Ep: 652: Hunting History

Summary

Podcast Summary: The MeatEater Podcast – Episode 652: Hunting History

Release Date: January 20, 2025

In Episode 652 of The MeatEater Podcast, titled "Hunting History," host Steven Rinella delves deep into some of America's most enduring outdoor mysteries. Joined by guest Dr. Randall and fellow team members Morgan Fallon and Phil, the episode explores intriguing historical events that intertwine with wilderness, hunting, and survival. This comprehensive discussion covers the legendary D.B. Cooper skyjacking, the enigmatic disappearance of the Roanoke Colony, and the harrowing experiences of the Donner Party. Each segment not only unpacks the historical context but also examines the human elements and environmental challenges that shaped these mysteries.

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1. Introduction to Hunting History

Steven Rinella sets the stage for the episode by introducing the concept of exploring outdoor wilderness mysteries. He emphasizes the unique perspective that The MeatEater Podcast brings by approaching these stories through the lens of hunting, survival, and the natural environment.

Steven Rinella [00:00]: "Hey, American history buffs. Hunting history buffs, listen up. We're back at it with another volume of our Meat Eaters American History series."

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2. Exploring the D.B. Cooper Skyjacking

The conversation shifts to one of the most famous unsolved cases in American history—the D.B. Cooper skyjacking. Rinella and Dr. Randall break down the events of the 1971 incident, analyzing Cooper's tactics, the FBI's investigation shortcomings, and the myriad of theories that have emerged over the decades.

Key Points:

• Cooper's Plan: Dressed in a suit and loafers, Cooper calmly handed a note to a flight attendant, claiming he had a bomb. He demanded $200,000 in ransom and four parachutes before facilitating a mid-flight jump over the Cascade Range.

  Dr. Randall [44:48]: "He's got on loafers. He hands a flight attendant a note he has a bomb. He demands a couple hundred thousand dollars in twenties."

• Investigative Flaws: The FBI's inability to anticipate Cooper's actions, such as the open back door and the lack of immediate search resources, significantly hindered the investigation.

  Steven Rinella [54:45]: "The back step. The door goes pop... That's the FBI drop zone."

• The Mysterious Money: In the 1980s, money believed to be from Cooper was found floating in the Columbia River. However, discrepancies in serial numbers and the location of the find raised suspicions about its authenticity.

  Steven Rinella [63:14]: "He was wearing a wetsuit. Cooper was wearing a wetsuit."

• Emerging Theories: From burial theories to accomplice involvement, the duo discusses how each new piece of information only complicates the mystery further.

  Dr. Randall [66:08]: "So the next logical conclusion, you say, well, the drop zone's wrong again, he landed in some tributary, whatever it was washed down, got caught in a sandbar. That's totally reasonable to assume."

Notable Quotes:

• Steven Rinella [69:37]: "If someone can present that, they can say here they are, here's where, here's where they ended up."
• Dr. Randall [85:20]: "The reason that the story is so enduring is it invites all of this... interpretation."

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3. The Enigma of the Roanoke Colony

Transitioning from the skies to the seas, Rinella and Dr. Randall tackle the mysterious disappearance of the Roanoke Colony. They dissect the historical attempts to locate the missing settlers, the cryptic carving of "Croatoan," and the various theories surrounding the fate of the colonists.

Key Points:

• Historical Context: In the late 16th century, approximately 117 English settlers established the Roanoke Colony on what is now North Carolina. Led by Governor John White, the colony eventually vanished without a trace.

  Steven Rinella [72:33]: "The woman in captivity at the time was scratching a rock."

• Croatoan Clue: The lone surviving clue was the word "Croatoan" carved into a tree, suggesting possible assimilation with local Native American tribes.

  Dr. Randall [79:41]: "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 go."

• Modern Investigations: The discussion includes the discovery of the Dare Stone—a controversial artifact that purportedly contains messages from the lost colonists. The authenticity and intent behind the stone remain hotly debated.

  Steven Rinella [82:58]: "The Darestone... the writing on the Dare Stone is so, like, stereotypically ye olde English."

• Cultural Impact: The disappearance has become a staple in American folklore, inspiring countless theories ranging from integration with tribes to forced relocations and environmental disasters.

Notable Quotes:

• Steven Rinella [85:40]: "I don't think there's a clean answer. I don't think there's a clean answer."
• Dr. Randall [86:23]: "That's what's so cool about that is that you go in... you come out with a completely different understanding."

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4. The Donner Party: Survival and Tragedy

Perhaps one of the most harrowing segments, Rinella and Dr. Randall explore the tragic story of the Donner Party. They recount the ill-fated journey of 90 pioneers who became stranded in the Sierra Nevada during the winter of 1846-1847, leading to starvation and acts of cannibalism.

Key Points:

• Journey's Mishaps: The Donner Party, led by George Donner, took the Hastings Cutoff—a supposed shortcut—that disastrously lengthened their journey, resulting in them becoming trapped by an unprecedented snowstorm.

  Steven Rinella [94:15]: "The Hastings Cut off is shorter and easier... is longer and harder."

• Survival Tactics: Faced with dwindling supplies and extreme cold, members of the party resorted to cannibalism to survive, despite their deep-rooted religious beliefs and moral codes.

  Steven Rinella [99:31]: "They did everything they could possibly do to keep their families alive. And I don't think anyone would do anything differently."

• Legacy of Heroism: Contrary to popular belief, the episode highlights the resilience and heroic efforts of the survivors who prioritized saving the children and the weak, challenging the narrative of cannibalism as a mere act of desperation.

  Dr. Randall [108:07]: "You're walking into a program with like really specific, you know, structure and guidelines and it needs to be that way."

• Modern-Day Reflections: Rinella shares his personal transformation after re-examining the Donner Party's choices and actions, fostering a deeper appreciation for their struggle and the complexities of survival.

  Steven Rinella [109:23]: "We start up the snow and they start up catching tunnels out of their shelters... it's a total rewrite of what I understood of that history."

Notable Quotes:

• Dr. Randall [86:22]: "It's incredible... you're in there experiencing things and then making... assessments of a mystery based on those experiences."
• Steven Rinella [85:40]: "I don't think there's a clean answer. I don't think there's a clean answer."

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5. Additional Mysteries and Production Insights

Beyond the three main stories, the episode touches upon other unresolved mysteries such as the oldest shipwreck in the Great Lakes and the Alaska Triangle disappearances. Rinella and Dr. Randall discuss their investigative approach, emphasizing experiential research by reliving the hardships faced by historical figures to gain a nuanced understanding of each mystery.

Key Points:

• Field Research: The team conducts on-site investigations, recreating historical conditions to better grasp the challenges faced by individuals like D.B. Cooper, the Roanoke settlers, and the Donner Party members.

  Dr. Randall [85:20]: "The reason that the story is so enduring is it invites all of this... interpretation."

• Collaborative Efforts: They acknowledge the extensive groundwork laid by their production partners, highlighting the importance of a supportive network in bringing such detailed historical investigations to life.

  Dr. Randall [122:54]: "We got to give credit to the people who did that work. It's the hardest part of making TV."

• Community Engagement: The podcast underscores the significance of engaging with experts and enthusiast communities, which enrich the investigative process and offer diverse perspectives on each mystery.

  Morgan Fallon [125:22]: "Check them out."

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6. Concluding Thoughts and Upcoming Content

As the episode wraps up, Rinella and Dr. Randall reflect on the ongoing journey of uncovering and interpreting historical mysteries. They tease future episodes, hinting at more captivating stories that blend outdoor adventure with historical intrigue.

Steven Rinella [126:04]: "I hope you have as much fun watching it as we had putting it together."

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Notable Quotes Throughout the Episode:

• Morgan Fallon [00:12]: "Or just try to interject with some quips, some observations."
• Phil [12:05]: "Yeah."
• Dr. Randall [13:05]: "Got one for cinematography and one for producing."
• Morgan Fallon [35:23]: "Yeah."
• Dr. Randall [40:52]: "You want to be the producer, so usually one producer."
• Steven Rinella [85:40]: "I don't think there's a clean answer. I don't think there's a clean answer."

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Final Thoughts

Episode 652 of The MeatEater Podcast masterfully intertwines hunting history with profound investigations into some of America's most perplexing outdoor mysteries. By combining rigorous research with firsthand experiential insights, Steven Rinella and his team offer listeners a compelling narrative that redefines traditional historical accounts. Whether you're a history aficionado, a hunting enthusiast, or someone fascinated by unsolved mysteries, this episode provides a rich, engaging exploration that challenges perceptions and invites deeper contemplation.

For those eager to uncover more about these mysteries and the stories behind them, The MeatEater Podcast continues to be an invaluable resource, blending entertainment with education in every episode.

Transcript

[Stephen Rinella]

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 Colter. 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 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 1761-1775. 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 1806-1840 by me, Stephen Rella.

[Steve Rinella]

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless, the Meat Eater Podcast. You can't predict anything. The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to.

[Stephen Rinella]

You by First Light.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Stephen Rinella]

Check it out at first light.com f.

[Steve Rinella]

I R-S-T-L-I-T-E.com joined today by Morgan Fallon and Dr. Randall. The. Dr. Randall's just here to look good.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yes.

[Steve Rinella]

If anything comes up that you need to talk about, though, raise your hand.

[Morgan Fallon]

Or just try to interject with some quips, some observations.

[Steve Rinella]

Please. Mo. Mo Fallon, man. Go. Trying to think of where to begin. Well, Mo Fallon was the original, so a billion years ago. Mo, I'm gonna give your. I'm gonna help you with your bio, then you fill it in.

[Dr. Randall]

Okay. Go for it.

[Steve Rinella]

No. How does it. Okay. Most longtime producer, cinematographer. If you've seen the movie. I know this. When you were a youngster.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You worked on the movie Ali. Michael Mann's Ali.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, I was Michael Mann's assistant on Ali.

[Steve Rinella]

Wow.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Right out of film school, Mo filmed a million episodes of biggest loser.

[Dr. Randall]

Yes. 96 episodes.

[Steve Rinella]

Mo I did a show many years ago on Travel Channel. Mo filmed all of that.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Mo filmed all of the first meat eaters. Yeah, a bunch.

[Phil]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Traveled all over hell first three years. Yeah. Mo made. Mo made me eater look like what meat eater looks like.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean, you designed the look of the show. A handful of us did. But you, like, put. You made the look.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, yep, I guess so, yeah. With the camera, for sure.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

The way the camera interacts, you know, with you on the show, for sure, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And at that time, you were already doing. Were you already working on Bourdain at that time?

[Dr. Randall]

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, that they called me when they hooked up with you.

[Steve Rinella]

So talk about. 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.

[Dr. Randall]

10. Cool. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I mean, what a w. I like, what? Because 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.

[Dr. Randall]

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. By a friend of mine who's the chief cinematographer, one of the two chief cinematographers for Bourdain, Zack 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, you know, do you have a passport?

[Steve Rinella]

That was your end.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

A cancellation.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. In their hind titty, they're like, do you have a. That's a tough show to get on, I'm 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? Like, and I was like, 100. I can go. And. And I went. And it went really well with Tony, which is. Which is rare, you know, like, it's these. It's like a very kind of particular person. 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, 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 they're, as if you're a guest in their world and not, you know, some arrogant TV producer who comes in and, and is just gonna, you know, stomp all over them.

[Steve Rinella]

So he, he was sensitive to how, he was sensitive to how you guys behaved to the people you were around.

[Dr. Randall]

I, I think that was actually like the number one criteria, man. But it, 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 and 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 going to go here and we're going to figure out what the story is of these people's lives and they're the ones that are going to tell us, you know.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

And I think that whole tone was set by this idea that you're, you're a guest and you are a guest, you know, 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?

[Steve Rinella]

Yep, yep.

[Dr. Randall]

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, it went really well. I think he particularly liked me because I was willing to risk my physical well being 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.

[Steve Rinella]

But you should at some point tell the story about Brazil.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, I mean, that was probably more me overreacting than anything else.

[Morgan Fallon]

What's the example that comes to mind though?

[Dr. Randall]

Well, I mean, that first show we went across the Western desert or a big portion of the Western desert in Egypt with 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 you go there where they drive Land Cruisers, you know, and a lot, that's the world.

[Steve Rinella]

A lot of the world can be.

[Dr. Randall]

Two automotive choices, right? They're a Land Cruiser country. And, and I, we, I had no idea what we were doing. I'd never been on the show. It's like my third day on the show. Had never been, you know, worked on the show before. We're driving out into the desert and I was like, well, I'll 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 going to need a four post bed out in the, you know, in the desert or something, man. Anyways, I'm like holding onto this thing with one hand, shooting with the other and we get to, we get to where we're camping and I've got this just massive bicep size hematoma, you know, on my arm.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh.

[Dr. Randall]

And Tony saw it and that was it, man. He was like, he's like started talking to me, he started asking me questions, looked at me, you know, he's 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?

[Steve Rinella]

Pigeon, Pigeon, sorry.

[Dr. Randall]

You grab a pigeon, you take it home and cook it. And they're like, we want to this, we want to make this a show and just like it. Immediately for me, like 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 presentation piece we did where we were in the, you know, in the swamp up by your house.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep.

[Dr. Randall]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

That was the Muskegon river marsh.

[Phil]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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. It's a native word that means big swamp. Well, I hope.

[Phil]

There you go.

[Steve Rinella]

That's. Well, you know, I can say this, I can say that's what they told me. They told me that.

[Dr. Randall]

But the thing, but, you know, I, 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, that, that makes for good tv. It's from an Algonquin word meaning marshy river.

[Steve Rinella]

That's a Phil.

[Morgan Fallon]

Close enough.

[Dr. Randall]

Very accurate.

[Steve Rinella]

Little like Phil could get his paycheck just for doing a little like that. Just saving the day. Tell me again what it means, Phil.

[Dr. Randall]

It's an Algonquin word meaning marshy river.

[Steve Rinella]

God, that's exactly what it is, too.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

Wonder where they got it.

[Steve Rinella]

Never thought to look that up. Good job, Phil.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, yeah, Anytime.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They really just gone through life saying it meant big swamp.

[Dr. Randall]

And you would have been right.

[Steve Rinella]

Sort of. Do I want to tell the. No, I'm not going to tell the joke. Growing up, what it meant. You were through everything we've talked about so far. You're a camp. You were a camera guy.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. And you, like, you don't. For listeners, Mo is the most, most kind of bashful and modest. Mo, you were an exceptional camera guy.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

At it this, at this particular little niche of, of this world. Yeah, yeah, Very much so.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Mo was a exceptional cameraman. Was Em. I'm combining nominated and Emmy. I should just say nominated for Emmy. Did you ever win An Enemy? Did you win one?

[Dr. Randall]

I've got. Yeah, I've got two. Oh. In two different categories and ten nominations.

[Steve Rinella]

Jeez.

[Phil]

What.

[Steve Rinella]

What'd you get the two in?

[Dr. Randall]

Got one for cinematography and one for producing.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, okay. Yeah, okay. I knew you were nominated, but I guess I spaced the fact that you won one.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, well, I sat through a lot of long ceremonies without.

[Steve Rinella]

You. Get to the end you're like.

[Dr. Randall]

Like 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 went and we're sitting next to the, you know, we're sitting next to them and, and the whole time just being like. I mean, there's. Yeah, it's just like, you knew how.

[Steve Rinella]

That was going to play out.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, yeah. I mean, it's like take a canoe out against like the USS Lincoln.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

We could paddle a good canoe, man. But there's only so much you can do.

[Steve Rinella]

You. And then you moved out of that eventually and got into producing.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And then produced like a bunch of episodes.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, yeah. For Bourdain, that was kind of twofold, you know, 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. He was just like, shoot everything that happens, you know, backstage, which was like not a normal film for cool happening backstage. It's like you're hanging out at the gym with like Ali and. And those kinds of things. So I, I start. 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. 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, you know, and the 96 episodes of Biggest Loser, it's. It's funny now, but that show shot me to, you know, taught me to shoot, you know.

[Steve Rinella]

Mm.

[Dr. Randall]

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 character 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 and I got out in the field with Tony, I was able to use all of those, like, narrative tools as well as just yet that time in my life was like a total athlete and a badass. Not anymore. At all.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You know what you should, you know, you should tell people about, because it's interesting about you is mo. Your folks taught at a boarding school.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And then you went to the boarding school.

[Dr. Randall]

I did.

[Steve Rinella]

So you were like a townie.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And a student.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

If you know what I Mean.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, I do. I totally know what you mean. And for any.

[Steve Rinella]

I don't mean you. I mean folks.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, no, you were a town students. Right. For anyone who grew up in a town with a boarding school, you'll understand the dynamics, especially in east coast boarding school. It's, it's, it's an interesting. It is an interesting dynamic. I got the worst of both worlds.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, I thought you maybe bet. I think you got the best of both worlds.

[Dr. Randall]

I didn't get the best of both worlds.

[Steve Rinella]

The townies hated you and the students hated you.

[Dr. Randall]

That's right. To the townies, I was, 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. Towney. You know, I didn't realize. So it was miserable for the first three years and then like, and then I realized, like, wait a second, I have a car and I can go wherever I want and, you know, I can exist with all the benefits of being from town and I can, I can, you know, choose from the flock of, of, of, of all these, you know, really beautiful, blue blooded, you know, prep school girls.

[Steve Rinella]

Got you.

[Dr. Randall]

I got you. It ended up working out pretty well in the end.

[Steve Rinella]

And this is in New Hampshire.

[Dr. Randall]

It's in New Hampshire, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Did you grow up around Ken Burns, like in his zone?

[Dr. Randall]

No. I mean. Well, if you grow up in New Hampshire, you grow up around everyone else who's in New Ha. You know, just by proximity, you know, the size of the state. So he was about an hour away.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And what was that lake you guys were on?

[Dr. Randall]

We're on Winnipe sake. Great lake.

[Phil]

Beautiful.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Stunning.

[Steve Rinella]

How was when, when you got out of being a camera guy.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And you moved into producing. How did you ever get over the feeling of wanting to yank the cameras away from the camera guys?

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, it was, it was really hard for a long time and created quite a fair amount of conflict with camera, with cinematographers on set.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, give me that thing.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. And I was a lot fiery. Yeah, A lot more fiery then at that point in my life. So, like, 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, how kind of interact with, with camera 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.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. So in total, how many years did you spend working on the various Bourdain properties?

[Dr. Randall]

Ten. Ten years with Tony. It's like. It comes out to like 75 that were. That I either produced or shot, directed I. For 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.

[Steve Rinella]

And then that 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 of what, you know, the degree to which any job for 10 years, but not only, you know, any job you have for 10 years ends so abruptly and so tragically, but the way it was, the way that kind of work really created a. They created like a complete lifestyle.

[Dr. Randall]

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 of 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. 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. All of the things that came with it. But I can't really. I can't, 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 the people, 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 and 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, 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, it, it, there's a kind of discomfort. You know, I, I, I believe we went through very similar things, you know, on the, on Meat Eater and on Wild within before that where as we tried to figure things out. How do you really, how do you really explain, you know, those experiences?

[Phil]

I, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

At that, at that age, you know.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

At that age in time it sounds so weird, but I would have a hard time, I would have a hard time bouncing from the one world to.

[Dr. Randall]

The other between the two worlds.

[Steve Rinella]

No, just going like I wanted to be home and love being home. But it was like it was the, the pacing was so different.

[Dr. Randall]

It was super hard.

[Steve Rinella]

It would become weird.

[Dr. Randall]

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 realize it's like it's all me and what I'm bringing back into the house. 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.

[Steve Rinella]

Know, years ago my wife told me just detecting that little bit of 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And you're with these kind of, 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Then come.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And I, and I, I got the message and I never did that.

[Dr. Randall]

Totally.

[Steve Rinella]

I think that would have been the one worst thing, you know, but it's like. But when you come in the house, man, you're walking into an actual active household with like little kids.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, I mean, you got to transition quick. And their thing. She'd always said 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, it's not gonna be a big deal when you come home. Yeah, right. It's not gonna be like balloons and. Right. You're walking into an active environment and you gotta get the program.

[Dr. Randall]

Well, you're working, you're. 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. 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.

[Steve Rinella]

And it's 10 at night. Like, let's go get an ice cream.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. It's hard to code switch.

[Steve Rinella]

Nope, not going to get an ice cream. It's 10:00.

[Dr. Randall]

Totally. So, yeah, I mean, that's a big. That's a. That's definitely a big part of it. Big part of it all along in terms of making a relationship and like a household.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Work.

[Stephen Rinella]

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 Colter. 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, 1761-1775. 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, 1806-1840 by me, Stephen Ranella.

[Steve Rinella]

And you. 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?

[Dr. Randall]

The last two didn't become one, so.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, so they never, they didn't finish your Italy one?

[Dr. Randall]

No, no, it was shelved. It was.

[Steve Rinella]

But you wrapped the episode.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, we shot the whole thing. It was, it was, it was a. It was probably from a selfish perspective. Best episode of TV ever.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I guess it makes sense because all the post production everything and.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, well, it's. We produced shows after Tony had died. Like I did a show in Marfa and 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. So you can watch that show. And there's none of his kind of very famous voiceover. The show is, it's, it's looser. It doesn't have that connective tissue because he wasn't around to record it. In the case of Florence, 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 Roadrunner. We used some of that footage, but it was, I mean I. Again, it was probably the best show. Like we had, we, we like had the Uffizi Gallery shut down. We had it all to ourselves.

[Steve Rinella]

You know what that is?

[Dr. Randall]

The Uffizi Gallery is one of the most famous museums in the world. It's like, yeah, you think of like the very famous Boticellis, 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.

[Steve Rinella]

They're there for the world, therefore, the world. Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

You know, he's talking about the. The heart and soul of, you know, Renaissance artwork is all contained right there. And. And we had that.

[Steve Rinella]

We had the place to ourselves now.

[Dr. Randall]

We went to some crazy places. Standing. Like, standing at the South Pole was pretty amazing, but standing in the Botticelli wing of. Of the Uffizi Gallery alone. Yeah, Like, I took a selfie. There's no one else there. That's about as. 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 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.

[Steve Rinella]

To be able to do that on.

[Dr. Randall]

Your own experience those things.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. To do it on your dime.

[Dr. Randall]

Millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of funding to. To shuttle our asses around the world, you know, and see the things that we got to see.

[Steve Rinella]

So when you walked away from that, what did you start doing? I'm kind of getting to the part where. Where you and me worked on our new project together. But did you just take some time.

[Dr. Randall]

Off when I walked away from that?

[Steve Rinella]

No, I'm not. Walked away. Yeah, whatever. It ended, you know, I mean, that was your job, right?

[Dr. Randall]

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, meat eater 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. Like, I. I was a participant in that show, but I didn't create it. Like.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, but, like, if we were like. But that's like the equivalent of the. You and me are, like, roommates, and all of a sudden someone buys you a house. I'm gonna be like, yeah, it's a bummer that you're moving out, Mo. But I mean.

[Dr. Randall]

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 remember.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I remember being. I remember you, like, struggling with it, but to me, it wasn't a. You know.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, well, in the End, like, it's a. It's a decision I had to make. Right. Like, again, I knew what. 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, like, I want you to come, like, full time, and you just, like, you just can't. You can't pass up that opportunity. You just. You can't pass up that opportunity to see the world like that. And. And there were a couple, like, career things. I like boxes. I wanted to check, too, you know. Yeah. But it was. It was hard, man, and it was hard to go, like, in that direction and go do that and then watch everything that you've built, you know, subsequently. So when I got the call to, like, to come back and worked, I was.

[Steve Rinella]

I was stoked.

[Dr. Randall]

It was great.

[Steve Rinella]

No, the timing. Well, I don't want to say the timing is good because it was such a. Because the things we discuss, 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. Aim for sure.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. Because I. I had been. I had been with ZPZ on staff for 14 years, which is still amazing to me. But then, you know, after Tony died, I worked. I did another three years with W. Kamau Bell doing United Shades of America, which was kind of an interesting thing, too, because, like, that was very much focused not only on, like, American culture and, like, domestic issues, but a. A POV on American culture and domestic issues that I could literally never attain myself. So I'm just not. I'm just. I'm not a black dude in America. And so I was able to go and travel around with Kamau and. And see things from his perspective, which was really profound. And then once we wrap that show up with another two Emmy nominations.

[Steve Rinella]

No wins, though.

[Dr. Randall]

No wins. No wins on that one. I left. I left 0.0 and. And went out freelance and started show running. And. And so, yeah, there's a little time in there, which is good, because I needed to learn how to showrun before you called.

[Steve Rinella]

No. Good. I'm glad you learned.

[Dr. Randall]

I learned a little bit.

[Steve Rinella]

So just for. For listeners, a little bit. MO is taught when I probably. I probably explained this for. I'm sure something's in the air and everybody's got, like, Are you having, like, a throat clear your throat also?

[Morgan Fallon]

Never been nominated for an Emmy.

[Steve Rinella]

No.

[Dr. Randall]

They don't come together.

[Steve Rinella]

Dr. Randall. I have not been nominated. We got nominated for James Beard Award, which you didn't get.

[Dr. Randall]

I was. I was. I was. Did you go to that dinner at that.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, we were at that dinner.

[Dr. Randall]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, really?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

I remember down on that. That ranch down there, we got. We went. We shot a buffalo and. And a bunch of turkeys.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Give a brief bit of history here for. For. For folks. Mo knows the story, but Mo'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?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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 finish the house, hand it to them. 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 those shows.

[Dr. Randall]

And it's important to note, develop the original concept, too.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. Which was Cook's Tour, right? Yep. So if you go way back and I. I like, remember, I. I vividly remember this happening is Anthony Bourdain's book, Kitchen Confidential. I remember it coming out.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I remember being excerpted in the New Yorker. And like, they took. They. They came in, optioned it, made a deal, started building this whole thing. When we started making Meteor with 0.0, we built media where we just. We own Meat Eater and just license it out. So in the old days and many, many, many of the first years of Meat Eater, I made Meat Eater as a joint venture. Like, we. We were 50, 50 business partners, and we own Me 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 Court, so Fox News, and they had a group called tcg. And we took an investment from TCG to build Meat Eater 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, 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 of 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, you know, 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.

[Dr. Randall]

I mean, you can think of it.

[Morgan Fallon]

I almost asked that a minute ago.

[Dr. Randall]

It's basically like a project manager, you know, so you're. You just have oversight over the whole project, tip to toe. Which requires, you know, requires a lot of different kind of skill sets.

[Morgan Fallon]

Does that include, like, creatively, what's an episode, what's not?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

From that.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

Okay.

[Dr. Randall]

Very much so.

[Steve Rinella]

We. 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.

[Dr. Randall]

And still directed the show.

[Steve Rinella]

Still directed the show.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

It seems like it should be a more prestigious sounding title. I know a showrunner to me would be like a. I think of like a bike messenger. It should be calls to mind a very different set of responsibilities.

[Steve Rinella]

I know. It should be seriously rebranded. Yeah. Showrunner, like, he's like a dude that runs around. Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

The title that people would see on screen is executive producer. Gotcha.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. But anyone that knows show business knows that can mean a variety of things.

[Dr. Randall]

That's a wide, wide catch all phrase.

[Steve Rinella]

A tip for people watching. For all you people that love watching credits and movies, when you see ep.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Apply like a healthy dose of skepticism because you. A lot of activities can capture you the EP. A check.

[Dr. Randall]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

A check can get you EP. Or it's that you spent 20 years bleeding for a project.

[Dr. Randall]

That's right.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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. I can be helpful. And then all of a sudden, there's the EP too. And those two people are like, huh? You have. You're what I am. You're not what I am.

[Dr. Randall]

And those bleed lists are getting long. You see shows now. This is like 10 EPS. Like, two of those people worked.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Everyone else was just attached to those people bled. That's why in. In. In. Well, I guess in all. All production. So it's not specific to documentary, but, like, fighting for those, like, the producer credit. Like, that's what people. That's what people want. If you want to be, like, Oscar eligible, you need that producer credit.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, got it. Really?

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

God, man, I didn't know that, Randall.

[Dr. Randall]

Some EPs, you know, some eps will have it, but producers, that's where it's at.

[Steve Rinella]

No, so executive is like a downgrade. You just want to be regular producer. Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

You want to be on that. You want to be the. The producer. So usually a one producer.

[Morgan Fallon]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

Gotcha.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It's too late either way, Randall.

[Morgan Fallon]

I do have a checkbook.

[Steve Rinella]

When we started. When we started on hunting history, when Mo came in, we had. We didn't have our subjects.

[Dr. Randall]

We had a few of them. They had done development work, you know, leading up to that, and. And it developed some good concepts.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

So, like, we ran with a bunch of those.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

We certainly weren't going to throw those out.

[Steve Rinella]

Let's do it. Should we. Should we. Should we lay out the mysteries we like? Well, let me first lay out the. The kind of overriding premises. So. 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 40 or 50 years old. Some of them. They could be mysteries that are over 300 years old.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So that.

[Dr. Randall]

Over many thousands of years old or.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They are things that people will have. Hope you're 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Right.

[Phil]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

There's like a. Oh, yeah, I heard of that. They're all things that are still being actively argued about.

[Phil]

Yep. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Oddly, and this surprised me. They're all things that have obsessives.

[Dr. Randall]

Yep. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They all have living obsessives.

[Dr. Randall]

That's right.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

And there are constantly new theories.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. Constantly new theories. Constantly new theories coming up. And so we found those. And. And to give you. We'll get into some of these. But to give you a 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

It seems so hard to picture now in a post 911 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.

[Dr. Randall]

For either economic gain or political.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. Became some, like, horrific ideological. Yes. It became some political. Yeah. Political hijackings. You know, the famous TWA hijacking. And then there are also Ben. 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. In the early days of the investigation, a journalist misheard a communication between some investigators. Misheard. D.B. cooper ran an article using D.B. cooper as a suspect name. It was misheard.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

D.B. cooper. Did not use D.B. cooper. Use Dan Cooper. He's on a plane that takes off out of Portland to Seattle. But what do you buy his ticket for?

[Dr. Randall]

It's like 20 bucks.

[Steve Rinella]

So funny. Yeah.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

$20 buys a ticket, Gets on it. Walks in, buys a ticket for 20 bucks. Gets on the plane. He's dressed in a suit. He's wearing loafers.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

He hands a flight attendant a note he. 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. The plane lands at sea. Tac. He Lets all the passengers go. He lets. He keeps some hostages on the plane. Flight crew lets a flight attendant go. She comes back with a big sack full of all his 20s. I can't remember. We calculated how many pounds of 20s it was. Not as much as you'd think.

[Dr. Randall]

No, I'm trying to remember. It was like £22 or something.

[Morgan Fallon]

Shocking.

[Steve Rinella]

Asked for four parachutes. This is. This is like some key stuff here. Ask for multiple parachutes, creating the idea that he's gonna jump with the flight crew. Yeah. Because if he says, give me one, shoot, like, sweet. Yeah, just give him.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, give him the anvil from. From Wiley Coyote.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It's like, why are you going to cut every rope in there, then shoot. As for four shoots. They. They take off out of. They. They take off out of cac. 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 this, all this is important detail because he t. He's taken off out of CTAC and he already knows what he's going to do. He knows he's going to 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. That they suggest. They suggest, like, landing in the Bay Area or something. Yeah, they suggest going to San Francisco.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

He's like, it's too busy. He's like, let's go to Reno and refuel.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So now time has gone by. He's in the air. He wants to go one place. They change their mind, they're going in another direction. Point being there. Like, people argue this that he had, like, he knew what was up and had an accomplice waiting. The dude.

[Morgan Fallon]

Dude.

[Steve Rinella]

This is one thing I'm sure about. This dude does not know.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

No, no rational person can argue that. He knew where he was.

[Phil]

No.

[Steve Rinella]

When he jumped out of that plane.

[Dr. Randall]

100.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

It was the kind of plane that had the back door that opens up.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

I mean, even if you knew where you were, even if you had known what route you were on, you wouldn't know where you were.

[Morgan Fallon]

No gps.

[Dr. Randall]

Cloudy night in the middle of a storm.

[Steve Rinella]

No, it was a storm. Overcast, heavily overcast skies, raining. And he's jumping out where he's jumping out. It's like negative zero.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. Seven degrees. We. We. We said negative seven, I think, is the number we came.

[Steve Rinella]

Negative seven. Cold at the elevation he's at, he's Got a suit on, loafers.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Going 200 miles an hour.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Negative seven.

[Steve Rinella]

There's a really funny part of this where. So put all on the hole for me. So I 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And we just are going to eat in this town of Cougar, Washington. Just going. There's a. We just, like, made 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 fun list. Here comes a guy driving by on a bike, and it's just killing him. He sees the cameras and it's killing them, 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's like, what are you guys doing? You know, D.B.

[Dr. Randall]

Cooper.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, he gets all fired up about D.B. cooper. I said, what do you have? Why you got your suspenders on under your shirt? And he tells me, it 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 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.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, okay.

[Steve Rinella]

About who D.B. cooper is. It introduces us to a thing that totally messed with our heads, because in all of our research, I was just talking about what he had on. Right. He's got on a jack.

[Stephen Rinella]

He's got on loafers.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Dr. Randall]

D.B.

[Steve Rinella]

Cooper was wearing a wetsuit.

[Dr. Randall]

But, I mean, but that's what's so cool about the story.

[Steve Rinella]

And the reason that the story is.

[Dr. Randall]

So enduring is it invites all of this you know, 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, all kinds of interpretations 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 go. He had a wetsuit on. He was jumping in the lake.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. I'm like, man, we're gonna look like idiots. We never talked about the wetsuit. Now we back up, like, scratch the wetsuit. That's just a dude on the street.

[Morgan Fallon]

See what else he knows.

[Steve Rinella]

That's a dude on the street wearing shorts with pistols.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Hanging from his suspenders. So Cooper goes on the back. There's always little details. He lights up. He. Here's the crazy part. Smokes a cigarette.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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. Here's one of the biggest screw ups the FBI ever made in 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. A blink of an eye process.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, the FBI lab would have the genetic profile of this person within minutes. They check them out. Yeah. Burn them. Can you believe this? You 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.

[Dr. Randall]

In 100 years, say, for a lady.

[Steve Rinella]

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 improved, but now they're like, yeah, what are you gonna do? These old cigarettes.

[Dr. Randall]

Gone.

[Steve Rinella]

Gone. At some point, he takes apart one of the four parachutes and. And gets some cord out of it 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.

[Dr. Randall]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

Yep. Yep.

[Stephen Rinella]

This show is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. It's time to ask yourself, what do you want 2025 to look like? Every New Year's brings you 365 blank pages waiting to be filled in 2025. Maybe you're ready for some changes, or maybe there's a part of your personal story you've been wanting to revise. Life is not about resolutions that fade by February. It's about taking control and being the author of your own life. Think of therapy as your editorial partner, helping you write new chapters and create the meaningful story you deserve to live. Therapy can help you learn positive coping skills and how to set boundaries.

[Steve Rinella]

It can empower you to be the.

[Stephen Rinella]

Best version of yourself. Remember, it's not just for those people who've experienced major trauma. BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient and serving over 5 million people worldwide. Access a diverse network of more than 30,000 credentialed therapists with a wide range of specialties. Write your story with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.commeater to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp. H E L p.commeater.

[Steve Rinella]

He. He. 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 up front. So now he's in the back of the plane. This is. This is key, too. 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 later determined 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Suggesting to them that that pressure change was that he's putting weight on the back step.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And when he jumped.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

The back step. The. The door goes poop.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Just for you folks listening at home, I just took my hand and flexed it at the wrist.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm not kidding. That's the FBI drop zone. Somewhere between SeaTac and Reno. But, like, sometime around there, because eventually they get like, well, let's go look.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

No, no. They.

[Dr. Randall]

They did.

[Steve Rinella]

Didn't they not look till they landed? Or did they Go look.

[Dr. Randall]

They did not get a. They did not get resources out in the field to look.

[Steve Rinella]

No, no, no. When did the flight crew go to look to see that he was actually gone?

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, a long time.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. Because. Well, I mean, he's got kind of. You can kind of defend that, guys, as far as, you know, the guy's got a bomb, man.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, yeah. He says, everybody go up front. Go up front. Yeah. No, I'm not blaming anybody, but I'm saying that became this hotly contested FBI drop zone.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Earlier we talked about. Everybody's got, like, a little bit of awareness of the story. I don't. I knew the story kind of. I didn't know any of the details. I knew there's a skyjacker, and I knew he jumped out of the plane and. And when we got into it, and Mo and I are, like, talking, and other guys we work with are all talking. I would often say on the calls, I'll tell you what happened. You know, having not been there.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And knowing nothing about it. I was like, he. He burrowed into the ground.

[Phil]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

Didn't know what he's doing. Had a bad shoot, whatever. And the reason he's never. Because we should jump to this. He's never turned up.

[Dr. Randall]

Not. Nothing has ever turned up.

[Steve Rinella]

Well.

[Dr. Randall]

Well, except, yeah, one thing.

[Steve Rinella]

Some money turned up. We'll get to that in a minute. Because we went. We went to the site, some money turned up in the Columbia river in the 80s.

[Dr. Randall]

Nothing of his body or parachute or anything like that.

[Steve Rinella]

And people thought that, you know, one investigator said, well, come deer season, we'll find him. Because he thought some, you know, like, some guy's gonna 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's like, he's just dead somewhere and they'll find the chute. They never did. And I would have thought, well, his shoot never opened, you know, and. And he. He burrowed into the ground and. And, you know.

[Dr. Randall]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

All that soft rainforest, moss, and you're hitting that at 170 miles an hour or something like that. Terminal velocity.

[Dr. Randall]

Velocity.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Somewhere. And you see. 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 mind, it's like, no, no. Landing the trees don't matter. Landing in the mountains don't matter.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, it's a parachute. They're, like, designed to work.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. He's like, no. I was like, well, what if you hit a treat?

[Phil]

I don't know.

[Steve Rinella]

It doesn't matter. Yeah, we couldn't get. We couldn't get any major parachute dudes to tell us that he was dead. As much as I wanted to.

[Dr. Randall]

No.

[Morgan Fallon]

Community.

[Steve Rinella]

But, yeah, they're like, the shoots work. You pull the cord, you're landing.

[Dr. Randall]

And I think the other interesting thing is, like, we had, like, an opportunity to, like, get you in the air, get you, like, you know, doing a tandem jump. And your immediate reaction on the ground went from, like, before we went up in the plane, like, he's burrowed into the ground to, like, oh, no, he's. Of course he could survive that.

[Morgan Fallon]

Now you're part of the community.

[Dr. Randall]

And I think that. And that's what's so fun about the show is, like, 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 what, you know, that's the reason that, like, as a concept, I think this show is so cool, is that. That you were out there experiencing things and then making, you know, assessments of a mystery based on those experiences.

[Steve Rinella]

And if he. And if he lived, and I think he did. If he survived the jump. Think about now.

[Dr. Randall]

You think he did.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Well, no, now I think he did.

[Dr. Randall]

Right.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And you've jumped in the dark.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And keep in mind, he never got caught. You're landing in the dark, and not toward dawn. You're landing in the dark in the evening.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. It's a long night in your loafers.

[Steve Rinella]

Not rigged up in the rain. Yeah. What Then there's talk of accomplices, and maybe there were, but, like, not to that point.

[Dr. Randall]

But there's no.

[Steve Rinella]

There's no way. There's no way you could have coordinated with someone on the ground.

[Dr. Randall]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

It was because. It was partly because it was Thanksgiving night.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Everyone had to finish there.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, everybody had to finish their dinner and pumpkin pie and. And they got the posse rounded up.

[Dr. Randall]

Up.

[Steve Rinella]

He didn't know this. Like, he doesn't know this.

[Dr. Randall]

No, no.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I think fingertip. Fingertip spacing.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Shoulder to shoulder. And they. They spent months grid working everything. No parachute, no sack, nothing. Nothing.

[Dr. Randall]

So, I mean, they were doing flyovers in the. Was it the SR17 or the 71? 71, yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

Blackbird.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, they brought that up.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Use that to try to find the shoot.

[Morgan Fallon]

Big reconnaissance aviation guy here.

[Dr. Randall]

You got it right.

[Steve Rinella]

Favorite band.

[Dr. Randall]

You too.

[Phil]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

They. Nothing ever. We'll get to this money. Then we'll kind of move on to another one of these. Just to give people an example. We'll get to this money. So here's the crazy weird part. And this is what really like the money. If. If the money hadn't happened, the story would be different. But the money upends everything.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

In the 80s, right near Phil's backyard. Phil philosophy on this.

[Dr. Randall]

That's right. Vancouver, Washington. On the shores of western Vancouver, I believe.

[Steve Rinella]

Do you know the name of the bar?

[Dr. Randall]

I don't know the name of the bar, no. So, yeah, I can't fill you in. Sorry. It's an Algonquin word meaning marshy swamp.

[Steve Rinella]

Tina Bar.

[Dr. Randall]

Tina Bar.

[Morgan Fallon]

So the original, the.

[Steve Rinella]

The.

[Morgan Fallon]

The skyjacking was in 72.

[Dr. Randall]

73.

[Morgan Fallon]

72.

[Steve Rinella]

72. Okay. I was not yet born. I wasn't even conceived yet. Randall, where was I? Oh, the money. So check this out. 81. Was it somewhere 8?

[Dr. Randall]

19. 81.

[Steve Rinella]

Somewhere early 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. That everyone agrees is this. Some kid goes down on the Columbia river and they're gonna make a fire, and he's scratching out with his foot.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Dr. Randall]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

When they give Cooper all of his 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 wrinkle because this is interesting. I knew. Go. As we did our research, it was like they knew the serial numbers of the money.

[Dr. Randall]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

I thought they were sequential. Meaning I thought they gave him blank to blank numbers, which would make it.

[Morgan Fallon]

Easier to find a list of serial numbers.

[Steve Rinella]

But it was all random numbers, so you couldn't notify banks if you see any money come in. 110-000-110. The. Yeah, 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. Because 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. Yeah. Took it to the Caribbean, took it to Mexico, took it anywhere, took it to Greece, whatever, and exchanged the money. And then the fact that someone down the road is going to 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. Yeah, but it's the numbers.

[Dr. Randall]

They know for a fact that that is the money. It's the money from the ransom.

[Steve Rinella]

But here's the deal. Like, the crazy part of it is, you'd say to yourself, if you're a thinking man, you're now saying to yourself, well, yeah, he lost some of the money. He drowned in a river and it washed downstream. It was in a little creek, flowed out of the mountains, flown into a tributary, float 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.

[Dr. Randall]

It's upriver.

[Morgan Fallon]

That spot is what I was wondering.

[Steve Rinella]

Upriver, 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 and here and here. Enter all conspiracy.

[Dr. Randall]

So, so the next logical conclusion, you say, well, the drop zone's wrong again, he landed in some tributary, whatever it Washed down, got caught in a sandbar. That's 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 in the billions.

[Steve Rinella]

Unless something was holding them. And it. He.

[Dr. Randall]

Okay, this is what's claimed. He.

[Steve Rinella]

There's a couple 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 of that 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, you know, like, it sat there.

[Stephen Rinella]

So long and rotted so much, something.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They think the money was buried there. And what's so funny, we went there with a guy who's like, he actually had some of the money. Like, some of the money that came out of the bank.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Camera's name, though. Eric.

[Dr. Randall]

Eric Ulis.

[Steve Rinella]

Eric Ulis.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

He's like. He's like the foremost, you know, kind of citizen sleuth. What they. What they refer to themselves as? Citizen sleuth.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. He's a serious investigator.

[Dr. Randall]

Investigator.

[Steve Rinella]

We go there, we're standing around the riverbank, and I'm like, so it's right here. And he goes, well, it was about 9ft up, 20 and 25ft out.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Because of erosion. It was like the money was, like, over your head when you're standing there. Now, he feels that. That money because of all the stuff I won't get into. He feels that money was buried. Yeah, he feels it was buried by D.B. cooper. Conspiracy theories are that D.B. cooper later placed the money to throw off the trail.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

That he. Lift. Got a ride from someone paid.

[Dr. Randall]

Paid someone $8,000.

[Steve Rinella]

Dude, get me out of here.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And that guy get freaked.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And buried the money on and on and on. But that is the last. There's a necktie that he took off and left on the plane. There's the cigarettes that are gone. There's the money in Tina Bar. And they've investigated, I don't know, some 10,000 people.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They really focus heavy on disgruntled Special Forces Guys coming out of Vietnam.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

And people with an engineering background or some exposure to Boeing or people who would have proximity to understanding how the plane works in a basic way. And it's fascinating. There are thousands of these little micro theories about little portions of the mystery. And the fact is no one actually knows anything. Nothing.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Dr. Randall]

But I mean, those are the things like. And this is the important part of the whole story is that he's like. He's. He became like a folk hero. You know, he didn't. Victimless crime, didn't hurt anyone.

[Steve Rinella]

No.

[Dr. Randall]

He, you know, in. In. In. In our imaginations, he gets away with 200,000 doll and disappears into the night. It's awesome.

[Phil]

He's a.

[Dr. Randall]

He's a hero.

[Phil]

He's, you know.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. If you watch the news, there's always claims. There's been many, many claims. There's a theme. People's parents die.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

Oh, yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

People's parents die, and then they come forward to say it. And recently, some people came out, and there. There's. There's these kids whose dad actually did Of. There's this 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. It was his own copycat. Like that was his second skyjacking. Some people say they. These kids come out and they produce this. This parachute all the way in North Carolina or something, across the country, cross 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.

[Dr. Randall]

Night, brought his parachute.

[Steve Rinella]

He, that night, bundled that parachute up.

[Dr. Randall]

There's no way.

[Steve Rinella]

And then brought it home to North Carolina and put it in his shed.

[Dr. Randall]

Like, I want to use this again.

[Steve Rinella]

No.

[Dr. Randall]

No way.

[Steve Rinella]

I like that one.

[Morgan Fallon]

Sometimes you just rub that fabric between your fingers and think of the good.

[Steve Rinella]

Old days like money. So many of my friends sent me that article when that came out, because I was just. Was after we. After we filmed, they sent me that article. And then by that point, I was, like, well versed in all the claims. Just like there's. There's a claim. More than every year, there's a claim.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

My boyfriend was D.B. cooper.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

And a lot of deathbed confessionals, you know.

[Steve Rinella]

Anything you'd like to add, Grandpa? I was D.B.

[Morgan Fallon]

Cooper.

[Dr. Randall]

We should make a buffer 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 guess of the. 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 in just trying to walk through there in the dark with cars, it was impossible. You're gonna drag a. You're gonna drag a parachute.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, we did a. We did a thing like, we. We know. You don't really know what you have. We did like a. No, we did a. No flashlight. Yeah, because he had just limited stuff. Like, he's not. Like, he's got. He doesn't have a big tool bag. Maybe a flash. It's unknown, but one thing I never did in my whole life was strike a match to look around. It doesn't work as good. Earlier, we were talking about Indiana Jones. He goes into a cave and strikes a match, and it's like a spotlight.

[Dr. Randall]

All of a sudden, you're in the Lincoln Tunnel.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. You strike that match, and you're like. You don't see much of anything. Man, it was fun. Okay, let's talk about Donner party.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, that's a good one.

[Steve Rinella]

And what we should talk about Roanoke and Donner party. There's a hundred of them, not 100. There's eight to talk about. We're not talking about all of them. Let's talk about Roanoke or downer party.

[Dr. Randall]

That'll start with Roanoke.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. I'll lay the groundwork. We should quiz Randall on Donner on Roanoke.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

What do you know about Roanoke?

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Randall, how many. How many settlers? Oh, Dr. Randall.

[Morgan Fallon]

31, 72, 54. 139. I don't know.

[Steve Rinella]

You just went too high.

[Morgan Fallon]

24.

[Steve Rinella]

I won't. No, you just.

[Morgan Fallon]

19.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm not going to continue to humiliate you. 117.

[Morgan Fallon]

God, I knew it.

[Steve Rinella]

Rough.

[Morgan Fallon]

I had it in there somewhere.

[Steve Rinella]

Roughly 170. I promise, we're gonna go way back in time. We're jumping now from the. From the 1970s to the 1590s. All these. All your European superpowers Spain, France, England, Portugal, 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, but down south, everybody's got bad fomo. Yeah, everybody's got bad fomo. They want their own chunk of the pie.

[Dr. Randall]

Well, Portuguese are killing it in South America, too.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. So people are tearing it up, and the English are feeling like they're missing the whole party. And they. They don't want to go too far south because the Spanish at this point have a major toehold 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 US coast, hunting for anyone who'd have the audacity to try to get a toehold in the New World. England had sent some, like, expeditionary trips, poking around, prodding around. They map parts of the shoreline, and they get an idea that they're going to establish their first permanent colony in Chesapeake Bay. So they take these 117 settlers. Kids, wives, young people. Right. And they haul them over, and the intention is to bring them up into Chesapeake Bay. There's, like, some weird stuff that we get into in the episode. And. And. And they don't bring them where they're supposed to bring them. They're just, like, kind of, like, just drop them. It sounds like a little, like, unceremonious, because it was. I mean, they dumped them out on the island in the Outer Banks. Here you go. This will have to do.

[Dr. Randall]

See you later.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, it won't work forever, but it might work for a minute.

[Morgan Fallon]

We'll see you next year.

[Steve Rinella]

But it wasn't.

[Dr. Randall]

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 equipped or used to going out and no experience building an outpost. From a military standpoint.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. These are people who, by and large, have probably spent their life and within a. Or like, some small radius of a handful of miles. Probably. Like, you can't generalize. But, like, mostly these are, like, yeoman people.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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 going to run back to England.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And get some supplies and I'm going to run back.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Hang tight. He goes back to England and, like, a war Breaks out.

[Phil]

Yep.

[Steve Rinella]

And the, the, the. The queen says no one's doing with any ships. All ships are fighting the war.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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, his daughter.

[Dr. Randall]

His gr.

[Steve Rinella]

His daughter.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

A hurricane comes, he leaves, and then no one comes back for a decade or something like that.

[Phil]

That.

[Steve Rinella]

A decade to. By the time someone comes and seriously looks for these colonists, it is just like they are absolutely gone.

[Dr. Randall]

But, but gone, gone. Like there's just rumors. It's not like there's a bunch of bones.

[Steve Rinella]

No.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

There's nothing gone gone.

[Steve Rinella]

Just rumors. And 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.

[Morgan Fallon]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Suggesting that they like integrated.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But just gone. But there. But people are actively looking for their stuff. And what's funny about it is like, of course their stuff gets scattered around because even if they had all died right there of some disease and 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.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So they're going to take the stuff and scatter it anyway.

[Dr. Randall]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

You know, these things that they had guns. So you think like, it's not just like a bunch of random crap lying around.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

These are like highly valuable items.

[Steve Rinella]

Stuff that people want. So the search has been. By and large, the search is archaeologists looking for their little trinkets and. Right. But finding a trinket. And we went to it. We went to an active dig Site where they're finding like really old English stuff.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But it's like they get excited about it, but it doesn't mean. In my mind doesn't mean that much because like their shit's gonna wind up there anyways.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Because people are going to take that stuff and trade it. We talked to one researcher on it and he's like, there's he. We're like, what would satisfy, what would satisfy you about what happened to someone? And he said, and it, it's cool because it's like identifiable. He's like a Christian burial.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

A Christian burial. Not on Roanoke someone. Because the, all the tribes had burial rituals where the bodies would be buried in. Curled up in the fetal position.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, buried different ways he goes to find a bear because he's like, they might have, you know, they might have been integrated into a tribe. The last thing to go would be religious practice.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, in his mind the last thing to go would be burial rites and a mother bearing 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.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. A Christian style burial done by Christians.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Is what they're looking, looking for.

[Steve Rinella]

And he's like, if someone can present that, they can say here they are, here's where, here's where they ended up.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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, they got like nothing. They got. They're hard up from the minute they're there. They got very little food resources.

[Dr. Randall]

Crabs.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh is it right? He goes crab. He goes blue crabbing.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

It just gets filled full of arrows.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. His head smashed. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Because the dudes that were there before him, the English explorers that were there before him do all this ham handed, antagonistic 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 the island.

[Dr. Randall]

Just let them go.

[Steve Rinella]

You see anybody? I don't know, don't mention me.

[Morgan Fallon]

And there aren't any like oral traditions from those communities around there about the strangers.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm kind of shocked by how. It's kind of shocking how, how little there is.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

How little there is.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

There again there are those rumors of like, you know, blue eyed.

[Steve Rinella]

Right. You know, square houses too. Tribes will like, like traders would encounter people and they'd be like put in Wild places, you know, they'd be like hundreds of miles inland. There's. There's people in square houses living with such and such tribe. And they have a square house, but it's just like, it's ephemeral.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

It's like rumors and glimpses as we dug into it. Like, I'll tell you one thing's for certain, and I can't say much for certain. 117 of those guys didn't go somewhere and like set up shops.

[Phil]

Shop. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And build houses. It.

[Dr. Randall]

No, it was too much of an imprint.

[Steve Rinella]

It was. Whatever happened was like quick. It was ugly. And I think it was scattered.

[Dr. Randall]

They panicked and scattered to the wind.

[Steve Rinella]

And I'm sure some of them, because they, they did write on a tree. They wrote on a tree and on a fence post. Croatoan and then Crow. Like on one side.

[Dr. Randall]

CRO.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, they finished it on one side. 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? 5. Right.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You don't know. And then there's been fraudulent evidence. Like 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.

[Morgan Fallon]

No, I love.

[Steve Rinella]

She writes down a rock like some shit. Right. And a guy finds the rock.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But the timing of him finding the rock was at a timing of like heightened public curiosity about this. Right. It's when the legend started to emerge. And then you have a dozen copycat rocks.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. It was like it was written to her father and to me, though, that I love. I. I like, I like the. You know, so wait, like she's running around running from these hostile Native American tribes?

[Steve Rinella]

No, she was in their captivity at the time and carrying a. Scratching a rock.

[Dr. Randall]

25 pound rock around, slowly scratching her story into it.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Well, it seems implausible.

[Morgan Fallon]

We need to go quickly get the rock.

[Steve Rinella]

It seems implausible. We talked to these one authors. They. 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 they laugh about, the Darestone Is 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 Dare Stone is so, like, stereotypically ye olde English.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Adding 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. Oh, that's great. In Shakespeare language, you know, or whatever. And that's one of the better indictments of the other indictment of beef. This play comes out.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, right. Right. At the same time.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. This very popular performance comes out.

[Dr. Randall]

It's still running today.

[Steve Rinella]

And in the fervor of the popularity of this, there, lo and behold, is the Darestone.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

But again, I mean, like, these are not selected because they're like finite mysteries. They're selected because they're mysteries with all kinds of possibilities, and that's what makes them of fun.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, I. Yeah. I don't think that one will be solved. And just a spoiler alert. That's what I say in the. 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. It's too. There's not a clean answer. I don't think there's a clean answer.

[Dr. Randall]

Right. But. But in the questions I'm asked 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 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. And going through, to the best of our ability, the things that those people went through, or it's suspected that they possibly went through.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Theorizing.

[Steve Rinella]

But going to the real places 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.

[Dr. Randall]

Right, Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Which you. You can take it different ways. One interpretation is they went 50 miles inland.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Which lands you in this place we went to, which is called the Great Dismal Swamp.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And you go into that stuff, you're like, oh, yeah, you got 100, like kids and stuff and you're all wearing like petticoats 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.

[Dr. Randall]

What's kind of amazing though is when, when we went there, 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.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

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 that area. Some of the most harshest slave conditions.

[Dr. Randall]

Yes.

[Steve Rinella]

In the history of slavery in the South. Some of the most harshest, like high death rate slave conditions was making that dry land.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They were, they were put to work draining that land.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And these malarial, you know, and malarial conditions.

[Dr. Randall]

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.

[Steve Rinella]

They were looking at just many, many, many, many square miles upon square miles upon square miles. It was hand dug trenches to drain that ground.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

It was just like a disposal place for humans.

[Phil]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

That you just pour into. Like you, 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. 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Where the Donner Party.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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 the parking lot. Someone, we ran into some guys, they were filming. They were doing like some ski stuff or something. I don't know 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. They share with us these people that they had encountered, Donnered, 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.

[Morgan Fallon]

Amazing.

[Dr. Randall]

That's pretty amazing.

[Steve Rinella]

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 else, including me. What I know about the diner party is it was an American horror story where people ate each other.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Full stop. Right? You're like, yeah, they got stuck in the mountains and ate each other. 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?

[Dr. Randall]

So, no, I, I think we were all like, that was a show that we, we pitched many times. Like a concept that we pitched many times. And the question we all had was, like, well, like, what's the story? Like, what's the mystery? What's the story? I, I, you know, they got snowed in. They ate each other. Well, I don't, you know, what are we gonna do?

[Morgan Fallon]

Seems pretty straightforward.

[Steve Rinella]

It ain't. It ain't. There's a lot of, like, who's to the. 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 gonna 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. He goes. Everybody likes to talk about the 49ers, but the lucky ones were the 48ers. The 48ers got all the gold. The 49ers, they're late. We're a little late.

[Dr. Randall]

So these folks were hopeful 48ers.

[Steve Rinella]

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, they're like, there's. There's a fluidity to, to. 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 in March because you're going to encounter flood swollen rivers. Right. There's mud everywhere. So you gotta be like, shit's gotta dry out and there's a race. It's like stuff dries out, water levels come down from, 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, you pick your window and, 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?

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

What's that?

[Morgan Fallon]

Independence?

[Steve Rinella]

Yes, I think that's it. Where they took off from. Anyways, you come together and you form your, your parties come together.

[Morgan Fallon]

Everything I do.

[Steve Rinella]

And 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, it's your brother's wife and kids, it's your mom and dad, it's your uncle and his family. But then you, you join up with all these other family units. So you're in a party, but you're.

[Dr. Randall]

Loosely bound family units and bachelors and you know, all, all kinds of different.

[Steve Rinella]

Folks and guides and hopefully a guide that's been there before. And there's like, you're literally taking votes to, to, to, to put forward like a leader. So when we say the Donner Party, it, you know, it winds up being, it winds up being 90 some individuals.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Of, 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 Cut Off.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

What's super funny about Hastings Cut off is it was build to them as shorter and easier. Okay. This is, this is the, the great part of this. It's way harder. And now that you can like measure stuff accurately, it's not longer, it's longer. The Hastings cut off, which is shorter and easier is longer and harder.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

Pretty rare in the world of cut offs.

[Steve Rinella]

It's like a shitty Long cut.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And they have a lot of internal division. 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. 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 famously, it was Jim Bridger who abandoned Hugh Glass and the whole Revenant incident.

[Dr. Randall]

Right, right.

[Steve Rinella]

So Bridger is or isn't like, the world's greatest guy. Bridger is like, now no one goes by my fort anymore. And he's like, hastings cut off. Sounds great. It goes right past my fort. You guys should definitely take Hastings cut off and stop by. We'll trade. I'll sell you some. And they do this. And. And when they leave on Hastings cut off. Here's the crazy part. So, like other wagon trains at the time, they go south on Hastings Cut off, which is going to 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 they're with that don't take Hastings Cut off, make it to California just fine. Going over Donner Pass.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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 Donner Pass. So they're not pioneering Donner Pass. Donner Pass has successfully been used.

[Dr. Randall]

Been used in years prior.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And they start up in the snow and they get. They.

[Dr. Randall]

Well, it's. 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.

[Steve Rinella]

It's.

[Dr. Randall]

It's the end of October.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. It's an early storm.

[Dr. Randall]

Right. Parties had crossed as late as December.

[Steve Rinella]

And. Yeah, you're right. Been okay in years past. I forgot that detail. Yeah. That's another thing is, like, that's a great point because you also start. There's this kind of narrative that they were, like, I was just laying out.

[Morgan Fallon]

Like, stupid to go up there.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. They were late. They were late, but it had been done. They were late, but 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And they lingered. They got up there. It was early snowstorm. Perhaps they could have backed out. But they felt that this, 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 whap. Big old storm. And then like a month later it's like 70 degrees. Yeah. And you're like hunting in your T shirt and you're like, God, it was, isn't that weird? It was like, you know, two feet of snow here a couple 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.

[Dr. Randall]

And when you talk about worse and deeper, like the numbers are astounding. Like the, the amount of snowfall in that area. So they'll get 60ft of snowfall.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

In, in Donner Pass, they're climbing.

[Steve Rinella]

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'll be a dude standing on dry ground and way up above his head is a cut off tree.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

30Ft. And he realized that's where they were cutting wood.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Walking around on top of all that snow. But here's where all this whole Donner Party changes for me is it's 90 people. Over half are little kids. You never think about that.

[Dr. Randall]

No.

[Steve Rinella]

No one ever thinks about. It's little kids.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And like statistically, the little kids were more likely to survive. And also statistically, parents of little kids were more likely to survive.

[Dr. Randall]

And statistically women were more likely to survive.

[Steve Rinella]

More likely to survive.

[Dr. Randall]

The, the, the, the, the people who did, who fared the worst were unattached bachelors.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. A handful of reasons, like supposed reasons why they were already working their ass.

[Dr. Randall]

Very fatigued from the trip out that far.

[Steve Rinella]

They were assuming all this work.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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. And it's called the Forlorn Hope Party. And they make a break for it in the California direction. They're going to cross down our path. They're almost at the top of Donner Pass. They're going to cross the pass and.

[Dr. Randall]

Go for it on foot.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. On foot, they make snow issues. They think they'll do. 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. People with relatives at the camp.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Other people just are like it.

[Dr. Randall]

And just died.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. 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, I 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.

[Dr. Randall]

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. You know, we talk about in Roanoke, like, the last thing to go are 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, you know, and. 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. They. Before they start eating people.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. There's one dark element to it. They. 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.

[Dr. Randall]

Right.

[Steve Rinella]

Okay. They're eating people who starve death. But there's a guy in the diner party who's kind of like, throughout the whole story, kind of emerges as a real. He murders two Native American guides.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Not picked up. They talked about doing something. No one ever did anything to that dude.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And sees the search party people and has the wherewithal to throw it down in the snow.

[Dr. Randall]

He's like, notice a year.

[Morgan Fallon]

My dog tries that trick.

[Steve Rinella]

Like, he got busted. We met with the archaeologist that dug one of the camps. They were at two different camp, two primary camp locations. And they dug one of the camps and found the remains of all kinds of stuff that they were. 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.

[Dr. Randall]

They had like lots of small game.

[Steve Rinella]

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 and 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 roofs and doors on structures. They were like making like tent like structures with hides. We made one of these structures with this rotten ass cowhide and slept in there. It was one of the worst smelling sleeves I ever had, dude. It was hard, rotten cowhide.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And we use it for a shelter. It was 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?

[Dr. Randall]

We're talking about the animals that they found.

[Steve Rinella]

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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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 this journal of. 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.

[Dr. Randall]

Okay.

[Steve Rinella]

And they all die in the 1920s in the Canadian Arctic along the Thielon 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

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 and like 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

In the cabin of this bone.

[Morgan Fallon]

Old timey concrete.

[Stephen Rinella]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They talk about it and I didn't. And so I. We met with the 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, like that's what killing. That's what's killing those guys. These guys, these Canadian Arctic guys was killing them. They would have died anyway. But what's like. The immediate biggest problem is that, that the. The bowel obstruction and digestive problems of eating like non edible.

[Phil]

Yeah, Eating.

[Steve Rinella]

Eating non digestible stuff in a state of desperation.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah. They talk about, you know, in, in Donner, they talk about boiling those bone so many times. Boiling and reboiling that they, 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. Out of what's left of the bone.

[Steve Rinella]

We boiled up some rawhide.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And it like you can make it pretty edible, man. When you boil it. It's actually not that it's like, why is it being like quite flavorless and it has a mo. Said umami quality.

[Morgan Fallon]

More the broth that wasn't. The rotten hide that's used for the shelter.

[Steve Rinella]

We didn't.

[Dr. Randall]

I don't think that would have been safe for. For consumption.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, we had some. Yeah, we had a handful that if.

[Dr. Randall]

You were starving out there, you'd eat it.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, we did some snowshoes. They made snowshoes. We mocked up some snowshoes. We worked with the guy that spent some time. Time. Spend a lot of time hiking the path, you know? But yeah, man, being in Donner Pass, you're like three, I can tell you one thing ain't to eat here.

[Dr. Randall]

No, man, 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.

[Steve Rinella]

It's subalpine. It's like. It's rock.

[Morgan Fallon]

11,000Ft now, so not that high.

[Dr. Randall]

It's. It's not like that. It's. But it's. I mean, at a certain point, it's like, almost like, what's the difference? You know?

[Steve Rinella]

It's like. It's subalpine. It's like 50 of every surface is rock.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And you got little, like, dwarfed up spruce and fur.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And there's some. There's some Ponderosas here and there, but it's just, like, a very poor ground. And you talk to guys there, like, we talk to hunters there, and hunters are like, dude, the first whiff of snow.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, everything vacant.

[Steve Rinella]

Nothing is up here. Yeah, nothing is up.

[Dr. Randall]

The highest snowfall in the country.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

They're like.

[Dr. Randall]

You get deer.

[Steve Rinella]

Deer come up in the summer.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But they're gone. They're gone early.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You know, there's just nothing. There's nothing. I mean, they killed like a. Like a. Some crows, whatever, here and there.

[Dr. Randall]

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. 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, donner party. You know, it's cannibals. 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. 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 the 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 heroes.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

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. At one of the two sites which was Donner Lake. It was right at the. At the end of Donner Lake. She's basically responsible for all these kids. You know, 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, you know, and it's in, it's. The story is like full of these little sub stories like that that just I find, like, incredibly moving and like a total rewrite of what I understood of, of that history.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, I kept vowing that I was going to stop making any and all Donner jokes. Donner family Christmas, Donner dinner party.

[Morgan Fallon]

Short lived resolution.

[Steve Rinella]

No, I stuck to it. No, now, you know, we were joking. Like, did you know that 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 when someone's a fine artist.

[Morgan Fallon]

I might, from now on, I might actually.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. When we overthrew the poet, novelist Saddam Hussein. So now, you know, you'd be like, donner party. You know, I'm gonna start doing something similar, but the odd opposite. I'm gonna say, oh, the heroes. The diner party.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm not gonna say, oh, dirty cannibals. I'm gonna say, you know, the heroes. The diner party.

[Dr. Randall]

Saved all those kids.

[Steve Rinella]

Saved all those children. Wonderful story of hope, you know, one.

[Morgan Fallon]

Of our finest moments.

[Dr. Randall]

There's another.

[Steve Rinella]

Half of them died. Half them lived.

[Dr. Randall]

Almost half of them died. More than half of them lived it. And would the. The other little sub note And I. I'll make this the last thing on this. But I love the fact that his name, the Donner, The Donner party and Donner 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. Rebuild a wagon wheel. Axle.

[Steve Rinella]

I think he's cutting an axle.

[Dr. Randall]

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 pass.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, he died even within view. He died of an infection. He got a somewhat superficial cut on his hand. He thought he'd be fine. Dies of an infection.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Morgan Fallon]

That's great.

[Dr. Randall]

And never lays eyes on the past.

[Morgan Fallon]

Gets rich.

[Steve Rinella]

And there's. There's a lot. I mean, there's so much more. Like they had, you know, they had gotten into an internal fight on the way and had Like a fatality from internal squabbling. And they. The. I believe it was the Paiute. As they were approaching the pass, the Paiute in Nevada were really whittling away on their livestock. They had all these problems. All these normal pro. I should say. Normal. Yeah. Yeah. All the problems typical of people trying to cross. Right. They were. They weren't, like, exceptional.

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

In any way. And then. Then during the gold rush, people resume flooding over that thing, man. Flooding over that path. And now you're standing there, and there's like, the highway doesn't go that way. There's a highway that goes over it. There's another highway over it. And you stand there, you look and be like, who in the hell would think you could get a wagon duty here?

[Morgan Fallon]

Yeah. I feel like I've seen the signs.

[Steve Rinella]

It is a wicked. Yeah, it's unreal pass.

[Dr. Randall]

It's unreal. I mean, they had. 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 within earshot of people going 85 miles an hour, you know, on a freeway.

[Steve Rinella]

That's so funny. Just driving in to do our work, driving into film. Like, I get into the airport, find Arena. Yeah. Fine. Areno. And start driving up the highway, and you get to a sign, and it says, like, Sacramento. 72 miles.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

You're like, well, yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

Better make a reservation.

[Steve Rinella]

What's the exact problem?

[Morgan Fallon]

There's a PF Chang's there.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Seeing that side, it'd be like, in your mind, like, oh, now I'll be there.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

We'll be over the mountains and out the other side and down in the valley in an hour. You know, imagine the. That, like, what that 72 miles meant back then. It's so funny. You're on that highway. Also. I had this, like, deflated feeling.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm like, oh, really a cool story.

[Stephen Rinella]

What pansies.

[Steve Rinella]

What pansies? Anybody could make it over there. Watch. I'll be there in an hour.

[Phil]

Oh, man.

[Steve Rinella]

No, that was great. So that. That's. We covered three.

[Phil]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

There's five more.

[Steve Rinella]

So we did one on the oldest shipwreck in the Great Lakes.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

The first ship to sail the upper Great Lakes.

[Dr. Randall]

Another fascinating story.

[Steve Rinella]

We did one on the mysteries of the first Americans.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

We did one on. Oh, we should have got. Well, we should have got into cattle mutilations.

[Dr. Randall]

Cattle mutilations is a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun, too, because, like, there's another One where I like, I know I went in with one perspective, which is like, stop. Like, you walk away being like, oh, oh, boy.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, yeah. You know what's thinking about if we wanted to do a podcast on cattle mutilations? I can't think of which one of the people we talk to be best to have on about.

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, dude, they're.

[Phil]

This is, they're all good.

[Steve Rinella]

I know. We had to get a camera panel.

[Dr. Randall]

We got enough seats here for most of the people in the.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, that's true.

[Dr. Randall]

I don't know if you can sit. How big is the community room?

[Steve Rinella]

But what else we got?

[Dr. Randall]

Oh, it's a big community. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of people out there that have had these experiences.

[Steve Rinella]

Here's one for people. We did one, 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. But we, we examined it through the lens of a particular flight called the Begich Boggs flight, again from the 70s where the speaker of the House, Hale Boggs, who if you're an NPR fan, Coki Rob, the journalist Cokie Roberts, who recently passed away. Cokie Roberts, if you ever listen 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 Baggage and Boggs are on a plane with an, a congressional aide and a pilot. And the plane goes missing and is still missing today, has never been found. Most the search area focused around the search area for a long time focused around a glacier that they thought perhaps it had gone into a glacier. And you'd be like, how's, 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 later regurgitated at the toe of the glacier.

[Dr. Randall]

It's absolutely fascinating. They crash this, this Globemaster, you know.

[Steve Rinella]

Big prop plane, military transport, 50 people, service members on it on top of.

[Dr. Randall]

This mountain, it, it falls into a crevasse, Snowed over and 70 years later, this massive glacier colony, glacier spits it out the bottom just as just shredded pieces of metal.

[Steve Rinella]

Every year the military, every summer the military goes and they scour the toe of that glacier and they're still identifying. It would be just finger bones and they're still identifying service members. And when we went, we flew over the helicopter. We didn't want to land there because it's like a, you know, it's almost like a grave site.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

We flew over after they did this summer's work. And there's orange spray paint circles all along that glaciers. Not all on but through 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, just. It's just like the, the. It pulverized pressure. It pulverized it to gravel.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

So you know, just a massive garbage disposal. I mean you think what it does to mountains, you know.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

This little plane man made a, you know, small aluminum aircraft. Aluminum.

[Steve Rinella]

But what's crazy is. What's crazy is on this one, the Begich Boggs 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. It was spit it out by now.

[Dr. Randall]

But it could spit out in the.

[Steve Rinella]

Bottom of a deep ass lake.

[Dr. Randall]

So this is, this is what like and 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, as it, as it you know kind of came down the mountain and, and into the basin, dug out a lake that's 800ft deep.

[Steve Rinella]

Dude, this lake, you could paddle a canoe across this Lake Some is 800ft deep.

[Dr. Randall]

800Ft deep.

[Steve Rinella]

It's in one edge of it is just a wall of ice.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So yeah, it could have spat it out into 800ft of water and little crumpled up pieces. My guess, the spoiler alert. I. I think it's in Prince William Sound.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Which is deeper.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

And muckier and way bigger. Yeah. I think it's in Prince William Sound. And I'm not like out on a limb when I say that.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

But they focus very heavily in, in one pass and one glacier at first. And this dude, this pass, we go through it with a plan. There's a pass we like going. It's like the worst pass in the world. Like you know, a passion or you think like a straight thing. It's a pass where you like when you're in the worst Part of the past. You got to take a 45. You got not. Sorry. You got to take a 90 degree turn. So you're going like, sharp left, sharp right.

[Morgan Fallon]

So you're going up to a head wall.

[Steve Rinella]

And it's incredible.

[Dr. Randall]

You fly to the end of this. This, you know, of turning an arm, right. This massive kind of valley. 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, you gotta check.

[Steve Rinella]

For oncoming aircraft, too. Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

And if it's not open, you just gotta keep turning and. And, and do a 180 and go right back to Anchorage.

[Steve Rinella]

We're sitting there in the. Pat. We hiked up in the past and we went down this lake. We're sitting there and after a while we watch a plane. He gets up, comes back, and his head's back to Anchorage.

[Dr. Randall]

You know, he's like, nope, not today.

[Steve Rinella]

Closed up that day. No. The sketchy pass.

[Phil]

Yeah. But.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, man, I don't know what date. Yeah. January 28th. If you want to watch the show.

[Dr. Randall]

If people are listening to this, the day it drops, it is the 20th. So it'll be week and a day from now. The 28th.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Mo's going to do credits.

[Dr. Randall]

It wasn't quite the. It wasn't quite the. The setup. I was like. I was like, kind of hinting to you. I was like, let's kind of steer the last part of the con.

[Morgan Fallon]

A lot of amazing people involved in this.

[Steve Rinella]

There are. Listen. And I'm not listen. I want to say.

[Dr. Randall]

Still angling.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah. Mo. And I'm joking. Yeah. Talk about who. Talk about who you worked with.

[Dr. Randall]

I mean, it's. Again, as we talked about at, like, the beginning of the show, I'll try to make a segue. Now you're not going to do the work. Okay. As we talked about at the beginning of the show, it's like, there's a lot that goes into these shows. This is not just like. It's like, oh, you got a show greenlit. You go out and make it. This is years and years of, like, grinding.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah.

[Dr. Randall]

In what's called the development process, you take a shower concept and you develop a deck on it and you pitch it to various networks and. And so I like it. We got to give credit to the people who did that work. It's the hardest part of making tv.

[Steve Rinella]

Yeah, like, yeah. Going way back would be the constant attention of Ben Ford and Mark Pierce.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah, exactly. Ben Ford, Mark Pierce, Bridger Pierce, Chris Richardson, all of the people over at Warm Springs who really, like, like, shepherded this project from concept to, like, something that actually has funding. And you're going to go out and.

[Steve Rinella]

On my end, it was my wife, Katie.

[Dr. Randall]

Yep, that's right.

[Steve Rinella]

Drove it on my end for a.

[Dr. Randall]

Long time, who I also need to thank because she's the one that called me.

[Steve Rinella]

I was like, oh, God, don't call Mo. She's like, I always like Mo, you.

[Dr. Randall]

Know, so you have this tremendous group of people here that we got to partner with and work with. And like, the part that we do, like, this is the. That's the fun part. You go out in the field and hang out and go to the cabin and, you know, get to do all the fun stuff. Fly around on, you know, glaciers and, and all that. But on the other side, when we talk about the network, like, what was the really great about this experience initially is like, we had a tremendous team at the network, too. I've had a lot of network experiences. It. It often is the case that you're getting network notes that are like, 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. It's like, 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, there's this, like, incredibly, you know, responsive and adept team that's got a blueprint for how you make these, you know, these shows. And it was a real, like, real learning experience for me, telling these kinds of narratives.

[Steve Rinella]

That's great, man.

[Dr. Randall]

So it was it all around. It's just been, it's been an awesome experience. I hope we get renewed and can do it again.

[Steve Rinella]

It comes out shows hunting History comes out on History Channel, 10pm Eastern. I could do the math all the way across the whole country, 9 Central. And what happens 8, 8 Mountain, 7.

[Morgan Fallon]

Donner.

[Dr. Randall]

10 o'clock in the Lost Colony.

[Steve Rinella]

6 or 5 or something like that. You'll figure it out. You'll figure it out in Alaska on the History Channel. And it follows the show that what's funny is a lot of. 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.

[Phil]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

So it's right after Curse of Oak island on his channel premiere January 28th. Then you can watch for eight weeks.

[Phil]

Yep.

[Dr. Randall]

Next year we'll make eight more.

[Steve Rinella]

You'll watch the whole thing and never get to see Mo. So you have to watch here if you want to see Mo.

[Morgan Fallon]

Check them out.

[Steve Rinella]

I trust that Mo was there all the time.

[Dr. Randall]

It's actually technically not true. I'm really bothered by one shot in Alaska Triangle where I'm like, I'm.

[Steve Rinella]

I'm.

[Dr. Randall]

I'm in this sweatshirt and I'm trying to. I don't know if I can get over my headphones, but I'm trying to. Trying to hide in the back of the helicopter like this as we're.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, see how the cameo.

[Dr. Randall]

Yeah.

[Steve Rinella]

Oh, that's cool.

[Dr. Randall]

And you can see me. And it's just like, who is that? Who's the weird dude in the hood.

[Steve Rinella]

In the back of the helicopter? Your lives are at risk. Yeah. 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.

[Phil]

Yeah, thanks.

[Morgan Fallon]

Thank you.

[Steve Rinella]

Foreign.

[Stephen Rinella]

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 interact 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 1761-1775. So again, this new Mountain man edition about the beaver Skin trademark is available for pre order now wherever audiobooks are sold. It's called Meat Eaters American History the Mountain Men, 1806-1840 by me, Stephen Rinella.