American History Tellers

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Frontier Legends | Buffalo Bill Cody | 6 Aug 26, 2026

Show notes

Few people are more closely associated with the Western Frontier than William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Born in 1846, Cody came of age during the era of Westward expansion. As a young man, he began scouting for the 5th Cavalry and eventually built a reputation as a skilled frontiersman. He later took his exploits to the stage and then created Buffalo Bill’s Wild West arena show, which carried the image of the American West around the globe.

In this episode, Lindsay is joined by Dr. Paul Andrew Hutton, author of the New York Times bestseller The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy and the Shaping of the American West, and Tate Chair of Western History in the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming, to discuss Buffalo Bill’s central role in shaping the mythology of the Wild West.

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Frontier Legends | Annie Oakley | 5 Aug 19, 2026

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As a young girl in Ohio, Annie Oakley learned to hunt game to keep her impoverished family fed. By the time she was a teenager she’d grown skilled enough to easily beat a traveling sharpshooter named Frank Butler in a public shooting match – and win his heart in the process. The two soon married, and in 1885 Oakley joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, becoming an international sensation and an emblem of frontier womanhood, all while carefully shaping her own image. But after nearly two decades as a performer, a newspaper scandal would draw her into a legal battle to clear her name.

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Frontier Legends | Butch Cassidy | 4 Aug 12, 2026

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In 1894, a young Utah ranch hand named Robert LeRoy Parker – already going by the alias "Butch Cassidy" – was convicted of horse theft and sent to a Wyoming penitentiary. It was a minor crime that set the course for a much larger criminal career. After his release, he went on to earn a fearsome reputation as the mastermind of a gang of outlaws known as the Wild Bunch, before he and his partner, the Sundance Kid, led lawmen on an international manhunt that would cement his place as one of the West's most enduring legends.

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Frontier Legends | Bass Reeves | 3 Aug 05, 2026

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In 1875, Bass Reeves became one of the first Black men to serve as a deputy U.S. marshal in the West. Reeves had been born into slavery, but after a violent confrontation with his owner, he fled to Indian Territory, in present-day Oklahoma. There, for three decades he used his knowledge of Indian languages and his expert marksmanship to hunt down murderers, horse thieves, and bootleggers across 75,000 square miles of remote terrain. As stories of his exploits spread across the frontier, he would become one of the most renowned and feared lawmen in the history of the West.

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Frontier Legends | Wild Bill Hickok | 2 Jul 29, 2026

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In 1865, James Butler Hickok, an Army scout and itinerant gambler better known as “Wild Bill,” shot a man dead in the town square of Springfield, Missouri. The gunfight became known as the first recorded quick draw duel, and Hickok became famous overnight. He parlayed his newfound fame into a job as a deputy U.S. marshal, and before long he was one of the most recognizable lawmen on the frontier. But Hickok’s reputation as a fearless gunslinger and a high-stakes gambler put a target on his back – one that haunted him to the end of his days.

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Frontier Legends | Davy Crockett | 1 Jul 22, 2026

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In 1821, a little-known backwoods hunter named David Crockett won a seat in the Tennessee legislature, despite having little formal education and virtually no political experience beyond his gift for spinning a good story. It marked an unlikely turning point for a man who would become a symbol of the American frontier, which was then rapidly expanding as settlers pushed into land long inhabited by Indigenous peoples.

Ultimately, Crockett's frontier persona would prove his greatest political asset, eventually carrying him all the way to Congress. But once there, he would break with his own party over Native removal, before heading to Texas for one final, fateful stand at the Alamo.

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American Revolution | The Revolution Continues | 7 Jul 15, 2026

Show notes

Today George Washington is remembered as the quintessential “Founding Father,” but his path to becoming an American hero was far from certain. Throughout the Revolution, Washington and countless others—including women, free and enslaved Black people, and Indigenous nations—had to make difficult choices about where their loyalties lay and what kind of future they hoped to secure. To help us uncover these often-overlooked stories, Lindsay is joined by Dr. Scott Stephenson, President and CEO of Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution, where the nation’s founding is explored as an ongoing experiment in liberty, equality, and self-government.

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American Revolution | The Sacred Fire of Liberty | 6 Jul 08, 2026

Show notes

After six long years of war, the Continental Army was exhausted, and Congress had run out of money. George Washington feared that without a decisive victory, the cause of independence would be lost.

But there was fresh cause for hope in the summer of 1781, as a massive French fleet sailed for the Chesapeake Bay. French and American commanders devised a plan to trap the British Army on a peninsula in Yorktown, Virginia.

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American Revolution | A Devil of a Whipping | 5 Jul 01, 2026

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In the aftermath of America’s victory at Saratoga, France entered the Revolutionary War, transforming the colonial rebellion into a global conflict. British officials decided that the path to victory lay in the South. As the fighting shifted to the Carolinas, a brutal civil war erupted, pitting families and neighbors against one another in cycles of violence and retribution.

By 1779, the Patriot cause hung in the balance, undermined by rampant inflation, soldier mutinies, and one of the most notorious incidents of treason in American history.

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American Revolution | Saratoga | 4 Jun 24, 2026

Show notes

In 1777, as Americans sought the support of France, Benjamin Franklin struggled to convince officials in Paris to form a military alliance with the new United States. Meanwhile, British General John Burgoyne planned a grand strategy to crush the rebellion by conquering the Hudson River Valley. That summer, his troops fought the Continental Army in a battle that would turn the tide of the American Revolution.

But late that year, American forces faced a winter of peril as George Washington led his exhausted army into quarters at Valley Forge, where the soldiers endured disease, freezing conditions, and the threat of starvation.

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