Texas Monthly

Texas Monthly’s celebrated journalism is returning to your screens this month. 📺 The second season of the award-winning series, Texas Monthly Presents: The Story, will air on Texas PBS stations and in select nationwide markets starting on Sunday, August 23. Season 2 will take viewers even deeper into the magazine writers’ captivating reporting journeys across the state, and for the first time, into Mexico. The program will continue to show that the storytelling process can be just as illuminating as the story itself. The season begins with “The Away Team,” a powerful episode about Afghan women soccer players in Houston, where viewers are offered an intimate portrait of the players rebuilding their lives after leaving their country. To view the show’s broadcast schedule in Texas or beyond, check your local listing. Episodes are also available for streaming anywhere in the U.S. through the PBS app. Special thanks to this season’s underwriters, Rambler Sparkling Water, Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation, and Texas Rural Funders for helping to make this show possible. The show is presented by Texas PBS, and station relations are managed by Artemis Independent.

Today the short film Thank You for Listening, which is presented by Texas Monthly, is now exclusively available for streaming on Yahoo. The film chronicles country artist Joshua Ray Walker’s journey of hope, healing, and resilience following a life-altering cancer diagnosis. Thank you for Listening was one of twenty films selected for global recognition and distribution by Yahoo Media Group and the Nonfiction Hotlist. The film is directed by Emmy- and Peabody-winning filmmaker Gene Gallerano and critically acclaimed filmmaker Bob Ray. It’s executive produced by Texas Monthly’s own Megan Creydt and story director J.K. Nickell; Peabody- and duPont-Columbia Award–winning producer Daniel J. Chalfen; Emmy- and Peabody-winning filmmaker Pagan Harleman; and Emmy-nominated producer and director Ben Selkow. Texas Monthly is honored to have played a part in Walker’s storytelling journey. To view the documentary on Yahoo, visit https://lnkd.in/ggQRRcCN. 

Texas Monthly is #hiring for three exciting roles across our portfolio! We’re looking for a Deputy Editor, a Producer for Texas Country Reporter, and a Staff Writer. All three positions are full-time and based in Austin, Texas. Visit our jobs page to learn more about these opportunities: https://lnkd.in/gtJ8zitR.

Today we’re celebrating National Intern Day by recognizing our talented Summer 2026 interns! This summer, our interns have gained hands-on experience working across our editorial, sales and business teams bringing curiosity, creativity, and fresh perspectives to everything they've worked on. Thank you to our interns for all of your hard work and enthusiasm throughout the summer. And thank you to all of our colleagues and mentors who have helped guide them this summer. We are so grateful to have such talented young professionals as part of the Texas Monthly Team and we can’t wait to see what’s next for each of you!

📺 Texas Monthly’s PBS Docuseries Expands to National Audience, Adding Flood Anniversary Episode ‘Texas Monthly Presents: The Story’ has made its nationwide debut after its inaugural year on Texas public television. The half-hour documentary series has captivated audiences with its unique storytelling and won four Lone Star Emmy Awards in its first season. This weekend, the series will premiere a special episode ahead of the July 4 anniversary of the Guadalupe River flood, exploring themes of grief, recovery, community, and hope as Texans reflect on what happened last summer and how to move forward. Read on for more details about the upcoming episode and series expansion. https://lnkd.in/gQmcDwp9

Last month was a landmark one for Texas Monthly, as our team received some of the highest honors in journalism. Senior editor Aaron Parsley has earned Texas Monthly's first-ever Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. He was recognized for his moving account of his family’s experience during the Central Texas flooding. His follow-up story is featured on the cover of the June issue, and his podcast, Where The River Took Us, was released last month. In addition, we received a National Magazine Award for general excellence—our first general excellence award since 2009 and the fifteenth National Magazine Award in our history. This award acknowledges the important and ambitious work we are doing across the organization and honors our commitment to serving Texas readers with quality journalism. At the City and Regional Magazine Association conference, Texas Monthly excelled, winning ten awards—more than any other publication. These included top honors for writing, design, editorial quality, and overall excellence. We are deeply grateful for the recognition from our outstanding peers, dedicated readers, and talented staff members, who all play a vital role in supporting our shared mission.

Today marks an exciting new chapter for Texas Monthly.     We’re proud to announce the relaunch of Texas Monthly Press, a new publishing venture created in collaboration with Penguin Random House.     For more than 53 years, Texas Monthly has told the stories that define Texas—stories of politics, business, culture, sports, food, history, and the remarkable people who shape our state. Now, we’re bringing that storytelling tradition to the books of Texas Monthly Press—publishing fiction and nonfiction that capture the people, culture, history, and ideas that make Texas unlike anywhere else.     Combining Texas Monthly’s deep knowledge of the state with Penguin Random House’s publishing expertise, this new imprint will publish works that are rooted in Texas and resonate far beyond its borders.     Texas Monthly Press’s projects will be guided by an experienced editorial team, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former longtime Esquire and Random House editor Mark Warren, a native Texan, who will serve as editorial director of Texas Monthly Press.     This is more than a new imprint—it’s an investment in great storytelling and a commitment to bringing important Texas voices to readers across the country.  Learn more: https://bit.ly/4ehHTAP.

Our February cover story delves into the efforts of state leaders to remake Texas A&M University—which has faced five presidents in five years, high-profile firings and cancellations, and crackdowns on dissent. "We live in an era that is allergic to complexity and context, and in which the tolerance and mutual respect necessary to make democracy function are harder and harder to come by. Any great institution—and Texas A&M is one of the greatest the state has—is bound to be stranger and more capacious than its most simpleminded defenders would have it. In point of fact, rather than being “inconsistent” modern impositions, cross-dressing and drag would appear to be old and venerable Aggie traditions," writes Christopher Hooks. Read the full story here: https://txmnth.ly/4kqUNir 🎨: Justin Metz

Roughly six thousand workers are laboring in Abilene to erect a Stargate AI data complex of eight buildings comprising 4 million square feet across 1,100 acres. Each structure will house a network of sophisticated servers used to teach artificial intelligence models to expertly interpret prompts from humans. It’s ground zero for Stargate, a $500 billion nationwide build-out of AI infrastructure that’s a joint venture of OpenAI, Oracle, and their investment-firm backers. The Abilene facility, Stargate’s flagship, is expected to be completed this year, and two of its buildings are already up and running. Abilene is best known for its abundance of churches, its down-home cowboy culture, and the presence of Dyess Air Force Base and multiple universities. But now, after the arrival of hordes of trade workers from as far as California and Maine, the city’s 130,000 residents must deal with the reality that their hometown has become an unlikely nexus of the AI revolution. “The price of progress is always hard,” says Mayor Weldon Hurt. “If there’s a construction project, it’s inconvenient. And this one’s just huge, which makes it hugely inconvenient, especially if you live out there.” Read more: https://txmnth.ly/4adBEfx 📸: Justin Clemons

An Austin woman wrote to the Texanist worried about a friend who came home from a barbecue festival feeling logy and clammy. Was it all in his head? Or was some of it in his armpits? The Texanist investigated and found that, according to Dr. Brooks Cash, the director of the Functional Bowel Center at Dallas’s Baylor University Medical Center, that though there is some debate about meat sweats, they do seem to be an actual thing. The phenomenon is attributed to something called diet-induced thermogenesis, or DIT. Read more about the phenomenon here: https://txmnth.ly/49Ch87Z 🎨: Zohar Lazar