Historical injustice, campaign work, and sharp Scottish conversation.
Witches of Scotland follows a public campaign seeking pardon, memorial, and lasting recognition for people accused under Scotland’s Witchcraft Act. Its episodes move between legal redress, historical belief systems, modern accusation harms, and the everyday work of keeping a cause visible.
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Witches of Scotland is a history podcast tied directly to an active public campaign. Its center is the campaign launched on International Women’s Day 2020 around Scotland’s Witchcraft Act, which the show describes as running from 1563 to 1736. The recurring aims are concrete: formal apology, pardon for those convicted, and a national memorial. The apology has been achieved in the account given by the show, with Nicola Sturgeon issuing it on International Women’s Day 2022. The pardon and memorial remain part of the ongoing work described in the episodes. That campaign frame gives the series its spine. It is not only a tour through witch-trial history. It is a sustained argument that old legal violence still needs public repair. Recent material moves between Scotland and wider contexts, including Italy, Catalonia, and modern witchcraft accusations. The show also returns to records, demonology, trial culture, women’s lives, and the ways religious or social fear could turn alleged power into alleged harm. The conversations are serious without becoming museum-still. Speakers can shift from formal legal and historical language into fast, familiar banter. A book event at Mason and Fifth London, discussion of a memorial tartan, Parliament evidence, and practical campaign updates all sit inside the same world as witchcraft scholarship. That mixture is the show’s texture. It treats the archive as political, emotional, and occasionally absurd in the logistics of public advocacy. It also makes room for grief, personal memory, and sharp humour. The subject matter can be bleak, especially when episodes touch violence, execution, brutal social conditions, or modern accusation harms. Still, the show’s energy is not grim for its own sake. It keeps asking how a country remembers people it once condemned, and what repair can look like when the original victims are long gone.
Made for: Suits a listener who wants witch-trial history connected to law, memory, feminism, and present-day advocacy. It also fits someone comfortable with serious material carried by conversational humour.
What sets it apart: Unlike a detached history series, Witches of Scotland is anchored in a named campaign with apology, pardon, and memorial goals. Its legal redress work and informal speaker chemistry make the past feel active rather than archived.
A podcast that follows the Witches of Scotland campaign to bring justice to those accused, convicted and executed as witches under the Witchcraft Act 1563
A demonology book gets its own bean bag; you get witch-trial history with the jokes left in.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Wolf hunts make Scottish witch-trial history feel physical, strange, and close.
Scotland's missing wolves give this single episode a vivid way into the mental weather around the country's witch trials. Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditotse trace links between wolf hunts, fear of animals tied to the devil, and the sheer scale of the creatures, making the past…
A warm Witches of Scotland live conversation linking Old Scots, demonology, tartan, and campaign history.
Witches of Scotland's live conversation brings Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell together for a warm, grounded look at the campaign behind How to Kill a Witch, A Guide for the Patriarchy.
A measured account of how demonology helped turn natural magic into witchcraft accusation.
Episode 80 follows the slower, more revealing path into witch-hunt history, showing how powers once tied to nature and natural magic came to be treated as malevolent as demonology placed the devil at the center of the story.
Witchcraft history, a campaign for redress, and a candid reflection on grief come together in a warm, grounded conversation.
Scotland's witchcraft prosecutions anchor this episode, connecting the Witchcraft Act, enforced between 1563 and 1736, to the continuing Feminist Witches of Scotland campaign.
A sharp, uneasy conversation about a midwife's offer of release and the brutal world that made it thinkable.
The episode sets Scotland's witch-trial history against an early 20th-century story of women living in one-room homes, short on money and subject to male authority.
Multi-part dramatized retellings of scandals like OceanGate's Titan and the Lehman Brothers collapse.
Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditotse frame the episode around the Witches of Scotland campaign, which seeks apology, pardon, and memorial for people accused under the Witchcraft Act.
Witches of Scotland episode 81 bonus at Mason and Fifth London follows Zoe Venditozzi and Claire Mitchell as they discuss How to Kill a Witch, A Guide for the Patriarchy and the campaign behind it.
Witches of Scotland episode 80 opens with Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditotse linking their 8 March 2020 Feminist Witches of Scotland campaign to Nicola Sturgeon's 8 March 2022 apology and the still-unfinished push for pardons and a national memorial.
["Witches of Scotland episode 79 connects the Witchcraft Act of 1563-1736 to the campaign launched on 8 March 2020 and the formal apology Nicola Sturgeon gave on 8 March 2022.", "Claire Mitchell and Zoe Vendit-Hotsey bring on Gio, known as That Glasgow Witch, and writer-artist Juano D\u00edaz to discuss Scottish ritual, folklore, and witch identity.", "Gio says she has practiced for 30 years, makes coffee for her ancestors, and uses songs, books, and tarot as signs.", "The episode also uses Janet Boyman, the planned Muriel Spark statue in Princes Street Gardens, and the phrase \"women, not witches\" to connect history with present-day reclamation."]
Witches of Scotland episode 78 links the 1563-1736 Witchcraft Act to Hope Reese's The Women Are Not Fine and the show's campaign launched on 8 March 2020.
Professor John Azuma says more than 90% of witchcraft accusations in Ghana come from close family members, including biological children accusing mothers.
Witches of Scotland host Zoe Venditozzi speaks with folklorist Dr.
Claire Mitchell links a wearable Witches of Scotland tartan to the campaign’s effort to remember people executed under Scotland’s Witchcraft Act.
Witches of Scotland hosts Claire Mitchell and Zoe Vendetoze open with news of a Maryland resolution by Heather Bagnell to exonerate seven women and one man accused of witchcraft in colonial times, framed by her line "it's never the wrong time to do the right thing." They then discuss Elon Musk calling MP Jess Phillips an "evil witch" and a "rape genocide apologist," and place him in their "will you please feck off corner." Claire summarises French witch trials, including about 2,000 trials between 1550 and 1700, the 1390 trial of Margot de la Barre and Marion de la Doitture, and a late Normandy wave in which most accused were shepherds.
Claire Mitchell and Zoe Van Detotse open Witches of Scotland season 2, episode 2 by linking the Taliban's ban on women attending nursing college to women's reliance on folk medicine in the 1600s and 1700s.
Witches of Scotland returns for season two, episode one, with hosts Claire Mitchell and Zoe Van Datoze explaining the gap as time spent writing "How to Kill a Witch, A Guide for the Patriarchy," due in May 2025 with a US edition.
The hosts of the Witches of Scotland podcast discuss their campaign for a state apology, pardon, and memorial for those accused of witchcraft in Scotland, and introduce an episode with experts on the Scottish witchcraft trials.
The hosts discuss modern witchcraft accusations and trials with guest Leo Igwe, while also covering their campaign for a state apology and pardon for historical witch trials in Scotland.
Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditopsi discuss recent developments in their campaign to pardon and memorialize those accused of witchcraft in Scotland, including giving evidence to Parliament.
In this episode of Witches of Scotland, hosts Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditopsi welcome historian Dr Ciaran Jones to discuss properties linked to witch trials, while also reflecting on the new year and their campaign for a pardon, apology, and monument for those affected.
Claire Mitchell and Zoe Venditopsy introduce the Witches of Scotland campaign and preview an episode about the Witches of Corstorphine with guests Emma Cowan and Norah Carlin.