MeatEater Podcast Network Launches ‘The American West with Dan Flores’
New Podcast Offers a Deep Dive into the Untamed Stories that Shape the West; Expands MeatEater’s History Content Offerings
BOZEMAN, MT - May 6, 2025 - MeatEater, Inc. is proud to announce the launch of The American West with Dan Flores, an expansive new audio series that brings the myth, grit, and complexity of Western American history to life. Hosted by renowned historian and bestselling author Dr. Dan Flores, the 26-episode series will debut today on the MeatEater Podcast Network with new episodes dropping every other week. Episodes will also be available in video format exclusively on the MeatEater Podcast Network’s Youtube channel.
The former Endowed Chair of Western History at the University of Montana, Flores brings his voice to the podcasting world, offering a radically fresh take on the West’s history – placing its rich ecological history and the people who shaped it at the center of the story. Through immersive episodes and thought-provoking dialogue with his former students Steven Rinella and Randall Williams (historian, public lands advocate, and Senior Editor at MeatEater’s book department), Flores explores famous, infamous, and forgotten stories of the American West.
“This is the history class you wish you had in school. It’s raw, real, and rooted in the very landscapes we still explore today,” said Steven Rinella, MeatEater Founder. “Dan has a way of making history feel alive, and more relevant than ever. This podcast is the result of decades of his thinking and I can’t wait for our audience to experience it.”
“This series tells the story of a West that’s much older, wilder, and more complex than the Hollywood version,” said Dan Flores. “It’s not just cowboys and shootouts, it’s extinction events, ancient civilizations, trickster gods, and lost rivers of time. This is a podcast about what made the American West so wild, so inspiring, and so complex.”
The first few episodes include:
- West of Everything: Following the collapse of the grand Chacoan Empire, refugees founded eight thriving new towns along the Galisteo River of New Mexico, but ultimately discovered it difficult to sustain an arid climate civilization across the next five hundred years.
- Clovisia the Beautiful: Humans belonging to Clovis and Folsom cultures entered an America teeming with a remarkable diversity of Africa-like creatures, but confronted an extinction crisis that was possibly precipitated by their own arrival.
- Raven’s and Coyote’s America: Native America existed for 10,000 years in a West marked by many earlier extinctions, but somehow found it possible to preserve almost all the biological richness of the continent until the arrival of Europeans.
- Old Man America: When Native people cast about for an American animal to carry their creation stories, the intelligent survivor, coyote, became deity Coyote, an avatar for humans who taught them about human nature for thousands of years.
- The Wild New World of the American Serengeti: When American explorers first entered the West, they found an unfamiliar world of landscapes and animals their journals and accounts preserve as an ecological baseline for what the West was only 200 years ago.
- Jefferson’s ‘Other’ Lewis & Clark: When Thomas Jefferson acquired the 800-million acre Louisiana Purchase, he launched a second major exploring expedition into the West, one with an entirely different outcome than Lewis and Clark’s, an outcome that shines a new light on what Lewis and Clark’s journey really meant for America.
The series is the inaugural podcast under the new MeatEater American History banner, bringing rigorous, story-driven history to a community passionate about wild places. With the launch of this podcast, MeatEater is expanding its growing slate of well received history-focused content. The podcast follows the success of its American History audiobooks, MeatEater's American History: The Long Hunters (1761-1775) and MeatEater's American History: The Mountain Men (1806-1840), and furthers the brand’s signature focus on the intersection of nature, history, and the American experience.
“We’ve always believed that a deeper connection to the outdoors starts with understanding the forces that shaped it. With Dan Flores, we’re launching a new chapter of content that enriches our audience’s experience of the natural world,” said Andrew Barge, MeatEater’s Chief Content Officer. “This podcast bridges the gap between the wild world we explore and the stories that give it meaning. It’s a natural evolution of MeatEater’s mission.”
The American West with Dan Flores is distributed by iHeartPodcasts.
It will be available on the iHeartRadio app, all other major podcast platforms and at themeateater.com.
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About MeatEater, Inc.
MeatEater, Inc. is an outdoor lifestyle media and consumer products company founded by renowned writer and TV/podcast personality Steven Rinella. Host of the long-running TV series MeatEater and The MeatEater Podcast (among the top ten sports podcasts), Rinella has gained wide popularity with hunters, anglers, and others through his passion for outdoor adventure and wild foods, as well as his strong commitment to conservation. With the belief that a deeper understanding of the natural world enriches all of our lives, MeatEater brings together leading influencers in the categories of hunting, fishing, wild foods, and conservation to provide a community of fans with premium content, apparel, equipment, and experiences. MeatEater, Inc. is the parent company of First Lite (technical hunting apparel), FHF Gear (outdoor accessories), Phelps Game Calls, and Dave Smith Decoys. MeatEater’s video content is distributed via Netflix, Outdoor Sportsman Group cable networks, YouTube, its website www.themeateater.com, its own free ad-supported TV (FAST) channel, and numerous ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) platforms including Roku, PlutoTV, Tubi, and Amazon Prime Video. The company is based in Bozeman, MT.
