Lectures curated around American Experience: Buffalo Bill, which examines William Cody's legendary exploits that helped create the myth of the American West.

This program presents a portrait of the man who made the American West into the American story. In 1886, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show played to over one million people in New York City. It was one of the most elaborate shows on earth. There were cowboys and Indians, sharp shooters including the famed Annie Oakley, hundreds of horses, buffalo, elk and donkeys, with more than two hundred cast members, all moving about in a sweeping western landscape of mountains and plains. Soon after the show’s stunning success in New York, it would go on to dazzle crowds in London, Paris, Rome and Barcelona, cementing the legend of the Wild West in the minds of people around the globe. Behind the extravaganza was one man — a meager plainsman turned international celebrity and frontier hero, whose meteoric rise to fame was made possible only by his genius, and his hucksterism. His name was William Cody, better known to the world as Buffalo Bill.