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Before Simone, Who Were the Other Greatest Texan Olympians?In the long history of the Olympics (this year marks the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad), hundreds of athletes with Texas ties have vied for the glory that comes with triumph on the global stage. For an individual competitor or the member of a team, just qualifying for a chance to represent one’s nation is the accomplishment of a lifetime for many athletes; succeeding at the world level is an achievement nonpareil.This summer, Texans and Texas-affiliated athletes such as gymnast Simone Biles, shot-putter Ryan Crouser, golfer Scottie Scheffler, and sprinter Julien Alfred have, because of their remarkable successes, become household names. Former Texas Longhorn Kevin Durant has long been among the most famous athletes in the world, but this summer he became USA Basketball’s all-time…

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The Problem with Erik bonus episodeThis is a bonus episode available to TM Audio subscribers only. Connect access to your TM Audio feed to the podcast player of your choice here. To troubleshoot any issues, access the FAQ here. Read the transcript below.“Watching all of these decisions come to this point where two people are murdered in a parking lot . . . That’s what we decided, ultimately, the story is: it’s these characters who all have their different motivations, and they just collide in this fateful way.”—Katy VineIn this bonus episode for Texas Monthly audio subscribers, we’re taking you behind the scenes of our production with a Q&A among host Katy Vine, lead producer Ana Worrel, coproducer Brian Standefer—who wrote the show’s original score—and coproducer and story editor Patrick Michels.This episode was produced by Patrick Michels…

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La Grange Lost Its Only Hospital Last Year. Now an Auction Will Determine Its Fate.Grass has grown wild and tall around what was once St. Mark’s Medical Center. A blue tarp covers a hanging entrance sign, and a piece of plywood on the front door carries an announcement that the hospital is closed. Its hallways are littered with empty beds, medicine carts, and wheelchairs.The shuttering of St. Mark’s last October left a hole in access to trauma care in La Grange, a small town between Austin and Houston. Roughly 40,000 Texans in the surrounding rural communities had counted on the hospital’s services, and the majority of patients were older adults with low incomes. While the area has a handful of urgent care clinics and physician offices, ambulances must now transport patients with more serious conditions to hospitals elsewhere.St. Mark’s…

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Clockwise from top left: moonseed moth, ladder-backed ethmia moth, bent-lined carpet moth, ailanthus webworm moth, blackberry looper moth.On a steamy June evening, Curtis Eckerman embarks on a mothing expedition in the Bauerle Ranch greenbelt, in far South Austin. Towing a wagon full of supplies, he follows a narrow trail that leads between mesquite trees and into a secluded oak grove suffused with golden late-afternoon light. Eckerman, the chair of the biology department at Austin Community College, parks the wagon and begins to wrap a tree trunk in white cloth. Next he suspends a battery-powered ultraviolet light from a low branch. He’s optimistic we’ll see lots of different moths tonight; it’s been a warm, humid day, conducive to plant growth and, by extension, activity by plant-eating creatures. The oak grove is full of frostweed, persimmon trees, and various grasses, each vital to different…

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Profile of Lemonada Co-Founder Stephanie Wittels WachsAs a kid growing up in southwest Houston, Stephanie Wittels Wachs transformed her parents’ living room into a performance space. She’d put makeup and costumes on her younger brother, Harris Wittels, directing him in full-scale plays she’d dreamed up. That early passion for the stage led to courses at Houston’s musical theater company TUTS (Theater Under the Stars), followed by a degree from the performing arts high school HSPVA, which is the holy grail of high schools for many creative kids in Houston. Back then, before podcasts were even a thing, Wittels Wachs never could have imagined she’d wind up cofounding Lemonada, an independent podcast network and soon-to-be publishing imprint with Simon & Schuster. Lemonada is home to 61 shows (and counting), hosted by celebrities…

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Early career Plinky ToepperweinTexans You Should Know is a series highlighting overlooked figures and events from Texas history. Ice water splashed over the sizzling gun barrel as the woman tried to cool her shotgun down. She’d been shooting for more than two hours. On this cool November day in Montgomery, Alabama, she was sweating. Her arms ached from holding the seven-and-a-half-pound Winchester. But the clay pigeons kept coming, whirling out of the trap machine like flying saucers from hell. Crack. Crack. Crack. One by one she pulverized them, the shards joining the layer of remains from the 950-odd pigeons she’d already dispatched.The spectators at the gun club that day in 1916 couldn’t take their eyes off her. Thirty-four-year-old Elizabeth “Plinky” Toepperwein was America’s only female professional trapshooter (one who…

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Simone Biles GOAT status Paris OlympicsThe final image of the 2024 Olympic women’s gymnastics competition captured an iconic moment: Simone Biles and her U.S. teammate Jordan Chiles—both of whom train at Biles’s World Champions Centre in Spring—kneeling on the silver and bronze steps on the medal podium, pointing toward Brazil’s Rebeca Andrade on the gold level with her arms raised and  her smile stretched ear to ear. In the final event, floor exercise, the Brazilian gymnast managed to edge Biles for the title, winning the gold medal that had eluded her throughout these Olympics. This is the first time that Biles has ever lost the floor gold in world-championship or Olympic competition. But judging from the display of admiration on the medal podium, Biles didn’t seem too upset about it.…

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100th Anniversary of James Coney IslandFew foods bring upon a tinge of nostalgia like a hot dog on a summer’s day. While it may be the star of a backyard barbecue, the fully dressed frank’s popularity as a year-round meal has diminished over the past several decades. For long-standing Houston restaurant James Coney Island, this is evidenced by the company’s downsizing from 21 locations at its peak in 2013 to just 6 today. But, with its rich history and reliable menu, the brand is tapping into the allure of being one of the state’s great nostalgic destinations.James Coney Island is among the oldest food establishments in Texas, dating to 1923, when Greek immigrant brothers James and Tom Papadakis opened the first location at Walker and Main Street, in downtown Houston.The…

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Sandhu quadrupletsWhen Mercedes and Jonathan Sandhu found out they were pregnant with quadruplets, joy quickly gave way to anxiety. “We were terrified parents,” Jonathan, who, like his wife, is an engineer, said. “If anyone ever looks up things about higher order multiples, everything is daunting.”The Sandhus had a 1 in 15 million pregnancy. Those are the odds of monochorionic quadruplets, four kids with identical DNA sharing the same placenta. Only about seventy-some-odd cases of monochorionic quads have been recorded in the world. Many quadruplets, sadly, do not survive to birth (one study found a 30 percent neonatal mortality rate). Texas has been home to some of the most recent successful cases —Dallas’s Jenny and Chris Marr welcomed four identical boys on March 15, 2020—but this was…

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CenterpointDid a relationship that began a decade ago between a chief executive of a Fortune 500 company and a recent college graduate lead to a controversial $818 million deal that Houston-area residents could be paying off for years? That’s a question elected officials and energy regulators may grapple with as new revelations arise about the contract that Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick recently described as “potential fraud.”The deal under scrutiny was struck in 2021 between CenterPoint, the electric utility to which state officials granted a monopoly to serve Greater Houston, and Life Cycle Power, a small start-up based in the northwest Houston suburb of Jersey Village. CenterPoint told regulators it needed to lease twenty tractor-trailer–mounted mobile power generators from Life Cycle to help keep the lights…

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