The MeatEater Podcast - Ep: 652: Hunting History

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Steven Rinella talks with Morgan Fallon, Randall Williams, and Phil Taylor.   "Hunting History with Steven Rinella" premiers on the History Channel on Tues., Jan. 28th at 10/9c and streams the next day. Topics discussed: How Mo's first film work was with "Ali"; years spent on Anthony Bourdain's show; being a gracious guest; Land Cruiser country vs. Land Rover country; multiple wins and nominations for an Emmy; "Hunting History with Steven Rinella" premiers on the History Channel on Tues., Jan. 28th; all of the unsolved mysteries; and more.   Connect with Steve and The MeatEater Podcast Network Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey American history buffs, hunting history buffs, listen up, we're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series. In this edition titled The Mountain Men, 1806-1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain beaver trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith, and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the West represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions. We explain what started the Mountain Man era and what ended it.

We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the white-tailed deer skin trade which is titled The Long Hunters 1761 to 1775. So again, this new mountain man edition about the beaver skin trade is available for pre-order now wherever audiobooks are sold. It's called Meat Eaters American History, The Mountain Men, 1806 to 1840 by me, Stephen Rinella.

This is the Meat Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten and in my case, underwearless. The Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug-bitten, and in my case, underwearless. Hunt. The Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for elk, First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment.

Check it out at firstlight.com. F-I-R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com. Joined today by Morgan Fallon and Dr. Randall. Dr. Randall's just here to look good. Yes. If anything comes up that you need to talk about, though raise your hand. We're just jumping.

I'll try to interject with some quips, some observations. Please. Mo Fallon, man. I'm trying to think of where to begin. Well, Mo Fallon was the original, so a billion years ago, Mo, I'm gonna give you, I'm gonna help you with your bio, then you fill it in. Go for it. No, how does it? Okay. Most longtime producer, cinematographer.

If you've seen the movie, um, I know this when you were a youngster, you worked on the movie Ali, Michael Mann's Ali. Yeah. I was Michael Mann's assistant on Ali. Wow. Right out of film school. Mo filmed a million episodes of biggest loser. Yes.

96 episodes. Moe, I did a show many years ago on Travel Channel. Moe filmed all of that. Yeah. Moe filmed all of the first Meat Eaters. Yeah. A bunch. Yep. Traveled all over hell.

First three years. Yeah. Moe made, Moe made Meat Eater look like what Meat Eater looks like. First three years. Yeah. Mo made, Mo made Meater look like what Meater looks like. Yeah. I mean, we designed the look of the show. Yeah. A handful of us did, but you like put, you made the look. Yeah. Yep. I guess so. Yeah. With the camera for sure. Yeah. The way the camera interacts, you know, with you on the show for sure. And at that time you were already doing, were you already working on Bourdain at that time? Yeah. So, I started working with Bourdain in 2008. So it predated when we met.

But that was the reason I was able to meet you was because I had done that and that had gone pretty well. And so 0.0, the company that produced Bourdain, they called me when they hooked up with you. Talk about, uh, tell everybody about, just tell the whole story of, of the years you spent on the Bourdain show. The whole story. I mean, like, I don't know, give me like 10 minutes worth, man. Cool. Yeah. Um, I mean, what, why, like what,

cause that's going to land us where we're landing. That's going to land us with us. You know, I mean, unfortunately it lands us with us being sort of like reunited on our new project. But I mean, you had like, you lived like a whole, you lived a whole lifetime. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it gets into all kinds of complicated stuff, man, because like, I mean, I'll start at the beginning. I got called randomly by a friend of mine who's the chief cinematographer, one of the two chief cinematographers for Bourdain's Zamboni. And they had had a camera operator cancel last minute on a trip to Egypt.

And it was, the phone call was basically like, do you have a passport? That was your in? Yeah. A cancellation? Yeah. Kind of diddy. They're like, do you have a,

well that's a tough show to get on. Oh, sure dude. I mean like, dude I was clicking my heels, man. They're like, do you have a passport? Can you go to Egypt next week? And I was like a hundred percent and go and And I went and it went really well With Tony which is which is rare, you know Like it's these like a very kind of particular person and there was a very set

You know kind of particular set of criteria That you kind of needed to meet to work on that show. Like you had to be able to hang out with you, you had to be cool enough to hang out, you had to not be a dick, you had to treat the people who are taking us into their lives as if you're a guest in their world and not, you know, some arrogant TV producer comes in

and is just gonna, you know, stomp all over them. So he was sensitive to how you guys behaved to the people you were around? I think that was actually like the number one criteria, man. But if you think about it, it sets the tone for the whole show. The show is not us sitting, you know, 5,000 miles away in my, you know, office in Los Angeles and saying like, what is the story I can tell about these people's lives? You know, it was like the show was like, we are gonna go here and we're gonna figure out what the story is of these people's lives and they're the ones that are gonna tell us, you know?

And I think that whole tone was set by this idea that you're a guest and you are a guest. You're traveling around the world and absorbing other people's lives in a commercial enterprise. You can't be considered anything but a guest, right? And so those were a couple of like the just criteria he had set forth for like people who kind of fit on the show and worked. Well, I got that call, I did the show, went really well. I think he particularly liked me

because I was willing to risk my physical wellbeing and or life for a shot, you know, at the time, I was young and didn't have kids. So I was able to make a lot of stupid decisions I wouldn't make now. But you should at some point tell the story about Brazil. Yeah, I mean, that was probably more me overreacting than anything else.

What's the example that comes to mind though? Well, I mean, that first show, we went across the Western desert or a big portion of the Western Desert in Egypt with the Bedouin right and they all uniformly drive these late 70s Land Cruisers which is a super cool car but then this is a weird little footnote there are some places in the world where you go where they drive Land Rovers and there's some places in the world where you go there, where they drive Land Cruisers, you know? And a lot of the world can figure that out.

There's two automotive choices, right? They're a Land Cruiser country. And I had no idea what we were doing. I had never been on the show. It's like my third day on the show. I'd never been, you know, worked on the show before. We're driving out into the desert and I was like, well, hop on the top of the car and, you know, shoot shots of the cars, you know, slowly picking their way through the

dunes and, you know, like five minutes later, we're going 85 miles an hour. I am hugging for my life. This four post bed that they, for some reason had strapped to the top of the car, which I still can't explain. I think they thought Tony was some kind of like prima donna that was gonna need a four post bed out in the desert. Man, anyways, I'm like holding onto this thing with one hand, shooting with the other,

and we get to where we're camping, and I've got this just massive bicep-size hematoma on my arm. Oh. And Tony saw it, and that was it, man. He was like, started talking to me. He started asking me questions. Looked at me, you know, all these like,

kind of novel things at that point. And I got a call from Chris and Lydia, the owners of ZPZ, after, and they're like, Tony likes you, which is super rare. So like, you know, we're going to do this a bunch more. And that started 10 years of traveling with him. Now, that's intermingled with when I got called to first work with you, which

was Chris and Lydia called me. And they're like, well, you know, maybe this guy will like you too. And they showed me that original presentation piece of you sitting in the park in Brooklyn, you grab the squirrel, right? Pigeon, pigeon. Sorry. You grab a pigeon, you take it home and cook it. And they're like, we want to make this a show. And just like it immediately for me, I felt like it immediately clicked. I was like, Oh, yeah, that's like, that's super cinematic, super

dynamic. It's a really interesting philosophy. It's totally unlike anything I'd ever seen before. And they called me to come and do that original, um, presentation piece we did where we're, we're in the, you know, in the swamp up by your house. Yep. And it was like, I think we met in like a outback parking lot or something. And within half an hour, we were like neck deep in a swamp. And I was like, totally hooked, man. Totally hooked. That was the Muskegon River Marsh.

Yeah. And Muskegon, that's the county I grew up in in Michigan. Muskegon, I should go fact check this. I've heard it my whole life, so I'm going to trust that it's true. Muskegon means, it's a native word that means big swamp. Hmm. Well, I hope. There you go. That's well, you know, I can say this. I can say that's what they told me. They told me that. But the thing, but you know, I, the important thing about that, and the reason I remember that moment so well is

just like it all, it just all clicked, you know? You're like, oh, this is like, this is kind of the best of both worlds, because you wanted to make TV that was about like ideas, you know? And at the same time, like it had the inherent kind of action and dirtiness and kind of throwing yourself into a swamp that makes for good TV. It's from an Algonquin word meaning marshy river.

That's a Phil. Or a swamp. Very accurate description. Phil could get his paycheck just for doing a little shit like that. Just saving the day. Tell me again what it means, Phil. It's an Algonquin word meaning marshy river. God, that's exactly what it is too.

Yeah. I wonder where they got it. Never thought to look that up. Good job, Phil. Oh yeah. Anytime. Yeah, they really have gone through life saying it meant big swamp. And you would have been right, sort of. Do I want to tell the... No, I can tell the joke growing up what it meant. You were through everything we've talked about so far. You were a camera guy. tell the no I'm not gonna tell the joke growing up what it meant you were through everything we talked about so far you can't you were a camera guy yeah yeah and you'd like you don't for listeners Moe is the most most kind of

bashful modest Moe you were an exceptional camera guy yeah at this at this particular little niche of this world. Yeah, very much so. Mo was an exceptional cameraman. I'm combining nominated and Emmy, but I should just say nominated for Emmy. Did you ever win an Emmy? Did you win one?

Yeah, I've got two in two different categories and 10 nominations. Jeez. What'd you get the two in two different categories and 10 nominations. Jeez. What'd you get the two in? Got one for cinematography and one for producing. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.

I knew you were nominated, but I guess I spaced the fact that you won one. Yeah. Well, I sat through a lot of long ceremonies without one. Before you get to the end, you're like, is it over? Four and a half hours of my life. I think the best example of that is when we got nominated up against free solo and so we're sitting next to them and the whole time just being like I mean there's yeah it's just like how that was gonna play out yeah mean, it's like taking a canoe out against like the USS Lincoln. We can paddle a good canoe, man, but there's only so much you can do.

You, and then, uh, you moved out of that eventually got into producing. Yeah. And then produced like a bunch of episodes. Yeah. Yeah. For Bourdain. That was kind of twofold. You know, I like, I came up always in camera because during that original job working for Michael Mann, I, he had just handed me a camera at one point.

It was just like, shoot everything that happens, you know, backstage, which was like, not a normal film for cool shit happening backstage. It's like you're hanging out at the gym with like Ali and those kinds of things. So I started, I filmed a bunch of behind the scenes stuff and they used a bunch of it to make this HBO documentary about the film. And that's what got me started shooting. It's like it never required

cameras never required any real training or effort. I picked them up and I just inherently understood everything I needed to understand to be an exceptional camera operator and it just clicked for me. And the 96 episodes of Biggest Loser, it's funny now. But that show taught me to shoot. It's like, you're 10 hours a day, you got the camera on your shoulder, and you're just constantly having to figure out the geometry of camera blocking and movement

and telling characters stories and tying things in together. All the stuff that you need to do to be a good camera operator, we were just practicing it every day. And so when I got out in the field with you, when I got out in the field with Tony, I was able to use all of those, like, narrative tools as well as just, yeah, at that time in my life,

I was, like, a total athlete and a badass. Not anymore at all. Yeah, you you know you should you know you should tell people box it's interesting about you is a mo your teeth your folks taught at a boarding school yeah and then you went to the boarding school idea so you were like a townie yeah and a student yeah yeah if you don't I mean yeah I do I totally know what you mean. And if for any, I don't mean you, I mean folks. Oh no. You were a townie student. Right. For anyone who grew up, uh, in a, in a town with a boarding school,

you'll understand the dynamic, especially in East coast boarding school. It's, uh, it's, it's an interest. It is an interesting dynamic. I got the worst of both worlds. Oh, I thought you maybe bet. dynamic. I got the worst of both worlds. Oh, I thought you maybe bet. I thought you got the best of both worlds. I didn't get the best of both worlds. The townies hated you and the students hated you.

That's right. To the townies, I was like a, you know, I was like a stuffy prep schooler. Yeah. And to the, you know, to the students, I was like a faculty brat townie. You know? I didn't realize, so it was miserable

for the first three years. And then I realized, wait a second, I have a car and I can go wherever I want. And I can exist with all the benefits of being from town and I can, I can, you know, choose from the flock of, of, uh, of, of all these, you know, really beautiful blue blooded, you know, uh, prep school girls.

Gotcha. I got you. It ended up working out pretty well in the end. And this is in New Hampshire. It's in New Hampshire, yeah. Did you grow up around Ken Burns like in his zone? No, I mean well if you grow up in New Hampshire you grow up around everyone else who's in New Hampshire, you know, just by proximity, you know, the size of the state. So he was about an hour away. Yeah. And what was that lake you guys were on? We're onnipeg, you know, it was Great Lake beautiful. Yeah stunning How was uh when you got out of some being a camera guy? Yeah, and you you moved into

producing How did you ever get over the feeling of wanting to yank the cameras away from the camera guys? Yeah, it was it was really hard for a long time and to yank the cameras away from the camera guys. Yeah, it was really hard for a long time and created quite a fair amount of conflict with camera. It was cinematographers on set. Give me that thing. Yeah, and I was a lot fiery, a lot more fiery than at that point in my life. So I would stomp over and grab the camera and pull it off the tripod and, you know,

not good behavior. As I've gotten older and I've become more seasoned as a producer and director I've learned to be much more mellow about the mistakes I see in camera and much more constructive and you know about how kind of interact with folks and and use the fact that I can speak their language in a way that isn't just like completely insulting and demoralizing to them yeah yeah so in total how many years did you spend working on the various Bourdain properties ten ten years with Tony it's like it comes out to like 75 shows or something that were, that either produced or shot, directed.

For a couple of the shows at the very end, I was co-directing with my wife, which was awesome. Kind of the best part of the experience. And then that shit was just all of a sudden just over. I mean, you know, we've talked about it a little bit, but if you wouldn't mind, it's kind of giving people an idea what, you know, the degree to which any job for 10 years, but not only, you know, any job you have for 10 years and so abruptly and so tragically but the way it was um the way that kind of work

Really created a um They created like a complete lifestyle Yeah Yeah, a lifestyle that was like just I mean incredibly awesome At times and in certain ways, not super healthy. And an absolutely extraordinary opportunity to see the world in a way that only a very, very, very small handful of people get to see it.

I try to tell the story of what it was like, and you can only really do it by, you know, in a million different little pieces, anecdotes and this and that. But you can't really ever, you can't really, I can't really ever articulate the full experience. I try to tell people this thing that I think some people get and a lot of people don't but there's a scene at the end of Lord of the Rings right

the new movies where they've just gone on this like unbelievable adventure that like really only the four of them understand and they go back to the Shire and they're they're sitting back in their favorite bar in the Shire and everyone's carrying on around them. And they just kind of sit there in silence and look at each other. And I guess that's how I feel about it. There's a very small group of people who went through that experience with me. And when I'm with them, we understand each other and implicitly understand the experience we went through, the highs and lows, the ending, all of the things that came with it. But I can't really, you know, the world around that goes on in a way that I can't really see in the same way anymore and I can't really explain it to even the people I love.

Luckily, my wife got to work on it so she understands. My dad asked about it all the time. I can't really fully explain it. It's, I think, I would imagine in no way am I comparing myself to a soldier, but I would imagine it's the same kind of thing that soldiers go through, where they can only really fully understand the experience between themselves, you know,

and when they're together, there's a comfort that comes by that kind of shared experience, and outside of it, there's a kind of discomfort. Mm-hmm. You know, I believe we went through very similar things, you know, on MeatEater and on Wild With Him before that, where as we tried to figure things out, how do you really explain those experiences?

Yeah, at that age, you know, at that age and time, it sounds so weird, but I would have a hard time, I would have a hard time bouncing from the one world to the other. Between the two worlds? No, just going like, I wanted to be home and love being home, but it was, it was, the pacing was so different. It was super hard. Yeah.

It would become weird. It was super hard. And for a long time I'd come home and like, you know, my wife would get fights and there's all kinds of like, and I'm like, oh, it's, you know, eventually you realize it's like, it's all me and what I'm bringing back into the house I I learned over time how to decompress in the hour ride from the airport to home and Not bring it in the house But it took me a long time and some more maturity to be able to figure that out because for a long time I carry all of that energy back in the house. Yeah

years ago, my wife told me, um, just detecting that little bit of, uh, anybody, anybody that travels a lot for work, probably understand it, but like coming out of one's pacing, coming out of one thing and then moving into a household, especially little kids. Yeah. Um, and you're with these kind of, uh, you're with like really high performing people and a fast paced thing and you're focused on a single thing and you're kind of like camping out or living out. And all of a sudden you're in and like little kids and shoot, I never called her

bluff, but, but, but she would say, Hey, if you need to, why don't you, when you come home, go stay in a hotel for tonight. Yeah. Then come. Yeah. And I got the message and I never did that. I think that'd have been the one worst thing, you know, it was like, but when you come in the house, man, you're walking into an active household, like little kids, you know, I mean, you got to transition quick and their thing that she'd always said is she's like, if it's not a big deal when you go away and you don't want it to be a big deal when you go away, you want to just slip out the door. Um, it's not going to be a big deal when you come home. Yeah. Right. It's not going to be like balloons and shit, right?

You're walking into an active environment and you gotta get with the program. Well, you're working, you're why I was just gonna say you're walking into a program. And I think that's the difference. And when you talk about like documentary, you know, making documentary content, I think it's actually particularly different than other kinds of work too, because you're in such a reactive environment. You're constantly reacting to sensory input that's coming in in the environment. And so you're super high key, you know, trying to figure out all of all of these things and what does it mean and how do you navigate this to tell the story. And then there's logistics and physical just sheer, the sheer physical nature of going

out and shooting in these environments. All of it has you in this very visceral mode. And then you're like walking back into like a program with like really specific you know structure and guidelines and it needs to be that way. And it's not a night like let's go get an ice cream. Yeah it's hard to code switch. Nope not going to get an ice cream. It's 10 o'clock. Totally. So yeah I mean that's a big that's a it's definitely a big part of it big part of all along in terms of making a relationship and like a household work.

Hey, American history buffs, hunting history buffs. Listen up, we're back at it with another volume of our meat eaters, American history series. In this edition titled the mountain men, 1806 to 1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain Beaver Trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith, and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of backwoodsmen helped define an era when the West represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions. We explain what started the

mountain man era and what ended it. We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried, what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume

about the white-tailed deer skin trade, which is titled The Long Hunters, 1761 to 1775. So again, this new Mountain Man edition about the beaver skin trade is available for pre-order now wherever audiobooks are sold. It's called Meat Eaters American History, The Mountain Men 1806 to 1840 by me, Stephen Rinella. Steven Ronella. And you filmed the, you did the last, correct me if I'm wrong, but you're, you directed the very, like the last ever Bourdain episode.

Because the last one didn't become one, right? The last two didn't become one. So they never, they didn't finish your Italy one. No, no, it was shelved. It was, you wrapped the episode. Yeah, we shot the whole thing. It. No, no, it was shelved. It was- But you wrapped the episode. Yeah, we shot the whole thing. It was probably from a selfish perspective, best episode of TVI ever.

No, I guess it makes sense because all the post production and everything. Well, we produced shows after Tony had died. Like I did a show in Marfa in West Texas. It was all inspired by the time we had spent down there. And that show, Tony died before we finished that show. And so you can watch that show and there's none of his kind of very famous voiceover.

The show is, it's looser. It doesn't have that connective tissue because he wasn't around to record it. In the case of Florence, like, there were things in the show that were just simply too painful to the people in his immediate orbit or we thought could have been too painful to people in his immediate orbit to release the show. And so a decision was made just to shelve that footage. It was used in Morgan Neville's documentary Road Runner. We used some of that footage. But it was, I mean, I...

Again, it was probably the best show. Like we had the, we like had the Uffizi Gallery shut down. We had it all to ourselves. You know, the Uffizi gallery is one of the most famous museums in the world. It's like, you think of like the very famous Botticelli's like Primavera and all of those, those paintings are there. It's like the one of the preeminent museums in Italy and you can, you know, just imagine from there what that means. They're there for the world.

Therefore the world. Yeah. You know, he's talking about the heart and soul of, you know, Renaissance, uh, uh, artwork is all contained right there. And so, and we had that, we had the place to ourselves. And we went to some crazy places, standing like standing at the South pole was pretty amazing, but standing in the Botecelli wing of, of the afeetse

gallery alone, like I took a selfie because no one else there. That's about as rare, unless you wax floors for a living, that's about as rare as it gets, you know? So, and that's what I mean about like this opportunity to see the world in, in ways that, you know, who gets to do that? You know, like you'd have to be in the very, very, very upper echelons of society, which I'm not, to be able to do that on your own. Experience those things. Yeah.

To do it on your dime. Millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of funding to shuttle our asses around the world, and see the things that we got to see. When you walked away from that, what did you start doing? I'm kinda getting to the part where you and me worked on our new project together, but did you just take some time off? When I walked away from that?

Not walked away, whatever it ended. I mean, that was your job, right? That was my job. Yeah. Yeah. There's some stuff in the middle there, though, that's like, that we've never talked about that's like, I mean, it's probably shit we should talk about. Like, I had to make a decision at one point to leave, like, MeatEater and everything that we had created doing this in order to do that and it was like a super super difficult decision because here like I didn't create that show mm-hmm I was a participant in that show I didn't create it like yeah but like if we were like but that's like the

equivalent of the you and me are like roommates and also someone buys you a house. I'm gonna be like, yeah, it's a bummer that you're moving out Mo, but I mean, I mean, this is, yeah, but this is where your humility comes into play, man. Like it was, it's more than that. Like I've never, no, I remember being, I remember you like struggling with it, but to me it wasn't, you know. Yeah. Well well in the end, like, it's a decision I had to make, right? Like again, I knew what was on the line. I had been on the show before, and when the show moved

from Travel Channel to CNN, Tony was like, I want you to come like full time. And you just like, you can't pass up that opportunity. You just, you can't pass up that opportunity. You can't pass up that opportunity to see the world like that. And there were a couple career things, like boxes I wanted to check too. But it was hard, man.

And it was hard to go in that direction and go do that and then watch everything that you've built subsequently. So when I got the call to, like, to come back to work, I was, I was stoked. It was great. No, the timing was, well, I don't want to say the timing was good because it was such a, because the things we discussed, like the fact that you were, I mean, this is years ago now, but that you were, you became like a free agent after doing, after working on board and for so long. Cause I had been, I had been with ZPZ on staff for 14 years, which is still amazing to me. Um, but then, you know, after Tony died, I worked,

uh, did another three years with, uh, W. Kamau Bell doing, uh, United shades of America, which was kind of an interesting thing too, because like that was very much focused not only on American culture and domestic issues, but a POV on American culture and domestic issues that I could literally never attain myself. So I'm just not a black dude in America.

And so I was able to go and travel around with Kabao and, and see things from his perspective, which was really profound. Uh, and then once we wrapped that show up, um, with another two Emmy nominations, uh, no wins, no wins, no wins on that one. I left 0.0 and went out freelance and started show running. And so yeah, there's a little time in there which is good because I needed to learn how to show run before you called. Oh good. I'm glad you learned. I learned a little bit. So just for listeners a little bit, Mo was talking when, I probably explain this for him, sure. Something's in the air and everybody's got like a, are you having like a throat problem? I've got a little tickle in my throat.

Clear throat. Also never been nominated for an Emmy. No. Phil or Randall. They don't come together. Dr. Randall, I have not been nominated for an Emmy. No. They don't come together. Dr. Randall, I have not been nominated. We got nominated for a James Beard Award which she didn't get. I was, I was, I was. Did you go to that dinner? I was at that.

Oh, we were at that dinner together? No, it wasn't at the dinner. I didn't go to the dinner, but I remember when we got the nomination. I was super stoked. We were in Mexico when we got that first one. We were hunting turkeys in Mexico. we got that first one. We were hunting turkeys in Mexico. Oh really? Yeah, I remember down on that ranch down there we

got we went we shot a buffalo and a bunch of turkeys. Yeah. I'll give a brief bit of history here for folks. Moe knows the story, but Moe's been talking about 0.0 production. So just try to explain a little bit of a little show business education. Generally, like 0.0 production is a television production company. How it generally works in TV production in the old days is that the production company winds up being like a contractor building a house, right? Yeah. A homeowner comes, they said, I want a house. I got plans for it. It looks like this.

I'm handing it over to you. You're the contractor. You come in and build the house. Once you build the house, it's all set. You hand the keys over to the person that bought it and you walk away. And it's their property. They might do more houses with you, but that's how it goes. You finished the house, hand it to them.

Um, for, for all you folks, I'm sure everyone listening, I'm sure, has seen episodes of No Reservations and Parts Unknown. So this company, 0.0 production, produced all of those shows. And it's important to note, develop the original concept too. Yep, which was Cook's Tour. Right. Yeah. So if you go way back, and I vividly remember this happening is Anthony Bourdain's book, Kitchen Confidential. I remember it coming out. I remember being excerpted in the New Yorker.

And they came in, optioned it, made a deal, started building this whole thing. When we started making MeatEater with 0.0, we built MeatEater we just own meat eater and just license it out. So in the old days, in many, many, many of the first years of meat eater, I made meat eater as a joint venture. Like we were 50-50 business partners and we owned meat eater as a joint venture between me and 0.0 production. Later we had the opportunity, I was approached by a company that that invested in digital media properties, so one you might know is they were invested in Barstool Sports and kind of were a majority owner

in Barstool Sports. It was with the guy that had been the chair of News Corp, so Fox News, and they had a group called TCG, and we took an investment from TCG to build MeatEater into a thing. And then over time, didn't have involvement with 0.0 anymore. And over time, Mo didn't have involvement with 0.0 anymore. This is all a long-rambling way of leading into this project that we're working on now that Mo and I are just putting a wrap on. Our work on all these episodes is coming out all those years of making Meat Eater. I started talking to a friend of mine, Mark Pierce, who owns Warm Spring Productions, and some of the guys on his team, we started talking about this idea of doing a show around outdoor mysteries, wilderness mysteries. And we had baked it along pretty good, made an arrangement with History Channel, we're gonna call it Hunting History, we're gonna do it in partnership with

History Channel, and eventually we needed like what's called a showrunner. You should explain what a showrunner is. I wasn't even really clear on what a showrunner was. I mean you can think of it, I almost asked that a minute ago. It's basically like a project manager. You just have oversight over the whole project tip the toe which requires you know requires a lot of different kind of skill sets does that include like creatively what's an episode what's not yeah yeah from that okay very much so we were mo was originally hired to be a director and then it moved up to being from a director to moved up to being the showrunner the kind of like

Primary driver of all things. Yeah, and still directed the show still direct this show Yeah, it seems like it should be a more prestigious sounding title. I know that's showrunner to me would be like a I Think of like a bike messenger. So it should be calls to mind a very different set of responsibilities I know it should be calls to mind a very different set of responsibilities. I know it should be seriously branded. Yeah showrunner like he's like a dude that runs around. Yeah the title that people would see on screen is executive producer. Gotcha yeah but anyone that knows show business knows that can mean a variety of things. That's a wide wide catch-all phrase. A tip for people watching for all you people that love

watching credits and movies, when you see EEP, apply like a healthy dose of skepticism. Because a lot of activities can capture you the EEP. A check, a check can get you EEP, or it's that you spent 20 years bleeding for a project. That's right. Yeah. Put your life savings, mortgaged your house in the end, you're an EP or later.

It's all done. And you're like, Oh, I'd like to be involved in that. Um, I can be helpful. And then all of a sudden there's an EP too. And those two people are like, hold on a, you have, you're what I am. You're not what I am. And those lists are getting long. people are like, hold on a minute, you're what I am? You're not what I am. You didn't bleed. Those lists are getting long.

You see shows now, there's like 10 EPs. Two of those people worked. Everyone else was just attached. Two of those people bled. That's why in, well, I guess in all productions, so it's not specific to documentary, but fighting for the producer credit, that's what people want. Well, I guess in all productions, so it's not specific to documentary, but like, fighting

for those, like the producer credit, like that's what people want. If you want to be like Oscar eligible, you need that producer credit. Oh, got it. Really? Yeah. God, man, I didn't know that, Randall. Some EPs, you know, some EPs will have it, but producers, that's where it's at. Oh, so executive is like a downgrade.

You just want to be a regular producer. Yeah, you want to be on that, you want to be the producer. Gotcha. So usually a one producer. Because I was just saying it's probably not too late for me to angle for EP on the new show, but it is too late for the producer and that's the one you want.

Yeah. Gotcha. Yeah, it's too late either way, Randall. I do have the checkbook. When we started on hunting history, when Moa came in, we didn't have our subjects. We had a few of them. They had done development work, you know, leading up to that and it developed some good concepts.

So like we ran with a bunch of those. We certainly weren't gonna throw those out. Let's do it. Should we lay out the mysteries? We like, well, let me first lay out the kind of overriding premises. So on hunting history, we explore eight outdoor wilderness mysteries.

I'll tell you some things that I would say are true of all of them. Okay. They could be that they're, they could be, they could be mysteries that are, uh, 40 or 50 years old. Some of them, they could be mysteries that are over 300 years old. So that there are many thousands of years old or, or, or millennia old. Yeah, you're right. They could be vastly different timeframes, but they share in common that these are mysteries that are set in wilderness, backwoods environments, like some of the wildest, most beautiful landscapes in the country. Yeah.

They are things that people will have. I'll be following all these riddles or these clues. There are things that most Americans will have some little thing in the back of their head that goes, oh, I've heard of that. Yeah. Right? Yep.

There's like a, oh yeah, I heard of that. They're all things that are still being actively argued about. Yep. Yeah. Oddly, and this surprised me, they're all things that have obsessives. They all have living obsessives who have dedicated

their life or major portions of their life to push a theory. And there are usually other obsessives with a different theory. And there are constantly new theories. Yeah, constantly new theories, constantly new theories coming up. And so we found those. And to give you, we're getting to some of these, but to give you sense of the range would be some of the mysteries are like, some of the mysteries

are just definitionally a mystery, meaning in the 1970s we had, this kind of blows your mind to think this is true, in the 1970s we had a rash of global and also national skyjackings. It seems so hard to picture now in a post--11 world, but there was a legitimate problem with people hijacking airplanes globally and nationally. Hijack an airplane, get ransom money, try to get away with the ransom money.

For either economic gain or political. Yeah, yeah, became some ideological. Yeah, it became some political hijackings, you know, the famous TWA hijacking, and then there also been just like some lone wolf financial hijackings, just for personal financial gain. Only one of these skyjackings, as they call them, only one of these skyjackings remains unsolved. And it is the story of a guy that identified himself as Dan Cooper. Um, in the early days of the investigation, a journalist misheard a communication between some investigators, misheard DB Cooper, ran an article, um, using DB Cooper as a suspect name.

It was misheard. Yeah. DB Cooper did not use DB Cooper use Dan Cooper. He's on a plane that takes off out of Portland to Seattle. Um, but what'd he buy his ticket for? It was like 20 bucks. It's so funny. Yeah.

Yeah. Uh, $20 buys a ticket, gets on it, was walks in buys a ticket for 20 bucks, gets on the plane. Um, he's dressed in a suit. He's wearing loafers. Yeah. He hands a flight attendant a note. He's, uh, that he's got a bomb. He opens up a suitcase. It's got a bunch of wires and shit. Looks like a bomb demands a couple hundred thousand dollars in twenties. Um, the plane lands $100,000 in twenties. Yep.

Um, the plane lands at SeaTac. He lets all the passengers go. He lets, he keeps some hostages on the plane flight crew. That's a flight attendant go. She comes back with a big sack full of all of his twenties. I can't remember. We calculate how many pounds of twenties it was. Not as much as you'd think. No, I'm trying to remember it was like many pounds of 20s it was. Not as much as you'd think. No, I'm trying to remember, it was like 22 pounds

or something. Yeah. Shocking. As for four parachutes, this is like some key stuff here. As for multiple parachutes, creating the idea that he's gonna jump with the flight crew. Yeah. Cause if he says, give me one shoot.

Like sweet. You ever see me like the. Just give him. Yeah. Give him the anvil from a, from a wild coyote. Yeah. It's like, why are you going to cut every rope in there?

Then give him the shoot. As for four shoots, they, they take off out of, they take off out of SeaTac. He wants to go. Mexico City. Yeah, he wants to go to Mexico City. They argue with him that you can't, there's not enough fuel on the plane.

They debate. So all this is important detail because he's taken off out of SeaTac and he already knows what he's gonna do. He knows he's gonna jump out of the plane and he has a destination in mind. They're already taken off and they're arguing about, you can't do that. They suggest, they suggest like landing in the Bay area or something. They suggest going to San Francisco. He's like, it's too busy. He's like, let's go to Reno and refuel.

So now time has gone by, he's in the air. He wants to go one place. They changed their mind They're going in another direction point being there's like people argue this that he had like he knew what was up and had an Accomplice waiting the dude. This is one thing. I'm sure about this dude does not know Yeah, no, no rational person can argue that he knew where he was No, when he jumped out of that plane. 100%. Yeah. It was the kind of plane that had the back door that opens up. Yeah. I mean even if you do where you were, even if you had known what route you were on, you wouldn't know where you were. It was a cloudy night in the middle of a

storm. No, there's a storm, heavily overcast skies, raining, and he's jumping out at where he's jumping out, it's like negative zero. Yeah, seven degrees, we said negative seven, I think is the number we came with. Negative seven. It's cold. At the elevation he's at, and he's got a suit on, loafers. Yeah, going 200 miles an hour, negative seven. There's a really funny part of this where, so,

put all on the whole, because I gotta explain a funny part of this, when we're filming it, we're in the town of, we're in this area of the FBI's drop zone. And we just are going to eat in this town of Cougar, Washington, just going, we just like make plans to go into Cougar to eat. And we're sitting there and we're like, we're kind of outside the trucks

and some guys got some cameras and here comes a dude driving by on a bike. This is the funny list. There comes a guy driving by on a bike and it's just killing him He sees the cameras and it's killing him, you know And he's like he drives and you can see him change his mind and he comes back and he's got Some shorts on and he's got a shirt a heavy like a big shirt on but suspenders under his shirt Like suspenders under his t-shirt. And I said, he said, what are you guys doing? You know, DB Cooper, you know, he gets all fired up about

DB Cooper. I said, what do you have? Why you got your suspenders on under your shirt? And he tells me that holds up my pistols. So to give you a sense of how much like this story lives, right? We didn't get an interview with this guy, but to give you a sense of how much like this story lives, right? We didn't get an interview with this guy, but to give you a sense of how much the story lives, this individual races home. This is a guy on the street races home on his bike and comes back with like evidence. Okay. About who DV Cooper is and introduces us to a thing that totally messed with our heads. Cause in all of our research, I was just talking about what he had on, right? He's got on a Jack. He's got loafers. Okay. And all of our research, we never see any mention of this, but he's describing, he's describing one of the last known moves of

DB Cooper, which was to slip a packet of twenties into his wetsuit. So we get done talking to him. We're like the wetsuit. How did we miss the wetsuit? But then we went and reviewed. There's no, that man, as far as I know that man and only that man knows about the wetsuit. But I mean, but that's what's so cool about the story. That the story is so enduring is it invites all of this, you know, you're, you're left with so few clues that paint such a vivid picture of what this guy did that it's open to all this interpretation as we talk about in the show. It's like a, it's a perfect story. And like, what a fun thing to be able to just like dive into a perfect story and just let your imagination goes. He had a wetsuit on,

he was jumping in the lake. We're gonna look like idiots. We never talked about the wetsuit. Scratch the wetsuit. That's just a dude on the street. See what else he knows. That's a dude on the street wearing shorts with pistols hanging from his suspenders. So, uh, Cooper goes on the back. There's all his little details. He

lights up, he uh, here's the crazy part. Smokes a cigarette. Yeah. Smokes a couple cigarettes, puts them in the ashtray, you know how even today you'll see planes that still have that little ashtray. Put some cigarettes in the ashtray, you know how even today you'll see planes that still have that little ashtray, put some cigarettes in the ashtray. He was one of the biggest screw ups the FBI ever made and not being able to anticipate and not being able to anticipate that you would pull DNA DNA off the cigarettes, which would now be a, a blink of an eye process.

Yeah. Like the FBI lab would have the genetic profile of this person within minutes. Um, they check them out. Nah, burn them. Do you believe this? Thought like you're like an archeology. It's very common in archeology. Like if you're at a site, you dig a little square, you'll dig a meter square and then the rest of it, you don't touch

because you're like, I don't know, in a hundred years, they'll be able to dip a stick in that dirt and tell you what happened here. So let's not mess with the rest because technology will improve. But now they're like, yeah, what are you gonna do with these old cigarettes? Gone, gone.

At some point he takes apart one of the four parachutes and gets some cord out of it, shit and fashions himself a little bundle of money and lowers that back door down and spend some amount of time messing around on the back. Yeah. We should, we should specify that it's, it's at a time when some planes had the, the staircase that lowers from the tail of the plane. So we're not talking about the side door at the back of a plane, we're talking about a staircase that lowers directly off the tail of the fuselage. Yep. He expects the flight attendant to open the door, realizes that the flight attendant is not instructed on opening door and in flight can't open the door and sends the flight attendant

upfront. So now he's in the back of the plane. This is, this is key to he's in back of the plane by himself. He gets the door down and at some point climbs down, puts on a parachute and climbs down the steps. How the FBI would later determine what they would call their drop zone is based on like trajectory, flight time and all this. But one of the key pieces is the pilots feel a pressure change in the cabin.

Yeah. Hmm. Suggesting to them that that pressure change was that he's putting weight on the back step. Yeah. pressure change was that he's putting weight on the back step. Yeah. And when he jumped the back step, the door goes, yeah. I just did a few folks listening at home. I just took my hand and, and inflected it at the wrist. Yeah. I did like a little wrist flick. That was the door coming up. And so they go like, huh, maybe that was him jumping out. Let's take

note of where we're at. That's the FBI drop zone. I'm not kidding. That's the FBI drop zone, somewhere between the SeaTac and Reno, but like sometime around there. Cause eventually they get like, well, let's go look. Yeah. No, no, they, they didn't, they not look till they landed look. Yeah. No, no, they didn't. They not look till they landed. Or did they go look? They did not get a, they did not get resources out in the field to look for. When did the flight crew go to look to see that he was actually gone? Oh, a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm well, I mean,

you can kind of defend that. The guy's got a bomb, man. Oh yeah. he says, everybody go up front, go up front. No, I'm not blaming anybody. I'm saying that became this hotly contested FBI drop zone. Earlier we talked about everybody's got like a little bit of awareness of the story. I knew the story. I didn't know any of the details.

I knew there was a skyjacker and I knew he jumped out of the plane. And when we got into it and Mo and I are like talking and other guys we work with, they're all talking. I would often say on the calls, I'll tell you what happened. You know, having not been there and knowing nothing about it. I was like, he, he bur he, uh, burrowed into the ground. Yeah. Didn't know what he's doing. Had a bad shoot, whatever. And the reason he's never, cause we should jump to this. He's never turned up. No, not not nothing has ever turned up. Well, except, yeah,

so it's one thing. So money turned up. We'll get to that in a minute. Cause we went, we went to the site. Um, some money turned up in the Columbia river in the eighties, nothing of his body or parachute or anything like that. And people thought that, uh, you know, one investigator said, well, it come deer season, we'll find them. Cause he thought some, you know, like some guys can be like, oh my God, a parachute hanging in a tree with a dead guy from it and it would be over.

Right. That was the assumption early on. It was like, he's just dead somewhere and they'll find the shoot. Um, they never did. And I would have thought, well, his shoot never opened, um, you know, and, and he, he burrowed into the ground and, and you know, all that soft rainforest moss and you're hitting that, that a 170 miles an hour or something like that terminal velocity yeah somewhere and you're so right and

unless someone looks in the right little divot and that's where the money is that's where his body is and we kind of begin our exploration with that idea and then quickly have special forces guys, military parachuters, a parachute instructor with like 14,000 jumps in his history who was actually interviewed by the FBI after the DB Cooper thing. Them all say, no he's probably fine. Yeah. No reason to think he's not fine. Like in their minds like that's no landing the trees don't matter, landing the mountains don't matter. Yeah it Like in their minds, like no, no. Landing in trees don't matter. Landing in the mountains don't matter. Yeah. It's a parachute. They're like

designed to work. Yeah. It's like, no, I was like, well, what if you hit a tree? It doesn't matter. Yeah. We couldn't get any major parachute dudes to tell us that he was dead. Hmm. As much as I wanted to know, like the sheets just work. They're like, they work community, but they're like, the shoots work. You pull the cord, you're landing. And I think the other interesting thing is like we had like an opportunity to get like, get you in the air, get you like, you know, do doing a tandem jump and your immediate reaction on the ground went from like before we went up in the plane, like he's,

he's burrowed into the ground to like, I know he's, he, he gets, of course he could survive that. Like now you're part of the community. And that's what's so fun about the show is like you, you, you get to unfold these mysteries and kind of pressure test one variation or one possibility or one theory at a time. And over the course of it, you come out with a completely different understanding or a completely different viewpoint on it.

None of it based on empirical evidence, all based on experiential evidence. And I think that's what's, you know, that's the reason that, as a concept, I think the show is so cool, is that we're out there experiencing things and then making assessments of a mystery based on those experiences.

And if he lived, and I think he did, if he survived the jump, think about what- Now you think he did. Yeah, well, now I think he did, if he survived the jump, think about how you think he did. Yeah. Well, I, no, I think he did. Right. Yeah. But then, but then just like, invite yourself to think about this for a

minute that you you're somewhere south of Seattle, but you're not quite sure where and you've jumped in the dark and keep in mind, he never got caught. You're landing in the dark and not toward Dawn. You're landing in the dark and not toward dawn. You're landing in the dark in the evening. Yeah. It's a long night. And you're loafers. Not rigged up in the rain. Yeah. What then? There's talk of accomplices and maybe there were, but like not to that point. But there's no, there's no way, there's no way you could have coordinated with someone on the ground. No, he'd need to get to a pay phone at that time and make a call and say, well,

I think I'm just somewhere out in the cascade range, you know, and you're walking around and as far as you know, there was this kind of laughable delay in looking for him on the ground. It was because it was partly because it was Thanksgiving night. Everyone had to finish their dressing and pumpkin pie and shit. And they got the posse rounded up. He didn't know this But he doesn't know this not now. So no like in all this time since and they did they brought out the army I mean the army To do shoulder to shoulder was like five foot spacing. Yeah. I think fingertip

fingertip spacing. Yeah. Shoulder to shoulder and they spent months grid working everything. No parachute, no sack, nothing. Nothing. So, I mean they were doing flyovers in the, was it the SR 17 or the 71? 71. Yeah. Blackbird. Yeah. They brought that up. Yeah. Use that to try to find the shoot. Big reconnaissance aviation guy here. Hey, you two got it right. Favorite bands, you two. They, uh, nothing ever, we'll get to this money. Then we'll kind of move on to another one of these to give people example. We'll get to this, this money.

So here's the crazy weird part. And this is what really like the money. If the money hadn't happened, the story would be different, but the money upends everything in the eighties. Right near Phil's backyard. Phil, Phil, fill us in on this. That's right. Vancouver, Washington on the shores of Western Vancouver, I believe. Do you know the name of the bar? I don't know the name of the bar. So yeah, I can't

fill you in. Sorry. It's an Algonquin word meaning marshy swamp. Tina bar. Tina bar. So the original, the the skyjacking was in 72, 73 72 72 okay I was not yet born I wasn't even conceived yet Randall where was I all the money so check this out 81 was it somewhere in 1981 somewhere early 80 80s. Some kid. Now this is that, this is the surface, I'm telling you the surface level, true part. And you can read in all the conspiracy theories, the surface level, true part. Okay. The, the everyone agrees is this, some kid goes down on the Columbia river and they're going to make a fire and he's scratching out with his foot. fire and he's scratching out with his foot. Yeah. Um, a little fire pit, okay. On the bank of the river,

just like you would. And lo and behold, here is a bundle, bundles, bundles, bundles of rotten twenties. Right. Um, when they gave Cooper all of his, uh, currency, when they gave him his ransom money, I, I knew they knew the serial numbers. Okay. Here's a whole other wrinkle. I'm going to get into this record. This is interesting. I knew going as we did our research, it was like they knew the serial numbers of the money, I thought they were sequential, meaning I thought they gave him blank to blank numbers, which would make it easier to find. But they just had a list of serial numbers. But it was all random numbers. So you couldn't notify banks. If you see any money

come in between 110000 and 110000, keep your eye out for it. It's, it's, it's like thousands of 20,000, 20,000 random ass serial numbers. So you could never get in your head, what numbers you're looking for. Cause I used to be like the money never turned up. So the money must be gone. But someone's like, how do you know the money's gone? If he took that money and spent it wherever the hell took it to the Caribbean it wherever the hell, took it to the Caribbean, took it to Mexico, took it anywhere, took to Greece, whatever, and exchanged the money. And then the fact that someone down the road is gonna check that serial number against a list of 20,000 random-ass serial numbers and

find it. But anyhow, the money that comes out of Tina Bar, the corners is all rotten away. But it's the numbers. They know for a fact that that is the money. It's the money from the ransom. But here's the deal. Like the crazy part of it is that you'd say to yourself, if you're thinking, man, you're now saying to yourself, well, yeah, he lost some of the money. He's drowned in a river and it was in a little Creek, flowed out of the mountains, flown into a tributary,

floated into the Columbia on a flood, got deposited on the bank, covered in sediment. But here's the problem. The money, if you drained the FBI drop zone, it doesn't flow to that spot. It's up river. That spot is what I was wondering. It's up, the money was found up drainage from the entire FBI drop zone,

which brings in the question. It didn't get like, he didn't, it's either he didn't land in his drop zone, the drop zone's wrong or someone enter all conspiracy theories. So the next logical conclusion, you say, well, the drop zone's wrong. It again, he landed in some tributary, whatever it washed down, got caught in a sandbar is totally reasonable to assume. Here's why the money being in three different packets is important because they were not bundled together.

Meaning the statistical probability of the three of them ending up in one place is in the billions to one. Unless some thing was holding them in it. He, okay. This is what's claimed. He, there's a couple of little details here. He says to a flight attendant, the flight attendant,

he asked her, do you want some of this money? Okay, she says no. Did some amount of that money, like we don't know what happened for a long period of time, did some amount of that money wind up like, he's got like a bag, but he puts not in his wetsuit, but like, some of it goes here, some of it's in a different envelope, some of it's some like a bag, but he puts not in his wetsuit, but like some of it goes here. Some of it's in a different envelope. Some of it's some, you know, like it sat there so long and rotted so much, something could have decomposed around it. What was holding it together. But, but people that are way obsessed about this have given up on the idea that it washed there.

Yeah. Yeah. They think the money was buried there. And what's so funny, we went there with a guy who was like, he actually had some of the money, like some of the money that came out of the bank. Yeah. Um, can you remember his name though? Eric, uh, Eric Ulless. Eric Ulless. Yeah. He's like, he's like the foremost, you know, kind of citizen sleuth. What they, what they refer to themselves as citizen sleuth. He's a serious investigator. We go there and we're standing around the river bank and I'm like, so it's right here. And he goes, well, it was about nine feet up and 25 feet out because of erosion. It was like, the money was like over your head when you're standing there. Now he feels that that money, um, because of all this stuff I won't get into, um, he feels that money

was buried. Yeah. He feels it was buried by DB Cooper. Conspiracy theories are that DB Cooper later placed the money to throw off the trail that he, uh, lift, got a ride from someone paid, paid someone $8,000. Like dude, get me out of here. Yeah. And that guy freaked. Yeah. And buried the money. Um, I don't know. But that is the last, there's a neck tie that he took off and left on the plan. There's the cigarettes that are gone. There's the money and Tina bar Yeah, and they've investigated on on some 10,000 people. Yeah, they really focus heavy on disgruntled

Special forces guys coming out of Vietnam. Yep. Yeah and and people with an engineering background or some exposure to Boeing or you know people who would have proximity to understanding how the plane works in a basic way and you know it's fascinating there are there are thousands of of these little micro theories about little portions of the mystery and the fact is like no one actually knows anything nothing the flight attendant asked him fact is, like, no one actually knows anything. I don't know nothing. The flight attendant asked him, according to her,

there's no witnesses to the conversation. She asked him, do you have a grudge against the airline? And he said, I just have a grudge. But I mean, those are the things, like, and this is an important part of the whole story, is that he became like a folk hero. You know, he didn't hurt anyone. Yeah.

He, you know, in, in, in, in our imaginations, he gets away with $200,000, you know, and, uh, and disappears into the night. That's awesome. He's a, he's a hero. He's, yeah. Yeah. Uh, if you watch the news the news, there's always claims. There's been many, many claims.

There's a theme, people's parents die. Yeah. Oh yeah. People's parents die and then they come forward to say it. And recently some people came out and there's these kids whose dad actually did a, there's these kids whose dad actually did a, there's these kids whose dad actually did a copycat skyjacking and then later

died in a shootout with the cops and a lot of suspicion fell that it was his own copycat, like that was his second skyjacking, some people say. These kids come out and they produce this parachute all the way in North Carolina or something, across the country. They're like, Hey, we found a parachute in our shed. Then you got to ask your question, but there's so many claims like this. They mostly get debunked. Yeah. It's your question. So you're telling me that he, that night brought his parachute. He that night bundled that parachute up.

There's no way. And then brought it home to North Carolina and put it in his shed. I use this again. No, no way. And then brought it home to North Carolina and put it in his shed. Like, I'll use this again. No. No way. Like that one, so many of my friends- Sometimes you go out there and just rub that fabric between your fingers and think of the good old days.

Feels like money. So many of my friends sent me that article when that came out. Cause that was after we filmed. They sent me that article. And by that point I was like-versed in all the claims. Just like, there's a claim, more than every year there's a claim.

My boyfriend was DB Cooper. And a lot of deathbed confessionals. Anything you'd like to add, Grandpa? I was DB Cooper! We should make a bumper sticker, man. You think about that with the parachute. We tried to walk through, like one of the things we do in the show is like we walk through in the pitch black. We walk through those mountains and it's staggering how difficult it is to walk through those mountains.

I mean, we're talking about like the, the cascades, the best, best guests of the drop zone is that it's in the cascades just west, like Southwest of Mount St. Helens, right? Prior to Mount St. Helens erupting. So it's like thick old growth forest and really steep and, and just trying to walk through there in the dark with cameras. It was impossible. You're going to drag a, you're going to drag a parachute. We did a, we did a thing. Like we, we know, you don't really know what he had, but we did like a no, we did a no flashlight. Yeah. Yeah.

He had just limited stuff. Like he's not like, he's got, he doesn't have a big tool bag. Maybe he had flash. It's on no, but one thing I never did in my whole life was, uh, strike a match to look around. It doesn't work as good. Early we're talking about Indiana Jones. He goes into a cave and strikes a match. He's like, spotlight. All of a sudden you're in the Lincoln tunnel. Yeah. You strike that match and you're like, you don't see much of anything, man. Uh, it was fun. Let, um, okay. I want to talk, let's talk about Donner party. Yeah. That's a good one.

I want, we should talk about Rowan Oak and Donner party. There's a hundred of them. Not a hundred. It's eight to talk about. We're not talking about all of them. I'll talk about Rowan Oak or Donner party. That'll start with Ron. Okay. I'll lay the groundwork. We should quiz Randall on Donner and Rowan Oak or Donner Party? That'll start with Rowan Oak. Okay. I'll lay the groundwork. We should quiz Randall on Donner, on Rowan Oak. Yeah. What do you know about Rowan Oak? Yeah, Randall, how many, how many settlers?

Oh, Dr. Randall. 31. 72. 54. 139. I don't know. You just went too high. 24. I won't, don't know just went too high 24 I won't know you just my team I'm not gonna continue to humiliate you 117 oh god I knew it rough I had it in there somewhere roughly 170 promise we're gonna go way back in time we're

jumping now from the from the 1970s to the 15 nineties, uh, all these, all your European superpowers, Spain, France, um, England, Portugal, they're, they're all vying for colonies, new world colonies. The Spanish were early to the game and they are getting loaded on gold. And everybody's like, ah! But down south. Everybody's got bad FOMO. Yeah.

Everybody's got bad FOMO. They want their own chunk of the pie. Well, Portuguese are killing it in South America too. Yeah, so people are tearing it up and the English are feeling like they're missing the whole party. And they don't want to go too far south because the Spanish at this point have a major toll hold

and like jealously guard their areas. In fact, the Spanish are so worried about other countries getting a toll hold that they got like warships cruising up and down the U S coast hunting for anyone who'd have the audacity to try to get a toll hold in the new world. England had sent some like expeditionary trips poking around and prodding around. They'd map parts of the shoreline and they get an idea that they're gonna establish their first permanent colony in Chesapeake Bay. So they take these 117 settlers, kids, wives,

young people, right. And, um, they haul them over and the intention is to bring them up in the Chesapeake Bay. There's like some weird stuff that we get into in the episode and, and, uh, and they don't bring them where they're supposed to bring them. They're just like, kind of like, it sounds like a little, like unceremonious because it was, I mean, they dumped them out on the island in the outer banks of North Carolina. This will have to do.

See you later. Like it won't work forever, but it might work for a minute. We'll see you next year. But it wasn't. But it's also important to note who these people are because like they're not, this is not a military expedition. These are like farmers and craftsmen. They're not people who are these are like farmers and craftsmen. They're not people who are who are equipped or used to going out and and no experience building a an outpost from a military standpoint. Yeah these are people who by and large have probably spent their life and within them like some small radius of a handful of miles probably. You can't generalize but like mostly these are like Yeoman people. They drop them on this island

and their leader is this dude, John White. Well, they realize how precarious their situation is and he can't even hang for long. And he's like, hey, I'm gonna run back to England and get some supplies and I'm gonna run back, hang tight. He goes back to England and like a war breaks out. And the queen says, no one's doing shit with any ships. All ships are fighting the war.

And all this other stuff happens and it's three years. And keep in mind, this John White dude, here's an important detail, this John White dude, his wife and daughter are there. No, no, no his daughter his daughter his daughter last pregnant yeah is there comes back three years later is able to do a quick check on Roanoke and they're not there they're gone but then there's a hurricane coming and he cut he can't even really look around but as the story goes carved on a tree they made a plan

Hey If you got to go somewhere carve on a tree crow it where you're going and they and they carve the word Croatoan which was a tribe that lived on modern-day Hatteras Island. Yeah A hurricane comes he leaves and then no one comes back for a decade or something like that a Decade to by the time someone comes and seriously looks for these columnists, it is just like they are absolutely gone. But gone, gone. Like there's no, it's not like there's a bunch of bones. No. Yeah. There's nothing. Gone, gone. Just rumors. It's so long has gone by that now there's like, Oh, you know, it's like,

it's this common thing that pops up in history. I'm sure you've encountered it. Randall. Oh, I did see a blue eyed Indian suggesting that they like integrated, but just gone. But there, but people are actively looking for their stuff. And what's funny about it is like, of course their stuffs get scattered around because even if they had all died right there of some disease, even if they'd all died of, I don't know, the flu, their shit's still gonna get scattered around

because this is like a vibrant, this area is full of all these different Native American groups. Yeah, and they- So they're gonna take the stuff and scatter it anyway. And they show up, the English show up with stuff that is like highly, highly, highly valuable because there's no way for native Americans

who are here to get, you know, iron, you know, these things that they had guns. So you think like, it's not just like a bunch of random crap lying around. These are like highly valuable items. So the people want, so the search has been by and large, the search is archaeologists looking for their little trinkets and shit, right? But finding the trinket and we went to it.

We went to an active dig site, um, where they're finding like really old English stuff. Yeah. But it's like they get excited about it, but it doesn't mean in my mind, it doesn't mean that much. Cause like their shit's going to wind up there anyways. Yeah. Yeah. Because people are going to take this stuff and trade it.

We talked to one researcher on it and he's like, there's, we're like, what would satisfy, what would satisfy you about what happened to someone? What would satisfy you about what happened to someone? And he said, it's cool because it's like identifiable. He's like a Christian burial. A Christian burial, not on Roanoke. Someone, because all the tribes had burial rituals where the bodies would be buried in a, curled up in the fetal position.

Yeah. You know, very different ways he goes to find a bear, because he's like, they might've, you know, they might've been, uh, integrated into a tribe. The last thing to go would be religious practice. Yeah. You know, in his mind, the last thing to go would be burial rites and a mother burying her child, a child bearing its mother or someone would would would have laid them out on their back, flat prone head to the east.

Yeah, a Christian style burial done by Christians is what they're looking for. And he's like, if someone can present that, they can say, here's where they ended up. A detail about that we get into is to kind of show you what's going to happen to these people when they land, it's within days. One of them goes out to get oysters. They got like nothing. They're hired up from the minute they're there. They got very little food resources.

Crabs. Oh, is that right? He goes crab. He goes blue crabbing. It just gets filled full of arrows. It's head smash now. Because the dudes that were there before them, the English explorers that were there before them,

do all this ham-handed antagonistic shit to the tribes and piss off a bunch of the tribes. And then you later bring a bunch of women and children and turn them out on an island. Just let them go. You see anybody? I don't know. Don't mention me.

And there aren't any like oral traditions from those communities around there about the strangers. I'm kind of shocked by how it, it's kind of shocking how, how little there is, how little there is. Yeah. There again, there are those rumors of like, you know, blue eyed, right? Square houses to tribes like, like traders would encounter

people and they'd be like, but in wild places, you know, they'd be like hundreds of miles of inland. There's, there's people in square houses living with such as such tribe and have a square house, but it's, it's just like, it's ephemeral. It's like rumors and glimpses. Um, as we dug into it, like, I'll tell you one thing's for certain. Um, and I can't say much of certain. 117 of those guys didn't go somewhere and like set up shop in build houses. It was too much of an imprint. It was, uh, whatever happened was like quick. It was ugly and I think it was scattered.

They panicked and scattered to the wind. And I'm sure some of them, cause they did write on a tree, they wrote on a tree and on a fence post, Croatoan and then Croa, like on one side. CRO. Yeah. They finished it on one side and one side didn't,

and that was the agreement. If you go somewhere, write it down. But then you're like, did they make it? How many have made it? How many went to Croatoan? Five. Right. Yeah.

You don't know. Um, and then there's been fraudulent evidence. Like, uh, there's this thing that came out called the dare stone. This woman, Elizabeth dare wrote this like fairly plausible on a rock. Don't laugh. No, I love, I love a rock like some shit, right. And a guy finds the rock. Don't laugh. No, I love, I love this stuff. She writes on a rock like some shit, right? And a guy finds the rock. Yeah. But the timing of him finding the rock was that a timing of like heightened public curiosity about this. Right. That's when the legend

started to emerge. And then you have a dozen copycat rocks. Yeah. So all the copycat rocks are obviously phony and then the one rock is suspicious And now people don't accept that rock to be true, but that rock basically said like we've been whittled away and killed and kidnapped Yeah, it's like it was written to her father and to me though the Love I love, um, I, I, I like, I like the, you know, so wait, like she's running around, running from these hostile native American tribes. No, she was in their captivity at the time. And carrying a scratching rock, 25 pound rock around slowly, slowly

scratching her story into it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It seems implausible. We need to go quickly, get the rock. It seems implausible. We talked to these one authors, they kind of laugh about the, it's called the darestone, they laugh about the darestone.

You gotta have a pretty sophisticated understanding of the language at the time. But one of the things that laughed about the darestone is, um, it like a decent analogy would be, let's say I were to talk to you in a Southern accent, right? Right. And a Southerner doesn't think I have a Southern accent. The writing on the darestone is so like

stereotypically. Ye olde English. Yeah. Yeah. And yeez, you know, like all over the place. They're like, it's just, it's like someone who's like read some Shakespeare or something, trying to write a note in Shakespeare language, you know, or whatever. And that's one of

the better indictments of the other indictment would be this play comes out. Yeah. Right. Right. At the same time. Yeah. This very popular performance comes out. It's still running today. And, uh, and the fervor of the popularity of this there, lo and behold is the darestone. Yeah. But again, I mean, like these are not selected because they're like finite mysteries. They're, they're selected because they're, they're, there's, they're mysteries with all kinds of possibilities. And that's what makes it fun.

Yeah, I don't think that one will be solved. And just a spoiler alert, that's what I say. In the end, I'm like, I don't think there's like a thing. When you look at it, like there's a lot of people looking and a lot of people ask the question, but there's not, there's not a clean answer. I don't think there's a clean answer. Right.

But in the questions amassed for a long time, but I think what was like, what was really cool about this concept and really unique to this concept is no one's really asked those questions from an outdoor standpoint. So these are all mysteries that have a element of the outdoors, right?

In the wilderness. And no one's really approached them from that point of view. And it's a lot of what we spend our time in the show doing, is like living these things and going through, to the best of our ability, the things that those people went through, or it's suspected that they people went through or it's Suspected that they possibly went through. Yeah theorize going to the real place is kind of blows your mind Because there's this one theory that emerged they said

Even though they had written that stuff on the thing There was also an expression of intention that they moved 50 miles to the main, right? Which you you can take it different ways one interpretation is they went 50 miles to the main, right? Which you, you can take it different ways. One interpretation is they went 50 miles inland, which lands you in this place we went to, which is called the great dismal swamp. And you go into that stuff, you're like, Oh yeah, you got a hundred like kids and stuff and you're all wearing like. Petty coats or whatever the hell they ran around it.

And like you're navigating the, you know, you're like wading through the great dismal swamp. And what's kind of amazing though is when, when we went to, you go there now and, and there's a bunch of dry land there, a bunch of agricultural land, but all of that land was, was drained. That was all just swamp. Like when you think of the prototypical swamp, like Kermit the Frog at the beginning of the Muppet movie level swamp, like that's what it was.

Lily pads and cypress trees, that whole area. Yeah, we, I mean, you know, it's an hour-long show, you can't explore any avenue of this, and this would have been like way down the list for how sort of outside of the story it was. But, um, that area, some of the most harshest slave conditions, um, in the history of slavery in the South, some of the most harshest, like high death rate slave conditions was making that dry land. They were, they were put to work draining that land and these malarial, you know, and malarial conditions. Those canals are all still just crisscrossing the land. Yeah. They were, they were put to work draining that land. Yeah. And these malarial, you know, and malarial conditions, those canals are all still just crisscrossing the land.

You see those canals that they dug and the imagine the conditions under which they were, they were, it is just looking at just many, many, many, many square miles upon square miles upon square miles. It was hand dug trenches to drain that ground. Yeah. It was just like a disposal place for humans that you just pour into like you're pouring them into a war, pouring slaves into that job. Which like I said, wasn't a lot of room to maybe a future episode. Another one of going to the spot, we'll talk about this one, then we'll wrap it up, is going to Donner Pass, where the Donner Party, where that all went down.

And one of the funniest things just happened in a parking lot, it's not in our show because it just happened in a parking lot, someone, we ran into some guys, they were were filming they were doing like some ski stuff or something I got what they're doing yeah we got talking to them they're talking about so this is like a third third-hand story because we're up filming in Donner Pass and they're filming like some skis nothing to do with Donner Party we're filming about the Donner Party and they're filming some ski stuff and they share with us these people that they had encountered who were in Donner Pass because they were doing a thing about places with Christmas names.

You know Donner and Dancer. That's the funniest thing in the world. That's amazing. That was pretty amazing. Background on Donner Party. Donner Party was, well, first off, I'm going to talk about what, before I get into what it was, I'm going to talk about what everybody knows, including me. What I know about the Donner party is it was an American horror story where people ate each other. Yeah. Full stop. Right. You're like, yeah, they got stuck in the mountains and ate each other. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right.

That's the story. There, there is the story. It's a very short episode. That's the story of the Donner party. That's what, that's what I went into it knowing about, you know, I was actually like a little skeptical because I was like, what is it? You know, what is there really to do? You know, so no, I think we were all like, that was a show that we We pitched many times like a concept that we pitched many times in the question

We all had was like well like what's the story like what's the mystery? Mm-hmm? What's the story? I you know they got snowed in they ate each other. Well. I don't you know. What are we gonna? Do seems pretty straightforward? It ain't It ain't there's a lot of like, who's to, here's the questions. Who's to blame and what could they really have done different? Right? And why did what happened happen? And now I'm going to set a little bit of the scene is like 1846.

So pre Gold Rush, like everybody's heard of the 49ers, right? Remember we had Elliot West on, because everybody likes to talk about the 49ers, but the lucky ones were the 48ers. The 48ers got all the gold. The 49ers were a little late. So these folks were hopeful 48ers. Yeah, so these guys, the Donner Party, they're coming over in 1846. And the way these immigrant trains worked,

as I learned through this project, is like, they're like, there's a fluidity to how these groups come together. You know, there's a kind of rough timeline. Like if you're going to cross the great Plains and cross the Rockies and cross the Sierra Nevada, it's like, you got to get going as early in the spring as you

can to have the maximum amount of time. So you can cross the continent and get there before snow, but you can't leave until the ground dries out. So it's hard to get going to March because you're going to encounter a flood swollen rivers, right? There's mud everywhere. So you gotta be like, she's got to dry out and there's a race. It's like stuff dries out, water levels come

down from snow melt and all of a sudden it's a good time to go and then you haul ass. And then on the other end you're bracketed in by the coming of bad weather. So there's like you pick your window and groups come together and they meet in these certain spots and what was the big town everybody took out these guys all took out of us not Springfield, Springfield Missouri. Yeah what's that? Independence. Yes I think that's it where they took off from. Anyways you come together and you form your, your parties come together. Everything I do in family groups, family groups form up. Right? So you, when you cross in a wagon train, you might be with your extended family.

It's, it's you, you know, it's your brother, your brother's wife and kids. It's your mom and dad. it's your uncle and his family, but then you join up with all these other family units. So you're in a party, but you're loosely bound. Family units and bachelors and you know, all kinds of different folks. And guides and hopefully a guide that's been there before. And there's like, you're literally taking votes And there's like, you're literally taking votes to put forward like a leader. So when we say the Donner party, it winds up being 90 some individuals

of like two primary clans, but then a bunch of other people kind of surrounding these clans. And they get all the way out to, they get all the way out to Fort Bridger and they are fed some bad information about a thing called Hastings Cutoff. What's super funny about Hastings Cutoff is it was billed to them as shorter and easier. Okay, this is the great part of this. It's way harder. And now that you can like measure stuff accurately, it's not shorter. It's longer. Hastings cut off, which is shorter

and easier is longer and harder. Yeah. Pretty rare in the world of cutoffs. It's like a shitty long cut. Yeah. And they have a lot of internal division. Um, Donner's wife, for instance, is like, I don't think we should do it, but this is crazy because Jim Bridger gets rolled up in this whole thing. Um, Jim Bridger, he, all these wagon trains are taking a route that's causing them to bypass Fort Bridger. Bridger who's already a compromised individual in some ways, because, um, famously it was Jim Bridger who abandoned Hugh Glass and the whole revenant incident. Right? So Bridger is, or isn't like the world's greatest guy.

Bridger is like, shit, now no one goes by my fort anymore. And he's like, Hastings cutoff sounds great. It goes right past my fort. You guys should definitely take Hastings cutoff and stop by. We'll trade. I'll sell you some shit And they do this and and when they leave on Hastings cutoff Here's the crazy part. So like other wagon trains at the time they go south on Hastings cutoff Which is gonna go over the Wasatch range and then through Donner Pass

Well, it joins back up before Donner pass. Anyways, when they, there's other wagon trains that they're with the wagon trains are with that don't take Hastings cutoff, make it to California just fine going over Donner pass. So they do this South loop and it sets them back so far and encounter so many weird problems that they wind up behind Other parties when they go up down our path, so they're not pioneering down our paths down our paths has successfully been used Been used in years prior. Yeah. Yeah and they start up in the snow and they get they Well, it's like important to note too. It's not that they actually don't arrive

at the bottom of diner, diner pass, particularly late, despite all of their problems. It's, it's the end of October. It's an early storm. Right. Parties had crossed as late as December. And yeah, you're right. And then okay. And years past, I forgot that detail. Yeah, that's another thing is like, that's a great point. Cause you also start, there's this kind of narrative that they were like, I was just laying out.

Like stupid to go up there. Yeah, they were late, they were late, but it had been done. They were late, but it had been done. But then they got up in the mountains in a situation where it was just insane snow. It was an abnormal snow year. Yeah.

And they got up there. It was an early snow storm. Perhaps they could have backed out, but they felt that the, that they'd get a thaw, right? What are the odds it's going to keep happening? Right? Yeah. All the time, like living in the Northern Rockies, you know, all

of a sudden October like, wow, big old storm. And then like a month later, it's going to keep happening, right? You all the time, like living in the Northern Rockies, you know, also in October, like, wow, big old storm. And then like a month later, it's like 70 degrees. And you're like hunting in your t-shirt and you're like, God, isn't that weird? It was like, uh, you know, two feet of snow here a couple of weeks ago. They thought it'd be that, but it just got worse, deeper, worse, deeper. And they lingered too long and then it became impossible to back out. And when you talk about worse and deeper, like the numbers are astounding, like the amount of snowfall in that area. They'll get 60 feet of snowfall in Donner Pass.

They're climbing, they make these all these little shelters. We'll talk about those in a minute. They're getting to where they're climbing tunnels up out of their shelters. You climb out and pop out on the surface and they're cutting wood. There's pictures later where there'd be a dude standing on dry ground and way up above his head is a cutoff tree. 30 feet. And you realize that's where they were cutting wood. Walking around on top of all that snow. But here's where all this whole Donner party shit changes for me is, um, it's 90 people over half her little kids. You never think about that.

No, no one ever thinks about it's little kids. And like statistically the little kids were more likely to survive. And also statistically parents of little kids were more likely to survive. And also statistically, parents of little kids were more likely to survive. And statistically women were more likely to survive. More likely to survive. The people who fared the worst were unattached bachelors. Yeah, a handful of reasons, like supposed reasons why they were

already working their asses off. Very fatigued from the trip out that far. They were assuming all this work, doing all this stuff, so they're going into it very lean. Meanwhile, people who have been able to ride in the wagons weren't as physically depleted. There's also like a little bit of a psychological element. There winds up being this group decides eventually to make a break for it. It's called the Forlorn Hope Party, and they make a break for it in the California direction. They're going to cross Donner Pass. They're almost to the top of Donner Pass. They're going to cross the pass and go for it. On foot. Yeah. On foot. They make snow issues. They think they'll be there in some number of days. It takes weeks.

Of the people that left on that Forlorn Hope party, parents lived. People with relatives at the camp, other people just are like, fuck it, they just died. You know, because they probably got where there was no point, you know. And there is cannibalism, but it's like, you know, these people were condemned for a long time for it. But when you start looking at it, it was like, you start getting into it. Like they did everything they could possibly do. Everything they could possibly do to keep their families alive. And I don't think anyone would do anything differently. I think the only thing that would be done differently in a modern context,

and I mean this in all seriousness, is that the cannibalism would have started much earlier. I think that you're talking about a time when people are, are, you know, we talk about in Roanoke, like the last thing to go or religious practices, these are people who are highly religious and highly driven to live by that code, and that code is very specific about eating other folks. And they hold on for what would seem like forever, just a torturous amount of time of starving to death,

trying to scrape food together in any way they can before they start eating people. Yeah. There's one dark element to it. It seems like no one really knows all the details, but if you look at all the journals and evidence and all that, it seems like cannibalism, with one exception, cannibalism was limited to people eating people who had starved to death. Right. Okay, they're eating people who starved to death. But there's a guy in the Donner Party who's kind of like, throughout the whole story, kind of emerges as a real asshole. He murders two Native American guides that they have. But at that time, that was not illegal. It would

have been illegal to shoot someone's cow. It was not illegal to murder two Native Americans. He outright murders two Native Americans to eat them. And then later, everybody knows that he did, he just lives his life. Yeah. Yeah. Not picked up. They talked about doing something, no one ever did anything to that dude. Yeah. There's also all these other crazy stories like one of the search parties as it's told, like it was quite a sight when search parties started to come, but when search parties came, they had to kind of ferry them out. Like a search party shows up and they can only take a handful of people.

So they're like, okay, everybody wait here. They take a handful of people to California, come back. One time they come back and as the story goes, here's a guy holding, walking along with a human leg and sees the search party people and has the wherewithal to throw it down in the snow. My dog tries that trick. Like you got busted. We met with the archaeologists that dug one of the camps. They were at two different camps, two primary camp locations. And they dug one of the camps and found the remains of all kinds of stuff that they were eating. At one point, early on, they killed a bear, they killed a grizzly, early on. They killed dogs, they had oxen, they killed, they had lots of small game, deer, rodents and stuff they were killing and they were They one of the things they were doing is they were eating animal hide So early on they had no way to feed their oxen So they were killing the oxen just eating the meat and then later they started revisiting it and they started eating the bones But when they killed them they used the hides to help them make that roofs and doors on structures They were like making like tent light structures of hides. We made one of these structures with this rotten ass cow hide and slept in there. One of the

worst smell and sleeps I ever had dude. Rotten cow hide and we use it for a shelter. It was a great shelter. I mean you could keep a lot of warmth in that thing with a fire. Like you could make it warm in there but it stank. We got like a little chimney and stuff coming out of there. So, the hell's I getting with that? We're talking about the animals that they found in the excavator. They started eating the hides and then they started boiling the bones and crushing the bones and boiling and eating the bones And there's a thing I read after the fact that I really wish I had read before we did it. A guy happens to give me, one of our podcast guests, Randy Brown, gives me a book called Death on the Barren Ground. And it's a journal of one guy who was in a party of three people and they all starved to death. The youngest guy

lives longest and he keeps a meticulous journal chronicling the starvation death of his two companions and then chronicling his own death of starvation. Okay, and they all die in the 1920s in the Canadian Arctic along the Thelon River. It's so crazy because they wind up eating that exact same diet. They had been trapping, so they had wolverines and stuff, and they're eating wolverine hides, weasel hides that they had built up before they started to starve to death, and they're eating bones. And what's killing them, like they're dying of starvation, yes, but what's really killing them is these terrible bowel obstructions,

because they're eating that boiled, crushed bone in the absence of other stuff. They're trying to build makeshift enema devices. And they're literally digging out of each other's rectums, dried gobs of crushed bone that are forming into these gelatinous balls from that boiled animal hide. And then the hair follicles, because you're eating, you're scraping the hair away, but there's all that hair follicle, and that hair follicle is joining up into balls of hair. When they find these guys' bodies, a couple years later, the Royal Mounted Police do like a report, they are nothing but skeletons, but there's still what he describes as a plate of excrement in the cabin of this bone ball.

It's like old-timey concrete. Yeah. Yeah, they talk about... And so we met with an archaeologist who worked on this bone project, and then I later was like, after we met, after we got done filming our episode, I sent her, I was like, Hey, for your work, here's this great journal of like, what happens when you eat these diets and like, that's what killing, that's what's killing those guys. These guys, these Canadian Arctic guys,

what's killing them. They would have died anyway. But what's like the immediate biggest problem is that, that the bowel obstruction and digestive problems of eating like non-edible, eating non-digestible stuff in a state of desperation. Yeah, they talk about, you know, in Donner, they talk about boiling those bones so many times, boiling and reboiling,

that they get something called pot polish, which is like, they basically turn to porcelain in that pot as they try to extract whatever nutrients they can out of what's left of the bone. We boiled up some rawhide. Yeah. And it like, you can make it pretty edible, man, when you boil it down.

It's actually not that bad. It's like, why is it being like quite flavorless? And it has a most' set of umami quality. The broth. More the broth. That wasn't the rotten hide that's used for the shelter, was it? No, I couldn't.

We talked about it. We didn't. We just said we had some standard broth. I don't think that would have been safe for consumption. Yeah, we had a handful of rye. If you were starving out there, you'd eat it. Yeah, we did some snow shoes. a handful of rides. You got a few starving out there, you'd eat it. Yeah, we did some snow shoes. They made snow shoes.

We mocked up some snow shoes. We worked with the guy that spent some time, spent a lot of time hiking the path, you know? But yeah, man, being in Donner Pass, you're like, I can tell you one thing, ain't shit to eat here. No, man, we went out, we tried to hunt like, you know, squirrels, small game. You end up like in an hour, you burn more calories than you could possibly hunt,

you know, for the whole day. It's just like, it's just so, it's like, it's, it's so alpine. It's like, it's rock, it's rock. Yeah. So no, no, no, no, no, no. It's, it's not like that. It's, but it's, I mean, at a certain point, it's almost like, what's the difference?

You know, you're- It's like, it's subalpine. It's like 50% of every surface is rock. And you got little dwarfed up spruce and fir. And there's some ponderoses here and there. But it's just like a very poor ground. And you talk to guys there, like we talked to hunters there,

and hunters are like, um, Dude the first whiff of snow. Yeah, everything. Nothing is up here. Yeah How does snow fall in the country? Yeah. Yeah, they're like Come up in the summer. Yeah, but they're gone. They're gone early. Yeah, you know, this is nothing. There's nothing I mean they killed like oh now like a Some crows whatever here and there. Yeah. But again, nothing, nothing that was enough to replace the calories. They were burning on it. So it's a, it's, what was fascinating to me about that story is like you go in, you know,

and I think this is like throughout the series, you go in like with one concept, you know, you're like, I thought a party, you know, it's cannibals. I know. Like I get it. Like you don't get it at all. When you do the research and in conjunction with doing the research, spend time in the place, trying to do the things that they have done, you have a completely new perspective on it. And so you go into this story being like, wow,

what a bunch of like fools that ended up eating each other in the mountains and you come out of it being like, wow, what a bunch of fools that ended up eating each other in the mountains, and you come out of it being like, wow, what a bunch of heroes. You know, this is the level of heroics that went into saving those kids. There's this great story about one of the women who stayed back at one of the two sites, which was Donner Lake,

it was right at the end of Donner Lake. She's basically responsible for all these kids. She delivers, as the story goes, she delivers the last kid to that rescue party, and then just leans up against the cabin wall and dies. The story is like full of these little, these little sub stories. Like that, that they just I find like incredibly moving and

like a total rewrite of what I understood of of that history. Yeah, I kept vowing that I was going to stop making any and all Donner jokes, Donner family Christmas, Donner dinner party, short lived resolution. No, I stuck to it. Now, you know, we were joking, like, did you know that, uh, um, Saddam Hussein has books of poetry. So just like you could say, like, you know, the poet Saddam Hussein,

no one says that right. He has a novel. So you can say the poet novelist Saddam Hussein. You'd never say that. So now someone's fine artist from now on I might actually. Yeah. When we overthrew the poet novelist Saddam Hussein. So now, you know, you'd be like Donner party, you know, I'm going to start doing something similar, but the opposite. I'm going to say, oh, the heroes, the Donner Party. Yeah. I'm not going to say, oh, dirty cannibals.

I'm going to say, you know, the heroes, the Donner Party. Saved all those kids. Saved all those children. Wonderful. Story of hope. You know, one of our finest moments. Story of hope. Half of them died, half of them lived. Almost half of them died them died, half of them lived.

Almost half of them died. More than half of them lived. And the other little sub note, and I'll make this the last thing on this, but like, I love the fact that it's named the Donner, you know, the Donner party and Donner pass. And we know it as the Donners. When you get into the history, pass and we know it as the Donners. When you get into history, George Donner stopped because he had wounded his hand trying to build a wagon wheel. Axle. He cut his hand and it was festering. So he stopped six miles short. George Donner, after which the entire fiasco is named, never even saw the past. Yeah, he died. He died even with a view of the past. He died of an infection. He got a somewhat

superficial cut on his hand. He thought he'd be fine. Died of an infection. Yeah, that's great. Never lays eyes on the past. Gets rich. And there's, there's a lot, I mean, you're so much more like they had, you know, uh, they had gotten into an internal fight on the way and had like a fatality, um, from internal squabbling and they, uh, the, uh, I believe it was the pie you, as they were approaching the past, the pie you in Nevada were, um, really whittling the away on their livestock. They had all these problems, all these normal problems, I should say, no. Yeah.

Oh yeah. All the problems, typical of people trying to cross, right? Um, they weren't, they weren't like exceptional in any way. And then, um, then during the gold rush, people were zoomed flooding over that thing, man, flooding over that pass. And now you're standing there and there's like a, the highway doesn't go

that way. There's a highway that goes over it. There's another highway over it. And you stand and you look and be like, who in the hell would think you could get a wagon through here? Yeah, I feel like I've seen the signs. It is a wicked pass. It's unreal. I mean, they, they took the wagons apart and block and tackle, pulled them up, the pulled them up those cliffs. And now it's like, you know, you're with an earshot of people going 85 miles an hour, a free way. Just driving in to do our work, driving into film. Like I get into the airport, find a Reno, find a Reno and start driving up the highway.

And you get to a sign and it says like Sacramento, 72 miles. Yeah. Like fuck. Yeah. Better make a reservation. What's the exact problem? Cause a PF Chang's there. Yeah. Seeing that side and be like, in your mind, like, Oh shit, now we'll be there. Yeah. We'll be over the mountains and out the other side and down in the valley. The hour, you know, imagine the shit that like what that 72 miles meant back then.

It's so funny. And you're on that highway. Also. So I had this like deflated feeling. Yeah. I'm like, Oh, this is a cool story. What pansies, anybody can make it over there. Watch. I'll be there in an hour.

No, it was great. So that's, uh, we covered three. Yeah. Yeah. There's five more. So we did one on the, um, oldest shipwreck in the Great Lakes. The first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes. Another fascinating story. We did one on the mysteries of the first Americans. We did one on, oh, we should have got, well, we should have got into cattle mutilations. Cattle mutilations is a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun too because there's another one

where I know I went in with one perspective, which bullshit like you walk away being like oh yeah yeah you know what's thing about if we wanted to do a podcast on catamulations I can't think of what one of the people we talked to be best to have on about these areas this is Sarah all good no we have to get a camera panel catalyzes got enough seats here for most of the people in the... Yeah, that's true. I don't know if you can fit all their hats in this room. What else we got? It's a big community. I mean, there's a lot of people out there that have had these experiences. Here's one for people. We did one on a thing now known as the Alaska triangle, which is a portion of Alaska that some argue has like this insane rate of disappearances, aircraft, missing people, ships.

Um, but we, we examined it through the lens of a particular flight called the baggage bogs flight again from the seventies where the speaker of the house hail bogs who, if you're an NPR fan, Cokie rop, the journalist, Cokie Roberts, who recently passed away, Cokie Roberts, if you ever listened to NPR news and you heard the journalist, Cokie Roberts, her

father was Hale Boggs. He was the speaker of the house. Alaska had one congressman, Nick Baggage and the speaker of the house. So like the speaker of the house, who's it now? Johnson. Um, uh, baggage and bogs are on a plane with a congressional aid and a pilot. And the plane goes missing and is still missing today. Has never been found.

Most of the search area focused around, the search area for a long time focused around a glacier. They thought perhaps it had gone into a glacier, and you'd be like, what do you mean by that? But we went to, in doing it, we went to a place where a plane, a much bigger plane, with many, many more passengers. 52.

Did get eaten by a glacier, and then many years years later regurgitated at the toe of the glacier. It's absolutely fascinating. They crashed this globe master, big prop plane. Military transport plane. 50 people on it. Service members on it. On top of this mountain, it falls into a crevasse, snowed over, and 70 years later, this massive glacier, colony glacier, spits it out the bottom as just shredded pieces of metal.

Every year, the military, every summer, the military goes and they scour the tour of that glacier and they're still identifying, it would be just finger bones glacier and they're still identifying it would be just finger bones and they're still identifying service members and we went we flew over in the helicopter we didn't want to land there because it's like oh you know it's almost like a grave site yeah we flew or after they did this summer's work and there's orange spray paint circles Wow all along that glacier there's not all on, but through a good chunk of that, there's like orange spray paint and markers and arrows and circles where they were recovering debris. The engines came out in big pieces, but a lot of it's

just, it's just like the, the, the pulverized, pulverized it to gravel. Yeah. So just a massive garbage disposal. I mean, you think what it does to mountains. Yeah. It's this little plane, man. Made of, you know. Yeah, small aluminum. Aircraft aluminum.

But what's crazy is, what's crazy is on this one, the Begich Bog's flight, the glacier they were looking at, they spent a lot of time on this glacier. The glaciers receded so much, and it's been so long, that when you look at the rate of flow of the glacier you can now rule out that it was in that glacier because it was in that glacier to spit it out by now. But it could spit it out in the bottom of a deep ass lake. So this is what's so cool is each one each little facet of each one of these mysteries has all these permutations, all these possibilities. Like what's cool about that is that glacier as it kind of came down the mountain and into the basin dug out a lake that's 800 feet

deep. Dude, this lake, you could paddle a canoe across this lake, some bitch is 800 feet deep. It's 800 feet deep. And one edge of it is just a wall of ice yeah so yeah it could have spat it out into 800 feet of water and little crumpled up pieces my guess out the spoiler alert I think it's in Prince William sound yeah hmm which is deeper yeah and. And muckier. And way bigger. Yeah. I think it's in Prince William's song. I'm not like out on a limb when I say that. Yeah. But they focus very heavily in one pass and one glacier at first. And this, dude, this pass, we go through it with a plan. There's a pass where you're like going, it's like the worst pass in the world.

Like, you know a pass you normally think like a straight thing? It's a pass where you're like, when you're in the worst part of the pass, you gotta take a 45, you gotta, sorry, you gotta take a 90 degree turn. So you're like going like, er! Sharp left, sharp right to get out of the pass.

It's like you're going up to a head wall and just take a left right. It's incredible, you fly to the end of this, this, you know, of turning an arm, right? This massive kind of valley. It's first, at first a body of water, and then this valley. Portage pass.

And then, and then Portage Glacier and Portage Lake, which we were talking about. And as you get to the very end of it, you make a 90 degree turn and only then can you see whether or not the pass is open. And if it's not open, you gotta check for oncoming aircraft too. Yeah. And if it's not open, you just got to keep turning and, and, and do a 180 and go right back to Anchorage.

We're sitting there in the past. We hiked up in the past and we went down this lake. We're sitting there and after a while we watch a plane. Yeah. He gets up. Comes back in his head, back to Anchorage. He's like, Nope, not today. Closed up that day. No sketchy pass. Yeah. But yeah, man. Um, I don't know what date, January 28th. If you want to watch the show, if people are listening to this, the day it drops, it is the 20th. So it'll be a week and a day from now the 28th. Yeah Mo's gonna do credits. It wasn't quite the, it wasn't quite the setup.

I was like, I was like kind of hinting at you, I was like, well kind of steer the last part of the conversation. There's a lot of amazing people involved in this. There are, listen, and I'm not, listen, I want to say, I want to say Mo's credit. Yeah Mo, and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not lot that goes into these shows. This is not just like, it's like, oh, you got to show Greenland, you go out and make it. This is years and years of like grinding in what's called the development process. So you take a show concept and you develop a deck on it

and you pitch it to various networks. And so like, we got to give credit to the people who did that work. It's the hardest part of making TV. Is developing the process. Going way back would be the constant attention of Ben Ford and Mark Pierce. Yeah, exactly. Ben Ford, Mark Pierce, Bridger Pierce, Chris Richardson,

all of the people over at Warm Springs who really shepherded this project from concept to like something that actually has funding and you're gonna go out and make. And on my end it was my wife Katie. Yep that's right. Drove it on my end for a long time. I also need to thank her she's the one that called me. I was like oh god don't call Mo.

She's like I always like Moe. So this tremendous group of people here that we got to partner with and work with. And the part that we do, that's the fun part. We go out in the field and hang out and go to the cabin and get to do all the fun stuff, fly around on glaciers and all that. But on the other side, when we talk about the network, like what was

really great about this experience and this show is like we had a tremendous team at the network too. I've had a lot of network experiences. It often is the case that you're getting network notes that are like don't like this, don't like this, don't like this. It don't like provide any constructive path forward. What's really unique here is working with like Max McAuliffe, Mary Donahue, Alexander Hicks, Eli Lehrer. Their notes are very very pointed and very constructive and it's a huge part of what has made this show successful. I've never worked for this network before you know and

instead of coming in and having to like just operate in the blind and figure things out this is like incredibly you know responsive and adept team that's got a blueprint for how you make these shows. And it was a real learning experience for me, telling these kinds of narratives. That's great, man. So it was all around, it's been an awesome experience. I hope we get renewed.

And do it again. It comes out, the show is Hunting History, comes out on History Channel, 10 p.m. Eastern, I could do the math all across the whole country, 9 Central, what happens? Eight Mountain, Yeah, Seven Donner. 10 o'clock in the Lost Colony and seven o'clock in Donner. I think if you're in Alaska, it's six or five or something like that, you'll figure it out. You'll figure it out up in Alaska. On the History Channel, and it follows the show that what's funny is a lot of the,

most people we talk to when we're working on our show and we talk about working with History Channel, they bring up how they can't. They don't like to miss curse of Oak Island. So it's right after curse of Oak Island on history channel, premier January 28th, then you can watch for eight weeks. Yep. Next year we'll make eight more. You'll watch the whole thing and never get to see Mo.

So you have to watch here if you want to see Mo check Check him out. Trust that Mo was there all the time. It's actually technically not true. I'm really bothered by one shot in Alaska Triangle where I'm like, I'm in this sweatshirt and I'm trying to I don't know if I can get over my headphones so I'm trying to hide

in the back of the helicopter like this as we're... Oh, so you have the cameo. Yeah. Oh, that's had a cameo. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. And you can see me and it's just like, who is that? Who's the weird dude in the hood in the back of the helicopter? Your lives are at risk.

There's a skyjacker. He's gonna jump. All right, thanks everybody for tuning in, man. And I hope you check out the show and I hope you have as much fun watching it as we had putting it together. Thank you. Yeah, man. And I hope you check out the show and I hope you have as much fun watching it as we had putting it together. Thank you. Thanks.

Thank you. Hey American history buffs, hunting history buffs, listen up, we're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series. In this edition titled The Mountain Men, 1806-1840, we tackle the Rocky Mountain Beaver Trade and dive into the lives and legends of fellows like Jim Bridger, Jed Smith, and John Coulter. This small but legendary fraternity of back woodsmen helped define an era when the West represented not just unmapped territory, but untapped opportunity for those willing to endure some heinous and at times violent conditions. We explain what started the mountain man era and what ended it. We tell you everything you'd ever want to know about what the mountain men ate, how they hunted and trapped, what gear they carried,

what clothes they wore, how they interacted with Native Americans, how 10% of them died violent deaths, and even detailed descriptions of how they performed amputations on the fly. It's as dark and bloody and good as our previous volume about the white-tailed deer skin trade which is titled The Long Hunters 1761 to 1775. So again this new mountain man edition about the beaver skin trade is available for pre-order now wherever audiobooks are sold. It's called Meat Eaters American History the Mountain Men 1806 to 1840 by me Stephen Rinella.