10 Medieval Torture Devices

uh gruesome history though. Yeah. So the Middle Ages are the Medieval period in Europe. Man, Yeah, they were very gruesome time, starting about the fifth century after the fall of the Roman Empire, uh and lasting until the Renaissance the fifteenth century. It's many English years, a thousand years of um, nasty, brutish and short life. Yeah, so that

the average life expectancy during the Medieval period. And all historians don't like they call it the Middle Ages because that implies that it's just basically this little bit of time in between two really important ages, the Middle Period. It's like the Jane Brady of history. Um. And they're saying, like, no, there's some really great things came about during this time and Um, you can't just call it that, so they

call it the Medieval period. I still think it's the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages is another great way to put it. Brutish behavior. There was a expectancy somewhere in the forties. I didn't see specifically, but yeah, at the very least it's yeah, average age, you could live longer than that. I mean, like you, you know, if you're a woman, the chances of you dying in childbirth were pretty high. If you were a man, the chances of you being killed by getting kicked by your horse,

we're probably pretty high. If you were a child making it, I think you had a thirty three percent chance to not make it past five. It was not good. It was a violent time. Um. Nutrition was not very good, it was a dirty time, and it was just it was a bad time to be alive. I think we can agree on that. Um, if you're time traveling, skip

the Middle Ages. One of the one of the one of the I guess hallmarks of the Middle Ages, UM was that after the fall of the Roman Empire, Rome like owned Europe owned it outright, and under this control also came things like Rhodes currency, government justice. Yeah, like to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire. It was under controlled generally, and these areas had public service, right

public services. After the Roman Empire fell um there was a power vacuum and for three hundred years the Franks and the Saxons and the Anglo Saxons um all were fighting. And finally in about eight hundred Charlemagne was crowned the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the Church took over basically, which good news, right you would think. The Church, however, had a hatred of women in their fondness of torture, and the Middle Ages was also characterized by a period

of really inventive thinking in how to produce human suffering. Yeah, I think it is a great quote from L. A. Parry's nineteen seventy book A History of Torture in England. The first part of this really hits home on it and hit home. But yeah, it brings up bad memories. What strikes us most in considering the medieval tortures is not so much their diabolical barbarity as the extraordinary variety

in what maybe term the artistic skill they displayed. So they definitely delighted and especially reading these torture devices and being very uh inventive and probably trying to outdo one another, and how awful it was and the different mechanisms, you know, because mechanics was new, so they were probably like, look, you know this has five gears that will you know, rip your toes off. How cool? But uh yeah, so

it was very ah, perversely inventive period. Yeah. Perry says that they basically ruminated and considered how suffering occurs to figure out how to produce it. That it was like basically an art form by the end. Yeah, they would in court sometimes they would um just do things like hey, let me put your arm in boiling water, and we're going to base our verdict on how long it takes it to heal. Um. I know the old thing about

you know, does the witch float throw it? Throw in the lake and let's see and if she drowns, hey she was not a witch. That's sad. But if she lives, then Berner at to stay exactly. Yeah, so either way the lady dies, which is very sad. Um. And they even had a thing when they would torture people for confessions, but they wouldn't They would say basically that confession doesn't count. So they would say, you know what, within that twenty four hour period, we won't torture you, see if you

still confess, and if you don't, we'll just torch you again. Right. That was to corroborate your own confession that was extracted under torture. So even even back then, they realized, like, yeah, you can't really rely on a confession under torture because people say anything to get you to stop doing the things that we're about to describe they were doing to them, right, or they would torture you very publicly. That's a very

common thing with most of these dissuade criminal activity. Yeah, humiliation shaming, scarlet letters, Yeah, that kind of thing, permanent scarlet letters. Even so, we're talking about the torture advices, some of the more famous, more diabolical ones that came out of the Middle Ages. Yeah, and this is a surprise for you. I told you I had a little

game we're gonna play. We're gonna as we go, we will also find out, because I've done this research, which of these torture devices are also the names of heavy metal bands. Oh yeah, that's a great one because at the very first one I saw The Brazen Bull, I was like, surely that's a band. Yeah. When I was researching this, I was thinking, like, I wonder how many times Chuck's gonna be like, that's a great band name. Well, the Brazen Bull is, in fact the band in Chicago,

three piece uh grinder core metal band. Give me another example of grind core. So I I know, I don't even know. I think it's just the stuff that's so like fast and heavy and like I like that. Yeah, so I've I found. I tweeted out this picture of like the different characters from Lord of the Rings and then based on like their looks, what kind of metal they were into? Really yeah, like Golam was in the new Metal New Metal. Yeah, and then I can't remember.

I think um Vigo Mortenson was into like, um, I can't remember. It's it's worth checking out going too our Twitter for you look like three weeks four weeks back. Yeah, I'll find it, you'll love it. I'm sure I didn't describe grind Cork correctly. That's cool. I'm not hip on the metal scene, Chuck. The Brazen Bull. The Brazen Bull is old. Indeed, they think that an ancient Greek name Perillus invented it, yeah, for for a tyrant named Phalaris of a grinchined him and so basically like, hey, let

me build you this torture device. You're gonna love it. And the guy was like, I love it, get in it? What And apparently that's how it went down, right. So what is the Brazen Bull. Well, it's a brass bull, which is why it's brazen. And the bowl yeah, um, it's a large one, big enough for human to fit him, and there is a locking mechanism on the outside once

the human is in. Because they built fires around the brazen bowl, lit them and then waited for the brazen bowl the heat up with the person inside, who would then scream and move around. And the muted sounds because it was brass because their tongue was often cut off. Um made it look and sound like the the bull was alive and making noise. Yeah, And we found through all of these grab Sir wrote this. Of course at Grabanowski it was usually followed with to the delight and

entertainment of the crowd. So apparently, you know the bull started rocking and making noises. People were just like, oh, I love it. It's great. Someone's getting seared alive inside that hollow bowl. Yeah, because this thing you're not being You're not being like charred, You're being seared to death. Ultimately, Ultimately, I imagine you would pass out and die from the heat, probably hopefully, but I mean being seared to death that's pretty bad. Or even being steered in the meantime before

you pass out from the heat. Yeah. I think with most of these, your best hope is to pass out as soon as possible from pain, you know. So, thumb screws is one that that are They're interesting in that they aren't designed to kill you, like a lot of these tortures are designed like to either kill you or you could die from them. And if you do well whatever with thumb screws, it's like, no, this is just for inflicting pain on you. Yeah, band or not a band?

A band thumb screw out of Austin, Texas metal band. Uh so Yeah, like you said, you're not gonna die. It's basically a these upright metal bars, three upright metal bars that you put your thumbs in and then a wooden bar slides down and presses your thumbs down, and then it has screws and they just crank it down,

like squeezing your thumbs until they're crushed and broken. I would imagine, Yeah, if you want to just start to get even the slightest bit of idea of it, just just pressed down on your thumb a little bit about within the top third of your thumb above the quick Jerry's not doing it, She's just watching us, and it just it starts as like a little throbbing pain. Now, imagine like somebody's screwing a vice down on top of that while you're screaming. That's what the thumb screws met for.

Apparently there was a tin finger version called a pilly wink. And that's a cute name. Is that a metal band name? No? I looked that up though, um, and it's supposedly originated in the Russian army is punishment for bad soldiers. And then a Scotsman said, this is great, let's bring it back home to the UK. Yeah. A guy named Quotability tam Delio who was a seventeenth century UH minister of parliament um who liked to use them himself. Not on himself, no,

but he liked to use them on people. Okay, Number eight, the rack band not a band band. No, I couldn't find it. It's gotta be I think. Um, it's just a little too like vague. That was my explanation. But it is a workout device. Someone's actually named their little workout machine the rack. No way. Yeah, it looks like it looks like a walker, you know, like if you can't walk, so great, but you can do like dips and push ups and sit ups and stuff with it. Yeah.

So do you think they were like making a joke? I have no idea, I hope so. Um. So the rack is pretty self explanatory and you've all seen this before.

Um has many different forms, but generally it is a person tied to a table with each limb um, you know, tied to a corner, and then it is cranked and you were pulled apart or at least dislocated, right, like the wheel is cranked, or like an axle is cranked or something that that that wines that coils the rope that your limbs are tied to up And yeah, it's either dislocated or if you really want to get down, you can just keep going and pull the limbs right

off of the body. Yeah, I imagine there was a about a four second period where it was great, you know where your back just cracked just right, and they're like, oh, that's fantastic. And then it was like no, no, no, no, no, can we stop there? Oh no, yeah, I don't like this anymore. Uh. And they called you you know, would be called broken on the rack or racked or stretched

on the rack. And there was one type that apparently looked like a horse even yeah, I get the impression that was a little bit like a sawhorse, looking kind of just a beam with legs, and um torque Mata, who was the head of the Spanish inquisition, he preferred one called the portoro, right, but again the inventiveness, like they would make one look like a horse, or you know, they would apply little artistry to it, which is even more perverse I think. And there's another one. It's kind

of related to the rack. It's called the wheel. Virtually the same principle, no man um the it's basically the same principle as the wreck. Your your limbs are tied to the wheel, or they're broken ahead of time in two places with an iron bar and then threaded through the spokes in the wheel, and then once you're secured this wheel. They can do all sorts of stuff. They can swing it like a pendulum and spikes that you're you're grazed over or fire or the fire below you,

and just swing you slowly over that. Or they can use the wheel as it was meant to be used and tie you to it and send you down a rocky hillside. You'll tell you on the outside of it. Yeah, it's not to make you dizzy. Myself almost said that was my favorite. The wheel is your favorite? Well, tying them on the outside and rolling them down the hill. When I read that, I was like, very inventive. Yeah, that's off to you. What else you gonna do with

the wheel using as a pendulum? That's stupid. Yeah. The one where they would break your arms was kind to crucifixion because, like you said, basically they would thread you through it and then put it high on a steak and just let you bake out in the sun until you died with four broken limbs. Alright, the rack in the wheel, the steak burning at the steak not a band name, no, and it was usually a form of execution, but it was so painful that it's also considered a

form of torture. How long would it take, Josh, So it's just a poll that somebody's tied to with some dry kindling around it, like kindling and um. Depending on the conditions, it could take thirty minutes for you to finally go unconscious from the pain of the fire. Thirty minutes of being burned before you finally feigned. Now, if it was windy out and the fire is blowing away from you a little bit, you could be during that for up to two hours, unbelievable of being burned to death.

Two hours of being burn to death at the steak. Yeah. And the Netherlands they got a little more creative with it. They would um a lot of times. They would remove the tongue or do something to the tongue I think, to just muffle the screams and make it a little more palatable. Uh. And in the Netherlands they would apparently um, sandwich your tongue between two hot iron plates and uh. Of course you couldn't do a lot with that except

you know, make weird muffled screaming noises. Right. I don't know if it was to make it more palatable or people during the Dark Ages thought it was hilarious where people couldn't talk. Yeah, maybe so you know, you're right like that was like Jerry Lewis of periods, the Jam Brady and the Jerry Lewis of periods. Wow, that's pretty

exciting time. Um, are we onto the Pillory? Oh well, we should say probably that there was a modicum of mercy with the steak where the church would strangle you if you confess to being a heretic, they would strangle you to death first before burning you at mistake, and then it was just a symbolic burning. Right, you're being consumed by fire. That's a very nice thing to do.

So Pillory band or not a band? I would say they are a band out of Boston and they're a hardcore band and actually listened to one of their songs. You want to know the name of it is, what hang nail in a Jeez? That's a metal band song title. It sure is. So the pillory you've all seen. It's um basically the two parallel wooden boards that are classed together around your neck and arms and you're bent over hanging through them. Your hands are your hands and your

head stick through these things. Yeah. I always thought that was the stocks. Yeah, it's just like to restrain your ankles. But the point is your immobile and you put on a platform in a very public area to be shame and humiliated and have rotten fruit thrown at you and more than that, feces. And I imagine the worst case scenario for this would be a group of like twelve year old boys in the Middle Ages when you're in

the pillory. Yeah, twelve year old boys have like families and kids by that, that's true, But I bet they were the meanest of all. Like, some people would die in the pillory because they would be you know, beaten to death. Uh. Some people would be lauded though, if they were like thumbing their nose at the government and saying I didn't pay my taxes, some people would bring them flowers and like food and stuff. Yeah, basically the pillory was meant to just be left up to the

crowd what what was to be done with you. At the very least, you were shame publicly just for being up there for an hour or two. But if the crowd decided that, you know, you needed more justice, Like there was a four Englishmen who would um wrongfully accused some people and send them to the gallows in order to get the reward money. Those guys were beaten to death when they were put into the pillory. That's no good.

That's what they call English justice. Yeah, and can you imagine that being able to move and just have someone like beating you about the head that brings up a not be able to bring her hands up at least guard your face. That still goes on today as public execution. There are some countries out there that use stoning. Iran is a very prominent one where you are sentenced to

death by stoning. Yeah. They bury you up to your neck and your head is just exposed so you can't move and people throw rocks at you until you die. Usually they cover you with the sheets that they can't see you, but they judge that you're you're done when you stop moaning and you're bleeding through the sheet. But there's a really interesting article I think you should read. I wrote this blog post, Chuck. It's called five most entertaining academic papers of all time, and one of them

and entertaining I use this in a strange way. But one of them is called the possible pain experience during execution by different Methods is by Harold Hillman, was written in the I think the early nineties, and one of the ones he covers is stone. But he goes through and takes like all of this like, um, He's like, there's no there's no body of work on how much

pain stoning causes. So he compares it to pain reported from like a car crash or something like that, and then makes assumptions that are you know, pretty good educated guesses of what pain a person experiences, and basically rates methods of execution from hanging to stoning to the gas chamber, um in in so far as how much pain and suffering they produce. Entertaining, Yes, the other ones are much

more entertaining that one had to be in there. It's just the Originally I call them the five greatest academic papers of all time. But you know s e o um okay, so we're done with the Pillory and the Stocks. Correct? Yeah? Were the Stocks a band name? No? Uh? And actually have the Iron Maiden band or not a band? Uh? You know they have their own beer Iron Maiden Beer trooper Ale. Really yeah, it's got Eddie on the cover and everything. Oh wow, it's pretty neat. I'll try that

around the label. I should say, can you get it like here in the States? No, you're gonna only get in the EU. I tried. It's probably sixty announces too. It looks good, like it's well made. It's not just like I'll put her name on this crap. Like it's clearly like a kind of craft beer. That's awesome. Yeah, you know, Bruce Dickinson's like a full on pilot, like seven pilot. I don't know, Like he flies there big jumbo jet that the band travels on. That's cool. Um.

So the Iron Maiden um. At one point they didn't even believe this was real because it sounded so diabolical, but then they found one in uh Nuremberg, Germany and uh sometimes it's called the Iron Maiden of Nuremberg for that reason. But it's a sarcophagus, you've seen it before, like King Tutt was buried in. But it's got little double doors and very strategically play spikes on the inside

done well. When you shut these double doors, including one over the door, including one over the face that has two spikes that are designed to take your eyes out. These spikes go into your vital organs. They're arranged in such a way so that your heart gets it, your kidneys, your liver just a bit right. Yeah, The spikes aren't so long that they just go right through you and kill you. They're short enough that they're gonna puncture these

organs and you're gonna die. But it's gonna take many hours, and the the lord of the castle in Nuremberg gets to sit there and listen to you moan and die. Wow. And they had one apparently that was even shaped like the Virgin Mary and her arms so when he got in she would hug you. Yeah, when you like turn to crank, the arms would draw you closer into the spikes again very fiendish. Uh. Scavenger's Daughter band or not a band? I know that as a band. I ran

across it during my research to four bands. From what I saw it was one of the UK, one in St. Louis, in Shanghai and when in Poland? Cool? Did they really spread out? Maybe it's all the affiliate to the same band. They're also city are he's a scavenger's daughter co well? Hell see uh? The original name for the Scavenger's daughter Skeffington's Jeeves or Geeves. I don't know how you would pronounce that g y v E s. That's a band too, Is it from Tallahassee? I can believe that so um.

It was named after the inventor Skevington and Todd Skevington. This the best way I'm gonna describe this is um.

It looks sort of like an arch. Imagine the St. Louis arch shrunk down two about two ft and attached to a bass plate, and you would get down in like the tornado crowds position and get inside of this thing, and then they would crank it down on the back of your neck and back at the top of the arch, the top of the center of the archers screw that they can crank to crank the whole arch down on top of your Yeah, so you're in like a crowd's position.

They just further crouch you until your spine cracks in your breastbone breaks, and like it's the opposite of the wreck where the rack tears you apart. The Skevington's gyre dives is meant to compress you and like you will bleed out of your fingertips and your eyes and your ears because your body is being compressed into this tiny balls like a car crusher. And yeah, and you're exactly And there's actually one on display at the Tower of London. Yeah,

it's all on the on the internet. Was pretty cool looking and again not delighting in this, but it's just insane. Like I was looking at it on the internet today too, and I was thinking, like human beings used to be placed in that a few hundred years ago, like the suffering that this machine, this contraption produced at the hands of other people. Like if you just sit there and

like forced perspective on yourself, it's really it's really unnerving. Yeah, well some people might say that putting someone in a chair and sitting like Trusty through their body until they dies the same thing. Oh yeah, you know for sure. Have you ever seen that the Errol Morris documentary on the inventor of the Electric Chair? No, what's it called Mr Sparky? No, I think it's called Doctor Death. Uh. And then Colin what his name is Lucher maybe or something.

I don't know. Really fascinating though, because he Yeah, just just read it and it's Errol Morris, that's all you need to know. Uh. These last two are really pretty Uh, brutal and brutal against women. Yeah, and it's pretty gross. So if you're not into hearing about that, maybe you should turn off the podcast. Yeah, this to me is

like this is the worst. The other ones for um, gender neutral, Yeah, you know, and I guess the last one we're going to talk about is technically gender neutral, but like the the idea of it being inflicted on women to kind of, as Grabowski points out, to destroy aspects of femininity. Yeah, is it makes everything even more disturbing, you know. Yeah, agreed. And this is called the breast Ripper,

not a band. And not to make light of this, but there was a Yahoo answer where a guy said, quote, I need a brutal band name something like diseases or disorders or something to do with babies being eaten. It needs to be killer. And one of the people said, you should call yourself the breast Ripper. Did he say awesome? No? I didn't like to follow up and like look to see if that's what he chose. But the guy had listed it like a bunch of names, you know that

were mainly torture devices. I mean, if you're a metal band searching torture devices, medieval torture devices, it's going to yield nine D or two exactly. So uh, extending back to the Roman times and probably before, females have had a rough time of things, um when it comes to torture, being marched through the streets, naked, public humiliation, uh, forced rape, sexual mutilation. Um all like just terrible, terrible things, specifically

geared towards women. And the breast ripper was probably the worst thing I've ever heard. Yeah, so basically wants to describe it. I thought it was very bad too. Back to you, go ahead, um, after you a woman was it would be tied to a wall or basically forced

to be a mobile. And then this, um, the breast ripper, which was basically a claw of spikes that could be open and then placed on the breast and then shut clamped down onto the breast, but then we pull away, basically just mangling the breasts and like the thumb screws, it was not intended to kill. As a matter of fact, I get the impression from this article that it was used very frequently, um to basically say, hey, everybody, look at this person, like like the scarlet letter, right exactly.

It was it was meant to label somebody. Yeah, in England, I know they were fond of branding women on the face to shame them. Yeah, and apparently if you're in the stock case or the pillory, one of the things that may also a company that was to be branded by having your nose slit or an ear cut off. Maybe. Yeah. What was wrong with people back then? I don't know. And what changed? I wonder that's like that the most

peaceful period in history? What right after the Middle Ages? Well, that's what we were talking about, like remember Stephen Pink Like the Middle Ages were particularly bad. I don't know what it was that that changed, but the I think the idea that government came in and created a monopoly on violence, that's fairly That's that's what we're talking about here. That doesn't really account for it because the government had not necessarily a monopoly. It was supposed to. But it

was pretty violent itself. Yeah, And it's not like things got great, like you said, they're still stoning people and they use the electric chair in this very country. But it definitely wasn't the Middle Ages. No. And also when you know, I mean you could get you could be richards for all sorts of things like your neighbor could be like you're a witch, and all of a sudden you're tortured, right, you know, so I would be very curious to know exactly what accounts for that change, because

something changed. Yeah, And they also point out in the article I did that. UM. A lot of times these were used to also get you too, uh sing about your accomplices, and that was basically like you just say whatever you want, like yeah, it was my my neighbor there, and the neighbors like huh, and then all of a sudden, it's in the pillory to you know, alright. Our final one is the pair of Anguish band or not a band, It's got to be a band. It's a band, pour

metal band from Roanoke, Virginia, man Roanoke, North Carolina. So the pair of Anguish was, UM, I guess I'll do this one since you had to did the breast ripper. It is a pear shaped device and the pair is actually four metal leaves um joined at the top by

a hinge with like a key crank. So just imagine a pair that if you crank like where the stein would be, the four leaves would open up and they would use this on women in like the worst places and on homosexual men in the worst places an orifice basically, yeah, and open it up. And I showed Emily this morning. She was like, so that looks like an early speculum to me. And that's you know, kind of this along

those same lines, and that's the pair of Anguish. And you can get pictures of all these and look at them, not in use obviously, but actually some of them are like they have drawings of like the rack and things like that. Yeah, but luckily not of the pair of English. There's a spoon from I think the Nuremberg Castle um that has many iron maiden on the top of it. Yeah,

probably displayed. Wow, yeah you can. I mean there's there's photos of these and and some of them are relics in in museums around the world, like the Skevington's Jeeves in the Tower of Lone. Then there's probably a torture museum and that somewhere. There's there's the London Dungeon. That one's awesome. I went with my dad my sister years

and years ago. I was like seventeen, maybe it was like thirteen maybe perfect though, Yeah, well, yeah, anywhere from there, but it's like they really did it up because they use like whack dummies and it's like there's like a head in the basket on the guillotine exhibit. Plus there's a great Misfits song named that too, name what London Dungeon? Nice? Uh? And one more thing I wanted to say. And two thousand three, after the US invaded iraq Um, they found

you know, Udi Hussein Saddam's oldest son. He was the Minister of Sports and he was very famous for like torturing athletes that he didn't think we're performing well enough. What they found an iron maiden at the Ministry of Sports, his iron maiden that he used on people. Yeah, that certainly doesn't encourage athleticism, you know. No, it encourages defection and running away whenever you go somewhere to play somebody in another country. Wow. Yeah, that's very sad. So that's

it for ten medieval torture devices. Yeah, very bizarre time in this world's history for sure. Uh. If you want to see pictures of these things read more about them. You can type that in medieval m E D I E v A L Torture devices in the search part house stuff works, and I said search bars, its time for messenge brick and now I listener mail Yes, all right, thank you. So this from Matthew and Cook listened to the Living Off of the Grid podcast and it reminded

him of his friend Michael's aunt. Uh. He and his friend are very technically oriented and they've been wiring little dude dads and things for years. His aunt bought a house some years back which turned out to be a long term witness protection house for local authorities. She called us in because there were about a thousand little switches and project boxes all over the house, tucked in the nooks and crannies, automated everything from the window blinds to

the lights, to the door and window locks. It's very reminiscent of something we've seen in old James Bond movie, so this is not like a new thing, which is why it was weird. She had no idea how to operate any of them, or even what half of them did, so we got to come and play in the house basically for a while and figured out what we could.

We found the house had many defense measures, including motion sensor alarms in the surrounding woods and driveway, and backup power and water supplies, which included rainwater collection, solar panel panels, a huge backup generator, and a wind turbine on a telephone pole type thing that could be raised or lowered

and adjusted using a hand winch. What made the house really cool is while many of the home automation and power water conservation measures implemented are now things that can be purchased and installed professionally, this was all done well before this, as evidenced by all the project boxes and very retro togcle switches and such. For us, it was like seeing history as some clever guy or girl actually had to think up these pieces and then design and

build them from scratch. I feel like I'm really not doing this house justice and the engineer's justice, but that could be the over excited geek and me. We're calling this find Matthew and Cook. So that's pretty cool. It's very cool, Thanks Matthew. Apparently the aunt wasn't too into it. Yeah, she's like, I got a good deal on this house. Yeah, Like once they figured out how to do like the lights and stuff, she's like, all right, get out. Um, I would be very curious to see photos of this house.

Send them along. Yeah. Um, we love cool photos of very cool places, whether they're abandoned or unusual or whatever. So if you have like a photo spread of a cool house or a cool old asylum or whatever, send us a link because if we want to see it. You can tweet to us at s Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com, and you can join us at our home on the web, Stuff you Should

Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Hey, Netflix streams TV shows and movies directly to your TV, computer, wireless device, or game console. You can get a thirty day free trial membership. Go to www dot Netflix dot com slash stuff and sign up now.