Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep: 652: Hunting History

Transcript

Ep: 652: Hunting History · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: If this is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear listening podcast, you
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: can't predict anything.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: for ELK, First Light has performance apparel to support every
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: dot com. F I R S T L I t
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: E dot com. Joined today by Morgan Fallon and doctor Randall.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Doctor Randall's just here to look good. Yes, if anything
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: comes up you need to talk about, they'll raise your hand.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: We're just trying to interject with some quips, some observations.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: Please Mo. Mo Fallen Man uh uh, I'm trying to
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  Speaker 2: think of where to begin. Well, Mo, found was the
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: original so a billion years ago. Mo, I'm gonna give
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: your I'm gonna help you with your bio. Then you
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: fill it in.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: Okay, go for it.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: No, how does it okay? Most longtime producer cinematographer. If
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: you've seen the movie I know this. When you were
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: a youngster, you worked on the movie Ali Michael Man's Alia.
• 1:26
  Speaker 4: I was Michael Man's assistant on Ali. Wow.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: MO filmed a million episodes of Biggest Loser.
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: Yes, ninety six episodes.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: MO. I did a show many years ago on travel Channel.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: MO filmed all of that. MO filmed all of the
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: first met Eaters. Yeah, a bunch, Ye traveled all over
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Hell for three years. Yeah, MO made MO made me
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: eater look like what me eater looks like? Yeah, you
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: designed the show. Yeah, I mean a handful was did,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: but you like put you made the look.
• 2:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yep, I guess so. Yeah, with the camera for sure. Yeah,
• 2:06
  Speaker 4: the way the camera interacts, you know, with you on
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: the show for sure.
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  Speaker 2: And at that time you were already doing were you
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: already working on Boordain at that time?
• 2:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah? So I started working with Bordain in two thousand
• 2:18
  Speaker 4: and eight, so it predated when we met. But that
• 2:23
  Speaker 4: was the reason I was able to meet you was
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: because I had done that and that had gone pretty well.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: And so zero point zero, the company that produced Boordaen,
• 2:33
  Speaker 4: they called me when they hooked up with you.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Talk about tell everybody about just tell the whole story
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: of the years you spent on the Boordain show. The
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: whole story was I mean, like I don't know, give
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: me like ten minutes worth man.
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: Ten cool?
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean why, I like what, because that's going
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: to land us where we're landing. That's going to land
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: us with us, you know. I mean unfortunately it lands
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: us with us being so like reunited on our new project.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: But I mean you had like you lived like a
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: whole you lived a whole lifetime.
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean yeah, it gets into all kinds of
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: complicated stuff, man, because like I mean, I'll start at
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: the beginning. I got called randomly by a by a
• 3:19
  Speaker 4: friend of mine who's the chief cinematographer, one of the
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: two chief cinematographers for Bordei and Zach Zamboni, and they
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: had had a camera operator cancel last minute on a
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: trip to Egypt, and it was the phone call was
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: basically like, you know, do you have a passport.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: That was your in Yeah, a cancelation.
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah. They're like, do you have a that's a tough
• 3:45
  Speaker 4: show to get on sure. I mean, like, dude, I
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: was clicking my heels. Man, They're like, do you have
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: a passport? Can you go to Egypt next week? And
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: I was like one hundred percent, there can go and
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: uh and I went and it went really well with Tony,
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: which is which is rare, you know, like it's these
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: like a very kind of particular person. It was a
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: very set, you know, kind of particular set of criteria
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: that you kind of needed to meet to work on
• 4:14
  Speaker 4: that show. Like you had to be able. He had
• 4:16
  Speaker 4: to be able to hang out with you. You had
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: to be cool enough to hang out. You had to
• 4:19
  Speaker 4: not be a dick. You had to treat the people
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: who are taking us into their lives as if they're
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: as if you're a guest in their world and not
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  Speaker 4: you know, some arrogant TV producer who comes in and
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: is just gonna, you know, stomp all over them.
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  Speaker 2: So he was sensitive to how he was sensitive to
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: how you guys behave to the people you were around.
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  Speaker 4: I think that was actually like the number one criteria man.
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  Speaker 4: But but if you think about it, it sets the
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  Speaker 4: tone for the whole show. The show is not us
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: sitting you know, five thousand miles away and my you
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: know office in Los Angeles and saying like, what is
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: the story I can tell about these people's lives? You know,
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  Speaker 4: it was like the the show was like we are
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: going to go here and we're going to figure out
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  Speaker 4: what the story is of these people lives and they're
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  Speaker 4: the ones that are going to tell us, you know.
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  Speaker 4: And I think that whole tone was set by this
• 5:11
  Speaker 4: idea that you're you're a guest, and you are a guest.
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  Speaker 4: You know, you're traveling around the world and absorbing other
• 5:17
  Speaker 4: people's lives in a commercial enterprise. You can't be considered
• 5:22
  Speaker 4: anything but a guest, right, And so those were a
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: couple of like the just criteria he had set forth
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  Speaker 4: for like people who kind of fit on the show
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  Speaker 4: and worked well. I got that called I did. The
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: show went really well. I think he particularly liked me
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: because I was willing to risk my physical well being
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: and or life for a shot. You know, at the time,
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: I was young and didn't have kids, so I was
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: able to make a lot of stupid decisions I wouldn't
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  Speaker 4: make now.
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  Speaker 2: But you should at some point tell the story about Brazil.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that was probably more me overreacting than anything.
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  Speaker 3: What's the example that comes to mind though.
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  Speaker 4: Well, I mean that first show we went across the
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: western desert or a big portion of the western desert
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: in Egypt with the Bedouin, right, and they all uniformly
• 6:18
  Speaker 4: drive these late seventies land Cruisers, which is a super
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: cool car. But then this is a weird little footnote.
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  Speaker 4: There some places in the world where you go where
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: they drive land Rovers, and there's some place in the
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: world where you go there where they drive land Cruisers,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: you know, and a lot, a lot of the world
• 6:36
  Speaker 4: can be got two automotive choices. Right there are a
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: land Cruiser country. And I had no idea what we
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: were doing. I had never been on the show. It's
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: like my third day on the show. I had never been,
• 6:50
  Speaker 4: you know, worked on the show before. We're driving out
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: into the desert and I was like, oh, hop on
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: the top of the car and you know, shoot shots
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: of the cars, you know, slowly picking their way through
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: the dunes, and you know, like five minutes later, we're
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  Speaker 4: going eighty five miles an hour. I am hugging for
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: my life this four post bed that they for some
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: reason had strapped to the top of the car, which
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: I still can't explain. I think they thought Tony was
• 7:18
  Speaker 4: some kind of like Prima Donna that was going to
• 7:20
  Speaker 4: need a four post bed out in the you know,
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: the desert. That's man. Anyways, I'm like holding onto this
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: thing with one hand shooting with the other and we
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: get to we get to where we're camping and I've
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: got this just massive bicep size hematoma you know, on
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: my arm. Oh, and Tony saw it and that was it. Man.
• 7:41
  Speaker 4: It was like he was like started talking to me,
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: he started asking me a question, he looked at me,
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: you know, these like kind of novel things at that point.
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  Speaker 4: And I got a call from Chris and Lydia, the
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: owners of ZPZ after, and they're like, Tony likes you,
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: which is super rare, so like, you know, we're going
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: to do this a bunch more.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: And that started.
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: Ten ten years of traveling with him. Now that's that's
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: intermingled with when I got called to first work with you,
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: which was christ and Lydia called me and they're like, well,
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: you know, maybe this guy will like you too. And
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: they showed me that original presentation piece of you sitting
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: in the park in Brooklyn. You grab the squirrel, right,
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: pigeon pigeon, sorry.
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  Speaker 2: You.
• 8:32
  Speaker 4: Grab a pigeon, You take it home and cook it,
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: and they're like, we want to this, we want to
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: make this a show. And it just like it immediately
• 8:42
  Speaker 4: for me, like I felt like it immediately clicked. I
• 8:44
  Speaker 4: was like, oh yeah, that's like that's super cinematic, super dynamics,
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  Speaker 4: a really interesting philosophy. It's totally unlike anything I'd ever
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: seen before. And they called me to come and do
• 8:54
  Speaker 4: that original presentation piece we did where we're we're in
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  Speaker 4: the you know, in the swamp up by your house, yep.
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  Speaker 4: And it was like I think we met in like
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  Speaker 4: a out back parking lot or something, and within half
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  Speaker 4: an hour we were like neck deep in a swamp
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  Speaker 4: and I was like totally hooked, man, totally hooked.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: That was the Miskegan River Marsh, Yeah, yeah, and Miskegan.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: That's that's the county I grew up in, a Michigan Miskegan.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: I should go fact check this. I've heard it my
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: whole life. Song of trust. It is true. Miskegan means
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  Speaker 2: it's it's a native word that means big swamp. M
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: I hope there you go. That's well, you know, I
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  Speaker 2: can say this, I can say that's what they told me.
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  Speaker 2: They told me that.
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  Speaker 4: But the thing but you know, the important thing about
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: that and the reason I remember that moment so well,
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: it's just like it all it just all clicked, you know,
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: you're like, oh, this is like, this is kind of
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: the best of both worlds, because you wanted to make
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: TV that was about like ideas, you know, and at
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: the same time like it had the inherent kind of
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: action and dirtiness and kind of throwing yourself into a swamp.
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: That that that makes for good TV.
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  Speaker 5: It's from an Algonquin word meaning Marshie River.
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  Speaker 4: Enough, very like.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: Phil could get his paycheck just for doing a little
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: ship like that, just saving the day. Tell me again
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  Speaker 2: what it means, Phil.
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  Speaker 5: It's an Algonquin word meaning Marshi River.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: God, that's exactly what it is too. Yeah.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: I wonder where they got it.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: Never thought look that up. Good job, Phil, Oh yeah anytime. Yeah,
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: they really gone through life saying it meant big swamp,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: and you would have been right sort of. Do I
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: want to tell the No, I'm not gonna tell the joke.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Growing up? What it meant? You were through everything we've
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: talked about so far. You're you were a camera guy. Yeah,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: and you like you don't uh for listeners, Moe is
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: the most most kind of bashful, modest You were an
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: exceptional camera guy.
• 11:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, this at this particular little niche of this World.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very much. So, Yeah, Mo was a exceptional cameraman,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: was uh combining. Nominated an Emmy, but I should just
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: say nominated for Emmy. Did you ever win an enemy?
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: Did you win one?
• 11:28
  Speaker 4: I've got yeah, I've got two in two different categories
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: and ten nominations.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: Geez, what did you get the two?
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: It one for cinematography and one for producing.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, yeah, okay, I knew you were nominated, but
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: I guess I spaced the fact that you won one. Yeah.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: Oh, I sat through a lot of long ceremonies without one,
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: so you get to the end, like over four and
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: a half hours. In my life, I think the best
• 11:57
  Speaker 4: example of that is what we got nominated up against
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: Free Solo. And so when we're sitting next to the
• 12:04
  Speaker 4: you know, we're sitting next to them, and the whole
• 12:07
  Speaker 4: time just being like, I mean, there's.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just like that was going to play out.
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean it's like take a canoe out
• 12:15
  Speaker 4: against like the USS Lincoln. Yeah, you can paddle a
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: good canoe, man, but it's only so much you can do.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: And then uh, you moved out of that eventually got
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: into producing, yeah, and then produced like a bunch of episodes.
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that was kind of twofold. You know, like
• 12:37
  Speaker 4: I came up always in camera because during that original
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: job working for Michael mann I, he had just handed
• 12:45
  Speaker 4: me a camera at one point he was just like,
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: shoot everything that happens, you know, backstage, which was like
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: not a normal film for cool shit happening backstage. It's
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: like you're hanging out at the gym with like all
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: e and those kinds of things.
• 13:01
  Speaker 5: So I started.
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: I filmed a bunch of behind the scenes stuff and
• 13:05
  Speaker 4: they used a bunch of it to make this HBO
• 13:08
  Speaker 4: documentary about the film. And that's what got me started shooting.
• 13:12
  Speaker 4: It's like it never required cameras, never required any real
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: training or effort. I pick them up and it just
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: inherently understood everything I needed to understand to be an
• 13:26
  Speaker 4: exceptional camera operator. And it just clicked for me, you know.
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: And the ninety six episodes The Biggest Loser. It's funny now,
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: but that show shot me to you taught me to shoot.
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: You know. It's like you're ten hours a day, you
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: got the camera on your shoulder and you're just constantly
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: having to figure out the geometry of camera blocking and
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: movement and telling characters stories and tying things in together,
• 13:53
  Speaker 4: all the stuff that you need to do to be
• 13:55
  Speaker 4: a good camera operator. We were just practicing it every day.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: And so when I got out in the field with you,
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: and I got out in the field with Tony, I
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: was able to use all of those like narrative tools
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: as well as just Yet at that time in my
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: life was like a total athlete and a badass. Not
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: anymore at all.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you should, you know, you should tell
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: people Box it's interesting about you is a mo your
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: your folks taught at a boarding school. Ye, and then
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: you went to the boarding school. So you were like
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: a towny yeah, and a student.
• 14:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if you know what I.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: Mean, Yeah I do. I totally know what you mean.
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: And if for any I don't mean you, I mean folks. Oh, no,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: you were a town student, right, for anyone.
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: Who grew up in a town with a boarding school,
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: you'll understand the dynamic, especially an East Coast boarding school.
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: It's uh, it's it's an interesting it is an interesting dynamic.
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: I got the worst of both worlds.
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you maybe best. I think you got
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the best.
• 14:56
  Speaker 4: Of both worlds. I didn't get the best of.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: Both worlds ha and the students.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: To the townies, I was, I was like, you know,
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: I was like a stale prep schooler yea. And to
• 15:09
  Speaker 4: the you know, to the students, I was like a
• 15:13
  Speaker 4: faculty brat Towney. You know, I didn't really so it
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: was miserable for the first three years. And then like
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: and then I realized, like, wait a second, I have
• 15:21
  Speaker 4: a car, and I can go wherever I want. And uh,
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: you know, I I can. I can exist with all
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: the benefits of being from town.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: And I can. I can you know, choose from the flock.
• 15:38
  Speaker 6: Of of of of all these you know, really beautiful,
• 15:45
  Speaker 6: blue blooded you know prep school girls got that.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: It ended up working out pretty well in the And
• 15:54
  Speaker 2: this is in New Hampshire.
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: It's in New Hampshire.
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, did you grow up around ken Burns like in
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: his zone?
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: Now? I mean, well, if you grow up in New Hampshire,
• 16:03
  Speaker 4: you grow up around everyone else who's in New Hampshire,
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: you know, just by proximity the size of the state.
• 16:10
  Speaker 4: So he was about an hour away.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And what was that lake you guys are.
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: On We're on winnipes hockey. Yeah, it was great lake beautiful. Yeah,
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: it stunning.
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: How was when you when you got out of being
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: a camera guy, Yeah, and you you moved into producing,
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: How did you ever get over the feeling of wanting
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: to yank the cameras away from the camera guys.
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah it was. It was really hard for a long
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: time and created quick a fair amount of conflict with
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: camera sure, cinematographers on set, but.
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: Give me that thing.
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and that was a lot fiery, Yeah, a lot
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: more fiery then at that point my lex stomp over
• 16:48
  Speaker 4: and grab the camera and pull it off the tripod,
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: and you know, not not not good behavior. As I've
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: gotten older and I've become more seasoned as a producer
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: and director, I've learned to be much more mellow about
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: the mistakes I see in camera, and much more constructive,
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: and you know about how how kind of interact with
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: with camera folks and and use the fact that I
• 17:15
  Speaker 4: can speak their language in a way that isn't just
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: like completely insulting and demoralizing to them.
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so uh. In total, how many years as
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: you spent working on the various bord Ain properties?
• 17:28
  Speaker 4: Ten ten years with Tony It's like it comes out
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: to like seventy five shows or something that were that
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: are either produced or shot directed. I for a couple
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: of the shows. At the very end, I was co
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: directing with my wife, which was awesome, kind of the
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: best part of the experience.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: And then that ship was just all of a sudden, uh,
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: just over. I mean, you know, we've talked about it
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: a little bit, but if you wouldn't mind, it's kind
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: of giving people an idea of what, you know, the
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: degree to which any job for ten years, but not
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: only you know, any job you have for ten years,
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: and so abruptly and so tragically, but the way it was,
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: the way that kind of work really created a they
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: created like a complete lifestyle.
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, a lifestyle that was, like say, I mean,
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: incredibly awesome at times and in certain way is not
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: super healthy, and an absolutely extraordinary opportunity to see the
• 18:45
  Speaker 4: world in a way that only a very, very very
• 18:49
  Speaker 4: small handful of people get to see it. I try
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: to tell the story of what it was like, and
• 18:55
  Speaker 4: you can only really do it by, you know, in
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: a million different little pieces anecdotes and this and that,
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: But you can't really ever, you can't really, I can't
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: really ever articulate the full experience. I try to tell
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: people this thing that I think some people get and
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: a lot of people don't. But there's a scene at
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: the end of Lord of the Rings, right the new movies,
• 19:22
  Speaker 4: where they've just gone on this like unbelievable adventure that
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: like really only the four of them understand, and they
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: go back to the Shire and they're they're sitting back
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: in their favorite bar and the Shire and everyone's carrying
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: on around them, and they just kind of sit there
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: in silence and look at each other. And I guess
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: that's how I feel about It's a there's a very
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: small group of people who went through that experience with me,
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: and when I'm with them, we understand each other and
• 19:50
  Speaker 4: implicitly understand the experience. We went through, the highs and lows,
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: the ending, all of the all of the things that
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: came with it. But I can't really I can't, you know,
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: the world around that goes on in a way that
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: I can't really see in the same way anymore, And
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: I can't really explain it to the people, even the
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: people I love. Luckily, my wife got to work on it,
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: so she understands. My dad asks about it all the time.
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: I can't really fully explain it. It's I think I
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: would imagine and in no way am I comparing myself
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: to a soldier, but I would imagine it's the same
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: kind of thing that soldiers go through, where they they
• 20:27
  Speaker 4: can only really fully understand the experience between themselves, you know,
• 20:32
  Speaker 4: and when they're together, there's a comfort that comes by
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: that kind of shared experience, and outside of it, there's
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: a kind of discomfort. You know. I believe we went
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: through very similar things, you know, on the on Mediator
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: and on wild Within before that, where as we try
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: to figure things out, how do you really how do
• 20:56
  Speaker 4: you really explain you know, those experiences.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, at that at that age, you know, at that
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: age and time, it sounds so weird. But I would
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: have a hard time. Uh, I would have a hard
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: time bouncing from the one world to the other.
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: Between the two worlds.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: Just going like I wanted to be home and loved
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: being home, but it was it was the pacing was
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: so different.
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: It was super hard.
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it would become weird.
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: It was super hard. And for a long time I'd
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: come home and like, you know, my wife would getting
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: fights and there's all kinds of like and I'm like oh, so,
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: you know, eventually you realize it's like it's all me
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: and what I'm bringing back into the house. I learned
• 21:35
  Speaker 4: over time how to decompress in the hour ride from
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: the airport to home and not bring it in the house.
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: But it took me a long time and some more
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: maturity to be able to figure that out, because for
• 21:48
  Speaker 4: a long time I'd carry all of that energy back
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: in the house.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Years ago, my wife told me, just detecting that
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: little bit of uh that travels a lot for work.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Probably aren't stand it, but like coming out of one's pacing,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: coming out of one thing and then moving into a household,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: especially little kids, and you're with these kind of you're
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: with like really high performing people and a fast paced thing,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: and you're focused on a single thing and you're kind
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: of like camping out or living out, and all of
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: a sudden you're in and like little kids. And she
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: I'd never called her bluff, but she would say, hey,
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: if you need to, why don't you when you come
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: home go stay in a hotel for night? Yeah then
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: come yeah, And I got the message, and I never
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: did that totally. I think that would have been the
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: one worst thing you know, but it's like, but when
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: you come in the house, man, you're walking into an
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: active household like little kids, you know what I mean,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: you got to transition quick. And their thing that she'd
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: always said is she's like, if it's not a big
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: deal when you go away, and you don't want it
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: to be a big deal when you go away. You
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: want to just slip out the door. It's not gonna
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: be a big deal when you come home. Right, it's
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: not gonna be like balloons and shit. Right, You're walking
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: into an active environment and you gotta get with the program.
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: Well, you're working. I was just gonna say, you're walking
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: into a program. And I think that's the difference. And
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: when you talk about like documentary, you know, making documentary content,
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: I think it's actually particularly different than other kinds of
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: work too, because you're in such a reactive environment. You're
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: constantly reacting to sensory input that's coming in in the environment,
• 23:29
  Speaker 4: and so you're super high key, you know, trying to
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: figure out all of all of these things and what
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: does it mean and how do you navigate this to
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: tell the story. And then there's logistics and physical just
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: the sheer physical nature of going out and shooting in
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: these environments. All of it has you in this very
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: visceral mode and then you're like walking back into like
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: a program with like really specific you know, structure and
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: guidelines and it needs to be that way.
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: Ton of night, Like let's go get an ice cream.
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: It's hard to code switch.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Nope, not going to get an ice cream ten o'clock totally.
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: So yeah, I mean that's a big that's a that's
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: definitely a big part of it, A big part of
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: it all along in terms of making a relationship and
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: like a household work.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: And you filmed the you did the last correct me
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: if I'm wrong, but you're you directed the very like
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: the last ever board in episode because the last one
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: didn't become one, right.
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: The last two didn't become one, so.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: So they never they didn't finish your Italy one.
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: No, it was shelved.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: It was you wrapped the episode.
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we shot the whole thing. It was it was
• 24:46
  Speaker 4: it was. It was probably from a selfish perspective, best
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: episode of TV. I.
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: I guess it makes sense because all the post production everything,
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: and yeah, well it's.
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: We produced shows after Tony had died, Like I did
• 25:03
  Speaker 4: a show in Marfa and in West Texas. It was
• 25:06
  Speaker 4: all inspired by the time we had spent down there
• 25:10
  Speaker 4: and that show. Tony died before we finished that show,
• 25:14
  Speaker 4: and so you can watch that show and there's none
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: of his kind of very famous voiceover the show is
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: it's it's looser. It doesn't have that connective tissue because
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: he wasn't around to record it. In the case of Florence, like,
• 25:31
  Speaker 4: there were things in the show that were just simply
• 25:33
  Speaker 4: too painful to the people in his immediate orbit, or
• 25:38
  Speaker 4: we thought could have been too painful to people in
• 25:41
  Speaker 4: his immediate orbit to release the show, and so a
• 25:45
  Speaker 4: decision was made just to shelve that footage. It was
• 25:48
  Speaker 4: used in Morgan Neville's documentary Roadrunner. We used some of
• 25:52
  Speaker 4: that footage, but it was I mean again, it was
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: probably the best show.
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: Like we had.
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: We we like had the Alfizi Gallery shut down. We
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: had it all to ourselves.
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 26:05
  Speaker 4: The Fizi Gallery is one of the most famous museums
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: in the world. It's like, yeah, you think of like
• 26:10
  Speaker 4: the very famous Bodacelli's like Primavera, and uh, all of
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: the those those paintings are there. It's like the one
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: of the pre eminent museums in Italy. And you can,
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: you know, just imagine from there what that means.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: They're therefore the world.
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: Therefore the world, you know, he's talking about the heart
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: and soul of you know, Renaissance artwork is all contained
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: right there. And say, and we had that, we had
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: the place to ourselves, and we went to some crazy places,
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: standing like standing at the South Pole was pretty amazing.
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: But standing in the Bodaicelli wing of of Thefizi Gallery alone,
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: like I took a selfie, is no one else there
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: that's about us unless you wax floors for a living.
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: That's about as rare as I guess, you know. And
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: that's what I mean about, like this opportunity to see
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: the world in ways that you know, who gets to
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: do that, you know, like you'd have to be in
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: the very very very upper echelons of society, which I'm
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: not to be able to do that on your own.
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: Millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of funding
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: to shuttle our asses around the world, you know, and
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: see the things that we got to see.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: So when when you walked away from that, what did
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: you start doing? I'm kind of getting to the part
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: where you and me worked on our new project together.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: But did you just take some time.
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: Off when I walked away from that and not.
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: Walked away whatever it ended, you know, I mean that
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: was your job, right, that.
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: Was my job. Yeah. Yeah, if there's some stuff in
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: the middle there though, that's like that we've never talked about.
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: That's like, it's probably shit we should talk about. Like
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: I had to make a decision at one point to
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: leave like meat Eater and everything that we had created
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: doing this in order to do that, and and it
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: was like a super super difficult decision because here, like
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: I didn't create that show.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: M M.
• 28:12
  Speaker 4: I was a participant in that show. I didn't create it.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: Like yeah, like if we were like but that's like
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: the equivalent of the you and me are like roommates
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden someone buys you a house.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna be like, yeah, it's a bummer that you're
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: moving out, MO.
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: But I mean, I mean, this is yeah, but this
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: is where your humility comes into plate man, Like it was,
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: it's more than that, Like I remember.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: No, I remember being I remember you like struggling with it.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: But to me, it wasn't a you know.
• 28:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Well in the end, like it's a it's a
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: decision I had to make right, Like again, I knew
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: what I knew what was on the line. I had
• 28:46
  Speaker 4: been on the show before, and when the show moved
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: from Travel Channel to CNN, Tony was like, I like,
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: I want you to come like full time, and you
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: just like, you just can't. You can't pass up that opportunity.
• 29:01
  Speaker 4: You just you can't pass up that opportunity to see
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: the world like that. And uh. And there were a
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: couple of like career things, I like boxes I wanted
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: to check too, you know. Yeah, but it was it
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: was hard, man, and it was hard to go like
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: in that direction and go do that and then watch
• 29:19
  Speaker 4: everything that you've built, you know, subsequently. So when I
• 29:24
  Speaker 4: got the call to like to come back to work,
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: I was, I was stoked. It was great.
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: A the timing well, I don't want to say the
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: timing was good because it was such a because the
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: things we discussed, like the fact that you were I
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: mean this is years ago now, but that you were
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: you became like a free agent after doing after working
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: on board.
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: A for extausely I had been I had been with
• 29:45
  Speaker 4: ZPZ on staff for fourteen years, which is still amazing
• 29:50
  Speaker 4: to me. But then, you know, after Tony died, I
• 29:53
  Speaker 4: worked I did another three years with w camal Bell
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: doing United Shades of America, which was kind of an
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: interesting thing too, because like that was very much focused
• 30:04
  Speaker 4: not only on like American culture and like domestic issues,
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: but a pov on American culture and domestic issues that
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: I could literally never attain myself. So I'm just not
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: I'm just I'm not a black dude in America. And
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: so I was able to go and travel around with
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: Cabal and and see things from his perspective, which was
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: really profound. And then once we wrap that show up
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: with another two Emmy nominations us on that one, I left.
• 30:45
  Speaker 4: I left zero point zero and went out freelance and
• 30:48
  Speaker 4: started show running and uh and so yeah, there's a
• 30:52
  Speaker 4: little time in there, which is good because I needed
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: to learn how to show run.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Before you called no good, I'm glad you learned.
• 31:00
  Speaker 4: I learned a little bit.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: So just for uh, for listeners, a little bit, MOA's
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: talking when probably I probably explained this for Hi'm sure
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: something's in the air and everybody's got like, are you
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: having like a throat.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: Film clear nominated for an Emmy.
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: No film Randall. They don't come together, but doctor Randall,
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: I have not been nominated. We got nominated for James
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: Beard Award, which you didn't get.
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: I was, I was, I was at that.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: We were at that dinner.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: No, it wasn't at the dinner. I didn't go to dinner.
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: But I remember when we got the nomination a couple
• 31:39
  Speaker 4: of fort We were in Mexico when we got that
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: first one. We were hunting turkeys in Mexico. Oh really, yeah,
• 31:45
  Speaker 4: I remember down on that that ranch down there we
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: got we went, we shot a buffalo and uh and
• 31:51
  Speaker 4: a bunch of turkeys.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Uh. Give a brief bit of history here for
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: for for folks, Moo is the story. But Mo's been
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: talking about zero point zero Production, So just try to
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: explain a little bit of a little show business education. Generally,
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: like zero point zero Production is a television production company.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: How it generally works in TV production in the old days?
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Is it the production company winds up being like a
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: contractor building a house. Right, a homeowner comes, they said,
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: I want a house, I got plans for it. It looks
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: like this, I'm handing it over to you. You're the contract.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: You come in and build the house. Once you build
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: the house, it's all set. You hand the keys over
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: to the person that bought it and you walk away
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: and it's their propert. They might do more houses with you,
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: but that's how it goes. Do you finish the house,
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: hand it to them For all you folks. I'm sure
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: everyone listening, I'm sure has seen episodes of No Reservations
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: and Parts Unknown. So this company, zero point zero Production,
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: produce all of those shows.
• 32:55
  Speaker 4: And it's important to note develop the original concept too.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: Which was Cook's Tour.
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: So if you go way back and I like remember,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: I vividly remember this happening is Anthony Bourdain's book Kitchen Confidential.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: I remember it coming out. I remember being excerpted in
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: the New Yorker, and like they took, they came in,
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: optioned it, made a deal, started building this whole thing.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: When we started making Meet Eater with zero point zero,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: we built media where we just owned we owned Meat
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Eater and just license it out. So in the old days,
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: in many many, many of the first years of Meat Eater,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: I made Meat Eater as a joint venture, like we
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: were fifty to fifty business partners and we owned me
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: Eater as a joint venture between me and Zero point
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: zero Production. Later we had the opportunity I was approached
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: by a company that that invested in digital media properties.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: So one you might know is uh, they were invested
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: in Barstool Sports and kind of were a majority owner
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: and bar our Stool Sports. It was with the guy
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: that had been the chair of news Courts, so Fox News,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: and they had a group called TCG, and we took
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: an investment from TCG to build me Eater and do
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: a thing, and then over time didn't have involvement with
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Zero point zero anymore, and overtime MO didn't have involvement
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: with Zero point zero anymore. This is all a long
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: rambling way of leading into this project that we're working
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: on now that Mo and I are just putting a
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: rap on. Our work on all these episodes is coming
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: out of all those years of making me Eater. I
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: started talking to a friend of mine, Mark Pierce, who
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: owns warm Spring Productions, and some of the guys on
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: his team, and we started talking about this idea of
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: doing a show around outdoor mysteries, wilderness mysteries, and we
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: had baked it along pretty good, made an arrangement with
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: History Channel. We're gonna you know, we're gonna call it
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Hunting History. We're gonna do it in partnership with History Channel.
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: And eventually we needed, like, what's called a showrunner? You
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: should explain what a showrunner is. I wasn't even really
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: clear on what a showrunner was.
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: I mean, you can think of it.
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: I almost asked that a minute ago.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: It's basically like a project manager, you know, so you're
• 35:15
  Speaker 4: you just have oversight over the whole project tip to toe,
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: which requires, you know, it requires a lot of different
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: kind of skill sets.
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: Does that include like creatively, what's an episode? What's note
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: from that?
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah? Okay, very much. Moe was originally hired to be
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: a director, and then it moved up to being from
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: a director that moved up to being the showrunner the
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: kind of like primary driver of all things, and still
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: directed the show, still directed the show.
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it seems like it should be a more prestigious
• 35:52
  Speaker 3: sounding title a showrunner. To me, it would be like
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: a I think of like a bike messenger, and it
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: should be called to mind a very different set of responsibilities.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: I know, it should be seriously you branded, yeah, showrunner
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: Like he's like a dude that runs around. Yeah.
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: The title that people would see on screen as executive
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: producer gotcha.
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but anyone that knows show business knows that could
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: mean a variety of things.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: That's a wide, wide cash all phrase.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: A tip for people watching, for all you people that
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: love watching credits and movies. When you see EP, yeah,
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: apply like a healthy dose of skepticism because you a
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: lot of activities can capture you the EP. A check, right,
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: A check can get you EP. Or it's that you
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: spent twenty years bleeding for a project, right yeah, put
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: your life savings, mortgaged your house. In the end you're
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: an EP. Or later it's all done and you're like, oh,
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: I'd like to be involved in that. I can be helpful.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: And then all of a sudden there's a EP too,
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: and those two people are like, oh, mate, you have
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: you're what I am? You're not what I am?
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: And those are getting long because he shows now these
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: are like ten EPs, but two of those people worked. Yeah,
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: everyone else was just attached to those people. Bled why
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: in in Well, I guess in all all productions. So
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: it's not specific a documentary, but like fighting for those
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: like the producer credit, Like that's what people that's what
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: people want. If you want to be like Oscar eligible,
• 37:31
  Speaker 4: you need that producer credit.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Oh got it? Really?
• 37:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: God man, I know that.
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: Right, some epis, you know, some EPs will have it,
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: but producers that's where it's at.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Oh so executive is like a downgrade. You just want
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: to be regular producers.
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, you want to be on that. You want to
• 37:47
  Speaker 4: be the the producer. It's usually a one producer.
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: Because I was just saying, it's probably not too late
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: for me to angle for EP on the new show,
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: but it is too late for the producer, and that's the.
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: One you want. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, this to lady the way, Randall,
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: I do have a checkbook. When we started, when we
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: started on Hunting History, when Moe came in, we hadn't
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: we didn't have our subjects.
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: We had a few of them. They had done development
• 38:15
  Speaker 4: work you know, leading up to that, and uh and
• 38:19
  Speaker 4: it developed some good concepts. Yeah, so like we ran
• 38:22
  Speaker 4: with a bunch of those. Yeah, we certainly weren't going
• 38:24
  Speaker 4: to throw those out.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: Let's do it? Should we should? We should we lay
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: out the mysteries like well, let me first lay out
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: the kind of overriding premises. So so on hunting history
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: we explore eight uh outdoor wilderness mysteries. I'll tell you
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: some things that I would say are true of all
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: of them. Okay, they could be that there, they could
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: be they could be mysteries that are forty or fifty
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: years old. Some of them. They could be mysteries that
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: are over three hundred years old. Yeah, so that there.
• 38:56
  Speaker 4: Are many thousands of years old or or millennia.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you're right. They could be vastly different timeframes, but
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: they share in common that these are mysteries that are
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: set in wilderness, backwoods environments like some of the wildest,
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: most beautiful landscapes in the country. They are things that
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: people will have I'll be following all these riddles or
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: these clues. There are things that most Americans will have
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: some little thing in the back of their head that goes, oh,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: I've heard of that. Yeah right, there's like a oh yeah,
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: I heard of that. They're all things that are still
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: being actively argued about.
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: Oddly, and this surprised me. They're all things that have obsessives. Yeah, yeah,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: they all have living obsessives who have dedicated their life
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: or major portions of their life to push a theory,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: and there are usually other obsessives with a different theory.
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And are constantly new theories.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, constantly new theories, constantly new theories coming up.
• 40:08
  Speaker 2: And so we found those. And to give you what
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: we're getting into some of these, but to give you
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: a sense of the range would be some of the
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: mysteries are like some of the mysteries are just definitionally
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: a mystery. Meaning in the nineteen seventies we had this
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: kind of blows your mind to think this is true.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: In the nineteen seventies, we had a rash of global
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: and also national skyjackings. It seems so hard to picture
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: now in a post nine to eleven world, but there
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: was a legitimate problem with people hijacking airplanes globally and nationally,
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: hijack an airplane, get ransom money, try to get away
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: with the ransom money.
• 40:57
  Speaker 4: For either economic gain or political.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Became some currific ideological yes, it became some political
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: political hijackings, you know, the famous t w A hijacking.
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: And then there also been just like some lone wolf
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: financial hijackings just for personal financial gain. Only one of
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: these skyjackings, as they call him. Only one of these
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: skyjackings remains unsolved, and it is the story of a
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: guy that identified himself as Dan Cooper. In the early
• 41:28
  Speaker 2: days of the investigation, a journalist misheard a communication between
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: some investigators misheard dB Cooper ran an article using dB
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: Cooper as a suspect name. It was misheard dB Cooper
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: did not use dB Cooper used Dan Cooper. He's on
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: a plane that takes off out of Portland to Seattle.
• 41:54
  Speaker 2: But what do you buy his ticket for?
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: It's like twenty bucks.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: It's so funny. Yeah, buys a ticket, gets on it
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: with walks in. Buys a ticket for twenty bucks, gets
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: on the plane. He's dressed in a suit. He's wearing loafers.
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: He hands a flight attendant a note that he's got
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: a bomb. He opens up a suitcase. It's got a
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: bunch of wires and shit looks like a bomb. Demands
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: a couple hundred thousand dollars in twenties. The plane lands
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: at sea tack. He lets all the passengers go, He
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: lets he keeps some hostages on the plane. Flight crew
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: lets a flight attendant go. She comes back with a
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: big sack full of all his twenties. I can't remember
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: we calculated how many pounds of twenties. It was not
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: as much as you'd think.
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: No, I'm trying to remember, like twenty two pounds or something.
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: Shocking.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Ask for four parachutes. This is like some key stuff here.
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: Ask for multiple parachutes, creating the idea that he's going
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: to jump with the flight crew. Yeah, because if he says,
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: give me.
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: One shoot, like sweet.
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: Give him yeah, yeah, why are you going to cut
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: every rope in there? Then give him the shoot? Ask
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: for four shoots. They they take off out of They
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: take off out of seattack. He wants to go.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: Mexico City.
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he wants to go to Mexico City. They argue
• 43:28
  Speaker 2: with him that you can't. There's not enough fuel on
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: the plane. They debate. So this all this is important
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: detail because he he's taken off out of sea attack
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: and he already knows what he's gonna do. He knows
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: he's gonna jump out of the plane, and he has
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: a destination in mind. They're already taken off and they're
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: arguing about you can't do that. They suggest they suggest
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: like landing in the Bay Area or something. They suggest
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: going to San Francisco. He's like, it's too busy. He's like,
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: let's go to Reno and refuel. So now time has
• 43:59
  Speaker 2: gone by, he's in the air. He wants to go
• 44:02
  Speaker 2: one place. They changed their mind. They're going in another direction.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Point being there's like people argue this that he had
• 44:08
  Speaker 2: like he knew what was up and had an accomplished
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: waiting the dude. This is one thing I'm sure about
• 44:13
  Speaker 2: this dude does not know. No, no rational person can
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: argue that he knew where he was when he jumped
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: out of that plane. It was the kind of plane
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: that had the back door that opens up. Yeah.
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: I mean, even if you do where you were, even
• 44:29
  Speaker 4: if you had known what route you were on, you
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: wouldn't know where you were.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Cloudy night, a storm, No, there's a storm, overcast, heavily overcast,
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: gys raining, and he's jumping out. At where he's jumping out,
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: it's like negative zero seven degree. We we said negative
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: seven I think is the number we came negative at
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: the elevation he's at and he's got suit on.
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: Loafers going two hundred miles an hour. Yeah, negative seven.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: There's a really funny part of this where so the
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: put all on the hole from excited explaining a funny
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: part of this. When we're filming it, we're in the
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: town of We're in this area of the FBI's drop zone,
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: and we're we just are going to eat in this
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: town at Cougar, Washington, just going does we just like
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: made plans to going to Cougar to eat And we're
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: sitting there and we're like, we're kind of outside the
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: trucks and some guys got some cameras and here comes
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: a dude driving buying a bike. Is then listen, here
• 45:22
  Speaker 2: comes a guy driving buying a bike and it's just
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: killing them. He sees the cameras and it's killing them,
• 45:27
  Speaker 2: you know, and he's like he drives and you can
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: see him change his mind. And he comes back and
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: he's got some shorts on and he's got a shirt,
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: a heavy like a big shirt on, but suspenders under
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: his shirt, like suspenders under his T shirt. And I said, he'said,
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: what are you guys doing? You know dB Cooper, you know,
• 45:47
  Speaker 2: he gets all fired up about Dbie Cooper And I said,
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: what do you have? Why you got your suspenders on it?
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Under your shirt, and he tells me that holds up
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: my pistols. To give you a sense of how much
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: like this story lives, right, we didn't get an interview
• 46:05
  Speaker 2: with this guy, but to give you a sense how
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: much the story lives, this individual races home. This is
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: just a guy on the street, races home on his
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: bike and comes back with like evidence okay about who DV.
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: Cooper is. It introduces us to a thing that totally
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: mess with our heads because in all of our research,
• 46:24
  Speaker 2: I was just talking about what he had on. Right,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: he's got on a jack, he's got loafers, okay, And
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: all our research we never see any mention to this.
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: But he's describing he's describing one of the last known
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: moves of dB Cooper, which was to slip a packet
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: of twenties into his wetsuit. So we get done talking
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: to him, we're like, the wetsuit. W how did we
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: miss the wet suit? But then we went and reviewed
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: there's no that man. As far as I know, that man,
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: and only that man knows about that the Cooper was
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: wearing a wet suit.
• 47:02
  Speaker 4: But I mean, but that's what's so cool about the
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: story and the reason that the story is so enduring
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: is it invites all of this you know, you're you're
• 47:12
  Speaker 4: left with so few clues that paints such a vivid
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: picture of what this guy did that it's open to
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: all this interpretation. As we talk about in the show,
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: it's like a it's a perfect story, and like what
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: a fun thing to be able to just like dive
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: into a perfect story and just let your imagination goes.
• 47:34
  Speaker 4: He had a wet suit on. He was jumping in
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: the lake. Manna.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: Look like idiots, We never talked about a wet suit.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: Scratch the wet suit. That's just a dude down the streets.
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: That's the dude down the street wearing shorts with pistols
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: hanging from his suspenders. So, uh, Cooper goes on the back.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: There's always a little details. He lights he uh, here's
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: a crazy part. Smokes a cigarette. Yeah, smokes a couple
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: of cigarettes. Put him in the ash tree. You know
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: how even today you'll see planes and still have that
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: little ash tray. Put some cigarettes in the ash tray.
• 48:04
  Speaker 2: He was one of the biggest screw ups the FBI
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: ever made in not being able to anticipate and not
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: being able to anticipate that you would pull DNA off
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: the cigarettes, which would now be a blink of an
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: eye process, Like the FBI lab would have the genetic
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: profile of this person within minutes. They check them out, Yah,
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: burn them. Do you believe this? No, Like you're like
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: an archaeology. It's very common in archaeology, Like if you're
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: out of sight, you dig a little square, you'll dig
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: a meter square, and then the rest of it you
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: don't touch because you're like, I don't know. In one
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: hundred years, they'll be able to dip a stick in
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: that dirt and tell you what happened here, So let's
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: not mess with the rest because technology improved. But no,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: they're like, yeah, what are you gonna do? These old
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: cigarettes gone gone. At some point he takes apart one
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: of the four parachutes and gets some cord out of
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: it shit and fashions himself a little bundle of money
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: and lowers that back door down and spends some amount
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: of time messing around on the back.
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we should, we should specify that it's it's at
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: a time when some planes had the the staircase that
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: lowers from the tail of the plane, So we're not
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: talking about the side door at the back of a plane.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: We're talking about a staircase that lowers directly off the
• 49:31
  Speaker 4: tail of the fuselage.
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: Yepp. He he expects the flight attendant to open the door,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: realizes that the flight attendant is not instructed on opening
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: door and in flight can't open the door, and sends
• 49:46
  Speaker 2: the flight attendant up front. So now he's in the
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: back of the plane. This is this is key to
• 49:49
  Speaker 2: He's in back of the plane by himself. He gets
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: the door down and at some point climbs down, puts
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: on a parachute, and climbs down the steps. How the
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: FBI would later determine what they would call their drop
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: zone is based on like trajectory, flight time and all this.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: But one of the key pieces is the pilots feel
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: a pressure change in the cabin, suggesting to them that
• 50:17
  Speaker 2: that pressure change was that he's putting weight on the
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: back step. Yeah, and when he jumped the backstep the
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: door goes fo Yeah. Just a few folks listening at home.
• 50:30
  Speaker 2: I just took my hand and inflected it at the wrist.
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: I did like a little wrist flick. That was the
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: door coming up. And so they go like, huh, maybe
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: that was him jumping out. Let's take note of where
• 50:45
  Speaker 2: we're at. That's the FBI drop zone. I'm not kidding.
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: That's the FBI drop zone somewhere between the Sea Tac
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: and Reno, but like sometime around there. Because eventually they
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: get like, well, shit, let's go look. Yeah no, no,
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: they didn't. They not look till they landed or did
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: they go look.
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: They did not get a They did not get resources
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: out in the field to look.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: No, no, when did the flight crew go to look
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: to see that he was actually a long time? Yeah?
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, because well, I mean you can kind of offend that.
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: Guys know the guy's got a bomb. Man.
• 51:22
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, every go up front, go up for No,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: I'm not blaming anybody, but they're saying that became this
• 51:28
  Speaker 2: hotly contested FBI drop zone. Earlier were talking about everybody's
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: got like a little bit of awareness of the story.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: I know, I knew the story. I didn't know any
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: of the detail. I knew there was a skyjacker, and
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: I knew jumped out of the plane, and and and
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: when we got into it, and Mo and I are
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: like talking, and other guys we work with are all talking.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: I would often say on the calls, I'll tell you
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: what happened. You know, have not been there, yea, and
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: knowing nothing about it. I was like he he burrowed
• 52:03
  Speaker 2: into the ground, didn't know what he was doing, had
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: a bad shoot, whatever. And the reason he's never because
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: we should jump to this. He's never turned up.
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: Nothing has ever turned up, well, well except yeah, one thing.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: Some money turned up. We'll get to that in the minux.
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: We went, we went to the site. Some money turned
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: up into Columbia River.
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: In the eighties, nothing of his body, parachute or anything
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: like that.
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: And people thought that, you know, one investigator said, well,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: come deer season, we'll find him, because he thought something,
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: you know, like some guy's gonna be like, oh my god,
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: a parachute hanging in a tree with the dead guy
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: from it, and it would be over right. That was
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: the assumption early on. It's like, he's just dead somewhere
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: and they'll find the shoot. They never did. And I
• 52:50
  Speaker 2: would have thought, well, his shoot never opened, you know,
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: and and he burrowed into the ground, and and you
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: know all that soft rainforest moss, and you're hitting at
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: one hundred and seventy miles an hour or something like that.
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: Terminal boity. Yeah, somewhere and right and unless someone looks
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: in the right little divot and that's where the money is,
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: that's where his body is. And we kind of begin
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: our exploration with that idea and then quickly have special
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: forces guys, military parachuters, a parachute instructor with like fourteen
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: thousand jumps in his history who was actually interviewed by
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: the FBI after the dB Cooper thing. Them all say no,
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: he's probably fine. Yeah, no reason to think he's not fine.
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: Like in their mind, it's like, no, no landing, the
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: trees don't matter, land in the mountains don't matter.
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a parachute. They're like designed to work.
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like no. I was like, what if you
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: hit a treat it doesn't matter. Yeah. We couldn't get
• 53:57
  Speaker 2: any major parachute dudes to tell us that he was dead,
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: as much as I wanted to community, but they're like,
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: the shoots work, you pull the cord, you're landing.
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: And I think the other interesting thing is like we
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: had like an opportunity to get you in the air
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: and get you like, you know, doing a tandem jump,
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: and your immediate reaction on the ground went from like
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: before we went up on the plane, like he's he's
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: burrowed into the ground, to like, I know, he's he
• 54:30
  Speaker 4: could of course he could survive that.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: Now you're part of the community.
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: And I think, and that's what's so fun about the
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: show is like you you you get to unfold these
• 54:40
  Speaker 4: mysteries and kind of pressure test one variation or one
• 54:45
  Speaker 4: possibility or one theory at a time, and over the
• 54:49
  Speaker 4: course of it you come out with a completely different
• 54:52
  Speaker 4: understanding or a completely different viewpoint on it. None of
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: it based on empirical evidence, all based on experiential evidence.
• 55:00
  Speaker 4: And I think that's what's what you know, That's the
• 55:03
  Speaker 4: reason that like, as a concept, I think this show
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: is so cool is that you were out there experiencing
• 55:10
  Speaker 4: things and then making you know, assessments of a mystery
• 55:16
  Speaker 4: based on those experiences.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: And if and if he lived and I think he did,
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: if he survived the jump, think about how you think
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: he did. Yeah, well, now I think you did, right, Yeah,
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: But then but then just like invite yourself to think
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: about this for a minute, that you're somewhere south of Seattle,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: you're not quite sure where, and you've jumped in the
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: dark and keep in mind he never got caught. You're
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: landing in the dark, and not toward dawn, You're landing
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: in the dark in the evening. Yeah, it's a lot
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: in your loafers, not rigged up in the rain. Yeah.
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: What then there's talk of accomplices, and maybe there were,
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: but like not to that point. But there's there's no way.
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: There's no way you could have coordinate it with someone
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: on the ground.
• 56:03
  Speaker 4: Now, he'd need to get to a payphone at that
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: time and make a call and say, well, I think
• 56:08
  Speaker 4: I'm just somewhere out in the Cascade range, you know.
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: And you're walking around and as far as you know,
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: there was this kind of laughable delay in looking for
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: him on the ground.
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: It's because it was partly because it was Thanksgiving night. Yeah,
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: everyone had to finish there. Yeah, they had to finish
• 56:22
  Speaker 4: their dressing and pumpkin pie and ship and they got
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: the posse rounded up. He didn't know this that, he
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: doesn't know this. No, so no, like in all this
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: time since and they did. They brought out the army.
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: I mean the army to do shoulder to shoulder was
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: like five foot spacing, I think Fingertip Fingertip spacing shoulder
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: to shoulder, and they they spent months grid working everything.
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: No parachute, no sack, nothing, nothing.
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: So oh man, they were doing fly over is in
• 57:01
  Speaker 4: was it the SR seventeen or the.
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: Seventy one seventy one?
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: You know blackbird? Yeah, they brought that up.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, use that to try to find the shoot big
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: reconnaissance aviation guy here, like, I got it right, my.
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: Favorite bat too.
• 57:19
  Speaker 2: They nothing. Ever, we'll get to this money. Then we'll
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: kind of move one hundred another one of these, just
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: to give people example. We'll get to this money. So
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: here's the crazy, weird part. And this is what really
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: like the money. If the money hadn't happened, the story'd
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: be different. But the money up ends everything. Yeah, in
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: the eighties, right near Phil's backyard, Phil Phil Phillison on this.
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: That's right Vancouver, Washington, on the shores of western Vancouver,
• 57:46
  Speaker 5: I believe.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: Do you know the name of the bar.
• 57:48
  Speaker 5: I don't know the name of the bar, so, yeah,
• 57:50
  Speaker 5: I can't fill you in. Sorry. It's an Algonquin word
• 57:53
  Speaker 5: meaning marshy swamp, Tina bar, Tina bar.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: So.
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: The original the the Skyjacking was in seventy two seventy three,
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: seventy two.
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: I was not yet born. I wasn't even conceived yet, Randall,
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: where was I? Oh the money? So check this out?
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Eighty one? Was it a somewhere eight nineteen eighty one?
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: Somewhere early eighties? Some kid, Now this is that this
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: is the surface I'm telling you the surface level true part.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: And you can read in all the conspiracy theories the
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: surface level true part. Okay, everyone agrees is this. Some
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: kid goes down on the Columbia River and they're going
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: to make a fire, and he's scratching out with his foot. Yeah,
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: a little fire pit, Okay, on the bank of the river,
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: just like you would. And lo and behold, here is
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: a bundle bundles, bundles, bundles of rotten twenties. When they
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: gave Cooper all of his currency, when they gave his
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: ransom money, I knew they knew the serial numbers. Okay,
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: here's a whole other wrinkle. I'm gonna get into this wrinkles.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: This is interesting wrinkle I knew going as we did
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: our research. It was like they knew the serial numbers
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: of the money. I thought they were sequential, meaning I
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: thought they gave him blank to blank numbers, which would
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: make it easier.
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: To find sell a list of serial number, but.
• 59:31
  Speaker 2: It was all random numbers, so you couldn't notify banks.
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: If you see any money come in between one one
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: zero zero zero zero and one one zero, they keep
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: your eye out for it. It's like thousands of twenty
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: thousand random ass serial numbers, so you could never get
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: in your head what numbers you're looking for. Because I
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: used to be like, the money never turned up, so
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: the money must be gone. But someone' say, how do
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: you know the money's gone? If he took have money
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: and spent it wherever the hell. Yeah, took it to
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: the Caribbean, took it to Mexico, took it anywhere, took
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: to grease whatever and exchange the money. And then the
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: fact that someone down the road is gonna check that
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: serial number against the list of twenty thousand random ass
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: serial numbers and find it. But anyhow, the money that
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: comes out of team to borrow the corners is all
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: rotten away. But it's the numbers.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 4: They know for a fact that that is the money.
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: It's the money from the ransom.
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: But here's the deal, Like the crazy part of it
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 2: is that you'd say to yourself. If you're thinking, man,
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: you're now saying to yourself, well, yeah, he lost some
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: of the money. He's drowned in a river and it flowed.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: It was in a little creek, float out of the mountains,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: float into a tributary, float into the Columbia on a flood.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: You got deposited on the bank. Covered in sentiment. But
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: here's the problem the money. If you drained the FBI
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: drop zone, it doesn't flow to that spot.
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: It's up river. That spot it's up.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: The money was found up drainage from the entire FBI
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: drop zone, which brings in the question it didn't get
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: like he didn't. It's either he didn't land in his
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: drop zone, the drop zones wrong, or someone and here
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: he did enter all conspiracy idea.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: So the next logical conclusion you say, well, the drop
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 4: zones are on again. He landed in some tributary, whatever
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: it washed down, got caught in a sandbar. That's totally
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 4: reasonable to assume. Here's why the money being in three
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 4: different packets is important because they were not bundled together,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 4: meaning the statistical probability of the three of them ending
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 4: up in one level in the billions.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: Unless something was holding them in it. He okay, this
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: is what's claimed. He there's a couple of little details here,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: he uh says to a flight attendant. The flight attendant,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: he asked her, do you want some of this money? Okay?
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: She says no. Did some amount of that money, like
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: we don't know what happened for a long period of time.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Did some of that amount of that money wind up
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: Like he's got like a bag, but he puts not
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: in his wetsuit. But like some of it goes here,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: some of it's in a different envelope, some of it
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: some you know, like it sat there so long and
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: rotted so much, something could have decomposed around it. What
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 2: was holding it together. But but people that are way
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 2: obsessed about this have given up on the idea that
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: it washed there. Yeah, they think the money was buried there.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: And what's so funny. We went there with a guy
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: who's like he actually had some of the money, like
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: some of the money that came out of the bank.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: Hm. He wrote his name though, Eric Eric Ericulis.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he's like he's like the foremost you know, kind
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: of citizen sleuth. What they what they refer to themselves
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: as citizens. Salu, he's a serious and best investigator.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: We go there, we're standing around the river bank and
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: I'm like, so it's right here, and he goes, well,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: it was about nine feet up feet out because of erosion.
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: It was like the money was like over your head
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: when you're standing there. Now, he feels that that money,
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: because of all this stuff I won't get into, he
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: feels that money was buried. He feels it was buried
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: by D. B. Cooper. Conspiracy theories are that dB Cooper
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: later placed the money to throw off the trail, that
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: he uh lift, got a ride from someone like dude,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: get me out of here, and that guy freaked and
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: buried the money. No, no, but that is the last There's
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: a neck tie that he took off and left on
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: the plane. There's this cigarettes that are gone. There's the
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: money in Tina Bar. And they've investigated, I don't know,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: some ten thousand people. Yeah, they really focus heavy on
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: disgruntled special forces guys coming out of Vietnam.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and and people with an engineering background or some
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 4: exposure to Boeing or people who would have proximity to
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 4: understanding how the plane works in a basic way. And
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 4: you know, it's fascinating there there are there are thousands
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 4: of these little micro theories of how little portions of
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: the mystery. And the fact is like no one actually
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: knows anything nothing.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: The flight attendant asked him. According to her, there's no
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: witnesses of the conversation. She asked them, do you have
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: a grudge against the airline? And he said, I just
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: have a grudge, But I mean, those are the things
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: like and this is an important part of this, of
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: the the whole story is he's like he's become he
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: became like a folk here.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 4: You know, he didn't didn't hurt anyone, you know, in
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 4: in in in our imaginations, he gets away with two
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: hundred thousand dollars, you know, and uh and disappears into
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: the night. It's awesome. He's a he's a hero. He's
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: yeah yeah, uh.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: If you watch the news, there's always claims. There's been many,
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 2: many claims. There's a theme people's parents die. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: people's parents die, and then they come forward to say it.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 2: And recently some people came out and there there's there's
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: these kids whose dad actually did a there's these kids
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: whose dad actually did a copycat skyjacking and then later
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: died in a shootout with the cops, and a lot
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: of suspicion fell that it was it was his own
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: copy cat, like that was his second skyjacking. Some people
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: say they these kids come out and they produce this
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: this parachute all the way in North Carolina or something
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 2: across the country.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 4: Across country.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: They're like, hey, we found a parachute in our shed.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: Then you got to ask you a question. But there's
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: so many claims like this, they mostly get debunked. Yeah,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: I asked your question. So you're telling me that he
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: that night brought his parachute. He that night bundled that
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: parachute up no way, and then brought it home to
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: North Carolina and put it in his shed.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 4: I use this again, no no way.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: I like that one.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: Rubbed that fabric between your fingers and thinking a good
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 3: old day.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: It was like so many of my friends sent me
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: that article when that came out, because I was just
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: that was after we after we filmed, they sent me
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: that article. And then by that point I was like
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: well versed in all the claims, just like there's there's
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: a claim more than every year does a claim Yeah,
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: my boyfriend was Dbie Cooper.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of deathbed confessionals. You know, you like
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 4: to add grandpa was Cooper. We should make a buffer sticker, man,
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: it you think about that. With the parachute, we tried
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: to walk through, Like one of the things we do
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 4: in the show is like we walked through in the
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: Pitch Black. We walked through those mountains and it's staggering
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: how difficult it is to walk through those mountains. I
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 4: mean we're talking about like the Cascades. The best best
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: guess of the drop zone is that it's in the
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 4: Cascades just west, like southwest of Mount Saint Helen's right
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 4: prior to Mount Saint Helens erupting, So it's like thick
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: old growth forest and really steep and uh and just
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: trying to walk through there in the dark with came
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 4: it was impossible. You're gonna drag a You're gonna drag
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: a parachute.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: We did a we did a thing like we know
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: you don't really know what you have, but we did
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: like a no, we did a no flashlight because yeah,
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: just limited stuff. Like he's not like he's got big
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: he doesn't have a big tool bag. Maybe yeah, flash,
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: it's on. No. But one thing I never did in
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: my whole life was strike a match to look around.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: It doesn't work as good. Ear. We're talking about Indiana Jones.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: He goes into a cave and strikes a matches like
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: a spot light.
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 4: It's not like all of a sudden you're in the
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: Lincoln Tunnel.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you strike that match and you're like, you don't
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: see much of anything. Man, it was fun. Okay, I
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: want to let's talk about Donner Party. Yeah, that's a
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: good one. I want we just talked about Rowing Oak
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: and Donner Party. There's one hundred, one hundreds eight to
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: talk about. Where them. I want to talk about Rowing
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: Oak or Donner Party.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: That'll start with Rono.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'll lay the groundwork. You should quiz Randall on
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: on rowing Oak.
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, what do you know about Rono? Yeah?
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: Randall? How many? How many settlers? Oh, doctor Randall?
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: Thirty one seventy two fifty four, one hundred and thirty nine.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: You just went too high twenty four.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: I won't. No, I'm not going to continue to humiliate you.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: One hundred and seventeen. Gotta do it rough.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 3: I had it in there somewhere rough one hundred seventeen promise.
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: We're gonna go way back in time. We're jumping out
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 2: from the from the nineteen seventies to the fifteen nineties.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: All these all your European superpowers, Spain, France, England, Portugal,
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: they're all vying for colonies New World colonies. The Spanish
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: were earlier to the game, and they are getting loaded
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: on gold and everybody's like, but down south, everybody's got
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: bad fomo. Everybody's got bad fomo. They want their own
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: chunk of the pie.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: Well, Portuguese are killing it in South America too.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so people are tearing it up, and the English
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: are feeling like they're missing the whole party, and they
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: they don't want to go too far south because the
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: Spanish at at this point have a major toll hold
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 2: and like jealously guard their areas. In fact, the Spanish
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 2: are so worried about other countries getting a toe hold
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: did They got like warships cruising up and down the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: US coast hunting for anyone who'd have the audacity to
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: try to get a toe hold in the New World.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: England had sent some like expeditionary trips poking around and
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: prodding around, they map parts of the shoreline and they
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: get an idea that they're going to establish their first
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: permanent colony in Chesapeake Bay. So they take these one
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventeen settlers, kids, wives, young people, right, and
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: they haul them over and the intention is to bring
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: them up into Chesapeake Bay. There's like some weird stuff
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: that we get into in the episode. And and they
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: don't bring them where they're supposed to bring them. They're
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: just like kind of like just them. It sounds like
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 2: a little like unceremonious because it was. I mean, they
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: dump them out on an eye island in the outer
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: North Carolina. This will have to do see you later,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: Like it won't work forever, but it might work for
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: a minute.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: We'll see you next year.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: But it wasn't.
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 4: But it's also important to note who these people are
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 4: because like they're not this is not a military expedition.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 4: These are like these are like farmers and craftsmen. They're
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 4: not people who are who are equipped or used to
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: going out and and.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 2: No experience building an.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 4: Outpost from a military standpoint.
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, these are people who buy and large have probably
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: spent their life and within like some small radius of
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: a handful of miles. Probably you can't generalize, but like
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 2: mostly these are like yeomen people. They drop them on
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 2: this island. And then their leader as this dude, John White, Well,
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 2: they realize how precarious their situation is. And he can't
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 2: even hang for long. And he's like, hey, I'm going
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: to run back to England and get some supplies and
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna run back hang to He goes back to
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 2: England and like a war breaks out and the queen says,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: no one's doing ship with any ships. All ships are
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: fighting the war and all this other stuff happens, and
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: it's three years and keep mind this is John White, dude.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: Here's an important detail. This John White dude. His wife
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: and daughter are there. No, no, no, his daughter and got
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: his daughter's pregnant is there? Comes back three years later,
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: is they able to do a quick check on Roanoke?
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: And they're not there? They're gone. But then there's a
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 2: hurricane coming and he can't he can't even really look around.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 2: But as the story goes, carved down a tree. They
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 2: made a plan. Hey, if you got to go somewhere,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: carve on a tree crow it where you're going. And
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 2: they and they carve the word crow a tone, which
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: was a tribe that lived on modern day Hatteras Island.
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: A hurricane comes, he leaves, and then no one comes
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: back for a decade or something like that. A decade.
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: By the time someone comes in seriously looks for these colonists,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: it is just like they are.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: Absolutely gone but gone gone, Like there's just rumors. It's
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 4: not like there's a bunch of bones. No, yeah, there's nothing.
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: Gone gone, just rumors. And it's so long has gone
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: by that now there's like, oh, you know, it's like
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: it's this common thing that pops up in history. I'm
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: sure you even countered at rantal Oh. I did see
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: a blue eyed Indian right suggesting that they like integrated
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: but just gone but there. But people are actively looking
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: for their stuff. And what's funny about it is like,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: of course, their stuff's get scattered around, because even if
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: they had all died right there of some disease, if
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: they'd all died of the flu, their shit's still going
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: to get scattered around because this is like a vibrant
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: this area is full of all these different Native American groups.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: So they're going to take the stuff and scatter anyway.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: And they show up, The English show up with stuff
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: that is like highly highly, highly valuable because there's no
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 4: way for Native Americans who are here to get you
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 4: know that iron. You know these things that they had guns,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 4: so you think like it's not just like a bunch
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 4: of random crap lying around. These are like highly valuable.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: Items, stuff that people want. So the search has been
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: by and large, the search is archaeologists looking for their
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: little trinkets and shit, right, but finding a trinket and
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: we went to it. We went to an active dig
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: site where they're finding like really old English stuff. But
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: it's like they get excited about it, but it doesn't
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 2: mean that in my mind, doesn't mean it much because
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: their shit's gona wind up there anyways, because people are
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: going to take this stuff and trade it. We talked
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: to one researcher on it and he's like this, We're like,
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: what would satisfy what would sad by you about what
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: happened to someone? And he said it's cool because it's
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: like identifiable. He's like a Christian burial, a Christian burial
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: not on Roanoke m someone because all the tribes had
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 2: burial rituals where the bodies would be buried in a
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: curled up and fetal positions, you know, very different ways.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: He goes to find a because he's like, they might
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: have you know, they might have been integrated into a tribe.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: The last thing to go would be religious practice. Yeah,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: you know in his mind, the last thing to go
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: would be burial rights and a mother bearing her child,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: a child bearing its mother or someone would would would
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: have laid them out on their back, flat prone head
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: to the east.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, a Christian style burial done by Christians is what
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 4: they're looking for.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: And he's like, if someone can present that, they can
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: say here's where here's where they ended up.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 4: Uh.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: A detail about that we get into is to kind
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: of show you what's gonna happen to these people when
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 2: they land. It's within days. One of them goes out
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: to get oysters. They got they got like nothing. They
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: got their heart up from the minute they're there. They
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: got very little food resources. Crabs, right, he goes crab,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: he goes blue crabbing. It just gets filled full of arrows.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 4: His head smashed.
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: Now because the dudes that were there before him, the
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: English explorers that were there before him, do all this
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: ham handed antagonistic ship to the tribes and piss off
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 2: a bunch of the tribes, and then you later bring
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 2: a bunch of women and children and turn them out
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: on an eye.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 4: Let him go.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: You see anybody, uh, I don't know, don't mention me.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: And there aren't any like oral true from those communities
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 3: around there.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 2: About the strangers, I'm kind of shocked by how it's
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: kind of shocking how how little there is, how little
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 2: there is there.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 4: Again, there are those rumors of like you know, blue eyed.
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: Right, square houses too, tribes like like traders would encounter
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: people and they'd be like but in wild places, you know,
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 2: they'd be like hundreds of miles inland, there's there's people
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: in square houses living with such and such a true
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: and to have a square house. But it's just just
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: like it's ephemeral. It's like rumors and glimpses as we
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: dug into it. Like I'll tell you one of things
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: for certain, and I can't say much of certain. One
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: hundred and seventeen of those guys didn't go somewhere and
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: like set up shop and build houses.
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: That was too much of an imprint.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: It was whatever happened was like quick. It was ugly,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: and I think it was scattered.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 4: They panicked and scattered to the wind.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: And I'm sure some of them because they did write
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: on a tree. They wrote on a tree and on
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: a fence post, crow atin and then kro on one signe.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: They finished it on one sign. One sign did and
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: now was the agreement. If you go somewhere write it down.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: But then like did they make it? How many of
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: them made it? How many went to crow at five? Right? Yeah,
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: you don't know. And then there's been fraudulent evidence, like, uh,
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: there's this thing that came out called the Dare Stone.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: This woman Elizabeth Dare wrote this like fairly plausible on
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: a rock. Don't laugh, No, I writes a rock like
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: some shit, right, And a guy finds the rock. But
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: the timing of him finding the rock was that a
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: timing of like heightened the public curiosity about this is
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: when the legend started to emerge. And then you have
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: a dozen copycat rocks. So all the copycat rocks are obviously,
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: and then the one rock is suspicious, and now people
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 2: don't accept that rock to be true. But that rock
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: basically said like we've been whittled away and killed and kidnapped.
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like it was written to her father and
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 4: to me though the love I like, I like the
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: you know, so wait, like she was running around running
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: from these hostile Native American tribes.
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: No, she was in their captivity at the time and.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: Carrying a scratching rocks the pound rock around slowly story
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 4: into it.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it seems implausible.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: We need to go quickly get the rock.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: It seems implausible. We talked to these one authors. They
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: they kind of laugh about that. It's called the Dairstone.
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: They laugh about the Dairstone. You gotta have a pretty
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: sophisticated understanding of the language at the time. But one
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: of the things they laughed about the Airstone is it
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 2: like a decent analogy would be, let's say I were
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 2: to talk to you in a Southern accent, right right,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 2: and a Southerner doesn't think I have a Southern accent.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: They're writing on the Dairstone is so like stereotypically.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 4: Ye old English, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: And yeez, you know, like all over the place. They're like,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: it's just it's like someone who's like read some Shakespeare
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: or something trying to write a note in Shakespeare language.
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 2: You know or whatever. And that's one of the better
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: indictments of the other indictment to be this play comes.
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 4: Out right right at the same time.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this very popular performance comes out. It's still running
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: today and and and the fervor of the popularity of
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: this they're low and behold as the daarstone.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but again, I mean like, these are not selected
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 4: because they're like finite mysteries. They're they're selected because they're
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 4: they're there's they're mystery with all kinds of possibilities, and
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 4: that's what makes it fun, you know.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think that one will be solved, and
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: just a spoiler alert, that's what I say. In the end,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I don't think there's like a thing when
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: you look at it, like there's a lot of people
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: looking and a lot of people ask the question, but
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: there's not it's too there's not a clean answer. I
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: don't think there is a clean answer, right, but.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 4: In the questions I'm asked for a long time. But
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 4: I think what was like, what was really cool about
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 4: this concept and really unique to this concept is no
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 4: one's really asked those questions from an outdoor standpoint. So
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: these are all mysteries that have a element of the
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: outdoors right in the in wilderness, and no one's really
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 4: approached them from from that point of view. And it's
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 4: a lot of what we spend our time in the
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 4: show doing is like living these things and and going
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: through to the best of our ability, the things that
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 4: those people went through, or it's suspected that they possibly
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 4: went through.
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, going but going to the real places kind of
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: blows your mind because there's this one theory that emerged.
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: They said, even though they had written that stuff on
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: the thing, there was also an expression of intention that
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: they moved fifty miles to the main which you can
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: take it different ways. One interpretation is they went fifty
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: miles inland, which lands you in this place we went to,
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: which is called the Great Dismal Swamp. And you go
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 2: into that stuff, you're like, oh, yeah, you guys under
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: like kids and stuff, and you're all wearing like petticoats
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: or ever the hell they ran around it, and like
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: you're navigating that, you know, you're like wading to the
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: Great Dismal Swamp.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: And what's kind of amazing though, is when when we
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 4: went you go there now and there's a bunch of
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 4: dry land. There a bunch of agricultural land, but all
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 4: of that land was was drained. That was all just swamp.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 4: When you think of the prototypical swamp like Kermit the
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 4: Frog at the beginning of the Muppet movie, level swamp,
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 4: like that's what it was. Lily pads and cypress trees
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: that whole area.
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we I mean, you know, it's an hour long show.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: You can't explore any avenue of this and this would
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: have been like way down the list for how sort
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: of outside of the story it was. But that area
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: some of the most harshest slave conditions, Yes, in the
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 2: history of slavery in the South, some of the most harshest,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: like high death rate slave conditions was making that dry land. Yeah,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: they were put to work draining that land. Yeah, and
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: these mallarial you know, and mallarial conditions.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 4: Those canals are also just criss crossing the land. You
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 4: see those canals that they dug, and the imagine the
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 4: conditions under which they were.
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 2: Looking at just many many, many many square miles upon
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: square miles upon square miles. It was hand dug trenches
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: to drain that ground. It was just like a disposal
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: place for humans that you just pour into like you
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 2: like you're pouring them into a war, pouring slaves into
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: that job, which, like I said, wasn't a lot of
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: room too. Maybe a future maybe a future episode. Uh.
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: Another one of going to the spot, we'll talk about
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: this one, we'll wrap it up, is going to Donner
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: Pass where the Donner Party, where that all went down.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 2: And one of the funniest things just happened in a
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 2: parking lot. It's not in our show because it just
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: happened in a parking lot. Someone we ran into some guys.
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: They were filming. They were doing like some ski stuff
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: or something. I think what they're doing. We got talking
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: to them. They were talking about So this is like
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 2: a third third hand story because we're out filming a
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: dinner Pass and they're filming like some skis nothing to
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: do with Donner Party. We're feeling about the dinner party
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: and they're filming some ski stuff and they share it
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: with us. These people that they hadn't counter who were
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: in Donner Pass because they were doing a thing about
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: places with Christmas names, right, you know, Donnor and Dancer.
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 2: That's the funniest thing the world. Amazing. Uh, that was
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: pretty amazing background on Donner Party. Donner Party was well,
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 2: first off, I'm gonna talk about what before I get
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 2: into what it was, I'm gonna talk about However, what
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: everybody knows, including me, what I know about the Donner
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: Party is it was an American horror story where people
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: ate each other full stop. Right, They're like, yeah, they
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: got stuck in the mountains and ate each other. Mm hmm, yeah, right,
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: that's the story there there in the story. It's a
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: very short episode. That's the story of the Donner Party.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 2: That's what That's what I went into it knowing about.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: You know, I was actually like a little skeptical because
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: I was like, what is it? You know, what is
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: it really to do? You know?
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 4: So no, I think we were all like that was
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 4: a show that we pitched many times, like a concept
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: that we pitched many times. And the question we all
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 4: had was like, well, like what's the story? Like what's
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 4: the mystery? What's the story? You know, they got snowed in,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 4: they ate each other. I don't you know, what are
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 4: we gonna do?
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: Seems pretty straightforward?
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 2: It ain't. It ain't. There's a lot like who's to
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: here's the questions who's to blame and what could they
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: really have done different? Right? And why did what happened happen?
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: And now I'm gonna say a little bit of the
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: scene is like eighteen forty six, so pre Gold Rush,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: Like everybody's heard of the forty nine ers, ye, right, member,
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: we had Elliott west On, he goes. Everybody's to talk
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: about the forty nine ers, But the lucky ones were
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: the forty eight ers. The forty eight ers got all
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: the gold. The forty nine they were late. We're a
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: little late.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 4: So these folks were hopeful forty eight ers.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so these guys, uh, the dinner party, they're coming
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: over in eighteen forty six. And the way these emigrant
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: trains worked, as I learned through this project, is like
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: they're they're like there's a fluidity to how these groups
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 2: come together. You know, there's a kind of rough timeline.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: Like if you're going to cross the Great Plains, across
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: the Rockies and across the Sierra Nevada, it's like you
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: gotta get going as early in the spring as you
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 2: can to have the maxim amount of time so you
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: can cross the continent and get there before snow. But
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: you can't leave until the ground dries out. So it's
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 2: hard to get going in March because you're gonna encounter
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: flood swollen rivers. Right, there's mud everywhere, so you gotta
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 2: be like, shit's got to dry out, and there's a race.
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: It's like stuff dries out, water levels come down from
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 2: snow melt, and all of a sudden, it's a good
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: time to go, and then you haul ass. And then
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: on the other end, you're bracketed in by the coming
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 2: of bad weather. So there's like you pick your window
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 2: and and groups come together and they meet in these
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: certain spots and uh, what was the big town everybody
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: took off? These guys all took out of us, not Springfield, Springfield, Missouri. Yeah,
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: what's that independence? Yes, I think that's it where they
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 2: took off from. Anyways, you come together and you form
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: your your parties come together in family groups. Family groups
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 2: form up, right, so you when you cross in a
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 2: wagon train, you might be with your extended family. It's
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 2: it's you, you know, it's your brother, it's your brother's
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 2: wife and kids, it's your mom and dad, it's your
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 2: uncle and his family. But then you you join up
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 2: with all these other family units. So you're in a party,
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 2: but you're loosely bound.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 4: Family units and bachelors and you know, all all kinds
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 4: of different.
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 2: Things and guides and hopefully a guide it's been there before,
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 2: and there's like, uh, you're literally taking votes to to
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: to put forward like a leader. So when we say
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: the Donner Party, you know, winds up being it winds
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 2: up being ninety some individuals of like two primary clans,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: but then a bunch of other people kind of surrounding
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 2: these clans. And they get all the way out to uh,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 2: they get all the way out to Fort Bridger, and
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 2: they are fed some bad information about a thing called
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 2: Hastings cut off. It's super funny about Hastings cut off,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 2: as it was billed to them as shorter and easier. Okay,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: this is this is the great part of this. It's
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: way harder and now that you can like measure stuff accurately,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 2: it's not stronger Hastings cut off, which is shorter and easier.
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 2: It's longer and harder.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 3: Pretty rare in the world of cutoffs.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: It's like a shitty long cut. Yeah, and they have
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 2: a lot of an internal division. Donner's wife, for instance,
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: is like I don't think we should do it. But
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 2: this is crazy because Jim Bridger gets rolled up in
• 1:30:07
  Speaker 2: this whole thing. Jim Bridger. He all these wagon trains
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: are taking a route that's causing them to bypass Fort Bridger.
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 2: Bridger who's already a compromised individual in some ways because
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: famously it was Jim Bridger who abandoned Hugh Glass and
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: the whole Revenant incident. Right, so Bridger is or isn't,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 2: like the world's greatest guy. Bridger is like, shit, now
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: no one goes by my fort anymore. And he's like,
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: Hastings cut Off sounds great. It goes right past my fort.
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 2: You guys should definitely take Hastings cut Off and stop
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 2: by well trade, I'll sell you some shit. And they
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 2: do this and uh and when they leave on Hastings
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 2: cut Off, here's the crazy part. So like other wagon
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 2: trains at the time they go south on Hastings cut Off,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 2: which is going to go over the wall Satch Range
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: and then through Dinner Pass. Well it joins back up
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: before Donner Pass. Anyways, when they there's other wagon chains
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 2: that they're with, the wagon chains they're with that don't
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 2: take Hastings cut off, make it to California just fine
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 2: going over Donner Pass. So they do this south loop
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: and it sets them back so far and encounter so
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: many weird problems that they wind up behind other parties
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: when they go up Donner Pass. So they're not pioneering
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: Donner Pass. Donner Pass has successfully been used.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 4: Been used in years prior.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and they start up in the snow and
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: they get uh the.
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 4: They well, it's it's like important to note to you.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 4: It's not that they actually don't arrive at the bottom
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 4: of Dinner Donner Pass particularly late, despite all of their problems.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 4: It's it's the end of October.
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's an early storm.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 4: Right, parties had crossed as late as December.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 2: And yeah, you're in years past. I forgot that detail. Yeah,
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: that's anar thing. Is like, that's a great point because
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 2: you also start there's this kind of narrative that they
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: were like I was just laying out like stupid to
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: go up there. Yeah, they were late, they were late,
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: but it had been done. They were late, but it
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: had been done. But then they got up in the
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: mountains in a situation where it was just insane snow.
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: It was an abnormal snow year. Yeah, and they lingered,
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: they got up there. It was an early snowstorm. Perhaps
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: they could have backed out, but they felt that they
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: would get a thaw. Right, what are the odds that's
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: going to keep happening? Right all the time, like living
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 2: in the Northern Rockies, you know, also in October, like
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: what big old storm, and then like a month later,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 2: it's like seventy degrees and you're like hunting in your
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 2: t shirt and you're like, God, it isn't that weird.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 2: It was like, you know, two feet of snow here
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago. They thought it'd be that,
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 2: but it just got worse, deeper, worse, deeper, and they
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: lingered too long, and then it became impossible to back out.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 4: And when you talk about worse and deeper, like the
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 4: numbers are astounding, like the amount of snowfall in that area,
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 4: they'll get sixty feet a snowfall in Donner Pass.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: They're climbing, they make these all these little shelters. We'll
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: talk about those in a minute. They're getting to where
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 2: they're climbing tunnels up out of their shelters. You climb
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: out and pop out on the surface and they're cutting wood.
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: There's pictures later where there it be a dude standing
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: on dry ground. Yeah, and way up above his head
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: is a cut off tree, Yeah, thirty feet and he
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: realized that's where they were cutting wood, walking around on
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: top of all that snow. But here's where all this
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: whole Donner party shit changes for me, is it's ninety
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 2: people over half a little kids. You never think about that, yeh,
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: No one ever thinks about it's little kids.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah, And.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: Like, statistically the little kids were more likely to survive,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: and also statistically parents of little kids were more likely to.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 4: Survive, and statistically women were more likely to.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 2: Survive, more likely to survive.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 4: That the people who did who fared the worst were
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 4: unattached bachelors.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a handful of reasons, like supposed reasons why they
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 2: were already working their.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 4: Ass saatigued from the trip out that far that.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 2: They were assuming all this work, doing all this stuff,
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 2: so they're going into it very lean. Meanwhile, people who
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 2: had been able to ride in the wagons weren't as
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: physically depleted. There's also like a little bit of a
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: psychological element there winds up being this group decides eventually
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: to make a break for it, and it's called the
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 2: Forlorn Hope Party. And they make a break for it
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: in the California direction. They're going to cross Dinner paths.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: They're almost to the top of Donner Pass. They're going
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 2: to cross the pass and go for it on foot. Yeah,
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: on foot. They make no issues. They think they'll do
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: They think they'll be there in some number of days.
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 2: It takes weeks. Of the people that left on that
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: Forlorn Hope Party, parents lived, people with, people with relatives
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 2: at the camp. Yeah, other people just are like fuck
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: it and just died, you know, because they probably got
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 2: where there was no point, you know, And there is cannibalism,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 2: but it's like, you know, these people were condemned for
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 2: a long time for it, but when you start looking
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 2: at it, was like you start getting it. Like they
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 2: did everything they could possibly do, everything they could possibly
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 2: do to keep their families alive. And I don't think
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 2: anyone would do anything differently.
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 4: I think the only thing that would be done differently
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 4: in a modern context, and I mean this in all seriousness,
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 4: is that cannibalism would have started much earlier. I think
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 4: that you're talking about a time when people are you know,
• 1:35:54
  Speaker 4: we talk about in Roanoke like the last thing to go,
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 4: or religious practices. These are peopleeople who are highly religious
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 4: and highly driven to live by that code, and that
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 4: code is very specific about eating other folks, you know,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 4: and they hold on for what would seem like forever,
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 4: just a torturous amount of time of starving to death,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 4: trying to scrape food together in any way they can
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 4: before they before they start eating people.
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one dark element to it. They it seems
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: like no one really knows all the details. But if
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: you look at all the journals and evidence and all that,
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 2: it seems like cannibalism with one exception. Cannibalism was limited
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: to people eating people who had starve to death. Okay,
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: they're eating people would starve to death. But there's a
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 2: guy in the dinner party who's kind of like, throughout
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: the whole story kind of emerges as a real asshole.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: He murders two Native American guides that they have. But
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 2: at that time that was not illegal. It would have
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 2: been illegal to shoot someone's cow, it was not illegal
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: to murder two Native Americans. He outright murders two Native
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: Americans to eat them, and then later everybody knows that
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: he did. He just lives his life.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, not picked up.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: They talked about doing something. No one ever did anything
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: to that dude. And there's also all these other crazy stories,
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: like one of the search parties, as it's told, like
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: it was quite a sight when search parties started to come.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: But when search parties came, they had to kind of
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 2: ferry them out. Like a search party shows up and
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: they can only take a handful of people, so they're like, okay,
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: everybody wait here. They take a handful of people to California.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: Come back one time. They come back and as the
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: story goes, here's a guy holding walking along with a
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: human leg and sees the search party people and has
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 2: the wherewithal to throw it down in the snow. My
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: dog tries that trick, like you got busted. We met
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: with an archaeologists that dug one of the camps. They
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: were at two different camp two primary camp locations, and
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: they dug one of the camps and found the remains
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 2: of all kinds of stuff that they were they were eating. Uh.
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: At one point early on, they killed a bear, they
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 2: killed a grizzly early on, they killed dogs, They had
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 2: oxen they killed.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 4: They had lots of small games, deer.
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 2: Rodents and stuff they were killing, and they were they
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: One of the things they were doing is they were
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 2: eating animal hide. So early on they had no way
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 2: to feed their oxen, so they were killing the oxen
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: and just eating the meat. And then later they started
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: revisiting it and they started eating the bones. But when
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 2: they killed them, they used the hides to help them
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 2: make roofs and doors on structures. They were making like
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: ten like structures with hides. We made one of these
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 2: structures with this rotten ass cow hide, uh, and slept
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: in there. It was one of the worst smelling rotting cowhide,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 2: and we use it for a shelter. It was a
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: great shelter. I mean, you could keep a lot of
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 2: warmth in that thing with a fire, like you could
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: make a warm in air. But stank. We got like
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 2: a little chimney and stuff coming out there. Uh So
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 2: how was I getting in with that?
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 4: We were talking about the animals that they.
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 2: They started eating the hides, and then they started boiling
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 2: the bones and crushing the bones and boiling and eating
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 2: the bones. And there's a thing I read after the
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: fact that I really wish I had read before we
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: did it. A guy happens to give me. One of
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 2: our podcast guests, Randy Brown, gives me a book called
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 2: Death on the Barren Ground, and it's this journal of
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 2: of It's a journal of one guy who was in
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 2: a party of three people and they all starved death.
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 2: The youngest guy lives longest, and he keeps a meticulous
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 2: journal chronicling the starvation death of his two companions and
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: then chronicling his own death of starvation. Okay, and they
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: all die in the nineteen twenties in the Canadian Arctic
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: along the Thelon River. It's so crazy because they wind
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 2: up eating that exact same diet they had been trapping,
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 2: so they had wolverines and stuff, and they're eating wolverine hides,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: weasel hides that they had built up before they started
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: to starve to death, and they're eating bones and what's
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 2: killing them Like they're dying of starvation, yes, but what's
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 2: really killing them is these terrible bottle obstructions because they're
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 2: eating that boiled, crushed bone. In the absence of other stuff,
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 2: they're trying to build makeshift enema devices and they're literally
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: digging out of each other's rectums, dried gobs of crushed
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: bone and like that are forming in of these gelatinous
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: balls from that boiled animal hide. And then the hair follicles,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 2: because you're eating, you're scraping the hair away, but there's
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 2: all that hair follicle, and that hair follicle is joining
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 2: up into balls of hair. When they find these guys'
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: bodies a couple of years later, the Royal Mounted Police
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 2: do like a report. They are nothing but skeletons, but
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: there's still what he describes as a plate of excrement
• 1:41:25
  Speaker 2: in the cabin of this bone ball.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 3: Concrete.
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they talk about And so we met with an
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 2: archaeologist who worked on this bone project. And then I
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 2: later was like after we met, after we got done
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: film in our episode, I sent her, I was like, hey,
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: for your work. Here's this great journal of like what
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: happens when you eat these diets, and like that's what
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: killing that's what's killing those guys, these guys, these Canadian
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 2: Arctic guys, what's killing them? They would have died anyway,
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: But what's like the immediate biggest problem them is that
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: that the bowel obstruction and digestive problems of eating, like
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: non edible. Yeah, needing eating non digestible stuff in a
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 2: state of desperation.
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they talk about, you know, in in dinner, they
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 4: talk about boiling those bones so many times boiling and
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 4: reboiling that they get something called pop polish, which is
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 4: like they basically turned to porcelain in that pot as
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 4: they try to extract whatever nutrients they can out of
• 1:42:30
  Speaker 4: out of what's left of the bone.
• 1:42:32
  Speaker 2: We boiled up some raw hide. Yeah, and its like
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: you can make it pretty edible, man, when you boil it.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: Actually it's actually not that. It's like, why is it
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: being like quite flavorless and has a most out of umi.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 3: More of the broth that that wasn't the rotten that.
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: We talked about.
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 4: It safe for consumption.
• 1:42:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we had had. We had a handful.
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 4: If you're starving out there, you need it.
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah. We did some snow shoes. They made snow shoes.
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: We mocked up some snow shoes. We worked with the
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: guy that spent some time, spent a lot of time
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: hiking the path.
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 4: You know.
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 2: But uh yeah, man, being in the dinner pass, you're
• 1:43:17
  Speaker 2: like there eight, I can tell you one thing ain't
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: ship to eat here.
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 4: We tried to hunt like you know, squirrels, small game.
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 4: You end up like in an hour, you burn more
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 4: calories than you could possibly hunt, you know, for the
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 4: whole day.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: It's just like it's just it's like it's a subalpine.
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 3: It's like like it's rocket.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's not like that. It's but it's i mean,
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 4: at a certain point it's like almost like what's the difference.
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like it's subalpine. It's like fifty percent of
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 2: every surface is rock and you got little like dwarfed
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: up spruce and fur and there's some there's some pond
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 2: of roses here and there, but it's just like a
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 2: very poor ground. And you talk to guys there, like
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: we talked the hunters there, and hunters are like, dude,
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 2: the first whiff of snow, yeah, everything they do not.
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 4: Snowf on the country.
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, they're like you come up in the summer,
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 2: but they're gone, they're gone early. Yeah, you know, this
• 1:44:16
  Speaker 2: is nothing. There's nothing. I mean they killed like a
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 2: like a some crows whatever here and there.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but again nothing nothing that was enough to replace
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 4: the calories they were burning on it. So it's a
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 4: it's what was fascinating to me about that story is
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 4: like you go in, you know, and I think this
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 4: is like throughout the series, you go in like with
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 4: one concept. Yeah, you're like dinner party, you know, cannibals,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 4: like I get it, Like you don't get it at all.
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 4: And you when you when you do the research, and
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 4: in conjunction with doing the research, spend time in the
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 4: place trying to do the things that they have done,
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 4: you have a completely new perspective on it. And so
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 4: you go into the story being like, Wow, what a
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 4: bunch of like fools that ended up eating each other
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 4: in the mountains, And you come out of it being like, well,
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 4: what a bunch of heroes. Yeah, you know, this is
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 4: the level of heroics that went into saving those kids.
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 4: There's a great story about one of the women who
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 4: stayed back at h at one of the two sites,
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 4: which was Donner Lake. Is right at the at the
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 4: end of Donner Lake, she's basically responsible for all these kids.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 4: You know, she delivers as the story goes, she delivers
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 4: the last kid to that rescue party and then just
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 4: leans up against the cabin wall and and dies, you know.
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 4: And it's and it's the story is like full of
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 4: these little, these little sub stories like that that that
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 4: just I find like incredibly moving and like a total
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 4: rewrite of what I understood of of that history.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 2: Now, I kept vowing that I was gonna stop making
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: any and all Donner jokes, Donner Family, Christmas, Donner Dinner Party.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: No I stuck to it. Now, you know, we were
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 2: joking like, did you know that Saddam Hussein has books
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 2: of poetry? So just like you could say, like, you know,
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: the poet Saddam Hussein. No one says that, right, he
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 2: has a novel, so you can say the poet novelist
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 2: Saddam Hussein. You'd never say that. So now when someone
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 2: say from now on, I might actually yeah, when we
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: overthrew the poet novelist Saddam Hussein. Uh So, now you
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 2: know you'd be like Donner Party. You know, I'm gonna
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 2: start doing something similar, but the opposite. I'm gonna say, oh,
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: the heroes the Donner Party. Yeah, I'm not gonna say, oh,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 2: dirty cannibals. I'm gonna say, you know, the heroes the
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: Dinner Party saved all those kids, saved all those children,
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 2: wonderful story of hope.
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 3: You know, one of our finest moments.
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: There's an half of them died, half of them.
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 4: Lived, almost half of them died, more than half of
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 4: them lived. And the other little sub note, And you
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 4: don't make this the last thing on this, but like
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 4: I love the fact that his name the Donner, you know,
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 4: the Donner Party and Donner Pass, and we know it
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 4: as the Donners when you get into history. George Donner
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 4: stopped because he had he had wounded his hand trying
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 4: to trying to build a wagon wheel. He cut his hand,
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 4: and uh, and it was festering, so he stopped six
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 4: miles short. George Donner after which the entire fiasco is named,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 4: never even saw the pass. YEA.
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 2: He died of an infection. He got a somewhat superficial
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: caught on his hand. He thought he'd be fine. Dies
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: of an infection, that's great, and never lay his eyes
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 2: on the pass. Gets rich and there's there's a lot,
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's so much more like they had. You know,
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: they had gotten into an internal fight on the way
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 2: and had like a fatality from internal squabbling, and they
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: the I believe it was the Piute as they were
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: approaching the past, the Piute in Nevada where really whittling
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: the way on their livestock. They had all these all
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 2: these normal problems, should say no, yeah, yeah, all the
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 2: problems typical of people trying to cross right. They weren't.
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: They weren't like exceptional in any way. And then then
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 2: doing during the gold Rush, people resumed flooding over that thing,
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: man flooding over that past. And now you're standing there
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 2: and there's like the highway doesn't go that way, there's
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 2: a highway that goes over it. There's another highway over it.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: And you standing look and be like, who in the
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 2: hell would think you could get a wagon through here?
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like I've seen the signs.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 2: It is a wicked it's unreal pass.
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 4: It's unreal. I mean they they took the wagons apart
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 4: and block and tackle pulled them up, the pulled them
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 4: up those cliffs. And now it's like, you know, you're
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 4: within earshot of people going eighty five miles an hour
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 4: on a freeway.
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: That's just so funny, just driving in to do our work,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: driving into film, Like I get into the airport, find arena, Yeah,
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: find arena and start driving up the highway and you
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 2: get to a sign and it says like Sacramento seventy
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 2: two miles.
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah, like what fuck?
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, better make a reservation. What's exactly problem?
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 3: Af chang there?
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, seeing that signe it'd be like in your mind like,
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 2: oh shitting hour will be there. Yeah, we'll be over
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: the mountains and out the other side and down in
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 2: the valley of the hour. You know, imagine the ship
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 2: that like what that seventy two miles meant? Back then?
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: It's so funny you're on that highway. Also, I had
• 1:49:56
  Speaker 2: this like deflated feeling. I'm like, oh, cool story, what pansies?
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: Anybody could make it over there? Watch over there in
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 2: an hour? Man. That was great. So that that's we
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 2: covered three.
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, there's five more.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: So. We did one on the oldest shipwreck in the
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 2: Great Lakes, the first ship to sail the Upper Great.
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 4: Lakes, another fascinating story.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: We did one on the mysteries of the first Americans.
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 2: We did one on we should have got well, we
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: should have got into cattle mutilations.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 4: Cattle mutilations is a lot of fun. It's a lot
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 4: of fun too, because like that. There's another one where
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 4: I like, I know I went in with one perspective,
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 4: it was like bullshit, like you walk away man, Like
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 4: oh oh boy, yeah.
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I was thinking about if we wanted
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 2: to do a podcast on cattle mutilations. I can't think
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: of which one of the people we talked to be
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 2: best to have on. Oh all good. We had to
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 2: get a cam, a panel.
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 4: Enough here for most of the people in the Yeah.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: True.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 4: I don't know if you can.
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 2: Say community, but uh what else we got?
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 4: Man, it's a big community. I mean, there's a lot
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 4: of people out there that have had these experiences.
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 2: Here's one for people. We did one. We did one
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: on a thing now known as the Alaska Triangle, which
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: is a portion of Alaska that some argue has like
• 1:51:26
  Speaker 2: this insane rate of disappearances aircraft, missing people, ships. But
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: we we examined it through the lens of a particular
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 2: flight called the Beggage Bogs flight again from the seventies,
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: where the speaker of the house Hailbogs. Who if you're
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 2: an NPR fan, the journalist Koki Roberts who recently passed away,
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 2: Kochi Roberts. Have you ever listened to NPR news and
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: you heard the journalist Cookie Roberts her father was Hailbogs.
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: He was the Speaker of the House. Alaska had one Congressman,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: Nick Beggage, and the speed of the house. So like
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: the Speaker of the House, who's it now, Johnson uh
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 2: Baggage and Bogs? Or on a plane with a congressional
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: aid in a pilot and the plane goes missing and
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 2: is still missing today has never been found. Most of
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 2: the search area focused around. The search area for long
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 2: time focused around a glacier that they thought perhaps it
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 2: had gone into a glacier, and you'd be like, what
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 2: do you mean by that? But we went to in
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 2: doing it, we went to a place where a plane,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 2: a much bigger plane with many many more passengers, did
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 2: get eaten by a glacier and then many years later
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 2: regurgitated at the toe of the glacier.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 4: It's absolutely fascinating. They crashed this, this globe master, you know,
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 4: big prop plane, military transport members on it, on top
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 4: of this mountain. It falls into a crevass, snowed over,
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 4: and seventy years later, this massive glacier, colony glacier spits
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 4: it out the bottom just as just piece shredded pieces
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 4: of metal.
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: Every year the military every summer, the military goes and
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 2: they scoured the tour of that glacier and there's still
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 2: identifying it would be just finger bones, and there's still
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: identifying service members. And when we went, we flew over
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: in a helicopter. We didn't want to land there because
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: it's like, oh you know, it's almost like a gravesite.
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 2: We flew over after it did this summer's work and
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 2: there's orange spray paint circles. Wow, all along that glaciers,
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 2: not all on, but through good chunk of that there's
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 2: like orange spray paint markers and arrows and circles where
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 2: they were recovering debris. The engines came out in big pieces,
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: but a lot of it's just it's just like it pulled,
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: it pulled, rides it to gravel.
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so you know, just a massive garbageposal and you
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 4: think what it does to mountains. Yeah, yeah, there's this
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 4: a little plain man made a small aircraft.
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 2: But what's crazy is what's crazy is on this one,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 2: the baggage Bog's flight, the glacier they were looking at.
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 2: They spent a lot of time on this glacier. The
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: glaciers receded so much and it's been so long that
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: when you look at the rate of flow of the glacier,
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: you can now rule out that it was in that glacier,
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: because it was in that glacier to spit it out
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: by now, but except the bottom of it.
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 4: So this is this is what like, and this is
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 4: what's so cool is each one, each little facet of
• 1:54:38
  Speaker 4: each one of these mysteries has all these permutations, all
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 4: these possibilities. Like what's cool about that is that glacier
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 4: as as it as it, you know, kind of came
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 4: down the mountain and into the basin, dug out a
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 4: lake that's eight hundred feet deep, dude, just.
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 2: Like you can paddle a canoe crosses like some bitches,
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: eight hundred.
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 4: Feet eight ft pep.
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: It's in one edge of it is just a wall
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: of ice. So yeah, it could have spat it out
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 2: into eight hundred feet of water and a little crumpled
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: up pieces. My guess to spoiler alert, I think it's
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: a Prince William sound, yeah, which is deeper, yeah, and
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 2: muckier and way bigger. Yeah, I think it's a Prince
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: William sound. And I'm not like out on a limb
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 2: when I say that, But Uh, they focus very heavily
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: in one pass and one glacier at first and this doue.
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 2: This pass we go through it with a plane. There's
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: a pass where you're like going it's like the worst
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: pass in the world, like you know, a passion everything
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: like a straight thing. It's a pass where you like
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: when you're the worst part of the past, you gotta
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: take a forty five. You gotta not sorry, you gotta
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 2: take a ninety degree turn. So you're going like sharp left,
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 2: sharp right, get out there into a head wall and
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 2: it's takes incredible you fly.
• 1:56:00
  Speaker 4: To the end of this this you know of turning
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 4: and arm right, this massive kind of valley. It's first
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 4: at first a body of water and then this valley
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 4: Portage pass and then and then Portage glacier and Portish
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 4: Lake who we were talking about. And as you get
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 4: to the very end of it, you make a ninety
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 4: degree turn and only then can you see whether or
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 4: not the pass is open. And if it's you.
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: Gotta check for oncoming aircraft too, Yeah, And if it's
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 2: not open, you just got to keep turning and and
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 2: and do a one eighty and.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 4: Go right back to anchorage.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: When we're sitting there. In the past. We hiked up
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: in the past and we went down this lake. We're
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 2: sitting there. After a while, we watched a plane. He
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 2: gets up there, comes back, comes back and his head's
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 2: back to anchorage. He's like, Nope, not today, closed up
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 2: that day the sketchy pass. Yeah, but yeah, man, on
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 2: the what date? Yeah, January twenty eighth, if you want
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 2: to watch the show.
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 5: If people are listening to this, the day it drops
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 5: it is the twentieth, So it'll be weekend a day
• 1:57:02
  Speaker 5: from now, the twenty eighth.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, molds gonna do credits.
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 4: It wasn't quite the it wasn't quite the setup. I
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 4: was like, I was like kind of hintings, like, let's
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 4: kind of steer the last part of.
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: The contents poved in this and I'm not listening. I
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 2: want to say for you, I want to still yeah Mo,
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 2: and I'm joking yeah, talk about who, talk about who
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 2: he worked with.
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 4: I mean it is again as we talked about it,
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 4: like the beginning of the show, I'll try to make
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 4: a seguay. Now you're not going to do the work.
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 4: As we talked about the beginning of the show, it's
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 4: like there's a lot that goes into these shows. This
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 4: is not just like it's like, oh, you got to
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 4: show greenlit, you go out and make it. This is
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 4: years and years of like grinding in what's called the
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 4: development process. You take a show concept and you develop
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 4: a deck on it, and you pitch it to various
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 4: networks and and so I like, it's we got to
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 4: give credit to the people who did that work. It's
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 4: the hardest part of making TV.
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: Like going way back would be the constant attention of
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: Ben Ford and Mark Pierce.
• 1:58:12
  Speaker 4: Exactly ben Ford, Mark Pierce, Bridger Pierce, Chris Richardson and
• 1:58:16
  Speaker 4: all the people over at Warm Springs who really like
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 4: shepherded this project from concept to like something that actually
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 4: has funding and you're gonna go.
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: Out And on my end, it was my wife Katie. Yeah,
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: that's right, drove it on my end for a long time.
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 4: So I also I need to thak because she's the
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 4: one that called me.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: I's like, God, don't call.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 4: You know. So you have this tremendous group of people
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 4: here that we got to partner with and work with
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 4: and like the part that we do, like that's the
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 4: that's the fun part. And got on the field and
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 4: hang out and go to the cabin and you know,
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 4: get to do all the fun stuff fly around on
• 1:58:56
  Speaker 4: you know, glaciers and and all that. But on the
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 4: other side, when we talk about the network, like, what
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 4: was really great about this experience in this show is
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 4: like we had a tremendous team at the network too.
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 4: I've had a lot of network experiences. It often is
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 4: the case that you're getting network notes that are like,
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 4: don't like this, don't like this, don't like this. It
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 4: don't like provide any constructive path forward. What's really unique
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 4: here is working with like Max Mcaliffe, Mary Donahue, Alexander Hicks,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 4: Eli Lair. Their notes are their notes are very, very
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 4: pointed and very constructive, and it's a huge part of
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 4: what has made this show successful. So I've never worked
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 4: for this network before, you know, and instead of coming
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 4: in and having to like just operate in the blind
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 4: and figure things out, this is like incredibly you know
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 4: response of an adept team that's got a blueprint for
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 4: how you make these you know, these shows. And it
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 4: was a real, like real learning experience for me telling
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 4: these kinds of narratives.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: That's great, man.
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 4: So it was all around. It's just been It's been
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 4: an awesome experience. I hope we get renewed and you
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 4: can do it again.
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 2: It comes out the show's hunting History comes out on
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 2: History Channel ten pm Eastern. I could do the math
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 2: all across the whole country, nine Central, What happens eight
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 2: miles Mountain, seven dollars.
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 4: Ten o'clock in the Lost Colony.
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 2: Five or something like that. You figured it out, You'll
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 2: figured it out Alaska on the History Channel, and it
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 2: follows the show. That was funny is a lot of
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 2: most people we talked to when we're working on our
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: show and we talked about working with History Channel, they
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: bring up how they can't. They don't like to miss
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 2: Curse of Oak Island. So it's right after curseve oak
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 2: Island on his channel premiere January twenty eight. Then you
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 2: can watch for eight weeks.
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 4: Yeah, next year we'll make eight more.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: You'll watch the whole thing and never get to ce Mo.
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: So you have to watch here if you want to
• 2:01:19
  Speaker 2: see Mo, check him out. I trust that Moe was there.
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 4: It's actually technically not true. I'm really I'm really bothered
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 4: by one shot in uh Alaska Triangle where I'm like
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 4: I'm in this sweatshirt. I'm trying to I don't know
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 4: if I can get over my headphones, so I'm trying
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 4: to trying to hide in the back of the helicopter
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 4: like this as we're had a cameo.
• 2:01:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's cool.
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 4: And you can see. Man, it's just like, who is that.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 4: There's a weird dude in the helicopter.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 2: Your lives are at risk. There's a skyjacker. He's gonna joke.
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks everybody for tuning in man, and I hope you
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 2: check out the show, and I hope you have as
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 2: much fun watching as we had putting it together. Thank
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: you and thanks, thank you,