Latest / Beheaded / Special Edition Episode: Interview with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb

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Special Edition Episode: Interview with Professor Suzannah Lipscomb · Beheaded

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_02: Hello and welcome to Beheaded Podcast.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to a special edition episode featuring author and historian Susanna Lipscomb.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Megan Moore and I'm Elizabeth Black.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Susanna Lipscomb.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_03: We are beyond thrilled to have Susanna on the show today.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_03: It is a complete honor for you to take your time to be with us and spending your Friday evening doing this.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_03: So thank you so much.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_03: We've got a lot of questions to ask you, I feel like.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_03: But we're very excited to get into this and share with our listeners all that you have coming up and what's going on and a little bit about your background.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, we're just very excited to have you here.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I am delighted to be here.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_02: And before we bombard you with questions, um we discussed this on our last season, but the way we met Susanna was we actually attended a lecture of hers in Salt Lake City last summer.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so she was kind enough to come to the States for a few days with her family.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we had this fantastic convention center type of atmosphere where all these tutor historians came together.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: We discussed the Reformation, we discussed uh witchcraft and witch trials, we discussed Shakespeare's world.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and the last lesson was a little bit on King Henry VIII's six wives and how they're represented in art.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: So we had such a fantastic time meeting you, meeting the other fellow historians.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that's how we got introduced initially, and we were like, hey, you know, let's at least get the conversation started of what it would be like to host you on our podcast.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_03: The fact that you even came to the Southwest, I'm impressed.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm sorry it's taken a while for us to get talking on this podcast, but it it was lovely to meet you.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a really great convention that Author Fan Travel organized because it was just an opportunity to engage with people who really care about history.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: So everyone who came along cared, and it was a kind of a club for all of us nerds together.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: Very nerdy.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't feel like we were nerdy.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_03: I thought we were all pretty cool talking about, you know, the difference between Catherine Parr's portraits and whatnot.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but yeah, you can you made it all the way to Utah, and we're from Arizona, so that was it felt like a we had to jump on this opportunity.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: We didn't think it would ever come up again.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_03: So um it's just yeah, it's a pleasure to see you again.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then for anyone who hopefully everyone knows who Susanna is at this point.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_03: I think everybody does.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_03: All of our listeners, I'm sure, you're a huge influence on us budding historian enthusiasts.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but Susanna specializes in tutor history, witchcrafts, and women's history, which is really refreshing and enlightening to always hear, um, you know, between your books, your podcasts, uh, not just the tutors and other broadcasting TV shows.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_03: Um and a new one that just came out, Ancient Autopsy, um, just launched, and we'll get a little bit more into that um later on in the show.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_03: Um, but just to kick us off, we're gonna hand it over to you, Susanna.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, I think just the first question everybody's really interested in knowing is how did you get into this?
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_03: How what what first interested you in history and especially tutor history?
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it was a very good teacher when I was 11 years old called Mrs.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: Marcus.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the fact that we were allowed to put stickers on our exercise books, and I have somewhere the book with stickers of Henry Gates and Elizabeth First on, must have been part of it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I remember her being a really good teacher.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then I was interested enough in history to pursue it to uh GCSEs, which is what we do at 16, and then in my sixth form, which is sort of 16, 17, 18, I changed schools and I had a couple of great history teachers, and one of them, Alan Scadding, was teaching me uh about the Russian Revolution, and he directed me to reading uh Volkogonoff's new biography of Lenin.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: And what was so exciting about this was that Volkogonoff had been able to get into archives that at that, you know, they had been closed for 50 years, and then he had accessed them and written his biography on the basis of that new evidence.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I suddenly discovered that history was contingent, that history was being rewritten, could be rewritten all the time, that this was a living subject, that there were discoveries to be made.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that really lit a flame in me.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I went to university, I went to do history, so you know that had been decided by that point.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And my undergraduate tutor was Susan Brigden.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So for those who don't know Dr.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Susan Brigdon, she uh is one of the absolute stars of the Tudor universe, and she uh has written about Thomas Wyatt and New Worlds, Lost Worlds, about London and the Reformation, and she's absolutely brilliant.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And she was my undergraduate tutor at Lincoln College, Oxford, but still I thought I was going to work on uh India.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I spent a lot of my time working on Indian history as an undergraduate, learning Hindi, spending my summers working with international development agencies in India, and I thought that's what I was going to do.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it was only because that didn't work out that I um came back to studying history.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And even then, even though I worked on the 16th century for my master's and my doctorate, I was working on French history.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it's only finally, finally, when I was coming to the end of my doctorate, that I uh got a job as a research curator at Hampton Court and started working on Henry.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'd studied, I'd done quite a bit of tutor history as an undergraduate, but uh I thought when it came to choosing the topic for my further research, that tutor history was so overstudied and there would be nothing new to say.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: And look where I am today.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: It is funny how that happens.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: And Megan and I talk about this all the time when people say, Oh, why would I research that?
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: It's already been done.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: And we're like, well, everyone offers a different perspective depending on where you're from, what you studied, what time you studied in, and again, what your professors have had to say along the way.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_02: So everyone's historical journey is so unique.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_02: So it's so refreshing to hear that from you, you know, who is so accomplished uh to tell budding historians, like, hey, it doesn't, it doesn't matter as long as you're curious and passionate, there are new things to say and new things to find.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: So we we've always preached that to our listeners.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_03: And to challenge, I mean, the king is dead.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_03: You start off saying, here's what some historians believe.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_03: I have a different perspective on that, and this is why.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_03: And the when I first started reading that, I'm like, okay, let's let's put uh put up a little bit of a challenge here.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_03: And that really showed me that it's exactly it's continuously new new angles to take, new discoveries, new research coming up, and it'll completely change the outcome of what we believed happened.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the the key thing is that one has to ask different questions of the past.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: And whoever you are, you will bring a unique perspective on the past.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: You will bring unique questions to ask of the past.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the research that we do is in response to research questions, which were formed by who we are.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's taken me sort of years to kind of fully understand how much what who we are is integral to the sort of history we produce.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So any new person doing history brings a fresh, a unique perspective if they're willing to put in the work to try and answer the questions that come to them.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_01: So I encourage everybody, you know, wanting to pursue history to think of the questions that are coming and to take them seriously.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, to challenge existing interpretations and to read with an expectation that a case has been formed by putting evidence together and seeing where they you don't think that evidence stacks up.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Very well said.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: Better than we usually bumble through it.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, just pursue your dreams.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: We're doing great.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: Come on.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um so obviously you've made this big shift in your life from academia to broadcasting, you know, and you still pursue uh your scholarly research, but how do you balance that pursuing the scholarly research and presenting on history, uh, you know, on TV, on radio, podcasts, history hit everywhere.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So there was never any intention to move into broadcast work.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had done my doctorate.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I got took this job at Hampton Court as a research curator.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a sort of postdoctoral position.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I was coming to the end of my time on that, it was three and a half years at Hampton Court, I deliberately took a job in academia at the University of East Anglia so that I didn't lose the opportunity to continue a scholarly career.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and that and that's what I did for the next 10, 12, 12 years, I guess, after that.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I had opportunities that came my way because I was a curator at Hampton Court, because we were making a new exhibition to mark the 500th anniversary of Henry VIII's accession.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result of that, you know, lots of TV companies got interested in doing something about it.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think my debut thing for TV was on a show called The One Show, which is on BBC One.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I did a little interview with Dan Snow, which is funny now.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were about to make a series together after all this time, 16 years later.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And so I did a little interview with him, and then they decided that they wanted to do a live segment as well.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a baptism by fire.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: My my first TV is live TV on BBC One at kind of prime time.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And as a result of that, I ended up doing what we call, you know, talking heads, expert contributor stuff that comes on shows.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then a few years into that, somebody came and asked me to present a series for National Geographic in 2012.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if funnily enough, the series I'm about to make with down is for National Geographic.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so and that's how it sort of all started.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I I for a long time I was absolutely doing both um teaching and uh writing books and making TV programs.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And as time went on, we we've come to a bit of a crisis in universities here in the UK.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: So about four years ago, after I'd made full professor, I'd changed institutions a couple of times, but you know, I was pretty happy teaching.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: But my university got to the point where it was having a bit of a crisis of funding.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And on the third round of asking on voluntary severance, I decided to jump because I sort of knew I kind of had a a bit of a feeling that at some point I would go freelance.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I had a couple of PhD students, so and I've still got one actually who's been doing it part-time that I took with me.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but basically I gave up teaching in the university.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: I actually now teach online courses for everyone.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and at that time, um Dan, who apparently is becoming a big feature of this story, though I hadn't realised he was going to be, I was, I think I went on one of his podcasts or I saw him about something.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: This was obviously pure, you know, COVID time.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Everything was on Zoom.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I told him I was going freelance.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And he contacted me and said, Would you would you like to do a podcast through history here?
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know if it will go well or anything, but maybe it would be a bit of kind of regular work, which which is really important when you're a freelancer.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that's when the podcast, Not Just The Tudors, started.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: The question about balancing though is really interesting because I love scholarly research.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: I really care about getting into the archives.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: I really care about trying to uh use um trying to join the dots between different sources and trying to ask questions of the documents of the past that perhaps other people haven't asked.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: But I also really care about communicating that and communicating history to the public.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I also love working on my own and I love working in a team.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: I love the creative product of TV and the podcast.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so the the real challenge is time, as for all of us and all things, that actually I can't be doing all of the things all of the time.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's it's the in all other ways.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I balance out the two and they balance each other beautifully.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: But the question is always how to spend one's time.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_03: What do you think that um or what do you hope I should say, what do you hope that audiences will take away from your work?
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like my job is to try and invite them into the truth about the past as far as we can access it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I hope that that brings them joy and delight and a sense of being smarter than they were before they started, and um that that sense of um profound curiosity and enrichment that learning can bring you.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: I really think it's about joy in the end.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: So uh my my hope is that it does that for people, and I hope that what I firmly believe is that the study of the past has the potential to help you understand other people.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like reading literature, you know, it you can have a sense that other people are as actual as you are, and you can start to think about why they acted as they did, why we all act as we do.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_01: So there's there's a kind of self-knowledge there as well.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: But above all, it's about pushing past ourselves and thinking about other people uh and the decisions they make and the crazy things they do and the way that humans have acted over time.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: Now more than ever, I feel that's extremely important to remember other people's points of view and to look at history as a guide and you know, take hit take lessons away from it too.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_03: And find how relatable it can be as well.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, thinking of some of our favorite tutor historical figures, yes, it was 500 years ago, and we kind of think, well, that everything in that time era was different.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_03: But when you really extract their personalities, their wants, their needs, and you realize these are still real people.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: And yes, culture is very different, society is different, politics is different, but yeah, technology.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_03: But then when you really get to the bare bones of it, you find it relatable and you start to think, what would I do in that position?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_03: What would I do in that situation?
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_03: And we tend to do that a lot on the show as we're talking about the dark and the gruesome of executions.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_03: We're constantly like, gosh, what would I do if I, you know, had a walk up and face the axemen?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_03: And it it it really does create this connection.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, time doesn't matter in that case.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_03: We're still people.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_03: Exactly.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_02: And that's gonna transition us a little bit into talking about tutor history specifically.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but why do you think tutors continue to fascinate us centuries later?
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, today you see things like Six the Musical or the Showtime Tutors.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's still so relevant, people still love it today.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um, why do you think that era specifically calls to us?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are lots of different ways to answer this question.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in part it's because the stories are just so tabloid.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yes.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Henry VIII marries six times, Elizabeth I remains a virgin, you know, they it's polarized and absolute kind of tabloid fodder.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the the stories, the amazing characters, I feel like when we get to the 16th century, one of the reasons I work on the 16th century is because the nature of the evidence we have starts to allow us to access people as individuals.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's not the diaries that we get by the 17th century, but we do have letters and we do have ambassadorial accounts of the court, for example, and we we have uh sources that mean we can start to piece together people and their motivations.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's and also it's we have so much evidence, but it's about the amount of evidence I think you can get your head round in a lifetime.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh first of all, when you get to the 20th century and you have to sort of zero in on these three days that you're going to be an expert in.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh I think the other thing is that we know what they look like.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're a we're an intensely visual people, and I think the fact that we have from the 16th century onwards good portraiture.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: So most of the portraits that survive, we have some very late set 15th century portraits, but most of the portraits we have of, say, kings of England f um from earlier periods are painted in the 16th century.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they're just kind of imagined portraits, really.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas we start to have people like Hans Holbein painting portraits of the Tudor court, and we feel like we can see these people.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this they're not photographs, however much they feel like them, but they were praised for their lifelikeness at the time.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that matters so many things.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in this country, most of like the most of our earliest surviving housing stock is 16th century.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: We have some earlier buildings, but you know, castles, for example, but but on a kind of a quotidian scale, they tend to be 16th century onwards.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and they have created it's created a kind of ideal or an idyl um kind of cottage that you might live in, even though it'd be far too small for you to actually want to live in if you hadn't extended it.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so I I think there's lots of those, and I think actually also a key part of it is because we love princesses and knights and things like that when we're seven or eight years old, and then the stories of the tutors fit that perfectly.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: So that's my sense about it.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: Makes sense, honestly, and I haven't really thought of that before.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: Of you're right, we we are so visual that, you know, of course, you know, we've got those who who have are fascinated with these different errors, whether it's the Roman Empire and going way, way back, um, and we can presume we think that they look like, but again, going back to how relatable it can be, and there is that connection.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_03: So uh makes perfect sense.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um and you specify so much of your research on the role of women in history and making sure that they have a voice that we we respect them for what they've done in history, and specifically then when it comes down to tutor history, what is your perspective on the role of women in tutor court?
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well, my sense is that women were always powerful.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, one of the reasons why women's power was so curtailed in kind of legal terms was because I think that men knew how powerful they were.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: And yet much of that has been hidden from us because of the nature of history that's been written.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: But recent work that's been done on things like, I don't know, gift giving at the Tudor Court or the way that someone like Catherine Aragon acted as a spectacle to acted as an audience to Henry VIII's spectacle, and was therefore a crucial fifty percent of of the story of the spectacle is Catherine watching him and him knowing his being watched.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: The w there's this we see women's power coming out in strange nooks and crannies, we can start to detect it.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the thing is, I think that a lot of the time women were operating strategically and politically, but they were doing so in ways that didn't make an impression on the historical record.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, conversations that were had that were not written down.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been about our shift from thinking about politics as being only the stuff of statutes and um, you know, letters between kings as being actually something that's involves uh people and soft power that we start to see how women were operating at the courts.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean obviously that changes when we get queens regnant like Mary I and Elizabeth I, who can demonstrate their power in a much more obvious way.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I think for m for much of the period up until that point in time, and then thereafter in the 17th century, women's power is by necessity hidden, but that doesn't mean they're not operating.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_03: I love how you mentioned Catherine was watching.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_03: It makes me think I have um a picture in my dining room.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure you're familiar with it.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's called Henry and Ann being watched by Catherine of Aragon, and it's this scene of them of all of the court having fun, and then in the background, Catherine of Aragon's speaking in what are they up to?
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_03: And that um you completely just I think defined what she was doing for so much of that period was you're right, she was she was watching, she was in the background.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: Background, but yet so much more than just being in the background, so much more resurfacing after all of that.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_03: So um interesting.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_03: That's funny.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_03: I thought exactly of your picture as well.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_03: Like, oh, Megan has that in her dining room.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_03: My giant picture in my dining room.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um and actually, I think for so much of the time before Anne Boleyn was on the scene, Catherine was the spine f to Henry VIII.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_01: She it was it was her regard that he was seeking, and it was she that he was trying to please.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so she was the one who was well connected in European society.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: She was the one who brought kind of clamor uh to the court.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And Henry, he's uh he's a young man, but of a fairly puny country, and I think that he revels in her um attentions.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think she's so important to him.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: That is such a good point, because we are we usually think of Catherine as the cast-off queen, you know, the first one that he was just kind of done with and dismissed in a terrible way.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: But we forget that they were together so long and she made him.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: She really created him in a lot of ways.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she shows his personality.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he grew up with her.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so obviously, with our podcast, we focus on people that were executed.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of the stories we draw from the Tudor Court era.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And we we often talk, you know, uh about how like what their final days were like, you know, being in the tower, what they witnessed from the windows, you know, like in the Ann Boleyn case, uh they there was some dispute as whether or not she actually saw George Boleyn and the others get executed from where she was, which it's kind of been I don't think so.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: But that's always the visualization.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: So are there what other common misconceptions do you think there are when it comes to tutor executions?
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she can't have seen George Boleyn and others get executed from where she was in the Queen's apartments at the time next to the White Tower, up to Tower Hill.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: She might have seen them go out to be executed, but she wouldn't have seen the actual executions.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: We know that Thomas Wyatt may have seen Anne's execution or may have seen others pass out to be executed because there have been buildings which now look very, very old, late 16th century, the King's House as they now are, um as it's now called, in the tower, that wasn't there at the time.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we can tell that he might have seen more, but no.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um so common misconceptions, well, actually, uh, given the title of your podcast, it's probably that everyone's beheaded.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um the vast majority of people weren't.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a very high-status way to die.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, it's true.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: Uh when we first started the podcast seven years ago, yes, that we thought, okay, we're just going to be doing beheadings.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_03: And honestly, we weren't even planning on the podcast being called Beheaded, which now in Heinz, I'm like, that is a pretty, that's a pretty in-your-face direct name for a show.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: But yeah, most of our episodes now are more hangings or um other other forms of of capital punishment.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: But it really was, I don't know if an honor is the right word to use to be beheaded.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, in um Europe, for example, the touch of the executioner was thought to be dishonoring.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: So a punishment that or a form of execution that meant that the executioner touched you, which is what happens with hanging, like he could well pull on your legs.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you obviously you might there's the kind of the humiliation of hanging people often soil themselves, uh, and the you know, it's a very it's not there's no long drop, it's a very visceral death.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: So um all of that is very dishonoring.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Where executioner who beheads you doesn't touch you, and so therefore you don't have the dishonor the dishonoring of his touch.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: So, yes, you're right, it was a more honorable way to die.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know that.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_03: I knew I knew that executioners were seen as taboo, do not touch me, do not come near me, cross yourself when they're passing you.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't realize even at the time of death, though, it was still seen as disrespect to even be touched at that point.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_03: At that point, I'd I think I'd be like, doesn't matter.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: We're at the end of the road here, but that's that's an interesting take.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_03: It is.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: Okay, so witchcraft um and the fear surrounded around witchcraft.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_03: Such to me, especially now that we're getting into spooky season, it's October right now.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_03: Um, witchcraft is definitely something that fascinates us generation over generation.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and it's transformed a lot of our perception of what witchcraft is.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_03: But um, yeah, we actually ended our last season on a two-part episode on the Pendle Witch Trials.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_03: And it really brought to light that us as Americans, I think at a very elementary stage, we just assume Salem witch trials.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_03: But it is much more international than that.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_03: So can you, um Susanna, can you share a little bit about the social and the the cultural contact context behind the witch hunts in Europe and in England?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: So Salem has had an awful lot of press, but actually it's 18 months and it's um what is it, 169 people accused, 25 people who die, 19 of whom are executed.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's pretty small beer by comparison to the Sorry, and a dog.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: There was a dog involved too.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_01: And a dog.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um There's one pressed to death as well, and five die in prison.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: But the in by comparison to the numbers that we see in Europe, and by which I include England as well, because England is part of Europe, despite what some politicians say, um, the the fact of the matter is that we have we think something like 90,000 people accused of witchcraft between about 1560, 1650, something like that.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: The broader period is about 300 years.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_01: And half of them are executed.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to get at exact numbers, but we estimate about 45,000 people executed.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Most the largest numbers of people executed happen in the German states and in Switzerland, uh, in the Duchy of Lorraine, proportionately is very high.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: And actually those killed in um England and Scotland by comparison are not concentrated in certain periods of time, 1590s in Scotland and the 1640s in England, and they're bad during those periods of time, but the rest of the time not so bad.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: The the social and cultural context is that this is a period of extreme economic change.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's a period where there's a hugely rising population and the price of bread has gone up, uh, and people are starving, and people don't understand inflation.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: This feels punitive.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so people are tightening their belts and looking after number one.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: There are people who are wandering around who are begging and quite often are asking for arms and are turned away by l householders who feel resentful and then sort of project onto the person turned away their aggression, the aggressive act of not giving to somebody who is in need.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: And we've also got lots of disease at this period of time.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: We've got terrible harvests.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: 1590s are a particular period where there are witchcraft trials, 1620s, 1660s.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: And in those periods, although we I hesitate to make sort of direct correlation, but we certainly have periods where in the 1590s we have four years in England where the rain destroys harvests.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: And every time a harvest is destroyed, these people can't pop to the supermarket.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is that's it.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: That that there's there's going to be hunger and starvation that year.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have that in consecutive years, then we're we're really moving into to dearth and and famine.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a feeling of desperation amongst contemporaries where they feel like something must be to blame for this, and so they're casting around for scapegoats.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then you add in the heady mix of the Reformation and this sense that uh people, both Catholics and Protestants, but especially Protestants perhaps, feel that the devil walks abroad and he is among them, and that you can, particularly hotter sorts of Protestants we call Puritans, you might be able to see uh the devil in everything.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so um that sense develops that witches are people who have made some sort of pact with the devil, who are interested in attacking fertility, whether that's young children or young mothers, or whether it's crops in the field, and that something must be to blame for the apocalyptic conditions in which people are living.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that's just, I mean, that's in a nutshell, kind of some of the sort of things going on in the background.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_02: And how do you think gender really shaped those accusations and executions?
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it varies enormously.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there are some places where there are more men than women accused of witchcraft.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Iceland, for example, very high proportion, like 90%.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: 90% of which is a male.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, uh, Russia, they're much higher numbers.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: Normandy, Estonia, these are places where the proportion of men to women is the opposite of what you might expect.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: In England, that is like 90% women.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it varies enormously.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_01: The bottom line is this: that a witch is someone who is seen to have been tempted by the devil, probably on the basis of promises that he or she will never want uh if they just give their soul to the devil.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a pact.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: This idea comes up in the 16th, late 15th, early 16th century of there being a pact between the witch and the devil.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And this diabolical pact obviously can be made by men or women, but women are thought more susceptible to temptation.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it's thought more likely that a woman would succumb.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you know, so so a lot of the narrative around witchcraft is of a woman, a witch uh, you know, having sex with the devil and um being seduced by him in that way as well.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's that's a bad rap.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna have to look into the ones in Iceland and Russia though.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_02: We we've discussed before that sometimes uh the accusation for men might have been not that they're necessarily, you know, witches or warlocks, but that they might be werewolves or something else supernatural or something else that perhaps more, I guess, you know, uh masculine demon type of thing.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so I don't know if you have any comments on that, but that is something we've noticed is that some of the men, you know, whether it's like not necessarily witches, but other uh supernatural beings.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly are cases of people and generally male being accused of being werewolves.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a new book coming out on that by Laura Koonin, but you can already find some good research on werewolf cases.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Jan Mackelson did a wonderful article about it, for example.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um But the distinction between witches and wizards or witches and warlocks is uh is an artificial one for this period.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_01: So that there might be a difference, a distinction made between witches who are seen as having made this diabolical pact and working with the devil for their powers, and magicians, I guess, people like Dr.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: John D.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: who are thought to be uh engaging with angelic spirits or you know, possibly uh engaging as alchemists.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: But all people who are accused of participating in evil magic, maleficium, at this time are witches, whether they're male or women or female.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um this might be a dangerous question to ask, but do you find there to be any parallels between the witch hunts that we've learned about and perhaps modern day moral panics?
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think certainly we can draw a parallel in the way that there can be a panic about something and it can spread in that powerful, pernicious way.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and so the uh it can something can escalate and get out of hand.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's how we tend to use it.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um or someone feels that they're the victim of an unfair attack.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I have some hesitation about the use of the phrase, because it seems to me that when innocent people, because it is my belief that that the people of the 16th and the 17th century accused of witchcraft were innocent, even if some of them actually thought they were witches, I believe that they were innocent.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um some of them may have tried to use magic to do harm to their neighbours, but I don't believe they had the power to do so.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um their intention may not have been innocent, but I don't think they did harm to the neighbours with magic.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so and the vast majority of them didn't even try.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, just interrupting myself.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I I d I think therefore the fact that the consequence of that for them was death, and for many people in continental Europe it was torture to the point of interrogation um before death.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it dem demeans the suffering of people in the past and diminishes what they experienced to suggest that someone giving you a bit of jip on social media is an equivalent.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: Why do you think early modern Europe was so fascinated by that?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, I think humans are fascinated by that.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um because let me tell you one of my absolute favorite facts from history, which is this.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Why do well, I'm gonna ask you a question.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: Why do you think public execution in England came to an end in the 19th century?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, in the 19th century.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_02: Was it because people of nobility were being accused at a higher rate, perhaps?
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_02: And they were like, never mind, stop this.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_03: I actually don't know.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I couldn't tell you.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's because too many people were going to them.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: After the invention of the railways, public executions became a sort of public health hazard because so many people would travel across the countries to attend them.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_03: There's always these like weird, quirky little execution stories.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_03: Do you have any that you like to keep up your sleeve?
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_03: Any surprising or little known facts about it?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, I think probably most of them are well known.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you've talked about Richard Roos before and uh being Bonard, etc.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: The the one that sticks with me, I don't know if you ever read Michel Foucault's Discipline and Punish.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: He describes at the beginning of that book um the execution of Damien, who was the attempted regicide of Louis XV.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my goodness, he's on our mug.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: We have a quote from Damien on our mug.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_02: It says it says the day will be hard, which is what he said before his very gruesome execution at the Place de Grave.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_03: It's just a nice reminder when you're having your morning cup of coffee, you know, your day will not be as hard as his.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: The day will be hard.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I don't think any day is as hard as his.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, just that the just the the horror of that description of his death that that's in the in the um Gazette.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, red hot pincers, oil onto the wounds, and the dismemberment.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I find that well, endlessly sobering.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And back to your point of it being a spectacle, um, when we were researching that episode, we had learned that the apartments nearby were all rented out, you know, because people were so excited to see this and it was such a public place.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it's yeah, we we as humans are odd.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: We like to see some strange things.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but aside from the spectacle, do you think execution did its quote-unquote job in terms of shaping society's uh sense of justice and morality?
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I think you have to remember that the vast majority of the time when this is happening, there is no effective police force.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: So there's been there was a book called The Spectacle of Suffering, you know, the theatre of horror.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: That these there is this sense that you need that to be publicly played out to deter offenders.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's obviously also to protect society against hardened criminals, but it's also about kind of exacting retribution for a particularly unacceptable crime, whether that's attempting to kill the king or um child murderers uh or whatever else is felt to be offensive at the time.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so part so there is something about it, the the justice being played out before your eyes um to to see justice done.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: But there's also a kind of sense in which people felt that it balanced the world.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: So uh they had it had to be done um in order to kind of compensate society for what the for what had happened, to compensate the victims and to kind of deal with the general harm that had happened through the the crime for which is being punished.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a kind of exacting redress from the criminal as well.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so part of the purpose of it was to sort of harmonize society thereafter, and I think it did do that in this kind of cathartic way.
• 40:38
  SPEAKER_01: So the the watching of executions is gory, but it's also about kind of saying justice must be done, and now the world has been set right, and we've got a clean state, and we can start again.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sure Henry really liked that, considering Henry VIII how paranoid he was.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_03: Especially he wanted to make a display, an example of anybody who would even dare go against him, act as a traitor.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_03: So definitely it's um it makes sense why at that in that time period it was incredibly crucial.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_03: So you have some very exciting new projects in the works.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_03: Ancient autopsy.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_03: I wanted to give an opportunity for you to share a little bit about your new show.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: Um, can you just kind of share with us the premise of what the show is and how perhaps it's different from other history programs that you've worked on before?
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the premise of the show is that we're looking at the deaths of four very famous figures from history: Tutankhamun, Cleopatra, Genghis, Chingis Khan, and Alexander the Great, and how they died.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And in each case, it's really disputed.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: So the sources disagree, and we're looking into those sources.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm speaking to historians and archaeologists who specialize in this, in some instances, going to places to see uh po venomous snakes or to ride a chariot of the sort that Tutankhamun may have ridden, um, did ride, um, and to explore whether he died as a result of falling out of a chariot.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, to explore whether Cleopatra could possibly have died from the bite of an asp.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really interesting.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: And on top of that, there's a kind of digital autopsy table that Dr.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Richard Shepherd manipulates.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: So he looks at how each in each case, in each theory, the person would have died, and whether that particular theory works on a medical scientific level.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_01: Could you possibly have died from this?
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's it's been really interesting as a as a show.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_02: How did the idea come about for the show?
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_02: And how did you uh like what were you most excited about when you were starting it?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea from for the show came from three people.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I I'll give them name checks, series producer Megan Roberts, who is the first series I'd made with her, and she was really helped shape this idea.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Tom Alright, who's a producer director I work with a lot, and um you know it's very visionary with it when it comes to coming up with brilliant ideas, and then the sort of person who is behind it all is someone called Sean Price, who was the executive producer on the series.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: And Sean and I first worked together on Time Team back in 2012 when we were both completely new to TV.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I love the fact that after all these years we've made this series together.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the three of them really kind of cooked up the format of the show, and and I think it really works well because in each kind of quarter between the ad breaks, we're looking at a different theory and we're looking at the evidence and really putting it to the test.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: So it's kind of true crime meets ancient history.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_03: I love that.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, how exciting.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_03: Very cool.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_03: And so correct me if I'm wrong, but right now it's being broadcasted in the UK.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_03: Is that correct?
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, right now it's on more four.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so the last episode goes out in a few days' time, and then it's available to rewatch on Channel 4 online.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: At the moment, it's not in the the US, but they're selling it soon.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: So let's hope it will get there.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_03: We were keeping our eyes open and our ears open.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_03: We're very much looking forward to that.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: That happens to us often in America where we see these releases in the UK and we get so excited.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: And in our minds, we're like, obviously, it's gonna come out for us on the same date.
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_02: And then they're like, oh no, you don't get it until next year.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: We're like, great.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_03: Between books, between Yeah, I know.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_03: Um I think Firebrand, the movie, was one that we had to wait a little bit on.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_03: Um, anyways, priorities, I guess, over here.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm not sure why British history isn't more of a priority in the US, but it should be.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_03: Should be.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um, well, well, we're gonna wrap up here, Susanna.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but before we go, uh, you know, I know you already mentioned this at the top of the show of just advice for budding historians and history enthusiasts.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but but anything else you would want to tell our listeners in terms of pursuing their passions.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think it's about reading lots and reading in a way that you're interrogating what you're reading, you know, figuring out whether you believe what it is that you're reading, the case that they've put out, um, can can it be substantiated?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: Does it stack up?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: Where are the gaps?
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's where you find the bit where you have something to say.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_03: And we've we've kind of skimmed across a few of the different works um that you have right now, but between your podcasts, not just the tutors, which absolutely I love because it just it really shows how broad your uh expertise is and quite frankly, what the show is called.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_03: You are not an expert in just the tutors, but I there's something for everybody on that show.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then ancient autopsies.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we've got a few of your books here on the table with us, but um any any other direction you would like to point people, whether they are are new to your work or longtime fans, um, anything else that we should be keeping our eyes out open for?
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, I would say go check out History Hits, which you can subscribe to.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I made a show for them last year about the dissolution of the monasteries, and we made a couple of shows in the summer, uh, which are Tudor-related, one on Lady Jane Grey and one on Catherine Howard, and those will be out in the new year.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean subscribe and then you can get those as soon as they drop.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we've got some other little shows going out at the moment on uh one the other day about Henry VIII on screen, one about uh the Ashmolean Museum just down the road from me.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then the new show that I've mentioned that I'm work we'll only be working on at the end of the year.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: We haven't started filming yet.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: But the show I'm working on with Dan Snow, I feel like I have to tell you because it's so appropriate to your podcast.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I don't even know if this is announced yet.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: So let's see if this rebounds on me.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: But it's called How the Tudors Lost Their Heads.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, love that.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_03: Perfect.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_03: I think you've got your first two listeners right here who will be very big fans of that.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_03: Hopefully it doesn't come out a year later for us.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: We might get it in three to five years here in the US.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_03: But it just means we have to go to the UK to go and make sure we can get there.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right see it next year.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, so so exciting, Susanna.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_03: Again, like you going back to talking about some of it is just time.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: I applaud you.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_03: There's so much that you have to offer everybody and such an inspiration to us, honestly.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um I just just to kind of um, you know, get a little sappy here, uh, because I started, I was first introduced to your works probably around 2012, I want to say.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_03: And that's when I really started diving into my passion for tutor history.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_03: And you sparked so much of that.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I think one of my favorite documentaries was Um Henry and Ann, The Lovers Who Changed History.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_03: I could watch that so many times.
• 48:15
  SPEAKER_03: I went to Thornbury Castle because I was like, if Susan forgot that room, I'm gonna also stay in that room.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_02: Anyways, all that all that said, um, I think that was the first thing we watched together when we became friends because we realized this was a shared passion.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that was like our first quote unquote date.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_03: It was our first date.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_03: We watched that together and geeked out over it the whole time.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: And knew we'd be friends forever.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I am really touched.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for sharing those ideas and those thoughts.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just um it's lovely to hear that.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_03: Well, it's such an honor to have you on the show again.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, thank you.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_03: I guess on that note, Susanna, any final words?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of the reasons I think we're so fascinated with Henry VIII, in addition to the ones we talked about earlier, is the fact that it is under him that the idea of what constitutes treason is massively expanded into really what Henry doesn't like.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so that he personally is responsible, not for the 72,000 deaths that sometimes you see on the internet, which comes from John Stowe later in the 16th century, probably kind of rounding up all the people killed at the assizes for petty theft, but probably over 300 people, and we know that um 34 people were executed without trial during who had perf personally offended Henry VIII.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think that we have this idea of Henry um as being somewhere between a lovable rogue, somewhere between a lovable rogue and a tyrant.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: But in practice, he's somebody who is extending the number of deaths by those he thinks have personally offended him in a massive way.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it really does change the history of the country.