Episode 258: The Donner Party

Not Today

Society & Culture, Comedy, True Crime

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 November 2025

⏱️ 97 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Donner Party was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California along the Oregon Trail in a wagon train from the Midwest. After taking a new and dangerous shortcut, the party became trapped by an exceptionally heavy snowstorm in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. When their food supply ran out the group resorted to cannibalism of those already dead.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, I'm Steph.
0:01.1	I'm Alex.
0:01.7	And this is not today.
0:20.1	And we're live. How are you? Great. How are you? I'm doing good. Good. I'm full of caffeine. I'm ready to go. Yeah, I'm pretty caffeinated. That was the weirdest way I could have said that. Okay. It didn't come out of my mouth very well. You know when you accidentally chew on your word? Yeah. It was like caffeinated.
0:37.9	Anyway, you get the point. How does that make you feel? I have tea in me. You have tea. Yeah.
0:42.5	It's a chai. It was an earl gray. Excuse you. Oh, excuse me. Yeah. Well, what do we have today?
0:49.3	We're talking about the Donner party. Okay. But before we get into that, lest we forget, Patreon exists.
0:56.0	Lest we forget. Where we have 45 bonus episodes for your listening pleasure. And a new one
1:02.0	every month? Yes. Every week you get episodes ad free? I mean... And you get to vote on the bonus
1:08.3	episodes every month? It's a deal. Crazy for only $5? Insane. Anyway, Patreon.com slash not today podcast. You know the deal. Check it out. Today we're talking about the Donner Party. All right. And actually, our patrons were kind of the reason why we're talking about it today because quite a few of them were like, we really want you to talk about
1:27.9	the donor party. And you also kind of wanted me to talk about it. So here we are talking about it. Okay. Like me? You're talking to me? I guess I'm talking to you. I don't know if you were talking to the audience and I'm like a sit-in. We do that sometimes. I'm looking at you. Okay. Well, you're always looking at me, actually. That's true. You know what, fair. All right, well, tell me more. I need to know more. This is a very old story. We're kicking it all the way back to 1846. Wow. Okay, so within the last half century, we just got independence from Britain. Yeah, and this is like the Oregon Trail.
2:02.8	Quite literally, we're going on the Oregon Trail.
2:04.9	Yesterday, we played the game, the Oregon Trail, in preparation for this episode.
2:10.0	I had both of us sit down and play it to see if we would survive.
2:13.7	And unsurprisingly, I did not.
2:16.3	Alex did.
2:17.5	Huge. All of my children died. Well, I did not. Alex did. Huge.
2:18.3	All of my children died.
2:20.1	Well, I mean, it's surprising that you didn't die.
2:23.3	Most people die.
2:24.6	My whole family died, including myself.
2:26.8	Yeah.
	...

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