Before he became one of the most influential surgeons in modern history, Michael DeBakey was just a fourteen-year-old boy in New Orleans holding the wrist of a dying neighbor and learning how fast life can slip away. That moment became the engine that drove him through lecture halls, operating rooms, and eventually into the largest war the world had ever seen. 

PMHX: No FX is the official aftershow for Past Medical History: The Story of EMS.

Each week, creator and co-hosts Sophie, Evan, and some occasional special guests break down the episode in a raw, unscripted conversation about the story, the research, the decisions, and the creative process behind the scenes. No sound design. No effects. Just the humanity, the history, and the craft that shape every chapter of the season. 

If you love the cinematic episodes and want to dive deeper into how they’re built — and why these stories matter — No FX is your place.

When the guns stop firing, the dying doesn’t end.

In 1793, the French Revolution burned across Europe. Amid the chaos, a young surgeon named Dominique Jean Larrey refuses to stand idle as wounded soldiers bleed and die where they fall. Against orders and tradition, he builds a system that will change the fate of the injured forever... a flying ambulance that brings care to the battlefield itself. 

In 1783, a young merchant’s son lies dying on a frozen Scottish road, his leg shattered, his lifeline severed, and no help in sight. Before ambulances, before medicine as we know it, survival depended on luck, distance, and the kindness of strangers.

In 1981, the night shift at Bexar County Hospital in San Antonio earned a name whispered in fear... the Death Shift.

Step inside the ambulance of history. Past Medical History: The Story of EMS is a cinematic documentary podcast that unearths the wild, untold, and sometimes downright eerie origins of modern emergency medicine. Hosted by flight paramedics Evan Claunch and Sophie Fuller, this isn’t your typical medical lecture, it’s an adventure through time.