Welcome to easy stories in English, the podcast that will take your English from ok to good and from good to great.
I am Ariel Goodbody, your host for this show.
Today's story is for pre intermediate learners.
The name of the story is the voice of reason.
You can find a transcript of the episodes@easystoriesinenglish.com voice that's easystoriesinenglish.com voice voice v o I C E there.
You can also download the episode as a PDF.
Today's story is something a bit different.
A while ago I read a book, Caliban and the Witch, which gave me the idea for this story.
Caliban and the Witch is about the witch trials in medieval Europe.
A witch w I T C h is an evil woman, a very bad woman who does magic.
Witches go.
They have black cats as pets, they wear big black hats and they fly on broomsticks.
In Harry Potter, Hermione is a very successful witch.
The musical Wicked, which is one of my favourite musicals, is about witches.
The witch trials were a time in Europe when people thought that witches were hiding in many places, and so they tried to find the witches and killed them.
Of course, many people were called witches who were just normal people.
If people didn't like a certain woman, they would say she was a witch, have a witch trial, and then she would be killed.
Caliban and the witch gives a very good history of the witch trials and argues that they were a way to stop women from getting economic power.
Women were slowly becoming more independent in medieval Europe in the Middle Ages, and so the witch trials were used to stop this.
Anyway, this story isn't actually about witches.