Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, April 22, 1889, about 50,000 people are standing in the middle of, kind of in the middle of nowhere,

in what was then referred to as the unassigned lands in what is modern day Oklahoma. The people lined up on the

edge of a nearly 2 million acre tract of land and then right at noon a gunshot

and the mad dash began. Would-be settlers rushed into the territory

to claim their cheap land and establish their territory. By the end of the day, both Oklahoma

and Guthrie, Oklahoma had established cities of about 10,000 people a week later.

There were schools within a month, Oklahoma City had five banks, six newspapers.

What I'm describing here is the Oklahoma Land Rush, a free-for-all moment that kind of feels like

captured the flag meets manifest destiny. So here to talk about that very wild moment are as always

Nicole Hammer of Columbia and Kelly Carter Jackson of Wellesley.

Hello.

Hello Jody.

Hey there.

And our very special guest this episode is Sam Anderson, a writer for the New York Times

magazine and the author of a book called Boomtown,

which is about this moment and all sorts of other strands

that come together in Oklahoma City.

So Sam, thank you for doing this. Hey thanks for having me.

Sam you can cover your ears here but I'm going to say some very flattering things I think

Boomtown is the best non-fiction book maybe of the last 10 years or so.

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