Annie Kelly brings Jake, Julian, and Travis tales of the lesser known figures of the European witch hunts during the early modern period: the skeptics who openly doubted that every accused woman was actually a witch.

At the time, it was common for village communities in England, Spain, and France to accuse local women of cursing cows and similar satanic mischief. But a handful of men didn’t believe the mainstream belief that witchcraft was widespread. Doubts were raised by the Spanish royal physician Andrés Fernández de Laguna, the English gentleman Reginald Scot, and the inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías. Salazar even established rules on investigating witchcraft that set a high standard of proof. This subsequently saved an untold number of accused witches from being hanged or burned at the stake.

What can all of this tell us about the modern right’s use of the language of demonology to describe their enemies? Listen to get exclusive analysis from the National Baby.

To get a better background on the history of witch hunting, Annie interviewed Professor Marion Gibson from the University of Exeter, and author of the book Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials.

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Annie Kelly

https://bsky.app/profile/annieknk.bsky.social

Witchcraft: A History in 13 Trials by Marion Gibson

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Witchcraft/Marion-Gibson/9781668002438

Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)

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QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.