Texas Monthly writers explore people and places at the intersections of identity, history, progress, and change. 

Being Texan: A Texas Monthly Special airs Friday, October 24 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streaming live on the WXXI app.

Stories include the ghost town of Terlingua, the last surviving ninepin bowling alleys, a ranching industry under threat, the unexpected discovery of a rare type of coyote, a woman who overturned state braiding laws, and a mild-mannered librarian who fought to save the Big Thicket.

Follow a paleontologist on an Arctic adventure to uncover the hidden lives of walrus and the threats they face as climate change shrinks the sea ice.

Nature “Walrus: Life on Thin Ice” Season 2 airs Wednesday, October 22 at 8 p.m. on WXXI-TV.

The walrus is one of the Arctic’s most enigmatic animals. With three-foot long tusks and a droopy mustache, everyone knows what these marine mammals look like, but few ever see them in the wild. For Kirk Johnson, a paleontologist and Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the walrus has been a creature close to his heart for 40 years.

Most of the world’s walrus, about 250,000 of them, live in the frigid seas between Russia and Alaska. Johnson embarks on an Arctic adventure to uncover the hidden lives of these lumbering giants and the threats they face as climate change shrinks the sea ice. He follows the fate of one young orphan, who is rescued and rehabilitated at the Alaska Sealife Center. What kind of future lies ahead for her, and for the walruses in the wild?

The dramatic and controversial rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Frontline “The Rise of RFK” airs Tuesday, October 21 at 10 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.

How the scion of a storied dynasty endured tragedy and scandal, broke with the Democratic Party and his family, stoked conspiracy theories, and is reshaping government and public health.

This film places the historic Flight of Five locks on the Erie Canal in Lockport, New York, squarely in the American narrative as a symbol of a young and developing nation.

America’s Stairway airs Monday, October 20 at 9 p.m. on WXXI-TV and streams live on the WXXI app.

It draws a direct line between the Erie Canal, the Flight of Five, and the birth of American tourism to today’s heritage tourism industry, which is inextricably linked to community-based, grassroots preservation efforts and a community’s sense of place. In doing so, this is a story that resonates beyond time and geographic location.

Photo: South Street Seaport : Painting by William James Bennett, “View of South Street from Maiden Lane”
Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of New York