Hey, Fibernation listeners. It's almost a year ago to the day that I recorded my favorite episode of Fibernation, the Donner Party and the Doll.

And in large part, that's because this episode is where I figured out what I wanted this podcast to be.

Not just the stories of individuals, but stories about history and culture.

In the Donner Party episode, a tiny doll became something much bigger than a child's toy. She was a window into an era, but also

a lens focused on a particular family. The doll tells us about their history, their social

status, even their relationship with one another.

Prior to researching this episode, I knew almost nothing about the Donner Party.

I thought it was just a wagon train that got trapped in the mountains with an especially lurid ending. I had no idea that the party was trapped for five months, or that a whole

lot of bad things kept happening over

and over and over. It was like watching a horror movie where you're yelling, don't go down

into the basement, as the main character does just that. And the story made me angry. The Donner Party

is a story about making bad decisions and ignoring good

advice. It's about a group of people who faced with adversity, fractured, and turned on one

another, rather than helping each other. But it's also a story about how to keep going,

in the worst circumstances imaginable. It's about holding on to whatever

it is that get you through something awful. We're hard at work on another season of Fiber Nation,

and we've got stories about cancel culture in the 1850s, stories about the fall and rise of a

forbidden fiber, even stories about secret codes hiding in plain sight.

In the meantime, if you haven't already listened to it,

or even if you have, I hope you enjoy this episode.

It's 1846. An eight-year-old girl named Patty Reed is headed west on the Oregon Trail,

along with her family. In their wagons is everything they thought they would need on their long journey.

...