What's the worst thing you can do with a stick?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan explore the brutal history of impalement, a method of execution designed not just to kill, but to make the suffering last as long as possible. From ancient Babylon and Assyria to the Persian Empire, medieval Europe, and colonial Indonesia, impalement was used to punish criminals, crush rebellions, and send a very clear message to anyone thinking about challenging the people in charge.

We begin in 1800 Cairo, where a young theology student named Süleyman al Halabi assassinates a French general and receives one of the most horrifying punishments imaginable. From there, we travel through nearly four thousand years of history, examining Assyrian siege reliefs, Persian royal inscriptions, European criminal codes, the notorious punishments ordered by rulers like Peter the Great, and Dan confusing the Javanese with the Japanese.

Naturally, Kevin and Dan bring their dark sense of humor to a subject that makes even the most uncomfortable historical research feel like a particularly bad day at work. Along the way, we examine the different methods of impalement, why some victims survived for hours or even days, how a gruesome public execution became a powerful tool of terror, the translation issues that cause arguments between historians, and all of it with one GLARING omission.

It’s torture history, brutal executions, ancient empires, and the horrifying lengths rulers have gone to make sure everyone gets the message.

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What happens when a group of doctors decides that the best way to study a sexually transmitted disease is to make absolutely sure their patients have it?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan uncover one of the darkest chapters in the history of American medicine: the Guatemalan Syphilis Experiments. Beginning with historian Susan Reverby’s discovery of John Cutler’s research papers in 2003, we trace how a secret medical experiment conducted in Guatemala between 1946 and 1948 deliberately exposed prisoners, soldiers, psychiatric patients, sex workers, and others to syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid.

We follow the story from the rise of syphilis as a major public health concern after World War I, through the discovery of penicillin, and into the increasingly disturbing experiments carried out by American researchers who wanted controlled subjects for their research. What began with attempts to study sexual transmission eventually involved deliberate infections, repeated exposures, painful procedures, and subjects who were often never told what was actually being done to them.

We’ll also look at some of the individual victims whose stories survived in the records, including Berta, a psychiatric patient who was deliberately infected with multiple diseases before her death, and the children who were subjected to medical procedures despite never being deliberately infected with syphilis.

And naturally, Kevin and Dan bring their dark sense of humor to a story where the phrase “medical experiment” somehow manages to become more horrifying with every page of documentation.

This is dark history, medical experimentation, true crime, the history of syphilis, and one of the most disturbing chapters in the history of American medicine.

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What happens when one of the largest and most intelligent animals on Earth is trained to become an executioner?

In this episode of Torture: A Dark History, Kevin Young and Dan Hourigan travel through more than two thousand years of history to explore the horrifying use of elephants in torture, punishment, and execution.

We’ll begin in India, where elephants became symbols of royal power and terrifying instruments of punishment. From the Mughal Empire to the kingdoms of South Asia, we’ll look at how condemned prisoners could be grabbed, thrown, dragged, crushed, or dismembered by animals that had been specifically trained to follow the commands of their handlers.

We’ll travel back to the ancient world and follow elephants from the battlefields of India and Persia to the armies of Alexander the Great and the great empires of the Mediterranean. Along the way, we’ll explore how these enormous animals were captured from the wild, trained for warfare, and eventually taught to perform remarkably precise acts of violence.

We’ll meet some of the people who found themselves on the wrong end of an elephant, including rebels facing Sultan Muhammad bin Tughluq, prisoners described by the traveler Ibn Battuta, a man punished under the Mughal emperor Akbar, and prisoners executed under the kings of Kandy. We’ll also travel to 19th century Baroda, where the practice was still being used well into the era of British rule.

But the most disturbing part may not be the elephant itself. These animals weren’t simply turned loose on their victims. They could be trained to grab someone, throw them, hold them beneath a foot, drag them, or wait for another command before delivering the final blow.

And because this is Torture: A Dark History, Kevin and Dan bring plenty of gallows humor to a story about rulers discovering that sometimes the most terrifying weapon in the room has four legs and weighs several tons.

If you’re interested in elephant execution, elephant torture, Mughal history, Muhammad bin Tughluq, Ibn Battuta, Akbar the Great, Alexander the Great, ancient warfare, the Kingdom of Kandy, Baroda, Indian history, historical executions, and the darker side of animal warfare, this episode proves that elephants weren’t always the gentle giants we like to imagine.

Sometimes they were the executioners.

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