Fighting Witches to Save the Harvest
The History of Fresh ProduceAudio · 27th Oct 2026 · 56m
Who were the benandanti, the “good walkers” of sixteenth-century Italy who claimed their spirits left their bodies at night to battle witches, armed with stalks of fennel, in order to save the harvest? Why did the men who believed they were defending Christendom find themselves being interrogated by the Inquisition? And how did a man’s claim to have been sent by an angel become the very thing that condemned him?
Join John and Patrick as they travel to the villages of Friuli to uncover one of the strangest chapters in the history of food — a story of grain, vineyards and famine, of miscarried healing and neighbours turned against one another, and of what happens when people who say they protect the harvest are told, by the authorities, that they are the enemy.
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