I'm not guilty," you'd be more likely to be hanged. Your alibi meant nothing in Salem. If you said, "I was at the grocery store when that attack happened," the person could say, "Well, it wasn't you. It was your ghost and I saw her do it."
Julie: Kind of going against the not guilty until proven guilty type of concept.
Zach: Yeah. It also is crazy to me that while Isaac Newton was formulating the laws of physics, people were still hanging each other for being witches. That is that is insane to me. And so, yeah, the Salem witch trials is it was a mess in America. It's a dark chapter of American history for sure. An extension of European witch trials. It paled in comparison to the length and the number, but it was like a concentrated example of the Puritan spirit and the form of being accused of being a witch. Absolutely. And I can see you losing attention based on the.
Julie: No, I'm just enjoying twisting wires.
Zach: You would be accused of being a witch if you if you had these XLR cables back in 1692. By the way, the Salem witch trials the Salem witch trials would have been your nightmare. You're a scientist and you would have been accused by children most likely of being a witch.
Julie: I have seen the movie.
Zach: If a child got up and started saying how you were a witch being a scientist doing potions.
Julie: The movie with—what's her face? She's in Stranger Things and Beetlejuice. What's the name of that woman again?
Zach: Winona Ryder.
Julie: Winona Ryder, yeah. What's the name of that movie?
Zach: The Crucible.
Julie: Yes so seeing that movie I felt infuriated by how dumb these children were and how they got people killed and it made me want to choke them to death.
Zach: Yeah, it would have been your worst nightmare. You're an outspoken woman who's a scientist who would have most likely been accused by annoying ass children of being a witch. Yeah, you would have been going to the gallows being like, "Fuck these little [expletive] Give me a drink."
Julie: Truly. Truly.
Zach: Play some Sabrina Carpenter. I want to go out to ‘Please.’ What song would you go out to?
Julie: Another one bites the dust.
Zach: That would be a badass song to go out to. ‘Another One Bites the Dust.’ My flesh—another one bites the dust. To end off, this is truly the ending. It's been a long journey. Thank you for taking this journey with me, by the way.
Julie: I'm so happy I was able to.
Zach: I love you.
Julie: And I love you, too.
Zach: You're my wife. You're the love of my life. You're with me through the strife. If I rhyme one more time, it's going to be a spell, so I won't.
Julie: It really is.
Zach: I want to get into some pop cultural examples of being a witch.
Julie: Go on.
Zach: What spell did you just cast on me? What are you trying to levitate?
Julie: The lamp is lifting. Okay, go on. Go on.
Zach: It's off camera. You guys can't see it. It's four feet in the air right now. Witch pop-culture examples—before we get into a few to end off, I just want to say—
Julie: I love it. You're like, ‘Before we end off. Okay, now before we end off.’ It's actually never ending.
Zach: I'm going to end, but before I end—okay. As a preface, for people wondering, because a lot of people posted about this in my research: if the Europeans killed 50,000 people, why are all the pop-culture examples about America?
Julie: Because, like I said, it's just [unclear].
Zach: The reason Americans define witch pop culture, as opposed to Europe, is: one, it's America. We think we're better than everything, and in some cases we're right. Two, Hollywood controls the—
Julie: I'll accept Hollywood, not the first one.
Zach: Movies and TV shows. We're naturally going to make more things that are American-centric. A huge catalyst of witch culture was The Crucible, the play by Arthur Miller, well before it became a movie. Made in America, about the Salem witch trials. That's why Salem, even though 20 people were killed—which is still terrible—
Julie: So it goes back to.
Zach: It's nothing in the face of 50,000.
Julie: Movies and plays about things that happened. We've talked about this before: slavery is made into such a bigger deal in America, while some other nations are still doing slavery. We've talked about this. Who?
Zach: Oh China the Uyghurs.
Julie: Yes. And like some nations have had way more slaves and been doing it for much longer, but it is such a quote unquote big deal. I get I want to highlight that slavery is bad no matter where you're doing it.
Zach: Julie Labau going on record. Slavery is bad.
Julie: Exactly. Like Lincoln was right. Slavery is no good. No, but I do want to highlight that like I think slavery is being made as being so bad in the US as opposed to anywhere else. Whereas it is always freaking bad and that is because probably of Hollywood and display and sending that message for film and theater and whatnot.
Zach: With that being said, the witch trials are very American-centric. I want to go through a few examples we've recently watched. Practical Magic—what are your thoughts on the film about the witch sisters?
Julie: Not as much magic as I thought it would have. It is a witch movie. It's funny, because I talked to a friend about it and she was like, ‘Don't you dare bad-mouth Practical Magic.’
Zach: Who did you talk to about it?
Julie: Emory.
Zach: Okay.
Julie: We've only watched it for the first time recently, and I think it's one of those movies that gives you a lot of comfort if you grew up watching it. Watching it as an adult, I thought it had the potential to be so much better. A lot of the sequences didn't blend together as they should. It felt like ten different stories happening one after another, rather than one sequence.
Zach: It felt a lot of back and forth.
Julie: It felt like there wasn't that much witchery and magic around it. I thought it could have been more. It had the potential to be more. Maybe this is just—
Zach: I wrote down my thoughts on Practical Magic.
Julie: Go for it.
Zach: I said it felt like you had all the elements of a great witch movie. The family curse, the abuser, revenge, the coven, but then the writer threw those in a blender with unicorns. And that's how I felt.
Julie: I couldn't agree more.
Zach: That's how I felt about Practical Magic. I was like, "This is such a dark movie, but it feels like the writing and the jokes and like everything is like so bubbly and I'm just like, lean into the darkness."
Julie: That may be the controversial part of your podcast, but—
Zach: One of many. You're saying you agree with everything that's ever been said on The Zach Show?
Julie: No, but weirdly, I do agree with you. It had so much going for it, so many good ideas and elements to make it great. It feels like when you go to a restaurant—and we did that recently—and it's also trying to be a bar, but it can't decide. Pick a lane. It had all the elements to be great, but couldn't fully commit to the bit.
Zach: It was confused. It was in between.
Julie: Yeah. It just felt like you had such great potential and you kind of wasted it.
Zach: The Witch, what did you think?
Julie: The Witch was a weird movie in that it was very artistic, quote-unquote. It really showcases the folkloric witch, the story from the old times—
Zach: It would be the religious, satanic witch.
Julie: Right. It was a slower movie that required a bit more thinking. It was also in old-time English, so I had to focus on the subtitles to get what they were on about. That made the experience harder for me. I don't know if someone used to Shakespearean language would have felt differently. Artistically, I definitely thought it was great, but as a non-native speaker, I could have used a little more going on.
Zach: It was tough because it was written in the English of the time. Even me as a native English speaker.
Julie: Who the [expletive] is ‘thy’? Is it you? Is it them?
Zach: It did take me a good 20 minutes to figure out that thy or no, sorry, thee is you and thy is me.
Julie: There were a lot of bits like that. Another one was ‘Come here’—‘Come hither,’ or something. Is it come here, or is it go away? There were definitely bits where I was like, ‘What are you saying?’
Zach: My takeaway is that it gave you a real taste of the interfamily paranoia at the time: how fear turns ordinary behavior into paranoia. It painted a vivid picture of how you can turn against your own family. When we talk about the Salem witch trials, and a daughter standing on a table accusing her mother of being a witch, you could see how a sister could accuse her own sister of being a witch.
Julie: I thought that was a really—
Zach: When it's a staple in your mind that the witch is the scapegoat for things you can't explain—it's hammered into your mind over and over, the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches—it's no wonder people in their own families, like in The Witch, were paranoid about each other and accusing each other of being witches. I loved Robert Eggers's creative take: she becomes what she was accused of. She was accused of being a witch, and only then does she seek the black sheep—the devil—and later become the witch.
Julie: So, I feel like, you know, again, spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the movie, even though it came out a while back, it's also like her entire family ended up rejecting her and she's in like lack of a community and she's looking for that community that she can find in other witches. Yeah. And I think it's like a nice full circle thing as well.
Zach: My favorite scene from The Witch was when Thomasin, Anya Taylor-Joy, pretends to be a witch to frighten her sister. I could see a sibling joke getting out of hand and getting me hanged. If I'd been born a girl, an older sister, and played a joke on my siblings—‘I'm a witch. I'm in control of the forest’—that could turn into me getting hanged as a witch. I've played jokes on my brothers like that when I was younger. You get into character, you're role-playing, and you're fibbing for your own entertainment. Her younger sister says, ‘You're a witch.’ Her mom's like, ‘Did you say you're a witch?’ She's like, ‘Yeah, but I was joking.’ And the mom's like, ‘No, you're a witch.’ And her dad's like, ‘What?’
Julie: That's crazy. We would totally play a joke like that with our siblings, but the fact that the parents would believe it's true is where you'd get in trouble.
Zach: But the parents also came over from England where the witch trials were happening and they were surrounded by that.
Julie: No but and to be fair like if I'd been in the parents position where like my baby's been quote unquote stolen and my other child was like possessed and then died I would also be like okay there is something weird going on.
Zach: Yeah, absolutely. Looking forward, what are your top takeaways from the history of the witch hunts? What lessons can we learn?
Julie: Hide your skills, girls, because they will kill you for it.
Zach: So, you don't want girls to showcase their skills?
Julie: No, I do want them to showcase their skills. I'm just saying—
Zach: We're talking about modern day.
Julie: Okay, I was thinking back then. I do think girls are powerful, and there's a reason they're accused of being witches: the patriarchy is scared of us. Let's be bold, show our skills, and show the world what we can do.
Zach: That's your main takeaway?
Julie: That's the message I want to leave with. And then my takeaway is—
Zach: That's a good takeaway.
Julie: My takeaway is also that men are threatened by us. That's the first part of the takeaway, and then my take-home message—
Zach: I'll add an addendum: some men are threatened by women. I don't think—
Julie: ‘Not all men. We're not all like that.’ Of course not all men are like this. But when—
Zach: Some men are threatened by women.
Julie: When we say ‘men,’ we don't mean all men. We mean the men making life harder for us. We don't mean all men. We never mean all men. No offense, you guys, but we don't try to put an entire gender under one umbrella.
Zach: I don't think men try to put all women under—
Julie: You, for instance, of course are not like that. Thank God. If you were, I would not be here sitting next to you.
Zach: In a witch's hat, casting spells on me.
Julie: Exactly. I would not do that because that would not be attractive to me. But I do think that a lot of men have been using witchery and hysteria and other femaleike features to downgrade women.
Zach: You're talking about like back in the day.
Julie: I'm talking about now.
Zach: You think men accuse other women of witchery?
Julie: Okay, not witchery. I'm progressing, but using—
Zach: Being outcasts, weird, or empowered in some way.
Julie: I do think that some men still a lot of men unfortunately are using what might seem as weaknesses amongst women like are you on your period? Are you being hormonal or things like that, which by the way, which are our strength often because being in touch with your emotions actually allow you to be a better leader. And.
Zach: I agree. I think a guy who uses the period as an excuse to dig in to get leverage is an [expletive]
Julie: I think a lot of the witch's accusation is again a way to control women and prevent them from being their full selves and expressing themselves to the fullest. So my takeaway is [expletive] that. Let's be ourselves 100%.
Zach: Let's be ourselves is a great thing. I wrote down a few takeaways from my own research.
Julie: Go ahead.
Zach: Number one, people can do terrible things with good intentions.
Julie: That's true.
Zach: People Yeah. But most importantly, people can think that they're making a difference in the world for the best. Yeah. By executing and accusing a witch. And in reality, they just don't know what they're dealing with because they ascribe supernatural intentions to a natural thing.
Julie: Yes. And that could be also true for a lot of people that are wrongfully accused. That like we're making the world a safer place by accusing this neighbor that we find suspicious of murdering that person or whatever and it's just an innocent person.
Zach: Sure. Number two is accusations don't equal proof.
Julie: There you go.
Zach: You could have a bunch of people saying something without evidence.
Julie: Mass hysteria.
Zach: Until you have solid evidence, it is just a rumor. More people saying something does not equal evidence. You should definitely look if 30 people come out and say this happened to me, I think that's worth paying attention to.
Julie: Sure. Sure.
Zach: But until you can establish a pattern with some evidence, it is it should be filed more under a rumor than this is something demonic or terrible that has happened. And number three, this might be the most controversial, but I think we need to stop needing victims to be likable. I think that during the witch trials and even today people that are extremely unlikable could have bad things happen to them.
Julie: 100%.
Zach: And we shouldn't color our perception of what they deserve as judgment based on how much we like a person.
Julie: And I think that goes both ways too where you have like someone very likable. Sure.
Zach: Just because you're likable doesn't mean you're not a piece of [expletive]. And just because you're unlikable—
Julie: Exactly.
Zach: If someone you don't like, or view as an outcast, says something bad happened to them, we should do our best not to let that color our perception of whether their concerns are valid.
Julie: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Zach: And that is thrown around a lot with how we perceive victims based on how likable or unlikable they are. It has nothing to do with the actual crime committed.
Julie: I also feel like there's sometimes the word for being like deserving of certain things. And I think unless you're like a judge or a god or something like you don't get really a say of like oh that person did this so they deserved to get raped or to get murdered or whatever. Like I don't I think it's so terrible to think that you have a way to say whether or not someone deserved it. And even if someone did a bad thing that doesn't mean that they're deserving of the horrible things that happened to them.
Zach: And the last two things, better technology comes with a price. The printing press spread scientific knowledge. It also spread witch hysteria. Yeah. And it happens throughout history, social media, the internet. It spreads a lot of good information. It also spreads different types of hysteria, different types of rumors, false information, misinformation, things that can be leveraged against people who are vulnerable and looking for answers that are easy to be preyed upon. So with every new adoption of technology, there's always going to be negative things happening. And then the last thing I wrote down is that we'd all think we'd be the one to defend the accused whether or not we actually have the balls to do it. Yeah. And I think that is something that I thought about as the person doing the research for this episode is that it's easy to project yourself back to 400 years ago and think, oh, like, yeah, if my wife or sister was accused of witchcraft, I would have stood up in front of the town and said, no, I know she's [unclear]. And I would have had it turned on myself.
Julie: Exactly.
Zach: Out of context, it's very easy to assume you'd have been the hero in all the stories you tell yourself. Whatever century you lived in, people like picturing themselves as super important, as superheroes. I recognize that with myself, that's nowhere near the case. I hope to God I'd have the balls to stand up for people in my family who were accused of witchcraft and about to be executed. But I'd be so egomaniacal to label myself as the guy who would have stood up in town and said, ‘No, this is bullshit.’ I'm talking as someone born in the 1990s, living in 2026. I don't think I'd be a special person in any time I was born. A good reason for that is that I'm not special in this time. I don't think I'm a particularly moral person. I'm a decent person who's good in a lot of situations, but everyone likes to think they're Jesus Christ or Gandhi in whatever [expletive] time period they were in. Whatever period I was in, I'd be a relatively average dude, bopping around and living life. I hope I'd have the morals to speak up for people in my community and village, but in no way do I think I'd have been some witch savior.
Julie: That is interesting. Like that notion of grandeur and narcissism that might come with someone wanting to be in that position.
Zach: That's been a wild, witchy episode.
Julie: Wild ride. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Zach: Dr. Julie Labau.
Julie: Thank you for having me. I had a wicked time.
Zach: I had a wicked time as well. And I'm only calling you doctor now because it's 2026. If I called you that back in the day, you might get a witch accusation thrown your way.
Julie: Thank you for saving my life.
Zach: Yes, so I wouldn't out you as a scientist back in the 1600s.
Julie: Thank you.
Zach: But thank you so much, my beautiful wife and smart person and intelligent scientist, for joining me on this podcast. It's been a witchy time. Happy Halloween.
Julie: Happy Halloween.
Zach: And I'll see you guys next time.