Zoe and Claire wish to offer a Solstice offering to all those who have stuck by us with this podcast through a VERY patchy period and we wanted to give u THE BEST festive guests we could think of to finish this year! First is @thatglasgowwitch whose quiet, authentic witch work has taken the world by storm and the hugely talented artist and author Juano Diaz whose excellent book, Slumboy tells of his childhood and whose current artistic work focuses on the spiritual world.

You’ll have seen memes saying “I made dinners for men I should have poisoned” , well Zoe and Claire speak to Hope Reese about her book “The Women Are Not Fine: The Dark History of a Poisonous Sisterhood.

Hope tells the story of about a woman who lived at the turn of the 20th century, in the village of Nagyrév, Hungary, midwife Zsuzsanna Fazekas. She was more than a caretaker - she was a confidante. She helped poor women give birth; she assisted them with abortions; and she listened. Their stories were the same: husbands who drank, who beat them, who made their lives unbearable.

In response, Auntie Zsuzsi asked one question: "Why bother with them?"

Her solution was arsenic. Soon, women began slipping this concoction, made by dissolving flypaper in water, into their husbands' porridge, stews, and brandy. And over the next twenty years, the quiet village became the epicentre of one of the deadliest poisoning epidemics of the 20th century - according to some estimates, up to 300 people in the region were murdered.

Why did they do it? How did these murders spin out of control? How did these women get away with their crimes for two decades?

In The Women Are Not Fine, journalist Hope Reese pieces together archival newspapers, court documents, police records, and the vital work of historians, sociologists, and psychologists, diving deep into the truth behind this extraordinary event. Her findings serve as a stark warning: when women in a community are pushed to the brink, the consequences reverberate through history.

Zoe and Claire also speak to the fabulously knowledgeable academic and writer Steven Veerapen. Steven is an author born in Glasgow and raised in Paisley.

Fascinated by the glamour and ghastliness of life in the 1500s, his books show a penchant for myths, mysteries and murders in an age in which the law was as slippery as those who defied it... We speak to him about his book “Witches – A King’s Obsession” whether broomstick-riding spell-casters or Wiccan earth-worshippers – have been culturally relevant for centuries. For centuries, too, belief in the potency of witchcraft has been debated, accused witches have been hunted and punished, and film and TV productions have brought the witch and the witch-hunter to big and small screens.

But where did our perception of witches – good and bad – come from? What motivated wide-scale panics about witchcraft during certain periods? How were alleged witches identified, accused, and variously tortured and punished?

Steven Veerapen traces witches, witchcraft, and witch-hunters from the explosion of mass-trials under King James VI and I in the late sixteenth century to the death of the witch-hunting phenomenon in the early eighteenth century. Based on documents and the latest historical research, he explores what motivated widespread belief in demonic witchcraft throughout Britain as well as in continental Europe, what caused mass panics about alleged witches, and what led, ultimately, to the relegation of the witch – and the witch-hunter – to the realm of fantasy and the fringes of society.

Listen to Zoe and Claire to talk to Professor John Azumah and extraordinary photographer Claire Thomas about the women suffering modern day witch accusations, the witch camps in which they are forced to stay for safety and what we can do to help them.

EPISODE 76 DR MARGARET BENNETT

Zoe in conversation with DR MARGARET BENNETT

“is a Scottish writer, folklorist, ethnologist, broadcaster, and singer. Her main interests lies in the field of traditional Scottish folk culture and cultural identity of the Scots in Scotland and abroad. The late Hamish Henderson, internationally distinguished poet and folklorist, said about her: Margaret embodies the spirit of Scotland.”

THIS WAS RECORDED BEFORE WE HAD CONFIRMATION THAT THE UK AND US HARDBACK OF OUR BOOO WILL HAVE THE TARTAN ON IT

CLARE CAMPBELL OF PRICKLY THISTLE talks to Zoe and Claire about the tartan and about how we are releasing the WOS Tartan, clans and much more

Zoe and Claire discuss the witch trials in France and speak to ANNETTE YOUNG, journalist and presenter of the 51% - a feminist French TV show about Gislèle Pelicot. WARNING The discussion includes details of sexual assault.

Zoe and Claire talk to the folks at the Connecticut Witch Trials and find out all about their campaign. They also talk about the Afghanistan Government decision to remove education from women, the internets reaction to a woman celebrating her PHD (Congratulations Dr. Ally Louks) and also talk about middle class women of a certain age.... Those brave listeners who are able to make it to the end of the podcast will be rewarded with raven chat and festive requests.

Zoe and Claire come clean about why there has been no podcast in a while and what they have been up to... SPOILER : They've written a book!

Their publishers say

"HOW TO KILL A WITCH is a compelling and detailed investigation into the historic persecution of women as witches by Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditozzi, founders of the world-famous Witches of Scotland campaign.

With testimony from a small army of experts, pen portraits of the women accused, trial transcripts, witness accounts and the documents that set the legal grounds for the witch hunts, HOW TO KILL A WITCH builds to form a rich patchwork of tragic stories, helping us comprehend the underlying reasons for this terrible injustice, and raises the serious question - could it ever happen again?