The Drag: Stories

This season features stories from the May 2023 Travel Podcasting class at the University of Texas at Austin. This episode is all about the great outdoors. You'll hear Kevin Baskar and Miles Oshan take us on a journey along Barton Creek Greenbelt. Mackenzie Matwick and Dacia Garcia spend a day along Barton Springs Road – yes, there are a lot of things named "Barton" in this city. Christy Crawford a...

Cheerleaders are a staple of American culture. Any high school slice-of-life movie will tell you that the girls in the cheer squad are on top of the suburban ruling class. When you get pro, the stakes, glamor, fame and scandal get even higher. The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders are world-class performers who have solidified themselves as the pinnacle of cheer excellence. Their iconic uniform is symbo...

In this episode, Celia Sampaio interviews Dress Warm, a young band taking the Austin music scene by storm. They discuss their plans to spread their indie pop sound and how that sound came together. Listen along to hear their charming laughs, quips, and jokes, and maybe even become the newest fan of Dress Warm.

Everybody loves bread. Texans are no different. Since humans first started cultivating wheat in the Fertile crescent 10,000 years ago, bread developed from an agricultural anomaly to a mainstay of the European diet to the sort of bread at your local grocery store. Today, bread is the unseen lifeblood of our communities, and our recipes transcend this evolution, preserving history in their every bi...

In this episode, Avery Hough investigates the most notorious legend of Dallas: the lady of White Rock Lake. Join her as she dives deep into the lake's history and hauntings and goes ghost-hunting herself with paranormal investigators. 

In this special bonus episode, we're sharing an episode of Data Dives! Data Dives is part of the Media Innovation Group under The Dallas Morning News Journalism Innovation Endowment. This episode is hosted by Carolyn Parmer and produced and edited by Aislyn Gaddis, two journalism students here at UT Austin. For this episode, they dove into the numbers behind a topic near and dear to my heart: Tayl...

The city of Austin is known for its extensive urban tree canopy, and that canopy continues to grow thanks to the work of the nonprofit TreeFolks. In this episode, Keaton Peters talks to TreeFolks – and some of the folks they help out – about their work. Planting trees is also part of the City of Austin's Climate Equity Plan, which relies on purchasing carbon credits, but carbon credits are a contr...

When influencer Jenna Palek moved to Austin, Texas, she was stuck in a boring routine. To get out of her funk, she decided to start Fun on Weekdays, a movement that grew from a podcast to a Facebook group to a full-scale event planning organization. She hosted an event in Austin, and one year later, Palek has hired a full time staff and expanded the events to other cities. Sophia Navarro talks to...

Between July 2021 and June 2022, Texas banned 801 books in 22 school districts, according to a report from PEN America, a nonprofit fighting to protect free expression. This neverending battle against books has affected authors, librarians, teachers, and students. One of those books affected by the state's bans is the 2015 novel "Out of Darkness" by Ashley Hope Pérez. Since 2021, Pérez has lost op...

In this episode, Marissa Greene explores the rich history and delicious flavors of kolache and klobasniky, staples in Texas cuisine, and she'll help you sift through the history of how Czech immigrants came to settle in Texas and brought their sweet and savory culinary traditions with them. Throughout the episode, you'll also hear stories from family-owned or historic bakeries in Czech hotspots su...

Most people only head to Brownsville, Texas for a beach day or...to visit the SpaceX launch site. But, have you ever stopped to think about how SpaceX is really affecting the small town, or what else it has to offer? Rio Grande Valley native Dacia Garcia reminisces about her hometown cutlture and talks to locals about the new developments. 

At a church in South Austin, a vending machine stocks something much more vital than snacks: Narcan, a medication that can reverse an opioid overdose. This is the story of the movement that brought the first Narcan machine to Austin and how the city is tackling the national opioid epidemic, told by its leading harm reduction strategists.

In 1991, Austin, Texas was named the "Live Music Capital of the World". Since then, legends like Willie Nelson and Stevie Ray Vaughan helped the city grow into a hotspot for Texas art and culture. But today, many of Austin's iconic music venues have gone out of business, and festivals like Austin City Limits threaten to commercialize a once authentic scene. In this episode by Madi Esmailbeigi, we...

 For centuries, Indigenous communities have turned to plant medicine for spiritual and physical healing. But what happens when the earth is out of sync? Flowers don't bloom when they're supposed to, plants go extinct and temperatures become deadly. In this episode from Elisabeth Jimenez, listen to Marika Alvarado, a Lipan Apache Medicine Woman, talk about the challenges posed by climate change, as...

Need to learn an easy sport to play on he weekends? Pickleball might just be the sport for you. Among young Austinites, this oddly-named ballgame has gained incredible popularity for it's simplistic rules and low-impact gameplay. Miranda Cazares explores the infatuation behind Pickleball and how its become the country's fastest-growing sport.

In 2024, UT's Texas Longhorn football team will make an historic entrance into the SEC conference. For this epsisode, Alexandra Whitlock goes down memory lane to learn where the team came from and where it's going.

In this episode, Carter Yates tells the story of a beloved University of Texas student hangout.   Since opening in 1991, the Cain and Abel's bar became synonymous with the West Campus student neighborhood nestled a block away from the University of Texas. Generations of UT upperclassmen flooded through the doors. Most drank their fair share of beers while unwinding with their closest friends, a ha...

 If you ever need your day brightened exponentially, all you have to do is visit the crosswalk at Whitis Ave and 24th St. Here, a UT Austin crossing guard, Mike Shaw, shares his words of wisedom, joy, and fistbumps with students passing by each day. Maren Bennett sat down with Shaw to learn more about one of the most beloved university employees.

Request Pending is now The Drag: Stories.  In this podcast, you'll hear episodes produced by students at the University of Texas at Austin. But it's a little different than what you might be used to hearing from The Drag. Each episode will bring you a different story, from a different student. Most of these stories will come from students in a podcast production class at UT Austin, which means you...

Drag artists have displayed their art through lip sync performances and dance numbers in night clubs and bars for decades. Now their usual venues have closed due to the pandemic, and drag artists are finding other ways to express their creativity and maintain their livelihood.

One of the hottest meme Facebook groups right now is about...trains. Yes, trains. New Urbanist Memes for Transit Oriented Teens has over 200,000 members, and posts range from comics to pictures of high-speed trains to discourse over the importance of bike lanes. Issues around transit and urban spaces hardly make it to the national debate topic list, but on the internet, they're center stage. Why d...

They say sex work is the oldest profession, and over generations, it has evolved and taken on new forms. Its latest iteration: Onlyfans. On Onlyfans, creators sell and users pay for access to original, independently made pornographic content. Sex workers are making big money from behind a computer or phone screen and often find a sense of empowerment in the process.