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Whooping cough – particularly dangerous to infants and young children – is a growing concern, with Austin continuing to confirm cases amid a statewide surge.
Texas teens faced more barriers to getting an abortion than other age groups after the state’s six-week abortion ban went into effect in 2021. A new study looks at the impact on Texas and surrounding states.
Plus: We chat with a couple of the folks behind the new book “Austin’s Music Scene.”
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 [00:00:09] Whooping cough is particularly dangerous to infants and young children, and it’s a growing concern here in Austin and across Texas. Austin’s local health authority continues to report cases, as does the state’s Department of Health Services. We’re going to hear more about the local and statewide numbers. Plus, Texas teens face more barriers to getting an abortion than other age groups after the state six-week abortion ban went into effect in 2021. The findings of a new study that looks at the impact on Texas and its surrounding states. That’s coming up.
KUT Announcer : Laurie Gallardo [00:00:40] The Austin Signal is a production of KUT News, hosted by Jerry Quijano.
Jerry Quijano [00:00:45] And there’s a new book out that captures this moment in time in Austin’s music scene. We’re going to chat with a couple of the folks behind that effort. That is up next. And it’s right here on Austin Signal. Thank you for tuning in out there. This is Austin Signal. I’m Jerry Quijano. It’s Monday the 17th, already more than halfway through November, nearly the end of 2025. Thank you spending part of your day here with us. A quick check in with the KUT newsroom. The Austin Independent School District made some changes to programming and student reassignments in the final version of a school consolidation plan that was released late last Friday. 10 schools are still set to close before next school year. Superintendent Matias Segura says the revised plan reassigns just short of 4,000 students and eliminates more than 6,300 empty seats from the district, a district that has been seeing declining enrollment over the last decade. That plan is expected to help save more than $20 million. The AISD Board of Trustees is set to vote on the plan this Thursday, along with the turnaround plans. For two dozen schools. Whooping cough is a growing problem here in the Austin area. Whooping Cough or Pertussis cases continue to be confirmed by Austin Public Health, and it’s not just happening locally. The Texas Department of State Health Services reports a surge statewide. Texas has seen 3,500 cases through October of this year. That is approximately four times more than there were reported during the same period last year. More than 10 times the case is reported in the same period two years ago. Here to talk about this more is KUT’s healthcare reporter Olivia Aldridge. Olivia, thanks for being with us.
Olivia Aldridge [00:02:44] Hi, Jerry.
Jerry Quijano [00:02:44] So do officials have any idea why we’re experiencing and seeing this uptick in cases?
Olivia Aldridge [00:02:51] Well, vaccination rates for whooping cough are down, and it’s a very contagious illness, so it’ll spread more if fewer people are vaccinated. And that’s why the state health department is really urging parents to make sure that their kids get the Tdap vaccine. That also protects against tetanus and diphtheria. And for adults to look into a booster, if they are around people who are vulnerable to whooping-cough, that includes infants, pregnant women, and anyone who’s immunocompromised,
Jerry Quijano [00:03:19] You mentioned that Tdap vaccine. Austin Public Health expects that there were several cases that passed around at Austin school campuses, but the whooping cough vaccine, that T-dap, it’s required for schools, is it not?
Olivia Aldridge [00:03:32] Yeah, kids are technically required in Texas to get a Tdap vaccine before starting school, but fewer people are actually getting it. So in Austin ISD specifically, just 74% of kindergartners were up to date on that shot during the 2024, 25 school year, around 85% among seventh graders. In Texas, you can get a conscientious exemption for required vaccines like this, but the data also shows us that locally, not all of these kids actually have those exemptions on file and rates for pretty much all vaccines have been slipping since COVID. For a story I did earlier this year that was more focused on measles vaccination rates, folks at Austin ISD told me that it’s just been. Battle for a number of reasons getting everyone into compliance since that time when things were pretty disrupted.
Jerry Quijano [00:04:25] Whooping cough was not something I would heard all that much whenever I was a youth so I’m learning a little bit as we’re going around it seems as though it’s more dangerous the younger the affected person is who really needs to be most concerned here when it comes to whooping cough.
Olivia Aldridge [00:04:40] Sure, right? It sounds kind of like an old-timey Victorian illness, doesn’t it?
Jerry Quijano [00:04:42] It really does it sounds like like a fainting couch or something you need to get fainten couch for your whooping cough or something like that
Olivia Aldridge [00:04:49] Sure, but it is descriptive, it’s, you know, people start off with a little bit of a cold, then they’re getting this really serious persistent cough that kind of does have this distinctive whooping sound potentially. It can be pretty mild for many people, but especially for babies under the age of one, it can be pretty dangerous. They can struggle to breathe, they can stop breathing, and again, DSHS says around a third of infants with whooping cough end up hospitalized.
Jerry Quijano [00:05:17] We can read more about Olivia’s reporting on Whooping Cough over at KUT.org. I want to switch topics to another story that you reported last week, which is that Texans under the age of 18 were disproportionately affected after the state enacted its six-week abortion ban back in 2021. First off, who conducted this study and what time frame were they looking at?
Olivia Aldridge [00:05:39] So it was published in the American Journal of Public Health, and some of the authors are part of this Texas-based research group called ReSound Research for Reproductive Health. They used to be affiliated with UT Austin. They looked at this time period around when Texas’s Senate Bill 8 was passed. That was the approximately six-week abortion ban passed prior to Roe versus Wade being overturned. Of course we now have a more restrictive total ban, but data from this period is interesting to researchers because it’s some of the earliest data available on the effects of restrictive abortion bans kind of in this era and can maybe indicate more of what we might be seeing in states across the country now.
Jerry Quijano [00:06:22] Well, from reading your reporting at kut.org, I noticed that overall facility-based abortions dropped in Texas, but when it came to patients under 18, they were way down, 60% fewer during the time of the study. We’re obviously here in Texas so we’re worried about that. Did we see that there was an effect on abortion numbers in the states surrounding Texas in the same time period?
Olivia Aldridge [00:06:45] Yeah. So keep in mind with those statistics you’re talking about, there’s only six weeks within time frame when people can be getting that procedure when this was the law. But the study’s authors also looked at Texans traveling to surrounding states. So it got statistics on the number of Texans who left the state of Texas to six surrounding states to have in clinic abortions there. What they found was that there were a lot more Texans doing that than before, maybe unsurprisingly, but it still didn’t compensate for that overall decrease. It really didn’t come close. So I think for minors under the age of 18, there was still an overall 26% decrease in the number of abortions they were getting, even if you included those out-of-state numbers.
Jerry Quijano [00:07:37] Okay Olivia, we only have about a minute left with you. Were there any other important takeaways that you found from this study?
Olivia Aldridge [00:07:44] Well, I would note that, you know, as we discuss, laws and trends have changed. The study doesn’t factor in telemedicine, for instance, so medication abortion sent by mail from doctors in other states. And we know that that’s increasingly common in the US and kind of the post-Roe era. So it’s not comprehensive of all the abortions that could have been taking place, but it does show us some interesting trends.
Jerry Quijano [00:08:07] All right, we have been speaking with Olivia Aldridge. She is KUT’s healthcare reporter, and you can find more of her reporting over at kut.org. Olivia, thank you for talking to us today. And thank you for being with us here on Austin Signal. You can hear us every weekday afternoon at one o’clock on KUT News 90.5 on the KUT app and online at KUT.org. Hope you’re having a nice Monday and hey maybe your Monday morning commute seemed smoother than usual and if so you are not imagining that. New research shows that Monday mornings have the fewest traffic delays on average. Compared to rush hour during every other weekday. But as KUT’s Nathan Bernier reports, the trend says more about who can skip traffic than how to fix it.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:07] Nobody likes to go into the office on Mondays, so for those who can choose which days to commute, they tend to avoid it, and that creates an opportunity for people like Kenna Pierce. She lives in South Austin and works in North Austin.
Kenna Pierce [00:09:20] I go to work on Monday and I take 35 and the traffic is way less in the morning anyway. On the way home it’s always bad.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:27] A new report by Texas A&M University’s Transportation Institute backs that up. Researchers looked at traffic data in almost 500 cities natio nwide, and a clear trend emerged.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:37] Mondays is…
Nathan Bernier [00:09:38] Hands down the least congested weekday. David Schrank is a senior research scientist at the Texas A&M Transportation Institute. He’s been studying urban mobility for more than 35 years, which is long enough to know that the same thing that makes Mondays smoother, basically people making their own choices about when to go into the office, can also make Mondays way worse.
Nathan Bernier [00:09:59] Because you don’t know which Monday ever employer in town is going to call their people in you’re no one’s expecting it. And all of a sudden, wham, everybody’s out there trying to use the system at the same time.
Nathan Bernier [00:10:12] Or something else happens, like bad weather is forecast on Wednesday, so people decide to go in Monday instead. Of course, not everyone has the luxury of choosing which days to commute, but Austin does have an unusually large number of people who work from home at least one day a week, according to a poll conducted by Moveability Austin. That’s an organization whose main purpose is reducing traffic by convincing people not to drive alone.
David Schrank [00:10:35] When people are stuck in traffic, they like to think it’s the traffic’s fault. But actually you are traffic.
Nathan Bernier [00:10:41] Lonnie Stern is MoveAbility’s executive director. Their Austin area poll found about 60% of Travis County respondents worked from home, at least occasionally. For Williamson County, it was 55%. For Hayes County, about 50%. The poll found remote work is an economic privilege. People allowed to work from home tended to have higher incomes, higher education, and were over 35 years old. And remote work just is not possible for much of the workforce that’s considered essential. Like those in retail, healthcare, construction, or hospita-
David Schrank [00:11:13] Work from home isn’t going to be a panacea. We find that people who work from home may then take extra trips during those off hours. So that’s why we’re starting to see the midday traffic spike where it used to be very predictable. Everyone drove in and everyone drove out for the workday. Now they’re making all these trips in the middle of the day.
Nathan Bernier [00:11:35] Texas A&M’s research found the same thing. Another factor is all the extra trips by delivery trucks because of more people shopping online. And more baby boomers have retired and now they’re driving around during the middle of the day. So if Monday is the best day to commute, what’s the worst day? On average, across all the roads measured in Austin, it was Thursday, especially afternoons between four and six p.m., in Austin anyway. In Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio, Fridays between 4 and 5 is still the worst time to be on the roads. I’m Nathan Bernier in Austin.
Jerry Quijano [00:12:22] It’s Austin Signal, thank you for being with us. We hope your Monday morning and Monday afternoons commute goes smooth. Something that didn’t move very smooth this weekend was the Texas football team. They came up short in a road game against Georgia, and joining me now to talk a little more about that is KUT’s Jimmy Maas. Howdy, Jimmy. Good afternoon, Jerry. So Jimmy, a final score of the game against Georgia, 35 to 10, seems like a walloping. Was the game any closer than the score indicated?
Jimmy Maas [00:12:53] A score not indicative of the game. Although, man, the game and the season really did unravel quite quickly there in the fourth quarter. They were only down four points. Texas, I mean. Georgia was leading by four. And then on the ensuing drive, they had a fourth down, seemingly they stopped Georgia with a little momentum. And then a fake punt. And then four downs later, the costly penalty on another fourth down. And then, a quick touchdown, and then a quick. Onside kick that fooled Texas. It happened very fast. Next thing you know, it is, they’re 18 points down and they had nowhere to go. There was kind of a junk touchdown at the end, but with that, there were a lot of expectations on this Texas team and I think if you were trying to hold that team to that same standard the pre-season number one, that was a very disappointing game.
Jerry Quijano [00:13:46] Absolutely absolutely as like you said preseason number one this team had made the college football playoff two times in a row I’m
Jimmy Maas [00:13:53] If you are holding Texas to the standard that is the highest grossing athletic department in division one sports, it is a very disappointing game. If you have some sort of circumspect view that like, well, it’s a young team, young quarterback read, you know, it s hard to make the playoffs for three years in a row and it’s very even more difficult to come in with those kind of manning sized expectations and live up to them. This season may be right about where you’d expect and it’s not over. It’s there’s still a little.
Jerry Quijano [00:14:28] Little bit to play there’s a little bit of sliver of hope that the you have a game this weekend against Arkansas here I DKR Arkansas here closing out next Friday against Texas A&M and that
Jimmy Maas [00:14:38] That game will determine whether Texas A&M may get into the SEC Championship.
Jerry Quijano [00:14:42] That’s right, so lots to play for still. That’s KUT’s Jimmy Maas with a quick update on the Longhorns. Jimmy, thank you. Thank you. And thank you for tuning in to Austin Signal. We will be back in just a moment. You’re tuned in to Austin Signal here on KUT News. Thank you for making this part of your Monday. You know that feeling when you wanna look up a favorite old local band or photos from a now shuttered venue, and once you’ve finally found an archived link that sends you down nostalgia lane, eeeek, a piece of the internet no longer exists. A fantastic alternative to that is a good old fashioned hold it in your hand book, a lasting testament to a sound and to a moment in time. Out now that’s putting a new shine on the artist venues and stories right at the heart of our local community music community it’s called austin’s music scene your guide to the city’s most iconic artists and venues and today we’re joined by the book’s editor-in-chief mitch baronowski and its photo editor david brendan hall uh gentlemen thank you for coming on Austin Signal.
Mitch Baranowski [00:15:46] Thank you for having us. It’s great to be here.
Jerry Quijano [00:15:48] Thank you. Well, Mitch, let me start with you. Why did you and your team, you know, why did you want to create this guidebook in the first place?
Mitch Baranowski [00:15:55] You know, we are a team of fans and journalists and creatives, and we were chatting with the folks at HAM. It’s their 20th anniversary at the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians, and wanted to do something special. And we, in taking a look at the landscape, we realized no one’s ever really tried a book about the current live music scene. We have so much talent in this town. We’ve had our history books. We’ve our biographies and our memoirs. But we haven’t had a snapshot of the scene today. And so we really set out to create a love letter, if you will, because let’s face it for a lot of musicians, a lot artists, it’s a labor of love. And this project was for us a labor love.
David Brendan Hall [00:16:37] Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the challenges was figuring out how we create this snapshot. And one thing we wanted to do, just to clarify that a little bit, was make it so that all the artists that you see in the book are active right now. The idea that you can pick up the book, read about an artist, check out the photos, and go see them. Find out when they’re playing something. Yeah, exactly. So There is an immediacy to the concept of the book also, which is the difference that Mitch was talking about, you know, rather than a Retrospective or something like that. Of course, it may turn into that over time. Yeah
Jerry Quijano [00:17:17] Yeah, but it’s starting out at this at this stage, right? You mentioned that immediacy. I love that You know, there’s an index of artists. You can actually fold through the pages and see Everything photos look beautiful How important was it for this thing to actually be like a tangible book and not just an online guide? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But how important was for this to be a real thing that people could hold?
Mitch Baranowski [00:17:38] Super important. I mean, we have, we have a digital companion to the book as well, where we’re, we’ll be sharing exclusive content, bonus content that you can’t find on the page. But, um, how awesome, uh, to have something that feels like a coffee table book, but also has the practicality of a field guide, if you will, and our friend Emma Schmidt, just to call out one of the many talented folks who worked on the, on the book with us, uh did these amazing hand-drawn illustrations of venues across town. Inside the back cover, it folds out to this great hand-drawn map of the venues across town, and you can really use that to plan your live music experience. So I kind of described the creative strategy as a reverse mullet. It’s sort of, you know, party in the front with all the great photos from, from David Brendan hall and others, and a business in the back with all the nuts and bolts that you need to really take advantage of this town.
Jerry Quijano [00:18:30] Yeah, well, as Mitch was saying there, David, most of the photos in this book belong to you, and you were talking a little bit about you, you were born and raised here, I believe you said, and so you’ve been on the scene for a long time. How many years of work did you, were you able to kind of amass into this book?
David Brendan Hall [00:18:44] Well, we wanted to pull from photos from my archive that was as current as we possibly could. Now, I have some photos that go, you know, back 15 years, but we tried to keep it within the last decade, and even then made some choices. Well, this is an old photo of this band or this artist. They have a different vibe or the band members have changed. Yeah. And those were cases where. Really needed to reach out to other photographers or the artists and get updated photos. And a goal of mine was to include as many other photographers as possible within the restrictions of our modest budget, but also tried to be generous in that sense to as many perspectives as we could get. And so about maybe to answer your question, 10 years of coming through my archive and a lot of that thanks to working with the Austin Chronicle, who opened a lot of doors for me, so shout out to them. Absolutely.
Mitch Baranowski [00:19:42] Absolutely. Absolutely. And then KUTX.
David Brendan Hall [00:19:44] NKUTX for everything. Education on the music scene, commitment to it, to spotlighting that for people every day. And I think that with the choices that we made, it was a difficult process.
Mitch Baranowski [00:20:07] An editorial process.
David Brendan Hall [00:20:08] Yeah, and the difficult editorial process and it came together in such a short amount of time. I think we pulled all these photos in a matter of two and a half, three months. So it was quite the trip down memory lane.
Mitch Baranowski [00:20:23] A perfectly imperfect process. I mean, no, no one book can do justice to the, to the broad, deep talent that’s in this town. And so this is a start and we just, we’re trying to give the readers a cross section. And that’s why we, you know, we decided to use genres to sort of organize, organize discovery of artists, if you will. And we have country Americana, blues and soul, Latin and world, hip hop and R and jazz electronic and experimental There’s so much to discover. I learned a lot, David learned a lot.
David Brendan Hall [00:20:56] Yeah that was that was one of the fun things is that you know of course Mitch and I both have our segments our niches in the scene that we know but you know I there was stuff like particularly jazz that I don’t know a whole lot about and so really learned about artists that haven’t been on my radar the entire time I’ve been in the seen and connected with photographers also who were really involved in that and people that came in to consult with us and educate us. On on some of these so it was that it was a process of discovery for us and we hope that you know it’s uh… Vehicle for discovery for others and it’s
Jerry Quijano [00:21:31] And did y’all expect it to be a source of discovery, because I assume, like, you know, you write a book, you’re perceived as, like an authority on that topic, right, but was that rewarding to be able to be enlightened as you’re going along in this process?
Mitch Baranowski [00:21:43] Well, you know, it’s interesting because we often talk about the Austin music scene as if it’s some monolithic entity. And when you go down this path, what you quickly discover is this great insight that there is not just one scene. You know, that holds space for all of these great scenes, all these micro scenes. And so you can go to Africa night at the Sahara Lounge on, on Saturday night, or you can dip in to the white horse for Armadillo Road on a Sunday night, or You know, you can go to ABGB on Sunday afternoon. You can do all these great things in this town. Chickensh, bingo, at Little Longhorn, right? Thank you for that. It’s all here. Anyway, scenes are personal. They are highly personal.
David Brendan Hall [00:22:24] Just to highlight something that you sort of did there inadvertently that the book is more than just artists. That’s right. It’s the venues, it’s the festivals, it is the nonprofits that are giving back to the scene also. Absolutely. So all that is included in there as part of the guide. And then to backtrack a little bit, I mean, you were asking about, did we expect it to, you know… To learn and to be enlightened by that. Well, I think that you have to when you’re creating a project like this. Or even when you’re conversing with people about the scene or any music scene. And I was talking to Mitch about it. And I think one of the most exciting things about music in general is that one person cannot know everything. There is always something to discover. Even if someone comes to me and says, you’ve probably photographed everything. You’ve seen everything. I’m like, absolutely not. There’s no way, try me. And so through this and even just all the time, you got so many chances to discover music. And that’s part of the magic of it. And it was part of magic of this project. Can help please. Translates to other people picking up the book in Austin and beyond. I think there’s reach beyond here, too
Jerry Quijano [00:23:28] Absolutely. It’s a way to be welcomed into the Austin music scene and have a good knowledge. We got about two minutes left and you mentioned Ham earlier. Some proceeds from the sale of your book are benefiting Ham. Again, that’s the Health Alliance for Austin musicians. How important was it to use this project as a way to give back to those musicians, to the community?
Mitch Baranowski [00:23:47] Super important. I mean, it’s open enrollment right now for Ham. Most of the artists we interviewed and talked to, and we must have done at least 70 interviews for this project, they’re not opposed to change or growth. Austin has changed a lot over the last decades. One common hope is that the scene remains affordable for them to stay here and perform here and make their art here. Uh, we, we heard that routinely and, you know, You know, working with Ham made it abundantly clear that we have to support these artists in this community if we want the scene to thrive. And so I’d say that’s another great note. We have an impact section in the back of the book. We recognize all of the great nonprofits beyond Ham who are working to sustain the scene. And we give readers tips on how they can amplify these nonprofits in their.
Jerry Quijano [00:24:42] We have been chatting with David Brendan Hall and Mitch Baranowski. They’re a couple of the members of the team behind the book. Austin’s music scene, your guide to the city’s most iconic artists and venues. I did notice that it says first edition and you mentioned, uh, you know, that maybe there will be future ones. We only have about 30 seconds left. Uh, but you said there’s going to be like a little bit of supplementary, uh, information available online.
David Brendan Hall [00:25:04] Yeah, we’ll be launching an online companion component and stuff we couldn’t fit in the book in the very limited amount of pages that we had. So hopefully many more photos, interviews, profiles, the scene will continue to change within a few months, within, it could be next week, another artist or band forms or another venue opens and then things will change and we can update that in real time. Reflects how this scene is ever-evolving. It’s it’s never gonna stop about
Mitch Baranowski [00:25:36] Thank you for going out and supporting live music. Yeah. Keep going.
Jerry Quijano [00:25:40] This is David Brendan Hall and Mitch Baranowski. Thank you for being with us here on Austin Signal. Thank you. And thank you out there for being us on this Monday afternoon or whenever you’re tuning in. This is Austin Signal, I’m your host Jerry Quijano. We have more information at kut.org slash signal.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
