Episode 7 - Witches & Gingers

welcome to this episode of the wolf and

the shepherd

today we're going to be talking about

witches and gingers and

since the wolf is now finally back from

his holiday

he's he's done a little bit of research

and he said we we need to talk about

witches and genders

hi um glad to be back

uh i've i know today sounds like

a very controversial topic witches and

gingers

oh especially so close to halloween well

actually why this

topic is particularly controversial is

this is the one time we have actually

done some research

oh we did actually look some stuff up

this time

well you'd think that episode we did

about

things we never saw come in which was

mainly based around technology

social media you would have thought for

one episode where it would have been

good if we've

actually bothered fact-checking

something that would have been the one

that would have been the way that we

should have done it yes

yeah but instead i've uh spent a few

hours looking up witches and gingers

time well spent it it is well spent um

originally i intended this to be two

separate topics but

i didn't know if even you or i could uh

bs enough to actually fill out a podcast

talking about what we actually knew

about

witches and gingers um but there

are uh in terms of treatment

of both groups a lot of similarities

through history most of the witch stuff

i kind of knew about

in terms of them being burnt at the

stake right gingers have had it bad for

about

4 000 years no kidding yeah 4

000 years that's crazy so lead us up to

it get get us started here

well we pretty much know or at least

most people have a somewhat

i guess filtered version of where

witches came from

which is role in history but the ginger

has kind of slipped

under the radar which is quite ironic

because

when you look at them physically they

don't slip under the radar

and this has been their biggest problem

throughout history

that's true i mean you could hide the

fact that you are a witch but you can't

hide the fact that you're a ginger right

and it this might be early in the

podcast to bring it up but you

you know you got the harry potter books

and you got the weasleys who were

gingers and witches

you know they they could probably hide

the fact that they were you know

not wizards or witches or whatever but

they couldn't hide the fact that they

were gingers

right and um that actually brings me to

a funny story

because one of the obviously the main

characters

in harry potter is ginger and obviously

then you've got harry potter and then

the girl whatever her name is

yeah anyway one of the first reviews

i read on the um original harry potter

movie

uh was from a guy i think from empire

magazine

okay and you know he went through the

synopsis of the whole movie

he said the only thing i found really

unbelievable in this movie

is that there's a ginger kid with two

friends

absolutely that is so true and of course

you know those friends were kind of

forced on him i can i barely remember

that first movie it's been years since

i've seen any of the harry potter movies

but i do remember them being on that

train and

he didn't have a friend on that train

but of course you know harry potter

didn't have a friend either it was like

well

i feel sorry for you little ginger boy

i'll be your friend

because nobody else is my friend but i

guess the only friends he could get was

kids that

lived under the stairs in their you know

what was it uncle and aunt or or

something like that cousin i can't

remember exactly what it was but it

wasn't even with his parents so he's a

little orphan boy

that was living under the stairs and

that's the only friend the ginger kid

could get right

well um i just want to clarify actually

for our american listeners

when we say ginger we don't mean redhead

uh i see that's that's the way it's kind

of taken in the united states

yeah you see redheads it can be kind of

like an offshoot of a brunette you know

somebody's got some

almost like chestnut dye in their hair

okay that that's a redhead there's a

very big difference between

ginger and a redhead you know when you

see a ginger if you have to look at

somebody and wonder if they're a ginger

they're not a ginger okay so so

then over in the uk that is is used much

different than in the us so

uh give me a famous ginger

whether it's a u.s person uk person

if if you were having to explain to

somebody that never heard the term

ginger before and you had to say well

you know so and so

that is a ginger who would that person

be well

i was actually gonna say emperor nero

and also napoleon but i get that they're

not great reference points

for most people as right all the um

images that exist of them are all hand

drawn so not not best example but um

i would say over here carrot top that uh

that kind of weird kind of comedian

right so so you're you're looking at

somebody that

of course has the red hair right but

then kind of

is a little bit funny looking you don't

you don't quite know why they're funny

looking you just

know they're funny maybe kind of the uh

very light skin lots of freckles yeah

that kind of deal is that ginger person

yeah and i think the gingers were

demonized more

in england uh than here in the

united states but i think that's because

we had

several uh centuries to kind of perfect

the art of uh demonizing them really um

but they were as i mentioned earlier uh

gingers

have been persecuted for thousands and

thousands of years

walk us through that well i mean

for one the reason gingers get singled

out

is because it's a genetic mutation which

affects

roughly about one and two percent of the

population okay

and so throughout history uh

they've always stood out and any

ethnicity

can actually result in that mutated gene

to have red hair

so no ethnicity is safe from being a

ginger okay and you can imagine

some of those uh um combinations would

actually bring up even more prejudice

than

exists in certain places i could totally

see that yeah

but um gingers in

medieval europe were punished pretty

much the same way as witches before the

whole

let's kill the witches thing came in and

um

they were put in stocks which you know

these kind of wooden

entraptions which they put in the town

which they put in the town center

they they put their head through the

little hole and then they had the wrists

uh on either side through the hole

and in the townspeople whether they were

peasants or

anybody else went by and they could yell

at them make fun of them

throw spoiled fruit at them or spoiled

food

for that matter waste garbage all that

good stuff

yeah and those stocks were you know

carried over

into the quote-unquote new world

you know at the turn of what two three

hundred years ago because

that that was a form of punishment now i

guess protected by the constitution as

something that would be cruel and

unusual but it was common

that was a common punishment yeah and

actually uh

i was thinking about that idea the other

day about the stocks

um when i came up with the topic of

witches and gingers

and i was wondering if there were any

type of rules involving the distance

you're able to throw the rotten

vegetables at

the face drum because if there was a 12

foot line

maybe being hit by a mushy carrot

probably wouldn't hurt that much

right but if they're allowed to throw

kind of like a nine pound potato at your

face from

about four inches away i think that's

where it start crosses past the line of

not being funny anymore

yeah uh you know i i can only picture

things that i've seen in the movies

yeah and and you see the the throwing of

the rotten vegetables and the rotten

food and everything adam in the movies

but you also see like little kids

walking right up to them and slapping

them in the head

slapping them in the face and the the

crowd cheers because they're doing that

so there's there's always been that

aspect of it as well

as far as what happens to somebody in

the stocks i

i think in most of the time you were

sentenced to a certain amount of time

right to sit in those stocks and it was

originally just

supposed to be painful for you to just

have to

sit there for that long yeah most of the

ones i've seen are where you stand up

in them and you kind of bent over at 90

degrees

and you know one never talked about

fact about those starks the worst thing

that happened was when the sun went down

people used to take advantage of the

lack of light

and the opportunity um and

right let's just say if you were in the

stocks because you committed adultery

but you didn't really commit adultery

by the end of the night you had

committed adultery there you go yeah

that that's a safe way to put it i think

everybody yeah gets the gist of that

right um oh quick question sure

name me a really nasty person uh

in history oh gosh uh

the immediate one that comes to mind

that

is kind of a given most people are

probably thinking the same thing

would be have to be adolf hitler right

so as bad as you can imagine him to be

right even he had a prejudice against

gingers well

among his were there well yeah but this

is one of those things that most people

would always be do you have anything in

common with hitler and

you know obviously the answers can be no

i can't think of anything personality

traits

but even he hated gingers and he

actually

banned the marriage between gingers

and this was so um because both the

mother and the father need to have the

mutated gene to pass on and it can lay

dormant

he can skip generations but um yeah he

actually banned the marriage of ginger

people

so that he could try and kill out that

strain because you know he was into

eugenics anyway

right but yeah even the gingers didn't

it now when you when you're saying

ban the marriage of gingers you mean

like two ginger people marrying each

other or

just one random gender or ginger

person two two tens of people okay okay

so

that was kind of looked at as hey yeah

there's a strong possibility that their

offspring right here

is going to be able to carry this

recessive gene

and so we want to make sure that we can

kind of

weed this out over time yeah i think

there was an assumption there that

you know people didn't have sex outside

of marriage because you know he could

have just banned sex between gingers and

you know it would have had the same

effect well we are talking about

a long time ago yeah so it makes more

sense if

if you'd have someone like a hitler

today

then yes you'd probably have some kind

of

rule that would say right that sex would

be illegal or

having a child you know between two

gingers would be

illegal right along those lines well

actually um

i think it was in an australian

scientific magazine

uh there's a group of scientists who

believe

that gingers are going to be extinct

within

100 years or even as soon as 2060.

wow which is bad news for anybody born

roughly about now

because you're going to go extinct yeah

and is

is that just because of that recessive

trait being

so recessive and things getting

a little more mixed up with the gene

pool that

eventually that little you know

tidbit of genetics is just gonna

eventually get

wiped away well there was actually

some positivity to the mutation when it

first appeared in humans

okay that it would allow because ginger

people

um have few laser skin

their enamel on their teeth is thinner

which why a lot of ginger people look

like they've got yellow teeth they can't

really do

much about that i mean talk about just

inheriting a whole ton about stuff

well anyway there used to actually be an

advantage

um of being ginger in

certain uh climates because

the lighter your skin the more sensitive

it made you to

you know the sun and but

it's the opposite when they go to areas

you know like northern europe where

there's not necessarily that much

sun because that skin could then

actually absorb more vitamin d from what

little sun there was and so it was

actually a benefit

but the gene has actually mutated so

much over the years

that now that same

strand of dna which caused that effect

actually completely changed it to now

gingers are something like 12 times as

likely to get skin cancer and

about 50 times quicker to get sunburned

so that went

downhill kind of across i i would have

to imagine that that

span of the the gingers or whatever

had to exist more in places where you

had a lot of cloud cover

or whatever like you said yeah you had

that advantage where if it's cloudy

you know like you say northern europe

i'm thinking you know in the united

states you'd look at somewhere like the

pacific northwest

kind of that same thing it's always

cloudy all the time so

you want to somehow have that absorption

of vitamin d

and so i could see if if you were uh you

know

looking for somewhere to live you

wouldn't want to go to say

phoenix arizona where the sun is out

every day or los angeles california

because like you say then you're just

gonna have to rub sunscreen all over

yourself

and get burned all the time

yeah and um as i mentioned earlier

i did actually find quite a lot of

similarities

or connections between witches and

gingers when i was doing my research

um as i said that they were both put in

stocks

you know in the middle of the town

[Music]

generally in some cultures if you have

ginger hair

they assume you're a witch and they kill

you

that happens actually now in some yeah

some countries in africa

yeah so it not that they treat

gingers and which is the same it's just

using that lineal logic you're a ginger

therefore you're a witch

i'm thinking of yeah monty python and

the holy grail yeah

you know if if she weighs the same as a

duck

she's made of wood therefore she's a

witch and we get to burn

it almost that same kind of

kind of theory right and um

yeah that and this is i guess where the

kind of witches and the gingers do

separate

slightly is that at least with a witch

you had a trial even if they decided you

were guilty before

the trial even existed at least you had

a trial when you're a ginger there

that's it like you said earlier you

can't you can't hide it right and so

yeah if you if you were a girl

especially with

ginger hair then there's not much you

could do to escape the thought that

people are going to think

you're a witch that's hilarious

and it makes a lot of sense i mean it

really does if you

if you look down the line and you think

about it the prejudices and everything

that we've had is

communities societies over the year

or over the years the centuries the

millennial however you want to

pose that there's always been something

about hey

those people are a little bit different

than i am yeah and

almost kind of the same with the witches

right there there were a lot of people

that probably

were burn at the stake or executed or

whatever that weren't witches

but let's be honest there probably were

some that were legitimate

witches that went to trial and

were actually witches and found guilty

we look at it today

and say well okay not that really big of

a deal

but back then pretty big deal yeah

and um i think with witches

the whole idea around them

has been romanticized you know

probably mostly because of the halloween

thing i mean they're a baddie but

they're kind of

you know it doesn't mean you might dress

up as a witch

and it has been romanticized i mean

think about now

in and here's one i'll i'll throw it you

and see if

this would fit your definition so to

speak of a ginger

right uh i remember the movie practical

magic

with sandra bullock and nicole kidman

right and nicole kidman's got the red

hair

i don't know if that would be ginger

but you know that movie

part of the point of that whole movie is

you know these women and their their

aunts or whatever it was

they were legitimate witches you know

legitimately possess this magic and all

of this stuff but at the end of the

movie

it was hey we're okay we're not bad

people we're not

evil we just try to help everybody and

even though throughout the whole movie

they were persecuted against

yeah and the one that sandra bullock

plays you know she

swore off magic and didn't want to do

any magic and then at the end

you have that hooray moment where the

whole town comes out and watches them

jump off the roof

and ride their brooms and all that stuff

and so

like you say the whole romanticized part

uh you've got the sexy witch costume

right

and yeah and that's okay it's not the

scraggly nose in the green skin it's

not the wicked witch of the west which

if you

look at the wizard of oz there's another

example because if

you remember dorothy in the movie even

says to the

witch of the east whatever it is glinda

you know she's in the pretty

like prom dress and everything and

dorothy says well

you don't look like a witch so it's

almost been

going on subliminally for quite a while

that

witches aren't all bad right right

they're not all bad but you still have

that little section of the bad witches

yeah yeah and

yeah i think i think that romanticized

label is probably the best thing you can

attach

to the whole witch imagery in today's

society because

very little is actually known about

witches if you ask the majority of

people

you know what is witchcraft is it just

about doing magic is it based upon a

religion

or is it based upon an absence of

religion and you know

do you wear a pointy hat do you have a

black cat you have a cauldron that you

stir up potions again

or is there something more to it right

yeah and so there's a lot of um

mistaken imagery and history to witches

which people just

you know what little i guess

information they do find out factually

about witches is

quickly kind of erased and overtaken by

the images and you know cartoons and

halloween

things but i mean witches have been

persecuted uh

throughout history i mean the earliest

um

i guess in terms of what is relevant to

us mention of a witch is in

uh exodus 22 where it says thou

shalt not suffer a witch to live

ah now i had a thought about that right

if i was a witch

and when that i think that was the new

king james translation

sure you know if you're a witch you're

kind of

i wish they'd hurry up and rewrite

another version

of the bible yeah because that sentence

sounds pretty harsh

right and of course you're talking about

exodus so you're talking about the

early parts of the uh

jewish tradition right the writing of

the law the first five books of the

bible being the torah and everything so

so you're talking about you know the

beginning

of what we consider as

kind of recorded history of going

through there so we're

we're talking about that stuff in the

bible so yeah

i think a lot of people once you say the

term

witch right especially in the united

states yeah the first thing that comes

to mind is the salem witch trials

right you know so yeah you you say well

what do you know about witches and

you get past the hat in the cat in the

cauldron and all that

the the next click is salem yeah and

what happened during the salem witch

trials

yeah and again you know the salem witch

trials

i bet most people would think wow how

long did that last for maybe 10 years 15

years

it basically went across a two-year

period

right which really surprised me very

very

little snippet in history as far as

time-wise

goes but so blatantly taught

repeated yeah you know everybody knows

the salem witches and the salem witch

trial yeah it's in american history

books it it

it made that cut there there are so many

things that

lasted for more years than that that get

left out of the history books but

the salem witch trials they always make

it yeah

um and i think a lot of people

you know assume along with that you know

it lasted way longer than it actually

did

is that it involved probably

um more witch instances than it actually

did

i thought you know they rounded up

thousands across you know multiple

um towns up there in massachusetts but

the reality is there was only about a

hundred

uh people charged with witchcraft right

and uh i think they found

roughly about 30 were found guilty

witchcraft and they hung 19 of them

whereas again if you'd have asked me

before i looked it up

um how many witches did they you know

burn at the stake i would have

literally said in the thousands and

thousands oh yeah yeah you and i both

that would have been just something that

always was going on in salem

and it was like oh well it's uh tuesday

what do we got going on today

well now we're going to go down to the

market we're going to get some bread

we're going to get some vegetables and

then we're going to stop by the witch

burning today

right yeah and that was a day in the

life of salem for years yeah

and that that period is actually nothing

compared to like the

spanish inquisition which went on for a

long long time and

burned a lot of witches and they also

and by the way no one expects the

spanish right exactly that is true

who knew we were so much monty python

yeah

but um they also had the belief

that uh ginger-headed people were

witches and so would bear

people with ginger hair as well i mean i

didn't know that but as

something else they have i was part of

the spanish inquisition

so that they they were they were looking

at a lot of different stuff during the

spanish inquisition

the heretics and all that good stuff but

right yes part of that

of course was the witches but it was one

of those

what you're saying then is oh there's a

ginger

ginger equals which yeah which is it's a

two-for-one yeah that makes it easy yeah

we don't even have to

put you through a trial right you know

what we know you're guilty

so yeah now it makes it easy for you

right um

and the well the witch hunts in europe

actually went on

for 300 years from 1450

right through 1750 and there were still

cases

after that i think um it was

1972 in england uh

was the last time

for practicing witchcraft somebody um

and i don't know what they were doing

maybe that was the issue rather than the

ideology it's um

but no that somebody was actually

prosecuted for

practice of witchcraft but what they

were practicing you know might

make all the difference but what you're

telling me though is there were still

laws on the books yeah against

witchcraft over there

in until nineteen until 1972 that that

stuff was going on that that that's just

crazy to think about i mean it really is

i say it's crazy to think about but you

know

in today's day and age honestly nothing

surprises me that much anymore so that

that right there doesn't even surprise

me that

there's probably some and we'll call

them third world country right that

probably is still prosecuting

at some level witches whether it be in

formal court or informal court in some

village somewhere

oh they put them to death now in uh

places like nigeria

if you're convicted of being a witch

they can put you to death

that'd be an interesting trial to right

yeah that would be

um and as you know going back to the

salem witch

trials most people i think mistakenly

think it was a bunch of

sex-crazed old men you know

rejected it internally because they

can't

you know be with these attractive young

women

suddenly perched them from society but

the truth is the salem witch trials

started because a bunch of young

girls started acting hysterical and they

claimed they were possessed by the devil

and they accused i don't know whether it

was women just within their own village

or

within the church or whatever of being

witches

and that's and that's how it all rolled

off so

the accusations were out there

people were you know saying hey you're a

witch

so how were they figuring out

in their estimation whether or not

somebody really was a witch

back off the ginger thing because that

was just supposed to be automatic

so so now a regular looking person right

yeah they're not wearing the pointy hat

they don't have a black hat on

you know or black cat and they don't

have their cauldron all that good stuff

how were they being tested how were they

being proved in these courts that they

were a witch

well um given for how many hundreds of

years ago

this was i think they actually came up

with some pretty sensible

methods to test and pretty much full

proof

which i think is why you know out of all

the witches

they convicted that only a fifth of them

were put to death so i mean i think

i think it was uh i think they had their

game straight when it came down to their

tests

one of the tests would be that the

prospective witch would be blindfolded

and they'd spin her around a few times

and a man in front of them would be

holding a crucifix

or a bible and a dagger in the other

hand

and the witch was supposed to put her

hand out and point

to where she thought the crucifix or the

bible was

and as she pointed to the dagger it was

proof that she loved satan

and was in cohorts with satan now

if she actually got the right answer the

court could decide that

she could have to redo it two more times

right you know just to ensure they get

there um

yeah kind of like if if you and i are

trying to decide

who has to go on the next beer run right

and i said well let's flip a coin it

comes up tails i'm like ah best two out

of three right

yeah exactly um there were

there were other tests that do i mean

actually burning at the state

could sometimes be used as a test to see

if you're a witch because if you didn't

burn

then you were a witch but if you did

burn you weren't the witch

how convenient for which right yeah and

there's other ones where

they would tie them to a plank of wood

and dunk it in the river and hold her

under the water for you know

four or five minutes if she drowned she

wasn't a witch

if she came back up and she was alive um

that meant she was a witch and then she

got burnt at the stakes so ah

but if if she was a witch

and then got burned at stake and still

was a witch didn't burn at the stake

almost sounds like the tests were more

towards the benefit of the witch and

not of the non-witch because if the

if the tests were fatal to the

non-witches but the witches could

survive

you know how did somebody not sit back

and say you know what bob maybe we need

to

rethink some of these tests here because

we're killing a lot of people and

finding out that they're not actually

witches

right and all the witches are surviving

what are we supposed to do he's like

well i don't know steve

uh we got to come up with something

better oh i know dunk them in the river

yeah let's start dunking them in the

river yeah

yes i mean it was a it could be very

brutal

you know across that 300 year period in

europe

and you know during the period in the

states here

it it could be a very brutal time to be

accused

of something which i mean today i mean

witches are pretty much everywhere

i mean you know their numbers have grown

uh exponentially i mean you've even got

famous witches like

uh lana del rey

uh the musician oh um okay didn't know

that

yeah um i kind of have a few doubts

about

the powers uh because the second and

third album absolutely sucked

well i i can't i can't honestly tell you

that i'm a lana del rey fan i

i couldn't name a song by right now i'm

not saying she's not a

good artist but uh

you talk about some of the stuff that

kind of came up

recently what about the whole

wiccan part of it because i know when

when some people hear the term

witch or i think what the male version

is warlock

or wizard or something like that oh let

me interrupt you there that's actually

not true a warlock is not

a male witch a warlock used to be

somebody who was a witch but to spare

their own life

they would give up the names of the

other witches and they would that's

where the name warlord

so and i guess that's why it rhymes with

narc

right so there you go so so talk a

little bit about the

the wiccans and and where all that kind

of

you know came about and i think what

we're talking about a little less than a

hundred years ago

something like that right yeah i think

people

get uh wicca and pagan mixed up

or they think it means the same thing

and it really doesn't

wicker or the wiccan kind of religion

has only been around since the 40s

and i don't know whether it is a

marketing ploy

but you know their principle belief is

do no harm

and so when you talk about wiccans

people

sometimes put them too

far into the witch category when they're

not kind of there they follow some of

the same principles

you know the belief in utilizing

nature's magic but um yeah wiccan

you know it isn't where witchcraft comes

from which craft is actually a pagan

religion

and the pagans there's been a whole

bunch of

religions come out of paganism and

witchcraft just happened to be one of

them

and that's really the more accurate

version of what you would call

witchcraft even though

wiccans do use earth magic the same as

uh

you know they're doing witchcrafts i

mean it's yeah they

the the wiccans sometimes

get looked at as you know kind of the

earthy people you know they

they want to go out there and celebrate

like the solstice

and it's more you know kind of a a

mother nature

leaning thought i could see how

a lot of people might get the druids in

the wickens

a little bit mixed up don't know if

there's a connection with the

the druids and witchcraft it probably is

i just i haven't

you know dug into that all that much

by by any means whatsoever

yeah did you um you mentioned earlier

on i can't remember what exactly we were

talking about

but about a witch riding a broom and i

think that might have been when we were

talking about the romanticism or which

is yeah well that

that was so so you always have that

broom

thing right that's one of those

stereotypical categories yeah so

uh once again in the harry potter movies

they play quidditch and they're all

riding the broom

right or you have the wicked witch of

the west in

in the wizard of oz and she's on a broom

and then in the practical magic movie

uh they have the brooms and they they

use that and so

so there was always this attachment

to brooms and in fact even in today's

day and age

you see a broom laying there and like oh

hey that you parked your

your ride over there to a woman and then

she gets all mad

once she figures out you're trying to

call her a witch right right so there's

always been this attachment to broome so

let's talk about that a little bit i

mean yeah where did that come from

well again because it's a romanticized

image um and very much

part of halloween which is on

broomsticks um

a number of years ago i did actually

take the trouble to find out where it

originated

and real witches used to use

the extracts of the belladonna plant

um to put themselves into trance-like

states

so was it like a hallucinogenic yeah

yeah very very strong one

but the problem with ingesting it

was that it had such a bitter taste that

the majority of the time you would throw

up so it never got

to metabolize in your garden so fail to

have the desired effect

and so they had to find another way to

get the belladonna

extract into the body and

given god gave us three holes they chose

the one

which was not the mouth right and so

they would coat a broomstick

the end of a broomstick with the

belladonna extract

and then push it into themselves and

that's where the

witch's rider broom actually comes from

that's i

can honestly say i was not expecting

that explanation but you know what

i'm gonna go back to the nothing else

shocks me anymore so

so not really surprised that it had

something to do with that and

of course i i can't picture gingers

wanting to do that but you know i can't

also

picture witches wanting to do that right

you know either

so just wow crazy

absolutely crazy but at least

we took that broom thing and cleaned

that

up a bit and made it to where

now they just you know ride them around

and all that good stuff

and it's it's not so dirty right sure

yeah um so really in summary

i think what we have proven is that

gingers have had it as bad if not worse

than witches um in ancient

um egypt i think they would actually

bury ginger people alive that's the

sacrifice to a

god if you think about something like

ancient egypt right and you're talking

about northern africa

uh would there have been and

this is by the way total speculation

here but would there have been

a correlation with an albino maybe

being lumped in in the same category as

a ginger

no like i said before have you if you

question whether they're a ginger or not

they're not a ginger you know when you

see a ginger you know

it's just one of those things where

you're kind of huh but but

you could argue the fact that if you

look at an albino you could say well you

know they

they don't look like a ginger let's see

but maybe they carry those same

characteristics maybe

all albinos are witches too you know and

anybody that doesn't look like me is a

witch yeah anybody that doesn't root for

the same football team as me as a witch

right you know crazy things like that

well i think albinos

it's actually the opposite in nature i

mean certainly with man

we kind of you know al albinos species

of animals or rather kind of sudden

mutations

you know are treated very religiously

you know

that's good especially in india um

and so that mutation like with an albino

is actually treated very positively but

the ginger

there is no and i looked i spent a good

amount of time

but i could not find one positive trait

attributed to gingers throughout history

it's been persecution

from start finish um i mean

so you talk about you know persecution

start to finish

all the way through i mean i think we've

hit quite a bit of

different uh

development in societies where were

there any other

you know kind of historical societies

that were

a little more developed that had

something against them

um yeah i mean greece greece

greece well you see greece was a

generally

you know very liberal type place in

terms of hedonistic

you know right and of course that's the

birthplace of philosophy

yeah i mean you got a bunch of people

sitting around talking about stuff yeah

pretty much like we're doing right now

you know but they were very accepting

the greeks were the first podcasters

right

they just didn't have the internet to be

able to do their podcast yeah

but i mean they were renowned for being

very welcoming

accepting of everything every type of

sexual deviation

any type of lifestyle but they believe

that gingers turned into vampires after

they died

wow you know and the greek and you think

of all the greek philosophers all these

brilliant texts written this existential

stuff and they come up with see those

gingers they turn into vampires after

they die

right yeah listen listen to all this

philosophy here's the way you should

live

here here's all this stuff they've

really thought through

and then almost as a footnote and oh

yeah you see those dudes over there

yeah they're going to be vampires when

they die like well wait a second all

this stuff just made sense but you're

just making this random blanket

statement that

these dudes are going to become vampires

that's that's hilarious yeah that

that's that's great it just goes to show

you how far we've come but

even today i would be willing to bet

and i think it'd be a very safe bet that

witches are still persecuted against

yeah you know

we we live at least in a society right

now where we realize

that there there is no magic they're not

doing

their little magic potions and all that

and even if they are

they're not really doing anything or man

i don't know maybe they are maybe they

are you know i

i don't know but but but your your

typical rational person is not going to

sit there and think that

that they're able to do that but

gingers still exist and

maybe there's some reason why people

point at gingers

and still kind of um

discriminate against them and there's

that

inborn thing and they're they're not

really sure why

but they do right and i'll end with this

story in england

as you know um a slang word for

testicles is bollocks right right but

you know bollocks doesn't always relate

to talking about

testicles sometimes you'll just say oh

what a bunch of bollocks

you know just something about it and

also

isn't bollocks kind of you know you

messed something up right and you said

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah well anyway um

i remember when i was in either fifth or

sixth grade

i was like yeah i was about maybe 12.

um we were in a

pe class and the pe teacher was gonna

pair us all

off for this game we're about to play

and uh

this kid walks in late and the pe

teacher

points at him and says oy ginger

bollocks

why are you late

oh gosh you know that you know you

couldn't get away with that anymore

that that's for sure but well

thanks everybody for listening to this

episode of the wolf and the shepherd

we'll be back with some more uh

interesting

entertainment for you we appreciate all

the support that you all have given us

as we've been

going through and creating these

podcasts so we hope that you'll

share this with your friends and keep

supporting us and we'll catch you next

time