The Texas Miracle #14: Make Pokemon Great Again

This week on the Texas Miracle podcast, the Texas Observer’s weekly compendium of everything you need to know, but maybe wish you didn’t, about the Lone Star state, we’ve got Pokemon, we’ve got politics and we’ve got the president of the United States — ish.

We don’t actually have Barack Obama on the show, but we do have the Texas country artist who appeared on last week’s televised presidential town hall about race and policing. Coffey Anderson is this week’s featured Texan for our Ask A Texan segment, and you might recognize him from a viral video he produced this month called “What to do when you get pulled over.”

We’ll talk with Coffey about that video — and about some of the negative responses he’s gotten — as well as hear his take on what really happened between Obama and Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick on the parts of that presidential town hall you didn’t get to see.

In our second-ever installment of our new game show, Stump-A-Ferner, quizmaster and Observer staffer Patrick Michels will see whether a native Dallasite can beat the Observer’s own brilliant environmental reporter, Naveena Sadasivam, at Texas trivia.

As always, we’ll go out to the Texas tiki shed for this week’s journalist roundtable, wherein Poke-expert and soon-to-be Texas Tribune social media man Bobby Blanchard, Houston Chronicle reporter Bobby Cervantes and Observer freelancer John Wright join host Andrea Grimes, talking Ted Cruz’s sassy non-endorsement of Donald Trump at this year’s Republican National Convention, Greg Abbott’s push to pass a hate crimes law protecting police, and the latest on transgender potty policing by Texas lawmakers

And finally, in our Strangest State segment, Patrick will be back to fill us in on the weirdest goings-on from far-flung Texas, where small-town newspapers are going poke-crazy for Pokemon Go stories.

[Editor’s note: There is adult language in this podcast! You can find the Texas Miracle on iTunes and Stitcher. Follow us at @TheTexasMiracle and here on the website for news and updates. If you want to submit an Ask A Texan question, e-mail us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at 512-981-5936!]

To support journalism like this, donate to the Texas Observer.