Episode
#1683 Writing the American West in a Time of Disillusionment
- Podcast
- Listening to America
- Published
- Dec 23, 2025
- Duration seconds
- 3373
- Processing state
not_requested- Canonical source
- https://jeffersonhour.libsyn.com/1683-writing-the-american-west-in-a-time-of-disillusionment
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/listening-to-america-665403/episodes/1683-writing-the-american-west-in-a-time-of-disillusionment/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/listening-to-america-665403/1683-writing-the-american-west-in-a-time-of-disillusionment.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Clay welcomes eminent western historian Paul Hutton for a discussion of his new book, The Undiscovered Country: Triumph, Tragedy, and the Shaping of the American West . Hutton is a distinguished emeritus professor of history at the University of New Mexico and also the Interim Curator of the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. Hutton's latest book attempts to strike a balance between the old, unreconstructed triumphalist view of America's westward movement and the more recent, guilt-ridden academic condemnation of the American experiment. We attempted to unpack the concepts of discovery, manifest destiny, the "Indian Wars," and the mythology of the West, including in Hollywood Westerns. How should America think about its westward movement as the 250th birthday of the United States approaches? This podcast was recorded on October 30, 2025.