There's a real pioneer spirit to this edition of the podcast, which was recorded en plein air in a remote mountain location along the border between Tennessee and North Carolina. Nat sounds -- including, at one point, the crackle of rifle shots -- lend background authenticity to our discussion first of Cather's novel, and then, at the 43 minute mark, of the many westward-empire-coursing moves that re-charted the NBA landscape in the early weeks of free agency. Next up: the first decade of the 1900s, and Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth.