Texas Monthly Talks

Texas Monthly Talks was a thirty-minute interview show on public television networks across the state of Texas hosted by Evan Smith, then Editor Emeritus of Texas Monthly magazine. Produced by Dateline NBC veteran Lynn Boswell, the show addressed contemporary issues in Texas politics, business and culture. Premiering in February 2003, the show was an original production of KLRU-TV, the PBS station serving Austin and Central Texas. In 2010 the series was succeeded by Overheard, with the same format, host and producer; the renaming was necessary because Smith had resigned his position at the magazine and had become Editor in Chief of the Texas Tribune.

On Texas Monthly Talks Smith regularly interviewed public figures from Austin and around Texas, such as Bill Powers, the president of the University of Texas at Austin, mayors Bill White of Houston, Tom Leppert of Dallas, and Texas Governor Rick Perry. His guests also included notables in national politics, such as presidential candidates Howard Dean, John Kerry, Bill Bradley, John McCain, Joe Biden, Mike Huckabee, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards; in business, such as Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher and Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey; in the media, such as New York Times columnists Maureen Dowd and Frank Rich and newscasters Jim Lehrer, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, Bob Schieffer, and Tom Brokaw; and in entertainment, such as directors Francis Ford Coppola, John Sayles, and David Lynch, singers Ted Nugent and Billy Gibbons, novelist Salman Rushdie, and actresses Lauren Bacall, Lily Tomlin, and Debra Winger.

In 2006 the show won a Lone Star Emmy Award for interview program. In 2009 an episode with Billy Bob Thornton won a Lone Star Emmy for arts or entertainment program.