How much do you know about Oklahoma City? Probably you know about the bombing, the Dust Bowl, and the Trail of Tears. Maybe, if you’re a basketball fan, you know about the drama of their basketball team, the Thunder. A feeble history, then, of a flyover city in the public imagination. Sam Anderson wants to change all that. As a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine, he was sent off to O.K.C. a few years ago to write about a stolen basketball team, and fell so hard for what he calls “one of the great weirdo cities of the world” that he wrote a whole book about it.

Go beyond the episode:

• Sam Anderson’s Boom Town
• Read his original reporting on the Oklahoma City Thunder, “A Basketball Fairy Tale in Middle America”
• And his Summer 2004 essay for us, “Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Joyce,” as strange a travelogue of Dublin as you’ll ever read
• Peruse the Oklahoma Historical Society’s materials on the Land Run of 1889
• Read the original coverage of the Land Run in the May 18, 1889 edition of Harper’s Weekly (click here for a more legible text-only version) or in The New York Times

Tune in every week to catch interviews with the liveliest voices from literature, the arts, sciences, history, and public affairs; reports on cutting-edge works in progress; long-form narratives; and compelling excerpts from new books. Hosted by Stephanie Bastek.

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