This podcast is for general information only and should not be taken as psychological advice.

Listeners should consult with their healthcare professionals for specific medical advice.

Hello, I'm Amanda Kella and I'm Anita McGregor.

This is w A chattery.

If you'd been listening two seconds earlier before we had to edit, you would have got a root swear word from my friend Anita.

Oh yeah, and well deserved, because we had just said let's do A, and I started going, let's do B, and yeah, I can't my memory your alphabet?

Why at We thought we'd start with some feedback.

We love hearing your feedback and reading your feedback.

Oh, I've just from everything from the getting to see pictures of people on hills hoists going round and round to some of the more profound feedback that we've gotten about the concept creep.

I have just enjoyed reading every little bit of it.

Let me ask you this, because I know which picture you're referring to with the hills hoist.

Do you have a hills hoist in Canada?

I know it's an Australian invention.

Yeah, you don't have anything similar.

There would probably be something similar, but most everybody had a clothes line.

Because I saw a post from a woman who's come here from America, and she said, even though she lives in Texas, she said, no one in America puts their clothes on a clothesline.

Really, where you do?

They stick it in the dryer until they had a dryer.

I don't know what they did, but they don't have the history of drying their clothes in the sun, even though she's in Texas.

Really, because there is nothing I've got.

There's nothing like towels or sheets that have been dried online that is just it's so beautiful.

Although sometimes the towels can be like sandpaper, but I quite enjoyed that way.

Sure, the picture you're referring to this when we're talking about old parenting techniques.

This is from Heather saying, he's a picture of my sister and I myself entertaining ourselves with that adult supervision in the school holidays.

So she's swinging her sister else maybe she's the small one.

It seems to be one of them sitting in some kind of bucket and the other one's spinning that hills hoist around.

All the games we used to play on the hills Hoist.

That's hilarious.

It just well, it sounds it was a lot of fun and completely safe for man.

And Mum probably wasn't even at home.

Probably not very different vigilante kind of parenting.

We have to do now, absolutely, oh man.

So today we thought we'd talk about something that you brought to the table Anaa which I find fascinating, which is witch talk.

Well, you know, Amanda, of my absolute love of witchcrafts, of witchcraft and seatanic rits, and I don't know about the science of stuff, yes, and and sorry, yes, yes, and so when I saw this witch tyk stuff, it just sent me down a little a little bit into the weeds about this witch talk and et sea and selling spells and stuff, and it just amused to me no end, Amanda, Well, it's interesting.

Witch talk obviously, is witchcraft on TikTok.

It's the.

It's kind of the fetish, the fetish end game of witchcraft in a way.

And what I when you mentioned this to me, I had a bit of a look at this too, and a whole lot of women.

It's usually women who are taking this on board as almost like they're saying, here, it's empowerment it's alternative spirituality.

It's almost seen as a part of the wellness program now, But it's about finding your own it's democratizing witched craft really and finding your own outfits, your Stevie Nicks out for it's your own form of spirituality.

It's it's just a you know, a fat really, but it's Amanda.

It is also about finding love, oh well kind of.

This all started with this woman who had contacted Etsy for a spell.

And so this is a witch on its Etsy who advertises you know, the descriptions or something like this, which is dive into the deepest, most powerful realms of black magic with this love obsession spell designed to create an unbreakable bond of passion, obsession, and undying love.

Seeing Henry Cavill, Oh a maan.

This is not just any love spell, Amanda.

It's an advanced black magic voodoo ritual tailored to ignite intense passion and force someone to obsess over you, an emotional, irresistible connection that can't be broken.

So she has seen this advertised by a witch on Etsy, and she says, I wanted this man to fall in love with me, gives this witch all the details about this guy and what happened.

Well, listen to this, guyslet's see witch tool on me.

Like I bought a lot of spell and I literally, like I said the guy's name because birth and stuff, and she literally DMed him on Instagram and exposed me.

She sent him screenshots of everything I said.

So what she's saying is that the witch DM the guy.

She found the guy and DMed him.

Yes, and and kind of warned him or informed him that she was that this woman was wanting to cast a spell on him.

Maybe in a weird way.

That's how this deep voodoo works is that you say put a spell on him, and she goes sure, and then she just contact saying, hey, this chick likes you.

Do me a favor and get in touch with her, so my stats go up.

This sounds like high school crazy crazy, doesn't it doesn't it?

So it's all loves you and here's a you know, if I put my little initials on my book and on his book, then he's somehow going to love me.

Like it's weird.

This has been going on for years and years, all these spells, but I guess having to pay for them and being ripped off like that is different but remember it was I never got into any of this sort of stuff.

But you wrote someone's name if you didn't like Tom, put it in the fridge, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah, yeah, have you been through my freezer?

Your name is there time and time again.

It's the only way I can appear not angry with you.

That's your name's in my freezer.

I don't know how to feel about this.

It's such a long way from the horrors of the Salem witch trials, for example, and those terrible times, which is were burned at the steak, which is what you round, women were drowned.

This was just a sign of any independent thought in a woman.

She's a witch, get rid of her.

And so it seems casual, doesn't it that now you can take on all of that just to earn a quit on the side dress, as I said, like Steve Nix puts some eyeliner on and off you go.

It's you know, part of what spurred my interest as well is reading this book by Yuval Harari called Nexus, and it's it's all about the information, you know, how information has changed over the ages.

And he talked about how there is this uh, this book that was called the I mean, try seeing it in Latin, it's mallius malificariam, which is that correctly.

I'm joking.

I was going to say, I can say I could see anything.

But but this, this guy that wrote this was this man who had been rejected in a he'd this witch to trial and it had been dismissed by this bishop who said, no, that's it's not true, and you know, let the witch go.

And this guy, because he'd felt rejected, had written this crazy book about witches and it was all this misogynistic, like I hate women thing, and it resulted in hundreds of women, mostly women, being slaughtered.

And it was one of those things that if you know, they would try to drown her and if she drown then she wasn't a witch.

But if she didn't drown, then what a witch?

And then they'd burn her like it was like it was kind of like if you were accused, your life was basically over.

And I mean, there's you know, I see this in kind of one of two ways.

One is this this long history of hating women's powers, men hating women, you know, for the power that we hold and being able to create life or whatever else it is.

But there's just also this other part of me is that this maybe Etsy is a way of you know, and the and the modern Wika movement is a way of you know, women taking back that power and saying, I reject the idea about you know which it's are evil.

What can you know, let's let's let's celebrate what women can do.

Interesting.

Interesting, as we're saying, the democratization of this female power.

Somehow apparently all this took off during the pandemic and we see this everywhere now, don't we use that sort of crystals rituals.

It is a way for women to reclaim stuff.

But it's also you know, young women influenced by the Internet are going to find a new fact.

I knew whatever you and I have both read that book is a circus.

How do you say?

C Irce and I didn't realize that, you know, I'm just looking through the history of She was seen as a famous witch because she turned men into pigs.

The whole story, though, is about her powerful powers.

We've had the you know, the sisters, the three Witches from Macbeth and contemporary witch persecution, which craft related kind of voodoo stuff.

I guess it is in South America and New Guinea in places like that, So it still exists as a real thing, separate to this New Steven explosion.

Yeah, part of that.

Do you know this is interesting?

I didn't know this is that in the Salem witch trials, this all kicked off because two girls had strange fits.

They now believe they were caused by fungus poisoning.

Wow, mushroom lady goes all that way back.

I ate the beef Wellington.

I knew we'd have to bring that up.

It is so big in Australia now.

And actually, yeah, for those of you who aren't aware, there was a recent trial in Australia about a Melbourne woman who has just found guilty of poisoning her relatives or ex relatives with mushrooms with.

Death cap mushrooms, and the mushroom industry has crashed because of it.

If I was the mushroom industry on her the minute that she was found guilty, I've done a big campaign saying see see it's okay, because she said she fossicked and I'll buy my No, she said she found one in a Chinese grocer, but couldn't name the grocery store.

So a whole lot of people have been fearful about buying exotic looking mushrooms, whereas the ones you buy in the shops are never going to harm you.

Ever, don't fossick for them, don't do it, don't forage.

That's how you get in trouble.

Buy anything from the shop in your safe.

But it casts a lot of a very dark shadow over the mushroom industry.

That sounds like a pun about growing mushrooms in the dark, of course, but she's been found guilty.

Pun what a shock, what a shop?

So yes, so no, please watch out for the poisonings.

Separate to this, I mean, I remember as a kid that we had a Wigi board.

Did you ever have a Wigi board?

Scared the shit out of me?

Even though I don't really believe it, everyone had a go at it, and it's been absolutely terrifying.

The results scare everybody, even though presumably it's not true.

I know some people.

Believe it is.

Are they still around?

I think there's probably a modern version as that.

Yeah, it's all digitized or something.

But we also had the horror, the terrifying nature of Bewitched in terms of witches wow.

And I just used to think, what doesn't she were gonna knows and have the housework done?

Why she's still doing the vacuuming when she's a witch?

That that is true.

It's all I could think about.

Couldn't she marryhim or hose handsome husband?

Well, that's the thing.

Couldn't she get a less her husband was so cranky?

Couldn't she get a less handsome husband, I mean, a more handsome handsome husband.

Stop doing housework and enjoy the exotic nature of being which why did he have to turn her into a suburban housewife rather the other way around.

Oh?

I still remember trying to, you know, move my nose and thinking somehow, and it was yeah, yeah, But I mean I think it appealed.

It certainly appealed to me as a child, thinking, you know, all that magical thinking about you know, what could happen, and you know the you know, the idea of that magic could be real.

And a lot of the books that I read as a kid were fantasy books about you know, all the things that could happen, and you know, strange fantasy worlds and all that kind of stuff.

So, you know, but as I've grown into an adult, I've kind of set most of that stuff aside.

I mean, it's kind of it's fun to kind of think about the possibilities.

You read the fairy porn and the I tag and porn as much as I do.

When I set it aside, I didn't mean totally.

And most generations have had their pop culture shows that we've had charmed the craft, you know, And but this is girls stuff in the way that Harry Potter is all about that.

But that doesn't excite the imagination of girls in the same way that the girl witches do.

Yeah, yeah, and certainly, you know, the equivalent for men is that that it's the dark, brooding guy.

It's evil, it's you know, it's all this kind of stuff.

But I don't think that.

I know, but there's not really the equivalent of like there's wick ends, like wickas for females, wickends for males, But I don't think that there's the same kind of communities.

Maybe druids, you know, because druids are still around now, and you know, is.

There anything more unattractive than a man dressing is a druid, let's say it.

But women do this because they think it makes them look alluring and interesting.

A guy dress as a druid.

If you're going to go to inter recreations, don't make it that you always see the controversial.

I'm the only one brave enough to say, all these druid loving women, no you're not real.

What about what about this?

Though it's part of the same thing of Etsy and which talk, there's this group here.

This woman said, hello, team, I'm searching for this man.

My friend had her soulmate drawn up by a psychic.

I thought it'd be nice to speed up the process and find out if he exists and where he might reside.

Does he look familiar to anyone?

Have loo got the drawings?

He looks like Chris Hemsworth, he looked.

This is an AI drawing, so much true, so much for a psychic drawing.

That that's complete AI drawing of a handsome man.

That's it.

And she sent this picture at saying does anybody recognize him?

Yeah?

Oh yeah, yeah.

He's Chris Hemsworth.

I recognize him.

He's not a druid, give you that for nothing.

She's going to go and contact him and send him the picture and say he lists And a psychic just told me that it's you and me, baby.

You know what that sounds like a great movie theme.

Hands off, I'm going to copyright that.

That's it.

Just get that AI generated, you know.

Yeah, you know, it's interesting with these films where people form mainly in love with each other like this, and I need to track him down or he tries to track her down.

Is off in the way Cinderella.

The Cinderella thing, the modern take on that of he's, you know, serenading you under your window.

You're not interested, not interested.

After one hundredth night, you give in a new you know, and finally.

We would call it stalking.

Absolutely, it's interesting looking at these romantic tropes that in real life actually play out quite differently.

They're kind of creepy and coercive control and all the rest of it.

Having said that, I'm going to put a spell out for Henry Cavill.

He call if I say it on the side, it doesn't sound weird, Henry Cavill not.

I've got this happening, and I've done a drawing of you.

If anyone knows where you can find him, yeah, let me know.

I'm sure that as soon as he hears about that, he's just he's going to be on this and just The.

Hard thing is he maddress as a druid, and I would kind of forgive him that's right.

Well, yeah, it's singing singing underneath your balcony and your balcony.

What I'm saying your balcony, I'm not using that as a euphemism, my protruding stomach, nature's balcony.

You know, Amanda, what I think her work here has done?

Do you think show you off to our delivery?

Let's let's why don't you start, Amanda?

Look, actually, speaking of Dragon Paorn, this is a dreadful way to start my glimmer.

But I took that book on holidays with me when I went to Tasmania for five days with my son.

And the worst thing is is I'd found a little series of school photographs from when he was probably six or seven, and I'd cut one of them out and made a bookmark.

And I didn't realize the book that I had it in, so his face pokes out the top of it.

His face was poking out the top of my dragon Not did Jack know this well?

As I'm sitting next to him on the plane reading my book, I looked over him and said, this is awkward, isn't it, but I had my glimmer is not that weirdness.

My glimmer is that I had a couple of weeks off the wireless.

My elder son Liam was doing placement for his Uni degree and couldn't do it, couldn't come on holidays.

But Jack was free.

So Jack came with me and we had the best time.

He was.

Of course I was paying for it, so he was.

Going to be gracious, but there was no eye rolling, there was no h He was just so.

He was such good company.

The only time we almost came to blows and it wasn't blows, was where he insisted on driving for three hours we went from one place to another.

And I said to him, just.

Humor me, Jack, two hands on the wheel, Jack, because I went straight back to being the person who was teaching him to drive for a period of time there, and it was that period was so stressful that as soon as I got into the car with him, because I don't know if he drives me around much since then, I instantly went back to being that.

And he said, this isn't going to work if you're going to backstreet, backstreet, what's it called back seat drive?

So I had to deep breathe pretend he was an uber driver who I didn't have any attachment to, and I could just sit here and relax as he was driving.

But I arrived with such a stiff neck and sort shoulders from the tension I was feeling.

And occasionally I did say to him, two hands on the just humor me, Jack, humor me, Jack, just slow down when you're going around these blind corners.

Just do that for me and everything will be fine.

But that's the down The upside was we had this fabulous five days together and I loved it, and I thought, when do I get a chance just to have mother sometime one on one with other them?

Was great?

Oh that is lovely, And we might have to do a whole episode on our kids driving.

I don't know my money can handle.

I don't know.

I certainly have to have to have had to see to Ben please don't drive like there's light since sirens going, you know, luckily he's a paramedic.

Luckily he is, but not on winter roads.

So yeah, and I had to say to Jack Jack please, because he drives with two hands at the bottom of the wheel and sometimes it's just one hand at the bottom and the other one picking his nose or whatever.

I'm putting it over his eyes, driving blocking.

His ease out from my screens.

Happy thoughts, Happy thoughts, and.

Watch your glimmer.

My glimmer is actually following on from some of the great comments that we have got from our teacups, is that D had sent an email a while ago saying that she had had heard of my love of Earl Gray tea and that I had actually taken her suggestion and I had ordered some of this amazing loose Earl Gray tea and it, my gosh, it's a good cup of tea.

Really, I have, I have been drinking it.

I brought some for my daughter in law, who enjoys a good cup of Earl Gray.

It.

Yeah, excellent suggestion, D.

Thank you so much.

There you go.

If anyone would like to suggest any tiffany diamonds you think that we should try out, let us know.

Let's have to be team.

Let's get an Etsy kind of thing, going to bring jewels into our lives, jewels and men who aren't druids.

It's a lot of scope, a lot of scope.

Absolutely.

It's lovely to.

Chat with you again, am I love you too, Love you love you, to see you next, to see

H