Overheard with Evan Smith

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When we are in Austin, one of the things that we like to do is go to tapings of Overheard with Evan Smith -- it's a long running PBS show with a studio audience.  The tapings are done in Studio 6A of PBS station KLRU on the campus of UTX. This was the studio where Austin City Limits was taped for many years. These days ACL has a much bigger stage in the Moody Theatre downtown. I understand that this show will be moving to another site within the year.

We discovered these tapings a few years ago at the suggestion of someone we met at a music event. One of those suggestions well worth following: "Oh, you might find this interesting while visiting". We certainly have. Evan Smith interviews all sorts of interesting people.

You can see the show on various PBS stations. We subscribe to a podcast but it's not quite the same. We love going to live tapings (something about seeing stuff live). We never miss any of them while we are there. Entry is free and it's usually some interesting person who might be flogging a book or has interesting stories to tell. That was the case for the shows we saw this time.

We saw Brill Bradley interviewed on Friday February 7. He's a former senator, he was a presidential candidate (vs Al Gore) and has lots of opinions on the current political situation. He's also a very tall man who played basket ball at college, in the NBA and the Olympics. He went to Princeton and was a Rhodes scholar. His credentials are impeccable. And he had a lot to say about Donald Trump. He was also, by times, very funny. Like before the taping when he a had a bit of coughing fit and collapsed on the table pretending to have keeled over. We learned a lot and enjoyed the show. 

Here's a link to the Bill Bradley show.

We saw Rick Wilson interviewed on Monday February 10. Rick Wilson is a savy republican operative/media consultant who has done a lot to get some pretty nasty folks into office. However, he is not a fan of the current president and believes the GOP is all the worse for it. His first book was "Everything Trump Touches Dies" (2018). His current book, "Running Against The Devil: A Plot to Save America from Donald Trump and Democrats from Themselves", is a strategy plan for beating Donald Trump in 2020. There will be some hard choices made. He touched a bit on the "Lincoln Project" -- it's a project by those on the political right (including folks like George Conway) to defeat Trump. It was any interesting talk and a bit of an eye-opener. One of the funnier lines: he calls Florida the "Gunshine State" as they're crazy about gun rights. 

Here's a link to the Rick Wilson show.

The last show we went to this time was an interview with the Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig who together investigated and wrote the book "A Very Stable Genius. Donald J Trump's Testing of America".  While most shows aren't terribly well attended this one was pretty much a full house. The authors both seemed like really nice people as well as both being Pulitizer Prize winners (I think the she has won 3 Pulitzers).  We bought the book, had them sign it, and Kate is reading it first. It is a fascinating but frightenting bit of history -- what the hell is going on in the Whitehouse? While it reminds you of all the horrible things Trump did, it also provides all the context around it (including what some of the people were thinking at the time). 

Here's a link to the Leonning & Rucker show.

If you get a chance to attend one of Evan Smith's interviews you will not be disappointed.