America’s Favorite Gunfighters and the Birth of the Old West

Angry Planet

Matthew Gault

War, Politics, Conflict, Government, History, News

4.3 • 882 Ratings

🗓️ 7 June 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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America loves the Western. Stories about frontier towns, outlaws and lawmen, and—most of all—killing. How did the myth and legend of the gunfighter come to permeate the U.S.? Were there rules to gunfights? How did you become famous by killing people? Did Texas, yes Texas, make all this possible?

We’ll answer those questions in this episode of the show as we discuss the new book The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild. It’s the work of returning guest (and Texan) Bryan Burrough.

Texas is both the West and the South
What made Texas so violent
What, exactly, is a gunfighter?
The rules of the duel
“Boys, I’m killed”
How to win friends while killin’ people
“What is more equalizing than a man alone with a gun?”
Olive, Isom Prentice
Historiography of the gunfighter
Modern bank robbers are boring
The cattle business is the perfect vehicle for violence
The future belongs ... to pirates?

Buy The Gunfighters from an independent bookstore or from Amazon

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Love this podcast.
0:02.0	Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature.
0:05.2	It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment.
0:09.1	Just click the link in the show description to support now.
0:12.6	Hey there, Angry Planet listeners, Matthew here.
0:14.9	Did you know that Angry Planet is almost entirely listener supported?
0:18.2	It's true.
0:19.2	Go to Angry PlanetPod.com, sign up for $9 a month, and you get commercial-free early access
0:24.0	to all of our mainland episodes as well as bonus episodes. The one that's up that I just
0:29.2	posted right now is all about Silicon Valley's dreams of the future and why they might not
0:35.7	be physically possible.
0:38.2	Go to angry planetpod.com to take a listen.
0:45.7	Hello and welcome back to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet.
0:50.2	I am Matthew Galt.
0:51.9	And I'm Jason Fields.
0:53.6	And Jason, you want to do something a little lighter
0:55.4	today? Do you want to talk about a romantic vision of the Old West? Do you want to talk about
1:01.3	gunfighters? Yes. Yes, I do. That sounds like a nice change from where we've been.
1:09.8	We are lucky to have Mr. Brian Burrow back on the pod.
1:14.4	I think this is your third appearance on Angry Planet, sir.
1:17.8	But for those who may not know, can you introduce yourself and tell us about this lovely new book you've got coming out?
1:26.7	My name is Brian Burrow. I am a long-found writer at Vanity Fair,
	...

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