My guest today is the writer and archeologist Stone Age Herbalist, author of the Grey Goose Chronicles substack, and also the book Berserkers, Cannibals & Shamans: Essays in Dissident Anthropology. 

We started with a discussion of the mystery of the paleolithic Venus figurines: protective amulets, matriarchal symbols, pornographic objects? No one knows for certain what they were intended for, but these objects have been the focus of intense interest ever since their discovery in the nineteenth century. 

In the extended part of the episode we moved on to an entirely different time and place: contemporary Ghana. Specifically, Ghanaian ideas about witchcraft, and indeed Subsaharan African ideas about witchcraft more generally.