Witches of Scotland - EPISODE 85 VICTORIA BRADBURY A SALEM DESCENDANT AND ARTIST

00:00:00.640 I am Clare Mitchell, Doctor of Laws and King's Council.

00:00:04.240 And I am Zoe Vendetotsi, Doctor of Laws, Teacher and Writer.

00:00:07.880 On the 8th of March 2020, International Women's Day, we launched the Feminist Witches of Scotland campaign.

00:00:14.120 The Witchcraft Act, enforced between 1563 and 1736, saw thousands of people, mostly women,

00:00:22.300 accused and executed as witches in Scotland in the country's biggest and most brutal miscarriage of justice.

00:00:28.600 Our campaign had three aims, to get a formal state apology for those accused of witchcraft,

00:00:34.820 to obtain a pardon for all those convicted, and to get a national memorial to remember those

00:00:39.800 involved in the Witchcraft Act. On International Women's Day 2022, the first of our aims was

00:00:45.960 realised when First Minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal state apology to those accused

00:00:50.540 as witches. The first formal state apology ever. We are currently working with politicians to ensure

00:00:55.800 there is legislation passed to pardon those accused as witches, to change their status

00:01:00.140 from convicted witches to those who ought never to have been prosecuted. We continue

00:01:04.860 our work to obtain a national monument so those who suffered will never be forgotten.

00:01:09.300 Join us as we speak to the experts on the witchcraft trials, both here in Scotland and

00:01:13.560 further abroad, as we explore the history of women in Scotland and continue the cultural

00:01:17.740 conversation of what it means to be a woman.

00:01:25.800 hello and welcome to the witches of scotland podcast which this time i believe is episode

00:01:34.120 85 of six hello claire hi zoe how are you yeah i'm struggling on

00:01:41.520 much like i feel everybody is at the moment not just women i'm feeling i'm hearing a lot of uh

00:01:48.260 struggling on from people there's a lot of holiday as well so i shouldn't be struggling on

00:01:53.460 yeah i'm back and then immediately have annoying things to deal with but that is just the life of

00:01:58.200 um that's the way of life i've just realized that these look as if i've got two bugs in my head

00:02:03.900 i thought you did but because it's not out with the sort of thing that you would do i didn't

00:02:08.280 question it i'm actually just fostering a pair of bugs so for the benefit of people that are

00:02:13.900 just listening rather than watching and why would you deprive yourself of the sight of two middle 0.99

00:02:18.840 aged women sweating slightly and claire has got two black hair clips in that do verily look like

00:02:25.900 bugs against that white hair that's the that's the issue the trouble is when i put my hair up like

00:02:33.200 this is very reminiscent of gary oldman's dracula not when he's young and handsome but when he's

00:02:39.180 like 700 years old but you lean into that look i think it's your aesthetic so well it ties in very

00:02:45.400 well with oh I just I'll need to tell you before we start the news I am absolutely loving that book

00:02:52.860 Carmilla by Sheridan Lufanu yeah well I say Lufanu but that's but it's probably

00:03:01.840 Lufanu it's so good anyway it's the precursor to Dracula and is all about Dracula but it's a

00:03:10.140 sapphic love story except it's two young women like it's really weird well that's making me think

00:03:20.300 of um somebody who I'd like to discuss briefly oh yeah if that's okay he is an American oh

00:03:28.380 wait a second oh hang on hang on hang on thank you Claire well you you've interrupted the flow

00:03:34.760 by doing a book review at the beginning this is a book podcast claire what is happening in the news

00:03:42.500 news right i'm actually going to discuss some news to start off with um i want to talk about

00:03:53.820 well i don't want to i feel compelled to talk about a man whose name is doug i can't remember

00:03:59.200 his second name because he is beneath my notice you might be able to remember his second name is

00:04:04.040 wilson doug wilson doug wilson is a very sort of innocent sounding name and in fact doug wilson

00:04:12.280 he leans into this aesthetic of being a sort of a jovial santa type pastor

00:04:18.580 yeah gives me the absolute boke as we say in scotland which means he makes me feel 0.70

00:04:24.960 sick um he's he says really really appalling things because he's appealing to the manosphere

00:04:31.440 and he's quite crude actually um which i don't feel is very christ-like i think christ would 0.94

00:04:37.220 have liked to joke i don't think he would have been crude at the expense of women no here's a

00:04:41.340 very good example of his extremely un-christ-like behavior so one of the things that that doug

00:04:46.760 has enjoyed describing women as feminists as is small breasted biddies honestly very seriously

00:04:57.680 say how can you be a religious leader when your fixation is on women's mammary glands to me that

00:05:06.940 just is it's so it's so illustrative of the fact that these are not serious people but they're

00:05:12.740 taken so seriously he is i believe pete heskis spiritual advisor these are the quote unquote men

00:05:20.080 that are running the united states that have an enormous impact on the rest of the world

00:05:23.540 And in fact, actually, Claire, was there not some legal news this week about Donald Trump?

00:05:31.460 He'd finally exhausted his final avenue for an appeal against...

00:05:38.540 Yes. In relation to the civil case, I'm sorry, I cannot remember the woman's name,

00:05:47.280 but in relation to the civil case, he had basically appealed it and appealed it and appealed it.

00:05:51.640 and he was told that he had no other appeal to go to.

00:05:56.220 So there's no possibility of that changing.

00:05:59.520 And am I right in saying that he has been found guilty

00:06:03.360 of sexual assault towards the women?

00:06:07.600 So, sorry, I've just Googled and her name is E. Jean Carroll.

00:06:12.640 Of course it is E. Jean Carroll, yes.

00:06:14.600 And I think it's really important that we say her name.

00:06:16.780 Absolutely.

00:06:17.200 She has been so brave and so insistent

00:06:21.160 And it is hard enough for any woman to report a sexual assault.

00:06:25.340 Obviously, we all know that.

00:06:26.660 We all know that everything's stacked against you.

00:06:29.660 But to go against somebody who, even at that time, had a high public profile, had loads of money,

00:06:35.660 and she knew that he would use his money to try and get out of it and to discredit her.

00:06:40.520 And he's been found repeatedly of him really trying to blacken her name and say that she's a liar

00:06:47.660 and that she'd made it all up and that he, of course, was innocent.

00:06:50.540 but he has tried in every court that he can to try and appeal what he was found guilty of,

00:06:56.300 which was clear. What was he found guilty of?

00:06:58.840 So he was found guilty for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll.

00:07:05.580 And that, as you say, the appeal was overturned.

00:07:08.680 What's interesting is what the statement was given on Monday.

00:07:14.380 Trump's legal team said, and this is a quote from Sky News,

00:07:18.260 the american people stand with president trump as they demand an immediate end to all of the 0.99

00:07:25.380 capitalized witch hunts oh fuck off i'm sorry i don't normally swear so early in the podcast 1.00

00:07:32.860 but that's repulsive it's just an ongoing sort of cavalcade of offensive just stupid 1.00

00:07:40.760 like willful ignorance well it's not serving to these perverts it's not it's not finished 1.00

00:07:47.660 in a statement reacting to Monday's decisions Trump's legal team said

00:07:53.940 quotes the American people stand with President Trump as they demand an immediate end to all of

00:07:59.260 the witch hunts including the Democratic funded travesty of the Carroll hoaxes president and then

00:08:07.720 a second quote President Trump will keep winning against liberal lawfare as he continues to focus

00:08:14.140 on his mission to make America great again.

00:08:18.360 Trump's lawyers had argued that Carol's allegations

00:08:21.540 were propped up by highly inflammatory evidential rulings.

00:08:26.980 So, as an English teacher, there's so much language in there

00:08:31.620 that if I could stop vomiting for long enough

00:08:35.340 that you could unpick everything that's there.

00:08:37.740 Did they say legal lawfare?

00:08:39.740 yes instead of warfare lawfare no i i understand that that's what it's it's um it's just such

00:08:49.380 willy-waving isn't it well it's well i mean it's not first of all it's not a usual quote from a

00:08:58.620 legal team i mean it's it sounds purely written by donald what i think is what i think is so

00:09:08.120 fascinating about it is it stands absolutely in the face of of the of the facts you know like

00:09:15.640 president trump will keep winning against liberal lawfare as he as he continues to focus on his

00:09:20.920 mission well well you didn't you know you were told you lost it doesn't matter claire claire

00:09:26.760 it doesn't matter because we're living in times where men like that and the women that back them 0.99

00:09:31.640 up the women that carry water for them they are making shit up and just insisting it's like if 0.99

00:09:38.240 you catch a small child in a lie right if you catch a small child and say they've there was 0.99

00:09:43.800 a donut and now the donut is gone and the child has got powdered sugar all around their mouth

00:09:48.760 right it's the equivalent of that they're just going no i didn't no i didn't no i didn't no i

00:09:53.400 didn't what have you got to do like to prove that i mean i don't want to stretch the analogy any

00:10:00.720 further but I just I just can't it's just so it's so uncivilized it's so uncivilized and poor this

00:10:09.860 poor woman E. Jean Carroll you know and I'm not saying that like in a oh poor her I just I mean

00:10:15.520 that like in a really pure state of empathy she has had to get up and battle that again and again

00:10:21.820 and again and again and again he's been found guilty of sexually assaulting her you know how

00:10:28.400 how can somebody how can somebody sexually assault somebody else and then not have a consequence for

00:10:35.040 it that i mean that's bad enough right but the fact that he has been found guilty of sexually

00:10:39.800 assaulting her and has then carried on being the president of the united states not once but twice

00:10:46.000 and has had such a huge impact and devastation on his own country and on other countries it's just

00:10:54.340 it's mind-boggling to me well a jury also awarded carol an additional um 83.3 million dollars um

00:11:04.280 after another defamation trial in 2024 and trump's also appealing that ruling but it's not yet before

00:11:12.240 the supreme court so it seems like litigation is still not at an end

00:11:17.620 before you actually explode yeah there's a chance luckily it's quite damp in north

00:11:29.000 so i think i'd be put out by the rain quite quickly well i'll move on to something else

00:11:36.440 not going to make you feel any better though and it's um this has been covered quite a lot

00:11:42.680 in the U.S., not U.S., geez, oh, my mind's in America, in world press, which is the UN Women's

00:11:52.020 Report, which said, quote, no country in the world has reached full legal equality for women and

00:11:59.820 girls. And in fact, what they have identified is women globally hold just 64% of the legal rights

00:12:11.280 of men so all the all the rights that men have women don't even have 75 percent of them

00:12:21.660 if you'd said to me zoe guess what percentage i would have probably gone for like maybe 85 you

00:12:28.760 know which would have still been absolutely appalling did you say 64 64 percent you just

00:12:34.580 said to me that in an attempt to not have me actually burst into flames you're going to bring

00:12:41.300 more information to the table you see what i thought was if i changed the topic you might

00:12:46.860 have to start again but what i didn't realize was it just it's the same topic it's the same topic

00:12:53.560 it's just it's just the entire world so so if people want to go and look it up it's um the un

00:13:01.340 Secretary General report ensuring and strengthening access to justice for all women and girls. The same

00:13:07.820 report reveals, and this isn't going to make things any better at all, that in over half the world's 0.98

00:13:13.580 countries, 54%, rape is still not defined on the basis of consent, meaning a woman can still be

00:13:21.100 raped and the law may not recognize it as a crime. A girl can still be forced to marry by national

00:13:29.180 law in nearly three out of four countries and in 44 percent of countries the law does not mandate

00:13:37.100 equal remuneration of work of equal value, meaning women can still legally be paid less

00:13:44.060 for the same work. And the UN Women Executive Director Seema Bahus, I'm apologising if that's

00:13:51.500 incorrectly said, says when women and girls are denied justice the damage goes far beyond any

00:13:58.380 single case. Public trust erodes, institutions lose legitimacy and the rule of law itself is

00:14:05.680 weakened. A justice system that feels half the population cannot claim to uphold justice at

00:14:12.540 all. So what it says is, and you know this is something I think that's being felt by women

00:14:21.800 globally, as a backlash against long-standing commitments on gender equality intensifies

00:14:27.280 violations of the rights of women and girls are accelerating, fueled by a global culture of

00:14:33.580 impunity spanning from courts to online spaces to conflict. Laws are being rewritten to restrict

00:14:40.040 the freedoms of women and girls, silence their voices and enable abuse without consequence.

00:14:46.460 As technology outpaces regulation, women and girls face growing digital violence and a climate of

00:14:52.140 impunity where perpetrators are rarely held accountable. In conflicts, rape continues to

00:14:58.660 be used as a weapon of war with reported cases of sexual violence rising by 87% in just two years.

00:15:09.220 So we have an absolutely grim state of affairs at the moment and it's absolutely what we must

00:15:20.780 continue to do to raise our voices to join in community and to fight these problems because

00:15:28.500 we are on a backslide and that is yeah we're certainly in a really really dangerous point

00:15:34.380 just now and it's it's really easy to kind of just be like hopeless and just think well what's 0.96

00:15:38.700 the point you know it's it's shit what's the point oh i think that we we've done a couple 0.81

00:15:43.240 of things recently for instagram that are about when when we put um content up we occasionally 0.98

00:15:50.700 there's been a little rise in it we occasionally get sort of negative comments from people that

00:15:57.220 are that would identify themselves i think as christian nationalists out in the states and i

00:16:02.100 think in the uk as just i don't know what they'd identify themselves as i mean i'd identify them

00:16:07.360 as arseholes but they probably wouldn't think of themselves as that they're largely men that are

00:16:12.160 that think that women should shut it and they're racists i mean there's no real other way to dice 0.85

00:16:17.960 it and i think that's one of the things that we need to think about i had a really long back and

00:16:22.460 forth with somebody saying that they're a woman and i think actually she is a woman who was really

00:16:27.240 using dog whistle um racist tactics did you not think they were a bot at one point no no this

00:16:34.800 unfortunately is maybe one else it's a real person and um and she i'm gonna say she i mean it's 1.00

00:16:41.200 horrifying to me but as we all know there are women that definitely carry water for the patriarchy 1.00

00:16:45.620 but she was saying that there's been an increase in rape um accusations rape crimes of rape and 0.62

00:16:53.220 sexual assault in the city center of glasgow in scotland okay so that was on the back of an a

00:16:59.840 news article done by stv which is scottish television their news saying that there'd been

00:17:04.620 a really marked and terrible increase in the last year i think it was of hate crimes specifically

00:17:10.800 racist hate crimes in scotland now that's really disturbing to me that's terrible that that figure

00:17:15.820 is going up right the hate crimes so this person jumped in along with a bunch of men

00:17:20.580 scottish men unfortunately we're purporting to be scottish men saying that well you know this the

00:17:27.780 why are there crimes being reported about crimes against scottish people now i mean what is what

00:17:34.880 is scottish people there's it's a really racist really loaded phrase um well then they shouldn't

00:17:40.760 they shouldn't be here if they don't like to be treated like that you know that kind of commentary

00:17:44.940 which i think a year ago you just wouldn't have seen as much and people would have been really

00:17:50.040 like what but now it's become so normalized and this woman was saying that that um sexual assault 0.67

00:17:56.620 crimes have gone up in glasgow city center and what she is doing with dog whistle racism is she

00:18:02.120 is saying that is because there's been an increase in asylum seekers in glasgow right she's not

00:18:09.140 spelling that out and that's how dog whistle racism works right so i i supplied her with this

00:18:14.380 but she didn't seem terribly interested in it but the the definition of dog whistle politics um dog

00:18:19.700 dog whistle sort of commenting and rhetoric is it's a bit like when you blow a whistle for a dog

00:18:25.080 humans can't hear it but dogs can right so when you do dog whistle rhetoric not everybody

00:18:32.040 understands what it is that you're saying but there's some people who are like the dogs

00:18:35.760 that understand the political point or the racist point or the sexist point or the homophobic point

00:18:41.200 that you're making and they understand what it is that you're saying so they know that what you're

00:18:45.600 saying is there's an increase in black people in Glasgow therefore there's an increase in rapes 1.00

00:18:51.860 and it's because these people are uncivilised 1.00

00:18:53.940 and they feel they can do rapes

00:18:55.400 which is so abhorrent to me 0.89

00:18:57.460 it's absolutely disgusting

00:18:59.020 it's also just a false correlation

00:19:01.260 it is and like then

00:19:02.720 it's just taking two

00:19:05.400 disparate facts

00:19:07.220 and just sticking them together

00:19:09.860 and so as a consequence

00:19:11.820 of that there are some

00:19:13.620 quote unquote men

00:19:15.320 that have formed quote unquote patrols

00:19:18.320 that are going about Glasgow

00:19:19.720 dressed in black with hoodies and all the rest

00:19:21.800 of it that are there to keep women safe well i'm sure i'm sure women are going to feel really safe

00:19:27.200 if i saw a group of men any group of men coming towards me i would not feel safe i wouldn't feel

00:19:35.360 safe and that's terrible that's not man bashing that's just common fucking sense right so if you

00:19:41.920 saw a big group of men coming towards you and you know make no bones about it they're wanting to 0.95

00:19:46.420 look intimidating because really these are like five-year-old children who are looking for a wee

00:19:51.440 scrapped maybe not five they're more like third years they're more like sort of 14 or 15 year old

00:19:56.700 boys that are looking for fight in the playground because they've got all this sexual energy that's

00:20:01.160 being thwarted and really what they want to do is get together women with women but they can't get

00:20:06.100 women so it turns into i think in this case racism and that's a hill i'm prepared to die on i think

00:20:12.320 racism i think a lot of the root of racism is about sexual inadequacy and sexual jealousy i've

00:20:17.820 said it before and i'm just going to keep saying it i do think that's a really big factor not the

00:20:22.100 only factor but i think that's a big factor of it and i think this whole idea about we are 0.72

00:20:26.680 protecting women and girls is such fucking lies right i'm sorry i'm swearing a lot today we might 0.83

00:20:32.580 have to put a warning on it's lies right these are not people that are then fundraising for 0.99

00:20:38.360 different rape services these are not people that are pushing for change to the law these are these

00:20:43.540 are not people that are talking they're not they're not funding they're not funding women's

00:20:48.460 you know talking against women's aid these are these are the very worst these are the men that

00:20:55.680 we are not safe with and that's been shown by the amount of domestic violence accusations and also

00:21:02.320 convictions of men that have marched in various protests in britain against so-called illegal

00:21:10.660 immigrants and it just it makes me feel sick because i just think if you're gonna talk like 0.86

00:21:15.900 that then just be just be fucking honest just say yeah i'm racist just say it and then at least we 1.00

00:21:22.180 know don't pretend that you give a shit about women when actually you are the biggest danger 0.99

00:21:26.480 to women right the biggest danger women face is always their intimate partners or family members 0.99

00:21:32.480 or people that are in a position of trust like priests or teachers or you know leaders of youth

00:21:37.760 groups or whatever right now i'm not saying obviously all those people are a danger that's

00:21:42.440 where the dangers come from it's people in positions of trust right it's not usually stranger

00:21:47.480 danger i know that we've made an enormous thing about that and of course it does happen of course

00:21:52.100 strangers do sometimes attack women i'm not not negating that at all but you're at far more risk

00:21:58.540 of the people that you choose to have a relationship with and we see it happening again and again we've

00:22:03.980 seen all the cases like there's there's a lot of stuff a lot of reporting about what's happening

00:22:07.360 in ireland and about the amount of women there's a really shockingly high amount of women killed by

00:22:12.960 intimate partners there or by family members sometimes sons and we're going to have a guest

00:22:17.800 on quite soon who's going to talk about that so we'll come back to it but these are these are

00:22:22.520 white populations right these are these are populations in scotland i think is something like

00:22:28.620 92 percent white i mean you're anyway it's not something that i'm ever going to shut up about

00:22:38.220 ever sometimes women are you know are told we'll just ignore it just ignore it right 0.99

00:22:43.800 but i see as a white woman right we have got such a responsibility to get our shit together 0.98

00:22:49.860 and be actively anti-racist right because lots of white women have benefited from racism and 0.97

00:22:55.160 continue to benefit from racism right so i feel that that's one thing that i can do i can use my

00:23:00.480 big loud voice i can use the position i've got to stand up for people and you know more than anything

00:23:05.960 it's not because i think i can change people's minds on there necessarily i think if you're the

00:23:10.500 kind of repulsive person that's going to type those things you're gone right what i'm doing is 0.83

00:23:15.860 i'm doing it so that if there is a person who is black or brown that is reading those comments they 0.99

00:23:21.920 know at least there's one fucking person in the comments that thinks it's wrong and thinks that 0.97

00:23:26.480 the white community that does that is wrong and i'd written something last night about somebody 0.98

00:23:32.040 fundamentally misunderstanding what racism is and somebody who i know who's an acquaintance who's

00:23:37.820 black liked the comment that i'd made and i just thought because i'm doing this so you know that

00:23:43.540 there are people that are fighting for it because because racism is so insidious and if you know

00:23:49.660 anybody that is that is black or brown i'm prepared to go out on a limb and say all of them

00:23:55.500 have experienced racism and it can be from small things like people turning away from you to big

00:24:01.640 things like you know people spray spray painting horrible words on your house or physical attacks

00:24:07.160 or even as we know murders and if we don't stand up and say no we're not having it it's never going

00:24:13.940 to change and it's never going to stop and this is the time now where we all have to get together

00:24:18.720 together and say no we're not having it I'm going to shut up now I tried to do gardening today Claire

00:24:25.800 to try and bring down my blood pressure I'm not even joking this isn't a joke that I'm doing

00:24:29.800 I bought gardening stuff I started doing gardening I started pissing with rain and I said Zoe that's

00:24:34.840 okay you're not going to melt you can you can work in the rain but it got to a point where I had to

00:24:39.380 come in because I knew I was recording with you and you were going to make me do a visual one 1.00

00:24:42.560 I thought you were going to say that you had a hoe in your hand and you just started hitting 0.98

00:24:47.800 the ground really really hard no but i tell you what you see you see those vines with the with 0.99

00:24:53.180 the prickles on them that i was pulling out the ground they got what for i'll tell you that much

00:24:57.200 i did a whole bunch of weeding of vines my garden's like a jungle

00:25:00.500 shall we move on to some better in the news honestly clear though i feel like i could cry

00:25:09.100 and i'm i'm saying that to you i'm not going to cry don't worry i'm not going to be that that type

00:25:13.140 emotional but i do i know that we get contacts all the time by people particularly by women that

00:25:18.160 are just like i just feel really upset i just feel really upset with the way things are we have to

00:25:24.400 um what we do is we have to form community and that community does have to be intersectional

00:25:32.020 it has to uh because you know if things are bad for women worldwide things are bad for women

00:25:40.300 of colour I know that's sometimes a phrase now not used people use black and global majority

00:25:48.180 global majority um um but yeah it's doubly so so I think what we have to focus on what you're doing

00:25:59.140 is when you're fighting with them online you're showing that there is there are people out there

00:26:04.940 who don't agree with those sorts of things and that is really really helpful what's also helpful

00:26:11.280 is just standing together as a community you know and that's looking at your neighbors you know

00:26:17.700 looking out when you're moving through public transport and like grow you know people are

00:26:23.240 being treated badly or do you know i mean i just you know as involved and would would get involved

00:26:28.180 in things in the way that i maybe would but i do think just keep your eyes open just just just have

00:26:33.700 your eyes open like i mean that like sort of obviously literally when you're moving through

00:26:38.560 the world but also when you're on social media and i'm not saying that everybody has to battle

00:26:41.640 everybody all the time i'm not saying you know that a lot of them aren't bots or whatever but

00:26:46.300 i think if you can say something to show that you are you're on the on the right side of history

00:26:51.680 then it behooves us to do that and i think i'm heartened i do get strength from the really really

00:26:57.500 nice contact that we get from readers and listeners and people that like the tartan

00:27:02.260 and people that have just unfortunately for them stumbled across some TikTok that we've made

00:27:06.680 but I do I do appreciate that I do appreciate people getting in touch and there are so many

00:27:11.820 really brilliant brilliant people in the world and we just have to remember that unfortunately

00:27:16.380 the way things are skewed at the moment it's those empty vessels making a lot of noise who

00:27:21.280 are in the minority and they're just emboldening people and most of us are good and we just really

00:27:26.820 really need to band together and just really look out for each other. Zoe I'm going to move on to

00:27:31.300 something which is good news okay what is it some people we know are bringing out which type

00:27:37.740 books this is good news this is good news right and i'll tell you part of the thing that's good

00:27:42.620 news about it is that we are going to be talking to them on our podcast very soon right so do you

00:27:48.120 want me to say who they are and what the books are called you go zoe okay so both of these people

00:27:52.920 are featured in our um these are non-fiction books i'm going to talk about first they're both

00:27:58.280 of them are featured in previous podcasts and we interviewed them and then we talked about their

00:28:03.140 work and their ideas and their opinions in our book as well how to kill a witch a guide for the

00:28:07.880 patriarchy i don't know if you've heard of it it's still available and one of those people is mariam

00:28:13.640 sorry i'm i'm mixing their names together because now i'm feeling excited because i'm starting to

00:28:18.580 regulate again malcolm gaskell who's written this brilliant book i really enjoyed called worlds of

00:28:25.180 Fear and Wonder, Living with the Supernatural, Past and Present.

00:28:29.100 It's so interesting because it's about the fact that we as humans

00:28:32.480 have always had the supernatural as part of our mental landscapes,

00:28:36.160 and we probably always will.

00:28:37.860 It's a really interesting book that looks at right back through time,

00:28:41.460 up to the modern day, talks about witches, but lots of other things as well.

00:28:44.840 Super cool book.

00:28:46.060 And the other book is Marion Gibson's new book.

00:28:49.220 Marion, as you'll remember, was the first historian who said to us,

00:28:52.800 of course the scottish witch childs were gendered of course they were if there were 85 percent they

00:28:58.100 were women of course it was gendered so we love marion for that we do we check her all the time

00:29:02.700 for it she's such a great writer and very clever very engaging malcolm is i would use those two

00:29:08.800 words to describe him as well love their books so her new book is called witchland love them love

00:29:14.960 that it's got a really cool hot pink title and cover page and that i think comes out in august

00:29:20.820 and i think malcolm's comes out round about the same time but we'll firm up those dates for you

00:29:25.440 and as i say we're going to have them both on the show we're also going to be talking to um big pal

00:29:31.300 of the show as well marie kidd about her um new book which is called what's it called claire

00:29:38.900 it's not news from scotland news of witches it's news of witches at this this is entirely the

00:29:47.600 menopause because i can't remember the titles of anything or anybody's name anymore but um i've

00:29:52.400 read that book and i really enjoyed it and it's kind of a bit it's kind of a bit like

00:29:57.100 crimey sort of but it's set during the witch trials it's very clever marie's a lovely writer

00:30:03.900 i love her writing so she's going to come on talk to us soon and i think her books may be out in

00:30:08.140 august as well so there's a lot happening but we will update with them yeah i'm about halfway

00:30:13.140 through her book poor creatures which is so good and again that's about frank and the writer well

00:30:19.780 it's about mary shelley when she came to dundee before she wrote frankenstein yes it's it's so

00:30:26.860 good really interesting and also not that we've had her on the podcast i would love to have her on

00:30:32.440 mona sholey who wrote in defense of witches that was her her sort of international book

00:30:38.900 she's got a new book coming out and i love the title it's called how to resist guilt on what's

00:30:44.640 how to resist guilt on what's holding women back can i tell you my theory about guilt yes guilt

00:30:52.620 doesn't actually exist naturally within humans in the way that like anger sadness or loneliness

00:30:59.420 or happiness or you know all those things exist i think that guilt is something that is just

00:31:04.680 entirely man-made and i mean man-made as a means of control i don't think we actually naturally

00:31:10.920 would feel guilt oh really yeah because i think that if you do something wrong then and you know

00:31:17.700 you've done something wrong then you should just try and make it up and you should you know you

00:31:22.620 should say sorry at the very least and then you should just like move on if you've made your best

00:31:26.740 attempt to make it right and i think that if you don't realize that you've done wrong then there's

00:31:32.040 just some sort of psychological problem with you and that's not a thing that you should feel guilt

00:31:36.680 about so i think guilt is used as a way to manipulate women into being quiet and being

00:31:42.500 small and it's just a way of making women feel bad about things they've done men too i yeah men

00:31:48.720 too i suppose the way i think about guilt is obviously coming from a professional background

00:31:54.160 of are you guilty of something or are you not guilty of something that's not an emotion though

00:31:59.780 no exactly um i've never really thought about it interesting what religion were you raised as if

00:32:06.100 you don't know me asking catholic you would think that i would know a lot but you know catholicism

00:32:12.560 for me was like many things that you've encountered it just bounced off you yeah also also you know

00:32:18.860 mixed up with you know my gran that would go to mass and read the tea leaves you know so i've you

00:32:24.020 know it's i you know just pick the good bits that's what i say yeah i think that's a really

00:32:29.520 good way to go with life generally just i just think i just think guilt is just it's just used

00:32:34.900 to control people whereas happiness isn't i am so good isn't you know oh no but anger is you know

00:32:42.080 like incels they're being they're being you know their their rage is being baited to yeah no

00:32:49.140 definitely but not enough guilt solely exists for that right whereas anger doesn't exist to

00:32:56.760 be manipulated if you know what i mean oh yes i see like the oh that's that's that that will send

00:33:03.920 me down a rabbit hole i've had this thought for a very long time and um i sometimes express it to

00:33:09.760 people and it falls upon deaf ears and i'm definitely a point now where i don't even care

00:33:13.980 well you'll definitely i'll get you this book because it says the book's an insightful dive

00:33:19.320 into in verse commas the relentless inner critic maybe that's what the problem is because i don't

00:33:24.600 have one of them i mean i you know claire i have got a relentless inner critic but it's not about

00:33:29.660 guilt it's more about you know fatness i'm laughing i'm really laughing not on the inside

00:33:38.500 i heard this tremendous idea right which was that you consider you are not your body

00:33:46.620 so you consider your body separately from you and you think i i have to take care i want to

00:33:53.660 take care of this body and and do nice things for it and i thought that's a nice idea like as

00:34:00.340 opposed to thinking you're your body thinking that your body's something separate from you

00:34:07.420 and your consciousness and it's your job to keep your body well and healthy and do things for it

00:34:14.020 yeah but you see that you know again don't want to get too deep here that for me is part of the

00:34:18.240 problem it's about a disconnect between mind and body for me this is like my mind's all good I'm

00:34:24.940 quite perfectly happy I'm not saying I don't have more to learn and more to develop I'm fine with

00:34:30.320 my mind and I'm confident about that is the body who I view as being separate and sometimes a bit

00:34:35.080 of a traitor now that I've now that I've started to take an exercise a bit more seriously trying

00:34:39.940 really hard to work with her so I'm just like come on girl and then I you know we're we try to work

00:34:45.420 together so i feel like we're coming together but i feel like also i'm somebody who dissociates

00:34:50.480 very easily and i feel those two things are quite separate okay yes you didn't think it was going

00:34:56.980 to be a therapy session today did you claire i know no i wonder if anybody is still listening

00:35:02.000 at this point i know i'm really sorry right we'll we'll pull it back to the normal way of things

00:35:07.100 yes and we'll and now we'll take this very seriously i mean all that stuff is really

00:35:11.620 serious it's just maybe sort of unbridled emotion but and also this this is a serious thing that we

00:35:17.160 should feel unbridled emotion about but it's a section of the show where we remember somebody

00:35:21.500 who's being accused and the person this week is really um interesting which is maybe the wrong

00:35:26.940 words but her name was janet kennedy and she was from dumfries and janet kennedy was accused of

00:35:33.420 um having been approached by somebody to bewitch somebody else to death basically okay so there was

00:35:41.060 no evidence for it apparently again this is from the survey of scottish witchcraft so as as usual

00:35:47.160 they've only got what they've got to work with and there's there's some information but not

00:35:51.900 anywhere near as much as i would like really to have a full idea of what happened here but she

00:35:56.580 had been approached by somebody who had tried to kind of i suppose contract her to do to kill

00:36:03.140 somebody with witchcraft but then the person that approached her said that they didn't really mean

00:36:07.760 it that they just did it to prove that um that she was in fact a witch and she was held in it

00:36:14.120 was mistress mowat that she was she was consulted by somebody else to to kill basically and then

00:36:20.760 she was held for a year um the kirk session found it says here here are the notes says kirk session

00:36:27.580 found several scandalous and horrid things and all they tried to get evidence could not get things

00:36:33.160 sufficiently proven so again just to just to say that this was it was a legal case and in this

00:36:40.140 case they found that they didn't have enough evidence they did however keep her in for a year

00:36:45.640 and they referred the case to the presbytery who advised consulting the king's advocate

00:36:51.660 and the general assembly of the church and ultimately she was held in prison for one year

00:36:58.240 and she was released but she was then banished and we don't know what went on to happen to her

00:37:04.080 because we do know that there were cases of if you were banished and you had to go and move to a

00:37:07.900 different you know community you would be accused again because there would be suspicion over you

00:37:12.360 I really wish at some point there'd be some treasure trove that was found and it was it was

00:37:17.360 that different different women or different primary sources had written down what actually

00:37:21.300 happened at the time I know that that's probably never going to happen but I really wonder what

00:37:25.420 it would be like to be banished and I'm surprised that there's not been that I'm aware of a good

00:37:29.780 novel about a woman being banished and what that's like. I'm sure that'll come out soon but that was

00:37:34.800 Janet Kennedy in Dumfries so today we remember Janet Kennedy who was held for a year on charges

00:37:41.060 that couldn't be proved and was banished but we don't know what happened to her next. So without

00:37:45.080 any further ado let's introduce today's guest. Hello and we are delighted to have with us today

00:37:51.060 a guest who is all the way from america but is is currently living in scotland and she'll explain

00:37:56.940 that to us but our guest today is artist and i believe you described yourself as a technologist

00:38:02.960 which i love so i want to know more about what that actually means and so we have got victoria

00:38:07.800 bradbury hello victoria hello thank you so much for having me on we're delighted to have you here

00:38:14.360 so first of all if you want to just tell us a wee bit about who you are and why it is we've

00:38:18.320 invited you onto the podcast? Absolutely yeah so as you said I'm an artist and maker and I work in

00:38:24.460 new media which basically means I use technologies like games, virtual reality, interactive systems

00:38:30.320 and digital tools as creative materials. My work sits between art design and computation and I

00:38:36.180 really think through making so for artists and designers building something is really a form of

00:38:41.440 research and critical thinking and so my research explores ideas around technology, agency and power

00:38:47.720 who gets to shape technology, how programming code can carry cultural assumptions and biases,

00:38:53.700 and how interactive systems really influence the way we experience the world increasingly. So

00:38:58.460 I'm especially interested in games and immersive media and these as artistic and storytelling

00:39:05.480 spaces. And I often use humor in my work as well, because interactive systems naturally create a

00:39:11.400 kind of back and forth exchange with a viewer participant that can really be playful or

00:39:15.460 lighthearted, even when the project itself is dealing with quite serious subject matter.

00:39:20.720 Back in the States, I'm the chair of New Media at the University of North Carolina Asheville,

00:39:25.320 and I'm currently a US-UK Fulbright Commission scholar at Glasgow School of Arts School of

00:39:31.100 Innovation and Technology. So I'm in Glasgow for six months, and it's been really, really wonderful.

00:39:36.380 It's really been exciting to work within Scotland's incredible games and creative

00:39:40.220 technology community. There's such an awesome community here. But I've really long been

00:39:44.820 interested in the connection between technology and magic, and so how technologies can shape

00:39:49.380 belief, perception, and agency. And my current research at GSA focuses on histories of witch

00:39:55.140 persecution in Scotland through interactive and textile-based artwork, some of which are behind

00:40:00.360 me we can talk about a little later. A lot of my earlier works have been around witch persecution,

00:40:07.160 some of them. I work on a lot of different topics, but particularly around the story of my 10th

00:40:12.000 great grandmother, Mary Perkins Bradbury, who was convicted of witchcraft during the Salem witch

00:40:17.080 trials. Oh, my wild. Really amazing. Because when we do events in Scotland, we've been told by

00:40:24.220 various historians, it's very hard to prove as a Scottish person that you've got a descendant

00:40:28.900 because we just don't have the records. So you might have an idea of a surname and a location,

00:40:33.420 and you might think, well, my family's been there for generations, but you can't prove it in the

00:40:37.040 same way that Americans are able to prove it because your paperwork is so much better.

00:40:41.320 so when when you know people get in touch with us all the time and say oh my relative my you know

00:40:46.760 10 times great-grand or whatever it's really interesting because you've got that you've got

00:40:50.660 that line so have you always known about your relative that's a great question I have um I

00:40:57.560 remember being in primary school and sort of telling the other kids in my class my grandmother

00:41:02.320 was a witch you know in the coat closet uh because you know my thinking around it was very simplistic

00:41:07.540 and it was just something that I knew. My dad has been doing genealogy. It's become much more

00:41:11.680 popular nowadays, but my dad was doing an analog in the 70s and 80s, and we used to drive. I grew

00:41:17.560 up in Pennsylvania, but we used to drive through New England, and our family holidays, we'd stop

00:41:22.120 at a bunch of graveyards and look at Bradbury's gravestones that went way back. So yeah, I did

00:41:28.820 always know about it since I was a kid, and it was when I became an artist that I started to just

00:41:34.460 think you know what what is that all about what what really happened there and started to really

00:41:38.480 think critically about it. That is incredible that you've been able to get your area which sounds to

00:41:45.780 to me very 21st century and to go back to have inspo from that time. Some questions already I

00:41:54.300 want to ask just about your family history. Did you always know about it or was it your dad that

00:42:00.080 found the connection in the lineage? Or has it been passed down from generation to generation

00:42:04.700 as a kind of lore in your family? I think the latter. So my dad had found out about it through

00:42:11.400 a great uncle. And then he passed that on to us. And I have quite a large extended family. So

00:42:17.080 everyone sort of knows about the story within the family. Interestingly, she's also an ancestor of

00:42:23.860 Ray Bradbury, who is very distantly related to me. He's like my sixth cousin, three times removed.

00:42:29.180 so we call him uncle ray in my family but i mean he's barely barely cool see see if you can claim

00:42:36.400 ray bradbury doesn't matter how far away it's so distant but interestingly she is a common

00:42:42.080 ancestor and i believe he knew about her story as well i mean she had 10 children mary perkins

00:42:47.660 bradbury and so she has hundreds of descendants and so there's many many people that can claim

00:42:54.700 her as an ancestor sorry can I just say when you for those listening on the podcast and not watching

00:43:00.000 on YouTube and you said she had 10 children Zoe's face was an absolute treat worth going on to

00:43:05.340 YouTube and having a look at she's like oh no oh no not in not in the not now but certainly not in

00:43:11.380 those days I know I know well the thing is people have asked you know if she had been because she

00:43:16.700 was convicted she was one of the 30 people convicted in Salem not killed though she had

00:43:21.680 execution date and her family was able to it's not clear how she was how how she was released

00:43:28.080 from the charges there's different stories around that but uh but i lost my train of thought no

00:43:36.080 sorry can you tell us um her story first of all before we come to the present day and find out

00:43:42.160 how what you're doing absolutely yeah yeah so so she was 77 years old when she was convicted and

00:43:48.720 And so she the point that I was trying to make was that she had already had her 10 children at that point.

00:43:53.680 So. So, yeah, she's had a hard enough life at that point.

00:43:56.700 She's had her punishment. All of her many and all of her many descendants would still have been born had this not happened because she had long had her children.

00:44:05.860 But, yeah, she was 77 years old.

00:44:08.360 She was she was accused by her neighbors, Richard Carr and Zerubbabel Endicott, of having gone into her gate and a blue boar ran out.

00:44:17.320 And so like, you know, the Salem archives are so detailed and I have her testimony, I have her accuser's testimony. I have the petition that her neighbors, hundreds of people came forward and petitioned on her behalf, which I think helped to save her from execution.

00:44:33.420 But one of the accusations that Richard Carr made was, I saw Miss Bradbury come into her gate, turn the corner, and immediately they're dirted out of her gate a blue boar.

00:44:46.220 And so she was accused of having turned into a blue boar, essentially, was one of the main accusations against her.

00:44:54.120 She was also, there were some other accusations thrown in. 0.95

00:44:56.660 She was seen as maybe controlling ships.

00:44:59.800 She was seen on the windlass of a ship bound for Barbados, which would have been a slave ship. 0.79

00:45:05.100 So there were several different accusations, but the one that has really stood out about her and that I have worked on and others have worked on around her story was that accusation of having turned into a blue pig.

00:45:17.840 Interesting. 0.95

00:45:19.120 That is crazy. So let's get this.

00:45:22.100 So she had transformed. That's one of the accusations against her.

00:45:26.380 And the other was that she was presumably involved in some kind of weather witchery if she's on a ship. 0.70

00:45:34.340 Yes. And presumably she was seen to be on that ship whilst at the same time never having left the land.

00:45:41.640 Is that right? Exactly. That's correct.

00:45:43.840 Because one of the interesting things about Salem and one thing that Salem looked to English witch trials for

00:45:50.820 was allowing evidence in of people saying that they saw people

00:45:57.300 in two places at the one time, like people bifurcating

00:46:00.880 or however you would describe it, so that even though

00:46:04.720 you could prove that you were at land or asleep

00:46:08.980 or something of the likes, evidence was still allowed

00:46:12.520 to be led that people saw you at sea.

00:46:16.640 So that's spectral evidence, isn't it?

00:46:18.880 spectral evidence thank you Zoe but to a criminal lawyer like me the idea that you could never

00:46:23.880 prove an alibi is very distressing you're like but I can show it somewhere else it's distressing

00:46:29.060 for everyone Claire I know I know it's distressing professionally for me yeah a rock solid alibi and

00:46:35.720 that still doesn't work come on now ideal not ideal at all sorry yeah but those those connections

00:46:40.540 that you mentioned though between the European witch trials and what happened in Salem and then

00:46:45.880 also connections that go back. So some of the research I'm doing now at GSA with the current

00:46:51.060 project that you can see behind me has to do with the Paisley Witch Trials. I know a lot of people

00:46:55.480 have done work around that. But what I found quite interesting was that the accusations

00:47:00.460 that happened in Paisley were thought to have been influenced by Salem. So the writing by

00:47:10.460 Dia Dot Lawson, then came back to some of the ministers in Paisley, and there were influences

00:47:15.900 the other way. So that is super interesting to me in terms of researching media histories and

00:47:21.300 how information spreads, that these witch trials in different places were being influenced by one

00:47:29.220 another, even at this very early time in media history. So can I ask, we know that these

00:47:35.580 accusations were made that she went to trial you have the transcripts was she allowed to speak in

00:47:41.180 her own name did she give it she was she was yeah yeah i have her trial testimony um and and and her

00:47:49.360 husband her husband spoke as well so i have his testimony so yeah she she was able to to come to

00:47:55.260 the stand and and speak on her own behalf okay and presumably she denied all the charges against her

00:48:01.600 she hadn't falsely confessed or anything like that no she did not she she denied the charges

00:48:07.640 she talked about you know her religion and how important it was to her and and no she denied

00:48:12.780 she denied what she was accused of and do we know why you got any idea why her neighbors accused her

00:48:19.260 was there any sort of bad blood between them was she unusual in some way those details i'm not

00:48:26.560 completely sure of you know i think i think some information has gone around about maybe there be

00:48:31.440 having there having been some kind of land dispute or something having to do with perhaps like a

00:48:37.660 failed marriage with with one of the children in a neighbor you know it's not it's not entirely

00:48:42.340 clear where why those accusations were made but oftentimes it was having to do with some

00:48:47.620 something neighborly or not so neighborly that had occurred um but i've made i've made several

00:48:53.800 projects about about mary's story that i'd love to tell you a bit more about oh yeah please do

00:48:59.360 Can I just check, just to finish off the sort of law part of her story, just my geekiness,

00:49:05.320 she went to trial, she was convicted, so presumably she was held for some time in custody, is

00:49:13.180 that right?

00:49:15.380 She was indeed, and she actually had an execution date, and that's where it's not clear, because

00:49:22.400 did someone escape her from prison, was there bail, was there potentially a bribe, all these

00:49:27.280 different ideas have been thrown around about how exactly she escaped her execution um was she hit

00:49:32.780 the the way that I've always thought of it was she was hit away by family and friends until things

00:49:37.520 kind of blew over and then you know people moved on and and she wasn't she was she was lucky to

00:49:44.540 be able to die at 85 a decade later um of old age and so uh so yeah she did she did escape execution

00:49:52.140 I mean, can I also say just entirely separately, you've got some good genes going there. For a woman of that age to have 10 children and to have survived to 85 was some going at that time.

00:50:03.060 I know, I know. Just it amazes me that people live that long at that time.

00:50:07.240 OK, so that's I'm glad and I'm really glad to hear that she was one of the people whose stories ended very differently.

00:50:14.480 So I interrupted you. Sorry. Tell us more about your projects that you've done.

00:50:18.980 yeah so so i started uh focusing on that idea of the blue boar story and um in 2009 i created a

00:50:28.400 blue boar installation and the way that that worked was i created so i also also worked with

00:50:33.580 textiles and i created a embroidered book and it was called the colonial vegetables sewn sampler

00:50:39.360 book and that was on a podium and so a person who was interacting with the installation would come

00:50:45.260 up and look at the book. And in the book, I used an embroidery technique where you move the fabric

00:50:51.580 underneath the sewing machine to draw the different vegetables that would have been in

00:50:56.840 Mary's door garden, because the garden was where the accusation occurred of her having turned into

00:51:01.980 the blue boar. And so I drew a cabbage, some leeks, potato, radish, onion, and essentially I wrote this

00:51:08.740 poem where the the vegetables are saying I saw Miss Bradbury as I daily do enter her patch to

00:51:16.040 pick tubers for stew she gathered an armful of potato and radish when a brown boar trot by 0.99

00:51:22.000 looking wild and maddish the fast-passing boar filled the old woman with fright she fell on her

00:51:27.060 back and she lay there all night with a rump on the tansy and her head on the teasel that horse

00:51:31.620 spooked the boar he's a perjuring weasel so I wanted to kind of flip the story and think about 1.00

00:51:36.680 how how the vegetables because here she was she's an old woman she was picking vegetables in her

00:51:42.500 garden what did they actually see what was their perspective on this story and so they say that

00:51:48.560 they saw a brown boar run out essentially i picture her having picked being picked or picking

00:51:53.360 the vegetables in her garden and she just fell over and maybe a pig ran through and the neighbors 0.53

00:51:57.900 saw it um so i'm trying to distill it knocked her over so you see her come in her feet go up in the

00:52:03.980 air she disappears from sight and then the boar you can see from the outside how that how somebody

00:52:09.760 could see that and you know it would probably be like a tiktok video now racking up views you know

00:52:16.600 of an old lady turning into a boar exactly so i do try to think you know how did these how you know

00:52:21.700 was there something that actually did happen that somebody saw that they could have talked about

00:52:26.060 having seen so i really think about perspectives but so the viewer is looking at this book this

00:52:30.360 fabric book. They're paging through it, reading that poem. And then as they do, they look in front

00:52:36.620 of them and there's a sculptural boar with a kind of blue scintillating video skin and they see

00:52:42.840 their own face projected onto the boar. And so it's that idea of bringing the viewer into the

00:52:48.960 story and saying, I'm always trying to say with the stories about, with the works about witch

00:52:53.640 persecution that, you know, this could happen to anybody. This could happen to you. This could

00:52:57.200 happen to any person. And so when someone's looking at the work, they really become a part

00:53:02.520 of that story. Absolutely. And, you know, we obviously much later than you, when we came to

00:53:09.940 as well, I think that's a really central tenant, isn't it? To remind folk that these people aren't

00:53:16.980 special in any way or different. They're just the same as us. Exactly. So that was the 2009

00:53:24.520 interactive installation. In 2019, I created another project based on Mary's story called

00:53:30.780 Blue Boar VR. And this is a virtual reality project, which completely immerses a viewer.

00:53:36.700 And so they're in the VR headset, and they're considering the story, Mary's story, from three

00:53:41.680 different perspectives. So they can play the story as Mary, they can play the story as her accusers,

00:53:47.560 or they can play the story as the blue boar. So that's the third character in the story. So

00:53:52.640 really trying to think through how can you look at this story from those different perspectives

00:53:57.740 and how can you then put a viewer into those perspectives that's very useful because one of

00:54:02.180 the things that we talk about a lot is putting yourself in the in the shoes of the of the people

00:54:07.000 that were accused or indeed of the accusers who were involved in sort of the machinery of of the

00:54:11.920 accusations and when we wrote our book we did um fictional bits of the book fictional sections

00:54:18.440 which are where we wrote about not the accused so it was about the people that were involved

00:54:24.620 around it so you could understand well how how might they have come to this pass where you can

00:54:30.000 accuse an old lady a mother of 10 of turning into a boar how does that how do you get into that

00:54:36.240 headspace and understand it yeah absolutely yeah and i mean mary you asked about mary's testimony

00:54:42.320 before you know she said i am wholly innocent of this wickedness and so she was really sticking

00:54:47.760 with that, you know, with her innocence throughout the trial. But I bring that into the virtual

00:54:54.200 reality piece. You can play as Mary. And so, again, being able to put yourself in the shoes

00:54:59.360 of that person who's been accused and think about what was this day-to-day thing she was doing. And

00:55:04.580 so in the game, you're in the garden, you come out of her house, you go into the garden,

00:55:09.540 and you're meant to pick carrots, and you have to put the carrots in a little basket that you're

00:55:13.000 carrying um just to describe the way that the scene looks um i can share screen really quick

00:55:18.660 and just show you um the scene but for people that are people that are listening to the podcast you

00:55:24.900 can see this if you go to youtube and if you subscribe to the witches of scotland channel

00:55:29.460 you'll be able to see this as well as uh listen to it that almost sounded totally professional

00:55:34.420 there so i'm not a moomin

00:55:37.300 not able to grab the the correct screen but uh but i can describe the yeah i can describe the

00:55:49.160 scene so so there i used a text a texture of textiles kind of embroidery on the on the digital

00:55:56.300 artifact of the virtual reality game it has it has a bit of a minecraft look because everything

00:56:01.640 is blocky because essentially in embroidery you have that really blocky style yeah yeah so and

00:56:08.140 then there's that there's that that is that embroidery texture across the headset um and

00:56:12.400 across the whole scene that i built and so when you're playing as mary you come out into her

00:56:17.420 garden you pick the carrots you put them in in your basket and then you carry the basket back

00:56:21.880 to a pear tree and you pick a pear and the picking of the pear causes this brown board to run through

00:56:28.040 and essentially knock you over as the player when you get knocked over the screen goes black and you

00:56:32.760 go back to the home screen so that's that's all that happens when you're playing as mary you do

00:56:37.800 see your neighbors in the distance kind of coming up on horseback right before you you pass out um

00:56:44.120 when you play the game as the accusers so richard carr and zara bobble endicott uh you you get to

00:56:50.280 ride on horseback which i was really excited about as a game developer to let the player ride horseback

00:56:55.240 And so you ride through the town, you see Mary's house up ahead, you ride up to her gate, and you see her come out, pick the carrots, go to the pear tree, and then this blue boar dashes in front and spooks your horse.

00:57:09.060 So from their perspective, the boar looks blue.

00:57:12.240 Right.

00:57:13.120 Okay.

00:57:13.680 Okay.

00:57:14.660 Yeah.

00:57:15.040 And then as the boar, yeah, so the third one as the boar, you end up, instead of being down on the ground,

00:57:23.620 you're hovering above the town and above mary's house and the whole scene and what you can do as

00:57:28.460 the boar is sort of reforest uh salem village so you use the the vr controller to sort of grow trees

00:57:36.040 and and reforest the town oh so is the boar is the boar like a spiritual a spiritual animal type

00:57:42.680 thing then you're not getting it from the eyes of i thought what you were going to say was that you

00:57:46.920 were going to see it from a boar seeing an old lady pluck a juicy pear and think i'm having some

00:57:52.740 of that. Just chalking up. Absolutely. I did, you know, I really thought carefully about what the 0.57

00:57:59.800 boar could be and what the boar could represent. And I really was thinking about, you know,

00:58:05.220 the complexities of, you know, Mary and the other Salem villagers as colonizers, as building this

00:58:12.060 town in the middle of this territory. And so what could the boar as a mystical creature do

00:58:20.960 better than just to reforest the town and um just kind of erase erase what had happened there

00:58:26.900 nice interesting amazing and does that bring us to your present day um piece of work that you're

00:58:34.780 doing yeah sure i'd be happy to talk about what i'm doing here um at gsa so so i've been working

00:58:43.080 in virtual reality for a number of years about eight years and teaching it and um and here at

00:58:49.220 GSA, I was able to have this period of time to really focus on a new project, which was very

00:58:54.760 exciting for me to have that support. Plus, the School of Innovation and Technology is amazing,

00:59:00.060 full of really fantastic researchers and facilities that I had access to. So I came here

00:59:05.920 with some idea of what I would do and then was able to kind of think through and start making

00:59:11.420 and building things and thinking about what I would work on. In that time, the early part of

00:59:18.440 my time here, I came across the story about Paisley. And of course, it's a really interesting

00:59:22.980 story. Loads of artists and folks have picked up on it and are working around it. But I was super

00:59:28.460 interested in the fact that, so just to summarize for the listeners, accusations in Paisley began

00:59:34.740 in 1697, when the 11-year-old Christian Shaw displayed unusual symptoms and several members

00:59:40.740 of the community were accused of witchcraft. And Shaw remains a key figure in the story,

00:59:45.560 though her role in the accusations was really amplified by those in positions of power.

00:59:50.280 And then the ensuing trials led to the deaths of eight people, four women and four men,

00:59:55.880 the Paisley Eight. And Paisley later became really known for its thread industry and textile

01:00:00.200 industry. And I was super interested in the fact that Christian Shaw grew up to be Christian

01:00:04.660 Miller, who started the Bargarin Thread Company. So behind me, what you see, so I started working

01:00:12.120 with textiles when I first got here at the same time I was developing a game. And so the figures

01:00:18.460 that you see on the black and white tapestry behind me, these are the Paisley 8 that I've

01:00:22.580 created as metahumans in the Unreal Engine software that I'm using to develop the game.

01:00:28.060 So I developed the 8 of them, I developed their costumes, and then I started to screenshot them

01:00:32.920 and had them printed at the Center for Advanced Textiles at GSA, which is an amazing digital

01:00:38.240 textiles facility that they have. So I've been having these printed, these images of the front

01:00:43.240 and back of each of the figures. And then this weaving that you see here is an image of Christian

01:00:51.780 Shaw as the CEO, essentially, of the Bargarin Thread Company. And I wanted to portray her.

01:00:57.720 The way I created this was I used Adobe Firefly, which is Adobe's AI product, to create an AI

01:01:04.640 representation a bunch of ai representations of what would christian shaw what portrait would

01:01:09.720 have been painted of her um in the style at that time of the style of painting and in scotland at

01:01:15.480 that time um what would she how would she have presented herself as the owner of this company

01:01:22.040 and so i created this image photoshopped it one thing that's really key about ai right now in

01:01:30.280 terms of image making is the way it messes up hands i'd really really like to talk to you about

01:01:36.180 this as a slight rabbit hole can i can i picture yes let's talk about hands in our book we used

01:01:43.640 an image that had been created by a young scottish artist called rosie andrew who had just

01:01:49.340 graduated or was just about to graduate in fact from dj cad which is dundee's um art school yeah

01:01:54.860 it's a great school we've got a very good friend mel who teaches there um and well who works there

01:01:59.440 I think she's she's more sort of research now. Sorry, Mel. But she so Rosie is this fantastic artist who I'd come across on Instagram,

01:02:05.840 who when she was doing her undergraduate, so she's probably about maybe 19,

01:02:10.540 she'd created this body of work for something she was doing in her degree that was photographs.

01:02:16.180 I'm doing I'm doing rabbit ears around it. Photographs of of the accused during the period.

01:02:21.820 Now, she I understood this. I completely get what she's doing.

01:02:25.180 She understood the history of portraiture. She understood the history of photography.

01:02:31.260 She understood that by creating these images, because AI can make such freaky looking humans, it sort of got across to me as the viewer, the uncanniness of being accused of being otherworldly and in league with the devil.

01:02:44.300 so it was sort of like tabloid photography almost so that viewers who maybe can't make a connection

01:02:50.400 without a visual in the modern world were able to kind of see it and go oh my god these were real

01:02:55.440 people but also she was kind of heightening the whole spooky supernatural aspect so we've got one

01:03:01.320 of her images in our in our book and we have had so much hassle from a small amount of people

01:03:07.440 that are like how dare you deprive a real artist of work by using ai now i know the ai is here to

01:03:14.520 stay just like painters said oh my god photography's ruined everything just like photographers

01:03:20.120 said oh my god photoshop's ruined everything it's a it's a new you know there's a responsibility

01:03:25.380 with new technology and everything but can you talk a bit about this please for people that just

01:03:29.580 go ai slop and then have accused us of then writing the whole book using ai which obviously

01:03:34.500 maybe haven't because it would have been more coherent if we'd used AI to write it we wouldn't

01:03:39.940 have had to have done as much fact checking but anyway no absolutely no this is always a sticking

01:03:45.240 point it's a huge thing point right now but look my field of new media we use this word new media

01:03:50.920 isn't new technologies aren't new you know the paintbrush was a technology but in my field we're

01:03:56.080 always interrogating technology whatever that is whatever is coming around and so artists have been

01:04:01.300 working with AI since long ago. Artists have been working with technology. As you say, photography

01:04:07.560 was hugely controversial for many years because it was going to take away from what painters could

01:04:12.540 do. It was going to, and, and, and we've, we've embraced, we've embraced photography in, in such

01:04:18.480 a massive way as a society in the arts, et cetera. AI is just another technology. I realize there's

01:04:24.900 more, there's more complexities to it than that, but it's the current, it's the current thing that

01:04:28.660 is very controversial it's very concerning in so many ways but as artists we can't we can't not

01:04:36.180 look at it critically and use it as a critical tool to say hey this is what this is this is what

01:04:42.760 we can do with this and to really to really make exciting work around that and critical work around

01:04:48.320 that and so artists are going to use ai um and and hopefully they're looking at in a critical way now

01:04:53.420 I used Adobe Firefly to create this.

01:04:56.440 Adobe Firefly is really specific in terms of the way it works with copyright

01:04:59.580 and artists' images.

01:05:00.940 They're really careful about how they're using artists' images,

01:05:04.280 and I know that's a huge concern for artists.

01:05:06.580 Of course, like the ethical side of stealing.

01:05:08.900 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:05:10.380 Stealing other artists' images or aesthetics

01:05:12.360 and then using that to create the algorithm.

01:05:15.460 That's super problematic.

01:05:17.300 But again, if we as artists and writers don't interrogate these technologies,

01:05:21.760 you know, who will?

01:05:22.360 we're the people that really need to be using them and thinking critically about how they can

01:05:26.260 be used and telling interesting stories with them in order to you know to present that to the public

01:05:32.360 and say this is what this could be because if we don't get involved with it critically then it's

01:05:37.180 going to be used by what i'm going to call bad actors that that will then use it for all the

01:05:41.840 things that people are really scared about and like don't get me wrong i'm not like a massive

01:05:45.280 ai fangirl or anything i think there's loads exactly incredibly problematic about it but we

01:05:50.580 are intelligent thinking people who still you know we're moving into the future we're gonna

01:05:55.800 we're gonna keep moving regardless of what we do so I think as as artists you know as a writer

01:06:01.080 um I used to have a friend that seemed to sort of delight in saying to me oh you're gonna become

01:06:06.960 obsolete because everything's gonna be written by AI I mean it can't replicate what a human heart

01:06:13.420 and human thought is gonna do it can copy stuff and I think that's why a lot of the time when we

01:06:18.300 see written ai if you're if you're a critical thinker you can often go that doesn't quite

01:06:23.460 ring true there's something that's not right there so when you're talking about the hands

01:06:26.900 that's obviously something that people often look at with visual ai where they go oh i can tell

01:06:32.120 because she's got 17 fingers that that's exactly exactly sorry exactly well and that's the thing

01:06:40.540 about technology is like we can think about the magic of technology in a really positive way like

01:06:46.060 how technology can make something happen that a magician or a vaudeville performer might have

01:06:52.800 made happen. And I think that's really interesting, but I also think that it's super important for

01:06:57.460 people who understand technology and work with technology as a tool to also reveal how technology

01:07:03.260 works and to show it really plainly. And also as a teacher and as a professor, I'm really

01:07:08.400 interested in teaching students how to use technology as a creative tool and not just be

01:07:13.320 a consumer because that's where I think AI and a lot of these really advanced tools can get us in

01:07:18.560 the long run is not being critical thinkers and not being creative makers with technology but

01:07:23.380 simply consuming it and that's where it becomes really dangerous so just just have a critical eye

01:07:28.960 just have a critical mind behind what you're making um and and and think through it and at

01:07:34.380 the same time be playful because it does allow you to be playful and really iterate quickly which I

01:07:39.440 think can be really exciting for artists there's some really interesting stuff about ai and

01:07:44.620 memorialization that i was thinking about yesterday because um somebody local to where i live lost

01:07:50.960 their son in really tragic circumstances and then i noticed i don't know her at all i just i know her

01:07:56.400 through facebook and then there was all these images of her and her son that are ai images and

01:08:01.600 of him being in heaven and of him being like held by jesus and stuff like that and now that's that's

01:08:07.280 not that's not my sort of thing but i can understand why that was she made it so she don't

01:08:12.600 she'd clearly oh that's fine she'd used images i thought people other no no no no look that looked

01:08:18.760 like she'd she'd made it herself and i can understand somebody that's lost i lost my father

01:08:22.660 it's not the same thing as losing a child but like you know what what grief can do to you

01:08:26.620 in the same way that you can you can think of like the magic of everyday life you know like when

01:08:31.740 when lots of people died in uh like say the american civil war or the first world war

01:08:36.960 people got really interested in spiritualism because it was an idea about the magic about

01:08:40.860 being in touch with those that you've lost so i can see why ai might be useful in that way and i

01:08:46.020 suppose the difference the the key thing is that people know that it's not real and i think that

01:08:52.780 that's maybe a bit like spiritualism too is that we might now look at that in 2026 and sort of go

01:08:58.580 but it wasn't real or there were unscrupulous people and i suppose that's where the danger is

01:09:02.880 if people forget that AI isn't a real thing,

01:09:07.140 that it can be manipulated negatively

01:09:09.700 as well as kind of benignly or even positively.

01:09:12.540 It's really curious to me about how we don't interrogate things.

01:09:17.780 Can I say, as a retired criminal lawyer,

01:09:19.700 all the things that you used to say to people about,

01:09:22.640 well, if you've got evidence,

01:09:24.240 if you've got pictures of you being in a different place,

01:09:26.800 if you've got evidence to show, if you can show us this,

01:09:29.980 if they did say that to you, give us the recording of it.

01:09:32.880 Now anyone can have anything. And as a result of that, the whole idea of what is evidence that can be proved and legitimised and what can't becomes a whole new tricky area.

01:09:43.000 Claire, that was also really professional because that linked back to spectral evidence.

01:09:47.900 Yeah, I was going to say, I've got right off the topic. But anyway, we find ourselves in Paisley and we find ourselves with your work.

01:09:55.180 Yeah, and the fingers. So you can kind of see here behind me on the fingers on this representation or this sort of reimagining of Christian Shaw as a businesswoman. The fingers are kind of messed up because that's just what AI does. And I left that. I did then use Photoshop to edit in the thread and some of the others, a spinning wheel behind her.

01:10:18.340 That's connected to, well, I do want to say about this tapestry.

01:10:21.920 So this tapestry was woven at a mill in North Carolina, just about an hour from where I live, called Pure Country Weavers.

01:10:28.120 They also have a strand called Fiber Art, and they're really amazing.

01:10:31.740 I've collaborated with them with my digital weaving class at UNC Asheville in the past.

01:10:36.320 But I had family come visit.

01:10:37.800 I had this sent to the mill in North Carolina.

01:10:39.820 They printed it for me, and I had family visit, and they went and picked it up and then brought it over to me about a month ago.

01:10:46.560 And so I've had it for my exhibition here at GSA. But this company, they also make memorial blankets, which is really interesting because people will create blankets for a loved one that has passed and then hand those out at the funeral as a memorial for people.

01:11:03.500 I think that's nice and I love the idea like we spoke about the tartan there's something

01:11:10.520 that the tactile feel of something makes you feel connected to it if it has a story or a person

01:11:18.140 so I think that's like yours got my RSA behind it I think that's really beautiful can I just say

01:11:24.280 for those of us watching in portrait instead of long screen when you watch this on the YouTube

01:11:29.860 you'll be able to see it but if you're watching it on the long screen you'll be able to see it

01:11:33.700 but hopefully we'll be able to get it up on video on yeah and the the so so her hands are are the

01:11:41.380 way they are in that the other thing is the metahumans that i created so these are created

01:11:47.220 in the unreal engine which is a game engine software that i'm using to build my game when i

01:11:51.920 do motion capture motion capture is when you use a camera to track someone's movement and then you

01:11:57.140 apply that to a 3d model it's you it was used in avatar the the original with the blue people

01:12:02.380 and uh or the blue creatures and a lot of and many and the many men yeah blue boar blue people

01:12:10.380 anyway many many um animated films have used motion capture but i i've used that to animate

01:12:16.480 my metahumans which represent the paisley eight and also uh christian shaw and other characters

01:12:22.360 in this game that i'm creating when the motion capture is done using a phone rather than a really

01:12:30.360 really high-end motion capture setup it messes up the hands so the hands end up being kind

01:12:35.320 of clenched and not as specific finger movement so you'll see that in my game um you'll see as

01:12:42.840 the as the characters are weave it are spinning on the spinning wheels their hands are kind of weird

01:12:47.960 And then one really exciting. Oh, I do want to talk about this other weaving that I did. So I was able to get into GSA's weaving studios and they let me work on their TC2 Jacquard looms. And I was able to weave this, which will also be in the exhibition I'm having in July at GSA. But this was a digital weaving and this represents Christian Shaw as a girl. So that first part of the story. So I'm looking at her as a grown woman.

01:13:12.900 um but this was woven I wove this myself by passing creating a digital file and then passing

01:13:19.400 a shuttle through a digital loom in an analog process so it's it's analog and digital together

01:13:24.820 but I have been wanting to get a hold of one of these looms for many years and was thrilled to be

01:13:28.700 able to work on that at GSA so that was really that's so cool so you're you're building up to

01:13:35.260 an exhibition in July um and is that something that the public can go to or is it just people

01:13:40.380 the art school or it is yeah so it's gonna be um it's a it's a pop-up um there's gonna be an

01:13:45.880 opening on the evening of saturday the fourth of july from five to seven and it'll be open that

01:13:51.280 weekend for so friday in the evening friday the third of july um saturday the fourth and sunday

01:13:57.620 the fifth all day and it's at the windows on heritage gallery in the reed building at gsa

01:14:03.920 right so that's in glasgow we'll we'll put up links to that so people can find it

01:14:09.360 yeah if you have this time you can give us any links we'd love to share them so people could

01:14:13.440 go and see it so it sounds amazing because it's one of those things the witch trials are have a

01:14:18.640 you know there's a lot of people have an artistic response to it and it's often maybe what i would

01:14:25.200 think and i don't know actually if this word is actually as i'm about to say i don't know if this

01:14:28.600 is in current usage so i'm sorry if this has now changed something it's better but like outsider

01:14:32.740 art or folk art maybe or people that are not necessarily artists per se but who feel compelled

01:14:39.280 to do some sort of visual representation particularly of I think of women's faces

01:14:44.540 we've seen some things of that which is quite interesting but I'm really glad to see you doing

01:14:50.760 this sort of level of art with using this kind of technology and with with all the training and

01:14:54.600 everything that you've got it's really interesting because it avoids avoids some of the sort of the

01:15:00.440 cliches of it I think you know we tend to get the same representations again and again which is women

01:15:05.500 women in pain you know and i think that although that's an enormous part of it there's there's more

01:15:10.920 complexity to be had in that situation i think we should start calling in a derogatory fashion

01:15:17.140 sorry victoria um insider art and a kind of very off-putting way oh that's insider art

01:15:22.160 yeah exactly exactly it seems such a shame to to make a differentiation between

01:15:30.020 real artists and doing inverted commas yeah absolutely no yeah i mean i think i think anyone

01:15:39.340 you know anyone who's responding to what happened with with which which persecution you know it's

01:15:45.620 all relevant i think it's all it's all really important to to showcase but but i i do you know

01:15:51.100 with the work that i do with technology i think there is an important aspect there to kind of

01:15:55.560 bring it into the present and sort of think about how can things like algorithms maybe kind of

01:16:01.880 compound and our use of technology kind of compound these possibilities for persecution

01:16:07.540 and for voices that are heard and not heard and all of these sorts of things that happen.

01:16:12.540 One other exciting thing that I was able to bring into the current project is I have a colleague at

01:16:18.480 GSA School of Innovation and Technology, Daisy Abbott, who is in a a cappella singing group

01:16:24.640 called Muldoon's Picnic.

01:16:26.260 They're a Glasgow-based acapella singing group.

01:16:28.980 And May, Katie Lavinia Cooper

01:16:31.740 is one of the members of the group.

01:16:33.280 She was able to compose a song about spinning

01:16:35.600 that's in the game.

01:16:37.440 And so this acapella group came into the studio

01:16:39.800 and recorded this five-part harmony

01:16:41.880 singing a song about spinning

01:16:44.060 that comes in and becomes kind of the rhythm of the game

01:16:47.060 that I'm creating that I'll showcase

01:16:48.940 at the exhibition in July.

01:16:50.560 So just being able to work with the amazing people at GSA,

01:16:53.920 3d modelers um just the folks the folks that are around me and kind of draw on those resources and

01:16:59.400 just bring people in and and make it kind of a collaborative effort to make the game has been

01:17:03.480 really really exciting it's really cool victoria it's been lovely speaking to you we'll we'll get

01:17:09.180 the details of your exhibition that we can put up when we put up the podcast and we'll we'll put it

01:17:13.680 on our social media as well if you if you'd like us to and and hopefully people will go along and

01:17:18.020 see because we know there is an enormous appetite for people to see art that's that's around the

01:17:23.000 issue of the witch trials it's nice to see this this sort of new angle that you're doing with the

01:17:27.240 games and things absolutely and speaking personally you know i love technology i embrace every new

01:17:32.220 thing and you know including with ai what i found funny when zoe was talking about ai was

01:17:38.480 people were complaining you've used ai um and you've not used artists and then we showed them

01:17:43.440 that we had used artists and they were they were university doing art and stuff like that and they

01:17:47.800 just moved it doesn't matter your books ai then and you're like yeah yeah i think i i understand

01:17:53.540 i think people are coming from a good place and i think they're seeing ai as like the man

01:17:57.540 and that they they're seeing that as being destructive and i understand that and the

01:18:00.920 environmental cost is so incredibly i don't understand how we we get away from that that's

01:18:05.620 problematic and also i think it's inherent of the inequality and yeah ai as victoria which i

01:18:12.400 completely completely get it but it just really pissed me off because rosie is a very good artist

01:18:18.240 she's absolutely a working artist rosie's ace and she's at the beginning of her career and just the

01:18:23.860 fact that people would just say oh you're you're stopping a real artist i mean what is a real

01:18:28.540 artist first of all and secondly she she is an artist like you know that's what i've started

01:18:34.500 this whole thing off again victoria victoria's like i'm just here to talk about my own art

01:18:38.300 but it's interesting though because because it is about doing something that other people then

01:18:43.720 will try and and sort of isolate and shun people and where where i've said this before to people

01:18:49.820 that you're replicating an aspect of the witch trials is that you're taking somebody and you're

01:18:55.280 going i don't understand this i'm angry with you we need to deal with you and that that to me is

01:19:00.640 really concerning so yeah and i mean i think the other aspect like with this with this piece

01:19:05.000 is you know there were a lot of gaps in history as well and a lot of times women maybe women

01:19:10.100 business women weren't depicted when you know when they should have been there should have been a

01:19:14.980 portrait of of her as this business owner and so yeah maybe we can go back and and use some of 0.99

01:19:20.740 these technologies to fill gaps and oh careful victoria you'll you'll you'll bring down the

01:19:27.020 in a creative sense

01:19:28.700 the three of us will be rounded up

01:19:34.020 accused of witchcraft

01:19:35.140 people will be counting our fingers

01:19:36.760 all going very strange

01:19:38.780 they're all present and correct

01:19:41.220 I know you say they're all present and correct now

01:19:43.100 but when it comes out

01:19:44.420 they'll be like 14 of them

01:19:45.880 right we'll say cheerio for that just now

01:19:49.860 I think this has been really fascinating

01:19:51.640 Victoria we look forward to seeing your work

01:19:53.820 in real life

01:19:54.620 and we're delighted that we got a chance to have a chat with you today oh thank you both so much

01:20:00.080 this has been really fantastic thank you welcome to this episode we are going to be talking to

01:20:07.760 some people today about something we think you should go and see if you get the opportunity to

01:20:11.880 I'm not going to mangle it by explaining anything I'm going to ask Brandon Sharp whose project I

01:20:17.080 believe this is to tell us why you're here today and what people need to know Brandon take it away

01:20:23.540 hello well i'm brandon i run headless acting theater company and i've written a little play

01:20:29.260 that we're in rehearsals for right now called the seven witches of toryburn and it's kind of just

01:20:35.000 about the real life events from 1666 in toryburn fife and it kind of merges a bit into the story

01:20:44.100 of lilius ade um which i assume some of people who are listening to this would have heard of

01:20:48.960 hopefully hopefully yeah uh who passed away in 1704 uh those stories kind of they they kind of

01:20:57.600 coincide together um and that's what the play's about really so you have to come along

01:21:02.460 and see what's that and where is the play on well we will be um performing uh throughout all of

01:21:11.100 october pretty much across scotland we're going to be in kirkology anstruther tory burn itself

01:21:18.240 glasgow edinburgh and dundee and gala shields well that's a good spread actually yeah you're

01:21:25.580 doing well there and do you think you might get any other dates added on or is that where you're

01:21:29.060 at just now probably not um i think that i kept adding dates before and i think the cast were

01:21:34.220 like oh no we're so busy yeah we have we have lives to lead as well so speaking of the cast

01:21:39.640 we have we have three people here today maybe we could start with nikki could you tell us who you

01:21:44.760 are in the play please. Hi yes I'm Nikki Scott Mitchell and I'm playing Margaret Horne and she's

01:21:51.020 one of the slightly older ladies in the cast in real life and in cast but Margaret Horne was a

01:22:01.380 midwife and unfortunately she was deemed to be a witch by the church because one of the babies

01:22:09.500 she delivered was stillborn um so yeah that was that was where where margaret ended up being

01:22:16.680 being accused um of being a witch but yeah okay thank you that's brilliant and ariana

01:22:24.840 who do you play in the play

01:22:26.420 oh i think you're mute there we go my mic is my work you're good now yeah perfect um so i'm ariana

01:22:37.020 mcculloch and i play mary logan in the play which is the reverend's wife she's quite an interesting

01:22:42.700 character i would say because obviously she's not one of the witches as per se but i think she's got

01:22:48.220 a very beautiful story kind of tangled in with everything going on and i guess it's kind of nice

01:22:54.000 to see her side of the story a little bit because again normally it's just kind of she's the reverend's

01:22:59.920 wife but yeah it's lovely to hear her kind of story throughout the journey that's interesting

01:23:04.400 because in our book we've got fictional bits that are woven through the facts and one of the

01:23:09.200 characters that i wrote about was an imagined minister's wife and how she might feel about her

01:23:14.000 husband being involved in that so i thought that was an interesting person to look at whether they

01:23:18.600 would be entirely supportive if they could see things in a slightly different manner that'll

01:23:23.480 be interesting thank you and thirdly we have nicola who are you in the play hi i'm nicola

01:23:29.420 anderson and i'm playing the character of christian may i unfortunately i tried to do a

01:23:34.740 little bit of background digging into christian but unfortunately like so many others there's

01:23:40.480 very little record left other than just a name and a date and christian in the play is being

01:23:46.940 portrayed as a homeless woman now in those days i think homeless people and just poor people in

01:23:53.800 general were often persecuted and one of the first ones to be accused I mean you just need

01:23:59.440 to look at the Salem witch trials in order to see that okay so because she was unusual and didn't

01:24:06.400 have the protection of society she was a more vulnerable figure I guess yeah and also we often

01:24:12.100 see stories don't we of of people that are asking for alms and they're they're turned away they're

01:24:17.260 turned down and they mutter and then something goes wrong in the family's house and it's that

01:24:21.360 person that's then accused of being a witch so we do that is unfortunately a very sorry

01:24:25.860 oft-repeated tale Brandon why do you think people should come and see the play I think people should

01:24:32.120 come and see this show because it's it's about real people it's about it's a real thing that

01:24:38.980 happened it's a horribly tragic thing that happened with so many average people everyday

01:24:46.280 people people that you would call your friends nowadays who were just being brutally tortured

01:24:51.400 and murdered for so long for very little reason if any reason at all um and i think that the world

01:25:01.160 that we're living in today there's a lot of similarities that can kind of mirror like the

01:25:06.440 powerful men ruling through fear and misogyny and um it's just it's been what 400 500 years

01:25:15.580 how have we not changed and i think this is a show that shows them as women and not witches

01:25:22.940 and not in my opinion not much these days shows stuff about witchcraft and all that

01:25:30.320 without the magic and just showing the hard facts that they were just people

01:25:35.600 and they were just your mom your granny your auntie your sister your friend your girlfriend yeah

01:25:42.160 so there's just something that audiences today should be able to connect with and empathize

01:25:49.660 with and see that we're not so far away from that these are people just like us and of course i'm

01:25:54.580 from fife so it's very interesting to me that it's set in fife but i'm really glad that you're

01:25:59.040 touring all over the uk so when we put this episode out all over scotland sorry when we put

01:26:03.820 this episode out we'll put links to that so people can buy tickets and come along and see you and who

01:26:08.360 knows at some point brandon maybe you can persuade the cast to go further afield if they can fit it

01:26:13.000 into their lives which i'm sure is a massive demand but we are delighted to have given you

01:26:17.600 just a little bit of um spotlight for this today and look forward to when it's out in october so

01:26:23.280 look at the links book your tickets and go along and see it because i think this will make the

01:26:28.000 whole situation about the witch trials that much more sort of you know understandable it should

01:26:33.800 it should connect you with what happened um if you're having any difficulty seeing these people

01:26:38.040 as being the same as we are today really so thank you so much for joining us thank you thank you for

01:26:43.480 having us thank you so much thank you so much for having joined us for this episode episode 85 i

01:26:51.180 feel like i should maybe say sorry for my enormous emotional um sort of offloading earlier but

01:26:57.420 actually i don't feel like apologizing i don't feel bad about it i don't feel any guilt about it

01:27:02.040 if you don't want to listen to it that's okay i suspect most people are listening to it probably 0.67

01:27:06.280 going fuck yeah fuck no fuck that so i'm going to bring out a t-shirt saying that but um thank you 0.97

01:27:12.640 thank you so much for joining us just before we go though claire just want to give you a quick bird 0.99

01:27:16.640 update oh yeah i've just come back from holidays um everybody's fine they all just you know they

01:27:22.620 they did their own holidays i'm not really sure that you know what the ravens are like they're

01:27:25.820 very secretive raccoons i just left them a key to the car that is fine i don't know what's going

01:27:31.880 happen but when i was on holiday i went to roads and there were very few crows there or ravens

01:27:37.940 there they're slightly different color but there's hardly any of them but you know what there was

01:27:41.080 loads of hang on let me guess let me guess

01:27:44.420 silent space cats well yes there there were lots of cats and as you know i'm a cat person

01:27:55.440 and there was lots of really nice little cats that if anybody's been to any greek islands you

01:27:59.900 know that there's lots of feral cats and there's usually somebody in the community who seems to be

01:28:03.740 looking after them and that was happening in Rhodes it was lovely went to a place called

01:28:06.880 Pefcos highly recommend very nice good break no there was lots of swallows and it was really nice

01:28:13.960 because the swallows kept swooping over the swimming pool and were like landing on this like

01:28:18.640 little box that was built into the side of the hotel and it meant that I was actually able to

01:28:23.320 get a really close-up look of what swallows look like in flight so instead of being miles away in

01:28:28.580 the sky they're actually very close and for those um who are aren't watching zoe was gesticulating

01:28:34.480 with her arm and as she gesticulated i saw the swallow on her arm her tattoo i've got three of

01:28:39.860 them three swallows i'm very fond of swallows for various reasons but it was very nice and very

01:28:44.920 peaceful and up until about an hour and a half ago i was feeling nice and relaxed sort of post

01:28:50.380 holiday is it possible that i bring it out in you zoe no to be fair no you're just you're just a

01:29:00.280 really good supportive friend that i'm able to just whang on about things and get really angry

01:29:05.780 and you probably just go to somewhere in your head where you're thinking about

01:29:08.940 hats or something and then i just peter out and then you go okay next thing and it's fine and

01:29:16.740 You don't hold it against me.

01:29:17.960 I just feel things, Claire.

01:29:19.540 I feel things.

01:29:20.640 You feel things too, but in a much more reserved way.

01:29:27.060 Yes.

01:29:27.700 Yeah.

01:29:28.900 Yeah.

01:29:30.840 I am what I am.

01:29:31.860 Do you know what I mean?

01:29:32.280 I'm 51 in a couple of weeks' time.

01:29:33.820 I don't feel like there's an awful lot of changing left to be done.

01:29:36.480 Oh, come on now.

01:29:38.320 Well, like, not in a...

01:29:39.920 No, you don't want to.

01:29:40.660 Don't go on changing.

01:29:42.420 I don't actually want to change.

01:29:43.840 I don't want to go to jail, though, so I'm going to have to rein it in a bit.

01:29:46.240 that's true yeah i am working on a guillotine though but just 0.87

01:29:50.760 i am working on my rage but no you're working on a guillotine madame guillotine

01:29:57.400 anyway thank you so much for joining us please if you don't already follow us on our socials

01:30:07.360 we're we're on all the ones that you'd expect us pose and also if you haven't signed up for our

01:30:13.040 um witches of scotland gang oh yes no it's not a gang it's a clan yeah it's a clan i quite like

01:30:22.140 anyway so witches scotland clan go to witches of scotland.com and you can sign up and that means

01:30:29.080 you'll get newsletters now and then don't worry we're not organized enough to be writing them in

01:30:33.120 any particular speed or um or you know amount of time you it's just now and then but if you want

01:30:39.320 to sign up for that then it means you can be part of the clan for no cost it's just you know we just

01:30:43.660 joined together you're part of a nice community and also we that's where we do updates in advance

01:30:49.320 for advances with the tartan yes so it's coming with that soon exactly so if there's big news

01:30:57.120 about tartan products we tell people there first so do remember to to go and sign up because if you

01:31:05.500 are interested in um getting some of the memorial tartan that is where you get the head start

01:31:13.260 yep do you know what i'm going to do i'm going to put my kilt on and i'm going to go for a furious

01:31:17.660 walk up newport and tea do it to the berries den which is like the park do it and i'm going to eat

01:31:27.820 a lion bar listen that's what you know how to do it yeah and so what you will come back feeling so

01:31:36.780 much better yeah okay all right thank you so much for joining us bye bye

Witches of Scotland - July 02, 2026

EPISODE 85 VICTORIA BRADBURY A SALEM DESCENDANT AND ARTIST

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