Infotainment isn’t news

Whatever you do, don’t get your news from comedians

I was recently watching WTF 101, which is CollegeHumor’s parody of The Magic School Bus. In every episode, Professor Foxtrot takes her students through space and time to see the horrors of history and the natural world. This episode was about torture, and in one scene, the professor was describing a peculiar torture method used by the Persians called Scaphism or “the boats.” This method involves tying a person in between two boats and covering them in milk and honey (hell yes). The victim is then left out in the open until vermin eats them alive (hell no).

The problem with this alleged torture method is that it’s wildly impractical. A person is far more likely to die first of dehydration than to be eaten by flies. It almost sounds like someone just made it up, which makes sense once you consider that the primary historical account we have for Scaphism comes from the Greek writer Plutarch, who was no friend of the Persians. It would be like reading Intro to Mexican history as written by Donald Trump. Scaphism probably came from Plutarch’s xenophobic imagination, but the WTF 101 writer’s desire for novelty trumped fact-checking something that was easily Googleable.

I am a comedian (at least, according to my husband).