In this episode of pplpod, we explore the life of William Frederick Cody, better known as Buffalo Bill, the man who helped turn the American West into a global myth. The episode begins with Cody’s brutal childhood in Bleeding Kansas, where his anti-slavery father was stabbed after speaking out against slavery and later died when Cody was only eleven. Forced to become a breadwinner as a child, Cody worked on freight routes, later embellished his youthful adventures into frontier legend, and eventually became a documented scout for the U.S. Army during the Plains Wars. The discussion follows his real feats of endurance, his work as chief of scouts, and the buffalo-hunting contract that gave him his famous name after he killed thousands of bison to feed railroad crews.

The episode also examines how Cody transformed from frontier scout into int ...