Finding Amelia

This Wednesday, August 7, 2024, the Discovery Channel will be airing a new documentary about one of the most famous vanishings in history: the disappearance of aviators Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan on July 2, 1937. Earhart was attempting to become the first woman to fly around the world when she and her navigator disappeared, never to be seen or heard from again. For almost a century, searches and expeditions have attempted to determine what happened to the world-famous pilot. This Wednesday’s documentary, Finding Amelia, will look at the theory that Earhart and Noonan may have crashed in the jungle of Papua New Guinea during their transcontinental flight. The 2-hour long documentary will investigate the origins of the theory and show footage from a recent expedition to the site.

While this documentary has nothing to do with the assassination of Lincoln, I wanted to highlight it because my wife, Jen Taylor, will be featured in the documentary working to evaluate the Papua New Guinea theory. I first met Jen in 2020 when I was a guest on her podcast Vanished. At that time, she and her cohost, Chris, were investigating the John St. Helen/David E. George/”Booth mummy” story. The two co-hosts split up, with Chris working alongside Nate Orlowek to justify the escape theory, while Jen and I spoke at length about Booth’s death in 1865.  I provided the history and sources while Jen used her skills as a lawyer to effectively topple the house of cards that is the Finis Bates chicanery. After finishing the final episode of the podcast in 2021, Jen and I continued talking and married in Granbury, Texas, two months later.

But before I ever met Jen, she and Chris had spent a lot of time delving into the case of Amelia Earhart. Chris had his own prior podcast called Chasing Earhart and brought Jen in on the first series of Vanished, which was devoted, once again, to Earhart. Jen’s background as a lawyer made her well-suited to evaluate and judge the many theories of what may have happened to the aviators. The production company behind Finding Amelia listened to Chris and Jen’s Earhart material and asked Jen to take part in the documentary. While Jen never visited Papua New Guinea, she was flown out to L.A. and shot studio material talking about the theory and interviewing the leader of the expedition on camera.

I am very excited for Jen to make her TV debut. I’m even more excited that she will be more than just a traditional “talking head” in this documentary. If you are interested in the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, and want to see Jen on the small screen, watch Finding Amelia on the Discovery Channel this Wednesday (August 7, 2024) at 8:00 p.m. EDT. The program will also repeat at midnight (EDT).

For those of you who don’t have traditional cable or won’t be able to catch these airings, we expect the program to be on the Max streaming service (and likely Discovery+) soon after it debuts.

I hope you will tune in!

Dave