I should start writing travel journalism and showing up and asking people about torture

devices that existed almost 300 years ago.

That would be a fun way to see Indianapolis.

Welcome to your roundabout.

I'm Sarah Marshall and today we are learning about medieval torture.

We are joined today by our wonderful guest Dana Schwartz.

We've been with us many times.

We've talked to her about Catherine the Great.

We've learned from her about Marie Antoinette, about Anastasia.

One of the themes in our episodes with her is that our popular conception of history

may be not entirely right.

And you will be shocked that this comes up again today.

In a broader sense, we're going to talk about the way that we throughout time

have looked toward history and tried to tell a story about how whoever

went before us was somehow different.

How people who lived before we were around were worse or less intelligent

or just simply somehow not recognizably human the way that we are.

And one of the themes whenever Dana comes on the show is that people

will just keep making the same mistakes over and over, which is disappointing in many ways.

In a way, maybe here also not because we can look into any stage of the past

and recognize ourselves.

And I like that.

...