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For years now, Austinites have been able to hail a driverless Waymo — but they’ve only been available to call for it through one specific rideshare company. That’ll soon be changing. We’ll have the details.
Recent polling is shedding more light on just how tight the margins will be in this fall’s race for the Texas seat in the U.S. Senate. Democratic nominee James Talarico is working to shore up support from Black Texans. So how does he compare with past nominees?
Austin’s “Master Pancake” has roasted and mocked the cinema for nearly two decades. How did they get their start? We tell you about their odyssey.
And more summer reading recommendations as we enter August.
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The full transcript of this episode of Austin Signal is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:08] Austinites have for years now been able to hail a driverless Waymo, but they’ve only been able to call for a spin through one specific ride share company. That will be changing soon enough. We’re going to have the details. And recent polling is shedding more light on just how tight the margins will be in this fall’s race for the Texas seat in the US Senate. Democratic nominee James Tallarico is working to shore up support from black Texans. So how does he compare with past nominees? We’ve got more about these stories. That’s coming up on today’s show.
KUT Announcer: Laurie Gallardo [00:00:37] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:42] Austin’s master pancake is roasted and mocked the cinema for nearly two decades now. So how do they get their start? We’re gonna tell you about their odyssey and we’ve got more summer reading recommendations as we start out August That is coming up next right here on Austin signal Howdy out there, thank you for tuning in. I’m your host, Jerry Kekano. This is Austin Signal. It is the first Monday of August, the third, thank for being with us today. Autonomous vehicles are all over the roads here in the Austin area. Waymo’s, which you’ve probably seen the most of in and around town, first rolled onto these streets experimentally about a decade ago, believe it or not. And since just about two years ago, the only way you could ride in one of these Waymos was by ordering it through the Uber app. Well, now Waymo and Uber are going their separate ways. And for more about this, we are talking with Texas Standard’s Shelly Brisbane, our go-to correspondent on autonomous vehicle chatter. Hi, Shelly, how you doing?
Shelly Brisbin [00:01:51] Hey Jerry, I’m all about the robot cars.
Jerry Quijano [00:01:54] So tell us, what was originally in this contract between Uber and Waymo? How did it work?
Shelly Brisbin [00:01:59] So Waymo, which operates robo-taxis or autonomous vehicles in a number of other cities, made a deal with Uber so that in Austin and Atlanta, you would use the Uber app to summon a Waymo and Uber would manage things like fleet operations and repairs of the cars and the billing, but Waymo would deal with all the navigation on autonomous vehicles stuff that they’re so expert at.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:21] Okay, so what’s the reason for this split here? Was it amicable, or is this kind of a rocky split?
Shelly Brisbin [00:02:28] Well, and Uber and Waymo are trying to sort of keep it all aboveboard and nice, but basically Uber had some concerns about Waymo and they weren’t awfully specific about that. There had been rumblings previously when there had been issues with the car’s behavior in school zones and in emergency responder situations. And Uber wasn’t really thrilled about that, but it’s Waymo that actually severed the agreement. Waymo. Was due to renegotiate that contract to May of 2028, but they just said, you know what, we’ve been operating autonomous vehicles, taxis in other cities, so instead of going through Uber in Austin and Atlanta, we’re just gonna do it ourselves.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:06] You mentioned those other issues in school zones and in emergency responder issues. We talked with you about those. You can find those previous episodes of Austin Signal at kut.org. So tell us a little bit, what does this mean for rideshare users who like the idea of driverless cars? How are things going to change for them?
Shelly Brisbin [00:03:23] Well, for the first few months, and this won’t happen until January 28th, by the way, so we’ve got another year of riding in Uber branded or Uber app vehicles.
Jerry Quijano [00:03:31] And that’s the only way for the night until 12 o’clock, okay.
Shelly Brisbin [00:03:33] Exactly. And in 2028, what happens is that both Waymo and Uber will operate cars in Austin. And so you can go to the Waymo app or the Uber app between January 28 and May of 2028. And after that, it’ll all be Waymo. And again, Waymo runs their own services in San Francisco and Dallas and Houston and San Antonio. So they’ve done this for a while, but in Austin, it will be the first time that you’ll have to go through Waymo rather than So what we don’t know yet is what that means for pricing or service areas, Waymo hasn’t really talked about it. They’ve just said, hey, as of May, 2028, it’s gonna be Waymo instead of Uber providing the service.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:10] Does that mean that rideshare users here might see more autonomous vehicle options available to them in the time between?
Shelly Brisbin [00:04:17] That’s hard to say. I think in general, that’s more likely because there are other companies out there. Amazon’s Zuchs is out there, Tesla is sort of kind of out there… There’s several companies that are providing autonomous rides in Austin to more or less degree. And I think just in the next year, we’re going to see more of that regardless of this arrangement. And it’s unclear whether Uber, who has a lot of partnerships with other companies that do autonomous technology, is going to find a way to provide that in or whether they’re going to go back to only providing rides. Via human drivers.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:49] All right, well, whenever it changes, and it inevitably will change, we will be talking with you. That is Shelley Brisbane from the Texas Standard. Shelley, thank you for your time.
Shelly Brisbin [00:04:57] Thanks for having me.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:04] Well, ever since Austin-based state rep James Tallarico won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, there have been questions about whether he can win over black Democrats by the fall. In the primary, his opponent, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, received overwhelming support from the state’s black voters. But as the Texas newsroom’s Blaise Ganey reports, polling suggests Tallaricco is doing better with black voters than public perception may suggest.
Blaise Gainey [00:05:30] At the Texas Democrats’ convention in Corpus Christi, there was standing room only for James Tallarico’s speech to the party’s black caucus. While he was introduced this way, the candidate still received a warm welcome. We’re going to bring in the next senator from the state of Texas, Mr. James Taurico. Those cheers clash with a narrative that’s followed the Democratic nominee for months, that he could struggle to win over black voters. But polling from the Texas Politics Project shows Tallarico’s actually in a stronger position with black voters than previous Democratic U.S. Senate nominees. So why doesn’t the conventional wisdom line up with the numbers? Joshua Blank is the poll’s author.
Joshua Blank [00:06:15] The main advantage that the Talarico has in this race with black voters and with democratic voters in general is that he’s just significantly more well known at this point in the race than were either O’Rourke in 2018, MJ Hager in 2020, or Colin Allred in 2024.
Blaise Gainey [00:06:31] Blank says Democratic candidates in Texas often spend much of the campaign simply introducing themselves to voters, but Taylorico was already relatively well-known, though not as high-profile as his primary opponent, Jasmine Crockett. But support in a poll does not equal enthusiasm, something I heard from Margaret and Monica Thompson after Taylorico’s speech to the Black Caucus.
Margaret Thompson [00:06:55] When history has turned the page, we have to go with the next page. So it was very hard, but I did turn the page. And so in order to win, we had to go with whoever the people’s choice has chosen.
Monica Thompsons [00:07:09] I’ll probably support him because we do want him to be given vaccine, but I don’t like the way he got it. I just don’t think Jasmine Crockett got a fair chance because of her skin color.
Blaise Gainey [00:07:20] Voters like them could become especially important to the U.S. Senate race. Michael Adams is a political scientist at Texas Southern University.
Michael Adams [00:07:28] If we have an election that’s a statistical dead heat, those voters who may opt to stay at home would be very important. And Jasmine Crockett was able to get them off of their sofas and out to the polls.
Blaise Gainey [00:07:40] It’s a challenge Talarico acknowledged in Corpus Christi. There is no way to win this race without black Texans. Joshua Blank says that’s because the conversation boils down to maintaining enthusiasm within the Democratic coalition, something he says naturally grows.
Joshua Blank [00:07:57] In all of that polling that we’ve looked at over many election cycles, the share of black voters who support the Democratic candidate tends to go up the closer we get to election day.
Blaise Gainey [00:08:06] The dynamic exists in both parties, in general, and even on the Republican side of Texas U.S. Senate race, where nominee Ken Paxton faced his own share of criticism from voters who supported incumbent John Cornyn. But Gary Carey, president of the Collin County Conservative Republicans, says most Cornyns supporters are now on board. A lot of them were very disappointed. I think a lot of are quickly coming around to recognizing that now Ken Paxton is a clear and important choice. So while Republican and Democratic voters may not always be enthusiastic about their party’s nominee at first, by election day, many ultimately rally behind the candidate, or at the very least, hold their nos in vote form. I’m Blaise Ganey in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:53] All right, we got a few quick headlines for your Monday. The Austin City Council continues discussions tomorrow on the next city budget. The proposed budget for the next fiscal year calls for cuts to social services and increasing the Austin police budget by nearly $25 million. KUT City Hall reporter, Luz Moreno Lozano has been doing lots of reporting on that. Did a lot of reporting last week and has been following that story a lot. You can find more of her reporting at KUT.org. And former state senator Don Huffines was sworn in as acting state comptroller over the weekend. He was appointed by Governor Abbott early last month and will face Democrat Sarah Eckhart in the November midterm elections. We have plenty more news for you on the KUT app and online over at KUT.org and we have more Austin Signal coming your way after this break. Thank you for making community-powered public radio part of your day. This is KUT News.
Ben Philpott [00:10:02] You’re listening to Austin Signal. Hi, I’m Ben Philpott. I’m the managing editor for the KUT Newsroom. We’ve got a month left for the Field Guide to Austin Summer Reading Bingo Challenge. It’s not too late to join and cross out a few books on your bingo card, or maybe you’re almost done. But either way, here are two book recommendations to help you out. The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer. Looking for something to read about eggs and murder? Well, this is the perfect book for you. The novel spans decades and submerges you into the world of wild bird egg collecting in Great Britain. A world where the rich and the greedy use poor children to reach dangerous ocean side cliffs to find uniquely colored eggs to enhance their reputations as the world’s top collectors. And a world where even decades later, people are willing to steal and kill just to say they possess the impossible thing. The next book on my list is The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. The plot is simple. A group of friends spend their Thursdays looking over police cold cases as they pass the time in a retirement community. But then, an actual murder happens. And the four, a nurse, a psychiatrist, a union leader, and an international spy, must solve the crime. This book is funny while at the same time very caring about how it portrays these characters in their 70s and 80s. Now there are five books in the series, but you should be able to get through all five this summer if you really put your mind to it. And yes, Netflix recently released a movie version of the first book, but I gotta tell you, they botched the ending so badly that I would suggest you skip it. To get your own bingo card and to find out more about the KUT Field Guide to Austin Summer Reading Bingo Challenge, go to KUT.org or click on the link in today’s podcast show notes. I’m Ben Philpott and this is Austin Signal.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:12] The Odyssey has been at the top of the box office over the last couple of weeks, at least until Spider-Man had his say. Anyway, this epic tale of adventure and temptation recounts the story of a 19-year journey home. And it might someday be the subject of a brutal roast at the hands of Austin’s Master Pancake Theater. We got a question about Master Pancakes for our ATXplained project. KUT’s Matt Largie set out on his own odyssey to find that answer.
Matt Largey [00:12:40] In the not too distant future, somewhere in time and space, a man was launched into the sky on a ship called the Satellite of Love. Condemned to wander the cosmos, his captors forced him to watch movies, the worst they could find. He had to sit and watch them all while they monitored his mind. This is where the answer to our question begins.
Jesse Davis [00:13:03] My question, I believe, was what was the origin of MasterPancake and how have they been able to sustain it for so long?
Matt Largey [00:13:12] That’s Jesse Davis. And if you don’t know what Master Pancake is, it’s a thing they do at Alamo Drafthouse where everyone watches a movie or a TV show or something and a handful of comedians crack jokes about it along the way. They’ve done movies like Zodiac.
John Erler [00:13:26] Putting it together, searching for the clues, I think I found the killer, his name is Dead
Matt Largey [00:13:34] Terminator 2
Speaker 13 [00:13:35] My pain receptors are still on, this hurts very much But it’s going to hurt most of all when my scrotum hits the fire! A view to a kill
MP Announcer [00:13:44] It’s the chopper carrying Donald Trump’s bronzer. It’s been him
Matt Largey [00:13:50] Jessie’s been going to Master Pancake shows for years now. So she asked us about its origins and how it’s still going. The story begins years ago with the legend I told you at the beginning. The man condemned to wander the cosmos, forced to watch bad movies. It was a TV show where the characters would watch movies and make jokes. It’s the Catholic Teen Center. Are we going to hustle these men big?
Jerm Pollet [00:14:18] Change for 50, please.
Matt Largey [00:14:19] The color of Danny. Dude, his head just turned into a big sucker.
Jerm Pollet [00:14:24] What are you trying to do, buy the place? Just break the 50 up. That was a lot of money back in those days. He probably could have bought the place.
Matt Largey [00:14:30] Mystery Science Theater 3000 started on TV in 1988 on a local station in Minneapolis. It eventually ended up on Comedy Central and later the SyFy channel. It was kind of a cult show with a really enthusiastic fan base. They made ten seasons of it. And then, in 1999, Mystery Science Theater went off the air. This is John Erler. We’ll get to who he is in a second. And here in Austin, Mystery Science Theater had fans. And it was around this time that a guy named Tim League started a little movie theater downtown called the Alamo Drafthouse.
John Erler [00:15:04] People started approaching Tim Lee, asking him to show episodes of the show at the Elmore Drafthouse.
Matt Largey [00:15:11] But League was like, nah, let’s do our own version, and we’ll do it live. So he called up a guy named Jerm Pollitt. He was in some local bands and did comedy. Tim asked Jerm to put together a team to do their own riffs on crappy movies. So Jerm called John Ehrler, who we heard from. He’d been working on his master’s degree in classics at UT. And he had a show on the student radio station. He was even a backup host on KUT. And he did some stand-up. Durham also called a guy named Owen Edgerton. Owen was kind of a legend on the improv comedy circuit in Austin. So now they had a team. The three of them got together, started planning their first show, but they needed a name. Something that would get people in the door. A name that would give an audience a sense of what they were walking into. Something to bring in the fans of the defunct Mystery Science Theater 3000 TV show. And that name was not Master Pancake. The name of that show was Mr.
John Erler [00:16:10] Sinus Theater 3000. Mr. Sinus Theater 3000. It’s hysterical how ridiculously much of a ripoff that is.
Matt Largey [00:16:21] So they had a name, but what movie would they riff? They wanted something kind of similar to Mystery Science Theater 3000, something old and weird, but not quite the same. Here’s Owen.
Owen Edgerton [00:16:31] We’re kind of going with the idea that we’re going to do, at the beginning, ripping movies different than the original television show. We’re going make our own sort of a, like we’re gonna go for R-rated film.
Matt Largey [00:16:41] Something a little spicier than vintage sci-fi movies. So, on September 24th, in the year 2000, the guys hit the stage for the first time. I’m moonin’ over you, my little moondog.
John Erler [00:16:55] Doris Wishman’s Nude on the Moon was our first movie that we ever did.
Matt Largey [00:17:00] This movie is exactly what it sounds like. Two guys build a rocket to go to the moon where they discover a race of telepathic nudists Although they’re really only topless in the movie and they fall in love. As kind of a joke The guys advertised free admission for anyone who showed up nude and as it turned out a lot of people were into that
Owen Edgerton [00:17:18] I remember one fella handed me, a naked man, handed me his business card, which is a Hill Country News Society, and you have to wonder, like, where were you keeping this?
Matt Largey [00:17:28] The show took off almost immediately. People were lining up around the block to get into Mr. Sinus Theater 3000.
Owen Edgerton [00:17:35] So the show was more of a hit than any one of us expected. What was going to be a once-a-month thing quickly became four times as popular as the show.
Matt Largey [00:17:43] So they goofed down other movies. The gruesome Twosome, Double Agent 73, Invasion of the Bee Girls. They did schlocky sexploitation movies from the 60s and 70s. And everyone was having a great time, having a good laugh at some bad movies, but they thought there was more to do.
John Erler [00:17:59] At a certain point, we were like, what if we did kind of a different style of movie? What if we don’t have to follow the MST 3K formula? So they did newer movies, bigger budget.
Matt Largey [00:18:09] Movies. Xanadu. Top Gun. Footloose.
Owen Edgerton [00:18:11] We did, uh, Dirty Dancing, Karate Kid, Red Dawn…
Matt Largey [00:18:16] And still the people came, more and more of them. The legend of Mr. Sinus Theater 3000 grew, just like the man who was launched into space. And then, the spaceman came co-
John Erler [00:18:28] Somehow the people at Mystery Science Theater got wind of what we were doing and they hit us with a cease and desist in 2004 and said, You can’t call yourselves Mr. Sinus Theater 3000. And they were right. I mean, they had a really good point.
Matt Largey [00:18:45] So they had to change the name. No, still not to Master Pancake.
John Erler [00:18:49] What we ended up with was a shortened version of Mr. Sinus Theater 2000, which was just The Sinus Show.
Matt Largey [00:18:58] John, Jerm, and Owen continued on their voyage. The whole idea was to make something that didn’t feel like going to a movie, but more like hanging out with your friends. Here’s Jerm in an old video shot by Austin PBS.
Jerm Pollet [00:19:11] There’s an intimacy to the show. It’s nice. I think that people want more intimacy and participation when they go out. And that it’s fun to be in a movie theater and be able to yell out loud or to get to know the person next to you or just to laugh together.
Matt Largey [00:19:31] Then, in 2007, after seven years of doing the show together, their own satellite of love came crashing down to Earth. Yeah, I’d say it was a bad breakup. Call it creative differences, call it whatever. No one wanted to tell me exactly what it was about.
Owen Edgerton [00:19:46] Three guys doing a shit, it’s like a band. There’s a lot of time spent together. There’s lot of difficult things that happen.
Matt Largey [00:19:52] So the three went their separate ways. The Sinus show had come to an end. Owen remained friends with John and Jerm, separately. Jerm didn’t want to talk to me for this story. John wasn’t done, though.
John Erler [00:20:05] So yeah, in 2007, I sort of regrouped, started a new, but you know, very similar show.
Matt Largey [00:20:13] John needed a name for this new show, and for that he went back to the list that the guys had made when they were naming the Sinus show.
John Erler [00:20:20] And one of the names that we came up with was Master Pancake.
MP Announcer [00:20:24] Ladies and gentlemen, you’ve seen them on the cover of such magazines as Sky Mall, Cat Fancy, Limousine Digest, and Black Men’s Health. Now welcome them to the stage of the Alamo Draft House for instance, your masterpiece!
Matt Largey [00:20:42] Finally, we have Master Pancake, the show that still exists today. But why Master Pan cake? What the hell does that mean? It’s very dumb, but people love pancakes. It’s completely random. It means nothing. Now, 18 years later, there’s a rotating cast of comedians, hundreds of movies and TV shows rift upon everything from Back to the Future to Zardoz. And in a lot of ways, Master Pancakes is bigger than ever. During the pandemic, they started doing shows online. And, you know, it works online, but I think it works even better in person. Because it’s not about bonding over movies that you hate. I mean, you don’t hate these movies.
Owen Edgerton [00:21:23] No, we don’t hate the movies, in fact, actually, if it was a movie we actually really didn’t like, like to its core, that becomes less fun.
Matt Largey [00:21:34] I don’t think Master Pancake would last this long if it was about being cruel, if the jokes all came at the expense of the movies.
Owen Edgerton [00:21:43] People having a blast together. Like a bad movie suddenly becomes good. And in the end, we’re all sitting around the dinner table laughing together like a family.
Matt Largey [00:21:51] A bunch of strangers, watching a movie, cracking jokes, a kind of kinship with everyone in the room, intimacy. It’s different than just going to the movies.
Owen Edgerton [00:22:01] It is an Austin thing where like weird, silly, maybe pointless art becomes a place of community.
Matt Largey [00:22:11] I’m Matt Largi in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:22:15] That story was originally performed at an A.T. Explained live show. You can watch that version of the story, including live commentary from Master Pancake’s John Erler at KUT.org. And our next A. T. Explain live is coming up this October. Tickets are now on sale. Get yours at TexasPerformingArts.org That is it for us today here on Austin Signal. There’s more from us at Kut.org slash Signal. Rene Chavez is our technical director, Alexandra Hart is our producer, and Kristin Cabrera is our managing producer. I’m your host, Jerry Kikano. Austin Signal’s gonna be back at the same time tomorrow. We’ll talk to you then.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
