'21 Favorite: Instant City (1889) w/ Sam Anderson

This Day in Esoteric Political History

This Thanksgiving week, we’re running some favorite episodes from the year that you may have missed. We’ll be back the Tuesday after Thanksgiving.

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This episode originally ran on April 22nd. This day in 1889, tens of thousands of people gathered in the middle of “unassigned territory” to wait for the signal at high noon — at which point they rushed to claim their free land in what would, overnight, become Oklahoma City.

Jody, NIki, and Kellie are joined by Sam Anderson of the New York Times Magazine to talk about the Oklahoma land rush, the chaos of those first few days, and how the forming of OKC represents modern America.

Sam’s book about Oklahoma City is called “Boom Town.”

Find a transcript of this episode at: https://tinyurl.com/esoterichistory

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Our team: Jacob Feldman, Researcher/Producer; Brittani Brown, Producer; Khawla Nakua, Transcripts; music by Teen Daze and Blue Dot Sessions; Julie Shapiro, Executive Producer at Radiotopia