Witch (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Spellcaster: The Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried ( Wondery )
History’s Secret Heroes, with Helena Bonham Carter (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
India Rakusen, host of the excellent 28 ish Days Later , which looked at the process of menstruation day by day, is back on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.Once again, she’s chatting lady stuff.Be scared, chaps! Yeah, you’d better be: because Rakusen is talking about – and to – witches.
I’ve heard the first three episodes of Witch , and the ones Rakusen encounters are a long way from claw-fingered, black-robed pointy hats.Instead, they’re normal-ish young women who’ve simply continued the spells and incantations of childhood.One burns unwanted bills and invitations in a May Day ritual.Another talks Rakusen through her teas (“That’s very poisonous! It’s nightshade; don’t even open the jar”).
A wicca follower mentions they schedule their projects according to the waxing and waning of the moon.Everyone’s having a lovely time.
But life wasn’t always so good for a witch.
In Edinburgh, Claire Mitchell KC is leading a campaign for the city to acknowledge that 2,500 innocent people – mostly women – were accused, tortured and killed for witchcraft from the 1560s onwards.We hear about the 1486 Malleus Maleficar um – the Hammer of the Witches – a madly sexist, initially ridiculed text that gradually gained respect and somehow got entwined with the papal bull of 1484, so that killing witches appeared to be church-approved.Then there’s Daemonologie , written in 1597 by King James VI of Scotland, later James I of England.His wife and daughter had been endangered in a storm at sea and he blamed witches.Historian Ronald Hutton says that, actually, when it came to witch-killing, the UK divided along Anglo-Saxon/Celtic lines: Wales and the Scottish Highlands on one side, England and the lowlands on the other.The Celts believed in fairies and so thought witches were OK; the Anglo-Saxons, influenced by Germany, did not.
Surprise! At the centre of this tale is a deeply flawed individual who makes others believe he’s some sort of messiah
As you can tell, there’s a lot of highly interesting research in this series.
Prepare to have your cynical mind expanded.It helps that Rakusen is an excellent presenter.
Her scripts are a delight: beautifully written and delivered.You sense that she really hopes that she too is a witch.An understandable desire: who hasn’t wanted the ability to point a finger at an enemy and turn them into a toad? The non-magic world has a way of wearing women down.I’ll be happy if Rakusen turns out witchy; but I hope that even if she does, she continues to weave her audio magic.
Here’s another Spellcaster : the title of Wondery’s new schaden-fraud series.And, yes, I mean schaden-fraud: it’s my label for that subset of true crime podcasts in which a charismatic huckster convinces crowds to part with their money, proceeds to soar to the top by riding those billions, and then… crashes.
Think The Dropout , about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes; WeCrashed , about Adam Neumann and WeWork; The Missing Crypto Queen , about Ruja Ignatova.These podcasts have a tendency to end up as Netflix series.
Spellcaster is about crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried.Which, let’s face it, is an amazing name for a crypto bro.A fried banker.
Or, given the American pronunciation of Fried, a freed banker.Either way, a money guy without the usual restraints.Anyway, just over a year ago, Bankman-Fried was seen as the future of crypto-currency.He had two companies: FTX (a crypto exchange platform) and Alameda Research (a crypto trading company).The ridiculous profits they made were, said Bankman-Fried, to be invested into ethical projects.
For – lo! – he was making money to save the world.
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried speaking at a Senate hearing in Washington, DC last year.Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images Bloomberg reporter Hannah Miller is our host, and she’s a good one: not only an excellent journalist but someone with a proper “in” to the story.
Via a bachelorette party she gets to know Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s sometime girlfriend and head of Alameda Research.Miller interviews her and feels that something is off…
Crypto is not something I’m interested in.(It really does remind me of dark magic: it only works if you believe it does.) But Miller, along with fellow reporters Max Chafkin and Annie Massa, is wise enough to make this podcast a story about people, rather than witchy money.And – surprise! – at the centre of this tale is a deeply flawed individual who makes others believe he’s some sort of messiah.
Honestly, if I were a financial adviser, I’d make every one of my clients listen to a schaden-fraud podcast series before opening their wallet.Everyone would be richer – though we’d have fewer excellent stories such as this one to enjoy.
Speaking of brilliant stories, Helena Bonham Carter has one about a fascinating spy.In History’s Secret Heroes , she turns her script-reading skills to good effect, recounting tales of derring-do from the second world war.Written by the clever historian and author Alex von Tunzelmann , these stories are true and fabulous.
First up is Virginia Hall, a posh American who moved to Izmir, where she managed to blow her own foot off in a shooting accident.To save her life, her left leg was amputated below the knee.
This, as you might surmise, was a turning point in Hall’s life.But instead of taking it easy, she resolved to live adventurously and ended up as a spy in Vichy France, masterminding the breakout of prisoners in a more efficient, less soil-down-trousers Great Escape .
Bonham Carter is a lovely reader, fruity and upbeat, propelling the story along without showboating.If the rest of the episodes are as fun as this one, it will be a thoroughly enjoyable series..