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I'm India Rackerson and you're listening to Witch from BBC Radio 4.
This is episode six, Midwives and Healers.
An occupational hazard when making pretty much any program is having to explain it a lot.
So it's a 13 part series all about witches?
Yes, kind of just exploring.
There's been a lot of misunderstanding about.
Right.
So it's a 13 part series for Radiofall.
So there's stories about witches.
Although reactions to this series have been really varied.
If the person I'm speaking to isn't a total expert on the subject, I found that more often than not they respond with something along the lines of this.
You know, a lot of the women during the witch trials were killed because they were midwives or healers.
You should mention that the idea that women were targeted for having specialist knowledge seems to strike a chord with almost every person I meet, particularly women.
From making this series, I know that the word witch can easily be molded into an image that represents how we feel about our place in the world today.
And this idea that accused witches were women with medicinal and herbal knowledge is certainly a popular one.
And I suppose it makes sense.
It's easy to envisage a time in which men were mortally threatened by women who knew something that they didn't.
After all, it still happens today.