Overheard With Evan Smith On Klru-tv

Jeff Flake served six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and was then elected to the United States Senate where he served for six years. Working across the aisle, Senator Flake was the lead House Republican in a successful effort to prohibit spending earmarks, and the lead Senate Republican to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba. Flake did not seek re-election in 2018 and became a contributor to CBS News. He will be a Resident Fellow at Harvard University during the fall semester of 2019. 

Major League pitching legend Roger Clemens got his start at Houston’s Spring Woods High School. He then attended San Jacinto Jr. College and went on to have a successful career as a University of Texas Longhorn. Clemens was the winning pitcher in the final game of the 1983 College World Series.  Roger was drafted by the Boston Red Sox and one year later named Rookie of the Year. Clemens is a seven-time Cy Young Award winner and a twelve-time MLB All Star. He earned 354 wins, 4,672 strike-outs and two World Championship rings during his MLB career with the Boston Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays, New York Yankees and Houston Astros. Roger and his wife, Debbie, make their home in Houston. In 1992, the couple established the Roger Clemens Foundation which helps and supports children’s charities from all walks of life.

Terrence McNally is an award-winning playwright and LGBT(Q) activist whose remarkably far-ranging career has spanned six decades. He has won four Tony Awards for his plays Love! Valour! Compassion! and Master Class and his musical books for Kiss of the Spider Woman and Ragtime. He is the writer of the book for the musical Anastasia. He was recognized with a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre at the 2019 Tony Awards and wass the 2019 recipient of the Broadway League’s Distinguished Lifetime Service Award. 

Presiding Bishop Curry graduated with high honors from Hobart College in Geneva, NY, and received a Master of Divinity degree from Yale University Divinity School. Throughout his ministry, he has been active in issues of social justice, reconciliation, speaking out on immigration policy and marriage equality. Presiding Bishop Curry maintains a national preaching and teaching ministry, having been featured on The Protestant Hour and as a frequent speaker at churches, cathedrals, and conferences around the country and internationally. He delivered a widely praised sermon at the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. In 2018, Religion News Association named Presiding Bishop Curry religion newsmaker of the year.

Singer-songwriter and Grammy winner Ani DiFranco has been known as the “Little Folksinger” but her music has embraced punk, funk, hip hop, jazz, soul, electronica, and even more distant sounds. Rejecting the major label system, she became one of the first artists to create her own record label, Righteous Babe Records, in 1990. Her collaborators have included everyone from Utah Phillips to legendary R&B saxophonist Maceo Parker to Prince. She has shared stages with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Greg Brown, Billy Bragg, Michael Franti, Chuck D., and many more. Her most recent album Binary was released in June 2017 and her memoir No Walls and the Recurring Dream was released on May 7, 2019 by Viking Books.

Anna Palmer is a senior Washington correspondent for Politico. She covers Congress, politics and the business of Washington. Jake Sherman is a senior writer for Politico. He covers the House Republican majority. Together, Palmer and Sherman co-authored The Hill to Die On, an insider’s look at divided American politics and the Capitol Hill players battling for power.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has served as the junior U.S. senator from New York since 2009. A magna cum laude graduate of Dartmouth College in 1988, Gillibrand went on to receive her law degree from the UCLA School of Law in 1991 and served as a law clerk on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. After working as an attorney in New York City for more than a decade, Senator Gillibrand served as Special Counsel to United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Andrew Cuomo during the Clinton Administration. She then worked as an attorney in Upstate New York before serving as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2009.  

Ed Zwick is an award-winning film and television director and producer. He co-created the television series thirtysomething and produced My So-Called Life, Once and Again, and Nashville. Zwick directed the Academy Award-winning films Glory and Legends of the Fall. Zwick received an Academy Award as a producer of Shakespeare in Love. His 2019 film, Trial by Fire, starring Laura Dern, is the true-life Texas story of a mother of two who fights for the freedom of a death row inmate. 

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and a leading voice for the human rights of immigrants. He is the founder of Define American, the nation’s leading non-profit media and culture organization that fights injustice and anti-immigrant hate through the power of storytelling. His memoir, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, was published by HarperCollins in fall 2018.

Susan Page is the Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today, where she writes about politics and the White House. Susan has covered six White House administrations and ten presidential elections. She has interviewed the past nine presidents from Richard Nixon through Donald Trump—and reported from six continents and dozens of foreign countries. She has appeared as an analyst on PBS NewsHour, CBS’ Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos, CNN’s State of the Union, CBS This Morning, and other TV and radio programs. Page’s latest book, The Matriarch, is a vivid, immersive biography of former First Lady Barbara Bush, one of the most storied women in American political history.

Douglas Brinkley is a highly regarded and best-selling author, CNN Presidential Historian, the Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and Professor of History at Rice University, and a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. His most recent book, “American Moonshot,” is a chronicle of the turbulent 1960s and JFK’s audacious plan to put a man on the moon.

Roger McNamee has been a Silicon Valley investor for 35 years. He co-founded successful funds in venture, crossover and private equity. His most recent fund, Elevation, included U2’s Bono as a co-founder. He holds a B.A. from Yale University and an M.B.A. from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. Roger plays bass and guitar in the bands Moonalice and Doobie Decibel System. He is the author of Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, as well as The New Normal and The Moonalice Legend: Posters and Words, Volumes 1-9. He has served as a technical advisor for seasons two through five of HBO’s Silicon Valley series, and was also responsible for raising the money that created the Wikimedia Foundation.

Timothy Shriver is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Special Olympics International, the organization founded by his mother, Eunice Shriver. He serves with over 5.6 million Special Olympics athletes in 172 countries, all working to promote health, education, and a more unified world through the joy of sports. Before joining Special Olympics in 1996, Shriver was and remains a leading educator focusing on the social and emotional factors in learning. He co-founded and currently chairs the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL), the leading school reform organization in the field of social and emotional learning. He is Co-Chair of the National Commission on Social, Emotional, and Academic Development, President of the Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Foundation, member of the Board of Directors for the WPP Group, LLC, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a co-founder of Lovin’ Scoopful Ice Cream Company.

Alejandro Escovedo is a Mexican-American rock musician with Texas roots. His decades-long career includes performing in the punk rock group The Nuns, and alternative country bands Rank and File and The True Believers. He has collaborated with Bruce Springsteen, John Cale, Los Lobos, Peter Buck & Scott McCaughey, Los Texmaniacs, and Chuck Prophet. No Depression magazine declared him the Artist of the Decade. His latest album, The Crossing, tells the tale of two boys, one from Mexico, one from Italy, who meet in Texas to chase their American rock and roll dreams.

Robert Rodriguez has been a celebrated and innovative filmmaker for more than 25 years. The San Antonio native has directed films such as El Mariachi, From Dusk ‘Til Dawn, the Spy Kids and Sin City franchises, and the upcoming Alita: Battle Angel, a partnership with producer James Cameron. In 2013, Rodriguez ventured into television and launched his own cable TV channel, El Rey. He co-founded Troublemaker Studios, an Austin-based film production company, and leads the band Chingon with members of Del Castillo.

Bob Mould is an American indie rock musician, part of the influential 1980s punk band Hüsker Dü and the 1990s band Sugar. Hüsker Dü was one of the first underground bands to sign with a major record label and their eight albums inspired a generation of musicians. Mould's autobiography, See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody, chronicles his story from a small town in New York to his later successes. His 2019 album is titled Sunshine Rock.

Tommy Orange is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma and is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow and 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. His first novel "There There" is being hailed by The New York Times as “an energetic revelation of a corner of American life.” Orange was born and raised in Oakland, California, and currently lives in Angels Camp, California.

Brooklyn Decker broke into the public consciousness as a model gracing the pages of Vogue, Elle, GQ, Glamour, Esquire, and Cosmopolitan. But she cemented her place in pop culture history by appearing on the cover of the popular Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Decker successfully made the transition from being one of the biggest names in modeling to become a Hollywood actress. She currently appears in the popular Netflix comedy “Grace and Frankie” with Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston. Decker is married to tennis great Andy Roddick and together they have two children.

Michael Beschloss is a historian and author of ten books on presidential history including The New York Times bestsellers Presidential Courage and The Conquerors, as well as two volumes on Lyndon Johnson’s White House tapes. His latest book Presidents of War chronicles the difficult decisions made by presidents from James Madison during the War of 1812 to present. Beschloss was also editor of the bestseller Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy. He is the NBC News Presidential Historian, a PBS NewsHour contributor and has received an Emmy and six honorary degrees. Beschloss lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and two sons.