00:00:00.200Hi, I'm Clare Mitchell, QC. Welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:05.220I'm a lawyer who specialises in miscarriage of justice cases,
00:00:08.740and we're bringing you this podcast because we want to tell you0.61
00:00:11.560about the women who were accused, prosecuted, convicted,
00:00:15.740and ultimately executed as witches in Scotland.
00:00:18.800I'm Zoe Vendetotsi, and I'm a writer who's always had an interest in the witches,
00:00:23.040and I feel that this dark mark against Scotland needs a reckoning.
00:00:26.480The campaign Witches of Scotland wants three things.
00:00:29.600Firstly, a pardon for all those convicted of witchcraft.
00:00:33.120Secondly, an apology for all those who were accused as witches.
00:00:37.420And finally, a national monument in recognition of all those who were affected by this terrible miscarriage of justice.
00:00:44.420Over the forthcoming weeks, we'll be talking to a whole host of experts about the history and the modern day connections to the witches of Scotland.
00:00:53.000Hello and welcome to the Witches of Scotland podcast.
00:00:56.060this week we are on episode 52 which is i'm just gonna say it again remarkable that's as many weeks
00:01:04.880as there is in a year if you chose to listen to one of our recordings every week we'll see you
00:01:12.080through an entire year i mean at what point do we say enough is enough when we run out of guests
00:01:21.020it's amazing there are so many experts that have covered all the aspects that we could possibly
00:01:27.100think of to do witchcraft and we've got a huge list of people still to interview so i think this
00:01:32.220could just keep going forever and ever frankly yeah well i hope for both of our sanity that
00:01:37.920there is a natural end to this story yes yes at some stage but not but no no but it's still
00:01:46.200keeping up the level of interest though the level of interest growing i mean the number of people
00:01:51.200dear podcast listeners is growing so please tell your pals your neighbors anyone that we are uh
00:02:00.040what are we we're an interesting yeah we're we're certainly we're certainly here we're here we're
00:02:09.160a podcast we're here deal with it that's yeah i'm not going to talk about the quality the quality of
00:11:18.400It's such a visceral thing, burning, you know, that we talk about on the podcast.
00:11:22.980It's a real atavistic, a really base level, the burning of it, the getting rid of it, the erasing it.
00:11:29.800It's like there's plenty more here, mate.
00:11:31.400I think he had the temerity as well of drawing a line, a parallel with himself,0.60
00:11:36.180that it was like he was fighting the Nazism of demon-y people, demons, demon lovers, demon worshippers.
00:11:42.920And you're kind of like, dude, you realise that the Nazis burned books.0.59
00:11:45.840that was like one of their their things that they did just like I don't want to do a big swear here
00:11:50.960but I'm thinking lots of swear words keep that rage contained Zoe remember I'm reining it in
00:11:55.800I'm reining it in about this anyway so that's the first piece of news Claire I believe you have
00:12:03.680something else on the news agenda yes there's something else in the news agenda now I don't
00:12:08.360know those of us that follow on Twitter may already have seen that on International Women's Day
00:12:14.380Laura Graham who is trained as a lawyer and as an artist she is having an event in Edinburgh. Now
00:12:21.980Laura Graham if those of you want to go back and remember Laura Graham was in episode 40 and we
00:12:27.980spoke to her about her work involved in the witchcraft trials. So what she has decided to do
00:12:34.460is on International Women's Day this year she has decided to have an event. Now the event is
00:12:42.240very early in the morning it's described as the reclaiming of agnes experience and it's at 5 30
00:12:50.100a.m on march the 8th that's international women's day on calton hill in edinburgh and what she's
00:12:57.900doing is her project is called exonerate agnes and she is on twitter and you can find her on twitter
00:13:07.100out at Exonery Agnes you can find her there and we are retweeting what they have tweeted so you
00:13:13.420can have a look at that and essentially the idea of it is and we're going to actually ask her to
00:13:19.500come on and speak about it in our next podcast but the idea is that on the days and weeks leading up
00:13:27.660to the 8th of March Exonery Agnes tweets out the allegations that were made against Agnes and what
00:13:36.340it was that she was accused of so it's really good if you follow her on twitter you'll be able
00:13:42.640to see the allegations that have been made out against her when we come to it we thought it
00:13:47.560might be a good idea if we just gave you some background information in relation to agnes as
00:13:51.940well so she's the woman today that we're going to remember as i'm really quite excited about it
00:13:57.400despite the fact that it's a very early start but it's it's a really exciting thing because
00:14:02.280International Women's Day you know this year that marks two years since we started the campaign
00:14:06.800and it'll be such an interesting you know to use the word visceral again twice in one podcast
00:14:11.920it'll be absolutely fascinating to see the spectacle and I think it'll be really moving
00:14:16.620that Laura's going to put this together and I know that her work that we've discussed before
00:14:21.200in that other podcast that you mentioned is really incredibly moving and again it just makes
00:14:25.700the reality of what happened to these people just really present and I think it's going to be a
00:14:31.060really amazing thing to go and see so i would really encourage people to engage with that and
00:14:34.580if you are in edinburgh or you feel like traveling to edinburgh it'd be really cool and it'd be nice
00:14:39.080to meet you because of course we're going to be there alongside laura so it would be really great
00:14:43.360to meet people if they're coming down to it i should also say that we will try and get laura
00:14:49.000on to have a word about it and to let us know about it and if you go on to eventbrite and look
00:14:54.120up exonerate agnes you should be able to get tickets for it as well so give that a look and
00:14:59.460hopefully we'll speak to her soon about it too but it's free isn't it it's a free event it's just
00:15:05.120yeah it's just to register i think for numbers particularly absolutely yeah yeah yeah so claire
00:15:10.800can you tell us a bit about agnes samson okay well agnes samson was a woman who lived in nether
00:15:17.060keith she was considered at the time to have healing powers and it said that she acted as
00:15:22.820a midwife. Now she became involved in the witchcraft accusations at the time of James VI.0.94
00:15:32.700James VI had returned from Copenhagen after marrying Anne of Denmark as we've spoken about
00:15:37.900before and he was quite fixated on the idea that the crossings had been so bad because the weather
00:15:44.640had been turned by witches in order to try and foil him in his return. So when these women were
00:15:52.060arrested. They were obviously tortured in terms of sleep deprivation, and women confessed to
00:15:58.120having been guilty of raising storms that threatened the voyage. And there was all sorts
00:16:03.720of lurids and stories that they sent devils to climb up the keel of the ship. The story of the
00:16:10.020arrest and the trial and the confession of Agnes Sampson, the reason that we know so much about it
00:16:14.880was that there was a printed pamphlet printed in London in 1591 called News from Scotland and I
00:16:23.700would tell anyone that's interested to go and google that there's a Wikipedia page on it called
00:16:28.740News from Scotland. News is spelt N-E-W-E-S, Newses from Scotland and that provided some contemporary
00:16:36.300information and trial records so it's a really rich source of information. So Agnes Sampson was
00:16:42.740accused by Gillis Duncan and was arrested along with others she was questioned regarding her role
00:16:48.240in the storm raising she was put to torture we believe that that torture was probably sleep
00:16:53.600deprivation and she confessed a part of her body was shaved we don't know if it was her head
00:16:59.220but that it was said that she had a witch's mark on her and the proceedings took place in 1591
00:17:07.320I'll not read out all the news from Scotland but it's definitely worth going and reading the accusations that were made against her and what Agnes was said to have said.
00:17:20.520Effectively she was said to have confessed to witchcraft.
00:17:24.180Now, one of the interesting things about the exoneree Agnes project is that what they are doing every day is that they are revealing part of the accusations that were made against Agnes.
00:17:39.340I'll not go through them in detail, obviously, it's best if you follow on Twitter, because every day you'll see various accusations that were made.
00:17:46.900but I'll just pick one or two. For example, it was said that Agnes had foreknowledge that a man
00:17:53.540was a dead man. So obviously she'd refer to someone as being dead when it wouldn't have
00:18:00.020been commonly known that that person was dead and it was said that that's why she was a witch.
00:18:06.240It was also said that Agnes worked as a folk healer, that she employed people and there were
00:18:12.100accusations against her in relation to that healing it was also said for example that Agnes
00:18:18.660was charged with healing a man so it said that she'd healed the person it was by witchcraft
00:18:24.360but we don't know any further details of that but that was one of the things she was said to have
00:18:29.740done so what happened as a result of that and as a result of her confessing to that was that she
00:18:39.020was in fact questioned by King James himself. He apparently and interestingly was sceptical
00:18:45.180of the material that she had given in her confession but it was said that she told him
00:18:52.360things about a conversation that he and Anne had had on their wedding night and that persuaded him
00:18:59.720that she indeed was a witch. So on the 27th of January 1591 the charges of witchcraft against her
00:19:08.740were drawn up into 53 different accusations or what's called articles of ditty. She was convicted
00:19:17.320of those offences. She was taken to the scaffold in Castle Hill where she was strangled and then
00:19:24.000burnt at the stake. So we remember Agnes Sampson as a woman who was accused of things she couldn't
00:19:31.620possibly have done, who was convicted as a witch and paid the ultimate burden. We remember Agnes
00:19:38.620samson today as a woman not a witch that's sad it's a sad story but i think it will be really
00:19:44.980great to go along to the event on international women's day the 8th of march in edinburgh
00:19:49.600that laura grame's putting together i think that will be a really interesting way of going along
00:19:54.160and marking her in particular but the witch hunts and the people that were caught up in it more
00:19:59.060broadly yeah she's i suppose on every woman in terms of the witchcraft act she could have been
00:20:05.220any one of the thousands of people that were accused but it just so happens we have more
00:20:09.520information about her great okay so today's episode of the podcast we are really excited
00:20:17.180to be speaking to somebody who again we've met on twitter and has posted some really interesting
00:20:23.040stuff that we think sort of broadens out the conversation generally about the witch hunts
00:20:27.120so today we're going to be talking to dr miranda corcoran who's a lecturer in 21st century
00:20:33.560Literature at University College Cork. Her research interests include Cold War literature,
00:20:39.300genre fiction, popular fiction, sci-fi, horror and the gothic. Dr Corkin has recently just
00:20:44.440released a book called Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture. So without any
00:20:49.920further ado, we'd like to welcome Miranda to the podcast.
00:21:03.560our podcast it's really great to have you here we met met's the wrong word but on twitter
00:21:09.880and I saw what your research area was and I thought this woman sounds like she has got some
00:21:16.120interesting ideas that our podcast listeners would definitely love so we're really really
00:21:21.440glad that you agreed to come on so thank you so much oh thank you and thank you so much for having
00:21:25.440me this is really exciting and I'm so happy to be a part of your podcast and your broader project
00:21:31.420as well so it's very exciting thank you. That's brilliant so if we could first of all start do
00:21:36.680you mind just telling our listeners what your area is? So I work broadly in the area of horror
00:21:44.060the gothic and popular culture so I write a lot on horror as I said on science fiction texts
00:21:53.100I do a lot on witchcraft in popular culture which is obviously why I'm here I also do some teaching
00:22:01.180on witchcraft as well I currently run a seminar in my department called witchcraft in the American
00:22:07.120popular imagination so while I'm interested in obviously witchcraft as a historical phenomenon
00:22:14.960and witchcraft sort of more broadly as a cultural phenomenon my main interest is in how it manifests
00:22:22.580in in the media in film television and in popular fiction that's so fascinating I thought when we
00:22:30.100thought about bringing you on or asking you on I thought about all the different representations
00:22:35.640of witches that I had to start off with and I don't know whether or not Zoe you'd have been
00:22:40.820the same but my first witch in popular culture was Tabitha oh yeah yeah from Bewitched oh I love
00:22:47.400Bewitched she was such a cool witch though she was she was like a really cool kind of benign
00:22:52.880positive cutesy sort of witch for the most part wasn't she she was I'm always fascinated by her
00:22:58.480because when I was a kid I was obsessed with Bewitched so that was probably a good indication
00:23:02.980of where my life would go but they used to show repeats of it on on Channel 4 the British Channel
00:23:08.9404 early in the mornings when I was a kid and I was just amazed by it because Samantha wasn't some
00:23:15.480you know sorceress living in an enchanted castle in some fantasy world like in Disney she was just
00:23:22.280an ordinary woman who had all of this power and I was absolutely amazed by her and I think as I
00:23:28.680got older obviously I think as with many people I did find myself being a little bit troubled by
00:23:33.520some of the patriarchal connotations of the series in that obviously Samantha is this massively0.96
00:23:38.840powerful woman but she has to rein in her powers and sort of suppress her culture in order to keep
00:23:44.860her very boring husband Darren happy but now that I've gotten a bit older again and have thought a
00:23:50.340bit more about it I'm sometimes really impressed by some of the subversive elements of that show
00:23:55.960and even though you know Samantha's forbidden to use her powers she still does and she gets sometimes
00:24:01.700she gets away with it and sometimes she doesn't and she uses them in very subversive ways and her
00:24:07.500mother Indora is a very powerful matriarch so the show actually plays with gender in some really
00:24:12.720unexpected ways but I absolutely love Bewitched. Yeah Indora was in fact my favorite because she0.96
00:24:18.500would always come in as the mother-in-law to go now come on here's how we should be using our powers
00:24:24.160and I loved her. Yeah and she was just so strong and so confident and men in the witch community0.99
00:24:29.500in Bewitched were almost non-existent they didn't have any real power they didn't have any real0.53
00:24:35.740strength it was always the women who were powerful in that community which I think is a really0.99
00:24:39.980interesting parallel to the middle-class suburban America that Samantha inhabits with Darren.
00:24:46.500What's really interesting is each generation has its own witch icon, I suppose. And has that been going on for as long as we've had media?
00:24:59.240I think so. So my focus in my research is very much on witchcraft and adolescence, but I think witches as a whole are such malleable figures that they can be adapted in so many different ways.
00:25:12.680There's a great quote from Margaret Adler in her book, Drawing Down the Moon, where she researches neo-pagan witchcraft in America.
00:25:21.300And in that book, she says that the witch has the ability to roam between a myriad of different forms and roam she does.0.63
00:25:29.240And I really like that because it sums up just how malleable the witch figure is. The witch as a archetype has so many different functions and can fulfill so many different roles.
00:25:42.440So obviously you have witchcraft in the sense of neo-pagan witchcraft as a religion. There's historical witchcraft as in the history of the witch trials and witchcraft practices around the world. There are media witches where you can get witches who are good, witches who are evil, witches who are ambiguous.
00:26:00.900And because the archetype of the witch is so ancient and so all encompassing, the witch as a figure can be put to any use. So it's really interesting to see how witches are adopted by different generations or by different groups for their own ends.
00:26:18.100and yeah I think every generation does seem to have to have their own witch figures I know when
00:26:23.500I was a teenager it was probably Sabrina the teenage witch from the 90s sitcom or maybe Willow
00:26:29.020from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and they were really interesting witches but they were very much for
00:26:33.700the most part good witches but I've noticed amongst my students the witches that they really
00:26:39.340like are witches like the girls from American Horror Story Coven or Thomason from The Witch
00:26:44.620who are much more ambiguous in their morality and in their behavior so it's really interesting to
00:26:49.860see those shifts it's really interesting I wonder if that's because just absolute pop psychology
00:26:54.920here I'm 46 so when I was growing up definitely would be bewitched because I was thinking earlier
00:27:00.920that bewitched ran alongside for me I dream of genie now she's not a witch in that obviously
00:27:04.940she's a genie but there's very very similar sort of an idea it's just the idea of a magical woman
00:27:10.680in the home which I think really really formed me in different ways and I know it probably
00:27:15.200if I was to research it I wouldn't sort of so crassly put them together because they're not
00:27:19.500the same sort of thing but the idea of a magical having magical powers was quite interesting to me
00:27:24.500and then I got into Sabrina so that would be sort of towards my sort of middle to late teens that
00:27:30.660she was out and I definitely was from that because she was so ordinary in many ways she had the same
00:27:35.220sort of worries and concerns and then I watched probably Practical Magic maybe after that so that0.99
00:27:40.800kind of a natural romantic slightly sexy move of witches at that point they weren't like evil they
00:27:48.440were absolutely like a kind of a good kind of benign probably for the most part sort of an idea
00:27:53.660and maybe something as a teen girl you'd gravitate towards that because you feel fairly powerless
00:27:58.180generally so you have this kind of dream that if only I could you know do something magical does
00:28:04.060your research bear that out that that's why teens are so drawn to witches? It does. I mean, so my
00:28:10.020research initially begins in the period just after the Second World War, where witch figures are
00:28:17.100mostly written and explored by adults. So I look, for example, at Marianne L. Starkey's The Devil
00:28:24.560in Massachusetts, which is a study of the Salem witch trials, and was one of the most influential
00:28:29.940studies of the Salem witch trials in the post-war period. It was published in 1949 and it was a huge
00:28:35.720influence on Arthur Miller's The Crucible. So I begin with those texts where you have adults
00:28:40.900engaging with the figure of the teen witch and mostly what I argue is that adults engage with
00:28:46.380the figure of the teen witch in some ways as a means of figuring out exactly what this new
00:28:52.240cultural phenomenon of the teenage girl is and what she means and how she functions. But after
00:28:57.860that, once you get into the 50s and 60s, you get more books that are either written for teenage
00:29:03.140girls or books that are adopted by teenage girls. So I look, for example, at The Witch of Blackbird
00:29:10.260Pond, which was a popular young adult novel from the late 1950s. And I look at the early Sabrina
00:29:15.360comics, and I very much explore how those works present their young witches as these points of
00:29:22.760identification for teenage girls, these sort of almost ideal figures. The main character in The
00:29:29.680Witch of Blackbird Pond, even though she's not actually a witch, it's a historical novel set in
00:29:34.360New England. She's an accused witch, but she's presented as this very brave, very strong, very
00:29:39.420idealistic figure. So she's very much an ideal projection of the self for teen girls. In the
00:29:45.200early Sabrina comics, obviously there's a lot of comedy in them, but Sabrina is primarily presented0.95
00:29:51.000as this very glamorous figure whose powers allow her to have the latest fashions and the latest
00:29:56.200gadgets and they make her very popular so they're very much presented as ideal figures and teenage
00:30:01.820girls can sort of map their own burgeoning identities onto these ideal figurations of
00:30:08.520teen girlhood that are sort of accentuated via their association with witchcraft particularly
00:30:14.340in the case of Sabrina where her powers allow her to you know live out this ideal consumer fantasy
00:30:19.740but I also look at some texts some witch figures that are a little bit more subversive
00:30:24.400and allow teenage girls to explore some of their darker fantasies and their darker feelings
00:30:29.460so I look at Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle where the protagonist isn't
00:30:35.680really a witch in that she doesn't actually have magical powers but she does engage in all of these
00:30:40.620strange rituals she has a cat who basically acts like her familiar so she is a witch figure if not
00:30:47.500actually a magical witch so I look at that and I look at Stephen King's Carrie as well who as I'm
00:30:53.060sure you you know she's not again a traditional witch but throughout the novel she's constantly
00:30:58.200aligned with the figure of the witch and I look at how those characters who are quite murderous
00:31:03.540and quite violent and quite subversive how they allow teenage girls to explore some of their
00:31:09.560darker impulses so a lot of my a lot of the work in my book does look at how the witch
00:31:15.240as a figure by virtue of her other worldliness by virtue of her sort of liminal status or by virtue
00:31:22.480of her magical abilities how she's allowed to do things that ordinary teenage girls might not be
00:31:27.620able to and it gives them a space to explore who they are what their desires are whether those are
00:31:33.420you know good or bad I think that really sort of shores up the idea that we have that we've0.99
00:31:38.340encountered a lot during the campaign particularly of people lots of people lots of women primarily
00:31:43.960really identifying with the idea of the witch as being the subversive woman that's too powerful
00:31:49.080to exist or you know that this sort of idea which i think is really really interesting
00:31:53.860psychologically now i am a huge consumer of pop culture i've always been a big tv watcher so i've
00:32:01.520got no issue with that whatsoever like 100 i love it i love the sort of the fictional representations
00:32:06.300of witches and things are super interesting but it concerns me that our cultural input with that
00:32:12.900and output with that obscures then the historical fact absolutely of those accused of being witches
00:32:18.640you know that they're not they're not the same things and they can exist quite happily together
00:32:22.960the historical truth and the representations as long as we understand that they're not that's not
00:32:28.480the same things yes absolutely and that's something I've been very careful especially
00:32:32.880in the introduction to my own book to separate out the sort of cultural function of the witch
00:32:37.860from the actual individuals who were accused of witchcraft. I mean, even in the early modern
00:32:45.440period, when people were being accused and tortured and executed for witchcraft, the witch
00:32:50.200also served a sort of cultural purpose in terms of, you know, being used as a symbol or a concept
00:32:57.060in debates about religion or the role of women and so on. And this is something that, for example,
00:33:02.120Stuart Clark talks about in his book, Thinking with Demons. So witches have always had a sort
00:33:06.980of conceptual function as well as their sort of real world or the real world reality of witch
00:33:13.400trials and torture and executions. And I have very much been trying to separate those things out in
00:33:19.740the introduction to my book. I think so many of our ideas, as you said, are very much obscured by
00:33:26.520cultural representations and the various cultural work people have done, various groups have done
00:33:32.160with the figure of the witch so for example second wave feminism made very heavy use of the figure of
00:33:38.600the witch from groups like the women's international terrorist conspiracy from hell they were a radical
00:33:44.940feminist group in the u.s in the 1960s so it's an acronym which women's international terrorist
00:33:50.340conspiracy from hell why have we never heard of this oh it's really interesting so i was i was
00:33:55.760trying to keep them away from you they used to dress up as witches and they would do things like
00:34:03.780hex the New York Stock Exchange while dressed as witches or once they ran through like a bridal
00:34:09.020fair um dressed as witches and like they were a really interesting group and their performances
00:34:13.720were like disruptive and really fascinating but there's also like a massive issue with how second
00:34:19.360wave feminism has treated the figure of the witch you know if you think of people like you know
00:34:24.120Ernrich and English for example or Mary Daly people like that who have this very sort of
00:34:30.280romanticized view of the witch and who essentially turn the witch trials and the European witch hunts
00:34:38.640and the North American witch hunts as well into a sort of you know gynocide and a sort of targeted
00:34:43.440attack on women they've you know inflated the numbers of women executed for witchcraft into
00:34:49.700the millions or they often describe women who are executed as being you know midwives and healers
00:34:55.780and these wise women and a lot of these ideas are older a lot of them come from people like
00:35:00.540Jules Michelet and Matilda Jocelyn Gage but they've been really influential in terms of how
00:35:07.720we as a culture view witchcraft and you still see that in the you know we are the granddaughters of
00:35:13.320the witches you couldn't burn meme it's like it's really really pervasive and in a way it is
00:35:18.920fascinating to me how our understanding of witches is so colored by the use that various
00:35:26.700political groups various producers of literary and popular culture have made of them and it
00:35:32.280seems like that almost functions as an intermediary or in some cases almost like a roadblock that's
00:35:37.560kind of preventing us from you know exploring the actual and far more complex history of the witch
00:35:44.080trials so I'm very clear in my own work that what I'm doing is I'm looking at the cultural
00:35:48.780representations of witchcraft and the cultural representations of the witch as opposed to the
00:35:54.340actual history because there's enough material there to work with you know with the real life
00:36:00.380historical facts there's no need for people to exaggerate it in any way exactly as it was yeah
00:36:06.440exactly and it's you know and also fascinating enough as it was as well as a reflection of you
00:36:12.280know the power dynamics of the early modern period gender roles it's you know it's really
00:36:17.340interesting as it is but people I think again it kind of comes back to that point I was making
00:36:22.340earlier that the witch is so malleable and the archetype is so broad in some ways that people
00:36:27.860will make whatever use they can of the witch and in some ways that's interesting it's created some
00:36:33.060really fascinating works of art and some really fascinating pieces of literature and film but on
00:36:38.620the other hand sometimes it does result in some very inaccurate perceptions of witchcraft and the
00:36:44.620witch trials being sort of absorbed into popular culture and being described as reality when in
00:36:52.220fact they come out of quite often first and second wave feminism and their use of the witch as an
00:36:57.700archetype as opposed to you know actual historical women who were accused of a very specific crime.
00:37:03.100you're absolutely right about the block issue because one of the things that we had when we
00:37:09.020started I mean we started an international women's day 2020 with the campaign and one of the
00:37:14.340difficulties that we had was at the start getting people to understand what we were talking about
00:37:20.920because people actually just they treated it as as fun I think we were getting phoned by
00:37:25.940journalists that wanted to do you know a silly piece or they they're trying to pardon witches
00:37:33.020and then when you actually spoke to people and said what we're talking about is thousands of
00:37:37.660people that suffered the most brutal miscarriage of justice in Scotland it was a high percentage
00:37:43.280of women than it is elsewhere in Europe was 84 percent our experts tell us were women
00:37:47.900and when we actually told them the story they were really receptive to it but there's and it's not
00:37:54.280surprising there are layer upon layer of cultural ideas that we have about witches which make it
00:38:01.220okay to treat them as a joke so when we're talking about the actual history of people
00:38:06.460they're like well that's jokes I mean we had a good article in a newspaper recently really
00:38:11.840positive article about the campaign about it's what we wanted out of it about why we wanted it
00:38:17.540about the modern resonances with violence against women about modern resonances with other people
00:38:23.640in the world who's still accused of witchcraft and the article was brilliant but the picture
00:38:28.180they put beside it was a woman with a green face and a pointy hat oh no just you're just it was
00:38:35.500obviously like someone just phoned the pictures desk was like we need a photo of a witch give us
00:38:39.900a witch yeah it's it's irritating but it's not something that I would have thought greatly about
00:38:45.780before getting involved in this campaign I have noticed little improvements though I've noticed
00:38:50.380more now when articles come out that they have witches generally in quotation marks so they're
00:38:56.580getting the message that they weren't actually witches which I think is really interesting I'm
00:39:01.060not taking complete credit for that with the campaign but I do feel like that's had something
00:39:04.720to do with that that there is an understanding now that they weren't actually witches which
00:39:09.660seems to be to be the most obvious thing that you could draw from the story but a lot of people still
00:39:14.900struggle with it you know I sort of didn't get into an argument with somebody on Twitter obviously
00:39:19.140that would be foolish but I did say to somebody on Twitter that you know it doesn't matter what
00:39:23.880else they were you know they might have been murderers they might have been you know robbers0.98
00:39:28.960you know they could have killed their children whatever if it was for witchcraft that they
00:39:32.860would accuse and executed that's not factual that's you know so there's no point in obscuring
00:39:38.380about going well some of them were criminals so what like that that's not the point that we're
00:39:42.920making they still weren't witches exactly absolutely and I do remember a couple of years
00:39:48.280ago before the pandemic I went to Salem which was kind of the fulfillment of a childhood dream for
00:39:56.140me because I've been obsessed with Salem ever since I was I was very young but I do remember
00:40:00.480I took a very good like very historically rigorous guided walking tour and someone did ask at the end
00:40:06.540you know were they actually witches so I think that idea is still pervasive and I think sometimes
00:40:15.020I think it kind of comes from two places in the sense that there is an element of ignorance but
00:40:19.620then again there is also the massive cultural impact of again second wave feminism and the
00:40:26.280use they've made of witchcraft and the way they did frame accused witches as healers as well as
00:40:31.740kind of works like you know obviously you've Margaret Murray's work and the the whole idea
00:40:35.540of the witch cult and a lot of that I think has seeped into popular culture as well so that
00:40:40.320sometimes people do assume that even if, you know, people accused of witchcraft in the early modern
00:40:45.880period, even if they weren't flying around on broomsticks, and even if they weren't green-faced
00:40:50.380cackling hags, maybe they were part of one of these, you know, pre-Christian witch cults. So
00:40:55.240I think it's just fascinating how all of these ideas have sort of percolated within the culture,
00:41:01.720and it leads so many people to still view individuals accused of witchcraft as witches
00:41:07.300of some degree even though obviously they weren't this very week we've had news that a pastor in
00:41:14.380America who's described as a far-right pastor called Greg Locke has been suggesting has not0.90
00:41:21.420only been suggesting but has held a book burning event to burn evil garbage like young adult fantasy0.62
00:41:27.020books including books on witchcraft like Harry Potter and stuff like that that seems to me to be
00:41:34.080the oddest thing that you can possibly do to draw attention to this as some kind of realistic magic
00:41:41.040it seems really really weird yeah absolutely especially since so many of those books are
00:41:46.300like high fantasy as well I mean they're not even they're not even grounded in reality
00:41:52.200it seems even in some ways more extreme than you know the satanic panic of the 1980s
00:41:57.580and the early 90s when people were concerned that teenagers were engaging in witchcraft and
00:42:02.260satanism that that seemed at least somewhat more grounded though it was awful and the you know the
00:42:09.160results of that you know led to so many people being imprisoned and having their lives ruined
00:42:13.700for again for nothing but it seemed at least somewhat grounded whereas the books that are
00:42:20.600being attacked in this context are high fantasy very much otherworldly kind of books which is
00:42:27.420you know strange in many ways it just reminds me of the fact now i must have been reading an
00:42:32.020article about this it mentioned something to do with zoophilia but the idea of the obsession at
00:42:37.980the time and in the confessions of having sex with animals i presume that's that's what it is
00:42:42.640the whole idea that the that satan was animalistic and and so on like it just always just makes me
00:42:48.540think that these pastors are just they're having really big repressed sexual feelings and their
00:42:54.600whole burning is just because they just can't deal with those feelings and they can't name whatever
00:42:58.760it is it's going on inside their own minds there's a real parallel between that and the way that
00:43:03.600confessions were extracted during the witch trials the witch hunts in Scotland particularly
00:43:09.360the subjugation of the women and of them being stripped and the whole sexual dynamic I just
00:43:14.560always think with those pastors dudes just relax explore your sexuality it's okay we support you
00:43:21.980it's modern it's cool you don't need to burn young adult books also I think it's very bizarre that
00:43:27.980they think that's going to make one iota of difference to what these young people sort of
00:43:31.500consume because they can get the internet so what difference does it make because they could go on
00:43:37.180they can log on to tiktok or instagram or whatever and see far more than the printed page where they
00:43:44.180have to use their imagination you know i just think it's totally bizarre it is and it's clearly
00:43:48.120very symbolic as well i mean it's all about the show and the spectacle of burning something
00:43:53.460publicly it's not about actually destroying the books or making sure that young people aren't
00:43:58.960accessing them it's this it's this big show and this kind of reaffirmation of the other adults
00:44:04.380yeah exactly exactly and for the media as well yeah yeah it's just is there any reason or thing
00:44:12.120that you have researched on as to why witches at the moment have had an absolute explosion in
00:44:19.780popular culture you know Instagram, TikTok they're everywhere and modern day witches people
00:44:26.100identifying as witches do you think that's as a result of the 50s and 60s and 70s that's why
00:44:32.640it is happening now? I think some of it has to do with I mean firstly the internet and the kind of
00:44:39.560ease of access to knowledge about these things I know that a lot of scholars of witchcraft and
00:44:45.100scholars of teen witchcraft in particular talk about the emergence of the internet in the
00:44:49.6001990s and the witchcraft related chat rooms and you know websites that helped a lot of young people
00:44:55.600connect and become interested in witchcraft and I know it's something that Peg Alloy for example
00:45:00.440in the U.S. writes extensively about so it is something you see in the 90s but I think it's
00:45:05.260becoming at least partially more pervasive because again of things like TikTok and Instagram and
00:45:11.420having access to these sorts of things and access to information about witchcraft. Last year I had
00:45:17.960some students do an excellent project for me as part of my witchcraft seminar that was all about
00:45:22.560witchcraft on social media and how teenagers and young women use social media to connect,
00:45:29.000to share information about spells and rituals and Wiccan and neo-pagan beliefs. So I think a lot of
00:45:35.700it has to do with the increased accessibility of information, but I think that part of it also has
00:45:41.200to do with just the current political climate as well, and particularly the political climate during
00:45:47.200the Trump era and the Trump presidency. I do remember reading a lot of articles during those
00:45:53.900years about groups that had gotten together to hex Trump or hex Brett Kavanaugh or some other
00:46:00.060very misogynistic politician. So there was a great deal of visibility there. That radical feminist
00:46:05.760group that I mentioned, which the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell,0.98
00:46:10.220they reformed under the Trump presidency. So I think some of it was sort of based on that sort
00:46:16.120second wave idea that second wave feminist idea of the witch as a powerful woman and feminist icon0.61
00:46:22.420or a victim of patriarchal violence and I think a lot of women at that time as things like
00:46:27.960reproductive rights were being eroded sort of identified with that the other thing I noticed
00:46:34.340and I think it was kind of the thing that encouraged me to write my book was the explosion
00:46:38.680of witches in popular culture as well during the 2010s so the 2010s gave us things I mean obviously
00:46:45.200there have always been witches and teen witches in popular culture, but the 2010s had a really
00:46:50.200high concentration of them. So it gave us things like The Witch, American Horror Story, Coven,
00:46:56.460The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, which was initially a comic and then a television series.
00:47:01.660So there was this real explosion of very morally ambiguous witches in the media, witches who
00:47:07.400weren't evil or heroic, but sort of more complex figures. And often these witches had to deal with
00:47:14.340things like agency, consent, sexual violence. And I think a lot of that ties into the Me Too
00:47:22.700movement as well. And these kinds of questions about, again, about consent and about rape culture.
00:47:27.640And a lot of the teen witch texts from the 2010s are very much interested in young women who use
00:47:35.500witchcraft as a means to explore their own agency and make their own choices about their lives and
00:47:40.820their bodies so I think a lot of it has to do with the political climate as well as you know
00:47:45.120obviously the internet and social media. That's utterly fascinating and something I hadn't really
00:47:49.860considered in that way before. Why do you think it is that it's a way for young women to test out
00:47:59.020their theories in the world or consider their position in the world? Why do you think that we0.97
00:48:03.360have to do that in the context of a witch idea rather than just having ordinary icons is it about
00:48:13.340the witch that draws us to it I mean I think a lot of it has to do with how girls and women are
00:48:21.160framed or treated in the world in that women are and especially young women and you know teenage
00:48:28.000girls are not allowed to explore their sexuality are not allowed to explore their own agency or
00:48:35.580their own sort of darker desires or their own sort of more socially unacceptable you know socially0.66
00:48:41.480unacceptable in air quotes impulses and I think fantasy figures like the witch sort of give them
00:48:47.560a safe arena in which to explore some of their more complex feelings about themselves and about
00:48:54.100their bodies and about growing up and the kind of transformations inherent in that. And I think
00:49:01.040that because the witch is so often associated with a certain kind of set of key magical abilities,
00:49:07.160things like flight and transformation, things that often kind of center around the body and
00:49:13.080how it moves and how it kind of transforms from one state to the other. There are lots of parallels
00:49:18.520between the experience of puberty and growing up and the figure of the witch. So I think the witch0.87
00:49:24.500is kind of useful in that sense. And also, of course, the witch is generally in fiction,
00:49:29.780powerful. And I think that power is appealing to young women, especially in this kind of more
00:49:36.240ambiguous incarnation that we're seeing now in the 2010s, where they can use their power for good,
00:49:41.920or they can use their power for evil, or they can use their power to be selfish, which, again,0.98
00:49:46.720is something that women often aren't allowed to be like one thing that always strikes me in the
00:49:52.280witch and I've had loads of debates with people about the ending of the 2015 film the witch whether
00:49:57.180it's empowering or whether she's just signed herself over to be you know the servant of the
00:50:02.240devil and serve another man one thing I always point out one thing that always interests me
00:50:07.060is that the thing that makes her say yes I will sign your book you know yes I will become a witch0.96
00:50:14.060and serve you as, you know, the devil. The thing that makes her do that isn't really the fact that0.74
00:50:19.440her entire family is dead or that she's on her own. It's the fact that the devil says to her,
00:50:24.680you know, wouldst thou like the taste of butter? Wouldst thou like pretty dresses to travel the
00:50:29.300world? And I know some of that comes from a real case of witchcraft possession in the 17th century,
00:50:34.460the case of Elizabeth Knapp. But the fact that she agrees to become a witch and serve the devil
00:50:40.600because he offers her nice things i think it's really appealing she's allowed to be selfish and
00:50:45.980to want things and desire things and that's often something that we just don't let teenage girls do
00:50:50.920i don't know if either of the two of you saw at the weekend on twitter someone had taken
00:50:55.620screenshots of all the t-shirts for young women in a high street store and it was like optimistic
00:51:02.940be joyful happy and it was just it was constant direction be a good girl you know keep your
00:51:10.360chin up and serve the Lord you know it was a bit it was yeah toxic positivity I think is what is
00:51:16.280what they're calling it online now and I think there is a lot of that you know for young women
00:51:22.200that sense that you have to be optimistic you have to smile I know there's been a lot of online
00:51:27.340discourse about men telling young women to smile and that it's it's almost become a meme you know
00:51:32.020that you'd be prettier if you smile think but I think there is an expectation especially for young
00:51:37.740women to be polite and pleasant and yielding and accommodating and I think some of these darker0.83
00:51:44.820kind of 2010s which is they allow girls to defy that and they can be violent and they can be0.73
00:51:51.520messy and they can be dark and they can be selfish and it's this conceptual space where they can play
00:51:56.780out those darker things that teenage girls aren't supposed to want or do. I think there definitely
00:52:02.480needs to be a dark and messy t-shirt totally buy that yeah yeah same it's much more accurate with
00:52:09.460the teen girl experience it's not like a nice and pleasant situation to be a teen girl i work in a
00:52:16.420secondary school i've got a teen daughter and i remember vividly what it's like to be a teen it's
00:52:21.740hideous oh yeah i think sort of the battleground of being a teen explains partly why we gravitate
00:52:27.640towards the idea of having magical powers you know I hadn't thought about Carrie as being
00:52:33.000like a witch you know I hadn't hadn't really made that connection but actually that's really
00:52:37.860really perfect you know I really like that yeah it's it's in the book I don't think they really
00:52:43.060touch on it there's a bit in the film where her mother calls her a witch because of her powers
00:52:47.920but there's a lot of it in the book where Carrie there's a bit where Carrie's lying in bed and she
00:52:52.160fantasizes about being a witch and like riding through the town and souring milk and overturning
00:52:57.300butter turns and all of this stuff and again there's like a pleasure in that there's a pleasure
00:53:02.180in destruction and violence which again teenage girls aren't associated with you know teenage0.97
00:53:07.340girls aren't supposed to be violent or just or um destructive they might be on the receiving end of
00:53:12.460those impulses but they're not supposed to be that and like you're right you could not pay me
00:53:17.220to be a teenager again it was awful and it was messy and i was insecure and like my body felt
00:53:24.960uncomfortable like you never feel right in your body as when you're a teenage girl and I'm sure
00:53:30.380like there's definitely a parallel for boys as well but like certainly as a teenage girl your
00:53:35.160body just feels like this surface that's erupting and I think that's probably one of why there are
00:53:39.800so many horror films centered around teenage girls I mean obviously you have Carrie but even
00:53:44.140things like Jennifer's Body and Ginger Snaps there are all these films that associate adolescent
00:53:49.700girlhood with monstrosity and with transformation and with horror because in many ways it is really
00:53:56.820horrible it's sort of adjacent to poltergeist stories to the idea that that's teen girls and
00:54:02.740it's this excess of energy that you know that then sort of seeps out in other ways it's so
00:54:08.140fascinating it's really been great speaking to you you're just you're it's wonderful and we'll
00:54:13.120put links up to things that people can go and find your writing and you mentioned what's your
00:54:18.300book called so my book is called teen witches witchcraft and adolescence in american popular
00:54:23.980culture and it looks at everything from spiritualism and how that's connected to
00:54:29.240teenage girls because it was founded by the fox sisters who were teenage girls right up to things
00:54:34.500like american horror story and the witch i was listening to a podcast about the foxes today
00:54:39.400well they were mentioned in one about the great psychic fraud one that i'm listening to at the
00:54:43.920moment and they were talking about that and i was just thinking about the idea of poltergeists and
00:54:48.260I'm a secondary I'm a high school teacher I was talking to my kids today my third years who are
00:54:52.900like sort of 14 15 about fear we're doing Macbeth so I was talking to them about when Macbeth sort
00:54:58.280of loses the plot and he imagines Banco's ghost and we were talking about whether that's real and
00:55:03.140what your brain does when you're under stress and I just think it's so fascinating as a writer and
00:55:07.980English teacher I just think it's amazing that we can construct these stories that help to kind of
00:55:12.820get through those difficult patches and I definitely think that the connection that many
00:55:17.620young girls feel with witch stories with representations of fictional witches just to
00:55:23.140be super super clear about it it's really helpful I think in some ways you know learn to accommodate
00:55:29.840the burden of being a woman it's actually really important as you say Zoe not only to treat these
00:55:34.660things as differently but to point out also we love witch stories I mean so hopefully
00:55:39.440to me recently oh well you can't ban what's it called zoom on the broom no room on the broom
00:55:46.560broom on the broom it was it was a child's book about yeah it's a great book oh yeah yeah i'm
00:55:53.140definitely not into the business of banning or even burning books never which is but we just
00:55:59.320all we want is restore these people to their proper place in history and make it clear that
00:56:06.640whatever ideas we have now and however we use the witch as a construct it didn't actually apply to
00:56:12.920these people i'm so glad we've managed to make it to the end without actually bursting into flames
00:56:17.360at the idea of we are the granddaughters of the witch oh yeah that's a pet peeve of mine as well
00:56:24.840just because it's it's very simplistic and it ties into i think what is a very problematic
00:56:33.720romanticization of the witch trials and a distortion of the witch trials that you get
00:56:40.020I say second wave feminism but you see it in like Matilda Jocelyn Gage's work as well at the end of
00:56:44.740the 19th century and it's very much a distortion of reality and a romanticization of something that
00:56:51.300was not only brutal and violent but also really complicated like in like there are parts of the
00:56:58.740world where the majority of like Scandinavia and Russia for example where the majority of accused
00:57:03.860witches were men like it's witch trials are such a complex phenomenon that it's very reductive
00:57:10.100to position witches as these heroic victims of patriarchal violence you know it's it's so
00:57:18.060simplistic one of the things that we've mentioned as well is well what what does that say for the
00:57:22.400women that were burned like are they lesser like to me it's in the same sort of ballpark as people0.98
00:57:28.320that die of cancer like that they didn't fight hard enough that stupid idea we've got about0.99
00:57:33.300you're battling you know I just think it's just baloney I just think it's total nonsense and like1.00
00:57:37.620we said before there's enough there's enough there to work with you know there's so much and I hate0.98
00:57:42.460the idea that it's romanticized where we have this idea that they were nubile redheads that were0.51
00:57:48.880that were going you know get lost to the man and that's what happened you know it just doesn't
00:57:53.020such an enormous disservice absolutely to like the calm and also like the complex personalities
00:57:59.120of people who were accused of witchcraft I mean my interest is very much American pop culture so I
00:58:05.400you know I look a fair bit at Salem because it's had such an influence on American pop culture
00:58:09.560but like if you look at the variety of people accused of witchcraft in Salem you have people
00:58:14.940including you know a former town minister a disgruntled beggar woman some teenage girls
00:58:21.960some children you know it was such a variety of people that to reduce them all to these you know
00:58:28.860adult quite sexualized and sexually liberated women who were you know maybe closely associated
00:58:36.080with nature and healing like that reduces a really complex story to like one type of person
00:58:41.920but Salem's just such a perfectly American setup it's like it's already it's been written as a
00:58:47.620script that you could have all these different actresses playing all the different parts it's
00:58:52.060so fascinating I think what's particularly amazing is that the story of the witchcraft trials were
00:58:58.040people who absolutely had no agency and that was part of the problem that was part of the problem0.93
00:59:04.220they were people without any agency they were without any power they were people who were easy
00:59:09.340to pick on and blame your ills on and it's so funny how we now transform that in the 21st century to
00:59:16.280something which allows young people women to explore their lives and to gain power from it
00:59:23.160It's such a reversal from what the actual story was.
01:00:15.820It is something you see in Salem, by the way,0.59
01:00:18.180like the descendants of rebecca nurse who was an elderly woman executed for witchcraft during the
01:00:23.320salem witch trials they got a monument to her in the 19th century yeah yeah and hold that up as an
01:00:30.420example of better practice than scholars and also then obviously over the course of the 20th century
01:00:36.080other witches were pardoned some of them only very very recently and there is a very you know
01:00:40.960a very beautiful monument to those executed for witchcraft in the middle of salem so i mean i'm
01:00:46.500absolutely in favor of of pardoning people who you know still I guess bear the stigma of being
01:00:54.560executed for a crime that like not only did they not commit but they couldn't possibly have
01:00:59.160committed exactly well thank you so much we really really appreciate you coming to speak to us oh
01:01:04.260thank you absolutely fascinating thank you thanks so much for having me
01:01:16.500So thanks for joining us for this week's episode. It's been fantastic. I love the discussion about cultural stories about witches. I think it's really fascinating. And I love the idea that they're such a big part of our culture.
01:01:29.820And I know we've mentioned this already in the chat with Miranda, but we're not wanting to ban witches generally. We just want to make sure the people that were accused of being witches are recognised as not being witches.
01:01:41.060and women aren't called witches as a derogatory term if people identify and reclaim the term
01:01:47.760witch and are using that to describe themselves that's all good but not to be used as a term of
01:01:54.300abuse against women yeah for sure for sure so I would say what we normally say every episode which
01:02:01.140is please do get in touch with us on our social media we love to chat to people and you know as
01:02:05.480I've already mentioned that's where we find a lot of our guests because either it's people that are
01:02:09.440already using twitter that are really interesting or it's people that get in touch with us to say
01:02:13.140hey do you know about this person that's an expert on this particular facet so thanks for getting in
01:02:17.740touch those people that do already but please keep it coming it's nice so we can chat to you on
01:02:21.820twitter that's the best chatty one to do we've also got a page on facebook that's not private
01:02:27.780or anything it's just a page that you can like and then you get lots of information from us about
01:02:32.400anything that's coming up that's you know of interest and then also there's instagram which
01:02:36.920is pretty popular i'm going to keep mentioning the tiktok even though we haven't really done
01:02:41.000one tiktok and i think so we should do another tiktok on international women's day the thing
01:02:46.360is though claire i'm not sure that the raccoons are going to be trained for that time i mean
01:02:51.920they're showing promise you know they're taking they're taking their time but i think it'll be
01:02:57.420worth it ultimately i'm a lot skeptical of that because the last time we discussed things it was
01:03:04.160in fact ravens you said you were training oh no i'm training ravens and raccoons of course yeah
01:03:09.680i've got both going on i've got other animals too that i'm training i can't talk about that though
01:03:13.920because that's um governmental but the raccoons and the ravens i've got quite a serious work
01:03:19.940schedule with them yeah yeah the raccoons are not learning phrases presumably but the ravens are
01:03:26.960that what the raccoons do is the raccoons come up with the phrases and then type them out on
01:03:31.780miniature typewriters that I've commissioned with their tiny little hands I read them out to the
01:03:37.080ravens the ravens then do the phrase so that's how it works Claire I mean it's pretty obvious
01:03:42.940and this is ridiculous like I'm I'm sliding into this awful sort of mid midlife sort of senility
01:03:49.560where I'm actually living through these imaginary troops of animals listen it's fantastic to imagine0.91
01:03:57.360that you have you know some ravens that you're teaching to smash the patriarchy with their tiny
01:04:03.180tiny little raven beaks there is the guy on twitter who we follow who is an expert on corvids
01:04:10.300who i would like to get on the show if i could just think of a good angle to tie in with witches
01:04:15.780and it will come to me eventually something will happen where i'll be like aha now we can ask him
01:04:20.800let us know through twitter if you'd be interested in just an episode on corvids with an expert
01:04:28.560ladies and gentlemen do not encourage this type of behavior it's bad enough you can already see
01:04:34.740so cool they're so cool lives in a world an imaginary world of ravens and raccoons don't
01:04:42.140encourage it i'm sorry so just going back to being an adult again i would just like to remind people
01:04:48.280as well that we've got merchandise and we've got the buy me a coffee thing that goes towards david
01:04:53.360our poor beleaguered hard-working podcast engineer who obviously was only going to do six and was
01:05:00.640motivated initially by shame at how poor our initial episode was and he's still here after 52
01:05:07.760episodes i feel really bad i just want to make it really clear that we don't have david chained up
01:05:13.320in a basement full of ravens and raccoons working away on different podcasts he has got a tether
01:05:20.680we let him out into the garden only joking
01:05:24.160now david's been co-opted into my imagination and the thing is that i've not even met david
01:05:33.420you've not no no he's heard a lot of your man that poor poor man that's a shame but anyway we
01:05:41.860have got the merchandise that's available so please do buy some of it for for david and his escape
01:05:47.720fund oh god right okay is there anything else we need to say at this stage other than i'm really
01:05:55.440sorry and i'm just going to go and have a lie down now there's nothing else we need to say except we
01:06:00.080look forward to speaking to you again in a couple of weeks and that will be our last podcast before
01:06:05.340international women's days oh hang on there is one thing i want to say um it's not a silly thing
01:06:10.900this time it's serious we've just done a whole bunch of really interesting interviews that are
01:06:15.460going to be going out in media sources that are international we've spoken recently to I think
01:06:20.220two or three French outlets we've spoken to one that is an international news agency that's got
01:06:27.880something like 155 clients worldwide so that might go up with them and also we've got an interview
01:06:33.640lined up next week i think with german press agency and an international magazine and i don't
01:06:41.000think we can say anything about what we're doing today but it's a cool thing that's coming up that
01:06:44.200when we are able to tell you about it you're going to get into it that's the worst when people do
01:06:48.600that but that was a that's a genuine one i can't tell you about it instead of people on twitter
01:06:52.500they go i've got the most exciting news but i can't tell you what it is what is it you've got
01:06:57.300a cinnamon danish for your tea tonight that totally would be exciting news we've managed