She’ll put a spell on you

Witch BBC Radio 4 Spellcaster: The Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried Wondery History’s Secret Heroes, With Helena Bonham Carter

At the centre of this is a deeply flawed individual who makes others believe he’s some sort of messiah

India Rakusen, host of the excellent 28ish Days Later, which looked at the process of menstruation day by day, is back on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. Once again, she’s chatting lady stuff. Be scared, chaps! Yeah, you’d better be: because Rakusen is talking about – and to – witches.

I’ve heard the first three episodes of Witch, and the ones Rakusen encounters are a long way from claw-fingered, blackrobed pointy hats. Instead, they’re normal-ish young women who’ve simply continued the spells and incantations of childhood. One burns unwanted bills and invitations in a May Day ritual. Another talks Rakusen through her teas (“That’s very poisonous! It’s nightshade; don’t even open the jar”). A wicca follower mentions they schedule their projects according to the waxing and waning of the moon. Everyone’s having a lovely time.

But life wasn’t always so good for a witch. In Edinburgh, Claire Mitchell KC is leading a campaign for the city to acknowledge that 2,500 innocent people – mostly women – were accused, tortured and killed for witchcraft from the 1560s onwards. We hear about the 1486 Malleus Maleficarum – the Hammer of the Witches – a madly sexist, initially ridiculed text that gradually gained respect and somehow got entwined with the papal bull of 1484, so that killing witches appeared to be church-approved. Then there’s Daemonologie, written in 1597 by King James VI of Scotland, later James I of England. His wife and daughter had been endangered in a storm at sea and he blamed witches. Historian Ronald Hutton says that, actually, when it came to witch-killing, the UK divided along Anglo-Saxon/Celtic lines: Wales and the Scottish Highlands on one side, England and the lowlands on the other. The Celts believed in fairies and so thought witches were OK; the Anglo-Saxons, influenced by Germany, did not.

As you can tell, there’s a lot of highly interesting research in this series. Prepare to have your cynical mind expanded. It helps that Rakusen is an excellent presenter. Her scripts are a delight: beautifully written and delivered. You sense that she really hopes that she too is a witch. An understandable desire: who hasn’t wanted the ability to point a finger at an enemy and turn them into a toad? The non-magic world has a way of wearing women down. I’ll be happy if Rakusen turns out witchy; but I hope that even if she does, she continues to weave her audio magic.

Here’s another Spellcaster: the title of Wondery’s new schadenfraud series. And, yes, I mean schaden-fraud: it’s my label for that subset of true crime podcasts in which a charismatic huckster convinces crowds to part with their money, proceeds to soar to the top by riding those billions, and then… crashes. Think The Dropout, about Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes; WeCrashed, about Adam Neumann and WeWork; The Missing Crypto Queen, about Ruja Ignatova. These podcasts have a tendency to end up as Netflix series.

Spellcaster is about crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried. Which, let’s face it, is an amazing name for a crypto bro. A fried banker. Or, given the American pronunciation of Fried, a freed banker. Either way, a money guy without the usual restraints. Anyway, just over a year ago, Bankman-Fried (right) was seen as the future of crypto-currency. He had two companies: FTX (a crypto exchange platform) and Alameda Research (a crypto trading company). The ridiculous profits they made were, said BankmanFried, to be invested into ethical projects. For – lo! – he was making money to save the world.

Bloomberg reporter Hannah Miller is our host, and she’s a good one: not only an excellent journalist but someone with a proper “in” to the story. Via a bachelorette party she gets to know Caroline Ellison, Bankman-Fried’s sometime girlfriend and head of Alameda Research. Miller interviews her and feels that something is off…

Crypto is not something I’m interested in. (It really does remind me of dark magic: it only works if you believe it does.) But Miller, along with fellow reporters Max Chafkin and Annie Massa, is wise enough to make this podcast a story about people, rather than witchy money. And – surprise! – at the centre of this tale is a deeply flawed individual who makes others believe he’s some sort of messiah. Honestly, if I were a financial adviser, I’d make every one of my clients listen to a schaden-fraud podcast series before opening their wallet. Everyone would be richer – though we’d have fewer excellent stories such as this one to enjoy.

Speaking of brilliant stories, Helena Bonham Carter has one about a fascinating spy. In History’s Secret Heroes, she turns her script-reading skills to good effect, recounting tales of derring-do from the second world war. Written by the clever historian and author Alex von Tunzelmann, these stories are true and fabulous. First up is Virginia Hall, a posh American who moved to Izmir, where she managed to blow her own foot off in a shooting accident. To save her life, her left leg was amputated below the knee. This, as you might surmise, was a turning point in Hall’s life. But instead of taking it easy, she resolved to live adventurously and ended up as a spy in Vichy France, masterminding the breakout of prisoners in a more efficient, less soil-down-trousers Great Escape.

Bonham Carter is a lovely reader, fruity and upbeat, propelling the story along without showboating. If the rest of the episodes are as fun as this one, it will be a thoroughly enjoyable series.