Witches, Whiskers and Whisky: Re-introducing the Original Cat Lady of Halloween! [Season 2 Premiere]
October 31, 2023 • 30 mins
We are back for Season 2 of "6 Degrees of Cats," the world's #1 (and only) cat-themed history, culture, and science podcast just in time for Halloween! Learn about the original cat ladies and what they really were brewing in those cauldrons - as well as what the heck was up with those hats.
Learn about weird trivia, women’s history and whisky brewing with Dr. Megan Goodwin, host of hit religion and history podcast “Keeping It 101” who gets to the heart of the witch trope; food historian and author of “Endangered Eating” Sarah Lohman who explains the origins of the witch costume; and Kings County Distillery founder and writer Colin Spoelman, who introduces us to distillery cats Carlos and Jeffy.
Celebrate the launch of season two on this special haunted holiday for an alternative history of the original crazy cat lady - the witch.
- uisge beatha (Middle Irish / Scottish Gaelic) → usquebaugh (English) → whisky
- Recommended listen: Witch podcast (BBC)
Support the podcast, sign up for The Captain’s Log, the companion podcast newsletter and learn about way$ to help keep this ship afloat for our next season here: linktr.ee/6degreesofcats.
Referenced episodes:
- Cats Are the Consummate Domesticate: Origins and Evolution of Our Feline Friends [Pilot]
- Did You Know the Vikings had Cats? Magic, Freya and Norse Folklore
About the experts:
- Colin Spoelman is the founder of award-winning Brooklyn whisky distillery, Kings County Distillery, and co-author of DEAD DISTILLERS: A History of the Upstarts and Outlaws Who Made American Spirits, “A spirited portrait of the unusual and storied origins of forgotten drunkenness.” Follow Colin on Instagam @colinopolis and Kings County Distillery @kingscountydistillery
- Megan Goodwin, Ph.D., is the host of hit podcast “Keeping it 101: A Killjoy’s Introduction to Religion” and author of “Abusing Religion: Literary Persecution, Sex Scandals, and American Minority Religions” (Rutgers University Press). She can be followed on X/Twitter @mpgphd
- Sarah Lohman is a culinary historian and author of “Endangered Eating: America's Vanishing Foods”, one of Eater's “Best Food Books to Read This Fall”. For more information about Sarah and to access archives of her influential blog, Four Pounds Flour, visit https://sarahlohman.com.
Producer, writer, editor, sound designer, host, basically everything*
- Captain Kitty (Amanda B.)
* with co-executive producers Binky & Snuggles
Animal voices include:
- Binky & Snuggles _^..^_
Music:
- Leathered: "Look Alive" © 2022
- Samples licensed via Loopcloud
- Additional sound effects from Pixabay.com
Logo design:
- Edward Anthony © 2024 (Instagram: @itsmyunzii)
Research used:
- Bennett, J
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Yeah, Snuggie. Why won't you speak to me? [hiss] Oh! Language, Snuggles! [meow] Look, I know you want higher
(00:06):
compensation, but we don't even make money off of this yet. [plaintive meow] Yeah, I know, but we have to follow
the advice that social media person gave me, so you gotta put on this outfit. [meow]
Right fine, no costume this year. Come here and take off that outfit. Even though that hat is really cute.
(00:29):
Welcome back cool cats and cat allies alike, to "6 Degrees of Cats",
the world's best and only cat-themed culture, history and science podcast.
Before I forget, I just wanted to thank all of you so much for the love in season one.
And if you're new to the pod, you definitely should check those episodes out because despite our
(00:49):
journeys in that season from Greece to Rome to Scandinavia, from the early days of the cat human
friendship to the present time, we still have barely scratched the surface of the thread bear
couch that represents all things connected to kitties in this life.
I'm so happy to kick off the second season of "6 Degrees of Dats."
(01:11):
Who am I? Well, if you didn't know already, it is I, Captain Kitty or Amanda B.
And you earlier heard from me and my co-executive producer Snuggles, who is also joined here
by her brother, not sure about the relationship to be honest.
Binky, neither of whom for the record have consented to where the very adorable,
(01:35):
very expensive costumes I got for the occasion. Which is...
Halloween. Ah yes, Halloween. The holiday of frights and scaries. Horrifying things like
ghouls, goblins, demons, team building activities at corporate retreats and stop and chats on the street,
(02:01):
celebrated in North America on October 31st.
(Trick or Treat.) Unlike Valentine's Day, which we talked about in my Cats vs.
Cupid" episode, the first images that come to mind when you think of Halloween are pumpkins,
ghosts, and kitties, who are...
Allegedly...and along with other fun critters like Toads, Frogs, Dogs and ducks,
(02:28):
the friends of...
Satan
A.K.A.
Lucifer
A.K.A.
The Devil.
The guy goes by a lot of names, but enough about him.
Let's talk about his alleged consorts.
Witches.
Or were they?
(02:50):
As a heads up, this episode will include some rather colorful language,
partly because, well, curses and Halloween go hand in hand.
And how apropos.
Halloween comes with pumpkin, scourcing is the spice of language, don't you think?
No way since both a weapon ingredient and a flavoring agent.
I digress. Back to witches.
(03:12):
So, Binky, what comes to mind when you think of a witch? [meow]
Ha ha, very funny. Be serious now, not me.
Okay. Nature? [meow]
Herbs?
Goddess? [meow]
Oh wait, no no no, sorry Binky.
I didn't mean modern practitioners of Wicca and other religions that call their followers witches.
(03:36):
Good point.
Thanks for reminding me about that.
And modern witches, thanks for your grace.
We're gonna be talking actually about the image of alleged witches that come into the
pop culture space from places like Disney and stuff.
Binky? Pull up some images here. [typing sounds]
Okay, here we are.
All right.
(03:56):
You have an old woman.
She loves alone.
She has kind of wild hair.
No comment on her complexion and profile.
That's kind of rude. [mew]
She wears all black.
She has kind of a strange head on.
Oh and there's a large black cauldron.
(04:16):
Oh.
Something's looking back at us.
In the corner of that picture.
Oh, kitties.
Excuse me.
She has a few cats.
I think she's a quote unquote crazy cat lady.
That's what we're here to talk about.
(04:38):
Both witches and cat ladies to this date have a bit of a branding problem
As our guest from season one, the trap king himself, Sterling Davis has acknowledged.
I would gather the volunteers and get them get volunteers to help me
and differ in the colonies, different areas.
And it was always women.
(04:59):
It would only be women.
And we start telling them, "But you know Sterling, I want to help.
I want to do this, but I get cursed out."
And that was when I was thinking to myself, "Oh, I need to make her cool."
She's not just some crazy cat lady.
She's actually helping.
So that's what we're here to talk about.
(05:19):
The origins of the quote unquote crazy cat lady.
Okay, that's enough, thank you.
Which, like the cauldron in the visual I just described, is a total crock of shit.
Look.
The tagline, "Crazy Cat Lady" may seem harmless.
I mean, we touched on this in our Father's Day episode.
(05:42):
The insidious gender stereotypes that continue to, uh,
dog our societies and make owning cats a thing that women,
and exclusively women, do alone.
Which is somehow supposed to be a funny visual, whatever.
When it comes to witches, well, those Disney images didn't come from nowhere.
(06:03):
Nor did the stigma we attached to people who look and act like...
that.
I'm thinking specifically of the Salem Witch Trials.
Which were held in the late 17th century in Salem, Massachusetts.
The Salem Witch Trials are pretty well documented and
ensconced in the canon of American literature,
(06:26):
thanks to playwright Arthur Miller's incredible work, "The Crucible".
There are so many podcasts and books out there on the witch trials,
and all the horrible things that were done to those folks accused of being witches.
I'll include a few in the show notes for you to check out.
So, about all them witches.
(06:46):
Why were these people seen to be agents of the devil?
Well, often it was specifically...
Women doing femininity wrong, women doing relationships and sex wrong,
women doing religion wrong, and women doing like people in wrong.
(07:07):
The historical association of witches with cats perfectly said by our first expert.
I am Dr. Megan Goodwin. I'm the author of "Abusing Religion", which is a book about religion and
abuse, like it says in the title, and the co-host and co-producer of "Keeping It 101:
A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion" podcast. I do media and tech consulting
(07:30):
for the Crossroads Project at Princeton, which is a loose-funded project that platforms and
raises the profile of scholars, activists, community organizers, artists, and teachers who focus on
Black, African-American and African religions. By the time this comes out, I guess I will
officially be co-president of the Bardo Institute for Religion and Public Policy.
(07:52):
It will come as no surprise to you returning listeners that religion resurfaces this season.
Recall our episode on Freya's Cats.
Our Norse folklore expert, Terry Gunnell, hinted at a pattern in which women in roles of moral or
structural authority found themselves pushed further and further aside as time progressed.
(08:15):
Same game, different name. So this brings us back to who gets protected as
validly religious and who gets left out, right? Because the folks who found themselves on the other
side of, say, which craft accusations are used to teach our witches' closet a northeastern, so this is
local history. Who when folks get accused of being witches overwhelmingly, particularly on this
(08:41):
continent? The apparatus that is used to convict them of that is both religious and scientific. There's
not a space in between those categories at this time. And we know that to this date, both religion and
science are brought into many strong discussions about how to "woman" correctly. What the accusations
are about science and religion on their face. And of course, cats got caught in the crosshairs of
(09:08):
that as well. It's something we experience to this day because of that, quote-unquote "crazy cat
lady stereotype" - a cultural and it turns out historic trope. One that can sometimes be intended
to land light hard and light. I mean, I'm gonna own that honorary title here and there.
But it is often maliciously directed at, well, people perceive to be doing femininity wrong
(09:35):
as Dr. Goodwin put it earlier. Which she experienced firsthand.
At a really unpleasant interaction with the dude at a gas station a couple of years ago,
where he was just taking up all of the space and I was trying to get around him so that I could
fuel my car. And I don't remember what I said, but he like drove off and was like, say hi to your cats for me.
(09:58):
I'm a scholar of rhetoric and gender and sexuality and it took about three milliseconds to realize
that what he was saying when he said, say hi to your cats is you're a fucking dick. The assumption
that women with cats are sexually wrong, gendered in a way that is not allowed in public, that they
(10:20):
must be alone, that they must be miserable. That has stuck with me and it has been interesting
thinking about the ways that cats stand in for, I think, if not rebelliousness, at least kind of
stubborn individuality and a refusal to do things on other people or species terms.
Yeah, unfortunately not obeying or complying is a thing that definitely gets under many people
(10:47):
skin, especially those who are used to everyone going along with what they say for whatever reason.
So of course when it came to an older woman not doing the whole husband, kids, church,
looking hot for the man-folk in town thing, you're gonna have some taking personal offense for
that stuff even though it's really not their business. But seriously folks, what exactly was it about
(11:11):
their witchy business? That's specifically, God, folks, hackles so raised that it became a matter
of life and death. Well, hold on to your hats. We'll talk more about this after the break.
(11:40):
Before the break, the wonderful Dr. Megan Goodwin oriented us on the historic and systemic
reasons that some women were designated witches and treated very brutally as an understatement.
And now the time has come. Gather around and perhaps make yourself a nice hot taughty if you are
(12:02):
of the alcohol persuasion, which for the record is lemon tea - cloves optional - and whiskey.
Whiskey for ye tea-tolet--
Tea tockles? Teetotalers.
...goes back 4,000 years at least. According to the aptly named the Scotch whiskey experience website,
(12:26):
the word whiskey comes from the word "usquebaugh." I will spell that out in the show notes, which is
an anglicized version of the term "uisge beatha." From middle Irish and Scotch, Gaelic, which literally means
"water of life." According to my research, whiskey was either originated by a bunch of bored monks
(12:51):
who brought the tradition to the Scottish Highlands, or it was discovered and perfected by the people
themselves in their homes. And it's made of barley, which is a grain.
Greens! Remember how we talked about the grain trade in season one with Dr. Melinda Zeder?
We touched on domestication, both of animals and plants. Now, it's time to think about
(13:19):
more than just bread when it comes to grains. Or rather, who brought in the dough from the drink,
at least for a while? Take it from our second guest of this episode.
My name is Sarah Lohman. I am a culinary historian and I am author of the book "Eight Flavors,
(13:40):
the Untold Story of American Cuisine." You can get on top of everything at SarahLohman.com. That's
links to all my good stuff. My newsletter is my upcoming events, my Patreon. Also if you
just search for me, SarahLohman, Lohman, L-O-H-M-A-N, you will find me as well.
In my discussion with Sarah, I asked her, "What do witches have to do with whiskey?"
(14:03):
And what does this all have to do with this crazy cat lady stuff we talked about earlier?
I think we need to go take a look at the history of labor and work.
Throughout most of history, women were the brewers because if we're talking about traditional
divisions of labor before industrial revolution, men were out there doing the farming. They were
(14:28):
growing the crops, they were growing the animals, they were doing all of that labor, and women were
doing all of the processing. Maybe they were doing some witchering certainly, but they were taking
the whole animal and preserving it and cooking it and making sausages and doing all of that.
So, growing falls under that in that they're not out there growing the grain but they're taking the
grain and processing it. So, women were the commercial brewers up until like the 15th century,
(14:55):
and then women were doing the majority of the home brewing up through the middle of the 19th century
in America anyway. And here's where the witches come in.
So, we've got a single woman, maybe older. She's got a cast, at least one cover,
(15:15):
keep down the rooted population. (This continues to describe my current life.)
She needs a big cast iron vessel to boil the wort in to essentially prepare the
beer for fermentation. So, she's got a big old cast iron pot that she's stirring around.
Also, when the beer is finished and ready for sale, it was traditional to hang a broom over the
(15:37):
front door of where she lived. It was like the signpost that said, hey, the beer is ready to come
and buy it, but if she was selling out of festival, she would wear a big tall pointy hat so that you
could see where the beer vendor was above the crowd. And so, when you think of like a Halloween
witch, these are all the visual associations we have with it too. So, I also want to point out
(16:02):
that this isn't my research or my theory. There's been a couple great articles and papers about
this. If you could look those up and cite the names that would be great, I don't have them on top of my
head. Glad to oblige. Sarah is referencing the work of writer and US historian Judith M. Bennett.
Her book, "Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England, Women's Work in a Changing World" does a great job
(16:23):
addressing the things that Sarah is talking about." So, there you go, folks. Happy Halloween!
That witch costume is actually a 15th century pilgrim's outfit or a sexy 15th century pilgrim's outfit
depending on how you roll with your Halloween costumes. This is really cool, but how in the world did
(16:43):
we lose the connection between witches and whiskey? Following along, a thought doctor Goodwin had shared.
If you look at the history, overwhelming the folks who wound up accused of being witches were
women who were disrupting lines of male property inheritance. That's about the money, right?
It's not about religion. It's about all of it. Here's where the real evil comes in.
(17:10):
So women have had a huge part of brewing for most of brewing history. The vast majority of
brewing history has only really been recently that it's fallen into the domain of men.
Women often grew for their families throughout time, but if we're talking historically about
selling beer commercial brewing in Europe, women were also doing that through the 15th and 16th
(17:34):
centuries. And that switched in the 15th century as brewing became a guild profession.
So basically, guilds think of them kind of like a union. It's an organization of people in a certain
craft and they were male dominated. So not only did they become a guild craft, but also different
laws were passed like the purity laws in Germany that put in very specific limits in place on how you
(17:58):
can make your beer and what wouldn't your beer. So the industry was changing and a lot of that
meant that males want to take this over as a profession. And so one of the ways they did this is to
villainize women brewers as witches. So how are they able to do this? Here we go folks.
(18:21):
Well, let's say it is the 13th century and you are a brewer. You're a woman and it is likely that
you are unmarried. You might be a widow or you might be a spinster like me and you
shockingly might enjoy your independence for whatever reason you're not on this traditional path.
(18:41):
Okay. And so one of the ways that you could make money and have a business that was socially
acceptable in this time was to brew.
So basically men who wanted to take over the brewing industry just slandered and gave a bad name
to women brewers and turned the tools of their trade into the symbols that we associate in the modern
(19:02):
day with like a real stereotypical witch. These days we colloquially say witch hunt to describe
campaigns of persecution, which is in of itself kind of controversial. I will say that it certainly
hasn't just been successful, powerful, unique women with cats who have endured these types of
(19:28):
malicious campaigns with that very same objective. Here's Dr. Goodwin again.
If you dig truly not even very much deeper at all, it becomes very quickly evident that, yeah,
capitalism and religion and politics, not that those are separate in any way, if left to their
(19:49):
own devices operate to privilege the folks who are already in power or if they have started losing
any of that power to make sure they get it back right quick. Here's a recent example of this kind
of campaign in our not too distant memory. My brain immediately went to a Dr. Sarah Taber place
because she does a lot of really fascinating work on food cultures and particularly farming
(20:10):
cultures and how they have harmed Asian folks, Black folks, Latinx folks. I had gotten the history
that we all get, which is Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and then everybody agreed that Japanese folks
needed to be incarcerated for the good of the country horrifying in retrospect. The thread that
really rewired my brain was the one that she did on Japanese incarceration in the 1940s overwhelmingly
(20:35):
being a land grab by white farmers who were not making as efficient use of the farmland that they
had available. Farmers of Japanese origin were used to growing in more hostile and more constraining
circumstances, so they were fucking killin it, which meant that they were beaten out the competition
and when they were incarcerated, the white farmers got their land and overwhelmingly the Japanese
(21:03):
farmers never got it back. It's one of those things where the narrative given is, oh it's about
national security, it's about what's doing best for the country. And we continue to see this playing
out to this day. Sorry folks, I know it was supposed to be a fun episode with Halloween, but this is
(21:26):
Debbie Downer. Welcome to my ship. So I guess this Halloween kids, whenever you've done those
witch outfits or watched those horror films, remember, there's nothing horrifying about single women
or cats worth the competition. What is horrifying is the idea that children everywhere are told so many lies.
(21:48):
Chief among them? That being a single person with your own successful home brewing business
and the most beautiful creature to shit in a box as your little best TVC isn't the best thing ever.
For crying out loud, that's the opposite of crazy, lady. That's called "Livin' the Dream".
This is taking us to the present tense. Let's bring it from witches to whiskers to whiskey on a
(22:17):
slightly later note. Now, since the Salem Witch Trials days brewing has become a billion dollar
corporatized industry. And outside of Halloween, I'm not really seeing a lot of witches running
distilleries here. Sarah corroborates this. Whiskey and craft brewing is very, very male-dominated and
(22:41):
very, very white male-dominated too. There was like a black brewer's conference for the first time. So
we're starting to see some shifts in that, but again, it's still very, very male-oriented.
So we have some work to do to get more witch in in the kitchen. I guess we won't solve that now.
It's definitely part of the larger cultural shift necessary to decouple gender from, well,
(23:02):
values, honestly. But it's at least a little promising that the legacy of these brew-ha-brueurs
remains in the form of their furry little apprentices.
You know, almost every brewing distillery has at least one cat for the exact same reasons
that people in Mesopotamian, breurs in Mesopotamian, breurs in medieval, England's add cats too
(23:28):
to keep control of the rodent population in these spaces that are storing a lot of grain.
We can look at the history of cats as being very tied into grain production because of that at the
same time we're starting to produce beer as well and beer with leads to distillates. So they're also
very much tied to the history of alcohol. Yet another wonderful thing about kitties.
(23:52):
For our final guest speaker in this episode, I'm grateful to have had the chance to meet the boss
of two distillery cats who told me what it was like to be, well, a cat boss, I guess. I don't know. Colin,
take it away. Okay, sure. I'm Colin Spulman, I'm co-founder and distiller at Kings County Distillery in
(24:13):
Brooklyn, New York. We can be found on Instagram at Kings County Distillery or on Twitter at Kings
Co-Wiskey. It's worth noting here that the lineage of this brand of booze brings the homebrew
origins to Brooklyn by way of the Scotch Irish immigrants who settled into the Appalachian region
of North America in the 18th century, a heritage close to Colin's heart. I grew up in East Rink and
(24:38):
Tucky, the moonshine part of Kentucky, which is to say the sort of cool mining Appalachian part.
I sort of began to understand that this was my cultural inheritance and I was intrigued by
whiskey and moonshine and that interplay between folk, Appalachian culture. Then this thing that
was happening in Brooklyn, which was this farm table interest in things that were made at a smaller
(25:02):
scale or according to an older tradition, which suited with moonshine very well. Burbin as it is
had become very homogenous and commercialized such that there weren't really a lot of small producers
anymore. So to be able to get into moonshine as a way to rediscover a sort of lost part of
(25:24):
distillation was really how they got started and that required getting a license as a commercial
distiller in 2010 and we've been growing pretty much ever since then. In no small part thanks to the
furry defenders of the grains. Carlos and Jeffy I think were brothers but they were
(25:46):
our distillery cats. They really came maybe not precisely as a result of Hurricane Sandy but when
the Navyyard flooded and including our building one of the side effects after that flood was
hordes of roving rats and mice that had been displaced from wherever they had lived before the flood.
We had a vermin problem in the distillery so we solicited help in the form of Carlos and Jeffy
(26:14):
who lived at the distillery. Carlos was more blood thirsty and more aggressive and got more mice
and then I think Jeffy sort of just kind of like lived off his coattails. Cat tails.
But Jeffy it was his job really to patrol and to scare away mice. It worked and we never really saw
(26:34):
him out. The problem was gone and it was remarkable how successful it was. It was actually the most
humane way to scare off the mice as opposed to trapping them or poisoning them. Sadly neither
Carlos nor Jeffy are at King's County distillery anymore. Carlos passed away maybe three years
(26:59):
after he was hired and then Jeffy basically lived out to retirement and now lives upstate. His
role was really to catch the mice which he did. Which he did.
Thank you Carlos. Jeffy, then all the kiddies who kept the rat and mice effluvia from ruining
(27:22):
our harvests. Cats, the eco-friendly humane pesticide, perfect solution.
And the best kind of colleague with whom to enjoy a stiff drink after a long day at the distillery.
Am I right?
Well,
we have cats and women to thank for whiskey and breweries and we have capitalism and competition
(27:47):
crowding them out of their own craft. Which wasn't actually witchcraft but craft brewing.
Or rather we should say witchcraft brewing.
Huh? Is that work? Alrighty. Let's all raise a glass to the wonderful network of
feline vermin fighters and their stewards working tirelessly to bring joy and maybe a little pain
to our weekends and evenings. And let us all toast the crazy cat lady of the hour.
(28:15):
May this misunderstood, fashion forward entrepreneur and food scientist finally get her due.
Alright everybody. It's been so fun to launch this season with this specific episode which
has been top of mind for everybody since I told them about 60 degrees of cats. I want to thank my excellent
(28:40):
guest speakers, the religious scholar Dr. Megan Goodwin, a wonderful food historian and writer
Zero Lohman and King's County Distillery founder, brewer and author Colin Spoelman
for sharing their time, their deep knowledge and their great humor. While the opinions are my own,
the research and work is theirs. So if you'd like to learn more about them please do check out our
(29:00):
show notes which also includes the references and research that went into this episode.
And as always big thanks to my team which includes my co executive producers Binky and Snuggles
who refuse to wear the very cute sailor outfits that we had made for them.
I want to thank you for sticking with me. We have so much more to talk about this season.
(29:23):
So until next time stay tuned, you beautiful. I appreciate you and remember
everything is connected.
60 degrees of cats is produced, written, edited and hosted by yours truly Captain Kitty,
aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to
(29:45):
linktr.ee/6degreesofcats or look us up on all those social media platforms (@6degreesofcats).
You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient, and the weird.
(30:05):
And of course all the cats we've loved and lost.
We would always come in at night and we had a real established routine that when Matthew was
sort of closing up he would bang on the doors and that was the code to come back in.
Yeah, Snuggie. Why won't you speak to me? [hiss] Oh! Language, Snuggles! [meow] Look, I know you want higher
(00:06):
compensation, but we don't even make money off of this yet. [plaintive meow] Yeah, I know, but we have to follow
the advice that social media person gave me, so you gotta put on this outfit. [meow]
Right fine, no costume this year. Come here and take off that outfit. Even though that hat is really cute.
(00:29):
Welcome back cool cats and cat allies alike, to "6 Degrees of Cats",
the world's best and only cat-themed culture, history and science podcast.
Before I forget, I just wanted to thank all of you so much for the love in season one.
And if you're new to the pod, you definitely should check those episodes out because despite our
(00:49):
journeys in that season from Greece to Rome to Scandinavia, from the early days of the cat human
friendship to the present time, we still have barely scratched the surface of the thread bear
couch that represents all things connected to kitties in this life.
I'm so happy to kick off the second season of "6 Degrees of Dats."
(01:11):
Who am I? Well, if you didn't know already, it is I, Captain Kitty or Amanda B.
And you earlier heard from me and my co-executive producer Snuggles, who is also joined here
by her brother, not sure about the relationship to be honest.
Binky, neither of whom for the record have consented to where the very adorable,
(01:35):
very expensive costumes I got for the occasion. Which is...
Halloween. Ah yes, Halloween. The holiday of frights and scaries. Horrifying things like
ghouls, goblins, demons, team building activities at corporate retreats and stop and chats on the street,
(02:01):
celebrated in North America on October 31st.
(Trick or Treat.) Unlike Valentine's Day, which we talked about in my Cats vs.
Cupid" episode, the first images that come to mind when you think of Halloween are pumpkins,
ghosts, and kitties, who are...
Allegedly...and along with other fun critters like Toads, Frogs, Dogs and ducks,
(02:28):
the friends of...
Satan
A.K.A.
Lucifer
A.K.A.
The Devil.
The guy goes by a lot of names, but enough about him.
Let's talk about his alleged consorts.
Witches.
Or were they?
(02:50):
As a heads up, this episode will include some rather colorful language,
partly because, well, curses and Halloween go hand in hand.
And how apropos.
Halloween comes with pumpkin, scourcing is the spice of language, don't you think?
No way since both a weapon ingredient and a flavoring agent.
I digress. Back to witches.
(03:12):
So, Binky, what comes to mind when you think of a witch? [meow]
Ha ha, very funny. Be serious now, not me.
Okay. Nature? [meow]
Herbs?
Goddess? [meow]
Oh wait, no no no, sorry Binky.
I didn't mean modern practitioners of Wicca and other religions that call their followers witches.
(03:36):
Good point.
Thanks for reminding me about that.
And modern witches, thanks for your grace.
We're gonna be talking actually about the image of alleged witches that come into the
pop culture space from places like Disney and stuff.
Binky? Pull up some images here. [typing sounds]
Okay, here we are.
All right.
(03:56):
You have an old woman.
She loves alone.
She has kind of wild hair.
No comment on her complexion and profile.
That's kind of rude. [mew]
She wears all black.
She has kind of a strange head on.
Oh and there's a large black cauldron.
(04:16):
Oh.
Something's looking back at us.
In the corner of that picture.
Oh, kitties.
Excuse me.
She has a few cats.
I think she's a quote unquote crazy cat lady.
That's what we're here to talk about.
(04:38):
Both witches and cat ladies to this date have a bit of a branding problem
As our guest from season one, the trap king himself, Sterling Davis has acknowledged.
I would gather the volunteers and get them get volunteers to help me
and differ in the colonies, different areas.
And it was always women.
(04:59):
It would only be women.
And we start telling them, "But you know Sterling, I want to help.
I want to do this, but I get cursed out."
And that was when I was thinking to myself, "Oh, I need to make her cool."
She's not just some crazy cat lady.
She's actually helping.
So that's what we're here to talk about.
(05:19):
The origins of the quote unquote crazy cat lady.
Okay, that's enough, thank you.
Which, like the cauldron in the visual I just described, is a total crock of shit.
Look.
The tagline, "Crazy Cat Lady" may seem harmless.
I mean, we touched on this in our Father's Day episode.
(05:42):
The insidious gender stereotypes that continue to, uh,
dog our societies and make owning cats a thing that women,
and exclusively women, do alone.
Which is somehow supposed to be a funny visual, whatever.
When it comes to witches, well, those Disney images didn't come from nowhere.
(06:03):
Nor did the stigma we attached to people who look and act like...
that.
I'm thinking specifically of the Salem Witch Trials.
Which were held in the late 17th century in Salem, Massachusetts.
The Salem Witch Trials are pretty well documented and
ensconced in the canon of American literature,
(06:26):
thanks to playwright Arthur Miller's incredible work, "The Crucible".
There are so many podcasts and books out there on the witch trials,
and all the horrible things that were done to those folks accused of being witches.
I'll include a few in the show notes for you to check out.
So, about all them witches.
(06:46):
Why were these people seen to be agents of the devil?
Well, often it was specifically...
Women doing femininity wrong, women doing relationships and sex wrong,
women doing religion wrong, and women doing like people in wrong.
(07:07):
The historical association of witches with cats perfectly said by our first expert.
I am Dr. Megan Goodwin. I'm the author of "Abusing Religion", which is a book about religion and
abuse, like it says in the title, and the co-host and co-producer of "Keeping It 101:
A Killjoy's Introduction to Religion" podcast. I do media and tech consulting
(07:30):
for the Crossroads Project at Princeton, which is a loose-funded project that platforms and
raises the profile of scholars, activists, community organizers, artists, and teachers who focus on
Black, African-American and African religions. By the time this comes out, I guess I will
officially be co-president of the Bardo Institute for Religion and Public Policy.
(07:52):
It will come as no surprise to you returning listeners that religion resurfaces this season.
Recall our episode on Freya's Cats.
Our Norse folklore expert, Terry Gunnell, hinted at a pattern in which women in roles of moral or
structural authority found themselves pushed further and further aside as time progressed.
(08:15):
Same game, different name. So this brings us back to who gets protected as
validly religious and who gets left out, right? Because the folks who found themselves on the other
side of, say, which craft accusations are used to teach our witches' closet a northeastern, so this is
local history. Who when folks get accused of being witches overwhelmingly, particularly on this
(08:41):
continent? The apparatus that is used to convict them of that is both religious and scientific. There's
not a space in between those categories at this time. And we know that to this date, both religion and
science are brought into many strong discussions about how to "woman" correctly. What the accusations
are about science and religion on their face. And of course, cats got caught in the crosshairs of
(09:08):
that as well. It's something we experience to this day because of that, quote-unquote "crazy cat
lady stereotype" - a cultural and it turns out historic trope. One that can sometimes be intended
to land light hard and light. I mean, I'm gonna own that honorary title here and there.
But it is often maliciously directed at, well, people perceive to be doing femininity wrong
(09:35):
as Dr. Goodwin put it earlier. Which she experienced firsthand.
At a really unpleasant interaction with the dude at a gas station a couple of years ago,
where he was just taking up all of the space and I was trying to get around him so that I could
fuel my car. And I don't remember what I said, but he like drove off and was like, say hi to your cats for me.
(09:58):
I'm a scholar of rhetoric and gender and sexuality and it took about three milliseconds to realize
that what he was saying when he said, say hi to your cats is you're a fucking dick. The assumption
that women with cats are sexually wrong, gendered in a way that is not allowed in public, that they
(10:20):
must be alone, that they must be miserable. That has stuck with me and it has been interesting
thinking about the ways that cats stand in for, I think, if not rebelliousness, at least kind of
stubborn individuality and a refusal to do things on other people or species terms.
Yeah, unfortunately not obeying or complying is a thing that definitely gets under many people
(10:47):
skin, especially those who are used to everyone going along with what they say for whatever reason.
So of course when it came to an older woman not doing the whole husband, kids, church,
looking hot for the man-folk in town thing, you're gonna have some taking personal offense for
that stuff even though it's really not their business. But seriously folks, what exactly was it about
(11:11):
their witchy business? That's specifically, God, folks, hackles so raised that it became a matter
of life and death. Well, hold on to your hats. We'll talk more about this after the break.
(11:40):
Before the break, the wonderful Dr. Megan Goodwin oriented us on the historic and systemic
reasons that some women were designated witches and treated very brutally as an understatement.
And now the time has come. Gather around and perhaps make yourself a nice hot taughty if you are
(12:02):
of the alcohol persuasion, which for the record is lemon tea - cloves optional - and whiskey.
Whiskey for ye tea-tolet--
Tea tockles? Teetotalers.
...goes back 4,000 years at least. According to the aptly named the Scotch whiskey experience website,
(12:26):
the word whiskey comes from the word "usquebaugh." I will spell that out in the show notes, which is
an anglicized version of the term "uisge beatha." From middle Irish and Scotch, Gaelic, which literally means
"water of life." According to my research, whiskey was either originated by a bunch of bored monks
(12:51):
who brought the tradition to the Scottish Highlands, or it was discovered and perfected by the people
themselves in their homes. And it's made of barley, which is a grain.
Greens! Remember how we talked about the grain trade in season one with Dr. Melinda Zeder?
We touched on domestication, both of animals and plants. Now, it's time to think about
(13:19):
more than just bread when it comes to grains. Or rather, who brought in the dough from the drink,
at least for a while? Take it from our second guest of this episode.
My name is Sarah Lohman. I am a culinary historian and I am author of the book "Eight Flavors,
(13:40):
the Untold Story of American Cuisine." You can get on top of everything at SarahLohman.com. That's
links to all my good stuff. My newsletter is my upcoming events, my Patreon. Also if you
just search for me, SarahLohman, Lohman, L-O-H-M-A-N, you will find me as well.
In my discussion with Sarah, I asked her, "What do witches have to do with whiskey?"
(14:03):
And what does this all have to do with this crazy cat lady stuff we talked about earlier?
I think we need to go take a look at the history of labor and work.
Throughout most of history, women were the brewers because if we're talking about traditional
divisions of labor before industrial revolution, men were out there doing the farming. They were
(14:28):
growing the crops, they were growing the animals, they were doing all of that labor, and women were
doing all of the processing. Maybe they were doing some witchering certainly, but they were taking
the whole animal and preserving it and cooking it and making sausages and doing all of that.
So, growing falls under that in that they're not out there growing the grain but they're taking the
grain and processing it. So, women were the commercial brewers up until like the 15th century,
(14:55):
and then women were doing the majority of the home brewing up through the middle of the 19th century
in America anyway. And here's where the witches come in.
So, we've got a single woman, maybe older. She's got a cast, at least one cover,
(15:15):
keep down the rooted population. (This continues to describe my current life.)
She needs a big cast iron vessel to boil the wort in to essentially prepare the
beer for fermentation. So, she's got a big old cast iron pot that she's stirring around.
Also, when the beer is finished and ready for sale, it was traditional to hang a broom over the
(15:37):
front door of where she lived. It was like the signpost that said, hey, the beer is ready to come
and buy it, but if she was selling out of festival, she would wear a big tall pointy hat so that you
could see where the beer vendor was above the crowd. And so, when you think of like a Halloween
witch, these are all the visual associations we have with it too. So, I also want to point out
(16:02):
that this isn't my research or my theory. There's been a couple great articles and papers about
this. If you could look those up and cite the names that would be great, I don't have them on top of my
head. Glad to oblige. Sarah is referencing the work of writer and US historian Judith M. Bennett.
Her book, "Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England, Women's Work in a Changing World" does a great job
(16:23):
addressing the things that Sarah is talking about." So, there you go, folks. Happy Halloween!
That witch costume is actually a 15th century pilgrim's outfit or a sexy 15th century pilgrim's outfit
depending on how you roll with your Halloween costumes. This is really cool, but how in the world did
(16:43):
we lose the connection between witches and whiskey? Following along, a thought doctor Goodwin had shared.
If you look at the history, overwhelming the folks who wound up accused of being witches were
women who were disrupting lines of male property inheritance. That's about the money, right?
It's not about religion. It's about all of it. Here's where the real evil comes in.
(17:10):
So women have had a huge part of brewing for most of brewing history. The vast majority of
brewing history has only really been recently that it's fallen into the domain of men.
Women often grew for their families throughout time, but if we're talking historically about
selling beer commercial brewing in Europe, women were also doing that through the 15th and 16th
(17:34):
centuries. And that switched in the 15th century as brewing became a guild profession.
So basically, guilds think of them kind of like a union. It's an organization of people in a certain
craft and they were male dominated. So not only did they become a guild craft, but also different
laws were passed like the purity laws in Germany that put in very specific limits in place on how you
(17:58):
can make your beer and what wouldn't your beer. So the industry was changing and a lot of that
meant that males want to take this over as a profession. And so one of the ways they did this is to
villainize women brewers as witches. So how are they able to do this? Here we go folks.
(18:21):
Well, let's say it is the 13th century and you are a brewer. You're a woman and it is likely that
you are unmarried. You might be a widow or you might be a spinster like me and you
shockingly might enjoy your independence for whatever reason you're not on this traditional path.
(18:41):
Okay. And so one of the ways that you could make money and have a business that was socially
acceptable in this time was to brew.
So basically men who wanted to take over the brewing industry just slandered and gave a bad name
to women brewers and turned the tools of their trade into the symbols that we associate in the modern
(19:02):
day with like a real stereotypical witch. These days we colloquially say witch hunt to describe
campaigns of persecution, which is in of itself kind of controversial. I will say that it certainly
hasn't just been successful, powerful, unique women with cats who have endured these types of
(19:28):
malicious campaigns with that very same objective. Here's Dr. Goodwin again.
If you dig truly not even very much deeper at all, it becomes very quickly evident that, yeah,
capitalism and religion and politics, not that those are separate in any way, if left to their
(19:49):
own devices operate to privilege the folks who are already in power or if they have started losing
any of that power to make sure they get it back right quick. Here's a recent example of this kind
of campaign in our not too distant memory. My brain immediately went to a Dr. Sarah Taber place
because she does a lot of really fascinating work on food cultures and particularly farming
(20:10):
cultures and how they have harmed Asian folks, Black folks, Latinx folks. I had gotten the history
that we all get, which is Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and then everybody agreed that Japanese folks
needed to be incarcerated for the good of the country horrifying in retrospect. The thread that
really rewired my brain was the one that she did on Japanese incarceration in the 1940s overwhelmingly
(20:35):
being a land grab by white farmers who were not making as efficient use of the farmland that they
had available. Farmers of Japanese origin were used to growing in more hostile and more constraining
circumstances, so they were fucking killin it, which meant that they were beaten out the competition
and when they were incarcerated, the white farmers got their land and overwhelmingly the Japanese
(21:03):
farmers never got it back. It's one of those things where the narrative given is, oh it's about
national security, it's about what's doing best for the country. And we continue to see this playing
out to this day. Sorry folks, I know it was supposed to be a fun episode with Halloween, but this is
(21:26):
Debbie Downer. Welcome to my ship. So I guess this Halloween kids, whenever you've done those
witch outfits or watched those horror films, remember, there's nothing horrifying about single women
or cats worth the competition. What is horrifying is the idea that children everywhere are told so many lies.
(21:48):
Chief among them? That being a single person with your own successful home brewing business
and the most beautiful creature to shit in a box as your little best TVC isn't the best thing ever.
For crying out loud, that's the opposite of crazy, lady. That's called "Livin' the Dream".
This is taking us to the present tense. Let's bring it from witches to whiskers to whiskey on a
(22:17):
slightly later note. Now, since the Salem Witch Trials days brewing has become a billion dollar
corporatized industry. And outside of Halloween, I'm not really seeing a lot of witches running
distilleries here. Sarah corroborates this. Whiskey and craft brewing is very, very male-dominated and
(22:41):
very, very white male-dominated too. There was like a black brewer's conference for the first time. So
we're starting to see some shifts in that, but again, it's still very, very male-oriented.
So we have some work to do to get more witch in in the kitchen. I guess we won't solve that now.
It's definitely part of the larger cultural shift necessary to decouple gender from, well,
(23:02):
values, honestly. But it's at least a little promising that the legacy of these brew-ha-brueurs
remains in the form of their furry little apprentices.
You know, almost every brewing distillery has at least one cat for the exact same reasons
that people in Mesopotamian, breurs in Mesopotamian, breurs in medieval, England's add cats too
(23:28):
to keep control of the rodent population in these spaces that are storing a lot of grain.
We can look at the history of cats as being very tied into grain production because of that at the
same time we're starting to produce beer as well and beer with leads to distillates. So they're also
very much tied to the history of alcohol. Yet another wonderful thing about kitties.
(23:52):
For our final guest speaker in this episode, I'm grateful to have had the chance to meet the boss
of two distillery cats who told me what it was like to be, well, a cat boss, I guess. I don't know. Colin,
take it away. Okay, sure. I'm Colin Spulman, I'm co-founder and distiller at Kings County Distillery in
(24:13):
Brooklyn, New York. We can be found on Instagram at Kings County Distillery or on Twitter at Kings
Co-Wiskey. It's worth noting here that the lineage of this brand of booze brings the homebrew
origins to Brooklyn by way of the Scotch Irish immigrants who settled into the Appalachian region
of North America in the 18th century, a heritage close to Colin's heart. I grew up in East Rink and
(24:38):
Tucky, the moonshine part of Kentucky, which is to say the sort of cool mining Appalachian part.
I sort of began to understand that this was my cultural inheritance and I was intrigued by
whiskey and moonshine and that interplay between folk, Appalachian culture. Then this thing that
was happening in Brooklyn, which was this farm table interest in things that were made at a smaller
(25:02):
scale or according to an older tradition, which suited with moonshine very well. Burbin as it is
had become very homogenous and commercialized such that there weren't really a lot of small producers
anymore. So to be able to get into moonshine as a way to rediscover a sort of lost part of
(25:24):
distillation was really how they got started and that required getting a license as a commercial
distiller in 2010 and we've been growing pretty much ever since then. In no small part thanks to the
furry defenders of the grains. Carlos and Jeffy I think were brothers but they were
(25:46):
our distillery cats. They really came maybe not precisely as a result of Hurricane Sandy but when
the Navyyard flooded and including our building one of the side effects after that flood was
hordes of roving rats and mice that had been displaced from wherever they had lived before the flood.
We had a vermin problem in the distillery so we solicited help in the form of Carlos and Jeffy
(26:14):
who lived at the distillery. Carlos was more blood thirsty and more aggressive and got more mice
and then I think Jeffy sort of just kind of like lived off his coattails. Cat tails.
But Jeffy it was his job really to patrol and to scare away mice. It worked and we never really saw
(26:34):
him out. The problem was gone and it was remarkable how successful it was. It was actually the most
humane way to scare off the mice as opposed to trapping them or poisoning them. Sadly neither
Carlos nor Jeffy are at King's County distillery anymore. Carlos passed away maybe three years
(26:59):
after he was hired and then Jeffy basically lived out to retirement and now lives upstate. His
role was really to catch the mice which he did. Which he did.
Thank you Carlos. Jeffy, then all the kiddies who kept the rat and mice effluvia from ruining
(27:22):
our harvests. Cats, the eco-friendly humane pesticide, perfect solution.
And the best kind of colleague with whom to enjoy a stiff drink after a long day at the distillery.
Am I right?
Well,
we have cats and women to thank for whiskey and breweries and we have capitalism and competition
(27:47):
crowding them out of their own craft. Which wasn't actually witchcraft but craft brewing.
Or rather we should say witchcraft brewing.
Huh? Is that work? Alrighty. Let's all raise a glass to the wonderful network of
feline vermin fighters and their stewards working tirelessly to bring joy and maybe a little pain
to our weekends and evenings. And let us all toast the crazy cat lady of the hour.
(28:15):
May this misunderstood, fashion forward entrepreneur and food scientist finally get her due.
Alright everybody. It's been so fun to launch this season with this specific episode which
has been top of mind for everybody since I told them about 60 degrees of cats. I want to thank my excellent
(28:40):
guest speakers, the religious scholar Dr. Megan Goodwin, a wonderful food historian and writer
Zero Lohman and King's County Distillery founder, brewer and author Colin Spoelman
for sharing their time, their deep knowledge and their great humor. While the opinions are my own,
the research and work is theirs. So if you'd like to learn more about them please do check out our
(29:00):
show notes which also includes the references and research that went into this episode.
And as always big thanks to my team which includes my co executive producers Binky and Snuggles
who refuse to wear the very cute sailor outfits that we had made for them.
I want to thank you for sticking with me. We have so much more to talk about this season.
(29:23):
So until next time stay tuned, you beautiful. I appreciate you and remember
everything is connected.
60 degrees of cats is produced, written, edited and hosted by yours truly Captain Kitty,
aka Amanda B. Please subscribe to our mailing list by going to
(29:45):
linktr.ee/6degreesofcats or look us up on all those social media platforms (@6degreesofcats).
You'll be first in line for the extra audio and more treats if you connect with us there.
All episodes are dedicated to the misunderstood, the marginalized, the resilient, and the weird.
(30:05):
And of course all the cats we've loved and lost.
We would always come in at night and we had a real established routine that when Matthew was
sort of closing up he would bang on the doors and that was the code to come back in.
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