Cover of This Town OKC

This Town OKC

This Town OKC

By: Rick Allen Lippert
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Cities are defined by their cultures. Those cultures could entail sports, or business, or certainly arts and entertainment. Oklahoma City is thriving in all of these areas. But who makes that all happen?

This Town OKC explores the people behind the cultures. Their origins, their motivations, their challenges, and their dreams.

I’m Rick Allen Lippert. I’ve been in this town for over fifty years with a front row seat to seeing the culture grow from a dusty bus stop on the southern plains to a flourishing destination.

Join me as we meet the folks behind the culture on This Town OKC.2025 Art Entertainment & Performing Arts
Episodes
  • S2E22 Mary Frates

    S2E22 Mary Frates
    13 Oct 2026
    Way before Mary Frates knew that one day she would coordinate the first Oklahoma Summer Arts Institute, she was a Ponca City High School grad attending a small college in the nation's capital. There she met Fidel Castro, Nikita Khrushchev, and Richard Nixon among others. A classmate was Nancy Pelosi. Because only cultural and political events were exempted by the early curfew, Mary did both, attending performances and protests!

    Mary finished her education at OU then began organizing cultural field trips for OKC Public Schools. That ultimately led to the creation of the Oklahoma Arts Institute with a two-week summer camp for high schools students and fall weekend workshops for teachers. Mary served as the OAI director for 25 years, and here gives a true behind-the-scenes account of how it happened 50 years ago.

    Post-production by Fred O. Bishop
    'Sponsored by Carpenter Square Theatre
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    1 hr
  • S2E21 Sean Cummings

    S2E21 Sean Cummings
    21 Sep 2026
    Before he owned restaurants in This Town, Sean Cummings had a couple in Kansas City. Plus he spent a year on the circuit as a standup comic! Sean also admits that his courtship and marriage to the late dynamo, Cathy, was the least romantic one in history. How they ended up in This Town is quite interesting, though, as is how he and Cathy got involved in politics. This restauranteur-turned-political activist has a lot to say!

    Post-production by Fred O. Bishop
    Sponsored by Carpenter Square Theatre
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    1 hr and 8 min
  • S2E20 Anthony McDermid

    S2E20 Anthony McDermid
    8 Sep 2026
    As a fresh graduate with two degrees in architecture from the University of Manchester, Anthony McDermid came to the U.S. to look for work. His first job interview lasted all of five minutes. Before long, he formed his own firm, TAP, with a partner. He's now "tapering off" after 40 years, but only after designing and building hundreds of projects all over the country. Anthony talks about rugby, his childhood fascination with the construction of rebuilding his war-ravaged and bombed-out hometown of Bristol, England, his community involvement in This Town, and his love of traveling.

    Post-production by Fred O. Bishop
    Sponsored by Carpenter Square Theatre
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    35 min
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