Where is the Line‪?‬ Where is the Line?

Have you ever ripped apart a deceased infant with your own two hands?  Have you ever stored a human brain next to the frozen broccoli in your refrigerator?  Can you differentiate between the smell of common road kill and the pungent and unique odor of a decomposing human body?  Have you ever removed maggots from human remains, covered them in acrylic paint, and then allowed those universally reviled larvae to crawl about a canvas unknowingly and unwittingly creating something that could be described as art.

If you answered “no” to any of the preceding questions, you are not the newest cohost of Where is the Line?  We’ve never devoted an episode to one of our own co-hosts.  To that point, we’ve never had a co-host whose daily occupation aligned so closely with the thematics of our show.  The new cohost of Where is the Line?  is named Holly.  Holly is a supervising forensic autopsy technician in the greater Kansas City Metro area who maintains a side hustle that is almost as interesting as her main gig.  It would be extraordinarily difficult to imagine a more appropriate cohost for this show. 





It is always hard to say goodbye to a cohost, and this holds especially true for my talented, intelligent, and unfailingly kind friend, Robin. Being that I recently moved far from the soul crushing and astoundingly characterless town of Tuscaloosa, AL to a new pad in Kansas City, MO's "gayborhood", a lineup change was unavoidable. Finally, after months away from the microphone, we are so glad to welcome you all back to this new and optimized iteration of Where is the Line? - Where is the Line? Season 2, Kansas City Nights.

Everyone who listens to this episode of Where is the Line? will die. Your final demise will probably not happen anytime soon and will most certainly have nothing to do with having listened to this episode.  Still, you are all going die.  The fortunate among you may slide into the ether as you sleep, leaving behind a corpse that your friends and family will describe as looking “peaceful”.  Others may find themselves spattered onto a tree.  Regardless, assuming that you exit this horrible plane of existence in some way that does not disintegrate your physical form, the chances are pretty good that you are going to leave a mess.  A mess that someone will have to clean up.





Since I started this podcast, I’ve been trying to speak with someone who works in mortuary services; A person who has seen the worst of what we can do to ourselves and to each other.  As it turns out, and as is the case with a great many things, I should have just asked my mother.  It happens that she knows people in this gruesome line of work.





This might qualify as our first “live show”.  For this episode I travelled deep into the forests of Alabama... to my mother’s house.  On her back porch overlooking the Black Warrior river, I spoke with a pair who have worked in one of the most unsettling occupations in existence.  As we talked, a small group of family friends and neighbors joined us on the porch, and much like my interviewees and also myself, they were hammered.  I mention this not only to set a scene, but also to explain the background chatter, strange wildlife sounds, and the occasional heckle that can be heard herein. 





Explanations for the unusual audio artifacts concluded, I’d like to introduce you to Rachel and John Raymond, The Corpse Wranglers of West Alabama.

This is the story of a woman with a disfigured body and an irreparably corrupted mind. It is also a story about our own vanity and how it is reflected back at us every time we encounter someone who looks vastly different from what we consider acceptable. This episode's subject was a physical monstrosity from birth. Was her mind equally malformed from the outset? Or, was her degeneracy and depraved behavior something that was carved into her by the cruelty of those who surrounded her?


Visit us at whereistheline.net


 

As a consumer of macabre and grotesque media, you the listener may believe yourself to be already acquainted with the story of Robert Liston.  Thousands of websites, podcasts, and even peer reviewed academic journals and publications have recounted the fantastic story of an operation performed by Robert Liston which resulted in the deaths of not only his patient, but also of his surgical assistant and a bystander.  The story goes that in his efforts to expedite as much as possible the process of amputating his patient's leg, that Liston accidentally removed 2 fingers from his assistant, and whilst flourishing his knife about also nicked the coat of an observer.  The patient died on the operating table, the man whose coat was slashed died of a heart attack, and the assistant died some time later after the remaining stumps of his fingers became gangrenous.


 


This story has been recounted hundreds of times, each telling inevitably concluding with the clever summation that this was the only surgery in recorded history with a 300% mortality rate.  


 


If this is the story that you are hoping to hear, you might soon be disappointed.  That disappointment stemming from the fact the aforementioned and often repeated story of surgical buffoonery never happened. 


 


Robert Liston was however an extremely interesting character and one whose true story is filled not only with blood and questionable ethics in those agonizing years before anesthesia, but also with accomplishment and achievement.




So, how did everyone except Where is the Line? Get this man’s story so terribly wrong?  How do I know that everyone except Where is the Line? Is wrong?  Who really was Robert Liston and what might it have been like to go under his knife during the age of agony?   Find out on this episode of Where is the Line? 

Everyone makes mistakes. For most of us though, the consequences of our actions fall to ourselves and sometimes to those with whom we associate, but seldom extends beyond.  The residue of our missteps tend to erode away with time, until they are eventually forgotten.  Scars can remain, but over time, we tend to forget how we got them.


Occasionally though a mistake can change the course of history and even distort the face of the earth.  When the Khwarazmian Shaw humiliated and killed a couple of Mongolian trade emissaries, he arguably made one of the most consequential mistakes in all of human history.  This mistake would lead to the deaths of millions.  Borders would be redrawn. Family lines would end. Entire cities and cultures would disappear, and the Khwarazmian Empire would fall.


On this episode, we will be discussing the the pursuit of the Khwarazmian Shah by Chinggis Khan’s most reliable general, and one of planet Earth's all-time deadliest men, Subutai. 


 


Artwork for this episode was provided by Kevin "from Groveport" Edwards.  Thanks Kevin!  Check out more of his artwork on Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/blackmoth7g

 


Late in the 12th century a young nomadic tribeswoman goes into labor under on the Mongolian Steppe.  Some claim that this woman’s child came into our world gripping in his fist a ball of coagulated blood, foreshadowing the millions of deaths that would soon follow.  Upon his birth, the child was given the name, Timujin.  If that name seems unfamiliar to you, it is probably because this child would eventually come to have a different name, a name rivaled maybe only by Jesus of Nazareth in terms of its attributed misery and murder.  This child would come to be known as Genghis Khan and his birth marks the beginning of an era that, that by its end, would bring about the violent death of more than 10% of the Earth's population.


 


On this episode, our focus is not on Genghis Khan himself.  Instead, we’ll be talking about the man who served as the Khan's right hand.  A general in the Mongolian army who was unnaturally gifted in the arenas of war and wartime subterfuge.  A man who, when unleashed, would chase his marks to the ends of the earth pillaging everything along the way and leaving mountains of the dead behind him. Like a ghost or a killer from a late 80s horror movie, this man’s targets would often flee terror, only to run directly into his blade. 


 


All those upon whom this man was set came to learn the hard way, that much like the Wu-Tang clan of our own time, Subutai ain’t nuth’n to f**k with.


 


 


Artwork for this episode was provided by Kevin "from Groveport" Edwards.  Thanks Kevin!  Check out more of his artwork on Instagram @ https://www.instagram.com/blackmoth7g