Will Cain Country - Steven Rinella: Exploring The Unsolved Mysteries of History! Plus, RFK, Jr. Gets Grilled By The Senate

Episode Date: January 29, 2025

Story #1: Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sits for his Senate confirmation hearing. Will shows you how the contentious inquiry is going so far.  Story #2: The��founder of MeatEater, Steven Rinella joins The Will Cain Show to talk about his new show on The History Channel called Hunting History, where he explores some of the unsolved mysteries of American History from the D.B. Cooper hijacking to the Lost Colony of Roanoke.  Story #3: Do you go to the grocery store with your wife? Where is the best place to meet people if you are single? A conversation with The Crew.  Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Subscribe to The Will Cain Show on YouTube here: Watch The Will Cain Show! Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For a limited time at McDonald's, enjoy the tasty breakfast trio. Your choice of chicken or sausage McMuffin or McGrittles with a hash brown and a small iced coffee for five bucks plus tax. Available until 11 a.m. at participating McDonald's restaurants. Price excludes flavored iced coffee and delivery. One, RFK Jr. sits for his confirmation hearing in the Senate live here on the Will Kane show. Two, Steve Rinella, founder of Meat Eater, has a new television series out all about hunting and history, where he takes on some of the unsolved mysteries of history, from D.B. Cooper to the Lost Colony of Roanoke. And today, we sit down with Steve Ronella. Three, do you go with your wife to the grocery store? Jesse Waters has lit the internet on fire and divided us here on the Wilking Show. It is the Will Kane Show streaming live at Fox News.com on the Fox News YouTube channel, the Fox News Facebook page, and always on demand by subscribing on Apple or Spotify.

Set a reminder on YouTube, and you can join us every Monday through Thursday live at 12 o'clock Eastern time. Or if you're listening on Terrestrial radio, as there are some three dozen markets across this great United States of America. If you liked the Wilcane show and you want to listen to it in another part of your day, go over to Spotify or Apple and hit subscribe. I'm excited to hang out with Steve Ronella. I'm excited to talk about histories, mysteries, and the way, actually, that intersects with hunting, outdoorsmanship. These all things that I love.

Now, all brought together in this new series, hunting history on the history channel with the founder of meat eater, Steve Rinella. But as we join you right now, here live, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is sitting in his confirmation hearing. I was just told just moments ago that it was getting fairly heated. It's been antagonistic. I would suggest not even with just Democrats, but also with Republicans. Let's take a minute now and dip in and listen to the hearing to approve Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the Secretary of HHS. He has even, I think, and I don't know that I want to ask him to get into it, but he has listed his assets and has gone through a discussion of the responsibilities under our ethics laws and is complied with all of those

requirements. Senator Tillis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Kennedy, how's your morning going? So far, so good. Good. You came prepared. I'm glad that you did. I, you, I believe, addressed my satisfaction and question about Title 10 and the president's priority with respect to Planned Parenthood. Can you just affirm that you are 100% behind the president's policy on time? I want to continue to monitor it. I'll ask the boys back in New York to continue to monitor this, specifically this line of questioning, potentially from North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis. It's going to be tough for RFK.

As I watched this today, this back and forth with senators, it's going to be tough sitting over his right shoulder, his wife, Cheryl, from Curb Your Enthusiasm, fame over her right shoulder, Megan Kelly of the Megan Kelly Show. But just doing the math, if Robert F. Kenny Jr. loses the same senators that were lost by Pete Heggseth. That would be Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Susan Collins. Well, he can't lose any other Republican senators. But, for example, Tom Tillis of North Carolina is deeply tied to the pharmaceutical industry. Chuck Grassley and other senators from the Midwest deeply tied to the agricultural industry. So how are you going to find the math to get 50 Republican senators? In fact, this was an image that came out on social media during the hearings.

This shows reporters already working on their stories. And you can see here the headline, right when the hearing starts, meaning nothing really has taken place yet. The headline reads, RFK Jr. face was grilling on anti-vaccine comments and animal mutilation, confirmation hearing, Trump live updates. They wrote that headline before anything had really taken place. Now, I will say I'm not as outraged as everyone else because I think that's exactly what ended up happening, not on animal mutilation.

I don't remember that moment just yet, and I've been watching this morning. But on vaccines, he's definitely been. answering tough questions and those tough questions make it difficult to come up with the math let's take one more listening here I want to see where North Carolina Senator Tom Tillis is taking this with RFK

the food because the dictates of the federal government have made it something that they don't want but they say well it's a healthy alternative it has processed materials in it and it's not particularly attractive to them so they throw it away trash cans full of food that these kids didn't eat So then what do they do? They go eat snacks or they go eat a sugar or they drink a sugar drink.

The SNAP program, everything you've said about the SNAP program, I agree with. I think that we should be very, very strict about that. And it's going to make some people uncomfortable in the food manufacturing segment produce healthy foods that we can run away before he gets to his disagreement and his challenges to RFK. But let's get into what we've heard so far with story number one. Robert F. Kennedy's opening remarks today in front of that Senate committee sounded a bit like this. The first thing I've done every morning for the past 20 years is to get on my knees and pray to God that he would put me in a position to end the chronic disease epidemic and to help America's children. That's why I'm so grateful to President Trump, the opportunity to sit before you today. and seek your support and partnership in this endeavor.

I will conclude with a promise. The members of this committee, to the president, and to all the tens of billions of parents across America, especially the moms, who have propelled this issue to center stage, should I be so privileged as to be confirmed, we will make sure our tax dollars support healthy foods. We will scrutinize the chemical additives,

in our food supply. We will remove financial conflicts of interest from our agencies. We will create an honest, unbiased, gold standard science at HHS, accountable to the president, to Congress, and to the American people. We will reverse the chronic disease epidemic and put the nation back on the road to good health. Robert F. Kane Jr. played an integral role in the election of Donald Trump as president. One could argue that It may not have happened without RFK. He brought together a coalition that doesn't normally coexist. You know, I will tell you, I've heard even this morning,

I really was hoping this was a quote that I heard this morning, just anecdotally. I was really hoping that he would get confirmed as head of CHSSS. Why? I said, because everything is so messed up with our health. And not that I agree with him 100% on everything he's ever held or any position he's ever held, but you need something radical. And RFK's focus on chronic disease and medicinal remedies to everything that's ever happened to us health-wise is the type of radical shake-up that I think everyone, if not everyone, a huge percentage of people, not just on the right, but in America are ready to embrace, but not, for example, Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat, who took RFK to task over what he called conspiracies about vaccines.

Senator Kennedy has embraced conspiracy theories, quacks, charlatans, especially when it comes to the safety and efficacy of vaccines. He has made it his life's work to so doubt and discourage parents from getting their kids life-saving vaccines. It has been lucrative for him and put him on the verge of of immense power. This is the profile of someone who chases money and influence wherever they lead, even if that may mean the tragic deaths of children.

I don't think that's what we're looking at here, with all due respect to Senator Ron Wyden. I don't think RFK is exhibiting the behavior of someone who is chasing fame and clicks in virality wherever he goes. And for Democrats, for example, Senator Maggie Hassan, of, I believe, Rhode Island, questioning him about how could you work under President Trump when he is pro-life and you're pro-choice, they're all reverting to political tribalism, predictable dividing lines,

when the whole point of this entire coalition, from RFK to Tulsi Gabbard to Donald Trump is that what brings us together is bigger than what drives us apart. Okay, well, Trump and RFK, they're not together, for example, on abortion, but Trump's the boss. And RFK has an opportunity to step in and bring radical change, the kind of change that I think many Americans want when it comes to health,

he has a chance to bring radical change without demanding that his boss have 100% the same politics that he's had throughout his career. I don't think, and I'll leave it up to you, the listener, I'll leave it up to you, the viewer. That exposes Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as a grifter. But someone who sees an opportunity to make real change and not letting perfect be there,

enemy of the good. Walter Kern. Yesterday we had Matt Taibi here on the Will Cane show. He does a show often with Walter Kern. Walter Kern just tweeted this out. He said, so this Senate confirmation hearing is a kind of bullying session, and it has taken on those tones, in which people who have manifestly failed to keep America healthy and overseen at steep decline harass someone who wants to try a new way.

He's absolutely right. You can't sit up there on that dais with any sense of authority. We lead the world in chronic health problems. We lead the world in obesity. We lead the world in prescription drug use, almost every prescription drug, including antidepressants and ADHD drugs. We're fat, we're sick, and we use medicine to try to fix us.

And the people that sit on that day us have helped overseen that entire industry complex. And if somebody else says, hey, we might need to pay attention to eating healthy and exercise and what we put into our foods, I don't know how. And not looking for medicinal solution to every problem. I don't know how with a straight,

face. You play the hero and he plays the villain. By the way, for the record, he said he's not taken away Diet Coke and burgers. Watch. To doing the research to understand the relationship between these different food additives and chronic disease so that Americans understand it and make sure that Americans are away. But I don't want to take food away from anybody. If you like a cheeseburger, a McDonald's Cheeseburger or Diet Coke, which my boss loves and you should be able to get them if you want to eat hostess twinkies you should be able to do that but you should know what the impacts are on your family and on your health and you should know and maybe we don't subsidize them maybe they're not covered by snap

maybe they're not incentivized with tax dollars maybe we're sane when it comes to health and food so you don't have to go hoarding your cheetos into the closet so that you can stock up over the next four years The biggest mysteries in history when it comes to outdoorsmanship, coinciding with hunting, things that we've talked about here, the lost colony of Roanoke, the Lumby's, the Melungeons. I love this stuff. Plus what happened to D.B. Cooper. Let's break down some of the biggest mysteries of history with Steve Ronella next on the Will Cain Show. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at foxnewspodcast.com. Whatever happened to the lost colony of Roanoke, did they intermarry, intermingle with Native Americans, did they become the tribe just recognized a week?

ago by Donald Trump, the Lumby's. Oh, they killed off. Did they starve? Could they not survive the winter? What happened to one of the first colonies in the United States of America? It's the Will Cain Show streaming live at Fox News.com on the Fox News YouTube channel and the Fox News Facebook page. Hey, hit subscribe at Apple, Spotify, and YouTube and be with us every day. As you can probably hear, I'm on the DL, but I'm not on the DL. I'm on the playing field, but I'm kind of pulling off Michael Jordan's flu game. As you can kind of hear, I'm not batting a thousand right now. But I'm fighting it.

I got myself a little honey tea concoction. And we're going to see if we can make it through 5 p.m. Eastern time today with another hour to go on the Fox News Channel. In that hour, I won't get to dive deep on some things that I really am fascinated by, at least not yet. That show is going to be an evolution. But I get to do it here and I get to do it now with the founder of a meat eater, Steve Ronella. What's up, Steve?

Hey, thanks, Will. Appreciate you having me on, man. And I was listening in and appreciate your comments about RFK Jr. I spent some time. I interviewed him for a few hours. And it was enlightening, man. I became a fan's not the right word, but he, he's someone that warrants paying attention to you, man.

I do. I think so too. And I think he's earnest. I don't think he is a crackpot or conspiracy theorist or seeking, you know, clicks in fame. he believes it i don't think he's right necessarily on everything but that doesn't matter necessarily because we've gotten so much wrong when it comes to health and food we might as well shake it up we do need somebody somewhat radical that's what i think i don't hang out with anybody who i think

is right about everything including my wife that's a great point man but i hang out a lot of people that I just, you know, I hang out with a lot of people that I think say a lot of things that are pretty compelling and interesting. Yeah. I want to mind that well for just a minute. I'm not going to try to push you into politics, but I think this is actually beyond politics. And look, you are somebody who's focused on food.

I think it's about health and well-being, man. But go ahead. Yeah. And it's somebody you, for example, have focused on food, the process of harvesting food, how you prepare food. And I didn't hear that conversation. It doesn't surprise me at all that you sat down with the RFK on your on your show but yeah i would have to imagine steve that you guys have a lot in common uh yeah we do

we both have been um i mean he's been very active and heavily involved in the um conservation movement and aspects of clean air and clean water uh i followed his work on that over the years and i think that he's also asking some pretty compelling questions about health and diet and as you know like you always go through these these trends and health and diet uh recommendations about food that seem to be somewhat biased and political at times um where one's diet becomes political uh political um yeah i think he's got some refreshing perspectives man i think he's asking some really important questions and i also think that that look at his willingness to go on and engage with with podcast hosts and people like me he's he's uh trump demonstration

demonstrated this as well of being willing to go into conversations that you don't know how it's going to go and being willing to sit down with people who are going to you don't have any expectation about what they're going to ask you're not paranoid about being put into a tough situation and he's willing to go in and have like real conversations and hear sides of things and then change his mind on stuff and not feel like he needs to be embarrassed about having his mind change on things so i like just that alone i applaud like someone being able to get out there and engage with the public and engage with people that aren't scripted and overly vetted as conversation partners. That's huge to me, man. That's huge. And again, that's something that Trump demonstrated that I was impressed with in the last election. It's just being able to get into a room and get out of mic with someone that you haven't gone over every question. And continues to do so, by the way, now that he's a sitting president, he's doing so from the Oval Office, taking wild, freewheeling Q&A sessions for an hour. Hey, Steve, I got to go up to Montana and hang out with you.

We went fishing together. My two boys came with me. I didn't really look around your kitchen. I didn't dig through your fridge. Are you and your wife and your family? Are you guys pretty, pretty disciplined about the food that makes its way into your house? Yeah, yeah, we are. Maybe I overdo it because now and then I'll come home.

If I'm on a trip, I might come home and my kids will confess to me that while I was away, they had chicken um chicken now and then i will find a bag of dino nuggets in my freezer and and and i don't like it and they get a kick out of pushing my buttons on it but yeah when we sit down at night like we make a big point i was raised this way we make a big point of having uh family dinner where everybody sits down together all five of us and um and at night we you know we eat wild game man and And it really brings us together. Everything, there's a discussion point. Now we spend a lot of time gathering that stuff up ourselves.

Of my three kids, I got two that are of legal hunting age in Montana. So this year they did most of our big game hunting for us. And yeah, that's what we like to eat. We celebrate it. It's a real unifying feature of our family. So out of seven nights a week, how many dinners is the entree, the main course, wild game? I mean, if we ate seven nights and row at our house, it's seven. Really?

I mean, like last night, you know, last night we had a meal deer roast. Tonight we're having, I'm brazen moose meat right now for moose tacos. We had some wild hog there at night. We eat a lot of meal deer. No, we eat game every night. Like, we're not going to sit down. Like, when we sit down at our house, we eat wild game. And we have enough of it, you know, like especially now.

Like, now I got, now that my kids hunt, man, I could, I could retire from hunting. We can just live off their stuff now. One last question. Then we're going to move to this new series, which I truly am. No gratuitous compliments excited about. Do you think, Steve, that it's possible? I don't even know, man. As I'm watching this and I see this grilling that RFK is getting on, you know, on Capitol Hill.

I just realize, and so do you. And we all do at this point, how big the pharmaceutical industry is. how big, big agriculture is. I don't know. I don't know how much we should get our hopes up. I just don't know if we can get RFK. Oh, you know, I haven't really, you know, I haven't read much about that, man.

Like, I haven't read about how they think that vote's going to go. I've been a little, I texted them a minute ago, tell them, hang in there. But I haven't read any, I haven't read any analysis. But you do know how powerful. analysis about what the vote's going to fall on but you do know how powerful those industries are and the influence they have overall absolutely absolutely but i don't know you know yeah if that if he gets voted down and he gets voted down because of industry pressure that would be pretty

depressing yeah it would be okay it's called um the the the hunting history it's on the history channel okay and it's got in this steve is going to attack several mysteries throughout history There's two that I'm particularly interested in But there's a couple I want to ask you about Because I may not I don't know everything about it But I've dove deep on D.B. Cooper I love the D.B. Cooper story

I'm not alone. For some reason, it resonates with everybody And I have dove not as Well, and I have dove a little bit Into the Lost Colony of Roanoke Not enough to profess even armchair expert But let's start there, man. I think that story is fascinating.

What happened to really the first colony here in the United States. Yeah, so we go back to late 1,500, you have, or sorry, you have a lot of the Western European countries are all, you know, duking it out over who's going to get a foothold in North America. The Spanish have, you know, are pulling a lot of gold out of South America from the Aztec Empire and elsewhere, and it puts this real competitive atmosphere. And at that time, Spain was really trying to thwart any efforts to colonize north of them. So Spain would send, you know, armed armadas up and down the coast, trying to root out anyone who's trying to establish a tollhold.

So as other countries, particularly England and France are trying to establish colonies, they're sort of doing it in open hostility with Spain. England had sent a few different exploratory vessels up and down the coast, but they had never tried to establish a permanent colony until what became the Roanoke colony. When they brought those people over, it was about 117 colonists, they bring them over, and their intention was to land them up in Chesapeake Bay. The thinking was you could get well inside Chesapeake Bay and literally probably hide from the Spanish, you know have a chance of not being detected by the spanish but the people responsible for bringing them there through a bunch of things we get into a little bit in the show they don't i mean and it sounds

like it sounds like i'm being flippant but they they basically dump these colonists on roanoke um without a real plan put together and it's not a place where they have a chance of really establishing a long-term colony and they're under pressure to begin exporting right They're supposed to be exploiting resources and exporting agricultural products, become self-sufficient. Right away, their leader, John Smith, he goes back across the Atlantic to get more supplies and help. But a war breaks out with Spain. They don't let any vessels travel. It's three years until anybody comes back and checks on these, you know, I think of them as abandoned colonists.

When they do check on, there's a hurricane brewing. They can only, they just, they determine that they're not on Roanoke and there's some evidence about where they might have gone. But then it's, it's several more years later till anybody comes and looks. And so by then it's just there's, there's effectively no trace. What surprises me is there's still people actively searching today. But that's the background. So in part of this, I think I've done this here on the show twice actually talked about the lost colony of Roanoke because here's two pieces of trivia. The first white woman European born on this continent was part of the lost colony

of Roanoke, Virginia Dare. As a piece of trivia, a lot of white nationalist stuff is actually named V. Dare to this day, which is kind of fascinating, that tie to that little fact of history. Second, I just got done reading this book, Steve, which I loved. It's called Demon Copperhead. It's a fiction book. But the main character in it, it's in Eastern. Yeah, it's in Western Virginia. And the main character is a malungeon. I was like, what is a malungeon? And so I felt on this rabbit hole of like these like unique racial subgroups in the United States.

Are they Native American? Are they not? Are they freed slaves who intermarried with white people? You know, like genetically and culturally, there are these subgroups that we don't know about. There's the Ramapo up in New Jersey. Same kind of thing. And one of those groups is the Lumby. Okay.

Now the Lumby are part of your story, this lost colony of Roanoke. And last week, President Trump designated the Lombie as an official Native American tribe. But there is one theory that the settlers, the colonists of Roanoke, decided we can't make it on our own. And they had friendly relationships, right, with one tribe, the Croatans, and they intermarried. And they genetically became what we know of today, at least whatever we are, 200, no, 500 years later, the Lumbie, right? That's one theory of what happened to the lost colony. I think that after looking at it, man, I think that there's, I think that every theory could be, I shouldn't say every theory. I think that many theories could be a little bit true.

And I knew this part of the story going back to all the way to being in, you know, elementary school is when they came back to check on Roanoke, prior to Smith's departure, they had come up with this little plan. If you guys move, they were supposed to write on a tree, like literally scratch into a tree where they're headed to. And they had some symbols they were supposed to use whether it was under de-rest or not. So one thing they find is on, there was a tree and there was basically like a fence post or a palisade corner that had been marked, one had been marked Croaton and one had been marked C-R-O-A-T, so like partially having written it. What that would refer to is the modern-day island of Haddon. south of Roanoke was the island that was inhabited by a group, the Croatone. And they had some friendly relations with the Croatone. Actually, there had been a Croatone man who had gone all the way to England

and toured around and met royalty, right? And they had a connection there. The question you get into is, for me, how many of them were there even left to go there? And let me point out an interesting thing here. right when they got to roanoke within days of getting to roan oak one of the settlers one of the would-be settlers was killed he was out he was out collecting blue crabs fishing for blue crabs was shot full of arrows earlier i had mentioned that england had done various exploratory missions up and down the coast and they had mishandled the diplomacy and had created some open hostilities with some of the many tribes in the area so when the settlers landed at roanoke they were sort of like dropped into a they were dropped into

conflict that they probably didn't even really understand and so right away one of them gets filled with arrows and that's immediately within days so if you go over the next three years how many more violent deaths befell this group so that later when they said we're going to crow to like how many i can guarantee you one thing it wasn't 117 was it 10 was it 5 And there are archaeologists that are currently doing digs on Hatteras looking for artifacts from the colonists, and they find interesting stuff. But their stuff would have made it there, whether it walked there with them or not, because it would have been of value. It would have been picked up and traded and spread around, right? What about the genetic ties?

Did you get, did you die into that in history? That was a big, I never found around. Looking at those modern day tribes, do they have genetic markers that would suggest they go back to? western europe yeah no you yeah i i miss getting that um it's really compelling and i wish it was better i i wish there was a way to get into the really nuanced detail of if we had good genetic material from those actual individuals right because from that day forward you know like england the english had a a foothold there and the english had soldiers that were going there so there's a lot of ways in which you could have had

offspring from English, you know, Native Americans in English. It'd be really interesting if you found a way to pull genetic, like specific genetics from those people at that time, but I don't think that's possible.

One of the researchers I spoke to that felt like the one thing that he thinks is plausible to find definitive proof of where those colonists went is he points to a Christian burial if you could find a Western

European, a person of English descent buried in a Christian burial at another site meaning it was that individual was buried by their fellow countrymen because he said you could have assimilated you could have adopted cultural norms but probably the last thing to go

would be funiary or funeral rights so when he talks about what would really satisfy him it would satisfy him to find a suspected roanoke colonist buried elsewhere in a christian fashion but he when he searches he says i otherwise he can't think of what would be like a definitive proof the genetic stuff's interesting but i think you're always going to have these other other bits of noise about how right

how those genetics could have become when did it happen yeah like when who right um one more question on the lost colony rona so when i fell down the rabbit hole of this because there's a couple of theories, right? They assimilated. They starved out. They were killed by Native Americans. On the starved out front, I also ended up, you know, chasing the rabbit hole of Jamestown and some of the failed colonies actually up there in the Chesapeake. There were so many failed opportunities. And in Rowan being one of these failures, this ties into who you are and what you know, your expertise, Steve. Like, I guess you have this image. I have this image in my head. Like, there's wild game and the ability to farm. Really honestly.

in most, certainly Eastern America. Arizona, that's a different ball of wax, right? But, like, when you looked into this, like, why is it so hard to scratch out a life in Virginia, granted, with no infrastructure whatsoever, but I would just think between game and I guess they did put down roots in some places with some bad soil I read. They couldn't really raise stuff specifically where they were.

But it didn't seem like it's Virginia, North Carolina, are wholly inhospitable. No, they're not. And I wondered about that, but you have to consider that there's a couple things that are important to keep in mind here. When they brought them over, these are people traveling sometimes,

they have infants with them. Okay? They're trying to bring over families. Had you brought over, had you gone and found 100, you know, a hundred people ranging in age from 18 to 35, all of them agronomists, right, professional fishermen and assembled some sort of

like expeditionary force meant to go there and find food security, perhaps, but they didn't operate in that way. And in fact, when you look at the time, what is known about the exploratory missions in that area, the colonists in that area, they spent, it seems like the bulk of their time they spent trying to buy and trade for corn from Native Americans. And that was the most suitable crop there. And keep in mind, too, that corn is a new world crop. So here you had people that since the dawn of agriculture in North America have been

successfully raising corn, and that's like the suitable crop for that area, but that wasn't what they knew. Also, you know, the Native American presence on the landscape, you know, pick your favorite number, but probably somewhere in the vicinity of 15,000 years of like adaptive evolution on a landscape and also getting a very good sense of what is a stable population and how to disperse, how to move seasonally.

It just took a long time to figure out how to exploit those resources in the same way if someone took you and me and brought us and put us in the Sahara, we would falter, right? And then a person that's been in the Sahara, era for a culture to spend the Sahara for 8,000 years would be like, I don't get it. What's the big deal?

But we'd be so out of our element. And so I think you kind of find that theme of taking people from London and urban environments, tradesmen, and all of a sudden you dump them in this place where they're scared and paranoid. Travel is limited because of hostilities because you keep blowing your diplomatic opportunities. And, you know, you create like a, you create paranoia and people being locked. up and it just falls apart. Man, looking back, I would have hated to have been part of one of those groups. It does sound awful. It just seems like a lot of them seem like the original continental horror stories, dude.

All right, I want to get into D.B. Cooper in just a moment, but you do several episodes and not all of these. You do the Donner Party. You do several others. Which one did you like the best? Like I honed in on D.B. Cooper in the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Which mystery did you like best? The one that surprised me most was the Donner Party, and I hate to admit it, but when we started in on kicking around ideas, I was, I don't know why. I was for some reason reluctant to do, I was reluctant to dig into the Donner Party. I can't really remember why, but I just felt there wasn't much there. But that wanted to be one of my favorite things to explore, partially because I had an idea about it that was really inaccurate.

if you go to most Americans like you know the daughter party can almost be people use it almost like a joke right like it's a it's a can't like the subject of cannibalism comes up someone's going to make a donner party joke cannibalism was certainly part of the Donner story

but earlier I mentioned with the Roanoke colonists that they had children well of the 90 people that got stranded in the Sierra Nevada in the winter 1846 of the 90 people over half were children.

So when you look like, you have kids, I have kids. When you start to examine it like what happened during that horrible winter, the things that happened were the

result of people, of parents, of families doing everything possible. And I mean everything possible to try to keep your children alive. We talk about the half of the Donner Party, you know, not quite half died. More than half survived. Children had a higher survival rate than adults. So when you get into this lens,

it's like rather than it being like some American horror story again or some dark cannibalism, Edgar Allan Poe type vibe, you look and it's like families and parents struggling mightily, and doing like I said everything they could to try to save their families and in that whole case there's an interesting thing about it of the cannibalism that did occur they would even take measures to have to try to ensure that you didn't need to eat your own family members but there's a dark side of this too because they they had it seems as though of the cannibalism they were only eating people who had already died except one man killed two Native American guides one could argue that they're maybe on the

edge of death but they weren't dead he killed two Native American guides and what's crazy is at that time in California that was not illegal so this guy was maligned later but he survived the man that murdered the two Native American guides for food

survived and never faced any kind of never faced any kind of criminal trouble you could have gotten more trouble back than if you'd shot someone's cow than if you shot those two Native American guides so that is like a dark element and there were some villains

but there was some incredible heroes involved with it and so what changed about my mind about it was rather than saying like oh what a dark and grotesque thing it's like what a heroic just like a heroic

battle to save families what is it about cannibal that draws us. It draws me. I don't know if it's just the darkness. Like this story draws me. I'm drawn to this reading stories about that tribe out in the South Pacific that has no contact and that guy went and tried to minister to him be a missionary recently, like in the last 20 years. And then of course the plane crash in the Andes, you know, I've seen every movie they put out about that one as well. I don't know what it is. Why are we so attracted to the stories about cannibalism well you know i think it's like um it's taboo for sure but i think that when you

get to that point in a story when you get to that point in a story it's the one it's a real surefire way that you know things got bad yeah you're at you're at the you're at the absolute you're at the absolute edge you know you're at the absolute edge and so i think it's like shorthand it's shorthand for um things were as bad as it could get and it's also just you know because of the cultural taboo it's horrible to think about and when we were working on that episode just our own private conversations with me and the guys I work with when we're working on that episode we kept debating it and and at the end of it what would you do it debating would you do it exactly yeah like like you know and no one really you don't no one really knows no one

really knows but in debating it right um we all came to the you know you know we all admitted in the end they were like we wouldn't have done like after looking at the whole thing is like we wouldn't have done anything differently and uh i would do it i got i got a body that used to live in oh sorry go ahead i was gonna say i would do it i don't i don't they don't you know that what's harder for me it's like i've seen again all those movies about the plane crash in the andies of course you don't want to do it and you do everything possible but you get to that moment in the movie or in the story when they do it and it's revolt um you know it's revolting to them they literally wretch that's actually kind of hard for me to um put myself into it's like

it's meat at some point it becomes meat i would think i don't know of course i don't know but i don't think that the taboo would keep me from doing it in order to survive no and and think about it this way too like put yourself in the situations many people in the donner group is beyond us that you survive, you would definitely think about it differently if it was a matter of your children surviving. And there's an interesting detail that comes out of that aspect of protecting your kids.

There was a group called the Forlorn Hope, and it was a group that broke off from the stranded Donner Party members, and they wanted to go over Donner Pass and try to get to an establishment called Sutter, by a guy named Sutter, that had his place in California down down toward present-day Sacramento.

So they wanted to try to make a break for it and they fashioned snow shoes and they're going to walk out. Some of the people that struck off on this rescue group to seek help, some had kids, some didn't have kids. The people with kids lived. That term forlorn hope, they had a thing they had to struggle.

They had a thing they had to struggle for and were less it seems less likely to succumb to just the despondency of the whole thing because they had a thing pushing them along and motivating them. But on the subject of cannibalism, I recently

spent some time with a interviewed for a while a guy that lived in the bush, that lived in the Alaskan bush in the 70s and 80s. And they just lived entirely off the land. And him and his friends, they made a pact with each other.

that should it come down to it they made a pack that like we accept among our group that it's fair game should they come down to it we all agree that we would like to be used for food and he has this this insane story where eventually one of the guys um that he's kind of intertwined with does starve to death and when he finds him he's shocked this guy uh randy finds the body in a cabin stuff starved to death. And he's shocked to see that there's effectively nothing to eat. He said it's just skin laid over bone. And so he said all this time when he's like picturing what that would be like and then to see a starvation victim, it just wasn't what he thought. He was just able to pick him up and just lay him out on the tundra. Just lift him like a baby. You know, and so that all played

part of this conversation about like what you would do in the most dire of situations you know all right last one i'm i imagine you are as well steve um i'm always i'm attracted to the wild wild west yesterday on the will cane show on fox news channel i actually got into this thing that senator mike leave utahs talked about where the government can issue letters of mark and reprisal which allows private citizens to essentially become what we know of is called privateers right and you can go like attack enemy ships and you get a cut of the loot and the government can write you

these letters of Mark, right? And there's something about that. Yeah, Mike Lee's saying maybe we should do this with the drug. I didn't know that that was still a career choice. It hasn't been done over 100 years. But he was making the argument

maybe we should do this when it comes to the drug cartels. And you just know there's a bunch of good old boys from eastern Oklahoma and Texas that are ready to take up that challenge. But the point I'm kind of segueing into here is I don't know.

I love. I love stories where there's still the sense of wildness to it. You know, I think that's what it is about D.B. Cooper. He got away with it. Of course, I don't root for criminals, but the last time I think there's ever been a successful air hijack, right? He parachutes out over into the wilderness of Washington. Isn't it Washington? No.

Or is it Oregon? Somewhere over in there. And he disappears. Yes. And we never know. So leaving CTAQ headed south. Okay. Yeah.

And I'm hoping most of the audience knows the story of D.B. Cooper, if not, he was, you know, dressed in a suit, sunglasses, smoked cigarettes, was a gentleman to the flight attendants, but he took over the flight, said he had a bomb, and then made him on a refueling stop, give him. How much money was it, Steve? He got. I don't even remember. $200,000. Yep, and then he bears you up back over the way. They gave it to him in 20s. He bought a plane ticket in Portland. I think his plane ticket was $20-some just walked in, bought a plane ticket. What's an interesting little part of this is he presents the name. The name he uses is Dan Cooper.

Later, this is so crazy that we're running around. Like, I say D.B. Cooper, you say, everybody says D.B. Cooper. He buys a ticket under the name, Dan Cooper. And this is, it's Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving or Thanksgiving Eve? Thanksgiving. It's Thanksgiving. Bides a ticket under the name, Dan Cooper.

Later, a journalist in the initial hours of this happening, a journalist overhears a conversation with an investigator. An investigator is talking to someone on the phone. The journalist swears the investigator said, D.B. Cooper. But he didn't. He said Dan Cooper. Publishes. Here's the great question. Publishes DB. If it had been Dan Cooper. And if it had been Dan Cooper, would we be, there wouldn't be songs, written about Dan Cooper. There wouldn't be an obsession with Dan Cooper. It had to be

DB Cooper. Yeah, it's our only unsolved skyjacking. It's also insane. This is the thing I didn't realize getting into this. There was like in that era in the 70s, there was a legitimate global skyjacking problem. I mean, it was a problem. There was copycat skyjackings. I mean, it was like, you know, it was a thing that was going on all over. It was for political purposes, purposes but he winds up being the only unsolved one and and I think that part of him becoming a folk hero is not just that he got away with it but people view it as somewhat of a people view it as somewhat of a victimless crime he was a gentleman to people the surround that he was surrounded by the final the last flight

attendant that he has any interaction with he offers her some money some of the money he wants to give her some of the money she doesn't take it she asked him if he has a grudge against the airline he says i just have a grudge uh hurts no one sure he stole money but you know people can write that off like they just assume that some insurance company somewhere took a hit for the money and so he's uh he got away with it you know he got away with it or not like we don't really know i i went into it pretty convinced man like i went into it pretty convinced that he didn't survive the jump i thought that explained a lot i thought it explained a lot about why those the we know the serial numbers and all that money and why the bulk of that money

never turned up because it was with him and he burrowed into a hole you know and didn't survive his jump and so there wasn't a guy out making the money spending the money there wasn't a guy out traveling around and it just helped to me it helped explain not solving it but after spending time with parachuters that have done 14,000 jumps, special forces guys who are trained in parachutes. None of them has any reason to think he didn't survive that jump.

They're like, no, he's fine. No problem. You know, and so that started to change my mind. But he had to survive the elements of the wilderness as well, not just the jump, right? It was a really remote area. That's where we wind up focuses on attention. So there's

some people that believe that he takes off out of CTAC and he wants to to Mexico but they inform him the flight crew informs him we can't make it that far and they suggest landing maybe I can't remember where maybe they suggest land into LAX or something

he doesn't want to go there as too big too busy they make a deal they're going to land and refuel in Reno so this is all happening in the air so if he takes off it's dark out when he takes off and they're debating what direction they're going to go so when he does jump out of that

plane I don't care what What anybody argues on this one about him having an accomplice on the ground or him having like visual cues about where to jump, I don't buy any of that. When that guy jumped, I don't think he had really any sense within probably a 50-mile radius of where he was. I don't think he did. Pitch black raining at that altitude, it's like negative 7 degrees or something like that when he jumps.

And he just pitches out into the night. there's big reservoirs in that in that FBI search zone I mean there's some major reservoirs there's big rivers in that area right and he just pitched out so the audacity but then again talking to really experienced jumpers who've done a lot of night jumping and other stuff they're like you know I don't see it being that much of a problem which kind of stunned me like I did a jump just to get a feel for it but it was nothing like that I jumped in the daytime strapped to a seasoned parachute guy you know but yeah he hit the ground and he might and he would have had to have tried to figure out where he was he's got this parachute he's got this duffle of money um

there's no way he had someone waiting on the ground so the fact that he didn't have interactions and he might have had interactions but if he had interactions those people have kept their mouth shut right since the 70s right And then it's just, yeah, I mean, it's like it's a bottom. So you went into it, you went into it thinking he didn't survive. Now, there are a couple of guys, and I've listened to all kinds of podcast series on this that focus on each one of these guys that have been legitimate, legitimate carries a lot of weight. I don't know if they've been law enforcement focus. They were at some point.

Some of these guys were green berets. Some of these guys had done similar copycat style skyjackings. at the end I mean when I've listened to all this Steve I come away thinking well on one hand I think it's really close like it's got to be this guy but they've never made an arrest and I think the case is closed

they're not even trying anymore so do you at the end of it do you have a guy that you think was DB Cooper I know I personally don't I talk to people that are pretty I talk to people that are pretty convinced about certain ideas but it's not the same idea so like when I'm hanging

out with people that have devoted decades or you know their life to this and you meet a couple of them you look and they're like a very equal credentials and they've got equal amounts of time in it and they're each convinced that it's a totally different person right there's not like there's not a sort of you know it's that i wouldn't call it an academic consensus but there's not a there's not a consensus emerging with the lead investigators in the story they mean they looked at thousands of people there's a theme that came about like someone within aviation because they had pretty good knowledge of the aircraft. Someone with a background and doing crazy stuff, like jumping out of planes.

So they looked at a lot of Vietnam guys, someone disgruntled or someone with a grudge, looked at guys returning from Vietnam, nothing to lose, adventure seekers. But no, I mean, if we got to a point where the half dozen leading investigators, citizen sleuths on this, all narrowed in on the same individual, I'd start paying attention, but right now they don't agree. Okay. and you've had so many people come forward and say it was my dad you know i know i know i've seen that check out the parachute in my basement you know uh well i'll be watching he's got the

donner party um by the way that's another rabbit hole that i've fallen down these great lake shipwrecks which he focuses on some of those as well um the whatever happened to the uh the pebblin people the alaska triangle this is all part of uh steve rnella's new series hunting history on the history channel which i think everybody should check out it's fun to talk to you man thanks for uh sharing this with us today i make sure i'm not feel better i'll be watching thanks man i got it more i got more work to do today we'll be watching that nomination process take care all right we'll pull through all right thank you steve there goes steve rnella the founder of meat eater uh and the host of hunting history make sure you check that out let's take a quick break we're going to come back we're going to wrap

this up by diving into the debate to jesse waters the internet go crazy about and divided us here on the Will Cain show. Do you grocery shop with your wife? Coming up on the Willcane show. This is Jimmy Phala, inviting you to join me for Fox Across America, where we'll discuss every single one of the Democrats' dumb ideas. Just kidding, it's only a three-hour show.

Listen live at noon Eastern or get the podcast at Fox Across America.com. Listen to the all-new Brett Bear podcast, featuring Common Ground, in-depth talks with lawmakers from opposite sides of the aisle, along with all your Brett Bear favorites, like his all-star panel, and much more. Available now at Fox News Podcasts.com or wherever you get your podcasts. I didn't dive in. I didn't care, but the Internet's all mad.

They're mad at Jesse Waters. Because he said, what kind of man grocery shops with his wife? It's the Will Kane Show streaming live at Fox News. dot com on the fox news youtube channel and the fox news facebook page hit subscribe at apple or on spotify the boys back in new york part of this debate because this divided us can i just say when stevenella jumped on the show i was very happy that i didn't choose to wear that shirt today i have the same shirt you're wearing and i was really thinking about wearing it instead i wore the gray one he's got the green poncho it would have been pretty funny though it would

have been like one of us has to change Okay, I didn't really pay attention I saw the internet was mad about it Here's what they're mad about Play it two days The New York Post caught her grocery shopping With Dougie Fresh What kind of husband goes grocery shopping

With his wife All right, everybody got mad at him And not just those on the left This wasn't a partisan issue Was there a gender divide? And this is you two of days This is like your thing You even wanted to name a segment

segment here today's rant or something Tuesdays takes you want to twist off on Jesse look I respect Jesse he's great love him he's the best one of the best to do it but he's just wrong it's crazy one of the best it's crazy

look I saw that and I was like what are you talking about man and I didn't even think that anyone else would have this opinion I was like everyone grocery shops together when they're you know husband and wife girlfriend I don't know I just thought it was the thing

Everyone does that I thought maybe it's where I grew up I don't know Everyone I know goes together So I thought this was a ridiculous take And I was like Jesse What are you talking about A lot of the internet agreed with me

So I felt a little Valid in my thoughts Patrick Do you grocery shop with your wife Not at all They ever Even when we were younger And with no kids

They have 22 kids So you know it's different but I think it's well I do think that's part of it I don't I haven't and again like Patrick I'm trying to think back before I had kids right when I was a newlywed in those first year or two did we do that together maybe but not every time it wasn't presumed it wasn't like let's go to the grocery store together it was like hey you want to go with me today sure why not yeah not every time not every time but a lot of times like especially Especially, and I was saying in our group chat last night, my wife is a pescatarian.

She doesn't eat meat, but eats fish. She has no idea what she's shopping for when she's getting meat. So I have to go, and I do the meat cooking. You cook. Yeah. Yeah, you said you cook. Patrick, do you cook? I can cook.

I don't cook a lot. That's a no. That's a hard no. I'm batting a thousand. I mean, I'm getting older kids now, so they cook a lot more. And, you know, it's kind of nice. I'm batting a thousand. pretty much on never cooking

really like I don't cook you just never learned or don't want to I mean I can do something for my sons like I can make a sandwich or something like that nice no but they like it they like it when I do it because it's always like I it's a treat

you know mayo and chalula on it it's good a little mayo ham sandwich on white bread it's about it's a good with chalula yeah yeah what's chalula you got spice it up Hot sauce.

You say what is Chulula? Yeah, that's a new one. Really? He's from New York. He doesn't know about that stuff. White bread, New York, Westchester. What do you use for hot sauce, James? I don't know.

I usually use chick-fil-A sauce. Chick-fil-A sauce and barbecue sauce. Put that on everything. Yeah, you got to grow up. You don't use hot sauce? like I'm really big on like, how about this? Tabasco that's, that's, yes.

Not since growing up. The most popular one. I put it on everything. I kind of like just stick to like four or five meals that I like. Like I go to a deli. I got two orders. Nothing. It works. You stick to it. You're good. Less decisions. They have Chalula

downstairs on the third floor in the cafeteria. Okay. I'll try. They're in little packets. Put it on like a pulled pork. anything i love i love it's not my favorite dan do you use hot sauce on everything i put most things i put a hot sauce what your go to um i do franks a lot and then chalula frank's right hot um the ranking goes like this this is what you got to have in your fridge top of tio is number one love it great then chalula and then you have saracha just as a curveball

sometimes if you need a little different flavor you're not in to regular hot sauce. There are times when I'm like, you know what this calls for? Saracha. And then, by the way, my wife, because she goes to the grocery store, buys chili crunch, which is like a tie thing. You know what I'm talking about? You have to get it out with a spoon.

And then you put that with your eggs as you're like frying an egg. That's great. That's really good stuff. Really good. See, these are the reasons why I need to go to the grocery store with my wife because I need to get all these little nuanced things that she doesn't really know about. I love you. You're great. You cook very well. But I cook most of the time and I need certain things that you wouldn't know about. And it's also kind of like a little date. It's like a little

date time, you know, hanging out with your wife. It won't continue. It won't continue. Want to make a bet? You think for the rest of your life, you and your wife are going to the grocery store together. Not every time, but for the most of the time. It's got to be over 66% like two thirds or 75% or three quarters of the time. I would say yes. So in 10 years, what do you think it's going to be? It's going to be under 50%. I bet 75% still in 10 years. 65. We'll be going together.

65. Bring the baby. Do you go once a week? My wife goes to the grocery store a lot. Yeah, once. She's a multiple. That I don't care. Once twice a week, I'll go.

Yeah. I love trying new things. I try new recipes. I need to get new things and all that. Anytime I go to the holes. I'm not with Jesse. I'm not making fun of you, Dan. for doing it, but I am on Jesse's side

where I was like, I didn't know this was a thing that people do. They go to the grocery store. See, that's really funny. I didn't know that was a thing. I was talking to my wife last night about this. I was like, I'm going to bring this up. And she goes, I bet Will doesn't go grocery shopping. And she was right. You know, there's a new trend. Because your

wife, sorry, James, your wife has me pegged as a right wing tragic masculinity, traditional household. And so she's making those assumptions, and she's right. No, no, no, it wasn't like that. It was just, no, she's a huge fan of Will Kane, but she just thought that was something she could pin down on you. I haven't gone to you, James, because what do you have to contribute to this conversation with Chimplea sauce?

You'd be surprised. Here, here, I'll throw you a curveball. One, I have gone grocery shopping with girlfriends and found it really wholesome, although that's the honeymoon phase, so I imagine that gets old pretty quick. Two, there is a new trend in New York City and the very, like, the anti-examination. anti-dating trend app of like find your girlfriend in a normal setting that like the grocery store is apparently a good place to go. I've met a girl in a grocery store before. Whole foods.

You go to Trader Joe's. And I, from just observation, I haven't actually gone up and talked to anyone, but it does seem like a decent idea. It's working out for you so far. It does seem like a good idea. Yeah. I think so. If I were you, James, and I were single in New York City, this is my advice.

Everywhere is a great place to meet a girl. The subway, the street, the grocery store, it doesn't have to be at a bar. My point is if you see someone and they catch your attention, you should say, hey, what's up? Don't be creepy, though. You know, don't be creepy, but you, hey, hey, what's up? I'm James. Nice to meet you. I used to do all the time, I knew.

Correct. Yeah. The phones, the phones have made it harder on our generation just because we don't, necessarily know how to do that anymore but it's you figure it out you're like hey can i instagram you and then dm you and ask you out i'm sure there's a video on youtube you can watch to kind of get the pointers yeah hold on what time i got to go plus i'm losing my voice and i got a tv show today uh 10 foil how'd you meet your wife uh we were in a church youth group together oh that's awesome wow church youth group there we go dan how'd you meet your wife bumble i was on it

Two weeks, I met her. Wow. Two weeks. Okay. Yep. Yeah. College for me. College.

That's a classic. Was she pepperdine? Pepperdine? Pepperdine. Pepperdine. Yeah, she went to pepperdine. Nice. All right.

Yeah. All right. All right. I'm going to try to recuperate here in the next couple of hours. We'll see at 4 o'clock. Eastern time for the Will Cain show. We'll also be back here right here. Same time.

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