How Curious

In 1909, two Oklahoma brothers aged just five and nine set off on horseback from near Frederick to Santa Fe—and back—alone. How Curious explores the extraordinary adventures of Bud and Temple Abernathy, and asks what their story reveals about childhood, independence and the American West of a very different era.

In 1975, as Saigon fell and tens of thousands of Vietnamese fled, a family in the small western Oklahoma town of Clinton opened their doors - and their community - to help resettle around 250 refugees.In this episode of How Curious, Rachel Hopkin visits the store still run by one of those original arrivals and hears firsthand accounts of the extraordinary welcome, the culture shocks, and the hard work of starting over, in what's been described as one of the most successful group resettlement efforts in the United States.

What happens when an Oklahoma picnic basket flies across a car floor on Route 66? You get Chicken in the Rough — Oklahoma’s original franchised menu item.

Discover the remarkable Kate Barnard — the fiery “Good Angel of Oklahoma.” Before women could vote, she became the state’s first woman elected to statewide office, fiercely battling child labor, prison cruelty, mistreatment of the mentally ill, and corruption involving Native American lands.Small in stature but unstoppable in spirit, this trailblazing reformer’s passionate fight for the vulnerable made her a national sensation.A story of courage and conviction from Oklahoma’s Progressive Era. Don’t miss this episode of How Curious.Connie Cronley's biography of Kate Barnard is titled "A Life on Fire: Oklahoma's Kate Barnard" and is published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

In 1945, the U.S. government chose Searcy Field in Stillwater, Oklahoma, for a unique experiment: selling 475 surplus World War II combat aircraft in one giant field sale rather than scrapping them.This episode of How Curious tells the remarkable story of how a Hollywood stunt pilot became the winning bidder — and what he did with the planes afterward!