Life By the Drop: How to Report on the Drought
KUT's Terrence Henry and Mose Buchele discuss the stories behind their research and reporting on the drought.
A native of Houston and a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Sonia Smith is a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. She cut her teeth reporting on crime on the bayou for the Baton Rouge Advocate. She has also written for Slate, The New York Times Magazine, Roads & Kingdoms, and the Kyiv Post, and was a finalist for the 2008 Livingston Awards for Young Journalists for her reporting on sexual abuse at the Louisiana School for the Deaf. Her Texas Monthly profile of leading climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe was included in the anthology The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2017.
KUT's Terrence Henry and Mose Buchele discuss the stories behind their research and reporting on the drought.
By Sonia Smith
The Perrys are expected to move back into the Greek Revival mansion, which was torched by arsonists in 2008, next month.
By Sonia Smith
A seventy-million-year-old Tyrannosaurus bataar skeleton finds itself at the center of a legal battle involving a Dallas auction house, a Houston lawyer, and the president of Mongolia.
By Sonia Smith
Should nonproducing oil rigs be demolished, or are the habitats marine life have built around them too valuable to compromise?
By Sonia Smith
The wife and children of famed auto designer Carroll Shelby are fighting over control of his remains more than a month after his death.
By Sonia Smith
A grand jury will decide whether to pursue criminal charges against the Shiner dad, but the public seems to favor his use of deadly force.
By Sonia Smith
What's more embarassing for an eight-year-old boy? School authorities forcing you to take a shower or your parents making a federal case out of the matter?
By Sonia Smith
Courtney Royal had sued to practice his vampiric religious beliefs behind bars but the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was unswayed by his arguments.
By Sonia Smith
David Barton and Alex Jones landed on the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of the thirty members of the radical right to watch.
By Sonia Smith
A full 3,888 days after Hank Skinner first asked for testing of the DNA in the murder case that sent him to death row, the Texas Attorney General's Office finally relented.
By Sonia Smith
A writer for the Oxford American samples calf fries at Throckmorton's Rocky Mountain Oyster Festival for the magazine.
By Sonia Smith
The basketball star repeatedly slammed San Antonio, driving Mayor Julián Castro to film a short video about the virtues of the Alamo City.
By Sonia Smith
Juárez, which had been scrubbed from the free tourist maps distributed in El Paso, will be included on the 2013 set of maps put out by the El Paso Business Region Chamber of Commerce.
By Sonia Smith
The cookies, known to most Texans as Caramel deLites, will be fried to mark the Girl Scout's 100th Anniversary.
By Sonia Smith
Marc Ostrofsky, who wrote Get Rich Click!, estimates he'll spend $1.5 million on private college tuiton to educate his five daughters and stepdaughters.
By Sonia Smith
A public high school teacher from the Valley will not be returning to the classroom this school year after she told her ninth graders that she is "married to God."
By Sonia Smith
Some Sugar Land residents are upset about a mixed-use development that would build 325 luxury apartments in the abandoned Imperial Sugar refinery.
By Sonia Smith
The Texas congressman announced in an e-mail to supporters Monday that he will not spend money campaigning in any of the remaining Republican primaries.
By Sonia Smith
Memorial Hermann hospital gave the Twitterverse a play-by-play account of how to perform brain surgery.
By Sonia Smith
Houston's openly gay mayor had previously said Obama's views on gay marriage needed to "evolve" more quickly.
By Sonia Smith
State senator Dan Patrick accuses fellow senator John Carona of spreading vicious rumors about the Patrick marriage, resulting in an email exchange that might make CW producers jealous.
By Sonia Smith
Jason Embry left the Austin American-Statesman to serve as Joe Straus's press secretary. But moving from political journalist to political flack is not unprecedented. Here are ten other Texas journalists who have made the jump.
By Sonia Smith
A Daily Campus story alleges the university improperly uses "secret hearings" to deal with sexual assault cases involving students, and SMU fires back.
By Sonia Smith
A new study looking at West Texas wind farms found that local air temperatures rose 0.72 degrees Celsius. Is this something to worry about?
By Sonia Smith
After years of exporting prized dinosaur fossils to some of the world’s best museums, the state will be getting two huge exhibit halls, in Dallas and Houston.
By Sonia Smith
Several temporary shelters have cropped up around Texas to house a recent unexplained influx of unaccompanied minors crossing into the United States.
By Sonia Smith
Millions of texts and e-mails from Texas teens who agreed to participate in a four year study could shed new light on the life of the American teenager.
By Sonia Smith
A Killeen mother recently took out a billboard to promote her daughter's prom queen bid. Has helicopter parenting jumped the shark?
By Sonia Smith
If oil and gas drilling is considered "manufacturing" instead of "mining," the industry effectively receives a huge tax exemption.
By Sonia Smith
Could eating invasive species be the best way to get rid of them?
By Sonia Smith
Is Glen Rose, famed for its fossilized dinosaur tracks in the Paluxy River, becoming a hotbed of creationism? A Texas Observer story says yes.
By Sonia Smith
The Chronicle of Higher Education put together a list of the highest paid professors across the country.
By Sonia Smith
The shiny new building is far too shiny and is sending unwanted beams of sunshine into the Nasher Sculpture Center.
By Sonia Smith
Erstwhile presidential candidate Rick Perry met with Rick Santorum in Austin, but the details of their discussion are unknown. Maybe Santorum hopes the state will switch to a winner-takes-all primary.
By Sonia Smith
Texas researchers are doing their part to fight malaria by monitoring the spread of a drug-resistant strain of the parasite and breeding a genetically modified goat with malaria-vaccine in her milk.
By Sonia Smith
Jose Antonio Acosta Hernandez, who admitted to ordering hits on more than 1,500 people—including a U.S. consulate employee—received a life sentence in federal court in El Paso.
By Sonia Smith
A cast member of Big Rich Texas claims that a woman who did not make the show has launched a smear campaign against her.
By Sonia Smith
The Texas Republican congressman's campaign appears to report every expense—even a $0.22 purchase from FedEx—to the Federal Elections Commission.
By Sonia Smith
A dispatch on how the petrodollars from the Eagle Ford Shale boom are reshaping life in South Texas.
By Sonia Smith
A Texas researcher is working to fight citrus greening by using bacteria-fighting genes found in spinach.
By Sonia Smith
Give that skunk in your yard wide berth, because it might be rabid.
By Sonia Smith
NPR explores what Texas would look like as an independent state in the modern era.
By Sonia Smith
One year, three inappropriate rants abroad airplanes in Texas. What's in the air?
By Sonia Smith
Mike and Steve Yassine and eight others are accused of a broad array of crimes, including money laundering, drug distribution, and sending money to the Lebanon-based Islamic militant group.
By Sonia Smith
Renowned photographer Mario Sorrenti visited Cadillac Ranch with a band of models in December for a spread that ran in the magazine's March issue.
By Sonia Smith
The press shy billionaire calls Karl Rove his "personal political muse" and reveals why he's bent on defeating President Barack Obama.
By Sonia Smith
It's official: James Franco will not be getting his creative writing PhD from the University of Houston.
By Sonia Smith
A new book, Flagrant Conduct: The Story of Lawrence v. Texas, explores the history of the men behind the landmark Supreme Court case and questions the conventional wisdom of the story.
By Sonia Smith
The Justice Department slapped the hand of the Texas legislature by blocking the state's new voter ID law, saying it would likely disenfranchise Hispanic voters.
By Sonia Smith
The Republican presidential rumor mill is abuzz with whispers that Newt Gingrich may tap Rick Perry to be his vice president in a rare, pre-convention ticket.
By Sonia Smith