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In this episode, Elle explores the dark legacy of witch hunts and how they continue to shape modern attitudes toward women. Drawing on Mona Chollet's In Defense of Witches, she examines four archetypes that were targeted during the Renaissance witch persecutions and remain under scrutiny today: the independent woman who lives outside male authority, the childless woman who refuses reproduction, the aging woman whose wisdom threatens social order, and the woman of knowledge whose expertise challenges established power. Elle traces how these historical persecutions established cultural scripts that still operate through stigma, invisibility, and medical dismissal rather than literal flames. She argues that reclaiming what was once feared in women—independence, wisdom, age, and autonomy—is essential to breaking free from internalized witch-hunt thinking and turning individual liberation into collective power.

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