Bittersweet Infamy - #118 - How the West Was Sold

Episode Date: March 9, 2025

Josie tells Taylor how our modern cultural image of the Wild West was constructed by one man: soldier and showman "Buffalo" Bill Cody. Plus: unravelling the mystery of the Persian Princess, the mummy whose royal trappings disguised a heartbreaking hoax.

Ever feel like the news is just arguments or nonstop tragedy? Plus, who has the time to keep up with it all? Well, I have a solution for you. Welcome, welcome to The Newsworthy. In just 10 minutes a day, The Newsworthy keeps you in the know about everything from politics to tech to entertainment, using its signature fast, fair, fun style. No wonder Harper's Bazaar, Fast Company, People Magazine, and more have called The Newsworthy one of the best podcasts to stay news savvy. Listen now by searching The Newsworthy in your podcast app or go to TheNews Sweet and Food. I'm Taylor Basso.

And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in infamy. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the familiar. The tragic and the comic. The bitter. And the sweet. Welcome everyone to Bitter Sweet and for me, the last remaining place where Canadian

and American relations are still good. Josie, my countrymen may be booing your anthem, but I'd never boo you. I might boo Mitchell. How you doing? Sorry, Mitchell. Boo. Aw, his coolness feelings. How you doing? Sorry, Mitchell. Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo if it doesn't get pushed back again. Are you looking forward to the mutual ruination of our economies? You know, looking forward is a strong word.

Probably fun for you working in a nonprofit, huh? Yeah, I know. But I think a lot of our funding comes from wealthy Houstonians who don't wanna give their money to the government. I wanna give it to- Mattress Mac. Yeah.

He's got a king size mattress that's good for your back. Damn. You're good on the fly too. Me and Jamie Kennedy, man. That's two of a kind. Yeah. It's a real fucking shame. No one likes it. And I don't, no one understands, I don't understand it.

I don't understand it. And I mean, I'm not gonna act like I understand economics on the best day, but I especially don't understand this. I have an arts degree folks, so does she. Same one even. I know we have the same exact degree. We have the same degrees. Is anything bringing you joy at the moment?

Let's joy up. Let's joy it up. So... Reach deep for this one. Yeah, not that, not that. No, no, me neither, me neither. I put googly eyes on my shop vac months ago. Oh, cute.

And I laugh at it when I look at that. That's great. I love that for you. Yeah. That'll do. I did my laundry today, which like feels really good and adults. That's nice. I had a really nice trip to Morelos in Mexico with my partner, Rui and my friend Nigel, both of whom listened to the podcast.

And I'm going to go all into that, I think, next episode. Yeah, because I really liked the way back in episode 89 to the island, Josie and Mitchell went on their honeymoon to New Zealand and then she recapped it and did a New Zealand story. And it's just like a nice little package New Zealand episode and I really liked how that one came out. So I think I'm gonna repeat the structure

for my next episode is gonna be a Mexico episode. So I'll give you all of the details about it there, but I will say lots of sunshine, lots of really nice folks, lots of really good thunderstorms, which I enjoy. Ooh, yeah. It's a good time of year to go to Mexico City or near enough by because you just get these sudden

thunderstorms that are so encompassing and powerful and then they're gone. You know, I really like that. Also, you mentioned to me a lazy river, which we had a lazy river. You had me at lazy. I love it. Yeah. Well, and river probably.

Yeah. Then I come back for more and then it's river. I'm like, what? No, we went to Las Estacas. I'll give you that little preview. We went to Las Estacas, which is this cute little setup where there's this very chill, lazy river that winds down

and you get to just sit there and float down and wear your chaleco and sit in your dona and look at the, probably not both, and look at the toucans and the various. Oh, there's so many cool. Mexico has an abundance of cool flora and fauna. And biodiversity to beat the band because it's such a big country.

Oh yeah. With many different, this region is mountainous and this region is low lying and this region is coastal and you know. Desert, yeah. Yeah, there's all these different spaces and all these different, I don't know, beautiful environs and animals and such to enjoy. Great people too, I don't know, beautiful environs and animals

and such to enjoy. Great, great people too. I don't know. I like Mexico. Nice, nice country. Let's move there. Yeah. Yeah. Option C. Option C, baby. Let's keep it in North America, but just. I'm excited to hear about all the details. Even before that, we have a little snack, a little treat. Maybe those aren't the words. Maybe I start again. Stick with it. I think you're cooking to keep with the metaphor. Yeah, for Superstar, Karen Carpenter's story.

Oh, maybe those are not the words. Maybe we should readjust. Well, let's just go with it. Folks, Superstar, the Karen Carpenter story is a little 45 minute long student film. Jewel. Produced by the one and only Todd Haynes director back in his film school days, Josie and Mitchell.

And I took that on over at, yeah, I'm the third one. I thought the third one was Mitchell, but nope, said him. I was almost said Josie Mitchell and special guest Mitchell Collins, but I was there. You were, well, so was B-Man, so. And so was that you can kind of hear him rummaging around in the background. We took that on over at Bittersweet Film Club

at the request of our follower and subscriber, Soph, great pic, and that is available for anyone who subscribes monthly to our coffee account. That's K-O-Fi.com slash Bittersweet Infamy. If you want to support the show, really, really helps us. It helps us pay our guests specifically, which we're really, really grateful for. And every month we watch a new film that is requested by you, our Bittersweet Film Club members, our subscribers.

Get in there and stir the pot. Give us something to watch. We are gonna be for March looking at the request of Ramon Esquivel, who you might know from episode 44, Bloodbath on Broadway of Bittersweet Infamy, where he covered the sort of catastrophic musical version of Stephen King's iconic horror novel, Carrie. He has entrusted us to analyze the Shelley Duvall

and Robin Williams' flop musical masterpiece, Popeye. Which I haven't actually seen. Was it a flop? I didn't know this, but apparently it was something of a flop. Okay, okay. Which I think makes sense seen. Was it a flop? I didn't know this, but apparently it was something of a flop. Okay, okay. Which I think makes sense with Ramon's history of bringing us flop musicals. Yeah, he should write a play, he should write a musical called Flop.

Exclamation point, I agree. I would say that this is one of those flops that is maybe being reevaluated about its flopitude. Like, was this a flop or were we just not ready for the impeccably cast Shelley Duvall as olive oil? You know what I mean? That's insane. It's insane how dead on that is. So I'm excited to see it and I'm excited to watch it all with you at a bittersweetfilmclub over at coffee.com. Coffee.com! Slash bittersweetinfamy. But that's not all we have on the horizon.

On that smooth Atlantic horizon. On that smooth Atlantic horizon with a peak, just a peak of white. Tiny. Jutting out from that horizon. We're gonna be going weekly in April, as we sometimes do. We're going four times, four times, we're going four times, folks.

Four times a lady in April. Four times a lady in April. We're gonna be giving you four episodes, one new episode every week. And in order to tell you what the concept, what the theme, what the encompassing idea around our April programming is... The mood board.

The mood board. We've pulled together a little advertisement for you. Listen and you might be up here. Shhhhhhh. Give me your hand. Keep your eyes closed. Don't peek. I'm not. Now step up onto the rail. Hold on.

Keep your eyes closed. Do you trust me? I trust you. Alright. Open your eyes. I'm flying, Taylor! Alright, open your eyes. I'm flying, Taylor! Well, the view from up here is rad, but if we're gonna get started on our April episodes, we need to get down from this bow and get recording.

You're right. We've got to get ready for our titanic new series. Bittersweet Infamy, Titanic April. A new story about the Titanic, every week in April, on 604 Podcast Network. Let's get to it! I'm king of the world! I'm so looking forward to April. That's right, folks. Bittersweet Infamy, Titanic, April. Four weeks of programming all about stories related to the sinking of the Titanic.

We've never gone in this tight on any subject. Yeah, I guess not. We've taken like the more broad, somatic approach. Now we're going deep dive, if you will. A deep dive, if you will. Well, James Cameron agreed, he did, he would. And so will we. We love James Cameron here on the podcast, folks.

In April, we're gonna be doing Titanic for Film Club. The 1997 James Cameron Titanic. So that's what you gotta look forward to. We're watching both VHS cassettes y'all. Both, we're gonna stop halfway through. Once they get stuck in that elevator, we're popping that baby out and we're pushing the net. That's when it stopped as I recall,

when they were kind of trapped in that elevator. I think so, yeah. Wasn't it right after they boned in the car? We're going to be doing that too. Live on the podcast, we're fucking in a car on a boat. It's going to be great. But it's not April yet, so we still got a couple more episodes to enjoy together before we get to our bittersweet inf infamy Titanic, April Block. Relevantly enough to her infamous, there's an urban legend that the sinking of the Titanic was in some way caused by this cursed artifact that was on board, transported from the British Museum. And specifically, it was supposedly a cursed mummy.

It wasn't the heart of the ocean that he'd wrack? It wasn't just the heart of the ocean. There was supposedly, there's, and I say supposedly because I think this is proven untrue, but there's much discussion of there was a cursed mummy on board this thing. And that comes into play as we discuss our minfamous, which is, shall we say, mummy-centric. Ooh. The reason that I brought this story as today's Minfamous is actually because I had planned on bringing it as my main story for episode 117, but it kind of just doesn't have an ending. So I give it to you ahead of time that this story is, it ends unsatisfactorily and that it doesn't. Gotcha. We can supply an ending if need be. We can supply an ending if need be.

We can supply an ending if need be, and perhaps that's something I'll call upon you to do later. But in the meantime, just remember that because we have the Minfamous, which is this small, mini-infamous spot that we put at the beginning of each episode where we can tell a story that's a little bit smaller, it ends up being a bit of a basket for stories that are, let's call them our no-frills stories, stories that are lumpy or

unconventionally beautiful, shaped oddly. This story ended up here because it is shaped unconventionally and I don't think it would have a satisfying ending for a main story, but there's a lot of interesting and odd stuff here and I will tell you now about the story, Josie, of the Persian princess. I'm ready. October 2000. Pakistani police become aware of a VHS videotape circulating, advertising for sale an ancient mummy for 11 million dollars. Whoa. Black market, baby.

Yeah, that's some dark web shit right there. Oh, absolutely. Police arrest a man named Ali Akbar on suspicion of selling the mummy, along with tribal leader Wali Mohammed Rikki of Quetta, the capital of Pakistani Baluchistan, and Rikki is the guy who's in actual possession of the mummy.

So he's holding the mummy. Yeah. Akbar apparently selling the mummy. Okay. And now the possession of the mummy is just like I'm imagining what's that bad 80s movie with the dead guy. You got to narrow that one down. Oh, we can at Bernie's. Yeah. So these two guys Akbar and Ricky are charged with contravening Pakistan's Antiquities Act. Ricky claims that he received the mummy from an Iranian guy named Sharif Shahbaki.

And there's varying accounts on whether we found this guy and just kind of let him go and he disappeared into the night or whether he like maybe never even existed at all. Oh, okay. Whoa. We have this mysterious mummy sourced mysteriously from this mysterious Iranian guy that has mysteriously found its way into Pakistani Baluchistan, which is sort of this historical region that comprises areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran,

and is now being sold via videotape. Damn, and the mummy is mysteriously wearing sunglasses. That's not a mystery, she was on vacation. Oh, okay, okay. The mummy is taken into possession of the National Museum of Pakistan in Karachi. An inspection led by curator Asma Ibrahim discovers that the female remains are embalmed, lying on a reed mat inside of an ornately carved wooden sarcophagus. Oh wow.

The body is decorated with a gold mask and crown as well as a gold breastplate with inscriptions in cuneiform, the ancient language of Mesopotamia, Persia, and Ugarit. The inscriptions declare, I am the daughter of the great king Xerxes. I am a Rhodagoon. Oh wow. Right? So Xerxes, the first aka Xerxes the Great, one of the better known kings of Persia in a kind of modern context, Persia modern-day Iran.

You might know Xerxes in a pop cultural context as being played by Rodrigo Santoro in 300 as this effeminate bald golden man. He does it really well. It's nice. Rodrigo Santoro, of course, one of the great Persian names. Small world. We're all human at the end of the day, right? Yeah.

Reigning from 486 BC until his assassination in 465, Xerxes is known for his many public works and military victories, as well as his failed attempt to annex Greece in 480. Among his issue were his daughter, Rhodogoon, about whom we know seemingly very little, other than this, the discovery of this mummy, which is proudly announced at a press conference by the National Museum of Pakistan. Wow. Confiscated from the dark market, for the black market too. Yes, from the black market, yes. We've got a brand new national treasure from a time before nations were settled in their modern forms, so naturally everyone wants to stake their own claim. The Iranian cultural heritage body lodges a complaint with UNESCO seeking repatriation. The Taliban

sticks their oar in, claiming they interrogated a group of smugglers who admitted the antiquity came from Afghanistan. Give it to them. Solved. We also get a notable reaction from Oscar White Muscarella. He's an American archaeologist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City who specializes in the ancient Near East. So very relevant. And he says, I think I've seen this mummy before.

Quite recently. It is weakened at Bernie's. Yes, actually, kinda yes. See in March 2000, about 7 months before the Persian Princess, which is kind of what she comes to be known as, is seized by Pakistani authorities. A New Jersey man named Aminullah Rigi, purporting to be acting on behalf of a Pakistani acquaintance, sent Muscarella a series of four Polaroids of the exact same mummy, along with its signature golden breastplate and cuneiform

inscription. Sunglasses of a lei, obviously. Pork pie hat. A hibiscus behind her ear, everything. Polaroids too, very vacation-coded. Yes, postcards. Muserella was also provided with a report that was written by a cuneiform expert from an American university detailing the inscription in the breastplate. However, he discovered that this was only a part of this American scholars report. The full report reportedly judges the inscription to be faked. Oh. This made sense to Muscarella, who already had his doubts over the princess's provenance due to the iconography carved into the wooden sarcophagus, didn't quite line up with what he knew as a scholar, as well as the fact that no other known examples of mummification

had been observed in remains from Xerxes' era Persia, although because the limits of the kingdom expanded as far as Egypt, mummification not totally out of the question. Muscarella knows whereof he speaks. His book, The Lie Became Great, The Forgery of Ancient Near Eastern Cultures, released that same year, 2000, includes a long catalogue of specific antiquities and even entire collections that he claims are modern forgeries. And in fact, this guy Muscarella has a particular career that kind of makes it weird to try to sell a maybe falsified mummy to him. His whole thing has been like, he's been in weird standing with even his own body, the Met, because he's like,

I think that's fake. And I think that the black market purchase of antiquities is like inherently unethical and detrimental to scholarship and to culture, etc. Right, yeah. He's a foremost theorist on forgeries in this field and a very vocal advocate. And as a new investigation is launched, the fears begin to gather. Inspection of those same sarcophagus symbols, so the carvings in the wooden sarcophagus, very beautiful, draws the eye and makes one want to believe, we find lead pencil marks are there

that were made to guide the carving. Oh. So you can imagine old Xerxes with his HB out, right? Yeah, yeah. Also that feels very like how I draw. It's like first do it in pencil and then cover it in, you know, like. That's also how people draw. It's like that's how I draw too.

It's you're good. You're good. OK. It just it doesn't feel like that would be the process for a princess's funerary. No, a CT scan of the body of the mummy shows that the internal organs were removed prior to embalming while the Egyptians removed them after. Oh, right. The jars. The jars. There are grammatical errors in the cuneiform on the breastplate's inscription. Oh shiiiiit. I E, except after C. Exactly right. Which is interesting because cuneiform is spelled E-I. C-U-N-E-I-F-O-R-M.

Including the use of the Greek version of the princess's name, Rhodogoon, rather than the Persian Wardogona. Oh. Finally, that readmat that she's on top of? It's from Walmart. Basically, yeah. Radiocarbon inspection shows it is at most 50 years old. Oh.

Oh ho ho ho. In April 2001, curator Asma Ibrahim releases a new report. The mummy is fake, although the dead body is real. No. Oh. is fake, although the dead body is real. Ahhhh! No! Ohhhh! An unknown woman of seemingly 50 or older at her death, which seemingly took place the death at around 1996, the current era. Oh wow.

A CT scan reveals the likely cause of death, a broken neck, as well as a fractured spine seemingly caused by a blow with a blunt instrument. Her teeth had been removed removed seemingly to prevent identification. Ooh, ooh, so this, cause part of me was like, oh, this is like somebody's dying wish. Like this cool weird lady is like, you know what, just make me into- Make me a mummy. You know how you call me mummy? Wow. Like that'd be cool, but Cause of Death is pointing in another direction. Technically not impossible,

but it seems like what we're looking at is at best a grave robbery, at worst a murder. Neither. Neither is a good option. Neither good. Option C, please. I want option C. Yeah.

Wacky lady, eccentric mummy loving woman. Yes. On the 20th of December, 2001, the BBC science series Horizon produces a TV documentary, which posits that multiple people behaving in tandem must have fabricated the mummy. A person with knowledge of anatomy and embalming techniques, a cabinet maker, hence our sarcophagus. Yeah. of anatomy and embalming techniques, a cabinet maker, hence our sarcophagus, a stone carver, a goldsmith, and someone with some sort of flawed knowledge of cuneiform. A candlestick maker, like it just like.

Yep, the list goes on, right? They would also have needed half a ton of drying chemicals to conduct the mummification, which the documentary suggests must have taken place within 24 hours of the woman's death, which the documentary suggests must have taken place within 24 hours of the woman's death, most likely in Iran. Woah. So, again, there's an unsettling implication that perhaps this woman was killed specifically

for this purpose, or perhaps a freshly buried woman has been… Yeah. …exhumed. Pakistani police open up a murder investigation, but with the mummy's falsehood confirmed, international interest wanes. People are no longer scrapping for this not a princess and ergo, I guess, like this story is kind of a shame because it shows how desirable this person seemed to be as a princess, even one about whom we've know literally nothing other than this. Yeah.

How quickly people were to abandon her when that turned out not to be the case. And also, I mean, even the shift of like, they're both dead people, but now this more recent woman who seems to have suffered some trauma in her death too, like, it's like, oh, we don't want to touch that. We want the pretty princess version. Yeah. And well, this whole escapade seems to have been quite a humiliation for everyone involved. You've got the National Museum of Pakistan, all these scholars, all these various, the Iranian cultural heritage body who were like lobbying UNESCO, right? The Taliban. The case is either brushed under the rug or simply never advances. It grows cold and remains unsolved to this day.

As far as I'm aware, we don't even have theories or possible names for our possible victim. Certainly not in the English language internet media that I had access to in preparing this story. I saw that it was possibly as late as 2008 that her remains were finally interred. Properly interred. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And that's it, an unsolved mystery with an unsatisfactory ending. It's finer details still yet to be unraveled. Oh, mummy unravel, I get it. Yeah, so sort of a strange and unsettling story about, you know, no justice for this poor woman who was disguised as this mummy and no real concept of the circumstances under which that happened.

Presumably to get a payday in the antiquities market as either from a private collector or a museum or one of the many kind of people who nefariously buy such items that have either real or false provenances. Tale as old as time, right? What that guy Muscarello is sort of getting at. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. That's the story of the Persian princess, the parts of it that we know.

Yeah, the parts of it that we know thus far. Yeah. Well, I'm glad that she's had a proper burial. But we don't know who it was. But we don't know who it was. And I wasn't even kind of able to track down whether the Riki and Ackbar and all these folks, kind of whether they got their relevant comeuppance or whether they had any particular involvement.

And it was a hard, it's a hard case to research. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Cause they may have also just been like let off Scott Free being like, oh, well, it's not an antiquity. So I guess you're not, you's not an antiquity. So. So I guess you're not. Yeah. You're not violating the Antiquities Act. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah. I like I like maybe the eccentric mummy loving lady vibes. Yeah. Let's recast this as feminist somehow. Yeah. I agree, Josie.

This past Friday, I was driving to work and a police motorcycle pulled into the intersection and like stopped all the traffic, right? I was like, God damn it. How long is this going to take? And then I look to my left down kind of the feeder road of Interstate 45. And that part of the city 45 actually elevates. So it's like three stories up in the air. It's just a very like urban setting. It's intense. I have to say as far as like cities that are just highway. Yeah. And like tall, tall stacks and stacks and stacks of highway.

Actually Mexico City is kind of one of them. And so is Houston. Yeah. It's a very like modern looking fast cars way up in the sky. Like Tracy Chapman zipping around up there. Yes, exactly. I'm stopped at this intersection and I look to my left and there is a man on horseback coming down the street.

Matthew McConaughey. And it's not Matthew McConaughey. Houston's own. Okay, well, I tried. Yeah, we all try. We all try for Matthew McConaughey. Michael McConaughey, as he's known to the podcast. Known to the podcast faithful.

That's very, thank you for correcting me. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And this horse has this beautiful saddle on it and it's clomping away on the asphalt of Pease Street, headed straight into downtown Houston. And behind the horse and its cowboy hatted rider was a Conestoga covered wagon led by another horse, in fact a team of horses. led by another horse, in fact, a team of horses. And in the wagon are a group of people wearing Western wear. They've got cowboy hats, jeans, embroidered shirts.

All of them are wearing the same red vest, certainly cowboy boots. I can't see them in the wagon, but you just, I trust that they're there. And then behind that wagon, there are more horses. A wagon train? And more wagons. Yes, yes, a wagon train. And they are all moving much slower than the Houston traffic and much too slowly for my late ass who is already like 20 minutes late for work. You hate when you get stuck behind the wagon train when you're already late for work. Right, yeah.

Elon's not gonna like that. No. That's not very efficient. No. I take it in, the spectacle of it all, for like one cycle of the light, and then I just like flip a U-turn, and I make sure that I get ahead of them

before they enter downtown, and... And really fuck it up for you. Yeah. Yeah. And I was just like, wow, I guess I live in Houston, Texas, huh? All right. Got to go to work. But thinking back on it and doing a little research, I was like, wait, what the fuck was that? Yeah. And I kind of instinctively figured that it probably had something to do

with the rodeo, the Houston livestock and rodeo show. At the time of our recording, Sunday, March 2nd, yes, a week before you're probably listening to it if you're listening on the day it released. And if it is that day, if you're listening to it when it's released. Then the Houston rodeo has begun. It starts on Tuesday, March 4th. And what I had encountered was Go Texan Day, a spectacle of Go Texan Day. And it was the rodeo trail ride. Okay. So two new items in that sentence. Go Texan Day. Yeah, let's break this down. Go Texan Day, distinct asie will tell you from go to work on time, Texan Day. I've never lived that day.

Yeah, that one's new too. Yeah. So go Texan Day is the unofficial kickoff to the Houston rodeo. And it's where the whole city is encouraged to wear Western heritage gear. So, the cowboy hats, the embroidered shirts, boots, spurs, jeans, you know. And growing up in Houston, Mitchell said that it's very noticeable if you are a school-aged child here, because it's like... It's spirit day.

It's a spirit day. Exactly. Yeah. Don't go to put a wire coat hanger in your hair to make it wacky today. You know, you can just put on your blue jeans. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And the rodeo trail ride.

So I'd heard of go Texan day, but the rodeo trail ride was actually something brand new to me until I saw this on the street in downtown Houston. So there are 11 trail rides that converge on Houston to kick off the rodeo. They are part of a big parade that snakes through downtown Houston and they make their way to the road or they make their way to Memorial Park

which is on like the other side of downtown. So they go through the whole city. And this year, as in most years, it's around this number, there are 11 trail rides and they come from all different places. So each one has a different name and it's made up of something around, it could be like 300 people. They have like up to 10 wagons with them. And there's like a trail boss who brings them along, who's like specifically named. And there's an assistant to the trail boss. And it's like, it's a big fucking deal.

The ATB. Yeah. The ATB as we all know. And it's all kind of like this Western heritage vibe, right? It's meant to recreate how before there were roads and elevated 45 freeways or highways, but before any of that, there were these trail rides that would bring people to trading spots like what Houston became. So it's meant to be kind of like a nod to the history of all of this. Sure. And also shout out that there are a few like black trail rides as well, like one from Prairie View A&M,

which is a historically black college. And I watched some footage of the parade. They were playing like Bill Withers and stuff like that as they were making their way through downtown on horses. I was like, this is rad. So the start of the 2025 Houston livestock and rodeo takes place at NRG Stadium, which is where the Texans play the football team. And it's also where I walked for my graduation for my MFA. Oh, cool. So, all to say, the rodeo is this big cultural marker of Houston, and it brings the country to

the city. All these rodeo events take place. There's livestock exhibitions and like any good county fair, there's the high school art show. There is tons of raucous carnival food, deep fried Oreos, turkey legs, anything that you could ever want on a stick, it is there. Perfect. Put that in my arteries. Yes, Stick it in there. And another notable element of the radio is the concert series. And the concert series brings in huge names from across genres, though they do tend to favor country music. Reba is going to open this year's... Fuck yes. ...radio. Fuck yes. I say a Reba to Reba. That's what I say.

But the biggest and most significant shows have been outside of the realm of country music. Beyonce played there before she blew up into mega mega stardom. She was just like a big deal. Grammy winning for her country album, Cowboy Carter, Beyonce. That's true, yeah. Which Josie covered back in episode 99, go take a listen. Yeah, and this was before all of that.

Yes. Miley Cyrus played there. She gave a performance that busted the stadium speakers because it was so loud. Interesting. That's not good. You should be quieter. There's cows trying to sleep. You'll remember this from the best music biopic film ever made. 30 years ago this year,

Selena performed perhaps her most iconic appearance at the Houston Livestock and Radio Show. Was that the one where she's in the little red guy? Yeah. That was part of this. Yeah. I've said if I could go back and go to any concert, that one. Yeah.

It seems like it was pretty goddamn fucking special because she played also on their like Go Tejano night. Yeah. Which was like Latinx night and she just fucking like blew it out of the water. Yeah, she would, wouldn't she? God, I love Selena. I know. She's so good. God, I love Selena. Josie gave me a, Josie sent me a picture of Selena that I have framed like an artistic rendering of Selena that I have framed, like an artistic

rendering of Selena that I have framed on my wall. Big Selena fans, both of us. They're very easy to find in Texas, I have to say. Good! Let's keep that memory alive. So this is all part of living in a Western state, right? Or a Western-inspired state or province, because the West wasn't just a US America. Alberta has a lot of this type of culture. I'm from Surrey. The yee-haw part of Surrey is called Cloverdale. We have a big famous rodeo too. Probably not Houston big, but big.

Or Stampede big. That's the Calgary one, right? Yeah. But all of this, it's reference and memorializing a Western heritage and remembering when these big cities that we live in now were once just dusty trails, right? So this aesthetic though. The wild west. The wild west. Yeah, the Western heritage vibe, right?

Yee-haw. So of course I got like locked into that staring at it from my car. Staring at the ass of a horse will do strange things to a woman. Exactly. I got to thinking more about like, where does this really come from? Like, I understand that. The West, Josie. Yes, I understand that.

I got that. The general West, right? I have a Texan family, but I grew up in California. Like, this is in California, certainly, but the West is not to the West. I grew up further West of here, but you would say that this Western aesthetic is more placed in Texas than it would be

in maybe San Diego. You raise a good point. So I started to kind of rootin' around, trying to figure out. Rootin' and tootin' around even. Rootin' and tootin' around even. Rootin' and tootin' around. And I wanted to see where this came from. And I noticed that it's a distillation, right?

If not a downright created concoction of the history of Westward expansion in North America. Now Josie, are you about to tell me that something that we hold true as a piece of history that immutably happened is something that was just probably created by John Wayne in 1940? Is that so you're gonna tell me something like that?

I'm gonna tell you something like that, yeah. We'll throw it back a little further, but not that much further. A little further than John Wayne, but okay, okay, I'm on board. I'm on the horse. So all the boots and the spurs, the circle, the wagons, the stoic American Indians and their war bonnets,

the shoot them up John Wayne, as you have already mentioned, the white savior myths of the Wild West, we can trace them all back to one man. That can't be,. Everything is so fake. In live in the story, he added his own little touch here and there to dramatize it all. And most importantly, he did that to get butts in seats and his own name on everybody's lips. Uh, who is this tedious soul? Do you know the name Buffalo Bill?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know anything about him other than yee-hawp! Yeah. Which is, I'm sure he'd have it no other way. Exactly. Yeah. You've fulfilled the assignment. Great.

So, this is the story of how the West was made by the greatest show in town, Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Wow, cool. Yeah, yeah. Because typically, I mean, this happens in a cultural sense where like things get dramatized and the dramaticized version becomes the more accepted and known. We remember the distillation. We remember the distillation. We remember the distillation, yeah. When we grew up in the 2000s in our American apparel and our shitty sideburns,

not unlike the ones I'm rocking right now, we didn't think of that era as being called, the 2000s era as being called, quote-unquote, indie sleaze, but that's the packaging, the repackaging that it's been branded as in the 20 years since and we've just distilled it. And I think that like, that's how eras are remembered, right? When we're recapping the 1980s,

we're not showing all the just ugly, ugly brown carpet that that involved. We're showing bright colors and you know, Cafe 80s. Side ponytails, yeah. We remember whatever the version of it that gets distilled into memory by. Honestly, it's typically, as you say, whoever's the best at marketing it back to us 20 years later. No, exactly.

And part of that marketing is like, oh, nostalgia and you know, like the distillation is like, oh, this is easier to swallow, you know? Yes. So what's the shiny thing? The shiny package version is always easier to swallow, you know? Yes. So what's the shiny thing? The shiny package version is always easier to swallow than Nuance. Nuance is famously difficult to swallow. That's why people hate it.

I love it. I mean, love is a strong word, but I fight hard to advocate for Nuance, but it's a tough sell at the best of times. Yeah, this is true. So, Buffalo Bill, whom we call and have come to know as Buffalo Bill, his full name is William F Cody of he is the namesake of Cody, Wyoming, a city in Wyoming.

So I'm just going to refer to him as Buffalo Bill through most of this because that's the kind of distilled version that I feel like he almost would want, right? But before Buffalo Bill, cowboys in all their nuance were filthy. It was hard, low paying work. Trey Lockerbie Unglamorous labor. The coffee wasn't even that good. Lauren Henry Exactly. Right? Before Buffalo Bill, real cowboys were just more or less simple ranch hands. They were tending to cattle and horses. They were fixing fences. It wasn't, you know, super marksmen and trick riders and ropers and rhinestones

that we might consider cowboys now. The Dollywood version. Yeah. Part of that too, is that real cow, before Buffalo Bill was able to distill the imagery, real cowboys were predominantly Mexican or black or both Mexican and black. Oh man, of course. So he puts a lot of white guys and clean duds on good looking horses. John Wayne types.

Yeah, yeah. Firing single playing cards out of someone's hand. That's kind of cool. Yeah. And the whole idea of the cowboy hat, the Stetson hat, the imagery we have. Don't tell me that was fake, too. That was fake as well. Fuck, Josie, you're killing me. Cowboys would wear like broad brimmed hats, but it would never like

those weren't quite as useful, those Stetson hats. No, because you can imagine the rain getting caught in the brim. Yeah, it just wasn't, that wasn't gonna work. So what we know as a cowboy today didn't actually exist in the Wild West. That's fucked. Though it did exist in the traveling shows

that were meant to bring the story of the West to Eastern cities and across the Atlantic even. Yeah, because West of what, right? Like West of whom? West of the people who created this. Yes, exactly. It's all relative, right?

Fuck. But what's interesting about this is we typically see this, this curation that happens, as you mentioned, like 20 years later, right? Like who can package the 80ies best in the 2000s? Who can package in these sleaze the best now? Right. Yeah. What was happening with the cowboy was that that distillation was happening concurrently to the expansion of the West concurrently, but also just on the coattails of it.

Like as the West was kind of right. As West Road expansion was coming to a slow halt, this was really, really winding up. Can you put us in time a bit? Yes. So Buffalo Bill was born in 1846. Got it. So that gives us an idea of if he's packaging things by the time he's an adult, that gives us an idea of if he's packaging things by the time he's an adult, that gives us like mid to late 1800s as the time when the colonial forces that have settled

in the now the United States are expanding west. Yeah. Yeah. And we'll know that time too, as the civil war or just ends end of the civil war. Yeah. So that's part of it. You know, it's part of this whole story, too. But yeah, we're in that era. So it's still very much the there's still a lot of people migrating across the American plains. There's still a lot of the wild west quote unquote frontier. But those stories have to get relayed back

to the Eastern audience, right? As you say, it's all relative. So when it gets relayed back, it gets the cowboy hat. It gets the... Six shooter. Yeah. The no dirt under your fingernails kind of thing. Clean pressed blue jeans.

Yeah. Well, maybe not blue jeans because blue jeans Levi Strauss wasn't until... Don't do this to me too. Okay. I'm sorry. Just let me imagine him in Blue Jeans, man. Let me live. Those, I guess, were around by the 1850s. So yeah, yeah, we'll say Blue Jeans.

We'll say Blue Jeans. Yeah, there we go. There we go. Wranglers, baby. And this show, this distilled, sparkling show was quite the fucking show that Buffalo Bill was able to put on. It started with a rousing rendition of the Wild West show that it became the national anthem. Josie, I'm so in- I'm learning so much. This is your most enlightening episode ever.

I've never learned more from you in any episode. We barely started. Just go to like nascent America. I guess it's not even nascent. It's like a hundred years in. But, you know, confuse it with a civil war. Then all these things start popping up, I guess it's not even nascent. It's like a hundred years in, but you know, confuse it with a civil war, then all these things start popping up, I guess. So you start off with Star Spangled Banner. You have some really hot shot sharpshooters, including Annie Oakley, who is known as Little Shershot. Yeah, Annie, Get Your Gun, a famous musical

about Annie Oakley for the musical Ramone. For Ramone. You'll know all about it, yeah. She was one of the very few women in the show, but she made a lot of money, only second to Buffalo Bill himself. And she, I didn't know this, but she performed with her husband, Frank Butler. See, I've seen this musical before and somehow I didn't realize that this was literally the gun. Like the way they play this, as I recall in the musical Annie and somehow I didn't realize that this was literally the gun.

Like the way they play this, as I recall in the musical Annie Get Your Gun is like, he's a cowboy and she's a cowgirl. Not that they're like inventing these archetypes wholesale right in front of us, right? And that's, I mean, they're taking little things from reality, but they are packaging it, right? Like it is the creation. Yeah. Part of the show, there is a herd, a small herd, but a herd of real life American bison of buffalo. They're adorable. They're big.

They're big guys. They're big guys. I wouldn't like to travel with feed and home, a small herd of American bison for a show. It was a lot of work, yeah. And this was interesting too because this was a time when these herds were going extinct. And Buffalo Bill, as per his name, was part of a crew that worked for the railroad that was killing mass numbers of buffalo. And yet he incorporated them, by the time that he incorporated them into this show, he was actually doing conservation work to keep them around, to have them in the show. And like the zoological work of like, isn't the Buffalo cute? Don't you want to keep it around? Let's not kill it anymore. Yes.

So live Buffalo, there was the Deadwood Stagecoach. I can't believe that they just invented Cowboys. Like, I'm still fucking losing it. I'm still losing it. Okay, sorry, Deadwood Stagecoach, yes. The show had, it included a full cast of American Indian folks from various tribes hired to play essentially themselves. I gather that American Indian is a term that is like, we have different terms for

different indigenous groups up here and Indian is very out of fashion broadly, although obviously different people identify in different ways, but American Indian is still in quite wide use, right? In USA, yes. And particularly like, think Native American is, that's the term that I grew up learning in elementary school, but I think American Indian has now become the more scholarly term. It exists in a lot of official contexts still, and I think it certainly would have been the term in wide use around the time of Buffalo Bill, right? Yeah, yeah. And a lot of the materials and all of that refer to American Indians as just

Indians and sometimes even in worse language. So I did want to thank you for putting that out because I did want to say too that like, when I know and have the opportunity to like actually say the tribe or the nation or the peoples, then I'm very happy to use that. But in some cases, it's a very genericized quote unquote American Indian. Yeah. And the show is in part doing that, right? They are depicting the American Plains Indians, more or less. And so it's what we now know as the stereotypical like war bonnets and buckskin and riding horses. And it's all very specific to like Kansas, Wyoming. We talked a little bit about this in episode 98, which was about the Sashin Little Feather Oscar's protest,

how like for the entire, again, talking about things sort of being invented out of thin air, many different groups of people were flattened and genericized under the sort of some characteristics of the Plains people slash others that were not really characteristics of the Plains people, but helped you keep your wig on when you were falling off the horse in a movie kind of thing. Yes, yeah. And that's interesting that you mentioned like wigs and costumes, because that appears here.

Buffalo Bill apparently hired a lot of Lakota from South Dakota area to travel with the show and play like Cheyenne and live in like teepees and stuff that wasn't actually their day to day. But for the show, they could make it happen. Fucking white people. Yeah. But interestingly enough, too, the American Indians who were in the show, their other

options weren't so great. This is the time of the Carlisle School. So like residential schools where in particular young American Indians were being assimilated, sometimes violently, into white culture. This was an opportunity for people to get paid. They made $25 a month. And it wasn't like, buku bucks then, but it was something. You got paid. A check's a check, man, when you're trying to survive. Yeah, exactly. And for not everybody, but for a portion of the American Indians who were cast in the show, they could actually live in a traditional way, quote unquote traditional way, right? They could still use their language, they could still practice their dances and some of their ceremonies.

Granted, it was for an audience, but they still were able to do it instead of completely having that erased from their identities. And if you're someone who wants to be a performer or for whom performing is an important thing, you get that? Yeah. As opposed to being forced into like whatever menial job is accessible to you based on your circumstances? Exactly.

So it was kind of this interesting, like, this doesn't seem great, but it was better than what was there. This is why people hate nuance, Josie. I'm telling you, people hate nuance. It's no fun. Absolutely no fun, no. So I guess a big negative of this job though,

is that you're always playing the villain. You are always attacking the pure white settlers. Trying to take some white lady from a fucking camp or something, yeah. At a certain time, the Buffalo Bill Wild West did a rendition of Custard's Last Stand. Does Custard win in this one? No, but Buffalo Bill rides in at the very last minute

and there apparently was like a big sign that dropped that said too late. That's funny. But that's not you shouldn't do that. It sounds like a good show in its way. Well, yeah, in its way. Right. And all the shows, like all the reenactments will say they call quote unquote illustrations. They end with Buffalo Bill like riding in

on his big white horse with his big white hat and he saves the day. Oh my God, his big white dick and yeah. And he is modeled, like his aesthetic is kind of modeled after Wild Bill Hickok who had like this long greasy hair, mustache and like the buckskins. That's what Buffalo Bill was doing too. Right, right. And while Bill Hickok is like a very famous

kind of American soldier of note, let's say. Whom apparently Buffalo Bill met. So part of the show also included people from the audience being invited down to the stage to feel and see the show, like to get up close and personal, like audience participation, get that horse breath on you, that fresh smell of maneuvering your nostrils, right? Like every introverts worst nightmare of the audience participation program, but they do, they work. I've left a show because I was like, this is too much.

What show was it? Mikhschl and I went to a community theater rendition. There's your first mistake. No, I'm joking. I'm joking. I love community theater and have done much community theater. Well, and I was like, it's fun. Like, who cares?

It might be not the creme de la creme, but it's fun. Yeah, and it's community. Like, we support our community, folks. That's one of the few fucking good things we've got. If you remember back when Josie did that episode, the Hell House episode, I want to say like, 54, 55, it's about these kind of like teenagers doing these like evangelical haunted houses where they're getting abortions on stage. My response to that was very much, well, I do like community theater. It's good for the soul. But audience participation, I don't know about that.

This just felt like the real fucking deal. Like they were bison and horses and cowboys and sharpshooters and guns going off. And if you're like a rural, like, say the show has come to Grover's Mill, New Jersey, home of the Martian invasion, right? There we go. What's the last show like that that you saw? Yeah. That must've been like, holy cow, I want to move out west.

Yes, oh, totally. And according to Buffalo Bill himself, he said of the show, it's a year's visit to the West in three hours. Not bad. Yeah. Get home in time for dinner. That's a long show. That's a great show. That's a great's visit to the West in three hours. Not bad. Yeah. Get home in time for dinner.

That's a long show. That's a great show. That's a great. You're getting your bang for your buck. I love live performance. I do. Yeah. There's nothing like it. Community theater, baby. Community not even just community theater, a concert. Someone strumming a guitar to a dog like God.

It's one of the last good things you got going as a race at this point, folks strumming a guitar to a dog. Like God, it's one of the last good things we got going as a race at this point, folks. Strumming guitars to dogs. And we're offsetting it to AI as we speak. Yeah, strumming a guitar to a dog. And it looks up at you with big eyes and it goes, and it puts a little face down on your knee. That's good.

That is good. That's like a good thing about life and existence in humanity at a time when I'm desperately seeking them. Now multiply it by three hours and put some bison in there. We're cooking a stew. Yeah. No, fair enough.

Fair enough. I mean, it's the late 1800s is post-Civil War. People are depressed. People are economically strapped. All their families probably dead. They need a little levity. It's true. It's very true.

Yeah. This show takes over. All their families probably dead. They need a little levity. It's true. It's very true This show takes over it's a huge fucking deal And of course the face that is plastered on all the marketing materials is Buffalo Bill like yeah, there's one postcard sign Pamphlet I don't know what it was exactly, but it's a hand drawing of a bison like running. It looks kind of lathered up and so like spit running in the plains and it has the line says underneath it says, I'm coming exclamation point, but just like right over the Buffalo is this oval and in the oval is the portrait painting of Buffalo Bill himself.

Yeah, hell yeah. Just I'm coming. Fuck yes. Yes. Fuck yes. And this the Buffalo Bill Wild West, which I'll refer to it sometimes as the show, the Wild West show, but it should be noted that was not how it was marketed. That was not the name to use. Buffalo Bill was probably correcting people left, right and center.

Pepsi presents the Buffalo Bill Wild West experience sponsored by Cricket Wireless. I got you. No, the idea was that show was not in the title. It was authentic experience, as you as you say, that's good experience. So you wouldn't put show in there because that implied that it was kind of faked or false in some way. Which it is. Oh, it totally was. But this was the real deal. Got it.

I'm coming. the real deal. Yes. Got it. I'm coming. I'm coming. It was on tour from 1872 until Buffalo Bill's death

in 1917. Wow. He that was around for a long time then. It was for a very long time and 1917 because of World War One. There was even another company that kind of was on the coattails of Buffalo Bill's Wild West and they kept going until the 1930s. In fact, they kind of took over some of the equipment and even the actors and cattle and bison and all of that.

When Buffalo Bill's Wild West folded in 1917, they took it over and... They got willed the herd kind of thing? Yeah, a little bit, yeah. Whatever straggly elderly bison with bad teeth we've still got left. The Buffalo Bill Wild West performed all over the US. They were in Seattle, they were in New York, weren't deep in the South. Eventually they toured Europe and they performed for many heads of state, Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria for her Jubilee. Wow.

That's a big deal. Apparently she was really into it. She had them come back. So damn. She was like, bring me a six shooter. No sex. No and fuck. Only for procreation and empire.

Exactly. Pew pew. Yeah. I'm coming, but you're not. So when it comes to Buffalo Bill, William Cody, and the story of his early years, it's hard to know what is fact and what is fiction. Ain't that how it goes. Yeah, yeah.

He did write an autobiography in 1879. But he's full of shit. Exactly. And he's at a point in his career because the Buffalo Bill Wild West has started in 1872. So he's already created this persona that's been going for seven good years.

You can't suddenly reveal that you were a bed pisser when you were four that deep in the game. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I got you. And he's also staked the claim that this experience is the most authentic thing out there too. Right, so his experience has to reflect this one. Yes.

He's not going to do anything that would disprove his claims and he certainly wouldn't also provide fodder for any of his detractors, of which there are a few who just say like, this guy. Of course, how could there not be? Someone's always shooting for the king at the top of the mountain, plus he's legitimately bullshitting and there's always going to be adherence to that inconvenient thing, the truth that Al Gore will tell you about, who want to fucking take you out on that note. Plus you never know who's gonna come up from your past contradicting the things that you put down in your book,

right, who says, no, I knew this person in 1840, whatever. Exactly. So here's what he claims about his early life. As a boy, his father was killed in the Wild West in Kansas. It's wild out there. So then Buffalo Bill at the time, William, Will, Cody, he was tasked with taking care of his mother, five sisters, an infant brother, all on his own. He

was the man of the house. He did that by riding in the Pony Express. He was a cow hand. He was a gold prospector, a fur trader, a buffalo hunter for the railroad, and a scout for the army in the Indian Wars. And a partridge in a pear tree. Yeah, just add that little spice on top too, why not? And you're about to say he got some accolade in this war though. Oh yes, as a scout in the Indian Wars, he was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor in 1872. And he claims that,

yes, he was not present, was not present at Custer's last stand. Because he was too late. Because he was too late. But shortly after that, he did enter hand-to-hand combat with a Lakota warrior who was named Yellowhair, and Buffalo Bill successfully killed him and scalped him, claiming it was the first scalp for Custer. So what Buffalo Bill claims, like the Pony Express and being a cow, a cow hand and gold prospector, fur trade, all these things. Raise my whole family myself. Yeah.

It's like the story of the West is just, he was there at everything. He's Forrest Gump. It's Forrest Gump. He's Forrest Gumping himself into the American West. You nailed it, yes. And this is a phenomenon we see with frauds. Tanya had the 9-11 lady who we covered back

in like episode one, 10 or 11. She sort of Forrest Gumps herself into every major component of the 9-11 narrative, right? You can't have someone be more blank, wild west, whatever it is than you, if you're gonna be the wild west guy. But I think there's also like this other element

of the historical record making too, where it's like, maybe we know all of these things as the stereotypical west, because of Buffalo Bill, though. He established them because he packaged it so shiny and swallowable. It is very swallowable. I even I, Taylor Basso, am very vulnerable to the allure of the Wild West. I love me my cowboy boots.

Ah, it's good shit. I have my cowboy boots from Quebec. I love me my cowboy boots. Ah, it's good shit. I have my cowboy boots from Quebec. I love them. I will say, I more prefer a modern take where we're able to be a bit more honest about what the roles of like indigenous people, Chinese people, these sorts of groups were in that society rather than them always being the villains

or the fools or whatever. I like a modern Western, I think a bit more. I love a gay cowboy. That's my favorite. I like the gay cowboy thing that's in, that's true. I don't fancy the idea of fucking in the Wild West, Josie, I gotta tell ya. I think it'd be pretty unhygienic.

The lube was made out of animal fat back then. Yeah, that's a rough one. So this is what Buffalo Bill claims, right? What we do know, what is like confirmed in factualization. He was born in LeClair, Iowa in 1846. His father moved to this area from Canada, actually. His father was Canadian. Hey, he's from Vancouver, y'all.

Local boy, make good. You got it. I stole it right out of your mouth. Guys, I don't need to finish anymore. I've taught you everything I know. I know, yeah, there was a real like karate kid moment we had. You just like snatched a fly out of the air

with some chopsticks, you didn't even know it. So Isaac Cody has this young family with his oldest boy being William Cody, our Buffalo Bill guy. Yeah. They moved to Kansas when Buffalo Bill is about 10 years old. And in the move, it's kind of clear that they're perhaps a little bit more well off than the other folks who are moving around in the West. As an example, every night they get to stay in a hotel.

They don't have to camp. Eloise. I know. Charge it, please. Yeah, room service. So they settle in Kansas. Isaac Cody, his dad, helps set up a town. Everything's looking good. Settling Kansas, Isaac Cody, his dad, helps set up a town.

Everything's looking good. He's able to find work as an arbitrator of stakes. So meaning like somebody comes in and they're like, I want to own this land. He can help measure out the law. We got to move behind this rock, whatever. Yeah. Allocator, I think is the name. So everything looks pretty dandy until this bubbling question

of slavery appears, which is bubbling across the nation, even in parts where there is no nation yet. Because when they moved to Kansas, it was before Congress had opened the territory for settlement. Like this is just unclaimed right out of the box. Parentheses by white people. By white people. Yes. So there is a pro-slavery contingency in Kansas that wants to ensure that slavery can happen. They want to be part of the Confederacy. There are the abolitionists who don't want that to happen. They're anti-slavery.

They want black people to be able to move freely in the West, in Kansas. And Isaac Cody is neither. He believed that there shouldn't be slavery in Kansas, but he also believed there shouldn't be black people in Kansas at all. Again, the nuance, right? It's not just pro and anti. It's never just one thing. So the pro-slavery advocates in Kansas are fomen. They're ready to go. They are the majority.

I'm coming. I'm coming, exactly. It gets so contentious that Isaac Cody, who isn't even an abolitionist, is stabbed by a pro-slavery advocate. Jesus. This starts- I don't know why I expected the pro-slavery advocate

to be a diamond. Jesus. Yeah. This starts what's known as bleeding Kansas, which is a period of time in early Kansas history where the Civil War actually hasn't moved out this far but tempers are running so high that people are stabbing each other, they are burning their livestock, their link, it's just like, it's the fucking Wild West, right?

Humanity is fucked, dude. Very fucked, yes. So Isaac Cody, Buffalo Bill's dad, is essentially just like running from these pro-slavery advocates. He's under the cover of night, he comes home, and then before sun rises he has to leave. It's this very intense existence where pro-slavery advocates are showing up on the doorstep and Buffalo Bill's mom is like, he ain't here, please leave, here's some biscuits, but bye. And it's intense. His dad eventually falls ill and dies when on the run. JAY So not killed?

STACEY Not killed. But, you know, attempts were made on his life. JAY Yes. Kind of a wash. He does leave William Cody, his oldest son, in charge. And it's not so much like, I bequeath this to you, son. It's more the societal structure means that his mom really can't find work that would be deemed kind of like immoral of her to do so. Oh, my God, I hate people so much these days. Yeah.

So 11 year old Will sets out looking for work. Now, he claimed that he worked for the Pony Express. Male by horse. Yeah, male by horse, exactly. And kind of like this iconic Western image, right? Mail by horse. Yeah. The lone cowboy stretching over the expansive American West. But Josie, you've already told me that cowboys are fucking fakes. Let's just get on with this. I know, right? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. But it was an American Express mail service that had horse mounted riders that carried mail between Missouri and California. That's insane. That's a lot of land. I mean, I was going to say that shouldn't be handled by them. I was like, I guess the US Postal Service still exists.

So whatever. Yeah. Not that impressed Pony Express next. Well, they were able to cover that much land and deliver messages in about 10 days. That is very impressive. It's extremely impressive. That is very impressive. And it was the most direct means of East-West communication before the telegraph came into existence.

Wow. And it was really vital for California becoming a state because California was so far out there that there wasn't, it was very hard to communicate with anybody there. Right, and California becomes a state before some other things that are between California and the East, right?

Exactly, yeah. So California is a state in 1850, but like Nevada, New Mexico, like a lot of stuff in the in-between is still just kind of territory. And that's because the gold rush, there's just so many people out in California. They wanted those mineral rights. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You think when gold showed up there that it wasn't suddenly going to be like, no, actually, that's a state.

It's really important to us that that one's a state. That one, yeah. So the Pony Express is a big deal in this early wild west, right? It's a huge expanse of land, getting communication from one coast to the other is like, that's starting to really tie the country together. As you say though, like not all the land in there is white claimed yet, but this is the beginning of that. And the Pony Express is this wonderful iconography, right? It's connecting the East and the West. It's taming the Wild West. It's disseminating information, which at its kindest, that's what the Buffalo Bill Wild West was about. Yeah.

New frontiers and going to them together. I'm reporting back and sharing these stories and how we're all American in the end, God bless America, right? American in the end. God bless America. Right. So it's pretty clear why Buffalo Bill wanted to attach himself to the Pony Express because if he can embody that as well as Indian Wars Forrest Gump, baby. He just wanted a Forrest Gump it. But he in fact, he did not ride with Pony Express. Buffalo Bill, you fucking liar. It's complete fallacy.

Also, interestingly enough, I think this points to the ways in which Buffalo Bill has cemented a vision of the West, or understanding of the West. The Pony Express was in existence for 18 months. That's not right. No, Juicy, stop it. You're killing me. This is torture.

This is horrible. No torture on the podcast. 18 fucking months, that's it. And yet, like you as a Canadian, no with a fucking pony. 30 years, that was around for 30 years, Josie. That was around for 30 years at least. It was around for a millennia, I believe. I think that was the proper date.

God damn it, Josie. 18 fucking months. And here's the kicker though. 18 fucking months is not a long time. The historical record doesn't have a whole bunch about the Pony Express. We know that it was in existence. We know that it carried messages. But like the hard historical record, it gets a lot of its information from

Buffalo Bill. And think about this because it got its start in 1861. So one, it was really far the fuck out. No one was paying attention. Communication was really lacking. That's what it was there to absolve. But this was the start of the Civil War. Nobody was paying attention to the historical record of what was happening so far away. Everybody was concentrating on Savannah. Everybody was concentrating on, you know, Richmond. Like, it wasn't being documented. And so I would imagine that there's probably a few other things that kind of like the door was left ajar for Buffalo Bill to be like, I was there. Me and Forrest Gump. For someone who is good to spin a yarn to just maybe have their version of things because

it was the most colorful and interesting. So that could be exactly how it went. Yeah. Son of a bitch. I know it. I know it. I know it. So I feel like the Pony Express is a really good encapsulation of maybe some of the other things that are in the Buffalo Bill show that like,

oh yeah, the Deadwood. We we know Deadwood because of not Deadwood the stagecoach that's in there. Right? I know. I know. So it is kind of unsettling how it's like, fuck, this was all manufactured. But of course, not everything can be manufactured.

Can you about to give me some good news? I'll tell you some more facts about our boy, Buffalo Bill. Please, bathe me in the truth, cleanse me with the truth. I've been enough of these lies. He enlisted in the 7th Kansas Volunteer Cavalry. This was after he wasn't in the Pony Express, but he did do this, right? So he was at the battle at Summit Springs in 1869. What's that? It was a battle where he supposedly killed Chief Tall Bull, the leader of the Cheyenne Dog Soldiers.

So it was part of the Indian Wars. It was one of these. But this is separate from this yellow hair thing. Yes, separate from that, yes. This is the incident that awards him the Medal of Honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1872. Okay, and we can document this because he's got the Medal of Honor, the Congressional Medal of Honor in 1872. Okay, and we can document this because he's got the Medal of Honor.

Exactly, yeah. In 1866, so a little bit before that, he was hunting buffalo to provide meat for the Kansas railroad workers. So that's where he gets his nickname because he reportedly killed thousands upon thousands upon thousands of buffalo.

What a guy. And we know too that the extinction of the buffalo was another way to eradicate and fuel the genocide of American Indians because if you take away a food source, a major food source, then what the fuck were people going to do? And that's exactly what was happening. He is said to have killed approximately 4,000, over 4,000, buffalo during this time when he was working for the railroad. It's a lot of fucking buffalo. His name's Buffalo Bill again, I don't know what I expected.

Yeah. After that, he found a job being like a guide almost. So he would take wealthy clients out on the prairie and would show them how to hunt buffalo, kind of safari style elements. And this is where he began to really harness a frontiersman cowboy persona. A narrative to sell to stupid rich people. And when it worked, he thought, why don't we just expand this thought? So he was actually approached by a dime store novelist who wrote under the name Ned Bluntline, which is fun.

That's a good one. Yeah, fun. Well, Josie, I think you and I really missed our calling as dime store novelists. I so wish that we lived- I would have kicked the shit out of some good pulp, some good like mystery pulp. Oh, come on. Write me a novel in a few days.

Totally, I could do it. I could do it. A novel comes out about him, Buffalo Bill, King of the Border Men. So he's very popular as this character in novels and then he starts thinking, you know what, maybe we can do a little bit more with this. 1872, same year he gets the Congressional Medal, he plays himself in a Western melodrama on stage in Chicago called Scouts of the Prairie. I am impressed by how much this guy has going on.

Yeah, no, it's true. Yeah, he's a busy guy. He's a gig worker. Even when you sift out the lies, he's a busy guy. So the play goes to New York. It's kind of canned by the critics, but the public fucking love it. That's not for the critics, that one, is it?

That one's not, no. This is a populist work, sir. Exactly. He teams up with a touring theatrical group that are depicting planes men, frontiers men. So they have a good shtick going too. And he's like, your shtick kind of looks like my shtick. What if we shticked together?

Yeah, flesh out that tapestry that make that world bigger. And they call it the Buffalo Bill combination. Not your best work, but okay. Combination kind of comes up a lot in these like crew ways or like team or. It must have been more of a word like combo, the Buffalo Bill five. Yeah, yeah. But for the next 10 years, The Buffalo Bill Five. Yeah, yeah. But for the next 10 years, they are traveling through US cities. They're doing the fall, winter and spring,

not the summer because that allows Buffalo Bill to go back to the plains to scout for the army and to guide hunting parties in the summer months. So he's kind of like gathering his stories in the summer so that he can put them on display all rest of the year. I'm so fucked up that everyone is going to the Houston rodeo to just like cosplay a bunch of lies this guy made up. Guy cannot get over it, dude.

Riva! Oh, not Riva. Even Riva probably believes this shit. Oh, man. So in 1875, he is living with his wife and his family. He's got a bunch of kids, four kids, and they're living in Rochester, New York, which I would say is not very like wild Western. Sir, a Yankee, a Yankee. He resettles his family to North Platte, Nebraska. OK, we'll deal with that. We can we can live in Nebraska.

And this is around the time of Custer's last stand. So General Custer is an American general in the Indian Wars, and he is famously killed in South Dakota. And of course, Buffalo Bill is just heartsick that he wasn't there. Too late. Too late. So he cancels his 1876 tour so that he can get back into the Wild West. This is after Custer has been killed. Okay. And this is apparently when he kills a Cheyenne warrior named Yellowhair. For real?

Yes. What a shame! But here's where it gets, I guess that fact and fiction get kind of murky weird. He shows up to the skirmish, right, in a scarlet shirt and black velvet pants. It's essentially a stage costume, what he would have worn on stage. But he shows up in Nebraska to this contentious... You couldn't get away with that Nebraska now. Oh God, you'd be so...

Well, yeah, no, no. And he must have been so fucking hot. But anyway, he does kill the Cheyenne warrior named Yellow Hair. I think sometimes he's called Yellow Hand and Yellow Hair, I think the translation got tripped up in some instances. Sure. And so, supposedly, as much as supposedly is useful in the context of the story, right?

Mm-hmm. He kills yellow hair, he's wearing this fancy duds, he scalps the man, and he comes back to New York with these trophies of the scalp and his war bonnet. Of his like murders effectively, right? Yeah. When you show up in a fancy like costume, you're effectively like hunting at that point. Very good point. Yeah.

Yeah. He shows up in New York with these spoils of war and he appears in a play all about it titled The Red Right Hand or Buffalo Bill's first scalp for Custer. So he is very expertly as gross as it is tying himself to the growing legend of Custer and the Battle of Little Bighorn. And so again, he's just kind of for a scumping himself into the narrative. But at the same time, he did actually show up in velvet pants and a red shirt. What a twat.

So that he could be on stage and be like, this is what I wore to take down little or take down yellow hand, yellow hair. Wow. You gotta give it up for this sociopathic white motherfucker. It's really impressive. Yeah. He's understanding, I suppose, the prompt in terms of like. At a deep level, at a deep level.

Yeah, selling an authentic version of things, but it's also extremely psychopathic to carry around the scalp too. I can't- And to like, and to like go and set out to do this for this purpose, but like marry it to this like idea of like the romance of Custer or whatever, like you don't give a shit, don't act like you give a shit. You were probably stoked to get out there and kill someone you said, oh, but other than that. So the show, I mean, his name is just cemented in the idea of the West. He's extremely popular. Everybody knows this show. It's sold out in New York.

There's thousands upon hundreds of thousands of people who have seen the show and are excited to see it again. He expands and finds a new business partner with Nate Salisbury, who has done a lot of these traveling troubadour shows in the U.S. but also in Britain and in Australia. So he's taken it overseas. That's what Buffalo Bill is able to start doing. That's what Buffalo Bill is able to start doing. He is bringing these shows across the Atlantic, and they are wildly popular in Britain. Like I say, he plays for Queen Victoria,

which you expertly brought us back to that real-life enactment. And I think a big note, especially when we're talking about the international audience that's so enticed by this, but it's not limited to just them. I think the Eastern audience too. There is definitely something very enticing about seeing American Indians. Portrayed is the weird word, right? Because it's, for some of them, it is not a portrayal. It's a way that they can actually live their...

No, I got what you mean. But if you are in New York or if you are in London, the chance to see a real life Indian, as sad and gross as that is, becomes this huge draw. And the show expands to have what in a circus would almost be like a sideshow, but in the Buffalo Bill Wild West, it's the Indian village. So they set up teepees, women are beading and making clothes.

We've cherry picked whatever parts of each culture most appeal to Buffalo Bill and put them in a stew together. Yes, exactly. And you can pay to enter the Indian village and not sit in the stands and look at them from afar, but to walk among them and see them and... Oh, weave a bead with them. Yes, yes. It's pretty intense, right?

Cause that's essentially like wipe these people out. And now that you feel that they're no longer a threat, you want to gawk at them and look at them. Yeah, like it's a zoo and it's depressing. It is pretty depressing. It mirrors the Buffalo as well, right? It's a threat to your expansion. It's a threat to your monetary gain.

Wipe them out. Oh wait, the threat is gone. Now let's just stare at them. That looks really cool, right? KAIEN Behind for the, again, the ways of life that we have colonized out of existence. STACEY Yes, exactly. Exactly.

And as we were talking before, though, even this manufactured idea of an indigenous life for some folks was better than going to the Carlisle Indian School and being violently assimilated into white culture. Both options are horrible. Where's my option C? Yes. Yes. Yes. And the other element of that equation for any American Indian, given the opportunity or the option, I guess, to perform in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, the other option might be to live on reservation, which are starting to be developed and to be siloed.

And that was not a great way of life either. At least if you are in the Buffalo Bill Wild West, you could meet the Queen of England. You could see Prague. That 24 bucks a year or whatever looking pretty nice. Yeah, but you're also getting all your room and board paid for. You're around at least a few other people with whom you might have something in common or Or not, maybe you're from completely different cultures. Yeah.

But of course, traveling while being American Indian, especially overseas, was really difficult because you did not have U.S. citizenship. Not until 1924. Jesus. You didn't have any official travel documentation. So you were kind of at the whim of whoever was manning that border station. And there were plenty of reports of these border agents, officers, using racial classification, which was very common at this time, to deny entry or give entry. And so it was just very dehumanizing in a lot of different ways. There was one young girl who, with her family, was employed in Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Her name was Rose Nelson, and she was known by her stage name, Princess Blue Waters.

And she apparently, when they were traveling to Europe, she got a chance to meet Queen Victoria and she was told when you meet the Queen, you have to curtsy. And she said, I'm not going to do that. My people don't curtsy to anybody. Good. And apparently when the Prince of Wales was like making fun of some elders who were in the troop, she smacked him. I don't know if she like smacked him across the face,

but I think she kind of like gave him a little kick. Like, hey, watch it. Oh, I hope she fucking punched him in the nose. Yeah. Royal protocol shit does not impress me much as Shania Twain would have, you know, when you hear about like, do you know Michelle Obama touched the Queen's back bitch give her a pile driver. See if I care.

I think Rose Nelson is a interesting, I don't know, a view into like the nuance of it, of this scenario of being American Indian and working for Buffalo Bill, who paid you and, you know, discriminated in the fact that you always had to play the villain, but he did employ you. Oh, and you can get away with slapping the Prince of Wales around a little bit. I bet a lot of other Indigenous women of the year couldn't say that. Right. Yes, this is very true. Yeah. Later in his career, Buffalo Bill retired the scalp. He thought that was no longer cool to whip out as a party trick. Oh, Buffalo Bill gone woke. Is this around the time he starts to save the Buffalo shit too? Yeah, kind of. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, and the other progressive element about Buffalo Bill too is he employed women, like Annie Oakley, among some other women. That was not common. Like his own mother could not get a job because it would be seen as uncouth. Right. But he was out there saying, here's your 25 a month.

Let's go. Buffalo Bill was actually a pretty good guy, you know, when you look at the totality of him, he's actually, I would say, like probably a great guy, you know, probably the best American who's ever lived. Yeah, yeah, that's what I would say. So for a short time, Sitting Bull was part of the show and Sitting Bull was a chief of the Lakota. He was in that fucking play.

I'm still the Annie get your gun. I'm still thinking Annie get your gun. I was like, he was in that fucking play. But it's one of those like weird elements of like Buffalo Bill Show is like this nostalgia making machine for something that is just ending too, which is kind of strange. Like Sitting Bull was a chief of the Lakota and he was still like an active leader in his community, but this was a way to make some money.

I was gonna say, he probably made more money doing this. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And there were plenty of cowboys who kind of like Buffalo Bill would take the offseason and go herd cows. You know, like they were still doing the job that they were nostalgicizing at the same time. Which is a weird, like that must have been a very weird existence to be in. Like certainly as like a white cowboy, but like a sitting bull himself, like that's really insane. You're like, yes, I'm a very serious leader of my people, but I am also a bit of kitsch

at this point or something. Yeah. Odd place to sit in bull. Moving on. So the show was still successful. It still had all of these changing elements. Like it began to incorporate this final scene of the settlers cabin. This was an interesting way to finish it in the end because she paused before she said

interesting folks. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so Stommy, if you've seen this before, but a cabin appears in sight on stage within the shot of the film or whatever it is. And there's a sweet little white settler family. The kid is whittling, the mother is making clothes,

the chimney is puffing smoke. Darning a sock, yeah. Pa's been working hard all day out in the, with the doggies and whatnot. Yeah. And he comes back in and they all eat a hearty stew. Yeah. Always beef stew. These people are very constipated.

Yeah. I'm not a vegetable in sight. And then the Indians come and attack and they ruin that way of life. Right. That's famously how it went, by the way, them ruining our way of life. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, as we all know, right? And then over the ridge is Buffalo Bill, who comes to save the day, right?

And his... Not too late this time. Yeah, and his crew, his combination of cowboys, which eventually in some iterations, he began to call Rough Riders, which eventually in some iterations he began to call rough riders, which Roosevelt stole. He just kind of like, oh, that's a cool term. And it all just gets trickled down through history by powerful white guys, huh?

Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's an interesting way to end the show because all of this myth making is about trying to save the white way of life, right? This precious nuclear family that's gonna... Which we're still fucking around with right now in 2025. Yes, exactly. And that's what, in some ways, that's why the cowboy was so compelling and perhaps maybe still is, is that it's like trying to make that way of life eternal right trying to protect it as best he can and that way of life is embodied by him handsome able-bodied white attractive

masculine supports the family you can stay back tread wife and tread childs yes I tried got this yeah in real though, Buffalo Bill's finances were kind of falling apart. He was overspending. I don't think this man would be a good spender. No, no. He seems like he'd spend way too much money on those chaps. What are you, what are you doing, Bill? Yes. Lots of kimonos. Behind the scenes, really a kind of a Japan guy.

Just didn't talk about it much. Yeah, I totally get that. Yeah. Speaking of trying to like protect the nuclear family, at a certain point, he files for divorce from his wife. I didn't even know they had those. Yeah, no, no, they didn't because he wasn't granted one. They had to like... Brutal.

He never got his divorce. So then he had to like go through this marriage. Did they turn down divorces? At the turn of the century they did. Yeah. I think mainly it was Buffalo Bill's extramarital affairs and all of his excess drinking, his inability to manage his finances. He traveled almost all the time.

He barely saw his finances. He traveled almost all the time. He barely saw his family. So there were a lot of issues in that marriage, but the divorce was not given. TITLE CREDITS Like he would not be a good spender. I also don't envision him as a good marital partner. STACEY No, no. All of his financial issues, I think, probably stoked those fires of marital discontent. He eventually partners with some other folks who are putting in money. That kind of works for a little bit, but then it just dissolves. The exhibition goes into bankruptcy. He's able to team up with a circus. Taman's Cells Floato Circus. Floato Circus? Floato. Cells Floato. I think it's the last name.

Oh, damn it. I thought it was some sort of floatings. I was very into it. I saw that light in your eyes. I'm sorry. Ah, damn it. Another lie. Another lie from Daisy Mitchell today. He inadvertently, though, in that transfer, like, sells pretty much the rights to the entire show without really meaning to. He hit the wrong button. He's desperate.

He hit sign here when he meant to say, no, don't. So he tries some other ventures, you know, he's a scrappy guy. As you mentioned, he has all these different- Plate spinning. How is there still more living to do, you know? Iron's in the fire. He uses his celebrity to promote an irrigation project

in what becomes known as Cody, Wyoming. They named the city after him because of this. He gets a few backers, a few investors. I'm sure he loved that, this fucking narcissist. Oh, he loved the town named after him. Is there a statue? Fuck. I think there is. There better be. I would hope so. What else do you go into Cody? No disrespect to the fine people of Cody, Wyoming. Even for this old racist put up a- what else you got?

Yeah. For Cody, he does get some financial backing through the Hearst family, actually. Phoebe Hearst. It comes back to the Hearst yet again. It always comes, this era is definitely Hearst driven. Season five, I think you've been batting a Hearst every episode or something like that at this point. Well, thank you. Thank you for noticing. Let's see how long you can keep it going. Were the Hearsts on the Titanic?

Oh, I can find one. I'll find one for you. Just dig one out of storage. So his project in Cote, Wyoming, the irrigation project doesn't really pan out. It doesn't completely go under because the railroad uses Cody as a station way. So the town can go on and we have it today. But it wasn't because of Buffalo Bill.

Let's say that. Well, one man can only do so much. Well, one man can only do so much. In 1917, Buffalo Bill passes away at his sister's home in Denver, Colorado. He I wouldn't say is destitute, but he is certainly not as wealthy as he had been. Which is ridiculous because if this man had invested some of this, dude, I don't know. Bad calls on the money, BB. Yeah. BB no money, sorry.

Yeah, that's fair. With his death, the Buffalo Bill Wild West folded. Some of the actors, some of the equipment, I think I mentioned this before, gets sold to another Wild West show, the Miller Brothers and Arlington 101 Ranch, real Wild West. They took it all over and actually they went up until the 1930s running a similar traveling Wild West show. But then when they folded and as they were folding, they sold a lot of their essentially IP and equipment,

what was left of the animals, to a filmmaker in Santa Ynez, California, just outside of Los Angeles, which became the start of the Wild West film. And a lot of the research says that the Buffalo Bill show and all these subsequent shows that kind of were on the coattails of it, they faded in popularity because film was able to do just as much as they were and it was cheaper to do, easier to distribute. People were excited, it was a new technology, they got into it.

And then we get the movie Western and then we get the TV Western and so on down the line. Exactly. But some of those actors who were in those Wild West touring shows appeared in film. Some of those horses, some of those costumes, the wigs, it literally just moved from one medium to the next. And you can tell from those early Westerns and including the Westerns we have today, that a lot of that iconography was built in the Buffalo Bill Wild West show, like the settler cabin being yeah, you know, covered and attacking American Indians

that I've seen on screen a few different times. It's in true grit. Yeah. Red Dead Redemption. Yeah. As we go into it, we start into takes like Red Dead Redemption that not subverted, but like challenge it and question it a bit because we're just realizing that people are people. Yeah. I used to think so anyway. Yeah. All those elements that made the Wild West shows, because it proliferated to all these

different side hustles for other people. All those images, all that language, all the clean cutness of it, all the family oriented elements of like the white settler and all of that, that just appears on screen all of a sudden. But it's not all of a sudden, right? It's been crafted and it's been edited and it's been massaged by all these different iterations of the show. But Buffalo Bill also had a very keen eye to what audiences wanted to see. And he was able to morph what he saw into that.

Then I think kind of the craziest thing, like wearing the black velvet pants to murder a man. He brought that showmanship to the West. And in one of the weirdest ways, that showmanship, like what I saw when I was stuck in Houston traffic. Springing it back around folks, springing it back around. Before the Houston rodeo on Go Texan Day. Talk about a showman.

It is about the spectacle. If it wasn't in its nascent stage, then it certainly is now. And I think even in its nascent stage, it was all about the spectacle of, of taming, of proving to yourself that as a white settler, you can knock out a people's who exist in this land. You can rationalize to yourself this genocide. You can kill an entire species and hunt it to death for no good reason. Besides monetary gain and your own second ego.

Yeah. I think you've made the case well. I do have a quote from a contemporary of Buffalo Bill, a cow puncture who worked alongside Buffalo Bill by the name of Teddy Blue Abbott. And Teddy says of Buffalo Bill, Buffalo Bill was a good fellow, though he was no great shakes as a scout as he made the Eastern people believe. But we had to hand it to him. He was the only one that had the brains enough to make the Wild West stuff make money.

And what's more American than that? Sorry about the tariffs. Da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da

da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da didn't you? Yes, yes. few bucks via our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinthemy. But no pressure, bittersweetinthemy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at bittersweetinthemy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet! My sources for this episode included Modern Mummy Mystery and Science by Robert Koenig, June 27, 2001. Persian Mummy by Neil Brody on Trafficking Culture, August 21, 2012. I read A Mummified Modern Murder, the Case of the Persian Princess by Stone Age Herb List on the Grey Goose

Chronicles. And I read the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes brief on the Persian Mummy case. The sources that I used for this episode include the About Us page from rodeohouston.com. I listened to Mossbeck podcast, specifically season five, episode four, which aired May 3rd, 2024, how Buffalo Bill shaped the West and the Western. I read a review by David Stanley in the journal of folklore research, which was posted November 12th, 2014. I read the article, Circuits of Spectacle Miller Brothers 101,

Branch Real Wild West, written by Allison Fields, published in American Indian Quarterly, volume 36, number four, special issue, Native American Cultural Tourism, Spectatorship and Participation, published fall 2012. I looked at Codyarchive.org, specifically the biography of William F. Cody. I watched a short excerpt from Ken Burns, the American Buffalo.

Specifically, this excerpt is called Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show. I watched it on PBS. I read an article in Time, What the True Story of Buffalo Bill Reveals About the Myth of the Wild West, written by Ijeoma Lo, published November 12, 2021. I read the introduction and excerpts from the book, Buffalo Bill's America, William Cote and the Wild West Show by Louis S. Warren. I read an article on PBS entitled, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.

I listened to the podcast Studio 360 American Icons, their episode, Buffalo Bill's Wild West, which was posted January 28, 2015. And I looked at the Wikipedia pages for Buffalo Bill, Conestoga Wagon, and Pony Express. If you would like to support the podcast, you can head over to kathi.com slash bittersweet infamy. That's k-o-f-i.com slash bittersweetinfamy. If you become a monthly subscriber, you can get access to the Bittersweet Film Club,

where every month we watch a new movie and talk about it. You can even suggest a film for us to watch and then talk about if you become a monthly subscriber, like our good friends Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie Dee, Erica Jo, Soph, Dylan, and Saksha. Bittersweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was lovingly edited by Alex McCarthy with help from Alexi Johnson. Our cover photo was taken by Luke Bentley. The interstitial music you heard earlier is by Mitchell Collins, and the song you are listening

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