Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 418 - A Brief(ish) History of Torture

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

When did we meatsacks start torturing one another? How did we do it? How have torture methods changed over the years, and what are some of the worst torture methods of all time? Where does the "music" of Yoko Ono fit into all this? Covering so much strange information today.Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. And you get the download link for my secret standup album, Feel the Heat.

Let's play a little game of would you rather. If you were getting tortured and killed, would you rather be flayed alive, your skin, little strip by little strip, meticulously sliced off, starting with your scalp, then your face, then your neck, shoulders, arms, and stomach, and well you're probably dead by now. Or you might as well be. You've at least had a complete psychotic break from all the pain and are about To die or would you rather be slowly and steadily ripped apart on the rack your limbs? Wrench from your body your tendons growing more and more taut until they finally can't stretch anymore, and they simply snap

Okay, next question What if you were a prisoner of war how much torture could you endure? Before you told your captors whatever they wanted to know? Would you be able to withstand being slowly eaten alive by hungry rats? Their tiny sharp claws burrowing into your bowels, their needlepoint teeth gnawing on your exposed tendons, their oily fur dragging against the spillage of your blood and bone? How much could you take of literally spilling your guts before you figuratively spilled your guts? What if you were locked in a cage too short for you to fully

stand up in but not wide enough for you to be able to sit down? How many minutes, hours, days, weeks could you crouch there before you said whatever you needed to say or did whatever you needed to do to be released? Or what if instead of being cramped in a small cage you were being hung by your wrists with your arms behind your back in a dark dingy cell. Or chained down on your back with a never-ending stream of water droplets pelting your forehead. Or deprived of sleep for days on end. What do you think would break you the quickest? This is the type of territory we're exploring today as we delve into humanity's fascinating and grotesque history of torture. More specifically, we'll be looking at one type of torture, the kind that is executed by some sort of governing body, be it the actual government,

or the church, or some other official power. From the violent forms of punishment implemented by the Neo-Assyrians in ancient Mesopotamiaia to the torture resistance training endured by soldiers in the modern-day US military will be covering so much Pain in a historical dark and dirty skin peeling rat feeding crucifying waterboarding What the hell is scaphism and did that window into literal hell actually happen to people? Addition of time suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins the master sucker groundskeeper at the slave masters 18 hole mini golf BDSM extravaganza at 83rd Metcalf in Kansas City next to Tako Nako

possible descendant of Alexander motorboat Hamilton and you are listening to time suck that a lot of crazy painful trivia to share with you today, but first Very fun free merch announcement. it's time for our annual Bad Magic Street Team year 7 hot damn and hail Nimrod just like with previous years a fun picture of a Bad Magic sticker slapped somewhere interesting will win one lucky person a $200 Bad Magic merch credit as usual there will be 500 free sticker packs with 10 stickers each available you only pay for shipping and it is first come first serve and once they're gone That is it. Please limit yourself to one sticker pack so people can join the more people can join in the fun

Once you receive your stickers All you have to do is slap them all over the place snap a picture of where you put them and then post that picture On Instagram and Facebook or just one you don't't have to do both. Using the hashtag badmagicstreetteam. That's the hashtag badmagicstreetteam and then you tag us and that's it. The goal is to have fun with this. Hopefully we get some new listeners as well but mostly it's just for fun. I just love seeing our stickers out in the wild. Let's keep growing this bad magic community. One fun sticker at a time and in addition to the normal 500 sticker packs this year we also have limited edition merch to wear as you rep the greatest podcasts in the

universe hopefully or maybe like top 10 at least or something you can choose from Bad Magic Street Team branded merch and Time Suck and Scared to Death's Pacific Street Team gear there's tees hoodies water bottles and more on September 2nd at noon Pacific Time will drop all the street team merch for you to browse and purchase ahead of time and then on September 16th at noon Pacific time will drop all the Street Team merch for you to browse and purchase ahead of time and then on September 16th at noon Pacific time, that's when the sticker packs themselves go live. And once they're gone again, they are gone. And then one more quick thing, the Time Suck collectible cards are back.

Hell yeah. And with two new sets, you can now purchase volumes one through four in the store featuring illustrations from Sucker Raymond Roll. He's fantastic. We now have cards for episodes one through 200. Can you believe it? Head on over and check that out. Those cards release early for space lizards August 29th and for everyone else on September 2nd and when those are gone they're also gone. Limited edition. And now quick note on today's topic. Yes over the years we have

touched on some of the methods of torture I will be sharing today in previous episodes said in Rome or the Dark Ages or the Spanish Inquisition even in the recent Taiping rebellion episode we covered some torture right Ling Cha death by a thousand cuts and I'm sure I've touched on historical torture methods in other episodes but we've never focused exclusively on torture on the history of torture itself, until now. It may seem like a dumb question, but let's ask it anyway. What exactly is torture? Well, according to the United Nations, current definition of torture is,

Any act causing physical or mental harm to someone for the purpose of attaining information or punishment. Examples of torture include someone being cut, hit, electrocuted, deprived of oxygen, sexually assaulted, restrained for excessive periods of time, being forced to listen to bagpipe music, specifically solos for more than 30 seconds, being forced to listen to any music ever recorded by Yoko Ono for more than 10 seconds, being forced to listen to any music every quarter by Yoko Ono for more than 10 seconds, or being forced to watch Bob Dylan perform his songs live for even one second. Kidding. Kidding about the UN defining torture that way,

not about bagpipe solos, Yoko Ono, or watching Bob Dylan perform live being torture. All of that being played at the same time? Oh ho ho! True torture. You doubt me? I'll prove it. Let's start with some back pipe. How's that hitting you? I had you listen to that for just hours on end. You know what? Let's just add on top of that a little bit of yoko- Oh no. Oh yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And let's throw some Bob Dylan into this cacophony.

Mmm-hmm. That's torture! Tell me what you- tell me what I need to know! And that's enough. That really was torture. This is how the UN actually defines torture. That really was torture. This is how the UN actually defines torture. Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, pushing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the

instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity, that is the longest sentence ever, it does not include pain or suffering arising only from inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. So in other words, torture as we are exploring it today is the act of physically or mentally harming another person as either a way to get information out of them or as a form of punishment for a crime and or wrongdoing they committed or we think they might have committed. And in this way, the quote unquote music of Yoko Ono, widow of John Lennon, is it actually is torture. It actually was literally used as a form

of torture on prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where members of the US military and the CIA committed war crimes and human rights violations on detainees and part of that was literally just playing them this kind of shit. Fucking being locked in a room. Listen to this shit. Oh God. That is the sound of the Beatles being destroyed. Next question.

Would you rather be skinned alive or left in a locked room with no food or water and just playing that fucking terrible Horrible fucking shit on like rock rock concert decibels Just this stuff Sounds like she's saying why why is right? Why are you doing that? Why are you ever doing that? Sounds like she's saying why. Why is right? Why are you doing that? Why are you ever doing that? Torture in the way the UN defined it has been around since well since uh society has Probably a bit longer and I imagine some caveman torture was going down to get ugg to tell Bort or whoever

Where he'd hidden some shiny rocks or some extra mammoth meat or something Tell us where the mammoth meat is B, or you get the stone to the dome again. Torture has existed throughout all of recorded human history, and though the methods of torture have changed, the when it's used, how it's used, why it's used, and against who it is used has remained essentially the same. According to one study, no matter the people or the period in time, all forms of torture throughout history share the following

four major characteristics. Number one, torture is most commonly used against people who are not full members of a society such as slaves, foreigners, prisoners of war, and members of racial, ethnic, and religious outsider groups. Number two, torture is used more rarely against members or citizens of a society. In this case, two special conditions must apply. 1. After a finding of probable guilt. 2. Torture is only used in cases of what are considered by said society to be extremely

serious crimes, particularly heresy and treason. 3. Torture is more commonly used when a government or society perceives itself to be under threat. Makes sense. I especially like that they use the word perceived, right? The government might not actually be under threats, but a paranoid ruler, I'm thinking of Pol Pot with Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, Joseph Stalin with the USSR, they might think they're under threat. And have people tortured they think might be out to get them. And finally, number four, the rise of human rights norms and the increase in the number of liberal democratic states have had a significant impact in reducing torture. Liberal democratic

states do sometimes engage in torture, but do so much less often than other states and almost never use torture against their own citizens. When they do engage in torture it is primarily against non-citizens and under conditions of extreme threat such as in response to terrorist attacks. As I mentioned earlier torture as we will be exploring it today can be designated into two categories, penal and judicial. Penal torture is the use of torture as a form of punishment for some supposed or proven wrongdoing, be it against God, the government, or some other holier-than-thou entity. Oftentimes, as we will see in the timeline, penal torture is used as a prelude to execution,

a little appetizer of mutilation before the main course of death, if you will. Judicial torture, on the other hand, is the use of torture to extract information from unwilling subjects. The goal of judicial torture is not to kill the person, per se, but to subject them to so much pain and suffering they have almost no choice but to tell you what you gotta know, or what they think you want to hear. Of course there's also a third category of torture. Throughout history there have been people, many of whom we have met right here on Time Suck, who capture, torture, and occasionally murder innocent victims simply because they're sick fucks and they get off. Sometimes literally getting off, ejaculating, uh, from hurting others.

Flashing on Bob Burdell of the Kansas City But right now. Holy shit, that guy loved to hurt people. And of course, what this big deal? Andre Chikatilo. Oh, attracted to pain. Today we will not be talking about those freaks. Instead, we are sticking to torture that is sanctioned by the authority of a governing body or person. A person who is also often a freak. Or a governing body composed of at least some freaks. Not every form of judicial or penal torture we'll be looking at today was justified. In fact most of it was not, but it was at least all done under the guise of government and or religious authority. Because we're telling Western humanity's story of

torture mostly chronologically, the bulk of today's episode is going to take place in our time-sucked timeline. And I say Western because it is difficult to find as an English speaker a lot of information on Eastern methods of torture historically that are substantially different than Western sources. Like when I talk about torture devices like the Iraq there were equivalents in many Asian nations like Imperial China and Imperial Japan. Turns out there are only so many ways you can chop, burn, bash, bend people up. And also there are so many slight deviations on torture. I don't want to get too repetitive.

And finally every time I've looked into torture methods over the years here on Time Suck I find more new examples of shit I've never heard of before. They don't always show up easily in Googleable lists. Just saying that to let you know that this is not a truly comprehensive list, but we're gonna cover plenty We'll start our journey around 3000 BCE in the age of antiquity and make our way up through the Various periods of history until we reach to reach today's America at each stop on our timeline I'll be covering the most widely used or famous torture devices from that period and once we reach the 20th century I'll also be adding a few major world events that impacted our modern day laws surrounding the use of torture. And now are you ready to jump into the timeline?

Huh, I uh, I don't feel like you are. Is there, is there something you're not uh, not telling me? Something you're hiding? What the fuck are you hiding? Come on, just tell me what you are fucking hiding and we can start the timeline. Oh, okay. Not gonna talk? Well, maybe this will help loosen your tongue. Tell me! Tell me what I fucking want to know! You made me do this! You made me do this because you're not behaving like you should be! Don't make me have the back pipe to do it again! Let's hope we can get through this without any further incidents. Dating all the way back to the age of antiquity.

Actually before I say that, sorry, I have the way back to the age of antiquity, which can be loosely described as lasting from 3000 BCE to the 4th century CE, torture was being used as both a form of punishment and interrogation. Compared to some of the more elaborate devices we'll be looking at today, the primary form of torture in the age of antiquity was pretty simple and straightforward. Impalement. Simple and brutal. Pretty simple and straightforward. Impalement. Simple and brutal. Just me thinking about impalement caused my butthole to have a full-blown panic attack.

Started to hyperventilate and it passed out. During this period, impalement was practiced across Europe, pharyonic Egypt, Mesopotamia, which covered present-day Iraq, parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran, Kuwait, the Achaemenid Empire, spanned across West and Central Asia. There were two forms of impalement, longitudinal and transversal. And that's a little deviations with the longitudinal. For a longitudinal impalement, the person being punished was positioned above a vertical wooden spike and they were then lowered down onto that spike.

And that is the kind of impalement that freaked my butt hole out. It's still unconscious. It didn't know that there was a there was any other kind. The spike was typically inserted just far enough up the victim's anus so that they couldn't exactly wiggle out of it. They could definitely wiggle it further in though. And far enough so that if they tried to stand up and escape you know it would just rip out of their body, tear up their insides, enough for them to quickly bleed out. As gravity took hold, the person would sink gradually lower and lower onto the spike until finally it came out through their mouth,

somewhere near their mouth. Very likely dead by this point. It would sometimes allegedly take multiple days though for the person to die if the torture, you know, torturer chose to not go up through the butthole, but instead make a new hole. A little further up the butt crack. A little, little butthole adjacent. If the stake was inserted into the interior of the body via the butthole, it would damage vital organs once it got up far enough inside of you and lead to a pretty quick death. However, these motherfuckers really refine this.

If the stake followed the spine more closely, right, if it started off again further up the crack above the butthole, it could avoid damaging vital organs and allow the person to survive so painfully for days. Some Dutch overlords in Batavia, shoot one of the few words there were so many words look up pronunciations of. I actually thought it was Bavaria, but it's Batavia. I might not be saying that right. A reportedly witnessed one poor bastard surviving a full six days on a stake and heard from local surgeons that some people could survive eight days or more. That is fucking insane. That's way too much time to think about the predicament you're in.

Like what are you thinking on day six of your impalement? Like, what are you thinking on day six of your impalement? Just... Okay, I've survived this far. I just might make it. Maybe I have some kind of special powers or something. My insides can heal themselves. I should try and stand up quick and make a run for it.

Oh, fuck! Okay! Okay. Okay. Okay, my legs are asleep. Like, they're really asleep. Maybe I can rock back and forth and just... Oh, shit! Oh, God! I thought I'd goneT I'D GOT TOTALLY NUMB BUT OH THAT HURTS

OH NOW I'M BLEEDING AGAIN HAHAHA OH I SHOULD PRAY OH MAYBE AN ANGEL CAN JUST GENTLY LIFT ME OFF THIS DECK WHY NOT ME? COME ON ANGEL COME ON LITTLE HELP LITTLE HELP G-GONNA NEED A LITTLE LIFT GONNA NEED A LOT OF NESINFECTED

PROBABLY MORE THAN A FEW STITCHES GOD I'M JUST FUCKING AGONIZING In some cases the pole was rounded instead of being sharpened so as to not damage the internal organs too quickly and prolong the victim's suffering. Pole also sometimes raised up vertically to display the victim's torment, right? Hoist them way up off the ground. I imagine they die pretty quick when you do that. Thinking of Vlad the Impaler right now.

The Persians would also sometimes fasten a person's hands and feet, the feet to the ground, a little distance apart, hands to a wall or a pole, so the victim was bent over. Then a wooden stake, about four to six feet long, was driven with great force up into their butthole and up through their body until it reappeared protruding from around their mouth, neck or whatever. This is like hammering a huge nail into someone's asshole. Whatever. This is like hammering a huge nail into someone's asshole. For transversal impalement, the process was similar except the stake was pierced through the person's torso while they were laying on their back. So you know goes into their back through their back out through their stomach or chest. So it's like the the the stake is

perpendicular to your body. This usually killed people pretty quick because of the damage it caused to vital organs. You know if I had to pick they're both so terrible. I think I would pick the lesser known transversal impalement just to die quicker. Truly the lesser of two evils. Another torture method that rose to prominence during the age of antiquity was scaphism. And I don't think I came across this one before. Scaphism, also sometimes simply called the boats. Very creative form of just a horrifyingly painful and prolonged execution allegedly practiced in the Persian Empire.

They could last for up to two weeks. Victims were placed on their backs. One very small, very shallow boat, just barely big enough to hold them. With another boat positioned inverted on top of it. Holes were cut in the little vessels to make it so that the victim's torso and neck was trapped inside while their arms, legs, head were dangling out, you know, hanging out over the water,

maybe barely kind of in the water. The victim's face would be coated with honey and then until they finally died and they would be force fed a sickening mixture of milk and honey, which would cause them to uncontrollably shit themselves over and over and over, day after day, into the little bottom boat while, you know, like wasps and flies and shit are all over, ants are all over their face with the honey,

and their shit would pile up until it just started to touch them, until they were, you know, now shitting directly into just more of their own shit. So fucking hot. I mean disgusting. Definitely meant disgusting there. I am not for sure even a little bit hard right now. I'm definitely not recording this episode, you know, bug-ass naked, and just dripping, simply dripping, an ancient Persian sour wine. No! I am absolutely not, in case you are wondering, slowly masturbating, just fucking edging this entire episode until the end when I when I won't finish because I'm not doing any of that kinky weird shit stop asking me about it anyway the first historical mention of scavism would

actually come from Greek philosopher Plutarch in his work Life of Artaxerxes in it he describes the execution of a soldier named Mithridates there we go Mithridates Mithridates. There we go, Mithridates. Mithridates killed Cyrus the younger brother of King Artaxerxes II. With Mithridates, or while Mithridates had stopped Cyrus from overthrowing the king, and Artaxerxes was grateful. Artaxerxes demanded he keep this a secret to tell others that it was actually he who slew Cyrus? But then Mithridates would forget about that covenant and drunkenly boast about killing Cyrus himself at a banquet. And when King Artaxerx says, the second heard of this, he sentenced him to die by scaphism for his treachery.

Doesn't seem like the punishment fits the crime here. I mean, this guy did save the king's life, and then what, accidentally told the truth when he was drunk? And for that, Plutarch wrote, taking two boats framed exactly to fit and answer each other. They lay down in one of them the malefactor that suffers upon his back, then covering it with the other and so setting them together that the head, hands, and feet of with the other and so setting them together that the head, hands and feet of him are left outside and the rest of his body lies shut up within. They offer him food and if he refused to eat it, they force him to do it by pricking his eyes.

Oh Jesus. Then after he has eaten, they drench him with a mixture of milk and honey, pouring it not only into his mouth but all over his face. Okay, milk and honey. The two of them together on his face as well. Then they keep his face continually turned towards the Sun and it becomes completely covered up and hidden by the multitude of flies that settle on it. Oh God and he's just fucking burning and peeling and as within the boats he does what those that eat and drink must needs do. So shit. Creeping things and vermin spring out of the corruption and rottenness of the excrement, and these entering into the bowels of him. Now the fucking bugs are crawling in.

His body is consumed. When the man is manifestly dead, the uppermost boat being taken off, they find his flesh devoured, and swarms of such noisome creatures preying upon it, as it were, growing to his inwards. In this way, Mithridates, after suffering for seventeen days, had last expired. Seventeen days? Holy shit. Dude was eaten from the inside out by fucking bugs. Poop bugs.

Crawling up his fucking dung heap into his dung hole. He started feasting on his colon, then spread elsewhere from there while his face is covered in flies and wasps, burnt. And you know what? All of that doesn't uh, doesn't sound that bad, does it? I mean, I mean you'd get used to it after a little bit, wouldn't you? No. Now that sounds like something that would literally happen in hell. The age of antiquity also saw the rise of a so-called elegant form of torture that would be echoed in one form or another across history. Flayne.

Oh my god. Flayne is the practice of skinning a person alive. Like impalement, it was a form of torturous execution that could take anywhere from a couple of hours to a few days if the flayer worked real nice and slow. Oh boy. The earliest known use of flame was executed by ancient Assyrians against prisoners and rebels,

lasting from around 2500 BCE to 605 BCE. The Assyrian Empire was one of the world's first empires, some think it was the world's very first true empire. It was known for its strategic warfare and ruthless leaders. One such merciless leader was a Neo-Assyrian king, Ashur Nassirpal, Ashur Nassirpal II, who served as king from 883 to 859 BCE. In one royal edict, King Ashur Nassirpal decreed, I have made a pillar facing the city gate and have flayed all the rebel leaders. I have clad the pillar and flayed skins. I let

the leaders of the conquered cities be flayed and clad the city walls with their skins. The captives I've killed by the sword and flung on the dung heap." All right, dude, that seems seems a bit excessive if I'm gonna be honest seems way excessive. Different times, I guess. To flay someone the victim was first stripped off of their clothes, bound flat in their back. Using a razor-thin knife, the executioner would then begin deftly slicing and peeling back the skin on the victim's skull. Because the head was considered the most painful part of the body to get flayed, the executioner

always performed on it first, so the victim would be the most conscious for that. How fun. Occasionally, if the victim's skin was too tough, the executioner would apply some boiling water to that part of the body to soften it up. You know, make it easier to peel off. I was kidding earlier, but right now, did anyone else just get a boner? Is that normal? To get like a really turned on by just talking a flame in somebody's boiled face skin? I'm kidding again. If you thought I wasn't kidding at first and you were like, oh, yeah. No, yeah me too Oh, thank God you said that. Holy shit. I was weird for a second that I was super fucked up

Well, you know what? You should be worried because you are super fucked up You need to be committed to an institution immediately, but not me cuz I'm I am for sure limp just to be very clear While getting flayed. Yeah, but weird mood today While getting flayed a person could die from a weird mood today. While getting flayed, a person could die from multiple things that included blood loss, infection, shock, and hypothermia. Although the Assyrians have been attributed as the first culture to utilize flaying, they were far from the only one. For example, the Aztecs of Central America, known to skin people alive quite a bit. Big fans of it. One of the gods the Aztecs worshiped was named Zypa Totec,

which translates to our Lord the Flayed One. Nightmare. According to Aztec mythology, Zypa Totec was the deity of the seasons, earth, agriculture, vegetation, fertility, deadly warfare, and liberation, and also scary shit. Essentially he was a divine embodiment of how life comes from death. The story behind Zypa was that when humanity was starving a long time ago, he skinned himself alive in order to feed us. So like, like he looks like a monster, but he's actually he's actually really sweet. He's a big softy. Shrek. Shrek was probably inspired by Zypa because he's like Shrek, but with just no fucking skin on his face. Especially during the turn of the seasons, the Aztecs often flayed human sacrifices in honor of the renewal god, in some cases the priest that executed the flame,

would then wear the skin for the rest of the rituals festival. Holy fuck. Can you imagine seeing that? Especially as a little kid. Oh look! It's our priest! Our spiritual leader, our conduit to the gods. That guy right over there. The guy wearing Jorge's face on top of his face. Let's go pay our respects. Dude, if you're seeing your priest do that, how terrified are you of the gods they represent? Zypothotek was frequently depicted by the Aztecs as wearing the skin of a sacrificial victim, stitched together around its body and face with rope.

Cool. No kids ever got nightmares over that. Now I'll recognize that technically the flaying that the Aztecs did in honor of Zipatoatec is not a form of torture as we defined it today, as it was neither a punishment nor an interrogation tactic. But still, wild-ass deity is just too fascinating and hardcore not to mention. Before moving on to the Greeks, a bit more about ancient Persian torture. Some people the Persians believed deserved more than one death. If their crime was terrible enough they wouldn't settle to kill them just once. They would make them

die three deaths before they were allowed to stop breathing. Kind of. I mean not totally literally of course but close. The victims wouldn't actually, but they would, you know, the first two times, but they go through the agony of death three times. When a royal guard who was already a eunuch, so dude had already lost his balls, angered Cassandane, the wife of Cyrus the Great, who ruled in the 6th century BCE, she first had his eyeballs pulled out of his head. That was death number one. Then once they'd allowed him to heal somewhat, she had a whole bunch of his skin flayed off.

And that was death number two. Then after he was nursed back to some semblance of health, he was crucified. And now he is dead dead. What the fuck did that guy say to her? The ancient Persians also came up with a way to execute convicted thieves in a very torturous way by tying them to two trees simultaneously. Executioners would first pull two parallel trees tightly together, some big trees with some very strong rope using a lot of manpower. Then they would tie the thief to these trees with the right limbs tied to one tree, left limbs tied to the other, and then when the trees were released and allowed to snap back to their original positions, the victim would, if all went according to

plan, literally be brutally torn in half. Yikes. Now moving on to ancient Greece, the culture that gave us the Olympics, democracy, philosophy, and you might be surprised to hear interrogational torture. But before I share some Greek torture information, time for our first of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those ads. If you don't want to hear anymore, get the entire catalog ad free and more by signing

up to be a space lizard on Patreon for $5 a month. And now let's find out how the Greeks dished out the pain. During the time of the ancient Greeks, which lasted from approximately 1200 BCE to 600 CE, torture was used as both the means of obtaining information and as punishment. Not only was the use of torture lawful during this period, it was actually revered, at least in some city-states. Try not to get bogged down in historical minutiae on this one, but laws and cultural practices did vary quite a bit from city-state to city-state and fluctuated depending of course on who was ruling each city-state.

One of the fundamental and highly criticized aspects of classical Athenian law was a policy known as bisonos, which roughly translates to interrogation under torture. The law stated that in court the testimony of slaves was only admissible if it was extracted through torture. In this sense a testimony freely given was considered much less reliable than a testimony that was forced. Poor bastards, right? We now know that the opposite is true. Coerced confessions are notoriously unreliable because people when tortured tend to care less about telling the truth than they do about just saying whatever the hell they think the person or people torturing them want to hear.

Whatever will just make the pain stop. One speaker from the period was documented saying, Indeed, you jurors, consider basanos, the most accurate of all proofs in both private and public cases, and when slaves and free persons are both available and you need to discover some fact under investigation, you do not use the testimony of the free persons, but you subject the slaves to Bassanos in this way seeking to discover the truth. And this is quite reasonable, gentlemen of the jury, for you know well that in the past some witnesses have seemed to testify untruthfully, whereas no one subjected to besanos has ever been proven to speak untruthfully in a besanos.

No one, not one person, has ever lied while being tortured. The method of this form of torture was generally just a whip. The person being interrogated was ruthlessly lashed, often across their bare back, while being asked questions. I imagine they almost always gave their answers via screams. Don't think that just because they generally used a whip to interrogate slaves that the Greeks were not creative when it came to their torture methods. One of the most famous torture devices used in ancient Greece, later adopted by the western monarchs of the medieval period and you know later showed up in China and Japan as well. I'm sure elsewhere. The rack. The rack was a big heavy generally

rectangular wooden table that had axles and levers fastened to two of the ends and of course there's multiple variations of this. The victim was forced to lie flat on the table with their arms stretched out above their heads, rope tied to their wrists and then to one axle, ankles bound with rope tied to the other axle, and then the axles were just turned slowly by poles inserted into sockets, that's the levers, and the person's arms with us pulled in one direction while their legs were pulled in the opposite direction stretching the ever-loving shit out of them, dislocating their limbs,

tearing muscles and tendons apart, and just fucking destroying bones. You would literally eventually be torn in two if they just kept going. During this process, the lungs would essentially be crushed by the pressurized rib cage, bones would splinter and break, vertebrae would snap, and nerve endings would become completely exposed. All the while, the rope would be digging into the skin as it slowly tore your body apart. The rack was most often used as a form of corporal punishment since once sufficiently stretched, well there's there's no coming back from that. You can't keep interrogating somebody if they're dead. Not gonna walk off a body full of shredded muscles,

distended and ruptured organs, eviscerated connective tissue, splintered bones, etc. This is a pretty weird thought to have but as someone with a tight lower back and tight shoulders and forearms from you know sitting and working on my computer all day, I have to believe there must be like two or three seconds when getting stretched on the rack just feels divine. Just oh oh yeah oh yeah yeah that's nice oh that's perfect oh just keep me there just a few more seconds oh okay too much now too too too much whoa way too much I'm pretty sure shoulders are not supposed to do that another form of torture in ancient Greece was the iron apega also known as the apega of Nabes the precursor to or inspiration for the fabled iron maiden perhaps if the iron maiden actually

Ever existed as an actual torture device There's no solid evidence that it was ever used as an actual torture device. There's no solid evidence that it was ever used as advertised actually. The Apica of Nabes was invented by its namesake, Namesake Nabes, the last king of Sparta who reigned from 207 to 192 BCE. History remembers Nabes as a tremendously sadistic tyrant and his signature torture device reflects that. According to Polybius, a Greek historian who lived during the Hellenistic period, the iron opiga was a person-sized

automaton or automaton, excuse me, that was built to look like a woman. One woman in particular, Nabis' real-life wife, Opiga. In history, Polybius describes a torture device like this. Nabis had constructed a kind of machine, if machine it may be called, which was the figure of a woman, clothed in costly garments and made to resemble with extraordinary fidelity the wife of Nobby's. Whenever then he summoned one of the citizens with a view of getting some money from him, he used first to employ a number of arguments politely expressed if the listeners gave in as he was satisfied.

If listeners gave in, excuse me, he was satisfied. His old translations are always a fucking bitch. But if they ever refused to comply with his demand, he would say, perhaps I cannot persuade you, but I think this lady, Apiga, will succeed in doing so. Apiga was the name of his wife. Immediately on saying these words, the figure I have described was brought in. As soon as the man offered his hand to the supposed lady to raise her from her seat, the figure threw its arms around him and began drawing him by degrees towards its breasts. Now its arms, hands, and breasts were full of iron spikes under his clothes. When the tyrant pressed his hands on the back of the figure and then by means of the works, When the tyrant pressed his hands on the back of the figure and then by means of the works, dragged the man by degrees closer and closer to its breasts, he forced him under this torture

to say anything. A good number of men who refused his demands, he destroyed in this way." Okay, should be noted, the veracity of Polybius' claims about the Iron Piga are widely disputed. Not all academics agree on whether or not it existed or even if it could exist as described. Either way, it's a fascinating little bit of torture history. And a slightly toned down version of this could have definitely existed. The ancient Greeks did create some mechanical marvels in their day. So, you know, why not build some crazy animatronic chucky cheese like murder statue? Like the Greeks, the emperors of the Roman Empire

also know strangers to torture. I doubt anyone's surprised to hear that. In fact, it was through the Roman Empire that we now have what is arguably the most universally known method of torture of all time, crucifixion. Although it was originally practiced many many centuries earlier by the Assyrians and perhaps even the Babylonians, it was the Roman Empire that truly gave crucifixion its claim to fame. This method of torture was originally introduced to the Eastern Mediterranean by Alexander the Great in the 4th century BCE and by the 3rd century BCE the Roman Empire

had caught wind of this new and exciting form of corporal punishment. The practice of crucifixion was finally abolished by Constantine the Great in the 4th century CE but for about 500 years the Romans, you know, they crucified anyone deemed deserving of it, which mostly meant slaves, foreigners, and of course infamously Christians. If you're unfamiliar with this method of torture, there's a really famous example of this one guy getting crucified in like 30 or 33 CE. You may have heard of him, Jesus Christ, possible middle name, begins with an H. Such a big deal, they even wrote a bunch of books about it.

They were collected into this widely published compendium of sorts that it was also kind of like a sequel to another collection. Crucifixion was a method of execution by way of torture as well as for the Romans an excellent way to assert social control because it was fucking terrifying to witness people being crucified. During a crucifixion the victim is suspended by their arms on a vertical wooden cross structure. T-shaped hang there until they are dead and this can happen in some different ways. But maybe not as how we have been led to believe. There's actually very little archaeological evidence to support the practice of nailing crucifixion victims, especially through the hands. Which is pretty funny, right? That whole stigmata thing, the blood pouring out of the

center of Jesus's palms from nails that held his body to the cross. Maybe it didn't go down that way. In fact some re-examined remains of ancient crucifixion victims have shown zero evidence that any nail actually penetrated the victim's hands or even arms. The only archaeological evidence for nailing is from an ankle bone, just singular, one ankle bone from the tomb of Jehohanan, a man executed in the first century CE. His remains included a heel bone with a nail driven through it from the side. The tip of the nail is bent, possibly because it maybe struck a knot in the upright beam it was being nailed into. Typically in antiquity, recent evidence has suggested that arms were not nailed to the cross beam but rather tied to it with rope

and that the legs were bent, twisted to one side, and perhaps held in place by a single nail that passed through a wooden plaque through both left and right heel bones and then into the upright of the cross. Or the feet may have just also been tied with rope. Not everybody had a big handy iron crucifixion nails lying around. Resources were limited. Maybe it was just a lot easier to get some rope and it was easier to reuse the rope. The process could take anywhere from around an hour to four days according to ancient observers. However, modern scientists and or doctors don't seem to believe that anyone could actually survive longer than about a single day after being crucified.

According to the National Library of Medicine during crucifixion quote, death was due to multifactorial pathology after effects of compulsory scourging and maiming hemorrhaging dehydration causing hypovolemic shock and pain but the most important factor was progressive asphyxia caused by impairment of respiratory movement. Resultant anoxemia, Resultant anoxemia, exaggerated hypovolemic shock. Deaths was probably commonly participated by cardiac arrest caused by vasovagal reflexes. Oh my god. Vesovagal reflexes initiated inter alia by severe anoxemia, severe pain, body blows and breaking in large bones. And now an explanation in plain fucking English. For

those of us who don't have a medical degree, that explanation was actually a bit torturous for me. But I imagine some of you understood it perfectly. But for the rest of us, death from crucifixion came from suffocation, loss of bodily fluids, multiple organ failure, and it was brutally painful. The weight of the body pulling down on the arms makes breathing extremely difficult, says Jeremy Ward, a physiologist at King's College in London. In addition, the heart and lungs would stop working as blood steadily drained through wounds. How long you live depended on a lot of arm position actually.

One of the most severe methods of crucifixion was to put the arm straight above the victim. That can kill in 10 minutes to half an hour. It's just impossible to breathe under those conditions, Ward says. I didn't even think about the breathing. If someone were actually nailed to a crucifix with their arm stretched out to either side, they could expect to live for no more than 24 hours. If someone were actually nailed to a crucifix with their arms stretched out to either side, they could expect to live for no more than 24 hours. Large heavy nails would likely have been driven through the wrists instead of the palms so that the bones there could support the body's weight.

Many think that nails through the palms would have ripped through the soft flesh of the hands due to the weight of the arms and upper body. A large nail through the wrist would sever the median nerve, which not only would cause immense shock waves of pain, just pulsing shock waves of pain, but it also would have paralyzed the victims hands. The feet, if they were nailed at all, would have been nailed to the upright part of the crucifix so that the knees were bent at around 45 degrees. To bring death about quicker, some ancient accounts say that executioners would break the legs of their victims to give them no chance of being able to use their thigh muscles to try and support themselves to breathe better. That was probably unnecessary though, as their strength would have not lasted more than a few minutes even if they were unharmed when they began to be crucified.

Once the legs gave out, the weight would be transferred to the arms, gradually dragging the shoulders from their sockets. The elbows and wrists would follow a few minutes later. By now the arms would be, according to this article, six or seven inches longer. Oh my god they've just been ripped fucking so loose from with all the tendons and stuff. The victim would have no choice but to bear his weight on his chest now. He would immediately have trouble breathing as the weight caused the rib cage to lift up and force him into an almost perpetual state of inhalation. Suffocation would usually follow but the relief of death could also arrive in other ways. The resultant lack of oxygen in the blood would cause damage to tissue and blood vessels, allowing fluid to diffuse out of the blood into tissues, including the lungs and the sac around

the heart says ward. Man, I never really thought about exactly how you would die that way. I was like, oh you'd have exposure. No you wouldn't. No you wouldn't be able to fucking breathe. This would make the lungs stiffer, make breathing more difficult, and the pressure around the heart would impair its pumping. So nail or no nail. If you do have a nail, nail through the palm or nail to the wrist, the suffering would be immense and you're not gonna last very long. Like I mentioned earlier, Christians were crucified quite a bit under Roman rule. One ruler in particular was famous for his hatred of Christ and his followers.

That was of course the notoriously tyrannical Emperor Nero. Nero was the fifth emperor of Rome. He ascended to the throne at just the age of 16 and 54 CE. Would die 14 years later at the ripe old age of 30. Though his rule was comparatively short, the legacy he left is profound. Dude did a lot, a lot of bad shit in his teens and twenties. One of the things he's most infamous for, in addition to perhaps being seduced by his own mother,

which may have just been a nasty political rumor, is how he loathed Christians and subsequently punished them. Young Nero was the inventor of the Roman candle. And I'm not talking about the super awesome fireworks is banned in 11 different states but not Idaho. Never Idaho. We love that some fire here. Not as big on books lately but very big on fire. Fire, fire! Look at it burn so hot! Yeah! The Roman candle I'm referring to is like the crucifixion, a showy method of execution that is meant to send a message

to all that witnessed it or was. The persecuted persons would be bound to a stake covered in oil, but not like a hot hard father daddy. Wax, pitch, other flammable materials. Maybe they were. Maybe they were hot hard daddies. Just fucking hot hard fiery daddies. Mmm.

So hot. Their feet were then set ablaze. They would slowly burn to death. Publius Cornelius Tacitus, a Roman historian and politician who lived during the same time as the cruel emperor, wrote that Nero often had Christians executed in this way on his own property, both as a form of really morbid entertainment and as a way to be, uh, to be practical. Right, real pragmatic, you know, just needed to light up the dark evenings. Just burning some motherfuckers for his own amusement. Just drinking wine, joking with friends, all of them. Their conversations all lit by people burning alive around them.

Not terrifying at all. In the Annals Tacitus wrote, mockery of every sort was added to the Christian deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination when daylight had expired. Nero offered his gardens for the spectacle and was exhibiting a show in the circus, while he mingled with the people in the dress of a charioteer or stood aloft on a car. Hence, even for criminals who deserved extreme and exemplary punishment, there arose a feeling of compassion, for it was not as it seemed for the public good, but to glut one man's cruelty that they were being destroyed." Man, as you can see, the Romans were

fans of torture methods that gave onlookers quite a sight to behold. The Romans certainly loved a spectacle. Are you not entertained? Another form of Roman torture that embodied their penchant for drama was death by molten gold. And if the first thing that pops into your head when you hear that is Khal Drago pouring molten gold on Viserys Targaryen's head in season one episode six of Game of Thrones, well you've got the right idea. And if you are super turned on, thinking about it, like real wet or real hard, well, you're not alone. I mean, I'm not fucking turned on, because I'm not an extremely ill sexual degenerate freak, but I am positive that a lot of other time suckers are, like a ton of them. You didn't hear this from me, but there's a lot of freaks in this community.

Back to being killed with molten gold now. Super fancy way to go out. Instead of splashing boiling hot liquid gold on the heads of their victims the Romans may have poured a steady stream into their mouths. One sorry fellow who allegedly had this happen to him was Roman general and statesman Marcus Licinius Crassus, also known during his lifetime as the richest man in Rome. At 54 years old Crassus had been named governor of Rome and Syria and from that position he launched an invasion on the Republic's longtime enemy, the Parthians. However, his invasion was unsuccessful and during the battle of

Correa in southern Anatolia, he was captured according to legend the Parthians and forced the old general's mouth open, poured scolding hot molten gold down his throat. I guess the Romans weren't doing this. It was a Roman that was having this being done to them. This happened to other people in Rome allegedly. The method of execution was chosen to be symbolic of Crassus's insatiable greed for wealth, although it was generally unclear whether or not the specific instance of death by molten gold cocktail is true. Some accounts say he was already dead when this happened to him. Again, the practice of death via

molten metal most definitely used throughout both the Roman Republic and also used on the other side of the Atlantic in some instances many years later. For example, during the Spanish Inquisition in 1599, the people of an indigenous tribe, the Havoran tribe of Ecuador, they captured a Spanish governor and executed him, Viserys Targaryen style. And much like Viseris, I have no doubt in my mind that dude probably deserved it. Although getting molten gold poured down your throat seems like a suitable enough explanation for how somebody dies when this happens to them, a 2003 study by the Journal of Clinical Pathology conducted an experiment to figure out exactly what causes death in this scenario. Here's an excerpt from their summary. Several sources mentioned the

bursting of internal organs. The question remains whether this is actually the case and also what the cause of death would be. To investigate this, we obtained a bovine larynx from a local slaughterhouse. Parenthetical. No animal was harmed or killed specifically for this purpose. After fixing the larynx in a horizontal position to a piece of wood and closing the distal end using tissue paper, 750 grams of pure lead, around 450 degrees Celsius, was heated until melting, then poured into the larynx. After a lengthy scientific explanation of what happened to the larynx during the experiment,

the researchers wrote, Based on these findings, we suggest that the development of steam with increasing pressure might result in both heat-induced and mechanical damage to distal organs, possibly leading to overinflation and rupture of these organs. Direct thermal injury to the lungs may lead to instantaneous death as a result of acute pulmonary dysfunction and shock. Even if this is not the case, the development of a cast once the metal congeals again would completely block the airways thus suffocating the victim. In conclusion, we have shown that in the execution method of pouring hot liquefied metals into the throat of a victim, death is probably mediated by the development of steam and consequent

thermal injury to the airways. So yeah, that doesn't sound too fun at all. Dying from a fucking bunch of hot steam and a heavy heated metal. Now let's head north. During the age of the Vikings, which lasted from approximately 793 to 1066 CE, the Norse warriors not only pirated, raided, pillaged with chaos and abandon,

they also invented some intricate and highly involved forms of torture that we're still terrified of today. Undoubtedly, the most famous example of this is the Blood Eagle, a ritual you may have seen depicted in a History Channel TV series, Vikings, got so good. The video game, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, heard as amazing, haven't had a chance to

play much. Or even in everyone's favorite psychedelic horror fest, Midsommar. Did see that. Weird but good. I also shared details of this torture method several years ago in episode 135 on the Vikings. Less of a torture device, more of a torture ritual, the blood eagle was allegedly performed by first placing the victim on their stomach, then using a sharp tool and deft surgical incisions. An opening is made in the back and one by one each of the victim's ribs severed from the spine

using an axe. After that, the lungs are pulled through the open wound in their back, creating a pair of bloody wings. Throughout this process the victim is somehow kept alive and breathing even when their lungs have been taken out of their bodies. And the victims last breath is said to make the shaped rib ornament jutting out of the man's back flutter. Just a little flutter as the payoff at the end. And it said in the the sagas, there was always an audience to watch this. Now like with the Iron Opiga, there's a lot of debate on whether or not the Blood Eagle was an actual punishment implemented during Viking rule, or just a dark legend that has withstood the test of time.

Its usage is documented solely in Old Norse poetry, and that poetry is definitely not always talking about real shit. They also talked a lot about like sea serpents, like the Kraken. The first reference to the ritual was in 867 CE when Ivar the Boneless convicted King Ael of Noorthumbria to be executed by way of Blood Eagle. Ivar was hell bent on punishing King Ael for the murder of his father, the legendary warrior chief and terrorizer of 9th century Europe, Ragnar Lothbrok. King Ael had killed the great Viking by throwing Ragnar into a pit of poisonous vipers, which

sounds pretty terrible. However, I would probably take that over the blood eagle, which is how King Ael himself is said to have died in the old legends. Okay, jumping forward in time now a little bit. Let's head to the medieval period. A time that might be aptly called the golden age of torture. Right after today's second to two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thank you for listening to those sponsors. Now let's head to the medieval period. A time that again, you know, could have easily been called or could be called the golden age of torture. This period lasted from 476 CE to around 1500 CE Also often called the Dark Ages, although some people have the Dark Ages ending during the 10th century

So much torture so much super sexy gory How fucking hot would it be to watch people get killed like this? But only if you're degenerate and I'm not kind of torture So much absolutely horrific. There's literally no need of justification for doing any of this shit torture and almost all of it done in the name of God torture. It was during the medieval period that people got creative and I mean real creative with torture and with not not with much else unfortunately. During the 11th century the English Royal Navy used a method of torture we now call keelhauling as a gruesome way to execute members of the crew that stepped out of line. And as somebody terrified of dark water, and of being trapped underwater, especially trapped like down in dark water, this one, even though it's not as visceral, gory as other torture methods,

still made my stomach turn a bit. This would be such a nightmare. The offending sailor would be stripped, bound by rope, tied from the ship's mast with chains attached to their nightmare. The offending sailor would be stripped, bound by rope, tied from the ship's mast with chains attached to their legs. The rope would be then looped under the vessel so that once they were released, they would be dragged under and against, oftentimes, the keel. Most often, the victim was dragged from one side of the ship to another, from starboard to port or vice versa. But if the transgression they committed was really egregious, they would be dragged the entire length of the ship's underbelly from bow to stern. There were multiple ways to die from keelhauling, including head trauma and internal bleeding from being repeatedly smacked

against the ship, lacerations from razor-sharp barnacles, other rough parts of the vessel's surface underwater, and of course obviously drowning. Before a sailor was keelhauled, they might be subjected to a lesser and non-fatal form of torturous punishment such as getting whipped, being lashed, being tied to the mast, left there for a while. The British continued this practice until the 17th century, and during the 16th century, Dutch training ships were known to implement the torture method on their own fleets. The word keelhauling actually comes from a Dutch word I don't know how to say which means to drag along the keel and all in all was a pretty effective way to help avoid mutiny. One French sailor may have actually survived five full trips around the ship.

This account was published in the November 1869 edition of Onward Magazine. Here's what the writer of the article said they witnessed. We all hastened on deck, and looking toward the Frenchman of war, not only saw the preparations for keelhauling, but witnessed a portion of the punishment itself. Two ropes were led through blocks at each four-yard arm of the ship, one end of each rope coming to a lead on each side of the forecastle. The other ends were hitched to a small hatchway grating and weighted with cannonballs or pigs

of ballast. The man had been placed in a sitting position, lashed on the grating, and when all was prepared, which was just at the moment we caught sight of him, he was run up to the starboard yard arm. He was reported ready. At a signal from the captain of the vessel of a gun, uh, at a signal from the captain of the vessel, a gun was fired and the starboard rope let go. Down came the unfortunate wretch, striking the water with a shock so violent as to cause serious injury. Down he sank to the full extent of the rope and was then hauled under the ship's keel

and jerked up to the four-yard arm on the other side where he hung suspended like a drowned rat in a rope. Here after being kept for 10 or 15 minutes the horrible douche, excuse me, the terrible douche would have been repeated. Not calling him a douchebag here. He was actually just like kind of literally being douched. Perhaps four or five times injuries of the most serious nature or death itself certain of being the result. So he may have survived all that somehow. During the medieval period another torture method that was actually used all over the place was that of the breaking wheel, also known as the execution wheel or the Catherine wheel. The breaking wheel was a particularly brutal form of punishment and its use has been documented

everywhere from medieval Russia to Sweden, Scotland to India, Romania, Germany, Austria, France, Britain, I'm sure many other places. A form of it originated during Roman times but it was later that it really fell into murderous fashion if you will. The intention of the wheel could vary from severely mutilating the victim to killing them. In medieval Britain it was used as punishment for capital crimes like murder, arson, treason, or crimes against the church. In Britain and the surrounding countries, breaking wheel executions and punishments were massively popular events that the townsfolk would gather to witness. That always makes me shake my head, right? The crowds gathering to watch someone be torched like this. Whenever I hear people

complaining about declining morality these days, I think of shit like this. We are, despite all of our current faults, nowhere near as barbaric as we used to be. I wonder when I hear about stuff like this, would I have watched? Would I watch if it was happening today? What are these torture sessions? Honestly, I probably would. I mean depending on the victim perhaps. If I thought the person was innocent I might not be able to watch or maybe I'd feel so bad for them. I don't know I'd want to be there to show some weird kind of morbid support. I don't know. But if I thought the person was definitely a guilty chomo, rapist, murderer, some other ghoul like that, I might grab some popcorn, a cold drink,

watch it all with a devilish grin. What I wouldn't do is watch using binoculars from a short distance behind the rest of the crowd, hide in the bushes or whatever, wear a trench coat and a wig and a big hat and sunglasses and jerk off. I wouldn't do that ever, because that's weird, right? I mean, it feels like that's pretty weird and creepy, I think. So I wouldn't do that. Maybe you would. Back to the braking wheel. And you did get fucking broke on this thing. The most common form of the device in the Middle Ages was like a massive wagon wheel, placed horizontally on a tripod.

Victim then laid on top of the wheel with their arms and legs outstretched and bound. Two executioners would be positioned on either end, and the wheel would begin to rotate. The executioners would then take turns slamming an iron mallet or a wooden club against each of the victim's limbs, breaking all of their bones, mangling their flesh, then later maybe bashing in their chest cavity. It's like they were playing a two-player whack-a-mole game. With the mole was a real person instead of a piece of plastic. And when the game ended, that person was dead.

Oftentimes in addition to breaking bones, the victims arms and legs would become completely dismembered from their bodies. And they wouldn't be cut off. No, no, no, they would be beaten off. And that is intense. If I had to choose between having my arms cut off or have them beaten off. What a terrible choice. Uh, I'm going to go with cutting.

And in some cases after the victim's arms and legs were pulverized, instead of the executioners hammering the chest or some other part of the torso torso and putting the victim out of their misery, the victim's legs and arms would be woven into the spokes of the wheel and they'd just be left to die like that. It's unreal. And insanely some victims after having their arms and legs beaten into a pulp would be released. They would live at least for a while. There's medieval literature on how to try to treat their mangled limbs. My god, I bet most of those people, if not all of them, ended up just wishing they would have been killed.

This process could last for a couple hours, up to a couple days. In the cases of intended execution, the victim would eventually be given a coup de grace, a merciful killing blow. Accounts exist of a supposed 14th century murderer who remained conscious for three days on the braking wheel. In 1348 during the time of the Black Death, excuse me, a Jewish man named Bona Dyes or Bona Vies maybe or Dees underwent the punishment and authorities stated he remained conscious for four days and nights afterwards. One famous case of this form of torturous execution took place in 1581 when German serial killer Peter Niers was beaten with the wagon wheel for two days before he was eventually dismembered and killed. Niers was convicted of killing

544 people. That's a lot. And slicing open the bellies and removing the fetuses from 24 different pregnant women. And I doubt that's true. That's what the old history books say. I doubt it's true because he was also convicted of being an extremely powerful black magician with many, many supernatural abilities, but was somehow still caught and didn't use any of his abilities to escape. So, you know, there's that. Allegedly he was tortured, then executed over the course of three days in September 1581. On the first day, he was flayed and burned, strips of flesh torn from his body, heated oil poured into the wounds. Then on the

second day his feet were smeared with heated oil, then held above glowing coal, essentially cooking his feet. The third day, September 16th, 1581, he was broken on the wheel, but not in the fashion in the way I described earlier. Sometimes the victim would be tied to the ground or tied to some sort of platform and just a regular-ass wagon wheel would be used to kind of just beat them. They just pummel them with the wheel. In this case, the wheel would be slammed down upon this guy's arms and legs, supposedly 42 times. And he was still alive after all that because you know, he's a powerful warlock. And then he was finally dismembered by quartering. So he cut his head off and then his body sliced up into four pieces.

Either that dude really was a nasty serial killer or someone in a position of power really hated him. But again, I highly doubt he died that way, but just an interesting historical account. After being broken, the dead mangled body of the victim was often left on the wheel to be scavenged by wildlife and to serve as a warning to anybody who saw it. Another way to use the breaking wheel was to just take the wheel and roll over somebody's appendages, just you know, over and over and over, mangling them as if a wagon was just running them over dozens of times. In a documented case from England, a man named John Callis, who was accused of murdering his own son, was beaten for two hours while spinning on a rotating wheel before he finally admitted

to his crimes and revealed the names of his accomplices and then he died from his wounds soon after. The device got its nickname the Catherine Wheel due to the legend that when Saint Catherine of Alexandria was sentenced to die on the wheel for refusing to renounce her Christian beliefs, the wheel magically shattered as soon as she touched it at the beginning of the 4th century. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that for sure never happened. Also St. Catherine, one of the historical figures St. Joan of Arc, will later claim visited and spoke with her. Next torture device now. Oh ladies, oof, this one, this one's gonna be rough for you. Hold on to your tits. This one's called the breast ripper. The breast ripper

was used from the 1300s all the way to the beginning of the 1700s. Unlike some other forms of torture we've looked at, the breast ripper not used for interrogation, only for punishment. According to the National Library of Medicine, the breast ripper, also known as the iron spider or simply as the spider, was used on women condemned for things like adultery, sex out of wedlock, pregnancy out of wedlock, self-induced abortions, or other quote erotic crimes. The breast ripper was an iron claw-like mechanism used to, as the name suggests, brutally rip the tits off its victims. Looks similar to a pair of metal tongs with two sharpened talons at each end. It honestly looks like something many of the 20th century sexually sadistic serial killers we have covered would have loved to use on some ladies.

To punish a woman for her heinous, HAYNESS crime of enjoying pleasuring the pussy she was born with, of liking to ride her own bicycle from time to time and maybe jumping off some rams or crash into a few ditches for fun, these talons were clamped into one of her breasts then slowly pulled away, shredding her skin and tearing her breast, tissue, blood vessels, lymph nodes and all completely off of her breasts, then slowly pulled away, shredding her skin and tearing her breast, tissue, blood vessels, lymph nodes and all completely off of her chest. I don't even have tits, but my tits are aching right now thinking about this. In some cases instead of being held by the person or by a person, the breast ripper was fastened to a wall and then the woman was just slowly pulled away from

it. Ugh! Now the variation of the breast ripper was a set of spiked bars that protruded from a wall. The woman's chest was then pressed against the bars then dragged back and forth until her breasts were completely torn apart. My God! Although the breast ripper gained traction in the medieval period, there is evidence of similar devices being used on women in ancient Rome, of course. So many of the Romans loved to torture the shit out of people. In fact, one of the most highly exalted martyrs from Christian antiquity, Saint Agatha of Sicily, supposedly had her breasts removed using iron tongs. Rome was still around sometime around 250 CE. She also was stretched on a rack, had her body torn with iron hooks, burned with torches, and

whipped. Why? Because she wouldn't agree to fuck some Roman prefect. Agatha of Sicily is now the patron saint of rape victims, breast cancer patients, and wet nurses. She is said to have survived her wounds because St. Peter the Apostle appeared to her and healed her all up. No, he didn't. Come on. Why are we asked to believe that all these crazy miracles happened hundreds of years ago, but they never happened anymore? Get out of here. If Peter could heal people's torture wounds back in the third century CE, where the fuck is he now? Been on vacation for centuries? Been napping for millennia?

Come on, Petey, get off your lazy ass. Get back to healing, bud. Plenty of people could use your magical healing abilities right now. Heading over to Ukraine or Gaza. Get to fucking work already. The persecution of women and violent misogyny was rife during the medieval period. So unfortunately the breast ripper, not the only instrument used to mutilate female sex organs from this time. The pair of anguish,

aka the choke pair or the mouth pair, another nasty ass torture tool. Lucifina hates this one even more than the breast ripper. The metal torture device consisted of a long sharpened rod with three separate leaves or spokes on the end that could be screwed open or closed. When closed, the leaves would form the shape of a pair, when opened well, they would tear a very sensitive part of your body up pretty good. The vomit inducing pair of anguish was most often forced into a woman's vagina, then screwed open while inside of her, but also was sometimes shoved into the rectum or mouth of its victim. According to the National Library of Medicine, it was used on women found guilty of quote sexual union with Satan. Okay, not clear if this device

actually killed you or just maimed your vagina or rectum. It for sure did leave you incapable of fucking Beelzebub again. So that part is pretty cool. Uh-uh, not anymore lady! Staying with the theme of sexual mutilation. There was a medieval device known as Newton's Orbs where a man would have to stand facing a wooden rack. He'd be tied to it at the waist and legs, securing him entirely to the rack and then his testicles would be pushed through a small hole in the wood. Oh boy, two heavy lead balls on strings would swing down, smash his testicles in between them.

The strings would then be pulled back to have the balls smash the accused person's testicles again and again and again. Not hard enough to rupture them it seems, but hard enough to cause the victim to vomit, lose consciousness. Some cases this would go on for days. The alleged heretic, you know, passing back and forth between consciousness and unconsciousness. Oh, I talk. I talk after a few minutes of that. My butthole finally woke up. Still a little shaky, but recovering. But now my balls are passed out. Now one more women's only torture device.

Jupiter's twist. Talked about this one before. With Jupiter's twist, similar to Newton's orbs, the accused would be tied to a wooden rack facing it. This time the accused's breasts were exposed with two holes so that inquisitors could do what they wanted on the other side of the rack. And what they wanted was to take a long sharp ivory needle-like stick. It would be inserted through either one or both of the heretic's nipples. And then the priests or inquisitors or whoever would just use the leverage provided by the strong piece of ivory to slowly twist the nipple.

Sometimes, allegedly making it up to five full rotations, before the nipple would be completely ripped apart from the breast, at which point the accused would be forced to eat it. And before moving on, a much more recent popular torture device is known as the Richard Bird, or the Dick Bird. It's when a podcaster, who should stay focused on gaining and keeping your trust instead sometimes takes you on a wild goose chase because he's a bit mentally unstable and overly prone to boredom. I told those same two lies and the Spanish Inquisition Suck over six years ago, May 1st,

2018. I just wanted to see how good some of you longtime listeners were at remembering bullshit like that. Okay, real horror again now. Oh yeah. Okay, I'll talk. I'll talk. My kids are downstairs. They're hiding in the basement. Back to torture from the end of the medieval era now. Sometime in the 15th or 16th century a new form of torture emerged involving an animal. If it hadn't been used already, and we just don't have documentation for it.

As both a method of information extraction and punishment, rat torture. Rat torture, while I'm sure there were countless variations regarding how it was carried out, was at its core pretty simple. The victim was stripped of their clothes, laid flat flat on a table and bound so they couldn't move Then a small bottomless metal cage containing a hungry rat was placed directly under their bare belly We talked about this torture method and the previous two in our actually the previous four if you count my bullshit And our suck on the dark ages Episode 2 2 1 released back in December of 2020. And I guess we didn't talk about none. We talked about the two before my bullshit

and the dark ages. My bullshit ones were from the Spanish Inquisition. God, hard for me to process all of that being years ago now. Back to the rats. Small tray with burning coals. We placed on top of the cage that held the rat or rats. Obviously the torturer could place a whole heap of hungry rats with their sharp little claws and teeth in a cage. Their discretion, I imagine, how many rats they wanted to use. As the metal of the cage would grow hotter, the rat or rats would start to claw and bite the soft flesh beneath them trying to escape. So that is your stomach skin if you're the victim. And then they would eventually make a hole large enough to be able to sneak through and

get out. And then feeling horrible and apologizing profusely, I imagine. The rats would just, you know, they would just burrow and burrow through the bowels and intestines nibbling on veins and tendons and muscles. Although I'm sure in that scenario you would want to. Victims did not always die from this alone, not immediately. Instead it would be infection or blood loss that would kill them slowly after the dead or the deed, excuse me, was already done and the rats had run off. My god, first documented usage of this type of rat torture that we could find was implemented

by ruthless Dutch military lieutenant Dietrich Senoy during the beginning stages of the 80 years war. For context, the 80 years war lasted from 1568 to 1648. It was fought between the Dutch and Spanish over the Dutch's independence. In the 1570s when Spanish spies or military personnel were captured by Sunnoy's troops, they were often tortured using the hungry rat in a small cage. And then they would talk. Well of course he would. According to multiple sources, oftentimes the captured prisoner would start metaphorically spilling their guts as soon as the cage

rat was placed on their stomach. Fear of getting alive by the little rodent was enough to make them betray their fellow countrymen and tell their captors whatever they wanted to hear. It would be so hard just to lay you know there and be silent endure this fate especially if you've just seen somebody else die in that manner. And now we head to the Spanish Inquisition which lasts from 1485 through 1750 CE when thousands and thousands were subjected to Pope approved sanctioned torture and One type was called Strapado

Strapado originated in medieval Italy before spreading around Europe. Sounds like a fun board game like Stratego, right? Come on kids. Let's play Strapado No It was primarily carried out by Catholic inquisitors against those accused of heresy It was primarily carried out by Catholic inquisitors against those accused of heresy. The most common version of this torture method, the hands of the accused would be tied behind his or her back, generally his, and a rope looped over a brace in the ceiling or whatever torture chamber they were in or was attached to a pulley. The subject was then raised until they were hanging from their arms, arms, you know, behind their back. Just imagine the strain that would place on your shoulders and how much that would hurt. This would for sure

dislocate both of the victim's shoulders and would possibly, if not probably, pull them out of their sockets. Sometimes the torturers would add a series of drops, right, jerking the subject up and down. Weights could be added to the ankles and feet to make the hanging even more painful and that would absolutely wreck your shoulders back in the days when PT or rotator cuff surgeries did not exist. This technique also typically caused something called brachial plexus injury, an injury to the network of nerves that conduct signals from the spinal cord to the shoulder, arms and hands or it would lead to paralysis or a loss of sensation

in the arms and prolonged suspension would eventually cause tissue death of the muscles of the shoulder and the chest wall due to constricted blood supply. So yeah, they hung you this way for more than, I don't know, 10-15 minutes. You're probably never gonna be the same. There was also the Judas chair, also sometimes called the cradle of Judas. Invented by the Spanish in the 16th century, nobody perfected torture like Spanish priests. The Judas chair was a pyramid shaped seat, very pointy. No one would ever buy this thing to comfortably sit in. It was like the opposite of a lazy boy. It was an angry boy. It looked like a stool with a pyramid sitting atop a flat base.

The person being asked to confess their sins against Christ would be placed on top of it, with the point inserted into their anus or a vagina while they were suspended in the air with rope. Then as questioning advanced the inquisitor would very slowly lower the defendant further and further down onto the tip of the pyramid via the overhead ropes and the naked victims orifice would be slowly stretched oil or grease would very often be added to the Judas chair to lube up the pyramids point. oil or grease would very often be added to the Judas chair to lube up the pyramids point. Down you would sit your vagina or anus gaping further and further until it couldn't gape anymore and there goes your hole. And I'm guessing whoever was holding the rope could have easily just, you know, pulled the victim up then sharply just dropped them back down just wrecking them. Inquisitors would also rock the person from side to side to help get that point just further and further inside of them.

Bah! would also rock the person from side to side to help get that point just further and further inside of them. Bleh! Being burned alive at the stake was probably the most popular inquisition punishment, but I would categorize that just as a, you know, primarily a method of execution. More than torture since, you know, once you start burning, it's not gonna take very long. You know, they're not gonna try and get any more information out of you, not gonna demand you repent in all likelihood. You're definitely just very close to death. And since we're all familiar with how burning works, I don't think we really need to go over that one.

Now let's head to London to visit a specific place associated with so much torture. In the 16th and 17th centuries, out of the medieval era now, torture became more and more commonplace at the infamous Tower of London centuries after it was first built. If you are unfamiliar, the Tower of London aka His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London was first built as a grand palace in royal residence, but it also doubled as a prison beginning just 12 years after its first tower was built back in 1100 CE. More towers were built over subsequent centuries. The tower is a complex of several buildings set within two concentric rings of defensive walls and moat. And from 1100 all the way to 1952, portions of the tower would be used as a prison. The complex is located on the northern bank of the River Thames in central London,

and nowadays you can tour the sprawling stone buildings for just 34 pounds. I took a tour of the tower myself over 20 years ago. At the Tower of London, the Brits borrowed from the ancient Greeks implemented a rack of their own, that device we talked about earlier that slowly rips your limbs from your body. At the tower, the ye old torture device was primarily used as a way to extract information from enemies of the crown, pretty effective in doing so. The prison also introduced a companion device to the rack in the 16th century called the scavenger's daughter, also known as Skevington's jives, also known as the iron shackle or the stork. The scavenger's daughter did the

same thing as the rack but in reverse. Instead of stretching your body apart, it would compress it using a folding frame device. Victims were forced into a kneeling position bent over at the waist with their knees pushing into their chest. Essentially the fetal position, but you're just not laying on your side. And then a bar or strap would go around your back. That could be tightened which would pull your chest closer and closer to your knees like way too close. Like someone was trying to fucking squeeze you into a little, uh, I don't know, overhead compartment on an airplane or something, put in a little suitcase,

like you're being vacuum sealed. Due to the intense internal pressure, victims would often begin to bleed from their ears and nose. If tightened enough, the victim would then suffocate. And I'm guessing most victims piss and shit themselves. I mean, your body is going to try and get out everything it can to reduce pressure in the situation. And I'm guessing a lot of people got, you know, real hard. You know, like a wrecked when this happened. Because it's like, I mean, it's kind of, it's sexy. It's sexy to be smushed out hard, right? I mean, I mean, I mean if you're a kinky weirdo, not me, but you,

I'm not hard. I'm not even a little tingle. Anyway, the scavenger's daughter, great torture device name, pretty cool band name or maybe like band album, was invented during the latter part of the reign of King Henry VII by the lieutenant of the Tower of London, Sir Leonard Skevington, and was mainly used as a punishment against rebels, particularly Irish rebels. Another Tower of London torture staple that was not nearly as inventive was the manacles. Very simple interrogation, torture device that we actually see quite a few variations of today. Prisoners wrists would be bound in manacles or iron handcuffs and then they would be suspended from the ceiling for extensive

periods of time. Afterwards the victim would find it very painful difficult to use her hands. Hands were very likely permanently damaged now. Arms were probably permanently damaged. Full suspension of an average-sized man by the wrist will likely cause permanent nerve damage after only about 15 minutes as a result of both compression and traction. If the victim's heavier, damage can occur even more quickly. While torture has never been officially permitted under English law, it did happen a lot. And those who carried out these brutal practices in the tower acted under the direct order and authority of the Privy Council and of the monarch. And a lot of torture went down in the tower's infamous dungeons.

I'm sure a lot of different experiments in torture were carried out that never made it into any historical record. One that did was another form of rat torture. The Tower of London had a special dungeon dedicated to rat torture. It was located beneath the water line in the River Thames. Prisoners would be tossed down into this pitch black space during low tide. As the tide came in and the water rose, rats would float in along with it. The prisoners would not be able to see the creatures in the total darkness,

but they would surely hear them scurrying about, feel them crawling over their bodies as they lay helplessly chained to the cold floor. According to one source, the flesh was torn from the arms and legs of prisoners during sleep by the well-known veracity of these animals. That's an old-timey word for ferocity. For anyone with a phobic level fear regarding rodents, you would probably die of fright. Leaving the tower now but sticking with England during the 16th century, waterboarding was also done by the Dutch East India Trading Company as an interrogation tactic against British rivals. Although today there are multiple variations of this torture tactic, back then the process consisted of wrapping a cloth around the victim's head so it covered his mouth and nose, then

saturating it with water. One book from 1624 recounts one instance of the tactic being used against a British prisoner. They bound a cloth about his neck and face, so that little or no water could go by. That done, they poured the water softly upon his head until the cloth was full, up to the mouth and nostrils, and somewhat higher, so that he could not draw breath, but he must suck in the water. While being still, continued to be poured softly, forced all his inward parts came out of his nose and eyes, and often as it were stifling and choking him, at length took away his breath and brought him into a swoon or fainting. Then they took him quickly down and made him vomit up the water. Being a little recovered, they pulled him up again

and poured in the water as before. In this manner they handled him three or four several times with water till his body was stolen twice or thrice as big as before. His cheeks like great bladders and his eyes staring and strutting out beyond his forehead. Yet all this he bare without confessing anything. So some tough son of a bitch there. Since then waterboarding has become one of the most widely used interrogational torture methods in the world, across all cultures. In fact, as we will get into it a little bit later, since the turn of the century, waterboarding has been used frequently by the CIA.

According to NPR, part of the reason waterboarding has been so popular throughout history is because it doesn't kill the victim, but it does give them the sensation of dying. It's true origins a bit hazy. I bet it's been used in some form for thousands of years. And I'm sure this next water-based form of torture has also been around in some form for thousands of years. But it seems like a dude in the 16th century gets credit for inventing it. During the late 16th century an Italian lawyer named Hippolytus de Marcillus describes what is now known as Chinese water torture for the first time. That's right, an Italian dude came up with Chinese water torture.

It seems that the word Chinese was just added to grant this method a sense of ominous mystery. Pretty funny. I always assumed because of his name that it did originate in China. It should also be noted that Hippolytus de Marcillis was the first person to pitch the concept of sleep deprivation as a form of torture. This guy was into torture. We'll get into that a little bit farther down the timeline. Having observed how a stream of water falling onto a stone would eventually erode a hole into its surface, he proposed a form of torture in which the victim being interrogated is restrained under a machine that releases continuous drops of water directly onto their forehead. Because the victim's head would be

tilted upwards they could see each drop of water coming and would eventually be driven mad by anticipation and fear like the like the stone a hole would be bored into their head by a never-ending repetition of droplets. In an early episode of Mythbusters co-hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Heineman, they tested the Chinese water tortures effectiveness and the conclusion they came to was that although it did cause severe discomfort and anxiety to a restrained victim, continuous water droplets falling on the head of someone who is unrestrained caused little to no negative effects and no the drops did not bore a hole into anyone's head. However, this method would lead to a victim eventually suffering a full-on

psychotic break. Now let's jump way ahead to the mid 20th century. During World War II, the US Navy discovered that while 75% of its naval fighter pilots survived getting shot down by enemy fire, only 5% would live past that because they either couldn't swim or if they managed to find one they couldn't find the resources to survive on a remote island. And because of this they decided to torture the ever-loving shit out of new recruits to find out who is strong enough to be worth training. If you can't survive the rack, if you can't handle a little pair of anguish, slammed up your poop chute, what's the point of even giving you a plane? No, because of this they, slammed up your poop chute, what's the point of even giving you a plane?

No, because of this they implemented a survival training course that all cadets had to take in order to become a naval pilot. This will circle back to torture. The course initially only required trainees to be able to swim for one mile in full gear, be able to dive 50 feet underwater to escape bullets, and then eventually expanded to include a submerged aircraft escape. And to simulate what it would be like in battle cadets would also be forced to dive into pools that were covered with a thin layer of oil and set on fire holy

shit following the end of World War two in 1945 and the subsequent creation of the Air Force in 1947 basic survival schools were now set up in Nome Alaska Thule Greenland and Happy Valley Goose Bay Newfoundland and Labrador Canada to help train military personnel to quote effectively deal with the survival of harsh environments, evasion from the enemy and a capture by a and capture by a hostile force. However it wasn't until the Korean War that the military would up their game to now include training on how to survive torture. On August 12 1949 the Geneva Conventions they were signed to

establish international legal standards and protocol for how persons in all countries should be treated during war Don't shove a metal expanding pair of anyone's puss ever Don't break in one the wheel or put them in a shit boat full of maggots and flies They're gonna crawl into their bellies not cool kill each other in a nice respectful way, please Torture in any form against any person was outlawed with these protocols. Article 17 of the Geneva Convention states that "...every prisoner of war when questioned on the subject is bound to give only his surname, first name and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or serial

number or failing this equivalent information. If he willfully infringes this rule, he may render himself liable to a restriction of the privileges accorded to his rank or status. Each party to a conflict is required to furnish the persons under its jurisdiction who are liable to become prisoners of war with an identity card showing the owner's surname, first name, rank, army, regimental, personal or serial number, or equivalent information, and date of birth. The identity card may furthermore bear the signature or the fingerprints or both of the owner

and may bear as well any other information the party to the conflict may wish to add concerning persons belonging to its armed forces. No physical or mental torture nor any other form of coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantage or disadvantageous treatment of any kind. Like it is literally illegal to put someone in a dark room and have them only listen to this for hours. And that should be illegal. It definitely should be illegal.

Would literally rather listen to fucking cats fight in an alley. Holy shit. As of 2024, 196 countries have signed the Geneva Conventions, including the Holy See of the Vatican and the state of Palestine. And that's cute, Vatican. You have a 135-man army. I'm not kidding on the side. 135 dudes total. No sophisticated military weapons. That army's never taken any POWs. Their colorful uniforms, which are yellow, red, and blue, have also often been compared to Renaissance court jesters. Again, not kidding. What other military are they ever going to do battle against? Speaking of the military, during the Korean War, which lasts from 1950 to 1953, over 7,000 Americans became prisoners of war, 40% of whom died in captivity. Not following the Geneva Protocol's North Korea you fuckers.

I think I remember John Bon Jovi singing about POWs once in North Korea. Anyway, this sad tragic state of affairs inspired the US military to adjust their training programs to include mandatory courses on how to survive being tortured as a POW. Prior to the war, personnel that had a high risk of being captured were only trained to give the big four in the case of being a POW, right, name, rank, service number, date of birth. Because that training proved insufficient in helping them survive being captured, the military started to work with both former POWs and psychologists on devising the best way to prepare soldiers for this possibility. In 1961, under the leadership of surviving

Korean War POWs, the first survival, evasion, resistance, and escape SEER training schools are implemented by the US Air Force. The Navy quickly followed suit in 1962, the Army in 1963. SEER training is still used by the US military today and its focus remains providing high risk of capture personnel with quote the skills to survive and evade capture or or if captured, to resist interrogation and exploitation, and ultimately plan an escape if feasible. Some positions that are designated to have a high risk of capture include aviation personnel, snipers, members of special forces, foreign diplomatic personnel, and intelligence gatherers.

Like I mentioned earlier, there are four main aspects of seer training. Survival, which includes both surviving severe climates like deserts or the arctic, as well as surviving physical force like combat or a crash landing. Evasion, how to avoid being captured by the enemy. Resistance, how to endure the enemy's interrogation tactics. And escape, how to plan or execute your escape from the enemy's prison, which is super badass. Although it's fascinating to learn about each aspect of seer training the one that's relevant to today's episode is of course resistance. What

exactly is taught during resistance training depends on your specific position in the military. For example a special agent might be prepped for a different type of capture than a sniper as well as which school you are attending. However across the board resistance training is generally concerned with providing people the skills and information they would need in order to endure psychological and physical torture. A fundamental part of resistance training is the legal and moral obligation a soldier must uphold even if they are captured by the enemy.

These obligations are outlined in the Code of Conduct. Number 1. I am an American, fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defenses. 2. I will never surrender of my own free will. If in command, I will never surrender the members of my command while they still have the means to resist. 3. If I am captured, I will continue to resist by all three, if I am captured I will continue to resist by any by all means available. I will make every effort to escape and aid others to escape. I will accept neither parole nor special favors from the enemy.

You gotta be a brave-ass soldier to follow through on all these. And so much respect and admiration for those who have done that in the direst of situations. Number four, if I become a prisoner of war, I will keep faith with fellow prisoners. I will give no information or take part in any action which might be harmful to my comrades. If I am senior, I will take command. If not, I will obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me and will back them up in every way. Number five, when questioned, should I become a prisoner of war? I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth.

I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and as allies are harmful to their cause. Number six, I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free I will trust in my God and in the United States of America and Finally number seven. I will never ever ever Masturbate to the sight of my fellow servicemen or women being tortured

I will not scream stuff while they are being tortured like oh shit. That's fucking hot me next I mean next dude do to me do it harder Well also thrusting my hips out So others around me particularly enemy combatants can tell that I definitely have an erection and want some of that hot hard BDSM ish action that's fucking gross. That's weird It's what a creep does it's not what a good boy who goes peeping to potty is supposed to do God bless thoughts and prayers Okay, maybe I made up number seven. But the first six, definitely real. According

to the 2017 Seer Air Force Handbook, the most important tool one can use to both survive being a POW and successfully withhold information from the enemy while in captivity is their will to survive. And that reminds me of Viktor Frankl. Right, former subject, the Austrian logo therapist who survived being trapped in a World War II concentration camp and survived losing almost everybody he loved to Nazi aggression. And he did that mainly by hanging on to hope, by still wanting to wake up every day and to keep going. He just had such a will to live. His will was so strong. And here's what that handbook says about will. The will to survive is defined as the desire to live despite seemingly insurmountable mental and or physical obstacles. The tools for survival are furnished by the military, the individual, and the environment.

The training for seer comes from training publications, instruction, and the individual's own efforts. But tools and training are not enough without a will to survive. In fact, the records prove that will alone has been the deciding factor in many survival cases. And to be clear, no amount of will is going to keep you alive in the rack or something similar to it, but it can help you endure far less overwhelmingly physically destructive methods of torture. In addition to extensive reading on the importance of withholding information from the enemy no matter what you are subjected to, the 2017 SEER Air Force Handbook also includes a few testimonies from veterans who used their SEER training to survive extreme

circumstances. Part of the section on captivity in the 625 page handbook reads, captive environments may vary but none are good. The will to survive has historically been a very powerful motivator to overcome the worst captivity scenarios. Such was the case of Greg Williams, who was held hostage by an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist in the Philippines. He was captured by a terrorist who thought of him as a source of income. The terrorist had killed other hostages. His treatment by the terrorist just confirmed what he knew.

His life expectancy was very short. Once they found out he was of no monetary value to them. Chained by the ankle inside a coral rock cave, he had tried to dig out the bolted chain from the cave's wall by using his fingers and chicken bones from his food but had no luck. The use of the bones had led him to the only thing available to him, his own teeth. Mr. Williams figured he could pull out a tooth with a crown to dig into the wall, which is exactly what he did. His captors had beaten him, knocking out and loosening several teeth. He found a loose tooth in his mouth with the crown, pulled it out. He used the yanked out tooth with a crown

for approximately two days to dig around the bolt securing him to the coral wall. Unfortunately a few days later while using the tooth to dig, his plan and quote escape tool were discovered by one of his captors. Just a little after his escape attempt was discovered, one of his captors aided Mr. Williams to escape. Mr. Williams' will to survive and determination led him to take extraordinary means to escape. So that's incredible. That's an incredible attempt and I love that one of the captors was clearly impressed with his will to escape and survive. You know even though

his plan wasn't you know working, he was impressed by what lengths he was willing to go to do that and helped him out. Hail Nimrod, hail Greg Williams. Greg was a Christian missionary held and tortured for 13 days before he was free. As the SEER training programs evolved, former prisoners of war continued to participate heavily in preparing the next generation of soldiers. In the 1970s now, after Vietnam POWs returned home, many of them contributed their knowledge to SEER programs by offering lectures about their experiences with torture, lengthy interrogations, threats of execution, disease and physical injuries, communication with fellow POWs, and most importantly the means to keep hope alive. During the Vietnam War or conflict but really war, which lasted for 20 years from 1955 to 1975, POWs were tortured to a degree that many didn't think was possible in a post-Geneva Convention

world. In North Vietnam, American prisoners were systematically tortured for military information or to get them to confess to war crimes. Torture methods used against POWs during this time included food reduction, sleep deprivation, clubbing, whipping, flogging. In one case, a prisoner was said to have received near-continuous lashings with the whip for 38 straight days. The fuck? Other prisoners were skinned alive by rubber fan belts?

What? Others still hung upside down and shocked with car batteries? A man named Eugene Red McDaniel, a Navy captain and naval aviator, was held captive and tortured for six years as a POW. He made it home, he's still alive today, 92 years old. He was flying his 81st mission of the war, May 17th, 1966, in his A6 fighter jet, part of operation Rolling Thunder, when shrapnel from a surface-to-air missile took out his A6's hydraulic systems and

the jet began to nosedive. He ejected out of the cockpit around 2,000 feet above some mountains, crushed a disc, cracked a vertebrae, broke several bones upon his landing. A day later he was captured by a bunch of dudes with machine guns and then taken to the Hanoi Hilton to be quote interrogated. He was tossed into a cockroach infested cell interrogated immediately upon his arrival. You talk medicine later, his captors first told him there. When he refused to give nothing more than his name, rank, and serial number, he was tied up with ropes, bound so his arms were stretched behind his back and his shoulders were ready to pop out of their sockets.

I pretended to pass out several times in hopes they would untie me and leave me alone, McDaniel wrote of his first day as a prisoner of war. But they were wise to that. At times I would bite my shoulder hard to try and transfer the pain from one area to another. Then I began pounding my head against the wall, hoping for blood, something liquid to ease my terrible thirst. Jesus. A month into his captivity, following some other pilots escaping, when McDaniel told the officers he had no knowledge of their escape, his pants were pulled down and officers took turns hitting him in the ass with a rubber fan belt. He was then

forced to kneel, keep his hands above his head, wrists locked in irons. When his arms finally fell down on his knees, a guard hit him hard across the back of his head. When he could no longer hold his arms up at all, the guards tied them up, kept them above his head with a rope. McDaniel spent the night sitting on a stool. He was beaten with a rubber sandal across the face if he spoke or asked questions. That was a Saturday. On Sunday was much the same. Fan belt beatings, arms up, spending the night sitting on a stool. By Tuesday, McDaniel's knees were infected from kneeling on the concrete floor.

The guards continued to beat him, this time with bamboo sticks, if his arms dropped below his head. Halfway through the week, McDaniel confessed that his room was the source of the escape plans. It wasn't. The confession brought him an hour of relief until the officers figured out it was bullshit. Then the torture continued and on the fifth night of beatings and no sleep, McDaniel became sick from infections. His fever reached 104 degrees. He said, so much came out of those wounds that whenever I moved around in that small

room, a trail of pus will be left behind along the floor. The torture reached its peak on the sixth night. McDaniel wrote in his book about all this scars and stripes that he became irrational, grabbed a guard, began to yell at him. The commotion attracted other guards to the interrogation room where they tied McDaniel's arms again with ropes, this time pulled him up from the ceiling about two feet off of the ground and at one point while he's being suspended and beaten one of his arms snaps in two. You've broken my arm, McDaniel yelled at the officers. No one replied. We have not broken your arm. You have broken your arm. The next day the guards tied damp

cloths around his arms, bound cords, excuse me, they tied damp cloths around his arms, you know one of them's really broken, and around cords hooked up to a battery and now they started to electrocute him. Started with electric shock treatments, those lasted throughout the day. McDaniel recalled the pain as blinding, but mercifully I was so tired there was only another blurring dimension of the pain I already had. Final beatings came on Friday, 120 licks with a fan belt, passing blood in his urine, ruptured eardrum. McDaniel couldn't take it any longer, he told the officers what they wanted to hear, but none of the names he gave were part of any escape

committee. None of the information he gave was true. After that, he was left alone to heal up, but then later be beaten again, then healed, and beaten again, then healed, and be beaten again off and on for six years. So much torture. In a 2009 article, retired Air Force Colonel, Medal of Honor recipient, and author of Surviving Hell, a POW journey, Leo Thorsness, commented on his experience as a prisoner of war. He said, if someone surveyed the hundreds of surviving Vietnam POWs, we would likely not agree on one definition of torture. In fact, we don't agree on whether water boarding is torture. For example, Senator John McCain, George Bud Day and I were recently together. Bud, one of the

toughest and most tortured POWs, was a senior officer in the camps, and he received the Medal of Honor for his heroism in Vietnam. McCain thinks waterboarding is torture. But did I believe it is harsh treatment, but not torture. Other POWs would have varying opinions. I don't claim to be right. We just disagree. As someone who's been severely tortured over an extended period of time, my

firsthand view is this torture when used over an extended period of time, my first-hand view is this. Torture, when used by an expert, can produce useful, truthful information. I based that on my experience. I believe that during torture there is a narrow window of truth as pain, often multiple kinds, is increased. Beyond that point, if torture increases, the person breaks or dies if he continues to resist. Each person will tolerate a different physical and mental threshold of pain. If the interrogator is well trained he can identify when that point is reached. It's the exact moment when if slightly more pain is inflicted the person can no longer hold out and merely provides name, rank, serial number, and date of birth as dictated by the Geneva

Conventions. At that precise point the window of truth exists and a person may give useful or truthful information to stop the pain. As slightly more pain is applied, the person loses it. He will say anything he thinks will stop the torture, any lie, any story, any random words or sounds. This torture window of truth is theoretical to some. Having been there, it is fact to me. While being tortured I had the sickening feeling deep within my soul that maybe I would tell the truth. It is unpleasant, but I can still dredge up the memory of that window of truth feeling

as the pain intensified." Thorsness also wrote that in addition to the code of conduct and the skills they received in survival training, many Vietnam POWs developed their own moral standards and would pass them on to newcomers on the site. For the former colonel and his fellow prisoners, their motto was, "...when you can't hold out for years by simply giving your name, rank, serial number, and date of birth, take physical torture until you are right at the edge of losing your ability to be rational. At that point, lie. Do or say whatever you must do to survive. But you first must take physical

torture. And the world truly has some tough motherfuckers who have been tested, battle tested, and know they are tough living in it. Oof, jumping ahead now. On September 11th, 2001, Al Qaeda executes terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon. We've talked about this multiple times. I'm sure you're well aware of this. In response, President George Bush declares a war on terror.

Bush's rhetoric and the stance the White House took following the attack would profoundly reshape Americans' relationship to torture. In other words, over the next two decades, gross human rights abuses and torture would be executed in the name of counterterrorism. On September 17, 2001, President Bush signed a classified covert action memorandum authorizing the CIA to detain terrorists. On February 7, 2002, President Bush signs a memorandum thatizing the CIA to detain terrorists. On February 7th, 2002, President Bush signs a memorandum that claims the Geneva Convention's rules about torture don't apply to the global conflict with Al-Qaeda. Yikes! I get the urge to do that, but also protocols like the Geneva protocols are completely pointless if you only follow them when it's convenient to follow them. Around the same time, Bush establishes

the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. The military prison was used to house Muslim militants and suspected terrorists captured by US forces in Iraq. Guantanamo Bay has seven campsites with 612 total units, as well as a black site located approximately one mile outside the property's perimeter where prisoners are interrogated or tortured since its establishment

Gontanamo Bay has been condemned for alleged human rights violations by a number of Big groups like Amnesty International The International Committee of the Red Cross the European Union the Organization of American States Despite an influx of criticism the Bush administration maintained that prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were never tortured and always allotted their basic human rights. However, Bush also asserted that because the base was outside the U.S. territory and because of the memorandum he had previously signed, they were not required to grant prisoners at Guantanamo Bay any constitutional protection.

So, they were tortured and denied basic human rights is what I'm reading between the lines there. On August 1st 2002 the United States Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel signs one classified and one unclassified memoranda that conclude the CIA's proposed enhanced interrogation techniques did not violate federal anti-torture statutes. The Bush administration approved enhanced interrogation techniques. Were used at clandestine U.S. armed forces remote sites around the world including Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, Abu Ghraab prison in Iraq, and Bucharest, Romania. And in Bucharest, Romania. Some of the methods classified as enhanced interrogation techniques at the time, definitely for sure not torture or even adjacent to torture,

were waterboarding, binding, sleep deprivation, confinement in small cages, subjection to extreme hot or cold, and medically unnecessary invasive procedures like rectal feeding, which amounts to sexual humiliation and assault in some cases. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Investigating Accusations of Torture found that the allegedly necessary and legitimate medical assault in some cases. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating accusations of torture found that the allegedly necessary and legitimate medical practice of rectal feeding was for sure used by the CIA as a form of torture tantamount to sexual assault. According to the committee report, at least five CIA detainees were subjected to rectal rehydration or rectal feeding without any documented medical necessity. The

report identifies a chief of interrogation referring to medically unnecessary rectal feeding and hydration as illustrative of the interrogators total control over the detainee. Alongside the psychological effects of this torture, a series of physical injuries was sustained by at least one detainee as a result of rectal feeding. According to the report, rectal feeding was actually sodomy. The detainee was diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic rectal prolapse. So whoever was shoving the feeding tube

in this detainee's ass, not doing it gently with enough lube. I highly doubt it was primarily inserted to make sure he had enough nutrients. It was just straight-up sexual torture. Prisoners of these sites were also consistently berated with threats to the lives of their children, threats that their mother's throats would be slit, their bodies raped. The first person to be subjected to the enhanced interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration was a detainee Known as Abu Zubaydah or Zubaydah. Excuse me. Abu Zubaydah Zubaydah is a Palestinian man who at the time of his detainment

As it was believed or initial detainment He still detained was believed by the CIA to be a leader of al-qaeda. He was captured in Faisalabad Pakistan in March of 2002, sent into the network of secret CIA prisons. Zubaydah has never been charged with a crime, although he was a jihadist, never been proven that he had any prior knowledge about the 9-11 attacks, let alone was actively involved in them, and he has never been proven to be a member of al-Qaeda or even adjacent to al-Qaeda, yet he is still currently being held at Guantanamo Bay, detained overall for over 20 fucking years now. Imagine that. Imagine for a moment that he's truly innocent of any acts of terrorism against the U.S. and yet the U.S. has

imprisoned him for over 20 years. Imagine he was a U.S. citizen and being treated this way. Take off your citizen's hat. Just imagine, just be a meat sack of the world, a citizen of the globe. Just be a human on this floating rock and think, what if that was you? What if that was a member of your tribe, your family, your friend, your federal citizen, whatever you, wherever you live. Not okay, not acceptable. If you can't find enough evidence to convict someone of a serious crime in over 20 years, what the fuck are you doing still detaining him? And if you think, well yeah, well now if we let him go, he's definitely gonna do something. Maybe.

What a shitty precedent to set. If we expect other nations to not illegally detain and torture our citizens, we are hypocritical fucking fools to not do the same with the citizens of other nations. This guy is 53 years old now. Been in custody since he was 31. Yeah, first known person to be waterboard about a CIA has subsequently been subjected to it 83 times. That's not disputed now. Another approved enhanced interrogation technique used against Sabeta and others is known as walling. This just beat the shit out of somebody. When he was quote walled, Sabeta was stripped naked, wrists and ankles chained, placed in front of a wall facing a guard.

The guard would wrap a towel around the prisoner's neck, hold the end to stabilize him, and then repeatedly slam the back of his head against the wall. Zabata was also subjected to sleep deprivation in the form of being shackled horizontally in such an uncomfortable and painful position it made it impossible to sleep. The CIA's reasoning behind this specific enhanced interrogation tactic is that it, quote, focuses the detainee's attention on his current situation rather than ideological goals. Although Zabeta stated he would be deprived of sleep for three weeks at a time when this tactic was originally approved by the Bush administration as an enhanced interrogation

method in 2002, documents stated the prisoner would not be subjected to sleep deprivation for more than 11 days at a time. Taking inspiration from medieval torture methods, another method the CIA used against the Beta and others was constriction. For hours at a time, he was confined in a small box he referred to as the dog box that was just big enough for him to be squeezed in in the fetal position. Might as well have just shipped a fucking copy of the scavenger's daughter from the old Tower of London or from some medieval torture museum. Similarly he would

occasionally wake up sitting on a metal bucket in complete darkness, naked, shaved, shackled at the hands and feet. The wood container he was placed in was barely wider than himself and although taller than the dog box not tall enough for him to stand up in. Other times Zabeta was forced to stand naked on his tiptoes in a freezing cell for days at a time, arms stretched above his head bound to a metal bar. Excuse me, in this position for prolonged periods of time he would become unbearably nauseous and vomit. In 2016 illustrations drawn by Zabeta depicted these and other forms of torture he experienced at the hands of the

CIA and were published by the New York Times. In one drawing Zabeta portrays himself getting waterboarded. In the self-portrait the prisoner is seen strapped tightly down in a gurney with his face positioned under a water spout, his head covered by a rag, his neck slightly elevated by a drop-down hinge, also has a bleeding open wound on his right thigh that is being dug into by one of the straps. One now declassified, yeah, in some declassified testimony given to his lawyer in 2008, Sabeta said of his experience, quote, they kept pouring water and concentrating on my nose

and my mouth until I really felt I was drowning. My chest was just about to explode from the lack of oxygen. In 2005, the CIA destroyed video footage of prisoners at places like Guantanamo Bay being interrogated using torture. The tapes were destroyed by the head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez. There were 92 video tapes in total, multiple of which allegedly showed Zabeta vomiting and screaming and bleeding while being interrogated. But not tortured! No, no, no, no.

Now, the US government would never do that. We're nothing but, you know, holy white knights over here here ordained by God to dole out nothing but righteous justice. Zero bad apples in this tree. According to Rodriguez, the tapes were destroyed in an industrial shredder in order to protect the identities of CIA interrogators who were simply doing their jobs. Not because they were doing anything, you know, super fucking illegal and disgusting. According to the BBC, Rodriguez also stated that, quote, the heat from destroying the tapes is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes got into the public domain. He said that out of context it would make the CIA look terrible. It would be devastating to us. All in the room agreed. Zabeta and who the fuck knows how many other prisoners continue to be held at US detention centers around the world

not charged with crimes and probably being fucking tortured. And for the record, I'm not saying that they're innocent. I don't know. I'm not saying that they're not connected to terrorist groups that are actively trying to harm both U.S. soldiers and U.S. civilians. But again, if we expect other nations not to torture our citizens because they might want to do some harm to their soldiers and civilians or because we're at war with them, then we have to exemplify the same behavior with our military or we just need to say fuck it say fuck you Geneva no protocols for us just say there's no good guys there's no bad guys they're just us and you and everyone else that isn't us and we're not gonna

apply the same rules to you or anyone else not us as we will to us and stop being fucking hypocrites with all the shit and of course the. is far from the only nation still torturing people. There are many other nations who torture way more people than we do. And to a more sadistic degree, like Iran. Let's go to the present day now. Iran security forces raped, tortured and sexually assaulted detainees while repressing widespread protests in 2022, 2022 and in 2023. Human Rights Watch said back in April 22nd of this year.

In December of 2023, Amnesty International released reports that documented that security forces quote, use rape and other forms of sexual violence to intimidate and punish peaceful protesters during the 2022 woman life freedom uprising. A Kurdish woman told Human Rights Watch that in November of 2022, two men from the security forces raped her while a woman agent held her down and facilitated said rape. A 24-year-old Kurdish man from West Azerbaijan province said he was severely tortured and raped with a baton by intelligence agency forces in a secret detention center in September of 2022.

A 30-year-old man from East Azerbaijan said he was blindfolded and beaten along with other protesters and then gang raped with another man by security forces in a van in October of 2022. Human Rights Watch also documented government security forces restraining, blindfolding, and torturing protesters in detention. Authorities beat and sexually assaulted a Baluch woman who witnessed at least two other women being raped in her detention center in October of 2022, leaving them physically and psychologically traumatized. Detainees have said that not only men and women have been raped by security forces but also children, and that beatings have led to murders. A female university student from Baluchistan told Human Rights Watch that

in October of 2022 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces arrested her along with approximately 20 other women after they protested and shouted anti-government slogans. The forces beat all the women so severely during their arrest that one woman lost consciousness. They blindfolded, bound the women, then loaded them into a van, took them to an undisclosed location. The woman described the place they were transferred to as a small room with a low ceiling. Security forces separated them into groups of three in separate cells there. The security forces detained the women for over a month,

during which time the women were subjected to torture and sexual violence, including being kicked repeatedly in their genitals to coerce false confessions that they were involved in political groups. The woman interviewed said that security forces handed her papers with revolutionary regard letterhead to write and sign a confession. And then quote, when I told the interrogator that I'm not affiliated with any political party and will no longer participate in protests, he said, no, you won't cooperate. I'll have to deal with you differently then.

Then he called two people and said, this whore likes to be torn apart. She said they tore my clothes apart and brutally raped me. I lost consciousness. And when they poured water on my head, I regained consciousness and saw that my entire body was covered in blood. Fuck. They blindfolded her, took her to her cell, where her cell mates told her the same thing had happened to them. She said she could see that they were so badly hurt and scared. They told each other that if they get out alive they would kill themselves. She said she was raped three times during her approximately 50-day detention, mostly

during her first days of her arrest. She was not given any medicine or hygienic supplies. They didn't even give us a single tissue, let alone medical aid, she said. They only gave us a pill every night. I don't know what it was, maybe some sort of sedative, a sleeping pill. They would make us take the pill and wouldn't leave the cell until we saw it wouldn't leave the cell until we swallowed it She was forced to sign dozens of pages of confessions without any questions They accused her of quote destroying public property disturbing the security of the population She faced additional charge of disrupting public order blasphemy

destruction of public property again She said that after she was released she had an infection in her kidneys and uterus and had to go, I had to undergo surgery twice. And I could go on and on and on, but I don't need to. You get it. Government sanctioned torture is still alive and well. Both in nations that are supposed to be the good guys and in nations that most of the world seems to expect to treat their citizens savagely. A history of torture. Man, we just covered so much trauma. Government or governing body sanctioned torture comes in so many forms.

And it's not just a product of Roman times or medieval Europe, again, still alive and well. The US government still tortures people and so do many other governments. The criteria of that study I mentioned earlier in the episode, conducted at the university, oh my gosh, my notes. Oh, Virginia. I remembered Virginia. I just wrote university with no other word. That's cool. But it holds up.

No matter the people or the period in time, all forms of torture throughout history share the following four major characteristics. Number one, torture is most commonly used against people who are not full members of a society such as slaves, foreigners, prisoners of war, and members of racial, ethnic, and religious outsider groups. Who is the CIA torturing of black sites around the world? Foreigners, prisoners of war, members of racial, ethnic, and religious outsider groups, right? Check, check, check, check, check. Number two, torture is used more rarely against members of citizens, against members or citizens of a society. In this case, two special conditions must apply. Torture is only used after finding of probable guilt and torture is only used in cases

of what are considered by said society to be extremely serious crimes particularly heresy and treason. Number two applies to the people being tortured right now in Iran. Citizens but citizens critical of a government that considers criticism tantamount to treason. Number three, torture is more commonly used when a government or society perceives itself to be under threat. Why are so many US citizens seemingly okay with the torture of men like Abu Zubaydah? Because he represents, even if he personally didn't do anything, the threat of terrorism in the US. And he's another. Again, right? He's Muslim,

he's Arab, he's foreign, he was born in Saudi Arabia, he's brown and not Christian, which means he is an outsider's outsider here in the US. And finally, number four, the rise of human rights norms and the increase in the number of liberal democratic states have had a significant impact in reducing torture. Liberal democratic states do sometimes engage in torture, but do so much less often than other states, and almost never use torture against their own citizens when they do engage in torture It is primarily against non-citizens and under conditions of extreme threat such as in response to terrorist attacks

And I feel like number four was written specifically for the United States, right written in a very Excusatory tone of yeah. I mean, yeah, I mean, we torture a little bit, but not like as bad as other people do. So we're still the good guys. We lightly torture. That's not so bad, right? In so many ways, we are the same meat sacks we were 2000 years ago, 2000 years before that. We're more civilized.

We have more laws, more humane laws, but we're still afraid of outsiders in ways that are not always rational and we're still afraid of outsiders and ways that are not always rational And we're still largely okay with treating outsiders in ways we would label as monstrous and barbaric if that was how they treated us Still silly old us versus them binary thinking still tribal mentality The world is a scary place and I'm not naive enough to think you can continually keep your society safe from external threats Without ever getting your hands dirty. But we shouldn't stoop to torture. Ever. And here's why. Because if we do it then we lose the right to be taken seriously when we ask others not to do it to us. But is that actually a realistic expectation? If you were positive that somebody had information,

that if you could get that information from them would save the lives of say, I don't know, 10,000 people. And a lot of those people were people you love. And that person would not willingly give you that information. Would you, if you were allowed, torture them if you thought that you might get the information you needed that way? Right? If we weren't emotional creatures, you know, the answer could be no, it's never okay to torture under any circumstances

because of the precedent sets, because of the very dangerous and dark slippery slope you start sliding down, but we are highly emotional creatures. I think most people would torture in that situation. If I truly believed that I could save my two kids and Lindsay's lives by torturing somebody I believed was a terrible person withholding information, I'm going to torture the fuck out of them. I'm going to torture them until death. I I'm gonna take them to hell before they die. Give them a real dark slow preview. And if they never give me the info I need, I'll still justify to myself that at least I tried to save my family.

And that reasoning does not make me a noble person. But it is what I would do. Which is why we need governing bodies to pass laws against torture under any circumstances and have those laws be enforced. To provide extra incentive for people like me, people with moral codes, have a lot of gray in them, from giving into our worst emotional impulses. That's the only way to reduce, maybe someday eliminate, but that feels a little too idealistic for me, government-sponsored torture proper legislation and enforcement and that's all I got for this topic outside of our takeaways

Time Shuck Top 5 Takeaways Number one there are two types of torture as defined by the United Nations penal and judicial penal torture is any method of inflicting pain as a form of punishment for some criminal or otherwise illegal activity. This also includes death by torture executions. Judicial torture on the other hand is any type of psychological or physical torture carried out by a governing body in order to extract information from the victim. And neither kind ever, ever make me hard because that's fucking weird. Stop accusing me being some kind of slave

master from last week's suck. Enough already. Number two, torture has been around practically as long as we have dating all the way back to 3000 BCE in the age of antiquity. The earliest known torture method is impalement, a form of excruciatingly painful execution during which the victim is slowly skewered from anus to mouth or back to stomach. So simple. So horrifying. Number three. Since the Middle Ages, the most universal form of torture across all periods and cultures is simulated drowning, aka waterboarding. Waterboarding in its most common form is the practice of wrapping the victim's head in a cloth,

then pouring a consistent stream of water over it. The earliest documented case of waterboarding took place in the 16th century when Dutch tradesmen used it against British prisoners. It took place in Guantanamo Bay and other CIA black sites following the 9-11 terror attacks. I'm guessing it's probably taking place right now somewhere. Number 4. Former POWs from the Korean and Vietnam wars have played a huge role in building the survival,

evasion, resistance, and escape training for the US Armed Forces. Nowadays the resistance aspect of SEER training includes prepping personnel that have a high risk of being captured on how to withstand all forms of interrogation, including torture. Number five, new info. The United States is currently embroiled in a heated debate regarding whether or not solitary confinement should be considered torture. If you don't know solitary confinement is the forced isolation of prisoners. Many believe that the practice should be completely outlawed given the negative physical and psychological effects. In fact in 2020 the UN released a statement claiming that prolonged solitary confinement

amounts to psychological torture. In 2016 President Obama banned solitary confinement for juvenile offenders, but the practice remains constitutional and legal for all other incarcerated people. Time Suck! Top 5 Takeaways! A brief-ish history of torture has been sucked. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for all the help making Time Suck! Starting as always with the queen of bad magic, Lindsey Cummins, giving

me the space to work on it. She really is a good one. Biggest heart in the biz. Thanks always to Logan Keith. Thanks always. Thanks also. Also always. It's Logan Keith helping to publish this episode designing merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com and thank you to Molly Box for her initial research on this one. Also thanks to the all-seen eyes moderating the culturally curious private Facebook page, the mod squad making sure discord keeps running smooth, and everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddits. And now, well, you know what's next.

First up, just a quick little note to crack me up from a sultry sack. Jacqueline D. She sent an email into Bojangles at timesuckpodcast.com with the subject line of a ham podcast and she wrote, dear future smut narrator. I love like all caps, Awesome. At work right now. While typing out meeting minutes, I felt a certain way after listening to your reading of the letters during the Alexander Hamilton episode. Normally, I'm able to hold myself together, but I was literally fighting for my life. After I returned home, my husband was so happy. I think it was the flute. Oh, fuck yeah, Jacqueline. So glad my dramatic reading of Hamilton's horny letters really got your engine revving. I laughed when I read that because I pretended that this message was not sent in jest

and that you were dead serious. They really did it for you. That colonial area flute music just made you want to fuck your husband's brain out. I hope that's true. Also, I would love to narrate some smut novels. Oh god, what a job. Not even joking. Like if any audiobook company is gonna, would offer me a shot at narrating some smut, I am in. Lindsay and I would laugh endlessly about that. And now God fearing sack, Dagen Traeger wants to share some therapy insight, and I like it.

Dagen wrote, hello, Sir Cummington, sweet lord of all that sucketh. My name is Dagon, pronounced Dagon, Traeger, pronounced again for your pleasure, Traeger. Also, I am not connected to those sweet, sweet Traeger grill people, but maybe a recommendation from you will help sway them to help a fellow family member out. I wanted to write him because I just finished up the short suck on Ruby Frank. Tor Janney made a point about using scientifically backcounting over any religious counting. While I will agree that strictly religious based counting can be extremely harmful if improperly used by maniacs like Jody, I would still argue it can be beneficial to many when

it is also backed by scientific research. In my own personal experience, I've had many beneficial sessions for both myself and with my wife where the counselor was able to teach us research and effective techniques to communicate while also using scripture to back up and build upon those concepts I could also add the benefits of getting over past traumas with both the help of science and religion I could go on and on but this is already getting pretty long I will add that I believe ultimately everyone should be cautious and who they choose to lead them read reviews do research Ultimately trust your gut and at the end of the day We're all just flawed meat sacks looking for guidance in this crazy thing. We call life. Oh man, so true

Sorry, not sorry for the link this email. I love your podcast will continue to stay hooked Thank you in general what you do three out of five stars for sure. Thanks again Dagen Trager Yeah, you know, thank you so much for sharing this. Yes, you know, no matter what kind of counseling you're going to get, religious-based, scientific-based, yeah, really, really look into it. I like your note about looking into reviews. And yeah, my thing with, I mean, there's a lot of problems with the various counselors in the science-backed community, you know, like just, you know, people that have doctorates and masters and, you know, going through, uh, you know, people that have doctorates and masters and you know going through the US educational system. Yes

there can be a lot of problems with those people because you know everybody is flawed to some degree and you never know who you're gonna get and if they're gonna use their education correctly, and it is a soft science in some senses that is changing and evolving over time. My note in the Ruby Frank episode was just that, uh, you know, there are a lot of things in like, specifically in the Old Testament, more than New Testament, that unless you're really understanding the history and the symbolism of what's going on, if you take them at face value are very problematic and just very blatantly abusive.

And so if you have somebody who only is using that as a basis, yeah, I think it's easier to slip into a lot of problems than if you have somebody who has been educated more recently in psychology and psychiatry. I actually found a good article titled, How to Know If Your Therapist is a Good Fit. And they list out 17 quick little bullet points. They actually listen to you.

You feel validated. They want what's best for you. Now, listen, number one is a great one. Because I have had some therapists in the past that's like, they just talk the whole time. Like, what the fuck? What's the point of this? Like, why am I paying to listen to you just talk?

Yeah, you feel validated. They want what's best for you. And that's actually a really good note where sometimes I'm like, is this person? Like what is going on? Like I actually should back up and say when I first went, I think I said this before, but when I first went into social work very briefly and I was talking to this guy who ran this, uh, this, this, you know, uh, oh my gosh, a group home for troubled teens where you communicate, you do therapy sessions with your, with the teens, the teens and their families before the teens get sent back home. And I was talking to him about, uh, you know,

a problem with two other counselors I had there and he was diplomatic. He wasn't like, yeah, they're fucking crazy. What he did say, he goes, there's two kinds of people that get into this field. There are people who want to help others and there are people who are trying to help themselves, like understand and fix themselves. And yes that's you know very simplistic but I think there is a lot of truth in that. And I do think some therapists are just very very broken individuals who got along this educational path because of the the massive trauma that they

experienced. And while I understand the impulse to get into therapy for those reasons they're not actually good therapists just because they're so damaged. You know, they need therapy. They shouldn't be giving therapy. Number four, there's a strong communicator. Number five, they check in with you, then they take time to educate themselves. Yeah, look for a therapist as ongoing education. You view them as an ally. They earn your trust. You notice a change in yourself. They challenge you respectfully. They offer a range of solutions, right? They're not dogmatic. They're not like, nope, you have to do

this. Nope. When they get real authoritarian, it's like that, that, that, that, that. I don't know about this. They're open to alternatives. They don't rush your treatment. They're mindful of all aspects of your identity. They take a backseat. They give you the tools to do the work yourself and 17 you can see the value in your work together And again simplistic little bullet points, but yeah, whether it's science-based or religious-based Yeah, really really try to vet them as best you can and like you said, you know trust your gut Thanks. Thanks, Dave. I appreciate you sending in that message. And now one more here.

Dirty, dirty used bicycle owner, Sarah C writes in again about some smut with the subject line of third Cummins law. Damn it, Dan. I can't believe you got me again. You may remember me from my double Cummins law during the Irish mob time sucker updates episode of 343, where you yelled about Amish dick in front of my postal customer, and then you got my friend Lauren with a presidential jerk-off joke in Japan.

Holy. I didn't remember that. At the 2 hour 50 min mark, I say that I have since learned to always listen to Time Suck with my earbuds in. Well guess what, motherfucker? I clearly didn't learn my lesson, got caught by my neighbor listening to possibly the worst episode yet, Sword Suck 12, the dark truth about Pornhub. I was listening to it getting ready for work. I go to walk out the door while it's still playing at full volume. It's 7 a.m. so I assume like

most mornings no one's around. It's safe to walk outside without pausing it. I shouldn't have assumed. I should have followed my own advice, put my earbuds in or paused it or anything other than just played at full volume for the world to hear but no. I like the dumb meat sack I am thought the car is only a few feet away I'll be fine. I grab my lunch box, my purse, my water bottle, walk out to my car. I'm fiddling around in my trunk, arranging things, just as I close it, I see a woman walking her dog come right up behind me, as you proclaim, at full volume. Let me talk about where you can drain your wizard staff without all the drama, where you can grease your front butt without all the guilt. We've compiled a list of a few other adult sites that produce guilt-free adult entertainment,

i.e. ethical porn. I elevate my voice in a feeble attempt to talk over your horrifically embarrassing words, Hi, good morning, how are you? As I desperately smash the volume button on my phone to turn it down, I jump in my car, cry laughing, and immediately send Apollo to lore. For the third time, I've been coming to lot that for the third time I've been coming a lot that my neighbor must think I'm a front but greasing degenerate this must be some kind of record and it must be some kind of stupid to keep

trusting you I know you take great delight in tricking us so I hope this makes you laugh oh I did thanks again to you and the whole Bad Magic crew for hours of entertainment your loyal spaces are in Sarah's seat oh Sarah the term front but greasing degenerate might currently be my favorite description of someone. I love me a front butt greasing degenerate. It sounds like a happy and satisfied degenerate. And why is the word degenerate so funny?

I love calling people degenerates. You fucking degenerate. Well Sarah C. I hope you continue to be a front butt greaser. I don't even know if you do grease your front butt, but you should try it. And I hope you're a degenerate and continue to be so. And thanks everybody for all of those messages. Thanks time suckers. I needed that. We all did.

Well thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast you front- You front-butt-greased degenerates. Scared to death time suck each week, short sucks and nightmare fuel on the time suck and scared to death podcast feed some weeks. Please, you front-butt-greasing degenerates. Don't torture anyone this week, government sanctioned or not. Don't rip anybody's tits off with an iron claw or blow out anybody's butthole with a weird metal pair thing or Stretch the one on the rack until their arms are by their sockets or have anybody torn in two by trees Unless you know for a fact that they've raped or molested or tried to murder some innocent person And then you know what fuck them torture away

And when you're done reward yourself with a nice meal a stiff drink grease your front butt Relax a few hours in the couch where you crank up the volume on your headphones and continue to keep on sucking. Hey, just one more time for old times sake. How about, how about a little bit more bagpipe? How about that? How about that? Well, it wasn't your favorite episode, huh? What about now? You know what that could really use?

That could really use a little bit more Yoko. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And of course, let's get Bobby back on the keys. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah, that's good. That's good. That's real nice. Now tell me where the bodies are.

Tell me the music stops. Tell me the noise. It's supposed to be music stops. I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.