Hidden City

Before B.B. King, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, and Stevie Ray Vaughan, there was T-Bone Walker. Born Aaron Thibeaux Walker, he grew up in Oak Cliff’s Tenth Street neighborhood, where he was surrounded by music and crossed...

Haley Leavitt joins us to share how she found her place in Oak Cliff’s creative community and how an experiment involving salvaged church pews grew into the Oak Cliff Art Walk. What began with 35 artists inside the...

In 1990, Oak Cliff came remarkably close to asking Dallas for a divorce. About 2,000 people packed a public meeting to discuss creating a new city of roughly 310,000 residents, complete with its own government, budget...

Stevens Park is one of Oak Cliff’s most familiar landscapes, but its history stretches far beyond the golf course. What began with Annie Stevens’s 1923 gift of 40 acres in memory of her parents grew into a public park...

What does it take to build a city where artists can make meaningful work without burning out? Avery-Jai Andrews, executive director of Arts Mission Oak Cliff and founder of Agora Artists, joins the show to talk about...

For the final installment of the Hidden City Summer Reading Club, Doug and Grant are joined by Eric Nystrom to discuss Nathanael Johnson’s Unseen City, a book about learning to notice the wildlife hiding in plain...

Summer Reading Club continues with The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. Joined by Fred Durham of the C.S. Lewis Institute, we explore why these beloved stories continue to resonate with readers of all ages. From...

Summer Reading Club continues with Theo of Golden by Allen Levi. We explore why this story has resonated with so many readers and how its themes of place, hospitality, and human connection echo the kinds of stories we...

We kick off our Summer Reading Club with John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, a novel that finds humor, humanity, and unexpected beauty in the lives of a small working class neighborhood in depression-era California. Grant...

Carlos De La Fuente has been part of Oak Cliff since 1974, and few people know the neighborhood's history quite like he does. In this episode, Carlos shares the story of immigrating to Dallas as a child, growing up in...

Philip Haigh, Executive Director of The Loop Dallas, joins the podcast to talk about the ambitious effort to connect Dallas through a 50-mile trail network. From discovering the bike-friendly culture of Oak Cliff to...

In this episode, we explore the story of 10th Street, one of the most important surviving Freedman’s Town landscapes in the United States. Long before I35 cut through Oak Cliff, 10th Street was a thriving African...

Sean Springer, founder of Springer Design Studio, joins The Hidden City to talk about his journey from studying sculpture at RISD to building a woodworking and design practice rooted in craftsmanship, healing, and...

Illustrator and designer Zach Stuef joins The Hidden City to talk about moving from Michigan to Dallas, building a creative life through illustration, and why he still starts every project with pen and paper. We talk...

Dallas once had a real plan to become a port city, with boats traveling from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up the Trinity River into the heart of Dallas. In this episode, we trace the strange and ambitious history of...