There and Back Again: An OAuth Story` is a narrative about the author's journey learning about OAuth 2.0 and its application in protecting applications with ngrok. The author initially thought they knew OAuth, but after diving deeper into its specifications, they realized how complex it can be. They witnessed firsthand how ngrok simplified OAuth implementation by acting as a lightweight policy enforcement point on the edge of the tunnel. This allowed applications to receive an access token created by an OAuth provider without having to process these requests themselves. The author also explored using custom OAuth providers like Okta, bringing their applications under the same security policy without modifying the underlying system. The story highlights ngrok's ability to implement OAuth 2.0 in front of any application in seconds without modification, and invites readers to share their ideas on how to further improve this functionality.