Michael and Lauren Boss are the founders of BOCO, a neighborhood music school in Oak Cliff. In this episode, they share how they started with a single student next to the Kessler Theater and grew into a school serving kids, adults, and families across the community. We hear about their approach to teaching music, curating what students learn, and giving them the chance to perform on real stages. From youth bands to adult programs, the conversation explores how BOCO combines education, performance, and neighborhood culture into a single, thriving space.

We’re looking back on the conversations that resonated most with our listeners. In this special episode, our team counts down the Top 10 most-watched episodes of 2025 - each one representing a story that left a mark on Oak Cliff and on us. From neighborhood organizers and artists to historians, filmmakers, and community builders, this episode revisits the moments that sparked curiosity, emotion, and connection. Along the way, you’ll hear short clips from each episode introduced by our team, reflecting on why these stories mattered. This isn’t just a highlight reel. It’s a snapshot of a year spent listening closely, asking better questions, and sharing the voices that make Oak Cliff what it is. Thank you for being part of it. We can’t wait to keep going in 2026.

Doug and Grant take The Hidden City out of the studio and onto the 10th tee box at Stevens Park Golf Course for a one-of-a-kind live episode, recorded during the Rosemont Dads' Club Oak Cliff Invitational. Between tee shots and a steady stream of neighbors wandering up to the mics, they talk with longtime Oak Cliffers, Rosemont Elementary administrators, local business owners, and a rotating cast of characters who’ve helped shape the neighborhood for decades. From on-air key lime pie reviews and heckling golfers to a few chaotic rounds of our game “Golf Course or Apartment Complex,” this episode captures Oak Cliff exactly as it is: funny, warm, unpredictable, and full of people who love where they live.

Lydia Torrez has spent nearly five decades shaping young minds in Oak Cliff. Her story spans generations of faith, education, and community—as a former St. Cecilia Catholic School student who returned to lead the school as principal, twice. She reflects on her career as an educator at both Bishop Dunne and St. Cecilia, sharing how each helped nurture confidence and curiosity in students who might have otherwise been overlooked. From guiding the future of St. Cecilia through its Blue Ribbon Initiative to serving on the advisory council for the new Halperin Park, Lydia continues to help shape Oak Cliff’s future—guiding the same neighborhood that shaped her.

Claudia Vega is a lifelong educator turned community builder, bookstore owner, and literary advocate. In this episode, she shares how growing up in Oak Cliff with educator parents instilled a love of books—and how that love became action. Claudia and her husband John co-founded Whose Books, a neighborhood bookstore committed to access, representation, and joy, and ARCO, a nonprofit that builds reading culture through book gifting, programming, and removing barriers to reading. We talk about the obstacles she faced launching a bookstore in a “book desert,” the community’s response, and why cultivating a culture of reading is about equity, not just literacy. Along the way, Claudia reflects on browsing as a lost art, the power of story time, and what it really takes to start something from scratch in the place you call home.

Greg Brownderville is a poet, musician, professor of English at SMU, and editor of the Southwest Review. He joins us to talk about growing up in Pumpkin Bend, Arkansas, discovering community in Oak Cliff, and the deep influence of Southern folklore on his work. We dig into Firebones, his multimedia storytelling project, and Frontera Fest, a free literary and arts festival in Bishop Arts that blends voices from the U.S. and Latin America. Along the way, we talk ghosts, shade tree storytellers, and why literature should never be boring.