Writer Elizabeth Gonzalez James explores her family’s history as crypto-Jews, Catholic converts who continued to practice Jewish rituals in secret during the Inquisition. 
“I felt I was closing a wound that had opened 500 years earlier, finishing a story that had remained incomplete.”

Narration: Elizabeth Gonzalez James

Producer: Katey Psencik

Illustration: Daniel Bejar

While coping with a loss, writer Emily Gogolak returns to the Panhandle to repay a stranger who helped her while stranded on the side of the road. 



“That memory is a stand-in for everything I miss about Texas—the openness of its plains, the enormity of its sky, the quiet kindness of its strangers. I decide to move back.”

Narration: Emily Gogolak

Producer: Katey Psencik

Illustration: Jessica Fontenot