Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm made for ox work. I
Speaker 1: couldn't even be like a paralegal in the Old West.
Speaker 1: I struggle at a best Western, so I can't imagine
Speaker 1: if I'm at the actual least Western. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, the actual West. So yeah, even a best
Speaker 1: Western is too Western for you. Today I am joined
Speaker 1: by former Obama speech writer, current pod Save America co host,
Speaker 1: and a guy I considered to be a whip smart,
Speaker 1: world class communicator with a startling command of the issues
Speaker 1: and devastating comedic timing. He's also somehow turned crippling anxiety
Speaker 1: about the future of America into a wildly successful media empire.
Speaker 1: Please welcome the one and only John love It. Hi.
Speaker 1: What an intro? Thank you? Hey? Yeah, that's what we
Speaker 1: do here. We honor our guests, we elevate them. And
Speaker 1: I've been I've been on your shows over the years
Speaker 1: many times. I'm so glad to have you on here. So,
Speaker 1: in your job at Crooked Media, you basically spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time analyzing the daily horrors of American politics,
Speaker 1: particularly Trump World, and yet somehow you stay quick and
Speaker 1: clever and weirdly hopeful. What's your secret like what's the
Speaker 1: like are you is it just therapy or are you
Speaker 1: on black market ketamine? Like? How do you not collapse
Speaker 1: into despair all the time. I want you to know something.
Speaker 1: If I ever am on ketymine, it will be from
Speaker 1: a prestigious Los Angeles Chase pill pushing fancy doctor. I'm
Speaker 1: not going to do black market drugs, forgive that why
Speaker 1: I moved to this city, and I shouldn't know better.
Speaker 1: But so it's interesting. The truth is for me, I
Speaker 1: think hope is important. I think it's important that people
Speaker 1: feel it because I think without it they may not
Speaker 1: be as involved or invested in it has real genuine value.
Speaker 1: But it's never been my motivator, to be honest, I've
Speaker 1: always been motivated by anger. I really have, like what
Speaker 1: like anger, not just anger at Republicans who I disagree with,
Speaker 1: but like angry at the fact that these problems are solvable,
Speaker 1: right like just I like, Yeah, I'm the kind of
Speaker 1: person where I was at a buffet line over the weekend.
Speaker 1: In fact, what a life I lead? And I'm at
Speaker 1: this buffet line and there was basically it was a
Speaker 1: Nacho's buffet line, okay, And here's how it was organized.
Speaker 1: It went plates, chips, cheese, another bowl of chips, another
Speaker 1: bowl of cheese. There's a long fucking line behind me
Speaker 1: and in front of me. I see this, and nobody's
Speaker 1: doing anything. And so I walk to the front of
Speaker 1: the line. I take half the stack of plates and
Speaker 1: I put it next to the other bowl of cheese
Speaker 1: and chips, so that a whole group of people aren't
Speaker 1: walking by. And because that's where the logjam was, that's
Speaker 1: where the hold up was. Okay, look, I see that
Speaker 1: I'm becoming the old Jewish relatives I knew from my childhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you're Larry David all of a sudden, But in ways
Speaker 1: large and small, that is my nature. I can't stand
Speaker 1: those things. And so maybe I was just always motivated
Speaker 1: by the kinds of like. I don't need to love
Speaker 1: or be inspired every day to be motivated to participate
Speaker 1: or make jokes or do whatever we need to do.
Speaker 1: So maybe that's my good fortune. I do think like
Speaker 1: in a serious way, there's a whole home media apparatus
Speaker 1: that wants people to feel cynical and negative and to
Speaker 1: view all politics as corrupt and all politicians is useless.
Speaker 1: And if you give into that, the people that want
Speaker 1: you to feel that way when they really do. And
Speaker 1: as bad as things have got, as bad as they
Speaker 1: could continue to get, there are always places where we
Speaker 1: have agency. And if you're giving up, it's not because
Speaker 1: you can't make a difference or you can't be involved,
Speaker 1: or you can't have an impact. It's because either you
Speaker 1: don't know the way to find it or you've decided
Speaker 1: it's too hard. And maybe that's okay, that's something people
Speaker 1: can decide. But like I think there's a way a
Speaker 1: which people try to tell themselves things are worse than
Speaker 1: they seem or are irredeemable because it makes it easier.
Speaker 1: And the truth is, hope makes demands of us. It does,
Speaker 1: and it requires you to do things well said. Thank
Speaker 1: you for reflecting on that with me. I actually I
Speaker 1: kind of only want to talk about this stuff with you.
Speaker 1: I just like how you communicate about these things. Just
Speaker 1: a quick question. You were on the show Survivor. That's right,
Speaker 1: Did you guys at any point on that show ever
Speaker 1: consider eating one another, just like casually a backup plan?
Speaker 1: The truth is I was only I was only surviving
Speaker 1: for three nights, which meant I only really missed three
Speaker 1: and eating a fellow person doesn't come up after three dinners,
Speaker 1: you're already taking this question too seriously. But so it
Speaker 1: never comes to that. The other thing, too, is there
Speaker 1: are coconuts strewn about. Sure right, you know, the exact
Speaker 1: number of coconuts one might need to survive happened to
Speaker 1: be randomly distributed by I think God. Uh yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: today's NAF does involve actual cannibalism because one of the
Speaker 1: most famous disasters in American history. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: Donner Party. Hell yeah. The years eighteen forty six a
Speaker 1: time when Americans were charging westward under the banner of
Speaker 1: manifest destiny, which was basically the nineteenth century version of
Speaker 1: I want it and God said I could have it,
Speaker 1: so gimme it. It was kind of a conveniently divine
Speaker 1: permission slip for land grabs, broken treaties, and some really
Speaker 1: creative definitions of morality. But we'll come back to all that. So,
Speaker 1: like today, eighteen forty six is a time of deep uncertainty.
Speaker 1: Most of the people heading west, they're not thrill seekers,
Speaker 1: they're not adventurers. They're just families chasing stability and hoping
Speaker 1: for a fresh start. John, have you ever had the
Speaker 1: fantasy of just like leaving it all behind and walking
Speaker 1: away from everything for a fresh start, like just off
Speaker 1: somewhere new. I'll tell you it's pretty embarrassing. But my
Speaker 1: friend Sam and I when we were graduating college, we
Speaker 1: decided we really wanted to like we're gonna we want
Speaker 1: to like go west, all right. We really did talk
Speaker 1: about this, and are in unimaginative brains. We were like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go to Alaska. We're gonna move to Alaska,
Speaker 1: but we were gonna become paralegals there. And I don't
Speaker 1: really understand how it was. We'd like twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: and we thought, oh, well, go become paralegals because we
Speaker 1: know we could get that job. And I just there's
Speaker 1: something so embarrassing about imagining going all the way to
Speaker 1: allow SCA as an experiment, but being only able to
Speaker 1: conceive of an office job once we got there. We
Speaker 1: could have gone fishing, we could have done a lot
Speaker 1: of different things, but that was what we imagined. That
Speaker 1: there was a Jewish pragmatism in the heart of even
Speaker 1: that adventure. But there's also like this ken keezy kind
Speaker 1: of like adventure spirit to Alaska that we all crave
Speaker 1: kudos to you for that. Thank you. So it's eighteen
Speaker 1: forty six. The Oregon Trail was a well worn path
Speaker 1: at this point. There were maps, guide books, and a
Speaker 1: pretty clear playbook for how to make it successfully, as
Speaker 1: long as you leave on time, follow the route, and
Speaker 1: don't try to get too fancy, which makes what happened
Speaker 1: next all the more unbelievable because one group looked at
Speaker 1: that solid, proven plan and they were just like, hold
Speaker 1: my beer, because we got better ideas. We're going to
Speaker 1: do this our own way. What's your dinner party knowledge.
Speaker 1: I have never done a full deep dive. There's some
Speaker 1: tiny part of my brain that members that at some
Speaker 1: point they get hoodwinked in some way. We'll get there,
Speaker 1: but you're right. Let's meet the partiers, shall we. First
Speaker 1: up brothers George and Jacob Donner, who brought their entire families, kids, wives,
Speaker 1: kids from other wives, basically just a massive frontier Brady bunch.
Speaker 1: They also hired a crew of teamsters, not the Jimmy
Speaker 1: Hoffa kind. Back then, a teamster was someone who drove
Speaker 1: a team of oxen. Today, of course, it means a
Speaker 1: Union truck driver, so basically a similar vibe as today,
Speaker 1: just more hay and less honking. So do you think
Speaker 1: you'd make a good teamster back in the day or
Speaker 1: would you just tap out at the first blister? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know that I'm made for ox work. I
Speaker 1: couldn't even be like a paralegal in the Old West.
Speaker 1: To your earlier point, I struggle at a best Western, right,
Speaker 1: no matter if it's if it's in the West, or
Speaker 1: even if it's in the East. Yeah, a long time
Speaker 1: along a highway upstate New York, I'm at a best Western.
Speaker 1: I'm complaining You're life. So I can't imagine if I'm
Speaker 1: at the actual least Western, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: the actual West, the actual the worst Western, which is
Speaker 1: the real Old West. Okay, So yeah, even a best
Speaker 1: Western is too Western for you, right right, all right,
Speaker 1: all right? Well, also joining the crew James f Reed,
Speaker 1: an Irish immigrant from Springfield, Illinois, whose business had just
Speaker 1: gone belly up, so he's looking for a fresh start.
Speaker 1: He brought along his wife, Margaret, their kids, and Grandma Keys,
Speaker 1: who is in her seventies. That's that's got to be
Speaker 1: a tough old broad right, Just I'm surprised the Donners
Speaker 1: would have allowed Irish people. I think that's probably where
Speaker 1: they that was where they went wrong maybe. So at
Speaker 1: the start here we're talking about roughly thirty one people
Speaker 1: in the group. Now I'm going to throw out numbers
Speaker 1: this whole time, but historians kind of dispute the exact numbers.
Speaker 1: So these are rough numbers about thirty one people in
Speaker 1: the group. And according to young Virgin, the Reeds had
Speaker 1: the nicest ride, what she called a two story pioneer
Speaker 1: palace car pulled by four Oxen. Meanwhile, the Donners were
Speaker 1: apparently slumming it with just three Oxen wagons. So even
Speaker 1: on the Oregon Trail, teenage girls, or they're going to
Speaker 1: judge your ride, there were double deckers. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: quick little sidebar, John love it any like disastrous road
Speaker 1: trips in your life, because this is about to go
Speaker 1: off the rails. I'll tell you. I was the presidential
Speaker 1: speech writerer, and it was my job to be on
Speaker 1: the road with the president on a rural tour. He
Speaker 1: was doing a swing of rural areas talking about rural issues,
Speaker 1: and something went wrong with my physical plant, with my corpus, no,
Speaker 1: my habeas. Okay, this is very cryptic, but it sounds
Speaker 1: like sounds like you was sick, You're getting ill. You've
Speaker 1: never been going to the bathroom while the plane landed.
Speaker 1: That's not something you've ever done. You've never been You're
Speaker 1: not allowed to. And literally I am having I'm I'll
Speaker 1: just I'm shooting my brains out on Air Force one
Speaker 1: while it is physically landing. And I know that I
Speaker 1: have like thirty seconds after this plane stops to get
Speaker 1: to the van because the motorcade leaves when the President
Speaker 1: gets off the plane. And I spent that whole day wondering,
Speaker 1: am I gonna have to like fake some sort of
Speaker 1: a medical episode to get this van to pull over?
Speaker 1: Because I was in trouble that whole day. That whole day, God,
Speaker 1: I am sick to my stuf. Where is this? Where city?
Speaker 1: Are you at it? As well? But where is this
Speaker 1: mouth and butt? That's where it is? Geographically, I think
Speaker 1: we had flown maybe into Des Moines and we were
Speaker 1: doing a swing through Iowa, Okay, And uh it was
Speaker 1: an unbelievable nightmare. It was my secret nightmare. But I
Speaker 1: I made it all the way through. Nobody was the wiser.
Speaker 1: I mean, just like it was unbelievable. It was a
Speaker 1: high high low low day. I do love that story. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're jumping back in. The Donner Party officially departed Independence,
Speaker 1: Missouri and headed to the Oregon Trail on May twelfth,
Speaker 1: eighteen forty six, having now ballooned to roughly eighty seven members.
Speaker 1: But it didn't take long for shit to hit the
Speaker 1: proverbial fan. Because May twelfth is way late in the season,
Speaker 1: the best time to leave on a westward trek was
Speaker 1: early to mid April. This was pretty much common knowledge,
Speaker 1: so shame on the Donner Party, right. Travelers relied on
Speaker 1: seasonal grass and flowers to feed their cattle, and also
Speaker 1: needed to avoid the rainy spring, which created crazy amounts
Speaker 1: of mud. Are you a big planner when you travel?
Speaker 1: Do you do you? Are you in the guide books?
Speaker 1: Are you just kind of winging it? Like what's your style? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm a planner. I'm a planner. The Internet made travel
Speaker 1: worse because it used to be you went to a
Speaker 1: city to explore it, and now if you arrive unprepared,
Speaker 1: you feel as though you didn't explore it. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, and so, but I like to
Speaker 1: know before I go I agree. And also cell phones
Speaker 1: have made travel really annoying because I found myself walking
Speaker 1: around Florence like just staring at my map, like where
Speaker 1: where am I going? And like scrolling trying to just
Speaker 1: like orient myself as opposed to like, you know, twenty
Speaker 1: years ago, you'd just be looking for landmarks and finding
Speaker 1: your way around and just so much more in the space.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, and it's like you the risk of that is, oh,
Speaker 1: you didn't eat the right gelato. But the reward of that,
Speaker 1: the reward of that is maybe a discovery or an
Speaker 1: experience that you otherwise wouldn't have had. Yeah, hot take
Speaker 1: John love it. I think the internet might be bad.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, it's yeah. I agree. Well, needless
Speaker 1: to say, there was no internet back in the day,
Speaker 1: so despite the late start, the Donner group was in
Speaker 1: high spirits. Initially, the party made fine progress, traveling from
Speaker 1: Missouri to Wyoming in about six weeks. For all you
Speaker 1: coastal elites, that's over six hundred and fifty miles, which
Speaker 1: is pretty impressive in wagons. Okay, now we're getting to
Speaker 1: the part that you sort of knew a little bit
Speaker 1: about or had an inkling of in early July, the
Speaker 1: Donner party arrived in Fort Laramie, Wyoming. While the party rested,
Speaker 1: they crossed paths with a man named Lansford Hastings, a
Speaker 1: Westward Expansion supervan with a name that sounds kind of
Speaker 1: super villainy. Hastings had big dreams of flooding California with
Speaker 1: settlers to spark a bloodless revolution against the Mexican government casual.
Speaker 1: He'd also written a guidebook promoting a shortcut through the
Speaker 1: wa Such Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert, claiming
Speaker 1: it would shave three hundred miles off the trip. Small catch.
Speaker 1: He had never actually taken this shortcut, and in reality
Speaker 1: it added one hundred and twenty five brutal miles. But
Speaker 1: still in Laramie, the Donners took this terrible advice and
Speaker 1: turned onto the now infamous Hastings cut off. What's the
Speaker 1: worst advice you ever got from a stranger, John Lovett?
Speaker 1: Was it the person who gave you that pad tie
Speaker 1: on Air Force one? Or yeah, it was the night
Speaker 1: before someone said you got to try the seafood special.
Speaker 1: The Oyster's right out of the ocean, right out of
Speaker 1: the Hudson. Yeah, oh right, Oh god, Hudson Oysters. That
Speaker 1: would be it, all right? This so called shortcut cost
Speaker 1: the Donner party two grueling weeks just to get through
Speaker 1: the Wasatch Mountains, but at least the desert was next,
Speaker 1: and Hastings had assured them it would only take two days,
Speaker 1: so they packed accordingly, But in reality it took six days,
Speaker 1: after which the families were exhausted, dehydrated, and severely undernourished.
Speaker 1: You ever been screwed by a short cut? Yeah? Yes,
Speaker 1: cliff Notes got me because the cliff goats would get
Speaker 1: me off. In high school, they got me pretty bad
Speaker 1: because the teachers caught wise. Look I'm a sucker for
Speaker 1: a short cut. I am. I am. You tell me
Speaker 1: that there's a better way. I'm gonna try it. I
Speaker 1: really will, are you like Hastings would have gotten me? Yeah, honestly,
Speaker 1: pretty compelling. Shave three hundred miles off this epic journey.
Speaker 1: The one valuable thing about the Internet is that if
Speaker 1: there was a Reddit forum in eighteen whatever hear this is,
Speaker 1: it would have said do not do. It would be
Speaker 1: under everybody our you know, Oregon r slash Oregon Trail. Hastings,
Speaker 1: do not follow this is bad, don't believe him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a little bit more because you know, nobody,
Speaker 1: how are you going to check? How are you gonna check?
Speaker 1: There's nobody. You can't ask somebody in California when you're
Speaker 1: in Wyoming if they took the Hastings cut off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and if he's got a really nice mustache, like you're
Speaker 1: gonna trust him. Yeah. This is the era of the
Speaker 1: snake oil salesman. Yeah. You know, maybe the internet's not
Speaker 1: all bad. It's not all batter I'm coming back around
Speaker 1: a little bit. I take creatine. How about that? That's
Speaker 1: my snake oil. And I don't know why because a
Speaker 1: very hus ski strong man on the Internet said it
Speaker 1: was good for your bones or something. Yeah, it's still
Speaker 1: like knowing how much the Internet is trying to manipulate us.
Speaker 1: It's still amazing how much we allow ourselves to be
Speaker 1: manipulated or just sort of like don't catch it at first.
Speaker 1: We're very dumb creatures. We're very primal John, That's it's
Speaker 1: just who we are, all right. So by late September,
Speaker 1: the Donner Party had made it to the Sierra Nevada Mountains,
Speaker 1: just in time for that classic road trip phase where
Speaker 1: the simmering tensions are so high, everyone's feeling one sarcastic
Speaker 1: comment away from a complete freak out. Sure enough, October fifth,
Speaker 1: tempers flared along the Humboldt River when James Reid's oxen
Speaker 1: got tangled with another wagon. How dare they? Words were exchanged,
Speaker 1: and then blows. John Snyder, the driver of the Graves
Speaker 1: family wagon, struck Reed in the head with the butt
Speaker 1: of his whip. That's pretty badass. Margaret Reid tried to intervene.
Speaker 1: She caught a blow from the butt of that whip.
Speaker 1: That's when James Reid snapped. He pulled a knife and
Speaker 1: fatally stabbed Snyder. So after the stabbing, some in the
Speaker 1: group wanted to hang James Reid. He claimed self defense.
Speaker 1: Tensions were high. One vocal member pushed for punishment of
Speaker 1: some kind. The group compromised. Reid was banished, sent into
Speaker 1: the wilderness alone with nothing but a horse. So, uh, John,
Speaker 1: you've been voted off before, that's true. What does it
Speaker 1: feel like? What do you think is going through James
Speaker 1: Reid's ahead? Do you think they handed him a menu
Speaker 1: and let him choose whether he wanted a cheeseburger or
Speaker 1: a pizza? No, to make you feel better. Probably not.
Speaker 1: Probably is that what you got on Survivor? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: walk off? Oh right, there's a little booby prize. Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Well no, it's more like like it's more like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you've been out there. You know, you're kind of like
Speaker 1: still in shock. And then they're very sweet because they
Speaker 1: know you're you know, you're you're just sort of stunned
Speaker 1: by what's happened. And then at some point they hand
Speaker 1: you a menu and like, hey, you're you're out, but
Speaker 1: you get to eat whatever you want. So you get
Speaker 1: to eat, like, you know, you can have a burger
Speaker 1: or a steak or a cheese or a pizza or
Speaker 1: wings or whatever. So that's a that's a nice moment.
Speaker 1: You get to have that food again, do you when
Speaker 1: you're eating that meal of this just like the most
Speaker 1: decadent junk food that's so delicious. At that point, are
Speaker 1: you just like I would imagine you're in your mind
Speaker 1: you're like, I think I just won. Like also they're
Speaker 1: the suckers. There's still so much you're still swirling. And
Speaker 1: also you're not that hungry because you just haven't eaten
Speaker 1: for days, so you eat like a little bit of it,
Speaker 1: and you're you're already kind of starting to build the
Speaker 1: story of what happened that you're gonna have to tell people. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's what you're kind of working. You're already you're working
Speaker 1: over you're working over what happened. And yeahs still fun though.
Speaker 1: So Reed had to leave his wife, Margaret and their
Speaker 1: kids behind, but his daughter Virginia pulled off a stealthy
Speaker 1: act of love. With help from their teamster, she snuck
Speaker 1: out at night and caught up with her dad, smuggling
Speaker 1: him his rifle, some ammo and what little food she
Speaker 1: could she could find. Meanwhile, the Donner party pushed forward,
Speaker 1: low on food, high on stress, and by Halloween they
Speaker 1: were just one hundred miles from their destination, which is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty exciting. That's not like it sounds like a lot,
Speaker 1: but like, given how far they'd come, this is like
Speaker 1: a big deal. They're getting close. And Virginia kept spotting
Speaker 1: little notes her father left along the trail, as well
Speaker 1: as these little clusters of feathers from birds he had
Speaker 1: killed to eat, and he would leave these little symbols
Speaker 1: kind of signs for his family to let them know
Speaker 1: he was alive and ahead. Of them on the trail
Speaker 1: and doing okay. But then John, the snow hit, and
Speaker 1: it hit hard, and we're talking five feet right out
Speaker 1: of the gate. Those little signs from Read to his
Speaker 1: family stopped. The Donner party ground to a halt themselves.
Speaker 1: Provisions were dwindling, morale was basically toast. They were stuck.
Speaker 1: They're so close, they're so close close, and winter had
Speaker 1: just begun. When is this? What is the date? Roughly
Speaker 1: when this has happened a little bit after Halloween at
Speaker 1: this point. Wow. So they also got unlucky because you
Speaker 1: know they're late. They started late. That's a big snow.
Speaker 1: That's a big snow to come come In November, the
Speaker 1: stranded families hunkered down around Trucky Lake, building makeshift cabins
Speaker 1: that would later become Donner Lake in Today's for Today's cartographers,
Speaker 1: building makeshift cabins and praying for a break in the weather.
Speaker 1: After eight straight days of relentless snow, they started to
Speaker 1: suspect they might be in over their heads quite literally,
Speaker 1: because the snow is getting really deepy in it. That's
Speaker 1: the heigh of the snow. They're in over their heads
Speaker 1: physically and metaphorically. The motive metaphor being being in over
Speaker 1: your head. That's good. With that snow or water, that's good.
Speaker 1: That's good storytelling right there. Yeah, it's really good. Desperate
Speaker 1: for help, a group of ten men and five women
Speaker 1: strapped together homemade snowshoes and set out on foot. The
Speaker 1: rest of the party gave them a name that sounds
Speaker 1: kind of like a bad ass heavy metal band, the
Speaker 1: Forlorn Hope. So the Forlorn Hope just sets off on
Speaker 1: their on their their homemade snowshoes, and back at camp
Speaker 1: things are really falling apart. Adults are getting delirious, kids
Speaker 1: were starving, and the cold was sinking in deep. One
Speaker 1: by one, people started to die. Now, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of myths that swirl around the dinner party, but
Speaker 1: desperate times do call for desperate measures, John, Real Talk.
Speaker 1: Do you think they actually ate each other? Yes? I do,
Speaker 1: I do. I mean, I don't. I don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess it could just be lure. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: you're right, I don't know. They did. They did do it.
Speaker 1: They did, they did. But it's also it's been sort
Speaker 1: of like I think, spun up into you know, like,
Speaker 1: was it this violent cataclysm where they attacked each other
Speaker 1: and ate well. According to historian Michael Wallace, they did
Speaker 1: eat each other, uh and he even interviewed descendants who
Speaker 1: confirmed it. But it wasn't quite the Schmorgas board. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't quite the sort of like violent
Speaker 1: like attacking each other in order to eat one another.
Speaker 1: It was more analogous to like the alive story of
Speaker 1: the the soccer people who died of natural cause, well,
Speaker 1: you know, died of exposure. Sure they're they're eating became
Speaker 1: fair game, Sure shall we say. One of my favorite
Speaker 1: Monty Python sketches of all time is like these. It's
Speaker 1: a it's from one of their record one of one
Speaker 1: of their audio albums, and it's just you hear the
Speaker 1: creaking of a lifeboat in the ocean, and they start
Speaker 1: debating who looks more delicious, and it's so perfectly done.
Speaker 1: He's like, well, he looks like he's got a gambileg.
Speaker 1: I'd rather have Richard, and they just start debating. I think,
Speaker 1: I think it's a nice thing to do to say, hey,
Speaker 1: go for it. Just wait till I'm dead. Yeah, don't
Speaker 1: kill me, wait till I'm dead. And then I would
Speaker 1: just say, you know, wings and drumsticks first. Yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: I think that's fair. That's honestly, that's a fair I
Speaker 1: would honor that. If you and I were in this
Speaker 1: situation and you said that to me, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: fair totally. As you as you turn into the road
Speaker 1: runner and you and you picture me and you your
Speaker 1: your your lips are watering, and then you look over
Speaker 1: and I become a turkey, you know, with a head.
Speaker 1: I'm like, what's ed? What are you? What are you
Speaker 1: looking at me? Weird for because you look like with
Speaker 1: those little chef hats on your Yeah, I'm above your
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. So according to Wallace, this uh, this historian,
Speaker 1: what's really accurate is that as the crew died, their
Speaker 1: bodies were stored in snowbanks, becoming viable sources of nutrition.
Speaker 1: Who precisely among the various party members participated in this
Speaker 1: cannibalism is not clear. That has not been uh that
Speaker 1: has not been all verified. But because who's putting that
Speaker 1: in their diary? You know you're gonna write, there's no
Speaker 1: one's being like and then they ate a person and
Speaker 1: I didn't, but everybody else did? I get that? That's
Speaker 1: that's for you, Like you know, there's that there's that tradition,
Speaker 1: there's that like French tradition where there's a tiny delicate
Speaker 1: bird they eat whole. Do you know what I'm talking about. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's called the ordolan. It's called the ordolan, and and
Speaker 1: and it's considered a such a garish thing to do
Speaker 1: that you don't want God to see. So before you
Speaker 1: eat the ortolan, you put a towel over your head
Speaker 1: and you eat it under the towel with your hands
Speaker 1: because it's uh, God, your towels. Yeah, God can't see
Speaker 1: under the towels. It's it's sort of an apology for
Speaker 1: this depraved and decadent act. In the same way I
Speaker 1: think people aren't writing in their journals that they just
Speaker 1: ate the reads. I mean, you just can't. You can't
Speaker 1: hold someone in that situation to like normal standards. No.
Speaker 1: Back on the other side of the mountains, across the
Speaker 1: California border, the Forlorn Hope rescue crew was still doing
Speaker 1: all right. Sure them had died along the way, but
Speaker 1: the rest had made it, and at this point dozens
Speaker 1: still remain trapped at the Lake Camp back in California,
Speaker 1: in a town called Yerba Buena, which is now known
Speaker 1: as San Francisco. A crazy man was running around town
Speaker 1: telling anyone who would listen about a party of travelers
Speaker 1: trapped in the mountains. That man was James Reed. He
Speaker 1: had survived after being banished and going ahead on the trail.
Speaker 1: He survived and he made it. And of course he's
Speaker 1: now worried about his family and all of the other people,
Speaker 1: and he's telling everyone he can about it. And amazingly,
Speaker 1: the remainder of the Forlorn Hope rescue group also arrived
Speaker 1: in town shortly after Reid. Together they managed to organize
Speaker 1: a relief effort for those who were still trapped, and
Speaker 1: it worked. The first rescue crew traveled up over the
Speaker 1: mountains and arrived at the camps on February nineteenth, eighteen
Speaker 1: forty seven. They took twenty three of the starving party
Speaker 1: members back with them in that first wave, including Margaret
Speaker 1: and Virginia, back to California. James Reid was actually part
Speaker 1: of the cruise caboose, reuniting with Margaret, Virginia, and most,
Speaker 1: though not all, of his family. Because of the forty
Speaker 1: people who remained at the camp, this included two of
Speaker 1: Reed's smaller children who weren't strong enough to make the
Speaker 1: journey easily. Margaret, of course fought leaving her kids behind
Speaker 1: tooth and nail, but finally gave in for the greater good.
Speaker 1: That's a tough one. Woof. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'd be leaving my two youngest behind in
Speaker 1: a group, and in a group that's already eaten people.
Speaker 1: They're like starting to eat people right right right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the smaller pieces do fall to the
Speaker 1: bottom of the bucket at KFC, but it's only a
Speaker 1: matter of time before you get down there. You kinda
Speaker 1: guess that you don't throw that like any little fried
Speaker 1: crispy thing at the bottom. Yeah, you come get there,
Speaker 1: even if it's going in the fridge for a day
Speaker 1: or two, you're gonna go get there. You're gonna get
Speaker 1: your good Yeah, boy, oh boy, Hobbly. There were three
Speaker 1: more waves of rescue attempts, but the snow made it
Speaker 1: like truly impossible. They could only travel through the pass
Speaker 1: over the mountains with so many supplies and or people
Speaker 1: in tow, having to carry many of the children or
Speaker 1: adults who were too weak. More people perished during each
Speaker 1: round of waiting, including George and Jacob Donner. George unfortunately
Speaker 1: had injured his hand during the snow in which became
Speaker 1: gangrenous and ultimately killed him. It is said that Jacob
Speaker 1: died of starvation and was cannibalized. Here's a question I
Speaker 1: have for you. Okay, okay, uh, you're in this circumstance.
Speaker 1: All right, the plane has crashed the don You're in
Speaker 1: the Donner. Let's see whatever you're inn accountabalistic situation. You
Speaker 1: have spices, Okay, you have salt and pepper and garlic,
Speaker 1: powdered onion powder, you have paprika. Okay, you are going
Speaker 1: to eat someone Italian seasoning. Is it more respectful to
Speaker 1: eat this human flesh unseasoned so that the esthetic experience
Speaker 1: matches the kind of moral experience, which is one of desperation,
Speaker 1: Or is it more respectful to the deceased to flavor it,
Speaker 1: cook it well, make it as tasty as possible so
Speaker 1: that you get the best experience from this food. So,
Speaker 1: from the comfort of our respective recording studios, I'm going
Speaker 1: to say two things. One is I'm spicing the hell
Speaker 1: out of it because it probably is so hard going
Speaker 1: down right, it's gamy too. It's like, and I don't
Speaker 1: even I don't know what human tastes like, but I
Speaker 1: don't want to know. And even if it's even if
Speaker 1: it's delicious, I don't want it to taste like what
Speaker 1: it is, right, I don't want to just be thinking
Speaker 1: about this. So I'm spicing the ever loving hell out
Speaker 1: of it. But number two, I also am British that
Speaker 1: these debates did not happen on the day that they
Speaker 1: got anything to make it go down easier. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: use what're you use it? Of course you use it?
Speaker 1: All right. There was a fourth and final rescue mission,
Speaker 1: and when they arrived, they found only one last survivor,
Speaker 1: reportedly found hovering over a cauldron of quote, cooked flesh
Speaker 1: and discarded bones. Sure, so you're to your point. Maybe
Speaker 1: there's probably some broth happening, and Jeb, it's just you.
Speaker 1: It's just you, you know, yeah, God, you're just there
Speaker 1: by yourself. You're not You're not a little bit of Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like you're doing a kind of cannibal version of
Speaker 1: like Mama number five, you know, like a little bit
Speaker 1: of a little bit of Andrew, a little bit of Jessica. Oh,
Speaker 1: you know, you're mixing, you know what I mean, you're
Speaker 1: sort of make you're just you're you're kind of you.
Speaker 1: I do think like you've crossed some kind of moral
Speaker 1: plane and now you're alone in the woods. Like what
Speaker 1: if when they showed up these weeks later, this person
Speaker 1: had ballooned by like one hundred pounds. Oh wow, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do a little swan to go. Does anybody want
Speaker 1: me to put any of this in to go? I'm
Speaker 1: gonna make up, you know, like, I'm gonna make it nice.
Speaker 1: This heats up. Here's the thing about human flesh. It reheats. Well, hmm,
Speaker 1: that's the thing about it, right, Or you know some
Speaker 1: food doesn't it doesn't travel. It makes a good jerky, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's yeah. Dry it out. Oh boy, this San Francisco.
Speaker 1: This is making me sick. This whole thing. Really is
Speaker 1: it making me hungry? It's fucked up about me. It's
Speaker 1: so upsetting. I did this before lunch. Well. According to
Speaker 1: Virginia Read, out of the eighty three people who were
Speaker 1: snowed in at Donner Lake, only forty one survived, and
Speaker 1: of the thirty one family members and teamsters of the
Speaker 1: original Donner Party family from Springfield. Only eighteen lived to
Speaker 1: reach California. Historians dispute these exact numbers, but that's the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: So the story of the Donner Party soon gained notoriety,
Speaker 1: but it weirdly didn't really deter people from the Oregon Trail.
Speaker 1: The younger daughter, Patty Reid, even wrote a letter to
Speaker 1: her cousin in Illinois stating, don't let this letter dishearten anybody.
Speaker 1: Never take no cutoffs and hurry along as fast as
Speaker 1: you can, which I mean understatement of the century, or like,
Speaker 1: still do what we did, just don't take no cutoffs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, no such thing as a free lunch. The
Speaker 1: survivors of the Donner Party got up to various things
Speaker 1: after their rescue and settled into California. Do you think
Speaker 1: anyone like found success in California? I'm gonna say yes.
Speaker 1: I'm sure somebody must have made something of themselves. A
Speaker 1: guy named John Breen got rich in the California gold
Speaker 1: rush of eighteen forty nine, taking home over twelve thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in gold, which is almost five hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: in today's money. So maybe karma is legit. I don't know. Also,
Speaker 1: how old do you think the oldest survivor lived to?
Speaker 1: Oh well, I mean I think once you get through that,
Speaker 1: ninety eighty nine. Wow? Good guess, John, Okay, really good? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay yeah. John Breen's youngest sister, Isabella, who was one
Speaker 1: year old at the start of the journey, was the
Speaker 1: last living survivor of the Donner Party when she died
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty five at the age of eighty nine.
Speaker 1: Whatever happened to Lanceford Hastings are scammy snake oil salesman
Speaker 1: who convinced them to take the shortcut. Oh, I assume
Speaker 1: he goes on to some other kind of scam gets
Speaker 1: He's the kind of guy that dies in a bar
Speaker 1: fight or gets killed because he's stealing somebody's ghost. Yes, close,
Speaker 1: all right. In fact, he later died while leading a
Speaker 1: group of Confederates trying to colonize Brazil. Yeah, terrific, Yes, lancer,
Speaker 1: the guy's got big. Yeah. He was a Confederate during
Speaker 1: the Civil War and he actually opted to emigrate to Brazil,
Speaker 1: pulling many disgruntled Southerners along with him, and that's where
Speaker 1: he died. Well, you know, uh, too bad for him,
Speaker 1: you know what not' I don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: sympathy for him. No, The Donner Party kind of a
Speaker 1: grim reminder of how far people will go when they're
Speaker 1: sold a dream, ignore the warning signs, and follow bad
Speaker 1: advice deep into the wilderness, which kind of feels like
Speaker 1: America right now in a nutshell, a little bit desperate
Speaker 1: people promised easy shortcuts left starving in the cold, while
Speaker 1: the guy who gave them the map is nowhere to
Speaker 1: be found. Thoughts, reflections, takeaways seaking the Donner Party, I
Speaker 1: would say, based on that analogy, it's also a reminder
Speaker 1: that we shouldn't really stay put, that we got to
Speaker 1: keep moving and nobody is coming, that we have to
Speaker 1: save ourselves, I would say, soldier on. Yeah. Also eat
Speaker 1: each other. Yeah. And I just think, don't start start
Speaker 1: in the flank, start with the big muscles, all right.
Speaker 1: Start start where you'd start at a restaurant, you know,
Speaker 1: to get don't get cre native, don't get don't get cold,
Speaker 1: don't get adventurous. Yeah. If picture that little place, Matt,
Speaker 1: you get at the restaurant, at the steak place when
Speaker 1: you were the cow on, it cuts the cow, It
Speaker 1: cuts every Look at that group of meats, every single
Speaker 1: one of those basically has an equivalent on the human body.
Speaker 1: There you are, right, so take take with you, ah,
Speaker 1: Peter Luger's place, Matt is the is the lesson. By
Speaker 1: the way, don't sleep on the cheeks. Yeah all right.
Speaker 1: I haven't been going to pilates all this time to
Speaker 1: have you not eat my ash what? Okay? John? Love it.
Speaker 1: This has been an utter delight. I'm so grateful to
Speaker 1: have you on the show. Is there anything you can
Speaker 1: tell us about where we'll see you in the coming
Speaker 1: days months? What's what else is going on for you? Everybody?
Speaker 1: Do me a favor. Subscribe to pote of America. Love
Speaker 1: it or leave it otherwise, you know, see on the
Speaker 1: internet posting and posting. Keep up the great work. Thanks
Speaker 1: so much for being on, Jennings. So good to see you.
Speaker 1: This is fun always Cheers. Snapho is a production of
Speaker 1: iHeart Podcasts and Snapfoo Media, a partnership between Film Nation
Speaker 1: Entertainment and Pacific Electric Picture Company. Our post production studio
Speaker 1: is Gilded Audio. Our executive producers are me Ed Helms,
Speaker 1: Mike Falbo, Glenn Basner, Andy Kim Whitney, Donaldson, and Dylan Fagan.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Alyssa Martino and Tory Smith.
Speaker 1: Our video editor is Jared Smith. Technical direction and engineering
Speaker 1: from Nick Dooley. Our creative executive is Brett Harris. Logo
Speaker 1: and branding by The Collected Works. Legal review from Dan Welsh,
Speaker 1: Meghan Halson and Caroline Johnson. Special thanks to Isaac Dunham,
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Speaker 1: especially Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, Nikki Etour, Nathan Otowski and
Speaker 1: Alex Corral. While I have you, don't forget to pick
Speaker 1: up a copy of my book, Snafoo, The Definitive Guide
Speaker 1: to History's Greatest screw Ups. It's available now from any
Speaker 1: book retailer. Just go to SNAPO dashbook dot com. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, and see you next week.