I Don't Know About That - Salem Witch Trials

Episode Date: May 11, 2021

In this episode, the team discusses the Salem witch trials with professor of history at the College of Charleston and author of "The Devil's Art", Jason Coy. Follow Jason on Instagram @jasoncoy15 Buy his book on the UVA Press website at upress.virginia.edu/title/5321 or on Amazon at amazon.com/Devils-Art-Divination-Discipline-Germany/dp/0813944074/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Jason+Philip+coy&qid=1620334389&sr=8-1-fkmr1See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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I don't know about that. We're Jim Jefferies. Was that Kim Jong-un? Yeah, it's a different... No, I'm not talking about like in front of North Korea. This is two different countries. I'm talking about... Who in front of North Korea. This is two different countries. I'm talking about. Who's the guy in North Korea? Kim Jong Un.

Nailed it. George and Ringo. Kim. All right. I have an announcement to make. If you're living in Australia, you may have already heard this announcement because I've been doing the rounds on the radio shows out there. I love the radio shows in Australia. Oh, Jim, you're coming back. What's going on?

But I will be there. Sponsored by my favourite radio station in the world, Triple M and the Mick Malloy show that I'm on once a week. I will be in Sydney Tuesday the 29th of June, Enmore Theatre, Sydney, and then the 30th in the Enmore Theatre in Sydney, and also on the 1st of July, I'll be at the Enmore Three Shows in Sydney. Then I'm off to Brisbane. We're going up to Brisbane. Come and see me at the Brisbane Convention Centre on the 2nd. On the 3rd, Melbourne at the, I don't even know, I may, centre on the 2nd. On the 3rd,

Melbourne at the, I don't even know where, I may, the Plenary? Plenary. Plenary! There we go, go to the Plenary everyone. Then I got a couple of days off, oh, I'm going to bloody go out and I'll do some Australian things, I'll eat a pie, I'll hold a koala, looking forward to it. And then on Tuesday

the 6th, I'll be in Adelaide at the Barton Theatre. The 7th, I had to change venues because the theatre wasn't open for two nights. So I'm doing two different theatres in Adelaide. I'll be at the AEC Theatre. And then to close it out in the town that I went to university I will be at the Perth Riverside Theatre on the 8th and the 9th. So come and see me Australia. Come and see me. That's what I'm up to. You can get tickets at FrontierTouring.com.

FrontierTouring.com. Slash Jim Jefferies. I'm still touring with Michael Gudinski's company. It's all good. Looking forward to it. So that's FrontierTouring.com slash Jim Jefferies. Or if you just go to FrontierTouring.com, you'll see his face there. Yeah.

And no, none of us will be going with you because a lot of people have been asking that. No, no. None of us will be there. I would have gone there. We would have done some live podcasts, but you have to quarantine by myself and only Australian citizens can get in unless you've got work permits and you're just not worthy of work permits. So you'll have Amos with you.

Amos Gill, the wonderful Amos Gill is going on before me. He's a bit more match fit than I am at the moment. He's done like three festivals and I haven't done comedy for a year. He's been doing comedy for like four months straight now. Yeah, every night, every night. And he's going to be slick as hell and I'm going to be like, oh, I've got some bits to tell you. No, actually, I did a warm-up gig last night and it went remarkably well

and I'm going to do another weekend of warm-up gigs and I'm very happy with the material that I've got at the moment. So I'm very much looking forward to, as I always do, playing in front of my homeland of people. So our former guest, Ted McFall, sent us some honey. We all have the honey here. Do-do-do-do-do-do. He sent some honey.

Do-do-do-do-do-do. Very nice of him. He sent us a nice card telling us how much he liked us, our show. And if you want to try Ted McFall's honey, you can go to, where is it? McFallByard.com. Or, yeah, M-C-F-A-L-L-B-Yard.com and try it. And he wants everyone to know it's raw, without filtering, has all the pollen and live enzymes.

I had a spoonful of it. It tastes, it's good. It's honey. Love honey. But you get all the enzymes. Luis said he's going to put a straw in there and suck it down. I know. I want to say something that Jack told me yesterday, right?

So we record these podcasts a week later or something like that. Yesterday was, two days ago was Cinco de Mayo. I had tacos. I had tacos. That's what I ate at home. I celebrate. You know what I mean? And Jack being the nicest, one of the nicest people I've ever met in my life, Jack Hackett, he rings up our good friend Luis and he says,

happy Cinco de Mayo. And Luis said to him, that's racist. So were you serious? Is that racist to wish a Mexican happy Cinco de Mayo? No, I don't think, I mean, but I think everyone assumes we celebrate. I haven't celebrated that once with my family. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Yeah, we got a couple of micheladas. I called him, he was on the way to get micheladas for Cinco de Mayo. Fuck you. It doesn't have to be a big celebration.

It's like on Australia Day, I have a pie, you know, and I bloody dress up in a flag and run around. Yeah, but I don't think Cinco de Mayo is what people think it is here, right? Yeah, everyone thinks it's Mexican Independence Day, but that's not. That's September 16th. Isn't it like a sad holiday? It's when you kick the French's ass. I thought it was the first Taco Tuesday.

No, that's where you're wrong, yeah. I used to do a joke about it because there's a lot of people that celebrate Cinco de Mayo that are like anti-Mexican immigration, I'm sure. Oh, yeah, for sure. They used to be like, yeah, we'll celebrate your holidays, but you're not allowed in our country. And it's like, just throw all the Coronas and the tacos over the wall. Do you remember that time that we were in like some little sort of

village-y type of town on the border of Mexico, and we had some tacos, and it was taco. They celebrated Taco Thursday. Yeah, yeah. It was like being in a fucking bizarro world. This Mexican restaurant had a big sign painted on the window, like, don't forget Taco Thursday. What?

And I'm like, who the fuck are these people? It was like right on the border of Arizona and California on the bottom part. That makes sense, yeah. You're driving from Phoenix to San Diego. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. It was good Mexican food. It was good remember that. It was good Mexican food. It was good.

It was really good food, but they celebrate Taco Thursday. I think that was the first time you had horchata. Oh, yeah. I'll tell you what. I'll tell you what, Luis. I've got a tip for you, mate. This might be racist for me to say it. I've got a tip for you.

But 7-Eleven are doing horchata slurpees at the moment. What? Oh, yum,ity yum yum yum. That was our racist. If you wish him happy Cinco de Mayo, he crawls racism. If I got to you and I suggest, like, you might enjoy this, 7-Eleven are doing horchata things, he might get offended. I'm on my way.

Yeah. It's good. It's cinnamony. It's slurpy. It's everything you want. Is there milk in horchata? Because my wife's a vegan and I convinced her to drink it saying it was rice or something. It's rice milk, yeah.

Yeah, there's no milk in it? I don't know. There's no dairy? There's no dairy in horchata? I don't know what rice milk. I mean, it's like almond milk. There's no dairy in that, right? Yeah.

How does milk come from rice? I'm thinking, what do you think about this? Putting horchata on your breakfast cereal. Wouldn't that be a good idea? I just had that same idea before you said it. That's crazy. Rice milk is a plant milk made from rice. Yeah, you can have horchata.

That sounds like how Jim would define it. What's rice milk? It's milk made of rice. It's rice milk with cinnamon, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's good stuff. Sugar, a lot of sugar. A lot of sugar. A lot of sugar in horchata.

And if you put fireball whiskey in there. Pretty good. Because it's already cinnamon. Tastes like a cinnamon toast crunch. It literally just makes it strong. Yeah, like rum chata. Yeah, yeah. Rum chata, yeah.

They say it's vegan here. It's a formula. It's just non-dairy. It's recommended for people who are lactose intolerant and vegan. So horchata. Tell her to horchata away. Yeah, I horchata her up all the time. What have you got for us, Jack?

Comment world. All right. Come on down to comment world and get high on our five-star ride. It's happening. Wait a second. I thought you were playing mariachi music to fucking pile on, Luis, for a second. I was with Jack last night.

Jack came to my gig and he's driving me home and he turns to me and he goes, remember we've got a podcast? And I said, yeah, yeah, I'll be a podcaster. And then he goes, I've got to think about my segment. He hadn't done it, right? And so if I was a gambling man, which I am, I would have put a lot of money on Comet World. It's the easiest one.

It was too late for him to come up with a life hack. I mean, I spend like 90 minutes going through all the comments, pulling good ones. So it's work. It's so much time. But it's fun. You enjoy it though, don't you? When they're nice.

There are some mean ones that I skipped over. He doesn't enjoy it because there's a lot of mean ones. And when I see mean ones about everyone else, I'm like, I want to delete all these, but I don't. I don't care. You can delete anything you want. Yeah, it doesn't bother me. But I don't want them to know that I've seen it.

You know what a lot of people always ask is why you can't do thumbs up or down on YouTube. Nothing on my clips, no, no, no. Because you get people flattered. Ratioing? Ratio it. It was an awful while ago. You can watch it if you want.

Don't watch it if you want. Keep your thumbs to yourself. You can leave all your negative thoughts below. That's still available. Yeah, yeah. You can still write a nasty comment. Keep your thumbs to yourself. We're just going to start commenting thumbs down.

Yeah, I don't watch a video based on the ratio. Keep your thumbs down. We got a review. Five stars. Favorite pod from Puckhead74. They make the great best reviews. Most great stand-up comedians have a lame podcast.

Most great podcasters are lame comedians. He nails them both handily. It's a great pod thatters are comedians. Not Jim Jeffries. He nails them both handily. He's a great pod. It's a great pod that is informative, educational, entertaining, and funny-eff. The co-hosts compliment the show perfectly. With like eight pluses.

Oh, and by the way, all the chickens live in Eastern Shore of Maryland. Oh, okay. See, he gave us information. That's a good review. And a nice review, and he complimented everyone. Another five-star review titled Jazz Cabbage. I learned that Louis Armstrong always smoked the jazz cabbage before playing and composing as a performance enhancement

and that he preferred to play with others who smoked it. Also, is it true that DuPont is a major reason it is illegal? The claim is they wanted hemp made illegal instead to push petrol based products like nylon fishing nets, which now account for a third of the plastic in the ocean. Also, I love the podcast. Thank you. Okay. I guess he answered his own question.

I tuned out. Our show is called I Don't Know About That. And you're asking if it was called I Know About That. We know it all. Another five-star review, but this one's interesting because they did a breakdown for us. They go, I don't know about that statistics. So for the anniversary of the podcast, I would like to present the scoring statistics for the first 50 episodes.

Oh yeah, before you go on. Yes, we just celebrated our one-year anniversary. So good for us. What is the scoring statistics? So all the scores we give Jim. I'm about to tell you. The highest score he ever received. Oh, Jim.

That's when we scored. Oh, good. The highest score he ever received was 10,017, which was for episode 22 for the Strongman competition. Yeah. He did really well on that one. He was on a commercial. He was on a Geico commercial.

Martin Leach eats. My nephews love that commercial and I go, oh my gosh, I know him. And I was like, do you want to send him a video? So we sent him a video of Jack going, you're pretty strong, but I think I'm stronger. Did he respond? Yeah, he responded. And now Jack is very happy that the world's strongest man

knows who he is. And this Jack. Yes. Lowest score, negative 2,297, which was episode 27 for Greek mythology. Oh, you did real bad there. Did pretty bad on that one. Yeah, I still don't care about that. And now we have the next highest reasonable score, 0 to 30.

And you got a 27 on magic mushrooms. All right. Pretty good. That makes sense. What was the topic though? Lowest reasonable score. You had a tie at three between Navy SEALs and the Vietnam War. Ah, yeah.

I'm not a warmongering type of guy. I know, but it's funny. At the beginning of this podcast, when we started it, you were like, do war ones. Vietnam War. I still want to do war ones. I like to watch and learn about war. But I thought you were going to know a lot about it. No, no.

Didn't know anything. The average score is 8,665.5 because the 10,000 ones skewed it. Oh, wow. Really skewed it. But then the average

reasonable score is 16.5. Yeah, that's shabby. This person has a lot of time on their hands. That's a pass. And they said, if you actually read this,

I can get more in detail if you would like. Yes, do it. Yes, more details. I would like you to waste seven hours of your life. Honestly, and if you have no problem doing all this stuff, we have other things that you could do for us.

I like the analytics. Also, can you sort out the dodges? They're not hitting very well. Yeah, we want a full report, 20-page report. So a couple of podcasts ago, Joe Finkel died, right? But you said Ray Finkel, and people point out Ray Finkel is the transgender police lieutenant in Ace Ventura. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but we changed it to Joe Finkel. I know? But you said Ray Finkel and people point out Ray Finkel is the transgender police lieutenant in Ace Ventura.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but we changed it to Joe Finkel. I know, I'm just saying. I forgot about that. So for everyone else, interesting.

Okay. I just thought this was an on a podcast comment. This was just on a YouTube comment on your gun control and someone said, this guy is extremely smart. Ah, thanks.

I write to myself every now and again. Burner again. Extrem extremely smart. Ah, thanks. I write to myself every now and again. Extremely smart. Have they asked me about Navy SEALs in the Vietnam War? Someone said your gun control as a set is the best I've ever seen. And I have a first cousin who's the original dead drummer. Oh, of what band? Rush? That's the joke you're doing he just died didn't he oh did he the drama

from rush i don't know yeah he did yeah he did yeah way to bring it up jack i thought that's what you think he's probably listening he is the dead drummer yeah yeah he is uh someone said jim can take anything in all camps and make it hysterical. That being said, Imodium. Yeah, it's a bloody wonderful product. All right. Are we ready to start? Yeah, let's read the map. Someone said I look like Korean Jesus.

Next. Korean Jesus. You look like Dave Grohl if he was Korean Jesus. You do look like Korean Jesus. Someone says I look like an animated character from F is for Family. Yeah, I can see that. Korean Jesus, man. And then someone said I thought he looked like the kid that played F is for Family. Yeah, I can see that. Korean Jesus, man. And then someone said,

I thought he looked like the kid that played the Grinch book growing up. Stop it, Korean Jesus. All right, that's it for comments, I guess. Let's read some ads. Green Chef is the first USDA certified organic milk company. Enjoy clean ingredients you can trust. Seasonally sourced for peak freshness. Ingredients come pre-measured. Now, you might be wondering what that is. Measured before you can trust. Seasonally sourced for peak freshness. Ingredients come pre-measured.

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Green Chef makes eating well easy. I don't try to read them exactly as they are. I try to put my own spin on it. That's supposed to be a shorter one. Yeah, I try to change it up a little bit. So Green Chef makes eating easy a willy-willy-wop, doobie-doobie-da, and affordable with plans to fit every lifestyle, whether you're keto, paleo, vegan, vegetarian,

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The CDC previously declared arse eating as not COVID safe. What? Is this an ad? Yes, it's real. This is exactly how it came in. When Luis read it to me earlier, I was like, wait, what? This is a prank, right? Arse eating is not safe.

You're not meant to eat arse. But thanks to the aggressive vaccine rollout, we're approaching herd immunity and our goal of 69% vaccination rate. Nice. Nice. What's wrong? 69. 69%.

Nice. Nice. Oh, yeah. Is that what you said? The 69? Yeah. Wow. According to canweatearse.com,

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and a 12-month warranty. Get ass-eating season ready. Get it ready because the seasons are coming. The tongues are out. Your ass wants to be clean. Join millions of Hello Tushy customers right now and clean your butt with every flush. Go to HelloTushy.com slash Jim to get 10% off plus free shipping. This is a special offer for the I don't know about that listeners that like to eat ass. Go to HelloTushy.com slash Jim for 10% off. HelloTushy.com slash Jim. All% off. HelloTushy.com slash Jim. All right. Let's welcome our guest this week, Jason Coy.

Hello, Jason. Thanks for having me. Now let's play. Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no. Yes, no. Judging a book by its cover.

All right. We did it. We did it. Well, I fluffed a bit at the beginning. We still haven't introduced that its cover. All right. We did it. We did it. Well, I fluffed a bit at the beginning. We still haven't introduced that. Perfect. All right. I'm going to guess what Jason does for a living

or for what his expertise is. It might not be a living. He might just be a big Madonna fan. Do you know a lot about Madonna? No. So he's a virgin. Okay. No. So he's a virgin. Okay, so it looks like you're sitting in an office or something like that, a place of work, or is this your house?

Are you in your house? No, this is my place of work. I was about to say, I don't know anyone who decorates their house with just like a table with one chair put into the corner. They've gone the Venetian blind. All right. Books is your favorite. He's got books.

Yeah, he's got books. We love talking about books. No, no. Look, my place of work doesn't have books. There's a single book in your house. My home actually has a lot of books. But they've got big pictures. I got my home interior decorated,

and they just bought me a whole lot of books for a shelf. And I look at them every now and again, and I go, oh, I might read that one day. And then things like the pictures of Coco Chanel is one of the books. A lot of picture books. Yeah, my father used to sit and get a book each day and open it up and go, oh, that's what Metallica did back in the day. All right, so this looks like an educational place.

Do you work in an educational place? Yes. Okay. Are you a professor, Jason? Yes. All right, Jason's a professor. I just want to tell you, so this subject today is very specific. You know, sometimes we're just like, we're very broad.

Like we talked about plane, you know, we're very broad, like we talked about flight last time. So it's very specific. He is a professor. It's history. It's in history. It's an American history. The history of nuts on mag wheels.

Wow. You got it. That's really specific. So it's history-based, history-based. Yeah. Okay, history-based. Has the history happened in the last hundred years? No. Oh, okay.

That's a good way to get an answer. Yeah. That is a good answer. That is. That is. I could go World War or something like that. So I won't say the Second World War. You see what I did?

You see what I did there? Yep. Process of elimination. Good work. Okay. Is your specialty subject, is it a war no is it based on structures like pyramids and shit like that no no that's a good one skyscrapers would be a good topic. Pyramids would be better. I like skyscrapers.

Yeah, yeah. They're low pointers, they call them. It's about history. It's in America. There's three words that is the title. One of the things women dress up like in Halloween. Oh, the history of sluts. They could be a slutty one. I've been looking forward to this all the time. They could be a slutty one. I've been looking forward to this all the time.

There could be a slutty one of these. Oh, a slutty one of these. And think of a broom. Oh, witches. All right, yeah. So you got witches. Now, specifically with witches in America. Oh, the Salem witch hunt.

That is correct. All right. Yeah, there you go. Salem witch trials. I can tell you a lot of this, man. Really? Oh, yeah. Okay.

Jason Coy is a professor of history at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina, where he teaches classes on witchcraft and witch hunting in early modern Europe and colonial America. He received his doctorate at UCLA in 2001 and is the author of The Devil's Art, a book about folk magic and witchcraft in pre-modern Europe published by the university of Virginia press. He also has appeared in a travel channel documentary series on the Salem witch trials called the witches of Salem and his book, the devil's art. It's available everywhere, right? Amazon. And I don't know where else you buy books, but definitely Amazon and anywhere else you buy books. So, and if you can tell us a little bit more just about how you, how do you know about witches? It's very specific.

Well, it's just basically from teaching classes on it here at the college of Charleston and working on this book. I've, I've researched it for many years and then I got involved in that documentary and it got me more involved in, in learning about Salem itself. And so it's a really interesting episode. So I'm I'll be interested to see what Jim knows about it. So what was the documentary? Was it Hubie's Halloween? I've seen that.

That was set in Salem. I watched the first seven minutes of that. The WandaVision comics. I watched Hubie's Halloween. I thought Salem looks like a nice place. It was Adam Sandler. Every one in four films, he has to go, oh, can you read it?

I can't do the voice, but that's like in his contract. Netflix went one in four, do the voice. Okay. So I'm going to ask Jim everything he thinks he knows about Salem Witch Trial. We'll have a few witch questions, general witch questions. We have a segment called Witch is Witch. Yeah, we should. And then you're going to give him a grade on zero through 10

on his knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials, Jason, and then Kelly's going to grade him a grade on 0 through 10 on his knowledge of the Salem witch trials, Jason. And then Kelly's going to grade him on confidence, on agreement, et cetera. We're going to put them all together. And 0 through 10, I don't know. I didn't even do this. Broom Hilda. She's a witch, right?

Yeah. And 11 through 20, Witches of Eastwick, 21 through 30, Sand Witch. Oh, yeah. I figured you'd want to be a Sand Witch. I love Sand Witch. That's from the Earl of Sandwich. When we do the podcast on that, he was the first bloke to go two bits of bread and put things in between the bread.

Fuck off, dude. Like seriously, what were people just putting things on the outside of bread and putting bread in the middle, putting all the toppings? Of course, how hard was that invention? Someone had to invent it. What's a witch? That is a good question. That is a good question, Price.

That is a good question. A witch is, I would say, not mythical, is maybe not the – a mythical being that people at some stages in our history have believed to be real, and they believe in the dark arts. They can cast spells on people. What? It's just funny because the dark – you're very excited to have pulled that out of your brain the dark arts they believe in spells um back in salem and stuff like that they believed if you could swim they were good swimmers right they were good swimmers for some reason right let's whenever I watch the Olympics, I'm like, look at these bunch of witches. Anyway, so people believe they fly on broomsticks.

Their shopping list always has Eye of Newt. That's always on their shopping list. They're like, oh, I'm all out of Eye of Newt. Better go down to the 7-Eleven, which sells Eye of Newt. What is witchcraft? Witchcraft, it's the practice of being a witch. It's the spells and the- That's another thing I like that you do when you have a credit.

Well, for us, obviously, it's the practice of being a witch. We all know this. It's the practice of making spells and doing witch-like activities. Okay. So we're going to talk about the Salem witch trials, but before we do that, just a little bit like kind of global history of witches. What do you know? How far back are they referenced? Do you know anything else about them around the world besides? Well, yes. That's the thing is Salem seems to be the most popular place, but I assume

they didn't invent them. That couldn't have been the first time they had witches. I would assume they would come from Europe would be the original places, the home of gargoyles and where dragons were mythically invented and all those type of things. So I would say that they're a Western Europe. I'm going to go Western Europe. I'm going to say it happened somewhere in France or something like that. I don't believe it's Eastern Bloc countries.

Yes, I am rich. I don't think I am coming here with you with tracksuit and I am going to cast spell. I don't believe that's a thing. And to our Eastern European listeners, well done on getting the internet. I think Jason Coy, he might be from, I don't know where he's from.

I'm fine with it. What are they going to do? I don't do gigs there anyway. That's Jason. I'm Jason, our guest. I don't know where he's from. I'm fine with it. What are they going to do? I don't do gigs there anyway. That's Jason. I'm not Jason, our guest. I don't know where he's from. It's not where I'm attracted to. Originally?

Chicago. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're fine. Yeah, and Coy's not an Eastern European. What were the Salem Witch Trials? Salem Witch Trials were, what happened was there was, they believed that there was an influx of witches that had come into town. And so when you were like married and you were getting tired or bored of your wife,

right, and you just wanted her out of the house, you could point at her and go witch. Now I'm trying to bring this back. I'm trying to bring it back. But you could go witch and people would, that's why they always refer to things. This is like the Salem witch hunt. Like cancel culture now, they're saying is like a Salem witch hunt or the McCarthyism that happened in the 60s where they said everybody was a communist, you're a communist, you're a communist. And just being told that you're something was enough for you to be put on trial with very little to no evidence.

And then what would happen in the Salem witch hunt, they would throw people off cliffs and if they flew away, they're like, told you, fucking witch. But if they plummeted to their death, they would go, oh, well, you know, you can't get them all right. And she died an honourable death. And same thing, they would put them into water. And if they were to swim, God have a forbid, they were swimmers,

they would be a witch. If they drowned, well, see, the problem was they'd start drowning and then there'd be someone like, I could swim in there and help them, but I don't want to be accused myself. So that's how they would do it. When were they when how long did they last oh god i saw the crucible the play was about three hours yeah um that's pretty short uh i i i would say oh they happened uh 18 16 to 18

uh 29 okay salem witch house was this the biggest witch trial in salem was that the biggest one 16 to 18, 29. Salem Witch Hunts. Was this the biggest witch trial in Salem? Was that the biggest one? I'm going to say, wait a minute. I must have got the years right if you're going, if that was the biggest one. It's just the next question.

There was only one that was called the Salem Witch Trials. The other ones were called Witch is Witch, and it was like a game show. And they'd bring two women out. That's a good pitch. Because men, I don't believe, could be trialed for witchcraft. It was a female thing. And how many in the Salem Witch Trials were accused

and how many were executed? Oh, they accused 100 people and they executed 80. Okay. So what caused them to hunt for witches? There was something that happened that like they, now historically looking back that they think happened, that was a reason that caused them to look for witches. All the women got together and they were talking and gossiping and stuff.

And then they were coming home and they were going, do you know that Goody Davis's house, they have themselves a new blah, blah, blah. Why don't we have one of those? And he's like, yeah, fuck. What happened was one guy was trying to call his wife a bitch and he had a speech impediment. Okay. He goes, you're a fucking witch.

Who? And you're like, oh, he's got a soft B that sounds like a W. Who was Tatuba? Oh. I don't even know why I asked. Oh, well, I'm well versed in one booba and three booba. No, Tatuba. Oh, no.

I mean, the one tuba and three tuba. Tatuba. Tatuba. Tatuba. Tatuba sounds like a manservant on an island from a movie from the 1950s where they were racially insensitive. Like Scaramanga. Yeah, yeah.

You're right. We just threw that question in here. They're like this. How are we going to fix things? I need to feed my family. Tatuba! Okay. There's some more questions,

but I'm going to kind of cruise through some of these. What is a witch cake? Oh, it's something you buy at Halloween from Baskin Robbins, and it's a layer of brownie, Oreo, or any ice cream you have, but I go the Oreo, and then you put on the top of it, you go, witch cake, you write that on top of it. You already answered this. You said no men were accused of practicing witchcraft.

They were warlocks. If I learn anything, and Jason, when you start talking, you'll confirm this. If I've learned anything, Bewitched was pretty close to what happened. There is a statue of Elizabethgomery from bewitched in the town of salem so they have and she's on a broom and she's wearing the hat and all that type of stuff so there i must get a point for that um you're not even gonna ask that but i knew that yeah and and men were called warlocks warlocks and witches um and then like her mother was called agatha

okay um the what methods were used to put accused to death you said they threw him off a cliff and Witches. And then like her mother was called Agatha. Okay. What methods were used to put accused to death? You said they threw them off a cliff and threw them in the water. Threw them off a cliff and put them in water. Okay. Anything else? Electroshock therapy. All right.

Here, a couple more questions here. What was the touch test? Oh, well, you felt like, because witches always had warts and stuff like that. So you felt their skin like braille to see, to see if there was, there was warty bumps. You got so many of these right. Um, uh, you may be into this. What major play written in 1953 was fictionalized version of the Salem witch trials. The Crucible written by, what was his name?

He married Marilyn Monroe. Uh, I forgot his name, but I've seen that Goody Proctor and all that type of stuff. And it was a mirror being held up against McCarthyism when they were doing the things about the communism. Okay. And then last thing, now that we've looked back on this and historically at how has history,

has any of the wrongs been righted? Has there been any like retribute? What do you mean the wrongs have been righted? Has there been any, like, retribute, like... What do you mean the wrongs have been righted? You can't bring the people back to life, Forrest. Well, I mean, like, historically, looking back on it, what's happened now as far as... Oh, we don't believe in witches anymore.

Yeah, forget it. We'll get to it. All right. Jason, on zero to ten, ten being the best, how did Jim do in his knowledge of witches and the Salem witch trial? This is a tough one. It's not tough.

Well, he did really terribly, except for the one about the crucible. He completely nailed it. So I would say a five. A five. I got a point for Elizabeth Montgomery statue. You're a college professor, Jason. He's great on a curve. That's a 50%. So that's still an F. Yeah, a college professor, Jason. He's graded on a curve. That's a 50%, so that's still an F.

Yeah, that's still an F. That's the best score I've ever gotten in school. No way he got half of these right. I'm giving him a negative 10 for confidence. I'm just throwing you into a river. That's your score. Oh, they were rivers. I thought it was a backyard swimming pool.

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I asked Jim what a witch is. He says the mythical being that people at some stage in our history believe to be real, dark arts, cast spells, good swimmers, flying broomsticks. I have Newt always on the shopping list. Yeah yeah how did i not get a point for that what is a witch and like what's witchcraft let's talk about that yeah okay so as far as what's a witch he did fine that that is that is exactly the sort of stereotype of a witch and when in some ways what they were thought of to be long ago in the past. But in terms of the crime of witchcraft, in 17th century New England, witchcraft was a double crime. Part of it was exactly what Jim was talking about, and that is using black magic to harm your neighbors, to kill livestock, to hurt children. But the other half was diabolism.

And that means selling your soul to the devil in exchange for getting this power to, to revenge yourself on your neighbors. That's the part. It had this darker dimension of, of, of devil worship and that sort of thing. Okay. And then globally,

uh, Jim said, Salem did not invent witches. They came from Europe. Yeah. Uh, historically, like when's the first time riches were referenced?

Like, where does that, do we know? Or is it not? Witchcraft is extremely prevalent in human history. The earliest mentions of witchcraft go all the way back to the origins of civilization almost 3000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia. They're mentioned in Homer's Odyssey. They're mentioned in the Bible, in the book of Deuteronomy. And in fact, people still believe in witches and hunt witches in areas of the world today, like Africa and parts of South Asia.

They hunt them? Absolutely. In countries today like Ghana, there are places called witch camps where villagers who have been accused by their family members or their neighbors of being witches have to be sheltered by the government so that they're not susceptible to mob violence and things like that well no no it's a cultural difference so it's like who are we to judge maybe they're right maybe we're wrong maybe there really are witches there it is funny when i was reading your bio it says he teaches classes on witchcraft and witch hunting. It sounds like you teach witch hunting. It's a fun class. Is witch hunting similar to that of like a vampire slayer?

Like is there a way to kill a witch? Like you know how you put a stake through the heart of a vampire? You give a silver bullet to a werewolf. How do you kill a witch? Well, in Salem, they just hang them. Yeah, yeah. I forgot that. That was the other one hanging did anyone ever think they were a witch who was on trial or were they always just like innocent people that is that's a great question that's there it's controversial but

there seems to be some evidence that a few of the people that were executed in Salem were, I mean, many of them were thought to be witches by their neighbors. Some of them had had been under suspicion of being witches for decades beforehand. But there's some evidence that some of them may have practiced folk magic or witchcraft. One of them, Bridget Bishop, who was executed, some workmen that were working on her house, they said that in the basement of her house, they found what they called poppets, which were like little voodoo dolls that were kind of a sign of witchcraft. So there's some evidence that some of them may have been sort of dabbling in, in magic in these ways.

Why was it just this one little town of Salem? Why didn't it take off or did it take off across America? And this was just the place that had the most hangings, but it seems like it was pretty contained. Well, America, first of all, there were a lot more witches, as you sort of said. It started in Europe. I mean, there were witches hanged in England and something like 100,000 people were tried for witchcraft in Europe between about 1450 and about 1650, maybe 60,000 of them were executed. So it was much bigger in Europe. In Salem, there's 19 people who were executed and about 150 or so that are accused and jailed and under suspicion.

So Salem's small by Europe's standards, but it's big by America's standards. So half the people that are executed in the history of the New England colonies, half of them happen in Salem in 1692. And remember my ancestor that I said came over on the Mayflower? Which? Well, his son was accused in the Salem witch trials, went to jail, and then his friends

broke him out of jail 15 weeks later and he escaped. Sick. I don't think there was... There was no witch hunts in LA, were there? No. No. Oh hey man. But they happened in other states. What's that? New York, Maryland. They happened in other states in the old you know in the American colonies

at the time. There was a witch in Camp Cucamonga. Rancho Cucamonga. Up to 405. Everyone in LA is a witch now though. Up to 405. Why LA is a witch now though up to 405 why is your LA person Canadian that's the only voice

I can do okay it's a Canadian voice so the Salem Witch Trials I mean we've been talking about them so what so how did that

I asked Jim what they were he said there was an influx of witches that had come to town or how did it start or it started

very small in the house of the local minister um his last name was parish um in his house his daughter betty paris started having um fits she started going into convulsions and she started um complaining of a fever and and shrieking and things and so they called the local doctor and he he said that he suspected that an evil hand had been placed upon her, that maybe she'd been bewitched. And over the course of several months, a bunch of other young women, so we're talking most of them in the ages of around 9 to about 13, started to exhibit similar symptoms. And then they started to accuse neighbors of being the ones that had bewitched them, that had tormented them. And that's what led to these indictments and these trials and to people ultimately being executed

for this. Hold on just a minute. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible. Boom. I've been playing on that. I've been thinking about that for fucking ever. Oh God, that was a good release. All right. So back to the witch hunt. And how long did they last? Jim said 1860 and 1829. Yeah, it's in the 1700s.

That was his very worst answer. That was the farthest off. Okay. So it started in January. Hold on a second. It wasn't witch cake. OK, sorry. I'm sorry. No, no, no. This was worse. So it's it started in 1692 in January when when the first of these girls started to have these mysterious symptoms. The trials themselves, they took a few months for those to get started. Those went from June to September, but then it really didn't end until the following May in 1693 when the last of the suspects that were in jail were finally released. Oh, so it just lasted a year.

And so you said 19 people were killed and then 100, was it, in prison? Did you say something like that? The records are not great on that, but it seems like about 150. So was there a moment in the town of Salem where they got together and had a council meeting or whatever, and they went, oh, this is all bullshit, right? Like, why did it end? When did they see the light? That's a great question. Well, when the initial people that these young girls started to accuse fit the stereotype of a witch.

So they were old, cantankerous women, outsiders, people who had a bad reputation in the village. So when they named those sorts of people, like Tituba, we'll talk about her in a minute, I think, or people like Sarah Good, who were outsiders, everyone was behind it. They had public executions, crowds showed outsiders, everyone was behind it. They had public executions, crowds showed up, and everything was progressing. But they started to name people who were well respected and prominent members of the community, godly women like Rebecca Nurse. They even named a former minister, George Burroughs, as a suspected witch. And that's when people started to doubt whether these accusations were valid or not. And so that kind of cooled off the crisis a little bit. But did they ever denounce that

there wasn't witches? Better question. When did America acknowledge that witches didn't exist? That took a long time after Salem. At the end of this trial, everyone still believed in witchcraft. I mean, that's one thing that's really important to understand. This was a Puritan society. They lived by the Bible. This was before the scientific revolution. The best minds of the age, people like Cotton Mather that came and advised the judges who had graduated from Harvard University, spoke a number of languages, very well read. He believed absolutely in witchcraft, and he had the Bible to back him up. Witches are mentioned in the Bible. And so everyone believed in witchcraft. What they didn't believe in increasingly was the use of

evidence in the trial. So that is, they had been using what's called spectral evidence. It meant that these little girls who were supposedly bewitched could say, well, I know it was Goody Nurse that did this to me because she came to me in spectral form at night and pinched me or bit me or shook me and told me to sign the devil's book and become a witch. So it was all based on this kind of hearsay. And people started to doubt whether that evidence was valid. But they did it in religious terms. They said, well, couldn't the devil have come in the form of Goody Nurse and done this? And so they started to doubt that kind of thing, the legal basis of it. How are witches mentioned in the Bible? There's a famous line in Deuteronomy that says, thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And that was often used by these Puritan authorities as a call to go into the community, root out these witches, and destroy them.

And they really believed in Salem. They were living in a wilderness. They were in the middle of a war with a local Native American tribe, the Wabanaki, that was going poorly. It was very harsh. It was a very isolated life. But they really thought that they'd come to this wilderness that was America to found a godly city on a hill. And they believed that the devil was out to thwart them.

So they were constantly looking for this conspiracy of people that might be out to destroy this godly community and witches kind of fit the bill. It's so bizarre because I'm going, when did people stop believing in witches and all that stuff? It's mentioned in the Bible. People still believe in the Bible. Yeah. People are still there like going,

this is the truth, the light, the whatever. They moved on from witches though. Now it's, it's still in there. Well, no,

I mean, I think there are a lot of people who still practice, consider themselves witches and still practice witchcraft and all that stuff. But, but I don't know. I maybe not in these terms no one's ever cast a spell on anyone well okay next question what is eye of newt well i think it's the eye of a legless lizard of some type yeah little uh what do you call it? So they're little tiny eyes. I thought they were a big eye that you threw in there. And I knew is there,

is there, was there spells? Was there cauldrons? How accurate is that? Well, no, they, I mean, those didn't exist, but I think what's interesting is people thought they did. I mean, some of the, some of these, these girls that were giving testimony in court that thought they did. I mean, some of these girls that were giving testimony in court that thought they were bewitched talked about a great gathering of witches, a great Sabbath that had happened near Salem, where they, just like in the stereotypes that we see at Halloween, they testified that witches flew in on brooms, and the devil was there, and they did a black mass,

and they had a big cauldron, and they cooked up all kinds of poisons and things to harm people. So, you know, they really believed in a lot of that kind of stuff. They thought this was a mass conspiracy. It was sort of like a QAnon type thing. I'll tell you the way to catch which is the easiest way. You go to the cauldron shop. And you go to the cauldron shop. Who's your main customers? They don't have cauldrons anymore. They just have crock pots. Yeah, they might have had cauldrons back then.

Back then, yeah. Back then, like regular people were using cauldrons. And it's like, that would be my defense. I'm a frying pan guy. Go to my house. See if you can find a fucking cauldron. But we know you have an instant pot, though, you fucking witch. You keep mentioning that girls that were bewitched. I didn't ask Jim this question, but what types of traits might someone display before they're deemed bewitched? What does that mean to be bewitched?

I'm credulous about witchcraft in the sense of always jumping to that conclusion. In other words, these little girls that started having these symptoms of convulsions and contorting their bodies and shrieking out and things like that, they sought a medical explanation first, and they went to a doctor first. Then they went to a minister, and the second thought was, well, we could pray and we could fast and maybe God will take away this affliction. And it was only later that they started to suspect witchcraft after this doctor said, you know, I've tried all the medical explanations and I'm not, and you know, medicine was not that advanced at the time. And he said, I can't find out what's going on. So I think that

maybe something, you know, evil has happened and maybe they've been bewitched. I have a serious question here. And I, this is not me trying to make a joke. Could it possibly be that those girls had just had orgasms? Like when you're saying convulsing and this and screaming out loud and all that sort of stuff, because back then the female orgasm wasn't even acknowledged. Could that be what happened? Well, okay.

I think it might have been actually the actually the opposite of that some scholars have said that that these girls were acting out because they were living in such a repressive environment where you know they were in the home of the minister they were going to church all day on sunday and hearing sermons about fire and brimstone and they were coming home all week and hearing the minister telling them you them about sin and about the devil and about hell and about whether they were going to go to heaven or not, about all these kind of things. So they were living in this pressure cooker environment. Also, as women, they were very low on the totem pole in a place like Salem. This was a very misogynistic age. As young people,

they didn't have much of a voice. Many of them, of the ones that suffered these kind of episodes were servants, so they were low in terms of status. So, you know, a lot of scholars have looked at it and said, maybe they were acting out to get attention or to try to loosen the bonds a little bit of this society around it. Because when they started accusing people, they came to court and crowds of a hundred people showed up and you know they they and and for the first time in their life grown men ministers judges they were coming and listening to every word they said oh wow that was a doctor's fault too though when those doctors they didn't know anything so they just had the flu and they're like you got ghosts in your blood do. Did all these people have like a Boston accent?

Because that changes the way. That's so true. I got the witch in me. The fucking witch. Wicked awesome witch that one. So I asked Jim what caused them to start hunting for witches. Like, well, if there was a catalyst or impetus, he said all the women got together and were gossiping.

And one guy was trying to call his wife a bitch and a speech impediment. One guy was trying to call his wife a bitch and he had a speech impediment. So what happened there? Like looking back at him. That was something else that I think Jim sort of got wrong in this case.

In a couple answers, Jim talked about men accusing women of being witches. But one of the interesting things about witchcraft accusations is it was almost invariably women accusing other women. Oh, they don't support each other in the workplace. You're not wrong there. I knew us men did nothing wrong. Thanks, Jason. It's been a great podcast.

And in this case, this is where this figure of Tituba is really important. Tituba was an enslaved woman that the minister, Samuel Parris, had brought with him. He'd been a planter in Barbados and failed. And then he came to Boston and tried to be a businessman and failed at that, too. So finally, he became a minister and was brought to Salem. came to Boston and tried to be a businessman and failed at that too. So finally, he became a minister and was brought to Salem. Well, this enslaved woman that was living in his house, she was the first person who was accused by these young girls of being a witch and of bewitching them, probably because she was an outsider. But she was smart enough to know that if she would

have tried to deny it, she would have been jailed and probably executed. So instead, she immediately confessed and said, yes, I am a witch, but if you keep me alive, I can tell you about all the other witches who are in this coven. I can tell you about the devil and his plans. So she named a dozen people who then were ultimately also arrested and accused. I mean, one of the tragedies of the trial is everyone who confessed to witchcraft made it. Everyone who maintained their innocence and tried to argue that everyone was wrong and the charges were unfounded, those are the people that risked being executed. So she actually survived, that is Tituba. But after her time in jail, you had to pay your own jail costs then.

So when she was finally released from the Boston jail, Samuel Paris refused to pay her prison expenses. So she was sold off into slavery to someone else. But she but she was not, you know, she wasn't executed for witchcraft. She took the plea deal and then snitched on everybody. One of those rat witch. Where did the outfit come from? Was there any famous witch who wore the pointy hat and the cloak, or was that just something that was put in books years later? Yeah, that's from Halloween cards and things like that. Did any of them own a black cat?

No, but I will say this. They were, in English witchcraft belief, all witches had a demonic familiar. That is, some creature could be a cat, could be a lizard, could be a small bird, things like that, a toad, that they believed the devil gave them to help them work their magic, like little imp and and they they supposedly they um they they fed this imp with their blood through a little witch's teat so one of the one of the terrible things that happened during the trial was when these women oftentimes they could be you know 60 years old 70 years old they were arrested they would bring in midwives to brutally search every part of their bodies looking for

these these witches teats as part of the evidence right so we we know what parts we're talking about yeah exactly exactly didn't stop at armpits let's put it that way no you're exactly right you had mentioned uh yesterday we were talking this this science or the journal Science article that argued the Salem witch hunt might have been caused by an outbreak of, well, I'll let you say the. Yeah, this is this was this is an interesting theory, although it's been subsequently debunked in the 70s. This famous article in Science magazine suggested that this was an outbreak of ergotism. Ergot is a type of mold that grows on rye that can cause, it's a, it's a relative of LSD. It's an alkaloid that can cause hallucinations and, and sort of like a drug trip. So, so people suggested in the seventies, well, maybe, maybe these girls, you're going to

go dunk your rye bread in some water. I'm sorry. I brought it up then. I thought it was like something that happened. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It is real. This absolutely does happen. The point that so, but, but people, some people suggested maybe that's what these girls were doing. Maybe they were actually sort of tripping out and thinking they really saw these people. But, but it turns out that, that, that the climate probably wasn't right for that to

be the case. But that leads to it, to one of the biggest questions of this whole, of questions of this whole phenomenon, this mystery of, so what were these girls up to? Did they really think they were bewitched? Did they really think these women were witches? Or were they sort of being like juvenile delinquents and acting out? Or were they having fun with this until people started being executed and they got in over their heads? Or, I mean, there is some evidence that they were faking it because there were times where they would show up in court and say, Oh, you know, goodie nurse bit me. And they'd roll up their sleeve and there'd be a bite mark in there on their arm that they, you know, clearly had done themselves. So, um, but it's, it's, it's hard to, to, to look back and find out what their motives were.

Could be a mix of all of those things. what is a witch cake not baskin robbins layer jim gets the brownie oreo i bet you if you went to baskin robbins and you asked for a witch cake they would make you a fucking witch guy don't tell i'll do it at halloween okay i'll have something ready on the fly okay so he he may have been he may have been right technically, but I would say wrong in terms of Salem. A witch cake, it's a little gross, but in this case, when the first of these little girls was bewitched, a neighbor, Mary Sibley, went to Tituba and said, I know that from back on Barbados that you knew some things about magic. Could you help me make a witch cake and what that was it's an old tradition type of folk magic you would take oats and you would take the urine of someone who was bewitched in this case this this young girl betty paris and mix it together bake a cake and feed it to a dog and they believe that if the dog that once the dog ate it that it that it would cause the witch to break the hex. Same recipe as Baskin Robbins.

So you feed it to a dog. Oh, you meant to, but we've gotten a lot sloppier. Our diets have gotten worse as the years have gone on. Wow. Okay. It's amazing that that was a thing. I don't care about the 1600s. Like why was this lady from Barbados in the 1600s?

I didn't think there was many immigrants from Barbados at that stage, if at all. That's one of the interesting things. Reverend Paris, the minister in Salem, had brought her from Barbados when he had emigrated to Salem, actually to Boston first and then to Salem. But she was this enslaved woman that sort of he owned and he brought her into his home. And then it kind of led, you know, she became a central figure in this. I mean, after the episode with the witch cake,

when he found out about it, he went into a rage, you know, threw it out in the yard, yelling and screaming and saying that they were turning to the devil to stop the devil. He thought that using folk magic like a witch cake or something like that, he felt like it was just as bad as witchcraft in a sense. So it also helped kind of bring up the anxieties even more. But if she was a slave, she should have just been like this. Look, I do what I'm told.

This person came to me to ask for a fucking witch cake. I'm a slave. So I just did it. I'm a slave. Not used to saying no to people. You got some urine. You put some oats. She asked me, are you pissing a cup?

I'm pissing a cup. I'm a slave. We did talk about men were definitely accused but more women were and we did we discussed why the men called warlocks or they call witches as well in salem at least they called them witches as well um there were there were 19 people who were executed hanged for witchcraft at salem 14 of them were women and five were men. I mean, and that's typical across the board. Back in Europe, 80% of the people accused of witchcraft and 80% of people executed for witchcraft were women.

And these women want to talk about equality. They believe that they more. You got to die more? 70 cents. It's not fair. You got to die more. Yeah, you got to die more? It's not fair. You got to die more. Yeah, you got to die more back then. Salem sucked.

We acknowledge that. So the burn to the stake, and I've always heard that too. Jim had mentioned it. They threw him in the water and they couldn't swim. They were off a cliff. That wasn't in Salem. That's a whole different. That was not in Salem.

That was back in England, this idea of swimming a witch. Although Jim was right about that, they did do the swimming test at times there. In England, that is, but not in Salem. Sometimes you see it in the movie, they just throw them in the water and sometimes they get dipped in in a bucket. You know, like in a big sort of like a well bucket where they sort of get dipped in so if they don't swim, they can lift them back out. Was the bucket theory ever used? Yeah, they call that a ducking stool. Ah, yeah, yeah.

Dunk them in. But oftentimes that was usually not an official sort of test. It was done as part of mob violence against women that were suspected of being witches. So they were often just kind of hauled down to the mill pond and thrown in, and then some mob would be jeering, and it wouldn't work out that way. I've lived in England, and many of the women still can't swim. I'm serious. A lot of English people can't swim in comparison.

Now I'm going to get English people going, we can swim. We splash around. We don't like to get our heads wet. What was the touch test? Jim said they had warts and you felt them like Braille. Witches have lots of warts. Yes. Are you telling him? Well, he was he was close on that, you know, in terms of the physical inspection they did.

But in terms of the touch test, what that's about is in court, they all these young girls are brought to court and they're just standing around yelling and screaming and falling into fits every time they bring one of the suspects into court. And they would start screaming and saying, you know, Goody Nurse is tormenting me right now. Look, she's biting me or she's she's attacking me in spectral form. And so once they went into one of these fits, the judges would say, well, a sure task will be if we have forced goody nurse to come over and touch say betty paris or mercy lewis or one of these other girls if she touches them and they stop having these fits it'll show that she's the witch and she's controlling them and so again it's this kind of very slippery use of evidence that's not really conclusive and it was even controversial at the time to get these convictions

well if it's so clear that you could fake that right yeah Kelly's touching me Forrest Forrest touched me I'm not touching that that's Arnie no but you're exactly right alright we talked about

the role religion played in these events i don't know the bible and what i want to know is why so why did this become so famous if if witch hunts and all of this stuff have been happening for really as long as long as back to mesopotamia how did this become like the big historical event that people talk about as opposed to the things where many more people were executed and stuff like that? No, it's a good question. I mean, I think even though it's not one of the biggest witch hunts or one of the most deadly, there certainly is this sense that it's become part of American popular culture. After Arthur Miller's play, movies, television, things like that, it really becomes an iconic kind of

piece of American history. And I think that that's a big part of it. And Salem itself has kind of made a cottage industry out of their reputation as being the site of the trials. They call themselves Witch City USA, and there's all kinds of major festivals that go on there at Halloween time and things like that. I'd like to go to Salem. I don't think there's a gig there. What is it, like an hour outside of Boston or something like that? I don't know. Is it near Boston?

It's an hour outside of Boston? That's right. Yeah, right. That's right. I won't bother then. I didn't know it was such a long drive. There's also been some recent efforts to make amends for what happened. And I think those are interesting too.

And in 2001, the state of Massachusetts finally came back and exonerated all of the people that were convicted in Salem. And what are they going to give the witches? 40 acres and a black cat? Also in 2001, it's like, Hey guys, let's get together. We just determined witches not real. Yeah. The war in Iraq is blazing. I'm busy with other stuff. I'm the cabinet of witches.

You know, it was their families that put the pressure forward to try to get the state to do that. Oh, really? Yeah, like descendants. What do they care for? I don't give a shit what happened to my great-great-great-great-grandfather. Like, if he was a witch,

he might have been. I don't know. I would assume it's a form of people asking for reparations for the torture of their families or something. I mean, people ask for reparations for slavery. They didn't kill him. You made it all the way here. Some of them got killed. What if they were accused of murder, let's say?

Okay, I believe that my great-great-grandfather was possibly a convict in Australia. There's reason to believe this. And he was sent to Australia. And I don't want reparations for himict in Australia. There's reason to believe this. And he was sent to Australia. And I don't want reparations for him going to Australia. What if he was a convicted murderer, but he wasn't? But how would I prove that? I wasn't there in 16-whatever.

Their grandparents probably were fucking witches. So let's say he had been convicted and sent. This is a reparation. Like when slavery is a definite, like this person was a slave, the end. We're speculating on court cases that happened in the 60s. But what if he was exonerated? Wouldn't you want some like, okay, we should

fucking get some reparations for this because you ruined his life. Oh, please. And then that sets the chain of ruining everybody else's life. When your dad's in prison. Yeah, oh yeah. Alright, alright. So what did they do? They just got their name cleared

or they didn't get money, right? No, no. They just got their names cleared. And 20 eyes of newts. Oh, okay. Okay. As long as there wasn't any cash handouts.

Oh, I don't mind getting their names cleared. I thought people were like, cash grab. And they're like driving around in a Ferrari and then they'd be like, hey, Kevin,

what happened to you? Turns out my grandfather wasn't a witch. They've got like witch scholarships. I'm one 16th. And, and so Salem now is like a tourist attraction basically. That's right. It's,

it's, as I mentioned, it's, it's known as which city USA and, and they have massive festivals and parties at Halloween time. And people come from all over the world to be there. They've got stores up and down the street selling. This is where everybody was hanged.

We hung people here. Let's party. Throw them in that river. They didn't do rivers in Salem. You said they did it sometimes. They sell some witch-like stuff, right? Yeah, like Kelly was saying, you know, the fastest growing religion in the West today is neo-paganism and Wicca.

And so people come from all over the world to go to these witchcraft shops to buy maybe Eye of Newt, but books about witchcraft and about Wicca and things like that. It's a big business. Making furniture out of sticks. Isn't that what Wicca is? That's Wicca. That's Wicca and things like that. It's a big business. Making furniture out of sticks. Isn't that what Wicca is? That's Wicca. That's Wicca.

Wicca or Wiccan. What's Wicca? Wicca is how you'd say Wicca in Australia. Yeah. Oh, no, that's how you say it in Boston. She has made out of Wicca. It's Wicca. It's Wicca.

I don't know Wicca. Wiccan is like witchcraft. Oh, I never even heard of it. Too busy with me Scientology books. Wiccan is like witchcraft. Oh, I never even heard of it. Ah, too busy with me. Scientology books. Well, that the,

um, that wasn't going to say, I don't fucking remember. I don't remember at all. Uh, okay. And so, uh,

also I was right about Elizabeth Montgomery gets a statue. That's right. Yes. That's exactly right. I've seen that. So that's exactly right. Um, she's, uh, she, she's one of those ones that I used to watch that show as a statue. That's right. Yes, that's exactly right. I believe I've seen that somewhere. That's exactly right. She's one of those ones that I used to watch that show as a kid, right?

And then as you get older, you don't think about things like that. I used to like the show. She wiggled her nose. If I was a witch, because, yeah, I always had a different thing, right? Someone pulled their elbow, I'd do the eyebrow. That's how I do spells, eyebrow. I can move my nose as well. I'd do it as well. If you're not watching this, very good.

as well. I'd do it as well. If you're not watching this, very good. But, but, but, but the thing is, I watched that show

and this is, you know, when you watch something as a little kid and you're like, that's a fun show. And then I watched a couple of episodes

as an adult. Nothing wrong with Elizabeth Montgomery. Holy hell. She's a good sort. I never even noticed as a kid. I'll tell you.

You didn't notice that she was attractive? As a kid, you're just watching. I know she was like, you know, but then I was like, she's something else. And I'll tell you what, I watched an episode of the Brady Bunch with my son the other day because he never said it.

That's the show I watched after school all the time. And I always used to like Marsha Brady. Now I'm all about Florence Henderson now. I've gotten older. Growing up. Mrs. Brady. I know what I was going to say. I went into this crystal shop that's over here

in Atwater Village and it felt like everyone in there could have been witches. There's a shit ton of crystals. Yeah, but when you go into a crystal shop and whoever's working there,

you're like, you practice wicked. Can we just say that collecting crystals and rocks is complete bullshit? Our friend Tommy Caprio, who we reference every now and again,

who's like, hey, I grew up in Jersey. Oh, whoa, whoa, type of guy, who's like, hey, I grew up in Jersey. Also believes like, hey, don't leave your crystals out in the sun. Now you put them in the sun. That's the way to recharge them. He always wears a crystal around his neck. He is definitely the most

interesting conglomeration of personalities. Let's hang him. Let's hang Tommy. Alright, this is a part of the show called Dinner Party Facts. We ask our expert to give us one fact, obscure, interesting or couple of facts that the audience can use to impress people about the subject of the Salem witch trials. What do you got? All right. This one's this one's less of a fact than an interesting anecdote. But there was a 20th victim of the Salem witch trials, Giles Corey, and he was not hanged because he refused to enter a plea.

According to the law at the time, the only way you could be convicted is if you pled guilty or not guilty. He showed up in court. He was so disgusted by the proceedings that he refused to enter a plea at all. So they brought out a very, very old, rarely used English law that allowed them to enter a plea at all. So they brought out and, um, very, very old, rarely used, uh, English law that allowed them to press him. It was called. And they, uh, took this old man and, and laid him out on a, on a board and they put another board over his chest. And over the course of three days, they started piling rocks on him. And then every, every 20 minutes they'd come out and say, are you ready to give your, to give your plea yet? And he kept quiet and they kept piling on more and more stones. His tongue started lolling out of his mouth and the sheriff came by with a,

with a walking stick and shoved it back in every couple, a couple of times every day. And he lasted for days and days. And then right at end they asked they they um they asked him if he had anything to say and his last words reportedly were more weight and then they piled more rocks on him smashed him flat and he died but the but but the thing that's interesting about it is that happened in september of 1692 right at the end of the trials and some people argue that that kind of a public, you know, they just laid them out in the town square, that kind of public display of cruelty and torture that everybody was walking by and seeing was one of the things that may have caused

people to start having doubts about whether they were really doing God's work by hunting these supposed witches. His wife was hanged three days later, but she was in a batch of the last people to be hanged right after that, you know, the trials kind of dwindled and then, and then ended. Is that on the tourist walk? Do they, do they,

do they have weight? And also his last words were more white, but his tongue was very large. And it was, what he actually said was no way. No more weight, but his tongue was very large. And what he actually said was, no weight. No more weight. That's where they do the keg stance right there. I would have been Monty Pythoning the whole thing. You call that a rock?

This feels light as a feather. Keep putting more on. All right. Jason Coy, thank you for being here. The book is called The Devil's Art. It's a book about folk magic and witchcraft. You can buy that anywhere that you think you can buy books, Amazon and the other places.

Any last words, Jason, for us? No, thanks a lot. I really had fun. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming to the podcast, man. We learned something. I won't recall a lot of it. I definitely learned about the guy with the rocks on the board of his chest.

I'll never get that image out. I know my son's new time out. Well, that's going to be. More Lego. If you're ever at a party and someone comes up to you and they said, you know, over 25 people were killed in the Salem witch hunts, you go, well, I don't know about that, and you walk away. Goodnight, Australia.