Do Go On - 259 - The Donner Party

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

In the Spring of 1846, The Donner Reed Party set out on a journey across the United States. They had no idea that they were embarking on what would become one of the most harrowing journeys in history. A terrible shortcut, bad weather and some ridiculous decisions later... their names and what they had to do to survive quickly became part of US folklore.Support the show and get rewards like bonus episodes: patreon.com/DoGoOnPodBuy tickets to our streamed shows (there are 8 available to watch now! All with exclusive extra sections): https://sospresents.com/authors/dogoonCheck out our web series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2TuMQ31VXvqqEus9Bo6FZW-dDY5ukEuh Submit a topic idea directly to the hat: dogoonpod.com/Submit-a-TopicTwitter: @DoGoOnPodInstagram: @DoGoOnPodFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/DoGoOnPod/Email us: [e-mail] out our other podcasts:Book Cheat: https://play.acast.com/s/book-cheatPrime Mates: https://play.acast.com/s/prime-mates/Listen Now: https://play.acast.com/s/listen-now/Our awesome theme song by Evan Munro-Smith and logo by Peader ThomasREFERENCES AND FURTHER READING:https://www.legendsofamerica.com/ca-donnerparty/http://www.donnerpartydiary.com/members.htmlhttps://allthatsinteresting.com/donner-partyhttps://www.atlasobscura.com/places/donner-party-artifacts-memorial

Melbourne and Canada, we got exciting news for you. And we should also say this is 2026. Jess, what year is it? 2026. Thank God you're here. Right now, I'm in Melbourne doing my show with Serenji Amarna, 630 each night at the Cooper's Inn Hotel, having so much fun. We'd love to see you there.

Canada, we are visiting you in September this year. If you've somehow missed the news, we are heading up Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, and Toronto for shows. That's going to be so much fun. Tickets for all this stuff, I believe, are online. And I'm here too. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates.

And welcome to another episode of Do Go On. My name is Dave Warnikey and as always I'm here with Matt Stewart and Jess Perkins. Hey Dave, hey, Jess. Hi Matt. Hi Dave. Hello. So good to be hanging out with you once again. And you're not sick of us yet.

No. Wow. Coming up to five years of doing, is that right? Coming up to five? Yeah, five years next month. And you're still in love with us, is what I'm getting for you, Matt? I'm still deeply, madly, truly in love with you. Sorry that you had to hear that, everyone.

But it's nice to connect every now and then. And still, I still look forward to it every episode. I can't wait to do it. Sometimes when I've written the report, I feel some trepidation. Yes. But when I'm coming in to listen to a Dave or Jess report, I feel so excited and happy to be here. you pumped up. Can't wait.

And are you even more pumped up because it is now officially Block season. Woo! It is my favorite month of the year. I love Blocktober. It is the best. For new listeners, Blocktober is where we do the most requested topics of the year and sometimes of all time. But yeah.

So this is our third year of doing it. It's big. It's big. It's the biggest thing in podcasting and possibly in. world media. I believe so, yeah. I can't think of anything world media-wise that is bigger than it. I don't think anything's ever trended on Twitter the entire month before, but this, I assume, will. Yeah. Hashtag block. It has the last two years, so I don't see why I wouldn't this year as well. Time for a three-peat. Everyone put those block hashtags out there. Everybody.

Everyone. Even if it's not relevant to your tweet. Well, this year's block was so big that we thought there's only four Wednesdays, which is when this episode comes out in Australia in October. So we decided to annex, as Matt put it last week, which I really loved, a fifth Wednesday. So last week was actually the first episode of Block, where we covered the OJ Simpson trial, something that people have been requesting basically the entire time we've been doing this show. And I've got another all-time request up for you today. But before we get going, Matt, how does this show work? Oh, well, the way it works is, well, one of us will go away and research a topic.

In this case, which has been voted on by the listeners, and they bring that research back. They'll put it into a report form and they'll come back and report it to the other two. While the other two sit quietly and respectfully and listen along, maybe occasionally interjecting to say, I'm really enjoying this report, keep it up. Or to ask very relevant and pertinent questions. Pertinent is the key there. Only pertinent. It's an unwritten rule we have on this podcast.

You're going to ask you a question. Better be pertinent. Better be pertinent. Dave, last week, obviously with Matt's OJ Simpson report, which was fantastic but also a huge topic to take on. So it was a mammoth episode. Probably is it one of our longest or is it the longest? I believe last week was the longest ever.

Was it really? Oh, wow. So how are we looking today, Dave? Do I need to go get snacks? Is essentially what I'm asking in a roundabout way. I think we've got another whopper on our hands. God damn. You should have got the snacks out.

And that goes for you at home as well. I brought a naval orange, the greatest eating orange of them all. So looking forward to cracking that open at some point. And hopefully the listeners enjoy hearing me munching along. Well, let me tell you... Wow, that's really interesting. I've got to say you're unlikely to feel hungry throughout this episode. Okay.

Okay. So I should just get a very thick drink maybe? Or maybe... Or just for the first half of the episode, you'll be right. But then back half, it's not really hunger-inducing, I've got to say. All right. Snack early. That's what you're saying.

It's weird for our listeners to have picked something that was a little bit off. Yeah. A bit grim by the sounds of it. Well, it is a bit off. And I believe that you both know what the topic is for, which is unusual. Usually you don't know the topic. Jess is shaking her head. I'm going, I remember it, but I can't think of what it's called or what it's about.

Yeah, I've forgotten. I definitely do know what it was. Well, because my question was just going to be, because we always start with the question to get onto topic, it was just going to be, what was the fourth most photo topic for block 2020? Okay. It's called the something exploration or something like that.

Let me, I'll give you a clue. There ain't no party like a something. Dover part. Donna. Donna. Dona. Dona. Dona party.

You fucking idiot. Donna party. They're right. I hope that hopefully there's no party like that. From the very small thing I know about it, yeah, things went wrong. It sounds like about halfway through, things went awry. That's right. That's when you stop munching on your snacks.

I've definitely put the Donna Party up for a vote, I reckon, before. And it's obviously not one. Otherwise, we would have done it. But I've, like, you know, skimmed Wikipedia, but I don't know much. So I'm a bit excited about this. I feel like this might be one of those topics that's big in America or maybe not so big elsewhere? Yeah.

So when I was researching it, I was sort of coming, I got the vibe that it was a bit like Ned Kelly and the Kelly gang here in Australia where we're all, you know, most Aussies are vaguely aware of the details, but how much you know really differs from person to person. So I think a lot of people have like the, you know,

the one paragraph summary where they go, oh, that's the party where this happened. But I don't know if everyone knows all the details. So hopefully I fill in a few blanks, even if you have grown up knowing this in your country's folklore. A lot of Americans, have the Donner Party helmet tattooed on their back.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there going to be a helmet in this? Because otherwise, is it really folklore? Is there some kind of shoot-up at a pub? There's a bit of shooting in this. Okay. This story's good at all. It's actually been, it is honestly up there with OJ

with one of our most requested topics and has been in the nearly five years we were doing this show. I reckon it's been in the hat that whole time. I even went back to the original hat and it was in there a couple of times. It's actually been suggested by a whopping 29 people. Wow.

Do we have time for me to read out these names? Oh, you got it. Let's just do them quickly. Yeah, that's my snack time. I won't say where people are from. Before we get into it, I won't stop like I normally do after each one and say, what a great name. This is a blanket, these are all great names.

And I haven't even heard them yet, but I'm assuming. Do you like how we're getting into it quickly? Well, the first name. Give me a chance to, after I hear them, I'll confirm or deny. Well, the first name's going to blow you away. I'll let you comment on the first name, and that is Emily. Oh, that's it. I love it.

I love it. That is fantastic. What a name. Is that two names or one name? That's one name, no hyphens. One name. Okay. Emily, classic name.

Thanks to Emily. So some people just gave their first name, so maybe you'll know this is you. Emily, Garrett Oakley, Tobias, Jared Schaefer McKenzie Castaneda Whoa Mark Belcombe Ian Watson

Mateo Ocampo Ronan O'Neill Brandon Castaneda A different castanator Wow Jacoby de Angel Mike Winkler Jesse Britt

Louis Wagner Ryan Campbell Emily Hyatt Danny McMaines William Young Joshua Cure Stephen or Stefan Tucker McKenna Middlebrook

Gabby Felcioni Whoa. Joseph Nataro, Drew Llamas. So good. Tobias Cain's, Emily Knutson, and way back from the old hat, Kelvin M. Parker, bang. Wow. That is so, I mean, yeah, they're a group of some of the finest names ever assembled. There was two Tobiases in there. I don't know, a single Tobias. Yeah, that's amazing, isn't it? And there also, there were quite a few patron supporters in there as well. What a great list of names.

That's awesome. So good. I'm feeling so confident this is going to be a great. great story. Well, let us jump into it. Hashtag blog. Hashtag blog forever. So give me a second to give you a bit of a background here, guys. Okay. We're going back to... Is this, this is still included in the podcast? Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. We're going back to 1845. Ah. So in 1845, newspaper editor and columnist John O'Sullivan coined the term manifest destiny. Oh.

Which is the belief that in the United States of America, the land between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans belonged to European Americans and that they should settle it all. Oh my God. So that encompasses all the land for you playing at home. The idea is that the United States is destined by God to expand its dominion and spread democracy and capitalism

across the entire North American continent. Right. And this term really took off. Okay. According to history.com, quote, the philosophy drove 19th century U.S. territorial expansion and was used to justify the forced removal of Native Americans and other groups from their homes, end quote.

Because it's our destiny to take it. Well, if that is what God wants, I guess. I guess. That seems like a weird thing for God to want, I'd be honest. But they say he works a mysterious way, so I guess this will work out for the best. Like hers. How about it? How about him?

Or her. So that influential phrase, Manifest Destiny, was coined by editor John O'Sullivan in 1845. It should be noted that in the following year, investors were dissatisfied with his poor management and he lost control of his magazine. So I'm not sure of God had big plans for him after all.

But his term lived on in the hearts of many Americans in the 19th century and justified a lot of what they did. Also one year after coining the term, one of the most infamous journeys in US history took place. Their story has shocked and fascinated for the more than half a century that's passed since. A talk, of course, about the Donna Party, sometimes known as the Donna Reed Party.

Not the Dover Party. Not the Dover Party, sorry. Dissigree. Dissigree. Great to disagree on that one. And let me just say, it is an absolutely fucked story, so let us begin.

Oh. In the United States, in the 1840s, the population was a bit shy of 20 million people, but it was growing rapidly. The largest population centers were mostly on the east coast and the Midwest of the country. Basically, if you're looking at the map, nearly everyone was contained

in the eastern third of the country as a percentage of population, mostly in the eastern third. But with the rapid expansion and two economic depressions in the first half of the 18th century, sorry, 19th century, more and more were starting to slowly move west to seek prosperity, mostly to Michigan, Arkansas, Wisconsin and Iowa. And in 1846, famously thousands of Mormons ventured east to Salt Lake City in Utah.

But some families were beginning to venture even further west, all the way to the Pacific coast on the other side of the massive country, taking the Oregon Trail, which is a journey of thousands of miles. Right. Do you know where the name Oregon Trail comes from? It's just Oregon's the destination on the other side? Yeah, that's a big part of it, yeah. Right.

And thousands upon thousands would soon join them for the 1849 Californian Gold Rush. But before that, when this story takes place, it wasn't a super well-worn path. So there's the background on what's happening in America at this time. Over in one of our favorite cities, Springfield, what? The capital of Illinois.

In 1846, three families were preparing to travel to California. They were brothers, George and Jacob Donner and their two families, and local businessman James Reed and his family. Oh, poor Reed. So it's sometimes known as the Donna Reed party because there was a guy called Reed and a family called Donna. And did the Reid guy not do his fucked up? of stuff or what? I'm so curious as to find out why he's been banished.

No, James Reed features heavily in this story. Okay, okay. I love that. What were the Donner Brothers names again? George and Jacob. Thank you. George and Jacob. Let me tell you about him. George and Jacob were elderly prosperous farmers, elderly for the time, I should say. So they're like 30? Younger than me, probably.

Yeah, elderly. They were in the late 50s, early 60s. Right. And according to the fantastic and linked source, donna party diary.com, which dot com. Dot com. I always say dot com. I panic.

Dot com? It's a very saucy diary. Oh. You will.com. If you read this. That's the tagline if you don't to read this. You will.com if you don't to read this. So don'taparty.com or dot com come.

I couldn't even get it right when I've tried to fuck it up. It lists their diaries. It says, quote, George and Jacob had no reason to go to California. So there you go. I mean, do we ever have a reason to do anything other than like eat and drink? I must say, to survive. This month last year, I also went to California for a week. And I had no reason to go there.

It's had a good time. What reason, Dave? You need a reason. I know. I wonder if maybe they were just chasing their Hollywood dreams, heading over to Tinsletown. That's right. Looking for their big break and they were too shy to say it in their diary.

What? Is wanting some adventure and a change of scenery not a good enough reason to go on a trip? You're crazy? Maybe they were just trying to find themselves. Maybe they're just trying to find themselves. Well, they'd already done a lot of travelling to find themselves. Born in North Carolina. Oh dear.

I paused. I put a pause in as Matt was peeling in orange. Fun fact. Michael Jordan plays. for North Carolina University. And during his time, they had a lot of success. And he kept wearing his North Carolina shorts,

even through to his NBA career at the Chicago Bulls, but he wore them underneath his red Chicago Bulls shorts, obviously. And that meant that he had to have bigger baggy Chicago Bull shorts. And as his fame grew, the fashion of his big baggy shorts grew as well. And now all the players in the NBA wear big baggy shorts because of North Carolina University

and those lucky MJ shorts. Wow. Just 125 years earlier, the Donner Party brothers had been born there. They'd already done a lot of travelling around the USA via wagon, migrating across the country as many as five times, all over. Wow. They had heard of the wonders of California

and decided to go for one last journey. But moving house sucks. But moving wagon, your house is the wagon. Hello. Okay, less of a pack-up. Actually, I reckon without a lot of technology that we have now, moving house would be easier, you know? It's TVs and all the heavy shit.

They didn't have couches back then. No. Couches. Yeah, having to organise your new electrical provider. Totally. Internet. Internet. Getting that connected in a timely manner, impossible.

George Donna was 60 years old and was accompanied by his third wife, Tamzin, who was. March. Ranking your wives is a bit off to me. Yeah, that's not on. If you've married her, just call her your wife. Oh, she's in the top three. Top three wives. I'd be around with that.

He left number four, five and six at home. What had happened to the other wives? They're still alive? You can't get divorced back then. No, I think that all died. A lot of people were dying back then, and that continues on in this story. And today. Yeah.

It still happens. It's crazy that we haven't figured out. how to stop death. What? 150 years later, I'm sure they would have predicted we would have stopped it by now. But anyway. I'm embarrassed. I think more people are dying today than ever before.

Wow. That's deep. That's a huge take, Matt. His third wife was Tamsan. She was 45, so a bit younger than him. Their three children were also there. Francis, six. Georgia, four, Eliza three.

This is George, and he named his daughter, Georgia. Yeah. God damn it, George. I love that. He also brought his two daughters from a previous marriage, 14-year-old Alitha Coombe. Oh, shout-a-lisp.

And Leanna, 12. Jacob Donner, the young brother, 56. He brought his wife, who was also 45, Elizabeth, and they have five children with them, ranging in ages from nine down to three, including George, Mary, Isaac, Samuel and Lewis. So five between the ages of nine and three. Yeah.

He really pumped him out. And start in late. So were they, they were both in their 50s, you say? She was 45. She was 45. And she'd already been married, but widowed. And she brought along her two kids from a previous marriage. Solomon Hook, who was 14.

Fantastic. And William Hook, who was 12. So she had a 14, a 12, a 9, a 7, a 5, a 4 and a 3-year-old. There are so many kids in this. I mean, there's one question that comes to mind. How do you entertain them? You can't just put them in front of the TV or give them a tablet? I know.

It's a nightmare on a journey. You could give them a tablet, be sinus or something like that back then, probably. It sounds like the TV is not working even if I know what I mean. That's another good one. What, bloody TV, not working on your house. I think I'm going to start just being incredibly blunt and be like, oh, you like to have sex with your wife. All right.

You're all right. Oh, someone's having sex with their spouse. So they've got lots of kids. Each brother had three wagons and two teamsters. A Tamarada only ever heard on The Simpsons when Homer tries to out-yorn and relax them when they're filming the Radioactive Man movie. Oh, yes.

Just watched that recently, actually. Watch out, Radioactive Man. Is that Jiminy Jilica so many times? It's lost all meaning. Millhouse, we need to do the Jiminy Jilica scene again. We already did it. It took six hours when we did it. But we need to do it again and again and again from different angles.

And again and again and again. So they had two teamsters. I didn't know what that was, but that's Noah and Samuel who were basically to drive the teams of animals on the journey because the wagons are pulled by horses and also oxes. Oh. Okay. I love oxes.

Love big. You love big animals. I love thick animals. Bison. Oh, they'd be. be out amongst the bison probably. Yeah, this is real bison territory. Bison country.

Bison era. When I was in at Yellowstone, I heard of bison surrounded my car. It was one of the great moments. Cool. So cool. Wow. Love them big, fat-headed bastards.

So cool. Just before we started watching, I was watching a video of a whale surfing. What? I was like, wow. Another great big-headed animal. They're all head. Real big animal.

They're head from. they're all the way down to the tail. That's haired, baby. They're all haired, baby. There was like, because it's from like a drone and you can see, you can see creatures in the water and I was like, oh, those must be the whales. No, no, those were dolphins and then the camera moves and you see this gigantic, massive whale,

and there's people surfing and the whale just like catches the wave with them. It's like, wee! But it's huge. That is crazy. Biggest animal to ever exist is the blue whale. That is wild? Absolutely amazing, isn't it? That's an amazing fact. You'd assume a dinosaur, it must have had been a bigger dinosaur than the blue whale, but apparently not.

Maybe one of my favourite ever facts. Is that a fun fact, Bob? Um, yep. Oh, I did not believe it. It wasn't that fun. Okay. I feel like that's a well-known fact. Oh, okay, well-known fact.

It feels well-known because you brought it up a few weeks ago, Matt. You told me that, you told us that Ben Russell told you that maybe? Yeah, Ben. No, what he told me was that whales used to live on land and also like a pig sort of dog kind of animal. That's right. And then they, so they start in the ocean, then they came up on a land involved into these sort of pig dog things.

That's not technically right, but something like that. And then they went back into the ocean and just, without anything sort of holding them back, they've just grown and grown until they're, so I guess they're going to just keep. Keep getting bigger as they evolve. Amazing. Eventually, the ocean will just be one big blue whale. Yeah.

That's a fun fact, sure. And we'll all live inside of it. That's fun. I thought so, but I'm not... It's not my right. Since last week, I started doing grim facts. Got a couple for you this week. Oh, well, I'll decide.

I'll decide. You can judge for yourself. So that's George and Jacob's families in their wagon. The other family I mentioned was headed by Local businessman, 46-year-old James Fraser Reid, who came to the USA from Ireland when he was a child. He had served in the same company as future president Abraham Lincoln during the Black Hawk War,

briefly fought between the USA against the SAC Native Americans. So he knew Abraham Lincoln. Wow. Wow. Reid, who was already wealthy, hoped to build an even larger fortune in California, and also hoped the warmer climate on the coast might help improve the health. of his 32-year-old wife, Margaret W. Reed. Also with them was their three children, Martha, James Jr. and Thomas, age between 8 and 5.

Also in tow was Mrs. Reed's daughter from her previous marriage. There's lots of marriages going on. Virginia Blackenstow, who was 13, and Mrs. Reed's mother, Sarah Keys, 75. Oldest person on this journey. I'm fascinated that these are three blended families. in a time that I definitely associated with, I mean, I understand they're not like divorced, but they're widowed and then remarrying, me remarrying.

But each of these families is really blended and that's really interesting. I think it comes in waves, doesn't it? That sort of stuff, depending on whoever's leading the moral majority or whatever at the time. It'll change. And it'll often depend on. on who like what the king or the queen is up to. We want to get divorced.

So divorce is cool for a bit. And then the next one comes in, divorce is bad. You never leave me. And then no one. And then one guy's wearing a hat because he's got a bald spot. So then hats are polite inside. And then, uh... Yeah, you're right.

I don't know. Something like that. That, you know, you can, it was always sort of seen as, it was different if some, if the spouse had died and you remarried and had more children or whatever. But the fact that you would think that maybe one of these couples, it was a second marriage or a third marriage, you know, but it's like all three, it's second, third, you know, for each person.

That's pretty, I don't know. I don't know why I found that so interesting. Yeah, I wonder if that was just common for everyone at that time or because that's what had happened to them. That's why they became friends with each other, like they related to each other. Or maybe it was just common back then because of mortality rates and stuff. And I think just depending on the kind of, you know,

assuming they're Christian, depending on the certain strain of Christianity or have different rules about that sort of stuff as well. Yeah, pretty interesting. But cool, okay, so there's a shit ton of kids and an old lady. An old lady. I don't really go into it too much, but she dies along the way pretty early

from suspected tuberculosis. Okay. She's the... Is that her whole? highly contagious one? Yes, it is, but no one else seems to succumb to it. Yeah, right. Well, this does definitely sound like the pilot episode of a sitcom. Hmm. Road trip. Like a 1980s or 70s sort of one. With a cast of 31. It's not like one of those intro songs. It just keeps going and going.

While they all back to back in. Introducing all the characters. They're all doing a different activity, which is like so that character. Yeah. And they wink at the camera. Yeah. Here comes Nana. She's about to die.

But for the moment she's happy and alive. And then they form the Brady Bunch square at the end. There's so many you can't even see their faces. The squares are so small. You're like, who's who? So, yeah, some sort of mix between Brady Bunch and, What's that one where the people from the country become rich because they strike oil? Beverly Hillbillies.

Somehow, because they're sort of the traveling nature of the Beverly Hillbillies. Blended families from Brady Bunch. I think you got yourselves a hit on your hand. And modern family as well. The Donna party. The Donna party. That's how they became the Donna party. And then Reid is there at the end going, Donna Reed party, shaking his fist.

Played by Tim Allen. This is a hit show. Netflix are interested. If we could somehow go back in time. I don't know if that would quite work today, but back then. We'll make it work today. We'll make it work. And we'll be rich.

Yes. The striking black gold. So they formed a group of 31, and their plan was to travel by nine horse and oxen lead wagons all the way to California. Hey, Jess. How's Stoke's? are you that the Nana died, rounding it down to an even 30. Hadn't even thought about that.

I am actually thrilled about the death of an old woman. That is so good. 30 is a fantastic number. Yeah, big time. I'm just saying it's really good. Okay. Hey Dave, sorry, you were about a word into that sentence. Please do go on.

30 of them, their plan to travel by nine wagons led by lots of horses and lots of wagons all the way to California. That's 3.33 person per wagon. Nine wagons? Yeah. Just saying. Depends if we're including Nana or not, doesn't it? I'm not.

Are you only counting living humans, Jess? Yeah. Okay. Not nearly dead humans. Over the previous couple of decades, a passable wagon road had developed, making sure to tackle the two main obstacles that parties had to overcome. The great Salt Lake Desert in Utah and the Sierra Nevada

mountains in California. The answer was a somewhat winding journey of 2,000 miles in a single summer and fall by oxen or horses at an average of 15 miles a day. In total, a voyage was expected to take about five months on average. Whoa. How far is 15 miles? It's about 15 miles, isn't it? Yeah.

Well, it's about 1.6 kilometres to a mile. So, 20-something. They're going 24Ks a day. A day for five straight months. Well, I mean, to be honest, they have rest day. So on some days you have to walk further, actually. Holy shit. That's hectic.

Reed was very wealthy and his wagons, lagging wagons, were very luxurious. His stepdaughter recalled 45 years later, our wagons, or the reed wagons, as they were called, were all made to order. And I can say without fear of contradiction, that nothing like our family wagon ever started across the plains. It was what might be called a two-story wagon or pioneer palace car

attached to a regular immigrant train. Certainly no family ever started across the planes with more provisions or a better outfit for the journey. What a brag. It's like, oh, so you had a great head start. Well, let's assume that you get across easily then. Yeah. Let's assume this works out really well for you then. I know, well, despite that, the question is, would it be enough? I'm a guess, no. The very least we know that this woman survives. That's true.

She's talking 45 years later. Yeah, exactly. What was her name? Was she the one with the Lisp? No, I don't, I didn't write down which of his daughters that was. It was the stepdaughter. So, no. I think of Virginia.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, from a previous marriage. Virginia Hack and Pack or something like that. She had a great name. Back and Stowe. Back and Stowe. Back and pack, yeah. That's what we were.

Virginia Fanny Pack. Virginia Hack and Fanny Pack. So the Donners and the Reeds took off from Springfield on April the 14th, 1846. And within a month, the Donners and the Reeds had reached Independence, Missouri. A hub of sorts where on May 12th they stocked up on supplies and joined a train of wagons heading west. The part of the train they joined was captained by Colonel William H. Russell. And through the journey, the group just grew,

and grew, so that is picking up people at towns and cities on the way, and everyone's heading in that direction. Now, it should be noted that they were one of, if not the last major pioneer train to leave that year. Leaving probably a month later than was ideal, meaning they had less time up their sleeve should something go wrong and delay them on the trip. So just keep that at the back of your mind. Right.

And this is for getting through wintertime. That's right. So they're racing to get through to the other side before the winter and the snow and that harsh weather sets in. Right. Yep. And everyone else, most other people have left at least a month earlier than this. That's a big, that's a big amount of time, I'd say, a month. Yeah.

It's not a week. It's much more than that. If you're thinking, oh, geez, we're running a bit late today, a few hours late. Maybe that's okay. But I reckon if you're like, you're waiting out the front and your mates and you're going on a road trip and your mates is like, no, we'll be out there soon and they're not out for a month. I would have called it off by then.

Yeah. Honestly, I think we'll just, I'll like, how long would you wait? Oh, maybe, maybe half an hour maybe. Okay. Otherwise, it's like, all right, fuck, either I'm going by myself or, you know, something else. Yeah. If the Mike picked up that horn, that's someone patiently waiting for their mates to go on a road trip.

Yeah. fuck out here. And we can only go within 5K, so it's going to be a pretty shit road trip. I pranked your mobile 15 minutes ago. Come out. We've got to make good time on this. So, but they honestly, they're looking at the calendar going, oh, we've still got time though.

We've got time. You know, everything's going to go smoothly. We'll be able to make it still. That's what they're thinking. The group actually made good progress all the way to Fort Laramie in what is now southeastern Wyoming, covering roughly. 650 miles or just over 1,000 kilometres and six weeks, which is about 15 miles a day.

So far so good. Bang on. Okay. What could possibly go wrong from here? Oh dear. Well, enter a man named Lanceford Hastings. That's a good name.

That is a fantastic name. Who the usually impartial Britannica describes as, quote, an unreliable guide. End quote. So when Britannica whips out that sort of language, you know some shit. about to go down.

Britannica, you bitch. I know. Oh, shit. Sassy. Now, Lanceford Hastings had written a book called The Immigrants' Guide to Oregon and California, probably to make money and also possibly because he had a vision of building an empire in current day Sacramento.

So he wrote a guide to bring people over, but also he was selling it. So he's making money one way or another. Yeah, win-win. At this point, he sounds like a savvy businessman. Yes. Sacramento goes on to be, if it's not already, the capital of California. That's true.

Home of the Kings. Yeah, from the Kings. Used to be the home of, there's a few teams that have rolled through there. California's been funny because it's a lot of sporting teams just move around, like go from L.A. to San Diego and up again to Sacramento. I can't think of any exact examples. What did, like, the Raiders moved around a bit. They went to, they're in Vegas now.

Oh. They used to be LA. In Oakland? Yeah. Had a couple of stints in Oakland, I think. If I had to pick an NFL team, that was going to be the one. Yeah, they were always, they had the best branding, right? It looks cool.

Yeah. Big time. But there's a few claims as to who read the book or how the Donner Party came across it. But it's certain that someone read it, this book, Hastings had written. In the book, or possibly long letter, who knows how you'd define a book back then, Hastings... What are books, if not long letters?

It was hard to ascertain if it was, like, properly printed, or someone was just handing out a pamphlet, who knows. Yeah, right. But he made many claims. The most appealing to the Donner Party was an advertised new shortcut across the Great Basin. Oh, dear. Hastings claimed would save the pioneers' 350.

to 400 miles off the usual route. And better still, it was on easy terrain, which sounds great, right? Who wouldn't take that shortcut if you knew about it? That's a massive shortcut. Like, that shaves off a lot of... Huge. A lot of time. Yeah.

And it's better terrain. So you'd rather go that way anyway, even it was the same distance. Absolutely. The problem, Jess, was that Hastings himself had never been to the route that he wrote about. In fact... Hastings is an unreliable guide. I say. Sorry to be such a bitch. In fact, that root had never been tested at all.

Well, no. In fact, that root doesn't exist in any way. There had been a root around these parts for about 30-a-year-old. No, basically, it's not even like he'd heard someone else talk about it and was like, oh, that's great. He just looked at the map and said, that'd work. That looks like a root to me. That's quick. I know a root when I see one.

He sounds like a root rat. Oh, he's an absolute root rat. According to Legends of America.com, another great source, which I will link, they had a great article on this, on the very day that the Illinois party headed west from Springfield, so when they left for the journey itself, Lanceford Hastings prepared to head east from California to see what the shortcut he'd written about was really like. So as they're moving towards the shortcut, he's like, I better go check this thing out that I've written a book about.

And he's leaving from California. Yeah, he's on the other side. Presumably, he's taken the normal route that everyone else at this time in history uses the Oregon Trail. Yeah, not listening to his own advice. No, he'd never been there. Now he's like, oh, I should probably go check out that shortcut. Go double-check in case anyone uses it, you know? I should go double-check in case anybody's put up a sign naming it after me.

I should go check that out. Well. Because I'm a hero and I've saved everyone a heap of time. It was named after him just. It was called the Hastings Cut-Off. Of course. Oh dear. Now, what is our number one rule when travelling in a group across the wilderness?

Never split the party. Never split the party. Hang on. Never ever split the party. Which harks back to our fifth ever episode, Birken Wales. Was it that early? Yeah, it was one of the few that Dave and I recorded before you came on and we re-recorded it with you.

So I think it was my second report, so it would have been episode number five. That's what Dave just said. If I could be so bold as to call the Donner Party, the American Birkenwills. Okay. Oh, wow. So that sets the tone of what we should expect. So we're going to dislike them soon. Yeah, we're going to get really mad at them?

Yep. So when you said they were like the Ned Kelly, they were more like the Birkenwheels. The Birkenwills, I suppose you'd say, yeah. I was thinking more Ned Kelly because it's kind of like folklory. Yeah, I feel like Birkenwell crosses into a bit of that as well. I knew their name growing up without ever knowing that much about them. I always assumed which we would have talked about in that episode that they had some sort of success, which they, you know, you could spin it in a way that they did.

They were sort of the first to do a thing, but... But they didn't do it well. They sucked. They sucked. And now I know that they're idiots. Yeah. So when you see big... statues of them. I'm like, I'm scared.

Especially Burke. Yeah, Burke. Especially Burke. What a big deal. Right, okay. So you never split the party is something we came up with all the way back then because Birkenwills kept doing that and every time you split up the group, obviously it never went well for them. And let me just say, no one should never do it, especially these guys. Sadly, most of the large wagon train that they were a part of, remember they're the group of three families, but then they've also joined hundreds of other people who are moving west in the wagon train.

train, most of the train opted to continue using the well-established Oregon Trail that everyone else is using. But a group of 87 chose to head south for Fort Bridger and then go for Hastings' shortcut, known as Hastings Cut-Off, to save them the up to 400 miles on the journey. Do you know what the number 87 is in cricket? It's an unlucky number. It's the devil's number. Oh, no.

Why? Because it's 13 runs from getting your century. Oh, of course. Isn't that funny? Well, they should have recruited one person more and it all would have gone well. If Nana had lived, but she didn't. Oh, Nana.

So they went for this thing, and this is to spark the fact that at Fort Laramie, a few days beforehand, our wealthy businessman and main player, James Reed, had run into an old friend from Illinois called James Clyman. Again, according to Legends of America, Clyman told Reid that he'd just traveled the new route eastward with Lanksford Hastings.

James Clyman advised Reid not to take the Hastings route, stating that the road was barely passable on foot and would be impossible with wagons, also warning him of the Great Desert and the Sierra Nevadas, the two main things that the Oregon Trail avoids. He said, don't go there, it's not good. Despite this warning from his old friend to take the normal route and definitely not use the Hastings cut off, Reid ignored him in the hope of getting to their destination faster than the usual route. But he just did it and told you, oh man, bad enough on foot, but you've got all these wagons with you. Yeah, no way. And it's actually a lot harder. You're better off going,

sure, a longer way, but, you know, you're going to live. Sometimes there's a reason why the way is the way. Right? Yeah. Well, there was some, what was the teen movie that had a line in it like that? Or they're like, the shortcut was proven really difficult. And they're like, that's why it's called a shortcut. If it was easy, it'd be called the way. Oh, wow. That's not a great line. What's stuck with me. Yeah, you've got that tattooed on your back. Yeah. I love your tramp stamp stamp, by the way.

I keep forgetting to tell you every week, I think, God, I love his tramp stamp. Thank you. I always forget it's there. I never see it, but you're looking at it all the time. All the time. And then I'm saying, Matt, can you please put a t-shirt on? And why have you got you back to me when we're trying to record? Come on, mate. So are we in agreement? So that is a pretty stupid thing to do.

Yes. Yeah, this sounds really dumb. I mean, the fact that you're talking about it now isn't it a good sign either. Yeah. And you've sort of forewarned that this is going to go pear-shaped. But the fact that so I thought they were just going to be unlucky and read this book. But having someone who's just gone down there and go against that, oh, silly. Yeah, like remember how I told you that Hastings was leaving at the same time from them to check out his route?

Well, this guy, Clymer was with him when he checked it out. And then he saw his old friend and said, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't go down there. And then he ignored him anyway. So in total, there was... In his mind, he was like, yeah, you would say that. You don't want me to be a big star. You're trying to keep it all for yourself, that sweet shortcut. Oh, dear.

I bet you've, I bet there's gold along the shortcut. And I bet you just don't want me to find the gold. So now I'm going to go and get all the gold. Yeah. You've always been jealous of me, climbing. You're always climbing. Yeah, you're a social climbing, you're a prick. I love this phrase.

You've always been jealous of me. I'm going to start using that more. It's always said by someone who is clearly misguarded as well. Yeah. When someone's just genuinely trying to be helpful, like, you've always been jealous of me. You just don't want me to succeed. No, I just don't want you to make an idiot of yourself,

but now I kind of do. Go for it. Yeah, you're right. I'm jealous. Prove me wrong, I guess. So in total there was 87 people in this breakaway group. Nine men, 15 women and 43 children, all in a column of 23 ox-drawn wagons. That's good.

Luckily, they've got a lot of these. You know, for something that's going to become physically hard, what you want is majority children. Yeah. Who are notoriously very good at hiking. 87 people. Nine men. Okay.

How's he making up the rest? Honestly, for half a second, I thought, you're counting the animals? Oh, children. The rested children. Oh, that's bad. That is no good at all. It's real bad. It is bad.

Those numbers are right. Maybe I think it actually is less than 87. By this point, more people have dropped off. I've just done the maths. That only adds up to 67. So, sorry, everyone. Wow. Well, that's 20 lives that were saved by going.

Actually, we might take the way. Actually, we've got 10 kids with us. And I think we might just stick to the tried and true way. We think we might just go down to that ball pit place down the road. Yeah. We'll chuck him in there for a while. There's a pokey's next door. They say life changes when you have kids and, you know, they're not wrong.

So yeah, we're going to head down to the ball pit. There's like a little arcade there and a cafe for moms and dad. So we're going to head down there for a bit. Refuel, try and tuck the kids out so they sleep on the rest of the journey. Yeah, honestly, our pioneering days were behind us. When we only had eight or nine kids, sure. That was a bit of fun. No worries.

But you know what they say? Ten kids. Too many. Too many for pioneering. You know that phrase? I love that phrase. I'm going to tattoo it on my lower back. You know what they say?

Nine kids is like one. Ten kids. Like a hundred. Yeah. Really tips it over. So there's between 67 and 87. There's a lot of people and there's a lot of kids. Let's just go with that.

And George Donner. So many kids. You should never be outnumbered by kids. What are they thinking? Never. If they turn on you, you are fucked. Isn't there? You wouldn't be able to have that adult to child ratio on a school excursion.

You wouldn't be allowed to. No way. Absolutely not. You should never be outnumbered. Never work with children or animals. They're breaking the two big rules. Yeah. I mean, that is hard for people who work at, you know, children farms. But.

Yeah. Pioneers. Well, pioneers, even. Come on. Pioneerers. You know, they can stick to that rule. Leave the kids at home. Yeah, that'll be right.

Let's put them on the train. No pioneering. Put the kids on the train say you'll meet them at the other end. I'm assuming there's a fast rail on this route. Yeah, but it's more, you know, it's fun for kids, but adults fun are boring, you know? Where's the challenge? Yeah. The train is a child-sized Thomas the tank engine, but it goes very fast.

Oh, so fast. Like, someone, like, pushes it really fast from one end. It's got those wine back wheels, yeah. And they wind it up until like it locks and so you know that it's got a bit of steam. It does that the whole way. That's why parents hate it. So George Donner was elected as the leader of the group and that's why it's often referred to as the Donner Party. Right. Okay.

He's much to Reid's dismay. Reid put his hand up as well, I'm sure. Apparently he did. I honestly think that he did it but he was just quite unpopular. Yeah, he sounds like a pain in the ass. I don't know why. I don't know why I made that assumption there. But I'm sticking with it.

Who's the one that made the decision? Who was told to not go that way and overruled? Read. Yeah, that was read. That's okay. Well, that's why, Jess? You're right. Thank you for drawing that line for me because I was like,

why do I dislike this guy? I'm not sure why I've got a weird feeling, bad feeling about this idiot. All right. For the life of me, figure out why. I mean, he's a moron. I know that. Why is it? Why do I hate it?

So they continued on, The group received a letter on horseback from Hastings, who they saw as the cut-off expert, and the letter stated that he would meet them at Fort Bridger, at Fort Bridger, and then leave them through the cut-off himself. I'm glad it wasn't called Fraught, because that would be another bad sign. Oh, well, this letter actually helped relax any trepidation the group may have been feeling about the lesser-known cut-off.

Because they're like, oh, the guy that wrote the book's going to meet us there and take us through it. It's going to be easy. Yeah, 100% that would put your mind at ease if you didn't know the fact that he's never been there before. Well, they reached Fort Bridger where they expected to meet Hastings. But when they got there, he was nowhere to be seen.

He'd already left with another group and left a note indicating that the Donna Party should try and catch up to them. Right. Oh, that's interesting. I mean, he sent the letter to that. They didn't say, hey, could you guide us through? And he was like, yeah, all right, but I believe him. And he was like, meet me here.

I'll guide you. And then he just fucked off without him. He just left. Oh, there's so much going on here that, and all of it feels a bit off. This is an amazing story, I can tell. Well, so they decided to actually have a little bit of arrest and resupply for what they expected to be a seven-week journey. This is now late July.

This is the final seven weeks in their mind? Yes. Wow, okay. So they've already been going for how long? Since April. Oh, damn. So they've been on the road for a really long time. Yeah, been on the road for three months,

hoping that it'll be about two more months and then they'll be there. bang on, perfect, miss the snow. Yep. And they're hoping that they're going to catch up to Hastings, the expert on the new trail. And for the first week or so, the group made good progress and all seemed pretty good

making 10 to 12 miles a day. Not that much further than the 15 that you'd hope to average. But they also don't, do they know when he left? Like, do they know how far ahead he is? Like, what if he'd left a week before? You know.

I don't know this for certain. I would have, I'd hope that he would have put a date on it. but I don't know. Yeah, yeah. But it's pretty good terrain. They're like, so far so good. But soon they found the terrain to be much more difficult than described by Hastings. Oh, you don't say.

More like how it was described by his old friend? Yeah. Yeah. The one who'd actually done it, unlike Hastings. But Hastings wrote directions and left letters stuck to trees to encourage them. Oh, so they know they're on the right path. And they continued on, yeah. So they'd see it and go, oh, yep, this is the right way.

Yep, hopefully we're gaining on him. We'll catch up to him. but a week later on August 6, they found a note from Hastings attached to a forked stick, wanting the party that the route ahead through the Wasatch Mountains was much more difficult than he had thought and that rather than follow the other party that he was leading,

the Donner should set up camp, wait for him, and then he'd come back for them and then show them a better way. I'd say he's trying to be helpful, Hastings. Well, okay. He meant he's not being super honest. Oh, well, he seems like he's trying to be helpful. He's, that's right. To them, they're like, oh, great, we've got the expert.

He'll come back. He'll come back. But they had a bit of a dilemma at this point. They could turn back to Fort Bridger and take the established route. Oh, do it. But this would result in losing several days because they're already a little bit way down the path. They'd have to turn around and basically give up that time. Do it, do it.

Do it. Please do it. It would have just been a pointless detour. Yeah, exactly. And they would have been like, well, that costs us a couple of weeks, but oh well. They decided. And we don't have, we don't have. we don't have a lot of time up our sleeves to lose.

Yeah, I think that's what made them think that they... It would have been hard, yeah. Yeah, they decided instead to wait for Hastings. But you also don't know how soon Hastings are going to be back. So it could be the same amount of time that you're just waiting there. That you could have gone back and... Well, you are absolutely banging on just because eight days later, he still hadn't arrived. So they definitely could have gone back.

Yep. Fuck. So they sent some riders ahead to meet up with him. because obviously it's quicker just to ride on horseback than travelling with a big group like he was so you could catch up to him. And mostly children.

Yeah, exactly. Kids don't move that quick. So they sent some riders they had to meet up with him and he gave the travellers instructions to follow another trail which they did. The problem was it was even worse

than the other route. So he just had a stab at it. He's a real lagger. Yeah, he was like, oh, the route arm one's no good, take another one and it was even worse. They encountered exceedingly difficult canyons where boulders had to be moved, trees had to be cut down, and thick foliage,

or foliage, as March would say, had to be removed to make way for the wagons. This obviously slowed them down a lot and their progress crawled to about one and a half miles or 2.4 kilometres a day, 10% of the speed that they should be travelling. Shit, that's not good. Again, they thought about turning back, but James Reid in particular advocated continuing on to the cut off. That's right. They hadn't even got to the shortcut yet. Oh my God. They're not in the shortcut. They're trying to get to the shortcut, but trying to get to the shortcut has already massively delayed them. It's cost them a few weeks already and reads like, no, no, no, I reckon we're

already in. We're going to get closest. We'll make up for it. Make up for it. He must be feeling the pressure because he was the one that said they should go for it. Yeah, I think he's doubling down. bubbling down, yeah. Yeah. Always chase. This is one of the old, like, joke rules used to say, having a day of a bit of gambling.

Always chase your losses. That is exactly what he's doing. The rule is never chase your losses, but we used to say, oh, you're down a bit on the punt? Always chase your losses. The only way out, I was like when Homer was stuck in quicksand, and he's like, it's easy. I'll just pull my legs out with my hands

and pull my hands out with my face. Double down, double down. It'll always get you out of trouble. They took a vote amongst the group and elected to continue on to the shortcut. Some of the wagons had to be abandoned because of the terrible terrain and the group began to show signs of fracturing.

They openly began to blame Hastings and soon James Reed. Yep, so accurate, yes. You're nailing it. You're not, you know, sometimes they'll throw blame around. And like I feel like that happened a bit with Burke and Will's where they'd sort of, there'd be blame on certain people and we'd be watching it like, what are you talking about? But in this case, spot on. Yep.

The Donner Party finally made it through the Wasatch Mountains, arrived at the Great Salt Lake on August 30th. Hastings route had cost them 18 valuable days. Shit. A note left by Hastings told them that crossing the Salt Lake would take only two days. Well, it took five Because the desert sand was moist and deep and bogged the wagons Oh no The salt lake was a barren plain

Perfectly flat and covered with white salt And described as one of the most inhospitable places On planet earth And they're trekking across it They haven't been to my ex-wife's house What's her house like? Very cold Covered in salt

Covered in salt My ex-wife is up horse. She's super salty because of the way we back up. Yeah. She's still like totally wants me back though, eh? Get over it, Suzanne. Move on.

Your horse? Just wanted to point out I'm not being derogatory towards my former wife. She is, in fact, quite literally a horse. Look, I had a bit of fun with that. I love it.

I apologize. does. How do you, so I remember it was hard for you to get her to do her vows at the wedding, but you had to put peanut butter on her, on her gums. Yeah. Yeah, instead of saying I do, she kept saying, nay. It was very confusing. Yeah, I'm like, I don't think she wants this.

Is that no? Does she object? And you kept saying, no, no, that's how she says yes. Yeah. And then I came across as quite domineering, which is not my personality at all. We were very much equals in our marriage. Okay. We were. She loved me.

Okay. I mean, yeah. Who are we to say? We're only looking in from the outside. Our wedding night went for a roll in the hay, literally. She loves it. She loves to roll in the hay. So they're crossing the Salt Lake. It's supposed to take two days. It takes five. Their water supply was nearly exhausted on day three. Oh, boy. You need that? You need water?

Yep, and on that same day, 32 of the first crazed oxes ran away, meaning wagons had to be abandoned altogether. Whoa, that's a lot of ox. Yeah. 32 ran away. 32. How did that happen? How does 32 run away?

They've been talking for a few days, I think. Yeah, they've been chatting each other for sure. I do want to ask though, Dave, you said they ran out of water. Did they still have Gatorade, though? Oh, yeah. They've got a vending machine in that pimped up wagon at the front. That's a really good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're not fully dehydrated just yet. Oh, no, they just run out of...

The ones they run out of Gatorade, they're fucked. Oh, my God. It puts back in what the sweat takes out. Yeah, I think you can only live for like three days without Gatorade. I think that's right. Yeah, and soon they'd have to start drinking either urine or powerade, and I know what I'd peeve. Yeah.

That was the joke. That was the joke. That piss would taste great. Yeah. Thought just in case. because I knew there would be a tweet coming later where someone would have said, Dave, it almost sounded like you were saying urine.

So these... It almost sounded like you think you were making the joke that power a taste worse than urine. Oh, okay. So I think these ox, that wouldn't have happened on Twitter, that would have happened on YouTube, that comment. But the ox, you reckon they've chatted. They got in each other's ears

and they're like, a couple more days of this and we're fucking off. It's making a break for it. How does 32? How do 32 of them? Are they like sheep? Were they just following each other? I don't think they are.

I reckon they've changed it in the diary, read and the Donald Party. But what actually happened was they were like, we need to entertain these kids. Let's put on an ox race. And they lined up the 32 ox. And they started running, but they never came back because then they went,

oh, we didn't tell them it was a circuit. And the finished line was back at the start. So the officers kept going. You know what ox are like. They're still out there. They're still running. Still going all these years later. It's actually incredible.

32. That's fucking bonkers. How do 32 of them all take off once? Also, I imagine, probably, apart from helping them move, they would have been a good backup plan for food, perhaps? Oh, absolutely. Yes, definitely. Oh, boy.

They finally made it across. They were forced to arrest for several days, wasting more time in a fruitless search for the missing oxen. So they went out looking for them. And they didn't have any fruit. I'm not. Yeah, why would they come back with no fruit? Fruitless search.

Looking for oxen. I mean, there's a lot going on here. Do they still have some ox left? They've still got some left. But they've lost a lot. They've got too much. And the less oxen you have, the less wagons you're able to have because they're pulling the wagons. Yeah.

So it's not a good. So now they're like doubling, tripling up and you've got to share your space in your fancy wagon. No, thanks. No, thank you. Feed off the Shades Lounge if you don't mind. Help yourself to the Bay of Marie. The other thing a fancy person would have. Yeah, they'd have a Bay Marie.

That sounds fancy, but it isn't, is it? That's where the Dim Sims and stuff are at the Fisher Chip Shop. Yeah, the service station. Yep. Oh, cool, good. Lardie Dao. Bay Marie. Oh, hello.

Hello, 7.11. This Fisher Chip Shop, Lardie da. Oh, this chico has only been here for three days. Oh, pardon me. My Lord. Oh, dear. So in the meantime, they took stock only to discover that their food supply was not looking good for the 600 miles they still had left to go. It got even worse when some men rode ahead and discovered they had another 40 miles or 64 kilometres of desert ahead of them.

That's a lot. That's a lot. How they're measuring that every gallop, they go one gallop, two gulves, three gals, four gulfs. That's cool. I like how they can do that, though. They would have some way of counting that way, I assume. Mm. One day, two go.

Now, they were doing those things where you like, you try and step about one meter. Yeah. So the horse is carefully just striding out one at a time. Yeah. Or like measuring your furniture will fit. So you sort of hold your hands, you know, okay, and now I'll move to where the furniture will go. And your hands move every time. Every time. But you go, yep, that'll fit.

Yeah, because you move it to the exact and go, oh, that's exact. Can't believe her. That's perfect. That's crazy. I nailed that. You get the couch in there. It does not fit. It's overhanging the door by about 20 centimetres.

Can't open the closer door there. I understand the Donna party's excuse for not using a tape measure, but what's yours? I don't know. Blind ignorance. Confidence. She likes working with her hands. I lost my tape.

That's the truth. All right. Is that what you wanted me to say? Yeah, got me. Guilty as chat. 32 of my tape measure. I don't know where it is. I haven't had the heart to replace them because I still believe they'll come back.

So amazingly, they continued on and made it through the desert and rejoined the traditional trail in late September. So that was supposed to be the shortcut. That bit they just walked through. The shortcut had actually taken them a month longer than the normal trail would have, as they had to travel an extra 125 miles through uncleared mountain terrain and then desert. All the other migrants that had left at the same time but had elected not to take Hastings' shortcut were already in California by this point.

Had been for ages. They're living it up. They've all got the original roles and, you know, one of them got the role in train coming towards camera. Oh, no, the big break. But for the Donner-Reed party, the journey was only just beginning. Oh, that must be, I mean, they wouldn't know any of that, I suppose, but jeez that they must have it in, they must deep down know we probably would already be there

if we just did what everyone else did. Yeah. They know, we fucked up. They do the maths on and go, hang on, this is the, I circle this in the calendar for unpacking and I'm still in a desert. There's a calendar inside the fancy. That's right. I'm meant to be meeting the interior designer today at noon.

Oh my God. What will I tell the plumber? We're hosting our first dinner party tonight in our new house. Not even built because we're not fucking there. Our guests will be there with no host. Yeah, they're going, hello, Mr. Reid. Mr. Reid, hello. Hello.

On a vacant block. It was an ambitious dinner plan, to be honest, but. It always is when moving. Always moving. You're like, what, I'll move in about, you know, unpack everything. That'll take, what, about 15, 25 minutes. Yeah.

Six days later, you're still unpacking crockery. Come around for dinner the next week. I'll be well and truly settled. Crockery, fine word. That just means all plates and bowls. Yeah, what about your dinnerware, Dave? When you can unpack your dinnerware, you're fucking ear. I'm wearing dinnerware.

We're in my dinnerware, unpacking crockery. It's the wrong order, but all right. Every now and then, something of little Eastern Suburbs comes out in you two talking to each other. I feel like crockery is one of those. I didn't say crockery. Dave did, and you knew exactly what he meant. I'm not entirely sure.

What is crockery? Is that like, is that... Dick it's bowls and plates. No worry about it. Yeah, that's crockery, right? Anything that you've got that's made of porcelain, which I assume is a lot. My toilet is crockery. You're kidding?

I've been calling that the shit. And why are you unpacking it on moving day? That should be there. That should already be there. It's not B.Y.O. toilet when you move house. Contact your landlord if there's no toilet when you get there. Yeah, that's not good. The shitter should be there.

Hi, there's no shitter here. That's how I say it. I'll send someone post haste. Now, remember how initially they had left later than every other migrant by about a month? Yeah. Now, add on top of that the extra month of travelling, and they were now dangerously behind time.

Oh, no. What they were really racing against, as we've already mentioned, was the snow. They were desperate to not be trapped in the Sierra Mountains during the snow-filled winter, and they could already see snow falling on the peaks of the mountains. That would have been nice? Yeah, beautiful.

Beautiful snow-capped mountains. But also terrifying. Yeah. With supplies already low and a huge journey still ahead of them, two of the young men travelling with the party, William McCutcheon and Charles Stanton, were sent ahead to Sutter's Fort in California to bring back supplies.

So they're off. But tensions were running high in the main group. Everyone blamed Hastings for his bullshit shortcut, and many held resentment to read who'd championed them. As they journeyed on, along the Humboldt River into Nevada, tempers began to flare, and they truly boiled over on October 5. There's a number of conflicting reports here, but the crux of it was on October 5th, at Iron

Point, two wagons became entangled. One of the men, John Schneider, angrily... Schneider! Great name. So good. Angrily beat one of the oxes owned by Reed. Reed ordered the man to stop and attempted to intervene, and then Schneider began to to whip Reed.

He's losing his mind by the sounds of it. Yeah. At this point, Reid's wife Margaret may have intervened and been hit herself. That's sort of where there's conflicting reports. But what is clear is that James Reed pulled out a knife and fatally stabbed John Snyder, the man with the whip. Right. So he just straight up killed him.

Yeah, that's a weird scenario. I mean, no one should whip another man's ox first. Of course. And then when... That's Dave's tramp stamp. And then when they turn that whip onto you, it's not going to be like, mate, come on.

This is not very nice. I would call his borderline impolite. You are not being very nice right now, saying in between getting whipped. Ah, ah, ah. You are not being polite. Ah, ah, a little to the left. So John Snyder has been stabbed by Reid.

At the time, US law wasn't a plight. in this remote part of the country, so the party was left to administer their own punishment. Some in the group, particularly German immigrant, Lewis Keseberg, advocated that Reid be hanged. The leader, George Donner, was actually a day ahead of the group at this point. So they took a vote and decided that Reid should be just banished from the group. Right. So basically, that's basically sentencing him to death without committing the murder.

Yeah, it's a bit like, good luck. If you survive out there, good luck too. Yeah. With his family to be looked after by the others. Remember, he's the wealthy one with the wealthiest carts and everything. Right. His family, you know, he made sure they'll be looked after by the others. James Reed was exiled from the group and forced to ride away and continue the journey on his own.

I did read that his stepdaughter Virginia rode ahead and secretly provided him with a rifle and food. Oh, shit. But it's still pretty tough going on your own out there. Enough bullets to kill everyone in the party. Is that what this turned into? So it sounds like he copped it on the chin, basically. He's like, yeah, I probably shouldn't have murdered one of us. Yeah, he accepted the punishment amazingly.

With their supplies very low, many wagons damaged or abandoned. The animals tired and the grass that they relied on becoming harder to find. From this point on, the groups began to splinter, and it very much became an every man or every family for themselves mentality. I kind of forgot you also have to feed the animals. Like a lot. A lot. Yeah.

because you've got a lot of animals and each of them require quite a lot of food. Well, they've got 32 less than they used to have. That's true. So, you know, it's all relative, isn't it? Now they'd be like, oh my God, there's a dream. Lewis Keseberg, who advocated for James Reins hanging, was a real prick.

Is that from Britannica again? That's Britannica. Britannica being bitchy. A 70-year-old man named Hard Coop traveled with him. And when the animals began to tie, everyone was ordered to walk. So before this, you'd be in the wagon

and the oxen's, the horses, they'd do everything. They'd pull you along. But now there's so little of those and they're tired and weak. Everyone has to walk. But Hard Coop, the 70-year-old man, couldn't keep up and Keseberg kicked him out and left him behind.

The old man asked the others for help, but they all refused to waste supplies on him. Oh my God. And they just left him there. That's fast. That's far. How awful is that? That's so awful. never seen again. Oh my God. Meanwhile, old mate exiled Reid caught up with the donners who were up

ahead and began to share a horse with one of their teamsters, Walter Heron. They're like, oh, what are you up here for? Oh, no reason. Certainly haven't killed anyone in the party. Where's the wife and kids? Yeah, we're all still getting on well. I've just said I'll come up ahead and share some food and stuff with you guys if that's cool with you. Can I hang with you for a bit? Oh, yeah, just had a fight with the family, you know. And the bloody doghouse. Reed and Walter Heron rode ahead, and they were able to cover an impressive 25 to 40 miles,

or 40 to 65K per day. So they've gone out in front. Yeah, without the old ball and chainway you down, you can cover a bit more distance, can't you? The train of wagons continued on and began the ascent of the Sierra foothills low on food, and to make things worse, Native American Paiute warriors killed or stole several of the remaining oxen

and chased away some of their horses. Some estimates show that at this point the company had nearly lost 100 oxen and cattle. Holy shit. It's crazy that they're travelling with such huge numbers of animals as well as... Like, it's just crazy. I can't picture it. I reckon the original, like, party would have been able to be seen from space.

That big. I reckon you're right. So they've lost so many oxen that many of them were forced to abandon their wagons and cashé their possessions. That is, bury them in the hope of retrieving them at a later date. That's never going to happen. Another German man named Wolfinger

stopped to cashet his wagon. Wolf finger? Wolfinger. He sounds like he should have been leaving this party. Why was he in charge? The wolf finger. The Wolfinger party sounds sick. I would follow Wolfinger to the end of the year.

I would have made it. We wouldn't know about him because he would have just like bad-assed his way the whole way across America. Big time. He would have roundhouse kicked like any, you know, like if some sort of buffalo came up to him to eat one of the others, he would have just kicked it in the face. Yeah. Or like a coyote.

What are the, what are the, because I don't have, what are the big, or bears? I'm trying to think what the American. I reckon beasts are... The American wombat. There's been no grizzly bears running in, but I reckon, yeah, Wolfinger would have just like roundhouse kicked it in the face. Dave, can you just let us know in case we are championing someone who's a bit shit? Can you let us know if he's terrible?

We won't have to talk about him for much longer because he went to cash his wagon, bury his stuff. Two other men, Reinhardt and Spitzer, stayed behind to help. They returned to the group without Wolfinger, reporting they'd been attacked by coyote Indians and he'd been killed. We'll never know if they were telling the truth. There's been lots of speculation over the years that they weren't and that they'd just killed and robbed him.

So yeah, what would be the benefit of that just to take his stuff? That he's cachet. Surely they could just see where it is and go back and steal it later without killing him. Oh, that, yeah, well, that just means then you've got to carry the stuff. Yeah, they come back and they've just got... That he can't carry. Ten loaves of bread on their back. No, I think they're probably also possibly stolen supplies.

Honestly, Dave. I reckon that bread would be pretty stale by now. Matt, they're baking fresh bread every day. The wagon's got an oven, mate. Yeah, come on. They've got damper. They're using it. The bakery wagon.

They've got a wagon for everything. Yes, you don't, I don't travel without the bakery wagon. I need my... Sorry, everybody. I'll just, if you need me, I'll be in the sauna and cinema wagon. The Eddie family had to abandon their way. and were refused help from the others and had to walk and carry their children the rest of the way. There's a real spirit of togetherness on this trip, isn't there?

Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it funny to travel together but being like, nah, fuck you? But like, still be so close. Yeah, you're on your own. You're on your own. Now, come on. Let's walk alongside each other for the next eight hours.

In what is probably the most tragic part of the story, Margaret Reed had to abandon her luxury wagon. Oh, Margaret, no. There's only three days from retirement. Guys, can we please just have a moment silence for that abandoned wagon? That's five. Oh, poor wagon. Poor Margaret. Amazingly, they were able to continue on without the luxury wagon, mainly because they had no choice at this point.

They made it to the gateway of Sierra Nevada on October 16th, almost completely out of supplies. But finally, a bit of good fortune occurred. Charles Stanton, who had ridden ahead to get supplies from California, arrived with seven mules loaded with beef and flour, as well as two Native American guides, Salvador and Lewis, and news of a clear but difficult path to the Sierra Nevada ahead. The other guy that had gone for help with him, William McCutcheon had fallen ill and he remained at Fort Sutter,

so that's why two went to get supplies, and only one came back. Okay. But that's good news. They've got a bit of food to keep them going, and now a couple of guides. and also the news that the trailer head, it's not that bad. Yeah, okay. Turning it around.

Oh, Dave, you really said the back end up. But this sounds like... Yeah, I'm just opening a new bag of snacks, ready to go. Yeah. Well, eat them over the next five minutes or so and then never eat again. But I've just baked this loaf of bread in my bakery wagon. Bakery wagon. According to Ethan Rarick, or Rerick, love that.

that I'm author of Desperate Passage about this book. He says, quote, to the bedraggled, half-starved members of the Donner Party, it must have seemed that the worst of their problems had passed. They had already endured more than many emigrants ever did, end quote. But were they through these problems? Oh, no. I'm starting to think, no? I'm still thinking it sounds really positive.

The path ahead is going to be pretty easy and they put some food. Oh, that's great. In this case, Jess, you're kind of like the Hastings. You haven't seen the story, you don't know the story. But you've got a feeling. Yeah. No, it'll be fine.

And I've written a book about it. They've just gone along and read the story. He's come back and we're like, no, I think we'll still stick with the Donna party. Good Lord. I say. Well, they camped 50 miles from the summit and rested for a few days. Getting ready for what they hoped was the final part of their arduous journey. This decision to delay,

would be one of many they would soon regret. It was October 20 and the past usually wouldn't be snowed in until the middle of November, so they assumed they had time. They'd have to be unlucky not to make it. One of the men, William Pike, was killed when a gun being loaded by William Foster was discharged negligently, so luck was not on their side.

But each family took off one by one. The donners were last on the trail. They immediately hit rough terrain and an axle broke on their wagon. And whilst fashioning a replacement, George Donner, the leader of this whole thing, cut his hand. And here's a quote from Wikipedia,

while chisling the wood, so he cut his hand while chisling the wood, but it seemed like a superficial wound, end quote. Seemed, that seems ominous that they put that in there, doesn't it? I'm hearing gangrene are coming. Uh-oh. Then the snow began to fall.

Must have looked beautiful. Oh, what a look. Oh, majestic. So nice. I assume they've stopped in some sort of a chalet. Yeah, they must be in a chalet. Surely the children would love to make little snow. There's no angel, snow man.

Oh, they can sit by and open fire and wait until it pass. Maybe hit the slopes. Coco, anyone? Dave, this sounds great. I don't know why you're always like, oh, this story's going to be terrible. So far this sounds like heaven. Well, one of them did find a chalet. The Breen family who were leading the charge

made it furthest up the mountain. They got three miles from the summit and made it to a cabin that had been built by previous settlers. Great. Oh, wow. They tried to continue on through the pass, which was just 12 miles away, but found 5 to 10 feet or 1.5 to 3 metre snow drifts that had fallen.

And in the end, the families were forced to stop and camp at Truckee Lake, which is ominously now known as Donna Lake. Okay. That's obviously where they, after they got across to California, they would go back to Donna Lake for summer holidays. Yeah, reunion. They used the existing cabin and added two more to shelter 59 people. That's a bit cramped.

That's pretty cramped. And cabin probably sounds better than they were. The floors were made of dirt and the roofs leaked when it rained. Okay. I do like how you've said the floors were made of dirt, not just there was dirt on the ground and they built around it. I like the idea that they've gone, we can make the floor out of anything. Let's make it out of dirt. And then they brought in dirt and just patted it down.

On top of other dirt. Yeah, they laid down wood floor and then they brought in dirt over the top. Polish floorboards, carpet. Then thick layer of dirt, please. Very thick. So that you can't get any of that carpet real. You've got to think about what surface lasts the longest. And nothing lasts, I mean, look around.

How long has that dirt been there forever? Do you want a floor that lasts forever? Great, get dirt. Oh, that's a good ad. You're not wrong. Get dirt. So everyone on my own. was there in the 59, except the Donners and their hired men who were five miles or eight

kilometres below because they'd fallen behind and then the snow had trapped them, basically. Theirs was a group of 22 at this point, 12 of whom were children. Okay. Twelve out of how many? They had 22. Okay. Still slight majority if they still have voting powers. Everyone say I.

Hi. We still, we call for a ball pit. We want to bring the ball pit. wagon, but can't we bring the food wagon? No, the food wagon stays. Bull beet wagon comes. Food wagon's boring. There's no food in there, just ingredients.

Kids are dumb. Sadly, the Donners had less shelter from the elements, building makeshift shelters from tents and quilts. So they didn't actually have the cabins. They built shelters from tents. I mean, the tent is already there. Just use the tent. They're like, I don't know what this tent is for,

but we cut it up. We turned it into a sort of shelter. I mean, you get into a tent, you can't see the dirt floor. Rip out the floor, you can see the dirt. Beautiful, makes sense. Bring in more dirt. Here we go. They put dirt in on top as well of the tent.

That's smart stuff. They all hoped that this initial snow early in the season would melt and they'd be able to make it through before the heavy stuff set in. The group made a few more attempts to continue on but quickly realized that they were actually snowed in for winter. exactly where they'd hoped to avoid this whole time. That is normally what happens with winter, right? Snow comes in, then it melts, and then the snow comes in.

That's what they were hoping for. I mean, maybe. Because it had come like about four weeks early, and they're like, oh, maybe this is just a little bit at the start. Hopefully it'll turn to summer again for two days. We'll make it through, and then the snow will come back. Optimistic, I've got to say. They had very little food, and as the oxes began to die,

probably not supposed to live in the snow without anything to eat. They stacked the frozen bodies of the ox and ate them. They also ate mice, twigs and bark. It's a very well-rounded diet. So you've got all four meat groups and food groups looked after there. Ox, rats, twigs and bark. They're the big four. They tried hunting but had little success.

The cabins were cramped and filthy, and it snowed so much that people were unable to go outdoors for days at a time. The conditions were simply awful. This sounds like a bit of a nightmare. Throughout November, they made repeated attempts to walk to the summit. A large party of about 22 people successfully reached the peak on November 21, but the weather again made them retreat back to the camp. So they're so close, yet so far.

This really does feel like the American Birkenwills. Surely if you get to the peak, you can just toboggan down. Exactly. I hope they pack their skis. Do they have skis, Dave? Do they have the ski wagon? They left that behind in favour for the ball pit. I know snowboards weren't invented yet, but skis were, I assume, in toboggons.

But it was pretty funny when the kids left, let the ball pit go from the top of the mountain. They watched it go down. That was pretty fun, Alice. That would be sick. Did they have a slinky wagon with them? That would be fun. Woo! Look at it go!

How do they work? You've done a full report on the man who invented the slinky jess for our Patreon episode. Is that me? That was you. You're kidding. Yeah, I remember he, and he went absolutely. Absolutely mad, joined a cult, and then his wife turned it into a successful multi-million dollar business.

Very interesting report. How the fuck do you remember these things? And I thought I'd done that report, surely. Oh, my God, I think Matt did. Maybe you did. And now that Dave said all that, I'm like, no, I don't remember that that well. Probably was Jess. Maybe I did the report.

No, I definitely didn't, but I remember the facts of it. And it was fun. People can check that out. Lots of bonus episodes out there. Incredible. That we don't remember. But hopefully you'll enjoy. Luckily we save them for posterity.

It's like a museum out there. Meanwhile, James Reed, who had been banished for murdering a man and had rode ahead, he'd made it to Fort Sutter, and he met up with the now-recovered William McCutcheon, the other guy who'd gone ahead and gotten sick. And together, they realized that they hadn't made it, so they wanted to mount a rescue. They went themselves at first but found the conditions on the other side of the mountain just as hard to get through.

They made it about 12 miles or about 20K from the top, blocked by snow. Possibly on the same day, the brains on the other side attempted to lead one last effort to get over the pass. So they were probably only, you know, a few miles apart. Bruttle. Wow. Reed and McCutcheon realized that they would need help if they were to get through to their friends and families. They tried to rouse some help, but back at the fort, the Mexican War had taken most of the able-bodied men, and they realized they'd have to wait,

which they actually weren't too concerned about because they were unaware how many cattle the immigrants had lost and they believed the party would have heaps of meat to last them through the several months of winter. They were like, oh, they've got heaps of food. They'll be right. They didn't know that they had no food except for Twigs and Bar. Oh, Twigs and Bar.

Two of the food group. Yeah, it reads like, oh, how much Twigs and Bark is left out there? There must be heaps out there. On December the 15, Bailas Williams, a driver for the reeds, died of malnutrition, and the group realized that they'd need to do something if anyone was going to avoid the same fate. Franklin Graves, another man, fashioned 14 pairs of snow shoes out of Oxbow's and Hyde. And the next day, five men, nine women and one child departed on snow shoes for the summit

with the ultimate goal of travelling 100 miles to Sutter's Fort. That's a big trip. and what an ominous name. Who made your stuff to survive this really tough thing? A guy called Graves. Oh, no. The shoes were effective but quite awkward. They packed light but barely had any supplies

and weren't well equipped for camping in the snow at night. By day six, their food had run out completely and for the next three days, no one ate at all. They travelled on through the grueling high winds and freezing weather. They also quickly found themselves snowblind. If I don't eat for three hours, God, I'm a nightmare to be around. Three days, I'd be saying, just kill me. It's better for all of us.

Snowblind mean they can't see snow? Because that would have made things difficult. I don't see snow. You stop being able to recognise what it is? What is this stuff? What is this? Yeah. I've been, Jess, you're doing the three-hour thing.

I've been doing, I don't know what it's called, but I don't eat until midday each morning. And some days I don't even notice, but other days it's like you're just looking at the clock and three minutes has gone by. Yeah. And you're like, surely I can eat now. You're doing intermittent fasting.

I mean, surely that's all fasting, right? You're doing it sometimes. I mean, yeah, you sleep overnight. Yeah, so intermittently fast. We're all doing it. I'm sleep eating. That a boy. I've just got a plate of haggis on my bedside table.

Of all things, it couldn't have been a tub of ice cream or something. A plate of haggis. Yuck. Hey, I know what I like when I sleep. It's meant to be quite nice. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it when we were over there last year. I've had veggie haggis, which is pretty good.

Probably not all that similar to the real thing, but... How could, when like, 95% of it is meat? How could it taste anything like it? I don't know. I took their word for it. They said it's a pretty good life. May, do you honest, maybe it is. Who bloody knows.

I apologise. I'm sure you enjoyed it. Yeah, but I'll never know. Well, you can tell me. Oh, that's right, I can eat both. Next time we're over there, if we're ever allowed to leave Australia again. Imagine. I reckon it'll happen.

I reckon like in the next few weeks we'll probably be able to go over to the UK. Yeah. Yeah. We'll just pop over. For a long weekend. Okay, so there's snowblind now. Yes, and then one of the group, Charles Stanton was exhausted and told the others to go on with at him and that he'd catch up with them later.

He was never seen alive again. No. They got caught in a blizzard and with no food whatsoever began to talk of the unthinkable cannibalism. Which is honestly, if you know the two-sentence summary of the story, that is definitely part of it. Cannibalism. Patrick Dolan proposed one of them should volunteer to die in order to feed the others.

Aw! You'd be like, all right, are you volunteering, mate? Yeah. You know that thing you do where you're trying to get your friend to volunteer to do something and you like make them put their hand up? Oh yeah, Odie, oh, yeah. Dave will do it. Dave will do it.

No, no. Shut up, shut up. Miss, he's putting my hand up for me. I don't want to do it. I don't want to be part of this magic trick. Is that what you think of cannibalism as? Let's cut his body in half. Ben, eat it.

Oh, you put me back together, right? Yeah, in a way. Yeah. Some suggested a jewel. Are you fucking kidding? And that the loser would be eaten. While another account described an attempt to create a lottery

to choose a member to sacrifice. But they never had to follow through with any of that because people just began to die naturally. Problem solved. Thank God. Antonio, the animal handler, was the first to die and he was soon joined by Patrick Dolan, the man who just said we should kill someone.

one. Good. Franklin Graves, the shoemaker, sorry Matt, and Lemwell Murphy. Lemwell. That's not a name you hear anymore, but I reckon it's going to come back in fashion. Let's bring it back. Beautiful stuff. Little baby Lemwell.

Lemmy. Born seven pounds, 50 centimetres long. Mum and Bub doing well. Lemwell. Lemwell Perkins, you reckon? No, absolutely. Lemmy. I like Lemmy.

I'm not a psychopath. Oh, Lemmy's cute. Okay, I'm back around. Lemuel Perkins. So these four men died, and the rest of the group ate parts of their bodies and dried and stored the meat for the coming days. Another quote from Wiki,

quote, taking care to ensure nobody would have to eat his or her relatives. That's nice, isn't it? Yeah. I think they sort of did it. It was fairly similar in the plane crash in the Andes. I think they, yeah. But I didn't.

I didn't read too much about the cannibalism of them because it made me queasy. Yeah, I'm not going to go into too much detail. There is a bit out there if you want to read through the sources I've linked, but it's just a bit yuck. So they continued on living off the bodies, but the two Native American guides, Salvador and Lewis, who were with them, refused to eat human flesh. Some of the group began to discuss killing and eating the guides.

The ones who said, no, we don't want to eat human, thank you. Then they went, well, let's eat them. Really? Yes, they were warned, so they ran away. They ran away from the group. How does that help anyone? They're not taking their food source, so why not just have them around? Or they were warned, someone went just by the way.

The others are talking about killing you and eating you. And when you said they're guides, so they knew their way around. Have you been mentioning the guides during the story? Oh, they got brought back with the guy that brought back seven mules laden with food. Yeah, that was when we're having a bit of good news. That was the one bit of good news was that they had food. They had guides and they were told the path ahead was clear.

Because at that time there was no snow. Now there's snow everywhere. Why would you want to keep the guides happy? No? Because, I mean, the point of surviving through this, sure. But then getting out of here alive, we don't want to get greedy. Well, remember that they, at this time, they had that manifest destiny at the back of their minds. And they're thinking, us Europeans.

And that's, you reckon they still believe that as everyone's dropping dead around them? This is what God wanted. This is all for us. This is our destiny. Now it starts to feel like God's saying, hey, you fucking idiots, this isn't yours. Yeah.

Go away. Stop that, stop that. Get out of it. Drop out of it. Ooy. O'i. Oh, hey. Like a little yappy dog.

Yeah. Oh, hey. Hey. Hey. Uh, stop. Gentle. Gentle. Gentle.

Take it nicely. That's what we see. say to Humphrey when we're giving him like a little dental treat. Take it nicely. Take it nicely. Take it nicely. That's funny. I don't know how we've taught him, but he knows, all right, I've got to take it out of your hand. I can't snatch her. You won't give it to me. It's very cute. A lot of people say gentle. You've gone, take it nicely. That's right. We use, please sit on my lap. Use your words. Humphrey, use your words. Your dog is a fancy dog. Yes, of God. Rory, Dave.

He's a posh dog. I didn't want to say this next bit, but I've got to tell you the bad news. The guides run away, but they were later discovered starving because they hadn't eaten anything. And William Foster, one of the other men, shot the pair and the group ate their bodies. He's the one that killed someone before when his gun went off accidentally. So his body count is high. His gun's going off accidentally quite a bit by the sounds of it. But what Matt was saying before is like why would you kill the guides who are the ones who can

help you if you do get through the bad weather. I think he wrote them off as a lost cause because they were refusing to eat the human flesh. There's nothing else. These guys are going to starve and die anyway. Some could argue put them out of their misery, but I still think it's a murder. And history.com writes of the murders, quote, it was the only time during the entire winter that people were murdered for use as food. Okay, thanks for that history.com.

I love that that implies that every other year around this period that people are. What a brutal time to be alive. Yeah. So of the group that it set out, on January 19, 1847, seven made it to the safety of a town on the other side of the mountain. It had taken them 33 days. William Eddie and William Foster were the only men that survived, but all five women that had gone on the trek had lived.

Girl power. Girl power. So they made it. A lot of them died and starved and were killed along the way, but they actually made it out. Sorry, you did say how many had set off? I believe 12-ish. Yeah, okay.

And seven made it. Sorry, 15 went including a child who actually had to go back because it was such a perilous journey. Because it was a child. Of 14, seven made it. 50-50. Okay. 50%.

Not bad. I mean, that's a park, isn't it? Yeah. The good news is that they survived and the survivors quickly alerted people to the fact that there were still many people trapped on the other side of the mountain and residents rallied to form rescue parties. Wow.

And now you're like, yay, now they'll all be saved. Sadly, it wasn't that easy. The weather was still terrible. It's still the middle of winter. The rescuers weren't able to take pack animals out, so only small amounts of supplies could be carried. But could they not just get a helicopter? Oh, I hadn't thought of that.

Sadly, the budget wasn't there. Get a few choppers up there. Are you kidding me? They're already being used to, They're already being used by news teams reporting on them. We can see them down there below. Yeah, they're trapped here for sure. But efforts are being made to come and get them.

We'll keep you updated. Stay tuned for the 7pm Borton. What we can see, what we can see around them are numerous flat places where hypothetically a helicopter could land. So hopefully they use that space for something. sort of, I don't know, sporting event to keep themselves warm. They've obviously cleared an oval for a game of soccer, wish them well. We'd hate to disturb.

So instead they're just lowering a microphone to enterline. Lowering a ladder down with a microphone and attached the end, just out of reach. Speaking of this, how you doing down there? You're going all right? So the first relief party left on February 5 and the second led by Outkart, James Reid left just two days later. So his family is still trapped on the other side, so he's pretty desperate to rescue him.

Yeah. So quote again from Legends of America. Quote, on February 19th, the first party reached the lake, finding what appeared to be a deserted camp until the ghostly figure of a woman appeared. Twelve of the emigrants were dead, and of the 48 remaining, many had gone crazy or were barely clinging to life, end quote.

So it wasn't a beautiful, it wasn't a very nice scene. Was that an actual ghost? Yes. That's cool. And that's why they didn't send helicopters out because all the pilots were spooked. Wow, there hasn't been a woman sitting around these paths for 15 years. So the rescue party made it,

but they couldn't take everyone in one go and not everyone was able to travel at all because a lot of people had been starving for months now. So even a journey with assistance was difficult. The rescuers took 23 back with them and left supplies with the others in the hopes that they could cling on long enough for more rescuers to get to them. Sadly, more of the survivors died on the trek to safety.

On the way back down the mountain, the first party ran into the second party led by James Reed, and Reid was finally reunited with his family. And they'd all made it. Oh, no kidding. His whole family survived. No. Amazing. But he had so many kids.

And he was the one who was responsible for all this death. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I suppose maybe he was feeling a bit of guilt because he was reunited with his family. They went back to safety and then he kept going to try and rescue the other.

So he wasn't like, I got my family out of him done. Yeah, sucked in. That's good. A slight redemption story there. The second relief party led by Reid arrived on March 1st and found evidence of further cannibalism. It was the same story when they made it a few miles down

the mountain to the Donner Camp. Remember that they'd been separated this whole time. They'd also had to eat people after they'd died. Reed led a group of 17 survivors out of the camp, but they got caught in another blizzard and had to set up another camp, referred to as the starved camp.

Okay, that doesn't sound good. So now there were pockets of survivors at three different locations. You got starved camp, the lake camp where the majority of people had, and the Donner camp further down. More cannibalism later, the starved camp was visited by the third relief party

led by William Eddy and William Foster, who were the only two surviving men from the snowshoe party earlier. Remember, he's one of the guys that shot the Native American guides and ate them. Yeah. But they came back. So I guess, you know, they are caring about each other in some ways, you could argue. The third party made it to the Donner camp and found that George Donner, the once leader of the group,

was dying from an infection in his hand, having cut it months earlier whilst fixing his wagon. Remember, Wiki wrote it seemed like a superficial wound? Well, it wasn't. George's wife, Tamson, refused to leave him and handed their children to rescuers. George and Tamson didn't make it out. So he was dying, she said, I can't leave him and was later found dead with him.

Well, actually, she wasn't found dead with him because the last to be rescued was Lewis Keseberg. The man who I mentioned had advocated that Reed be hanged all those months earlier. He was found in April 1847, supposedly half-mad and surrounded by the cannibalised bodies of his former companions. According to History.com, Keseberg was later accused of having murdered the other emigrants for use as food, but these charges were never proven.

Tams and Donna had apparently joined Keseberg in his cabin after George had died from his wound. And quoting here, Keseberg said he put a blanket around her and told her that they'd start out in the morning, but she died during the night. The salvage party was suspicious of Kessberg's story and found a pot full of human flesh in the cabin along with George John's pistols, jewelry and about $250 in gold. So a lot of people are like,

I don't trust this guy. Either way, he arrived at Sutter's Fort on April 29, 1847, and he spent the rest of his life being treated as a villain for the story. People looked at him as a murderer. And what about Reid? How did he spend the rest of his life? Well, I'll tell you about what happened to the rest of the group, but all up it took two months and four relief parties to rescue the survivors.

And all up, it was one year and two weeks since the Donners and Reeds had set out on their journey and the last surviving member made it to California. So over a year. For this trip that was supposed to be about five months. Five months. If they'd taken the normal journey like everyone else, it would have taken five months. Oh my God. Of the approximate 87 people who entered the Wasat Trou,

mountains, 48 had survived. Two-thirds of the men in the party perish, whilst two-thirds of the women and children lived. Amazingly, as I said before, the Reed family and also the Breen families remained intact, but the rest all lost members. I read this on Wikipedia and nowhere else, but this story needs a bit of light, so I'm going to say it's true, but hopefully, the Ureeds settled in San Jose, and two of the Donner children who were orphaned lived with them. Reed fared well in the California gold rush and became quite prosperous. So he did well, Matt, despite obviously being a big part of their failure. So much blood on his hands.

Just for being pig-headed. The city of Marysville in California is named after survivor Mary Murphy and several streets in San Jose are named after members of the Reed family. Yeah, right. One of the other survivors, Mary Graves, wrote in a letter to her relative in 1847 after having just made it back. she said, quote, I will now give you some good and friendly advice. Stay at home.

You are in a good place where if sick, you are not in danger of starving to death, end quote. And that's just good advice. That is great advice. Stay at home. Because I won't starve to death here because there's food. Well, she had a bit of an obsession with starving. This is another line from Wiki, which it just stood out to me because it's so bizarre. It says, quote, Mary Graves married early, but her first husband was murdered.

She cooked his killer's food whilst he was in prison to ensure the condemned man did not starve before his hanging. Right. She wanted him to survive to be... Survived to get his punishment. Yeah. Seems like you're just prolonging the inevitable, aren't you? She cooked his food, like, doesn't trust the chef, the jail chef. Just poison the food?

No. It's got to die in a specific way. That's right. According to the law. Yeah. As for Lanceford Hastings, who encouraged the fake shortcut, wrote the book these days, you'd expect him to face multiple manslaughter charges, right? He was never punished and went on to be a major in the US Civil War,

fighting for the losing South. After the war, a bunch of these losing racists attempts to establish colonies in Brazil, Hastings was one of these people and died of yellow fever whilst taking a shipload of settlers to his settlement. So he was still leading people on fantastical journeys. But never face punishment or ridicule or any backlash as far as I read. Far out. At least suing him for his book, you know?

Or his long letter. He would have weasled his way out of it somehow, I reckon. Claimed bankruptcy. Started a Phoenix book publishing company. Yeah, classic Hastings. What a tale. The story of the Donner Party rapidly spread across the United States and quickly became a very famous story

where it remains to this day in American folklore. It may have put off some people making the journey to California over the next couple of years. Some places I read that it was slightly less people making the trip. But like I said, at the start of the report, as soon as gold was found, all bets were off and California burned. And people just travelled on the road there. Yeah, they didn't take the shortcut ever again.

The harrowing conditions and cannibalism has made the journey a source of fascination ever since. and the Donner Party has been the basis of fiction, drama, poetry and film. The state of California created the Donner Memorial State Park in 1927, and today it has 200,000 visitors a year, so let's add that to the list of places we have to one day visit. That sounds good to me. Yeah, wow.

But all in all, that is the harrowing tale, the often-requested tale of the Donner Party. Polite applause. Crazy stuff. Wow. Yeah. insane. So much. Yeah, like I said, I knew the cannibalism bit and I knew they were on a very long trek. But I, yeah, didn't know a lot of that. And that is an insane story. Yeah. Crazy stuff. It's, yeah, just so many bad decisions end up in so much death. Yeah.

But then, yeah, the people who survived, what a, I mean, to have got through all of that and held on, It was a pretty amazing effort as well. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, yeah, thanks to everyone that suggested that topic over the years. We finally got to it for Blocktober. I reckon that that was a pretty block appropriate story. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Huge. And like Matt said with the OJ story last week, there were other things I could have gone into because there's, you know, a whole year of a journey to go into. but I hope that I covered most of it. Yeah. And you didn't go too heavy on the cannibalism, which I certainly appreciate.

No, there certainly is more stuff out there online. If you want to search it out, I did a bit of reading and went, I don't think we need to talk about that. In detail. I don't like, obviously I was going to mention it because it's so famous. Everyone would be like, I can't believe you didn't mention the most famous part. Yeah, exactly. Imagine if I was like, and they left on April,

and they made it a few months later and had a good time in California. So, yeah, thanks for listening. Like and subscribe. Wow, great story there, Dave. It had a bit of everything, apart from all that much feel-good stuff. But it did have a bit of everything in terms of grim facts. Yeah, were that grim enough for you?

Well done. Thank you. I'm giving you a gold grim star for that report. And that's the highest grim star you can get. So that brings us up to the point of the show we would like to thank a few patron supporters in different ways. I also just quickly looked up, I find this so fascinating. I was talking about briefly before about American sporting teams that move around a bit.

There's only been one from San, where were we talking about? Sacramento, the Kings is the only big pro team. They relocated from Kansas City in 1985. And before that, they were known as the Rochester Royals. the Cincinnati Royals, the Kansas City, Omaha Kings, the Kansas City Kings. So they moved cities one, two, three, four times. That's amazing. That's not funny. That happens all the time.

It's like the Lakers. You're like, there's no lakes in Los Angeles. But that was because the Lakers were initially from Minnesota or something like that. Yeah, Minnesota. But they kept the name. So strange. It's a weird sporting world over. there. It's just because they're usually, I think they're usually privately owned, so the owner can

just be like, I want to move them over here, because I've got a better deal on a stadium or something. And then, yeah, I think the league has to tick it off, but it sounds like it often can happen. Anyhow, I just, I knew there would be someone going, tell me more about Sacramento sport. And we hate to disappoint. I was certainly feeling it. So thank you for scratching That is. There's some lower leg baseball teams and stuff as well, but I don't need to go into those. What we want to talk about now is some fact quotes and some questions, which has a segment, which has a little jingle, I believe.

Fact quote or question. Always remembers the ding. And how to get involved in this is if you go onto our Patreon at patreon. Atcom slash do go on pod. And you support us on the, I want to say, Sydney Schaenberg Deluxe Memorial, rest in peace, edition level. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

This is the... Correct. This is a big tier, baby. You get a lot of stuff for this. You get the bonus episodes, which you also get at a lower tier. So if you want to support us on that, that would also be great.

You get the shout-outs. You get access to the Facebook group. When we do tours, hopefully that would be coming up again soon, one day. You get access to pre-sale tickets. And basically, you just get to know in the comfort of your heart. Comfort of your heart?

Yeah, comfort of your heart. I hope your heart is comfortable. You're supporting the show and we truly appreciate it. Big time. So first up, we've got Tessa, Chilcott, who's given herself the title. You have to give yourself a title on this level as well. She's given herself the title of current queen and usurper or usurper of dragons.

Damn, that's tough. That's a sweet title. And Tessa's got a question for us. The next, all the rest of facts today, but this is our only question. Tessa's question is, I feel like we've had this one before. How fun. How much wood does a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood? Really, I want to know, desperately.

It's important. I'm looking at hiring someone. Is it a certain amount per hour per day? How do they make a living? Also, thanks to the laughs. Thank you, Tess, a great question. I mean, we are not wood chucks. So as for how they make a living and stuff like that, I don't feel qualified to answer.

But to answer the main part of the question, which is how much would a woodchuck, would chuck, if would chuck, could chuck would, the answer is 42. Oh, thank goodness. I forgot, because we did obviously look it up last time, and we've got to be consistent. I'm sure it was the exact answer we gave last time.

Probably. It's a go-to number. Dave and Jess, if I could take the mic for a second, according to Miriam Webster, the definition of a woodchuck is a grizzled thick-set marmot, chiefly of Alaska, Canada, and the north-eastern US,

also called groundhog. I love it even more now that I know it's a grizzled thick-set marmot. You are thick animals. And if they're grizzled, even better. So good. What fantastic news that is. It's a rodent.

And a great question. They're cool-looking animals. They're another animal that is sort of just one bit. real neck. It's just haired into body. Love it. Love a sick animal. So thanks for bringing them to our attention. We might have mentioned this last time. They're also known as a chuck, a wood shock, a ground pig, a whistle pig, a whistler, a thickwood badger, Canada, marmot, a monarchs, a moonac, a Wienisk, a Red Monk, and a syphilis. Isn't that amazing? They got so many names.

Was one of them a Wiener? A Wienus. A Wienus. A Wienus. A wee. Weiner, wean us. I think maybe my favorite is between thickwood badger and whistle pig. Yeah, I like whistle pig. Oh, great. That's so good. Thanks, Tessa, for taking us back to the woodchuck, fast climbing my list of favorite animals. It's one I often forget about, but thank you so much for bringing it back to the front of my mind.

And thank you so much for your support. The next one comes from Paul Meller, who's one of our great supporters, as all these people are. Paul has given himself the title, official do-go-on keeper of the faith for underdog sports teams. Oh. It is a very important role. And here is Paul's fact. I think Paul has, he definitely keeps his eye on the Saints.

He'll message me when we've had a win or something. And I appreciate that. I think he's doing it from over in England, perhaps. I feel like no dogs are more under than the Saints. At the time of recording, they're about to play their first final in nine years. By the time it comes out. you'll either know if I'm happy or sad about it. If they lose, is it, they get a second chance?

Well, I'll tell you what this game is called, and you can see if you can figure it out from that. It's called an elimination final. Okay, so if they lose, they'll be back next week. Yeah, unfortunately, no, it's do or die. So the season could be over by the time this episode comes out. We're actually, we are the underdogs in this game. To your team, Dave, the dogs.

I know. Starting favourites. You're underdogs. You're just dogs. You're a dog. You dog. Sorry, Paul Mellar's fact is. A fact about my all-time favorite passenger aircraft, Concord.

Concord will make a great bonus episode someday, I reckon. Concord. He says, which I'll sadly never travel on. Did you know that during supersonic flight, the fuselage stretched between six and ten inches due to heat generated by air? friction. Whoa.

Bob, could I get a ruling on that? Fun. And plain stretches. That's wild by that much. Yeah, that's a lot. Seems like quite a big, I mean, geez. Talk about a bit of friction and you stretch an extra six to ten inches.

Am I right? Can you, I think if you say about, I think it's probably for the ultra wealthy only. But I think you can, every now and then they possibly, I don't know if they actually have ever raise the funds, but people try and raise like, you know, a million bucks so they can bring it back for one flight only or something like that. What a good use of money. It's probably millions, yeah. Because people are, you know, if the plane enthusiasts are desperate to have a crack.

Yeah, right, of course. Paul goes on, says, so this stretching of the fuselage, this caused external temperatures of up to 127 degrees Celsius at cruising speed of Mark 2.04, or 1315. miles per hour. Concord was painted in a special white paint to accommodate this stretching and dissipate the heat. The Concord in the Museum of Manchester Airport has the last captain's cap stuck tight in between the control panels as he put it there on the last flight before the aircraft shrank back to its normal length. Oh, that's fun. Oh, and it got stuck. Yeah. So basically when it went

fast, the gaps appeared. He chucks his hat in and it shrunk back down. It shrunk back down. and so his hat stuck in there. That's fun. That's fun. That's amazing. That's a great fact. Good on, Paul. That's a great fact, cool.

I am thinking now that there's probably no need to do a mini episode, I have a funny feeling. That's the most interesting thing about it. But still. Yep. No, I think they had a pretty cool, you know, check it history. Yeah, all right. Dave, I request you do a bonus episode about that one day. All right, I'll do it.

Stick that in your hat and smoke it. The next one, thank you, Paul. The next one comes from. from Betel, Utlu. Betel Utlu. It's Betel. Thanks, Betel. Betel sounds like Petal.

So I think I'm getting that, right? The problem is when people say my name's like this, because it sounds like this other word. But unfortunately, I mispronounce a lot of different words. So if I don't say pedal like you, I'm possibly still saying it wrong. But anyway, Betel Utlu has a fact. Oh, sorry, but Petal's title is Egg Hater.

Yes. I think that is one of the shortest titles we've ever had, I reckon. And I am with you. Egg hater. Betel has given a fact. It is. BTS are the first group since the Beatles to have three Billboard number one albums within a year. BTS.

Who's BTS? For the K-pop South Korean. Oh, cool. Wow. Three Billboard number one albums within a year. In a year? That is ecptic. So, BTS, that's interesting.

So they're obviously a huge band. Yes. So much so that you two have heard of them. Would I know any of their songs? I don't. Okay. No, they recently had one that's come out in English that I listen to. The group's name, BTS, stands for the Korean expression,

Bangtan Sonjong Dan, literally meaning bulletproof boy scouts. Oh, that's fun. That's cool. But is it true that that's a back-running, where they come up with the name and then apply something later, maybe? That possibly is. Still, it's a great backronym. A great acronym.

A backronym. I love that. So, yeah, that's a great fact. Thank you so much. Bettle for that one, sweet fact. And finally this week, the last fact quote of question comes from Jacob Lane, whose title is Simpsons Guy or whatever I said last time.

And Jacob... I reckon he's got a bit of work to do it this week. We did quite a few Simpsons references. Yeah, if you don't know, Jacob is on the Patreon Facebook group and he does a... What do you call it? He sort of goes through and... He catalogues.

Catalogs and audits, the Simpsons References. Audits, yes. It used to be called the Simpsons Reference Auditor, but now he's just called himself the Simpsons guy or whatever. It's snappy. It is much snappy. It is much like his fact, a very snappy little fact here from Jacob. it is. Batman is my favorite superhero, I think.

Great fact. Thank you, Jacob. That's great. That's great. Mine's the phantom. Yeah, we know you like the stupid phantom. What's your favorite superhero? Mine's a scientist. Batman is a scientist. Fantastic. Yeah, Batman is a great superhero. I'm up there with that. Is Batman a scientist? That's another Simpsons reference.

So now we get to thank a few other... I was like... I don't think you're scientists. We get to thank a few of us. our other Patrions who've been on the shoutout level for a while. If you're on their shoutout level or above, I always forget which one it's called, but you'll say it if you go to the patreon.com slash too.

Go on Pod, which one's which? And Justin comes up with a little game to play. We'll give everyone a title or something or something. Yeah, I think this time we should assign them a particular wagon that they're looking after, whether it's the ball pit wagon. Yeah, that is so good. All right, well, if you don't mind, I might kick this off. Firstly, from Surrey Hills, a suburb here in Melbourne, Victoria, Sam Cross.

Sam Cross. Right, Sam Cross is in charge of the dinnerware wagon. Yes. So cutlery, knives, forks, etc. And clothes. And, yeah, suits and ball gowns. Hang on one. I'm confused now, which one's the right one?

Cutlery. Cutlery, right. Yeah, because Dave got it wrong when we did a live show on Sydney a few years ago. Dinnerware plates. and bowls and shit. I'm going to be honest with you there. I got it wrong again there. I thought I was doing the joke one when I accidentally said the right one.

I thought I was like, yeah, sooth and stuff. So I'll say the cutlery. Sorry about that, everyone. Classic. All right, Sam Cross. So, you know, start getting that crockery ready. And crockery's involved there too, right? Crockery and cutlery.

Yeah. Oh, you've brought it all together beautifully. Sam Cross, that's a very important role. But, I mean, that would be nothing without food. So hopefully if someone else is in charge of some sort of a food, wagon. I'd also love to thank from Rosebud, beautiful, beachside city down on the peninsula in Victoria. Ashling Marone. Marrone, Marone, I reckon. Aschling is in charge of the bonfire wagon. Oh, okay.

So you can go. A lot of accelerants. You can hop in, you can go into the bonfire wagon if it's a bit chilly and sit around the fire and toast some marshmallows and just chill out. But warm up. You can chill out while you warm up. That's the slogan. Yes. They all need a slogan on the side. Great idea.

All right. Well, thank you so much to you for your support. Let me just get back to the page. See, we'll get next. So thank you, Sam. Thank you, Ashling. And finally, I'd love to thank this. I was on a different page because I was trying to figure out how this city is pronounced,

but I could not find it. I'm going to say Flugerville in Texas. Whoa. I'd love to thank Eric Moody. Oh, Eric Moody. With a name like Moody, I kind of feel like maybe he's in charge of the therapy wagon. Oh, yeah. Oh, I love it.

We are, of course, traveling with trained and qualified psychologists, psychiatrists, So, yeah, we've got everything covered there if you need to have a chat. Do I have that little chair you can lie down and look up? Of course. I love that. You can also have a nap in there if you like. Oh, yeah, totally. I mean, they're not going to be using it all the time.

So, yeah. That's great. That's great work there for you, Eric Moody. I appreciate your support, of course. So thank you, Sam Cross, Ashley Marone and Eric Moody. They're one of you two like to thank a few? I'll have a cracky if you don't mind. I'd like to thank from St. Helens in the UK, OPP, OPP, O'PTA, Platt.

Yeah, you know me. OPP. He's on the Facebook group, obviously, and I said, I've linked to the song. I said, I'm guessing you get this a lot. He said, more than you'll ever know. Well, let's steer away from that and say that he's in charge of the Austin Powers memorabilia wagon. Oh. Oh, behave.

Yeah, baby, yeah. Who knows when you're on your two and a half thousand mile journey when you might need a fat bastard costume. Yeah. You'd hate to leave the house without it, you know? You're one of those things where you're halfway through your journey and you're like, fuck, I need my fat bastard costume and I've left it at home. Phone, keys wallet, fat bastard bastard costume.

Yeah. I hate that feeling of I've forgotten something, you know. That's great. OPP, hopefully you enjoy looking after that for us. I would also like to think now from an unknown location. I can only imagine Donna Lake. And that is Katie Dolan. Katie Dolan.

Katie, of course, is in charge of the fine dining wagon. Oh, beautiful. Obviously she needs help from Sam Cross to put out the crockery and the cutlery, but she provides the finest ingredients and the finest foods. Oh, what are we having tonight? Beef stroganoff. Oh, wow. Yeah.

So. Okay, and Matt, what are you and I having tonight? Just the strogan off. Vegetarians. Okay, all right. Bean strogan off. Ooh. Now you're talking.

I love our Oliver Clark used to always just work beef stroganoff into his routines. Yeah. Yeah. The whole song. So fun. Funny. Beef, beef, beef, beef. Strong, strong, strong. That's right.

If you don't know Oliver Clark, fantastic musical comedian, look him up on YouTube. Some great stuff. I would also like to finally thank from, my goodness, where's this from? Denmark. Yeah. I think so, yeah. And the city is Ah-hus, Al-Hus, maybe. I would like to thank, and I've nailed none of that, and I'm also not going to nail Casper and KGio.

Yeah, definitely wrong. But I don't know how else you could possibly say it. I'm so sorry, Casper. It's the A, the A letter where they're combined in one. There'd be a rule for that. What would the sound be? But how do you make a KJ sound? That's also hard.

DK is correct though for Denmark. And I've told you this before that we had a Danish exchange student at our school and his nickname was Denmark. Classic. Isn't that funny? His real name was Chris, I think. So it's like, you could just call him Chris. Just call him Chris.

Or like anything to do with his personality. Or hobbies. That's where a nickname would come from. But no. All right. I'm on a pronunciation website. I don't think you can hear this through the recording, but I'm just going to listen to my headphones.

It sounds like Entia. Entia. Enkia. Jakob. Enkir. I'm sorry. There must be a famous person called Jakob Enkier, because they're asking how to pronounce that.

But if I combine that, I'd like to thank Caspar and Kier. Great work. From Ah, Huss. Appreciate it. Have we given him a wagon? Thank you, Casper. Because if not, I want to do

Warhead Lollies, the super sour ones. Oh, I love them. I love the green ones. Oh, okay. No, actually, I don't want to go that specific. All Warheads. So it's super hot, super sour, all the colours. Also, what about nuclear weapons as well?

Yeah, and nuclear weapons. Yep. Okay. So not like all lollies or candy, just warheads. All warheads and whatever Dave said. Weapons. Yeah. Caspar, I trust you.

All right. Look after them, please, Caspar. Very important. I'm just a bit disappointed. There are other, there's no skittles or something like other types of candy. But, you know, it's like... Well, there's three more wagons, Jess. Come on.

You're right. Well, I would love to thank from Corv. from Corvallis in Oregon. Oh, appropriate. No, yeah, Oregon. The Oregon Trail, right? Oregon Trail. Yeah.

I'd love to thank Jason Gears. And Jason's got a skittal wagon. Ah! Oh. Like 10 pin bowling? Oh, fuck. It's, okay, no, Jason doesn't have a skittal wagon, but he does look after the bar wagon.

We've got a pub. I like that. Pub on wheels. How many beers on tap? 12. Wow, that's pretty good. For a wagon. It's really good.

And five ciders, which is unheard of. Usually you might get one or two. So stoked by that. Thank you for your work. Jason gears, more like Jason beers. Very important role. I'd also love to thank from Stony Stratford, in Great Britain.

I would love to thank Chuffy Mullins. Oh my God. Hold the phone. What? Chaffy. I mean, this is like right at the end, the winner just floats in and beats everyone. It's been an episode Chocca Block full of the best names of all time. And then just coming in right at the end, Chuffy Mullins.

Chuffy Mullins. Oh my God. That knocked me off my chair. It's hard to then think of something appropriate that Chuffy might be in charge of. Let's think of something that's, because we've done, some of these haven't been all that useful. So I'm going to go with something very useful. Chuffy, of course, has a wagon full of dirt, the best building material. Of course.

Exactly. He can put up a floor at a moment's notice. Yeah. Chuffy, that may not seem like we've given you an important role, but as we've learned, we really have. Chuffy, you're at dirt. You're our dirt. You're our dirt, man. You're a dirt merchant.

You're the guardian of the dirt. Guardian of the ground. You're the patron saint of the, what's another word for dirt? Soil. Soil. You're the patron saint of soil. That works. Soil sizzler.

The soil sizzler. What is that mean? The soil or sizzler from Strat, no, from Stony Stratford. You're the mulch merchant. Maltz isn't quite right, but, you know, you see what I was. It's close. Obviously the ballpark's in a different wagon. Different wagon.

Finally, I would love to thank from Fort Collins in Colorado. Named after Phil Collins, Fort Collins. Not a lot of people know that. Yeah. Wow. I think Colorado. I love learning. Yes, Colorado. In Ethan Gilbert's wagon, one rule.

No jacket required. Yeah, I'd love to thank Ethan Gilbert. I've jumped ahead there. That's all right. I think maybe, oh, I had an idea and I lost it. Damn it. I had an idea. I got nothing.

You guys got something for Ethan Gilbert. I was going to say a gym, but mini golf is way better. No, half and half. Oh, yeah, gym and mini golf wagon. But like, so the gym, it's all the upper body stuff that's hanging from the roof so you can do pull-ups and stuff. But on the ground, it's like lots of mini-golf holes. Oh, that's clever. Yeah, really using his space.

Yeah, exactly. You have to in a wagon. You must. Well, I mean, they did also say that one of the wagons was basically two stories. So maybe it could be like a mezzanine gym, but mostly, mostly mini-golf. Yeah, I love it. Perfect. God, Ethan, you're my new babe.

Thank you to all of you. We'll see you in your wagons. We're all obviously on this road train as well. And we're leading it and we're doing things a little bit differently. We're going to go the way. Yeah. So we should get you there before winter. I'm never taking a short cut again.

That's the main takeaway from this. I think the main takeaway should be you can take a shortcut, but if a close friend says, hey, that short cut's fucked. Listen, that's the takeaway. Yeah, that probably is good. Don't say, you've always been jealous of me. Don't say it. If you think it, the problem is with you.

Okay. All right. So the only thing left to do is to thank a few of our long-term supporters. You can join the Triptitch Club if you support us at the patreon.com. For three plus years straight on the shout-out level. There's a few to induct this week. The way this works, if you're new to the show, I'm standing at the door with my clipboard.

I got the door list on there. I'll lift the velvet rope as I mentioned these names. They run in. Dave is the hype man inside. He will give them a big hype up, make them feel good about joining the rest of the crew inside. Jess is behind the bar. Oh, we've got some hotties in line tonight.

All right. I'm high-fiving them as their line up. I also hype Dave's hype manness. I need it. I'm a mess backstage. Just behind the bar with, she's working up some cocktails. She's got a small staff there of which I am one. And we make these cocktails as well as put together some little food.

Oh, can I make a request? Sure. Donna Kababs. That makes sense. Oh, fucking hell. Well done. You're thinking about them all week. Here's what I was planning on doing.

I was going to say, no, no, no, no. I was like, when you said, can I make a request, I was like, sure, but my plan was as soon as he said it, I was going to go. No, because I just thought that would be a bit of fun. But you've absolutely nailed it. Yes, Donna Cababs. Thank you. Perfect.

I also always struggled to think of something. So thank you for doing the work for me. And what kind of cocktail are you at? Probably something salt. What's the one with salt around the rim? Margaritas. Salt Lake City, Margaritas. Margaritas are my all-time favorites and also haven't had them since I gave myself

alcohol poisoning. And that was a while ago. That feels like a good reason to just. But I love them. I love them. Isn't it? That's the worst when someone you love hurt you like that? Yeah.

I'm like, how could you do this to me, Margaritas? Well, there's a... We're best friends. There's a dirty half dozen to invite in. So without further ado, let's bring them in. Oh, sorry, Dave also books the musical act. I can't believe they said yes. We got Pearl Jam on tonight.

We did not. Yeah. Can't find a better man. Yeah. Will they let me sing Better Man with them? Yes. She dreams is. When I saw Bruce Springsteen, they brought Eddie Vetter up on stage.

He was just in the crowd or something. He was standing near us. Eddie, is that you? Yeah, it was quite a big show and he was standing just near us. And then obviously hooked it up beforehand, but he came up and sang a tune. That's fun. Not as good as... And then were you like, I'm next?

I assume. You're working your way through the crowd. The best one, though, was the first time... I've seen him twice. The first time, supported by Barnsey himself. and sang a tune with Barnesy now. That's a life highlight. That's cool.

For Bruce. Yeah. So, Dave, you're ready to hype these guys up? Come on, Dave. Pearl Jam's playing alive to celebrate the few survivors. In that black circle. Here we go from Victoria, BC and BC Canada, Darcy Williamson. Oh, I'm feeling victorious tonight.

Yes. From Pulton Lafieldery in Lancashire, Great Britain, it's Tasha Hargreaves. We won't be grieving tonight because Tash Hargreaves is here. Or Hargraves. Oh, Dave. Well, no one's going to the grave tonight because Tash is here to keep us safe. I've been absolutely spooked on the pronunciation of that word because that's the family name in the Umbrella Academy. And I was saying hard graves and then someone said it's actually Hard Grieves.

And then I looked it up and they spell it differently. I'm spooked. I feel no, I've got no confidence for Hargraves. Hargreaves, hard graves at the moment. Anyway, let's keep moving along. We got them covered. From Chandler in Arizona in the United States, it's Jamison and Tony Estes. Oh, could we be any more Estes?

Yes, we did it. Yes. So the new deal is now, Jess is the hype man for Dave, who's the hype man for the new people coming in. From Fond do luck in, I'm going to say Wisconsin in the United States. It's XZ-Z-Zil. Oh my God. X-Z-Neil. Well, I'm fond of X-Z-Neil.

There was something, the run-up if the name took so long, I forgot what I had earlier. Do you want me to give you another run at it? From Fondulak in Wisconsin, the United States, it's X-Z-Neil. Oh, fun-do like this guy. There'll be no lack of fondue at this year. You've used lackfully. like, even though in that same thing is fond, a word meaning the same thing.

Yeah, I said I'm fond to like this guy. Like, I'm fond of this car. Okay, great. Forget what I said then. From Well, when in Garden City, Hertfordshire, Great Britain, it's Adam Stamford. Well, when you come along, I feel good. Adam. High five.

And that's all. No, sorry, there's one more from Nyack in New York in the United States. It's Gregory Gritman. Bram, bam, ba-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Welcome, Greg. I'm going to be. Because New York State. Yes, Dave.

The state's so nice, they named it once. One of my big hit recent tweets, I think about 70 likes. So everyone, you've everyone probably already seen it. Go on to Twitter, follow me and also like and retweet that tweet if you wouldn't mind. Jess is pushing her Instagram. Follow Jess on Instagram. Jess Perkins. Follow me on Twitter.

Matt Stu underscore Art. follow Dave on the street. Hell yeah. You know what I'll be. Follow Dave Pistogram. But that brings us to the end of the episode. What a fantastic time we've had here. Now that we're officially in Blocktoe for Grace,

aka Blocktoe for Grace, period. Thanks so much for joining us. I feel good. The celebration doesn't end. It's going on all of Blocktober. We're here to have a Donna Part two. Let's do it. Yeah, can you believe that

the fifth and the fourth episodes have already been this big. What could possibly be in the top three? It's going to be great to find out. It's fascinating to see how the people have voted because there's a few surprises in there. There's definitely some big ones that I was kind of expecting, but a couple that I wasn't either, which is hard to have two different couples

when there's only three topics to go. It doesn't quite add up mathematically. But that is the end of the episode. Dave, let's boot this baby home. Get in contact any time, guys. do go onpod.com with links to our social media and our Patreon, our YouTube. It's all at do go on pod or slash dogo on pod. Come say hey.

But until next time, we will say thank you very much for listening and I'll say goodbye. Bye. This podcast is part of the Planet Broadcasting Network. Visit planetbroadcasting.com for more podcasts from our great mates. I mean, if you want, it's up to you. Don't forget to sign up to our tour mailing list so we know where in the the world you are and we can come and tell you when we're coming there. Wherever we go, we always hear six months later, oh, you should come to Manchester.

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