This week, we're simultaneously in both the years 1953 and 1692. Luckily our friends D & Ken from the Antiques Freaks podcast have arrived to help us interpret The Crucible.

Ken has more sticky notes than pages inside his copy of the play, D teaches us about the House Un-American Activities Committee, Paris is perfectly sober unlike the last time the Antiques Freaks were guests on the show, and Chris is possessed by the ghost of Arthur Miller and reveals his plans to hunt witches with his arsenal of ... water.

Many thanks to the following podcasts and books that helped us understand the political and cultural climate of Salem Village (Danvers) and Salem Town in 1692 and just how inaccurate Miller's play was:

Podcasts:

• The History of Witchcraft
• Iconography
• Unobscured

Books:

• A Storm of Witchcraft by Emerson W. Baker
  • P.S. Listen to the album of the same name by the band Malleus if you're into black metal
• The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England by Carol F. Karlsen
• The Devil in Boston: A Play about the Salem Witchcraft Trials in Three Acts by Lion Feuchtwanger (the actual OG play about the HUAC and the Salem Witchcraft Trials)
• Under Household Government: Sex and Family in Puritan Massachusetts by M. Michelle Jarrett Morris
• The Witches by Stacy Schiff