Film & TV
April 11, 2024
Jeff Hiller Is Living His Best Gay Christian Life
How the San Antonio native and ’Somebody Somewhere’ star became a middle-aged ingenue.
Profile
Music
February 28, 2024
Cigarettes After Sex Is More Addictive Than Ever
The indie band, fronted by El Pasoan Greg Gonzalez, has transcended TikTok stardom and built a following with songs of love, longing, and heartbreak.
Style & Design
January 29, 2024
Meet the Most Visionary Woodworker in Texas
Llano’s Danny Kamerath builds playful and dreamlike cabinets, chairs, tables, and more.
Film & TV
January 23, 2024
How a West Texas Cowboy Ended Up in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
Ty Mitchell has been a Navy sailor, a saloon owner, and a rancher. He’s also a scene-stealing part of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated epic.
Giving Back
November 13, 2023
Lots of Help Is Available for At-Risk Students, but Few Know How to Get It
Adeeb Barqawi founded the nonprofit ProUnitas, which helps connect social, health, and education services with the students who need them most.
Country Notes
August 10, 2023
This 78-Year-Old Artist and Rancher Has Spent His Life Chasing a Pure and Wide-open Space
Mike Capron never felt comfortable until he settled west of the Pecos River.
Art
August 8, 2023
Meet Artist Nestor Topchy, the Mad Genius Hidden in Houston Heights
Behind a rim of freeze-dried giant bamboo and scraggly trees, in a Houston Heights neighborhood caught between old apartments and new townhomes, lies the compound that has been artist Nestor Topchy’s laboratory for twenty-odd years. His place is a natural habitat for wildlife and his own wildest dreams; if there could
Business
July 12, 2023
The Queen of Highland Park
For forty years, Allie Beth Allman has ruled the glittering world of luxury real estate in Dallas. Then came a flood of coastal money, a technological revolution, a rift with a longtime partner, and the inexorable toll of time.
Film & TV
July 10, 2023
Anne Rapp Immortalized Small-town Texas on the Big Screen. But She Can’t Stop Her Hometown From Fading Away.
During Anne Rapp’s Hollywood career, she worked with the biggest names in movies. Now, at 72, she’s ready to tell her own stories about her Panhandle upbringing.
Books
June 15, 2023
Ryan Holiday, the Stoic King of Bastrop County, Is the Man of the Moment
From a small bookstore in Central Texas, the best-selling author rules over the booming Stoicism self-help movement. Why now? Why here?
Film & TV
June 13, 2023
Meet the Texan Director Behind Some of Your Favorite TV Shows
‘Mad Men.’ ‘Homeland.’ ‘Love & Death.’ The current golden age of television wouldn’t be the same without the work of Dallas native Lesli Linka Glatter.
Music
May 15, 2023
The Long Ride of Charley Crockett
After years of struggle, Charley Crockett is on the verge of stardom. The story of how he got here would be unbelievable if it weren’t true.
Film & TV
March 6, 2023
How Christy Carlson Romano Lost Her Disney Money and Founded an Empire
Ren Stevens and Kim Possible led the early aughts star to the role she was always meant to play—content strategist—in the place she was always meant to live.
Music
December 8, 2022
Making an Album Is Throwing Marc Rebillet for a Loop
The Dallas-raised electronic musician is filling venues with his raucous, half-naked, almost fully improvised shows. Can he settle down just once and make a serious album?
Art
November 10, 2022
One of Texas’s Greatest Artists Lives Quietly in East Texas—and Was a Beloved Professor to Famous Art Stars
Lee Baxter Davis is an unrecognized master because he’s never played to popular or critical tastes.
Music
October 21, 2022
Faith, Love, and Scandal: The Wild Origin Story of a North Texas Heavy Metal Band
With its fourth album and a big upcoming tour, Tulip, which is led by an ex-evangelical opera singer, is on the verge of its big break.
Sports
October 10, 2022
Meet Jak Crawford, the 17-Year-Old Texan Gunning for a Seat in Formula 1
The teenager grew up in the Houston suburbs, where he started driving go-karts when he was six. He now races with some of the best drivers in the world.
Music
June 22, 2022
Conan Gray Is Creating Pop’s Best Love Songs—But He’s Never Dated Anybody
The 23-year-old from Georgetown emerges as Texas’s answer to Olivia Rodrigo and—dare we say it?—T-Swift with his sophomore album, ‘Superache.’
Sports
June 13, 2022
At 88, Poker Legend Doyle Brunson Is Still Bluffing. Or Is He?
The Texas gambler has been winning at poker for seventy years—long enough to become an icon and watch an outlaw’s game become an industry.
Music
March 16, 2022
How Austin Punk Band Trail of Dead Survived a “Perfect Album” and “Young Devilry”
Trail of Dead was “the band that trashes everything.” But on its eleventh album, ‘XI: Bleed Here Now,’ it’s finally grown into the classic rock group it always wanted to be.
Health
September 10, 2021
Jamie Wheal Is Austin’s Cassandra of Techno-Optimism
Wheal became a guru in the city’s self-optimization scene, hobnobbing with the likes of Elon Musk. But will anyone listen to his warnings about the movement that brought him renown?
Film & TV
December 16, 2020
The Seven Ages of Barry Corbin
From ‘Urban Cowboy’ to ‘Northern Exposure’ to ‘No Country for Old Men,’ Texas’s finest character actor isn’t hanging up his spurs just yet.
Film & TV
September 23, 2020
How Danny Trejo Built a Decades-Long Film Career After Prison
After years of playing ex-cons and bodyguards, the prolific actor became an iconic leading man in Robert Rodriguez’s Machete series.
Business
September 12, 2019
T. Boone Pickens Was a Helluva Storyteller—and That’s Why We Couldn’t Resist Him
In his plainspoken, hilariously vivid vernacular, the Texas oilman constantly spun tales about good times and bad.
News & Politics
June 25, 2019
She Couldn’t Go to Space Because She Was a Woman. But She Hasn’t Given Up on Her Dream.
Nearly sixty years ago, Funk and twelve other women proved that they could be astronauts too. But they never got to walk on the moon.
Music
June 26, 2017
Bad Girls Get Old
How Jo Carol Pierce went from adventurous Lubbock teen to restless single mother and social worker to Austin’s most underrated songwriter is a story unlike any other in Texas music. Now, at 72, she’s ready for her next act.
Business
June 14, 2017
The Shelf Life of John Mackey
The Whole Foods founder revolutionized the way Americans consume food. Now, with profits and the stock price down, and after a series of controversies ($6 asparagus water!), can he reinvent his company before Wall Street swipes it from him?
Politics & Policy
May 21, 2017
The Empathy of David Brown
When a gunman opened fire during a protest in Dallas last summer, killing five people, it was the city’s police chief who knew the words a rattled country needed to hear. In fact, he knew them all too well.
Music
June 6, 2014
The Strings of the Father
How Johnny Gimble became one of the greatest fiddlers of all time—and showed me and my son a thing or two about playing music.
Music
May 16, 2014
The Last Ride of King George
After a career that’s spanned more than thirty years, George Strait is wrapping up his 48-stop farewell tour this month. For those of us whose lives he has captured so inimitably in song, country music will never be the same.
Film & TV
March 7, 2014
King of Dreams
Over the past twenty years, from his outpost in Texas, Robert Rodriguez has quietly revolutionized the movie business. What happens when he gets his own TV network?
Books
January 24, 2013
The Artist and the City
For thirty years, when she wasn’t writing books or winning genius grants, Sandra Cisneros has been pushing and prodding San Antonio to become a more sophisticated (and more Mexican) city. Now she’s leaving town. did she succeed?
Feature
January 21, 2013
Ted or Alive
In the late seventies, Ted Nugent (a.k.a. “the Nuge” or “Uncle Ted”) had the country’s biggest hard-rock touring act—a wild-ass blend of in-your-face energy, obscene language, and a well-placed loincloth. Now he’s the country’s biggest gun rights advocate—and all that’s changed is the loincloth.
Music
January 20, 2013
The Real Buddy Holly
His life was as short and sweet as his songs, but who was the Lubbock rocker whose influence over popular music will not fade away?
Business
January 20, 2013
A Boy and His Airline
No kid ever had more fun with his favorite toy than Herb Kelleher has in running Southwest Airlines.
Music
January 20, 2013
Since She’s Been Gone
The L.A. life of a girl from Burleson (or, You can take Kelly Clarkson out of Texas . . .).
Arts & Entertainment
January 20, 2013
Mr. Malcontent
More Lenny Bruce than Jerry Seinfeld, Hicks wins fans by showing them his dark side.
Sports
January 20, 2013
Whatever Happened to Ronnie Littleton?
Twenty-five years ago, in the wake of integration, he was the football star at my mostly white high school in Wichita Falls. Not much has gone right for him since.
Books
January 20, 2013
The Uncertain Sage
A cool, brilliantly blue day in early February found me driving north from Austin on a sort of pilgrimage. I was going to see John Graves, the writer and gentleman farmer, now 73 years old, at his place on four hundred acres of rocky blackland prairie near Glen Rose.My visit
Film & TV
January 20, 2013
Warren Skaaren, Movie Mogul
The head of the Texas Film Commission hustles Hollywood movie-makers into putting more of Texas in the can.
Politics & Policy
January 20, 2013
The Good Wife
Is she a “saccharine phony”? A closet liberal? A foot soldier—or a rebel—in the culture wars? The truth about Laura Bush is that her ambiguity makes her a model first lady: a blank screen upon which the public can project its own ideas about womanhood.
Business
January 20, 2013
The Texas 100: The Son Also Rises
The moral of Tex Moncrief’s story: Father knew best.
Business
January 20, 2013
The Texas 100: Revenge of the Nerd
He made his first million before many kids finish college. Less than a decade later, Michael Dell continues to confound conventional wisdom.
Business
January 20, 2013
The Texas 100: Money Becomes Electra
As a bitter family feud drags on, Electra Waggoner Biggs if fighting to keep her fortune—and her ranch—intact.
Politics & Policy
January 20, 2013
Girl Gone Mild
After spending her adolescence largely out of view (except for a few scrapes with restaurant and bar employees), presidential spawn Jenna Bush is emerging as a public person in her own right. But her return to private life can’t come soon enough.
Sports
January 20, 2013
The Real Troy Aikman
His dreams. His fears. The truth about his love life. A candid chat with Texas’ most misunderstood sports hero.
Music
December 1, 2010
The Soul of a Man
For nearly sixty years, a succession of obsessed blues and gospel fans have trekked across Texas, trying to unearth the story of one of the greatest, and most mysterious, musicians of the twentieth century. But the more they find, the less they seem to know.
Politics & Policy
August 31, 2009
The End of the Affair
Everyone was shocked when San Angelo’s hugely popular mayor suddenly left town with his gay lover. Everyone, that is, except the citizens of San Angelo.
Film & TV
September 30, 2008
Dude!
Yes, yes, new baby and new movie—but what Matthew McConaughey really wants to talk about is the cushion of the flip-flop, the skooching of hoodie sleeves, the proper thickness of koozies, and his coming career as the arbiter of redneck-Buddha chic.
Energy
September 1, 2008
There Will Be Boone
Our most iconic oil and gas man, lately a water marauder and now a celebrated windcatter, has saved himself a couple of times in his eighty glorious years. Who’s to say he can’t save America?