My Favorite Lecture - "Witches: Sex & Science in the 16th Century"

My Favorite Lecture from KHSU

[Advisory: Some of the content below maybe be considered graphic, bleak, and/or NSFW.] In this episode of My Favorite Lecture , Humboldt State history professor Ben Marschke paints a vivid picture of the spiritual, social, and economic factors that surrounded the witch hunts that led to an estimated 100,000 witch trials and 50,000 executions over hundreds of years. Demonology and epistemology collide as Marschke explores the "science" of witchcraft in the sixteenth century, placing witchcraft in the context of contemporary anxieties about gender, sexuality, and fertility. You'll learn about popular handbook Malleus Maleficarum , which was basically the Oxford English Dictionary of how to spot, hunt, and try witches.